Father's Day Creations

It's always so difficult to get a nice picture where everyone is genuinely smiling.  See above photo as evidence.  

But, what's not difficult, is to get my boys to be creative.  And especially when they're making it for someone else.  Every year, it's difficult to determine what we should do for Hubs for Father's Day because he doesn't wear ties, he doesn't golf, and he has enough tools (except a new drill after one unnamed child accidentally threw his other one away).  So, when I saw these picture frames at Joann Fabrics last week on sale, I knew this was it.  They're nothing fancy but the boys had a lot of fun painting them.

The frames are just raw wood, so they're great for painting.  We only had fabric paints and finger paints at home, so we used a combo of those.  Since I can't really imagine a scenario in which the frame would get washed, I figured the washable finger paint would hold up.

They didn't come with glass, so we'll have to find some to put in them.  They decided to paint the paper in the middle, too.  At least they're thorough. 

We're going to pop in a picture of each of the boys and the frames will go on Hubs' desk at the church.  The boys were very proud of them and that's the most important thing about these homemade gifts; all the love that went into them.

What did you give to the fathers in your lives this year?

Happy Father's Day everyone!

Garage Embarrassment Phase I

In the six years that we've lived in this house, we have cleaned out the garage probably 15-20 times.  No matter how great it feels to have it cleaned and organized, over time, things get thrown in the garage haphazardly and since it's our only real storage space, a few tons of stuff have found a home there.  When we first moved in, we had 40 sheets of 4' x 10' FRP paneling that I got for free when my company was changing out our decorative paneling line.  However, we never got around to installing them anywhere, so we ended up giving them away to some people that could use them.  The panels sat in the garage, taking up precious space, for about four years. 

Then, we had an unfortunate run-in with a very large piece of furniture.  (NOTE: My suggestion is to NEVER buy furniture from Harlem Furniture/The Room Place.  I've heard nothing but bad reviews from people I know.  The quality is not great, to say the least.)  That furniture sat in our garage for about two years in the hopes that we would move and repair the rips in the leather.  We had to make the hard decision to get rid of it because it was taking up almost half of our garage and with no move in sight, we just couldn't afford to keep it.

In April, during Projectpalooza, (I know, I know - I still haven't posted pictures!) a couple friends came over to move our huge dresser and armoire from our room to the garage. I had hoped to sell them because they were still in great shape.  However, they are about 20 years old and the style shows it.  I posted them on a local garage sale site, but no bites.  So, we donated them for a tax write-off just to be rid of them because there's no room in our current place to keep them. 

With all these big items getting their eviction notices, the garage was looking much better.  We had even cleaned out the other half of the garage sometime in April but we never got to finish our work.   When the dresser and armoire got moved to the garage, they blocked the main walk way and other junk just started piling up on and around them again.  We had to bring buckets and bins out of the house for Calah's birthday party a couple weeks ago and building materials from Projectpalooza were all over the place. 

To say that it was disorganized is an understatement (You'll see the photos - preparing you now).   During the party, I opened the side door to get something out of the extra refrigerator and immediately wanted to die.  There was no room to walk on the actual floor of the garage.  There were heaping piles of stuff everywhere.  I.WAS.MORTIFIED.  And I found out later, my parents and a couple other people saw it all and even tried to get in there.   

I just couldn't believe it had gotten that bad again after we had just cleaned the left side a little over a month before the party.   The furniture was all still in there at the time, so that didn't help things.  On that Tuesday after the party, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore came to pick up the furniture to be donated.  We took the ripped couch to the curb for the garbage man because the ReStore couldn't take it due to the rips.  We had three extra tube TVs that we didn't use anymore, so those got recycled.  That opened up the space quite a bit but we still couldn't really walk in there.

So, moment of truth (please be kind!), here are the photos of the garage after we got rid of the big items and started moving some of the bikes and other kids' toys out:

::Exhale::  I feel better now that that's out there. 

During the clean-out, I just kept breathing and telling myself that we had to do this one step at a time but that we WILL get there and soon.  You can see in the photos that we do have lots of shelving space, provided by my mom when we first moved here.  They are industrial-strength, metal shelves and can hold a LOT of weight.  Also, they're stackable, so we have some room to play with how to organize the space.

