And then there was light.....

Isn't it lovely that those pesky projects you really wanted to finish don't get done til you wanna move? Yep, that's me over here. Kicking myself for not doing this sooner. Do you know what an orange kitchen does for every birthday candle blowing picture? You turn into an oompa-loompa. That's what every photo looks like for the last 3 years. I love the color orange. I loved the look of it in my kitchen. But I'm not loving the super fake spray tan look it would do to our skin. I'm pasty white. I'll own it before I own looking like a pumpkin.... Here are my before kitchen photos: Ignore the after next to them- this is after we installed granite counters and a travertine backsplash......

And here is the after....... a little boring but lighter and airy! That's what I'm hoping anyway!


Don't know what's up with the super blue island..... weird. Does NOT look like that in real life!

So what do you think? Wanna buy my house now? Because supposedly this will make it sell! Cross your fingers for me!

2012 Resolutions

I've been thinking about making some goals. I usually don't make any because in the back of my mind I don't really believe I'll follow thru. Lame, but honest! But if I write them on my blog, I suddenly feel accountable to my blog. While I feel like there's so much more I could've done and I was a bit lazy on the crafts it's kind of nice to look thru my home and see what I have accomplished in the last year.

For instance: My office is pretty much done. And I still love my circus stripes....

I finally bought my deer head from Z Gallerie after I drooled over it for months. And the ikea frame I spray painted finally got out of the garage.

The chevron drape fabric was finally chosen and thanks to my mom, completed without any hot glue, velcro or painters tape. My mom is a seamstress, I'm a glue-er :)

The magnet board we made was painted white and hung.... and the room became complete!

I also completed drapes in the family room- again, thanks to my mom!

Fabric is called Chipper sunflower from Fabrics.com and made by Premier Fabrics.

Morgan's room finally got the finishing details as well. The finishing stuff is the trickiest for me....

The clipboards were mod-podged and hung. It only took 4 months......

The canvas was painted and the vinyl song lyrics applied. The pink birds were cut and stuck to the wall. And the room became complete!

Kimballs room changed from a baby bed to a big boy room!

And the wall gallery on the staircase was completed....

And all of this was because of the blog. Thank you blog friends. I need something to motivate me, to make me set goals and deadlines. My house feels pretty complete, just in time to sell! Isn't that how it works? The minute you finish a home, you take half a breath and you put it on the market? That's what's happened to my last home & now this home!

Goals for this year.....

1. Sell this house

2. Sell this house fast

3. Sell this house without dis-owning any family members or burning any of their/hoarders possesions to the ground. (not that it's ever crossed my mind or anything :)

4. Build a new home from scratch with my "pinterest dreams" without my family dis-owning me!

5. All the while, trying to lose weight.

Possible? I'm not sure. But maybe if I blog it? Goodnight bloggy. Maybe my bloggy dreams will come true this year too!

PS-I've linked to this fun party @Thrifty Decor Chick for more office inspiration!

Joining: the Nester 2012 Home Goals Party

& and this fabulous site: DIY Show Off

http://diyshowoff.com/

Decorating for the holidays

I am drooling over all the beautiful Christmas decorating ideas. I think I have more envy this year because I'm not willing to do much in my own home with a three year old who's sole daily goal is to break something. My favorite nativities are tucked nicely away in their boxes, maybe they can come out next year. Cross fingers that this is just a short phase! (as I type this I just hear glass & metal collide....nice) Anyhoo, here are some lovely ideas i've been collecting on pinterest and maybe one Christmas my home will be perfectly lovely like these photos....

What to do with Christmas cards? Here's some fabulousness:


photo tree image found here


Or, what do you do with old Christmas cards? Some are just too pretty to throw away. So don't! That's what apothecary jars are for! Ooooh, gonna have to find me apothecary jars now. (note to self: make sure to buy back-ups since I have a boy)


(jar idea image found here)

( staircase garland idea from marthastewart.com)

Do you get the impression that I love sentimental decor? Well, here's some more! How fabulous & cheap & awesome is this idea for your tree or kid's tree? Square photos! I love the idea of seeing past Christmas photos and remembering how quickly they grow up. And maybe this breaking everything stage is cute and not sad & annoying. Typing outloud, sorry peeps.....

image from my favorite site found here

What was once tacky is now fabulous! What was missing, you ask? It wasn't a collection! One tree just looks cheap and boring. Add about 20 in various tacky colors and you can now have yourself a merry little mantle!

tree mantel image found here

This print below combines everything I love in a simple & beautiful way. Quotes, beautiful cursive & black & white. Its simplicity is stunning and I must have! I would love this all year round! O Holy Night print found here

There you have it people. My dreams of a beautiful home for Christmas. I'm content this year just to window shop other homes. And set aside for my "one day" dreams. Right now I have to enjoy my 3 little kids who won't stop growing & go clean up whatever was "accidently" broken while I wrote this post....

Christmas Kindness

As I pulled out the Christmas decorations this year, I came across one of my favorite ornaments. It's a red leather book, that my sister gave me, that hangs on the tree . Every year we write the Christmas fun we had that year. The parties we threw, the parties we attended. Our favorite gifts we received, the gifts we gave. The Christmas Eve activities and the New Years fun. It's all in that book and it makes me laugh when I read about the live mouse that someone gave as a white elephant gift. I almost forgot about it! Great memories all recorded in this cute little book that hangs on the tree.

That book gave me an idea.....I decided to make another book ornament this year. I'm calling it the Christmas Kindness ornament. Instead of writing the fun we had, it will be 25 (or more) random acts of kindness we did for others. It will keep us mindful of serving others for the next 25 days. I'm excited to think of the possibilites. The rush we get from making someone's day brighter. The lessons it will teach my children and most important, the gratitude we will feel in seeing how blessed we are as a family. I can't wait to start our list and keep our minds open to helping those in need this year. I look forward to the future where I can see our list of Christmas kindness and the opportunities we had to serve one another and that we were able to fill this month with service. It will help remind us of the true meaning of Christmas. I'd love to hear of any meaningful Christmas traditions you have! Let us know! I'm off to make my ornament book.....

My advent calendar ideas

I seriously can not figure out what's wrong with me, I'm just not really in the mood to decorate for Christmas this year. Crazy, right?! I usually love decorating, but with a 1 and 3 year old running around the house, the thought of putting out my treasured nativities and a tree full of breakable ornaments seems like a recipe for disaster. So, I'll probably put it off a bit. BUT, one of my favorite parts of Christmas is our advent calendar of activities. LOVE it. You can find my original advent calendar post here. Can't wait to get started with the fun! So I thought I'd share with you my tentative plan for our advent activities this year. Here it is (in no particular order):

Read "The Elf on a Shelf"

Make a paper Christmas countdown chain

Watch Christmas Vacation

Get hot chocolate and see the lights

Get and decorate the Christmas tree

Decorate a gingerbread house

Take treats to our neighbors

Watch Elf

Go to the ward Christmas party

Go sledding

Sing Christmas carols

Christmas book night

Do some secret service

Build a snowman

Go to Arthur Christmas

Make and decorate sugar cookies

Go shopping for brother gifts

Read Snowmen at Christmas

Watch the Santa Clause

Watch The Christmas Story

Read Luke 2 and watch the Nativity movie

Read and watch the Polar Express

Go shopping for stocking stuffers

I guess we'll be busy watching all our Christmas movies. And I'll have to watch the 90's version of Miracle on 34th Street because that's Andrea and my favorite but no one else wants to watch it here:( Womp, womp.

Anyway, hope this gives you a few ideas of things to add to your holiday list! Any other suggestions for fun family activities??

Meaningful Gifts

You know I'm obsessed with finding the perfect gift, right? You know the kind that brings tears to the receiver's eyes when they open it? Yeah, that's what I want every gift I give to be like. No pressure right? The problem is, when you find that perfect gift and it's everything you hoped it would be, everything after that is just a let down. It's hard to just give a gift card after that! Oh the things I stress myself out with :)

So a few years ago I wondered "If I died, would my family know how much they meant to me? Would my brothers, that I don't talk to enough, know how much I adored them, and how much fun I had growing up with them?" So I began one Christmas to sit down and write letters to each of them. I thought it would be hard, since I have 6 siblings and it's tricky to stay close now that we're all grown up and living so far away. But as I wrote, the memories of shopping cart races, dolly bomb fights & glow in the dark tag easily came. And after I had written 6 letters to my brothers and sisters, I had a pretty good history of our childhood. I thought my parents would enjoy them as well and so I wrote them letters as well. Then, I compiled the letters and published the book for my parents to keep. Since I live far away, I don't have a picture of that book. But I did a similar one for my own children and hubby last year, if you remember. From my favorite book publishing site- shutterfly.com It looked like this:




Each child and hubby have a two page layout with a letter from me.

I typed up my hopes and dreams for each of them and of course I had to include my favorite photos of them. Photo's are my favorite gift of all time. They evoke so many emotions when I see they're chubby baby faces or remember how much they loved that particular necklace or always had to have they're hair a certain way.

Here is another way to show how much you care for someone:




The original idea was found here and I just love thinking of how fun it would be to open each letter and relive each memory. On someone's birthday, however old they're turning, you turn over a pen & paper to that many people. For instance, your dad is turning 60, you find 60 friends, grand kids, and family to write a memory of him. Compile them in a book like I did, or stack them in envelopes and tie them up pretty. The idea is simple, but so meaningful! It's the perfect time to start this, since so many families will be gathered together for Thanksgiving!

31 Days- Photo organizing

31 days!! Can you believe we organized and blogged for that many days? I gotta admit, I didn't think we'd make it!
So the last thing on our agenda is photo and video organizing. I'm really good at taking 400 photos a month (wish I was exaggerating) but what do you do with them after you take them? I wish I could say that I have up to date scrapbooks for each child and additional copies for them to take when they grow up, but you've seen my closets and pantry by now, you know that's not like me. What I can tell you is I have a great desire to document my children's lives and prove I was a fun mom even though they'll deny it through their teens. So in my opinion, it doesn't matter how many photos you take, what's the point if you don't do anything with them? I used to spend an hour per scrapbook layout which included only about 3-4 photos of the same event. But that only lasted for the first child. It's pretty overwhelming to do that for multiple children. So now I use www.shutterfly.com. I should probably work for them or at least buy stock in this company because I love them! I scanned in my baby photos along with my siblings and some of my ancestor photos and then uploaded them to shutterfly.com. Now, if something should happen to my oroginal photos such as fire or water damage I have them backed up. Shutterfly also promises to never delete my photos or projects and doesn't require a minimum purchase to keep my account open, unlike other companies. There is so much peace knowing that my family photos will always be safe and I can reprint any of my previous photo books if I ever need them. (I promise they're not paying me for this blog post- I just seriously love their quality and they're easy to use!)

Here's a great idea for the non-scrapbook people. Document what your child is into on each birthday. Here is a sample of mandy and my 3 year old boys:





So what do you do with your videos? Now that our phones, camera's and iPads all have video recording , I have plenty of videos but have to watch them on my phone to view them. I've just started playing around with iMovie app for the iPad or iPhone. My 9 year old opened the program and made a video with photos set to music without a single tutorial. I needed a little more help but am starting to get the hang of it. Clipping videos and setting them to music is a little trickier but so much more fun to watch than 20 min of a baby sleeping. In this fast paced world we need more exciting home movies and iMovie is the perfect solution. (Again, not getting paid for my opinion) I'm loving it and the kids feel like movie stars when I show them the finished projects. Here is a quick sample of what I mean. I uploaded to vimeo.com but you can use Youtube & even Facebook. I still have to figure out the whole music copy rights so I had to go with some cheesy music, but you'll get the idea....

So in the long run, the most important thing you do with your photos is to DO SOMETHING with them. Print your favorite photos AND frame them. Turn your home movies into fast paced movies or in the very least, burn them to CDs to enjoy. Create digital photo books or paper scrapbooks. Whatever you decide, the best thing you can do is enjoy the photos and videos that you take of your loved ones. And then after that, use www.carbonite.com to back up your computer nightly. It's only $50 a year and cheaper than an external hard drive. Trust me, this back up has worked many times for us!

Happy Halloween Peeps! I hope you enjoyed organizing with us. Since we're no pro's at this I think it's safe to say, we learned alot this month! For instance, I learned that we have a whole lotta clutter and chocolate makes cleaning easier. My next 31 days will probably consist of a diet. Boo.