By the end of the night on Saturday, we had gotten about 80% of the garage cleaned out.  Our goal for the day was to decide what we would keep, donate, and trash.  The one area that I did finish completely is my gift wrap/craft shelves.  I had started a business a couple years ago for custom gift wrapping and decided to take a long-term break from it, so I still have a LOT of inventory left over.  I am proud of how that area ended up!  

Hubs brought five large buckets of the kids' clothes in to the house for me to sort through.  I decided to organize them by season since the boys' sizes aren't changing so quickly at 5 and almost 3 years old.  I put clothes in buckets by Fall 2013/Winter 2014 and Spring/Summer 2014.   Then, I labeled the buckets with duct tape by naming them by season.  I consolidated them into three total buckets and I didn't even throw anything away.  Some of it was our clothes, which got its own bucket.   And some of it usable for Summer this year, so those stayed in the house.  My next step is to clean out the two boxes of clothes we received from a friend to see what sizes/seasons the clothes are for and put them away accordingly.  I also feel like I need to weed out some of the clothes in the kids' drawers again.  I plan to do that tonight because it's my only night for the next two weeks where I have nothing else going on and that's the most dangerous thing to a cleaning routine in my house because it means we will come home and just drop everything wherever we stand.   I took the buckets of sorted clothes back to the garage and stacked them neatly so we could easily find what we need later.

The end result: We have a lot of garbage for the curb this week and a few bins of stuff to donate.    I wish I could say that everything got put back in the garage where it should be and in an organized fashion but it's not. 

That will be Phase II.  The next two weeks are crazy busy with different appointments, parties, and outings, so it will probably be a while before we get to Phase II, but I will be sure to include lots of photos when it's done.

Thanks for reading and I hope my garage hasn't horrified you too much and that we can still be friends.

Creativity By Way Of A Broken DVR

This past Saturday, I cut the grass in the front and back yards and burned over 500 calories doing so (our backyard is fairly large with lots of things to work around).  Afterwards, I turned on the kids' car wash that Hubs made for Calah's birthday party the week before.  See photos here.  I filled up the baby pool with water and the kids just had a blast.  We grilled turkey burgers and turkey hot dogs for lunch.  We ate outside (clean up is so much easier!!) and just hung out together.  We were outside ALL DAY.

Then, at dinner time, we came inside and watched a movie together while we ate.  The only time the TV was on all day. One of the items on our summer bucket list is to have a screen-free weekend, but we haven't decided when to do that just yet.  This was just a preview and I was très excited to see that we can actually do this.  We can spend a whole day outside playing without feeling the desire to go in and watch a show (or three).  I've always known the boys could do it but sometimes I get too lazy to want to be outside when it's hot and humid.

Sunday, after church, we had lunch at Cracker Barrel, one of our favorites.  Then, Benji and I went to a friend's house for a bit and then we met Hubs and the little kids at his softball game.  On the way to the game, I noticed that I received an email from our TV provider that we were receiving a new DVR.  My first thought was that the email was spam and almost deleted it but I called Hubs instead and he told me that our DVR had just stopped working.  What?!  It was only just over a  year old, how could that be?  The new one would be shipped out on Monday and we'd receive it by end of business on Wednesday. 

It's not like my life would be over without TV for four whole days but it would make things different for sure because while I clean at night, I watch a movie or a few of my shows.  It makes folding mounds of laundry a little less mundane.  Plus, I'm constantly working towards clearing things off the DVR because we're always around 98% of our Terrabyte capacity.  (We may or may not have roughly 250 movies recorded).  So it's always like a challenge to me and satisfies my OCD tendencies.

Thankfully, we didn't get home until bedtime on Sunday night, because that gave me some time to figure out what we would do the next few days.  The house seemed a lot quieter but it was a nice quiet.  I have been having issues with my hips for the past week, so I haven't been able to attack my to-do list nearly as much as I want each night. 

Without TV and with the Hubs busy with a big project,  I was left with reading and going to bed early.  Going to bed early is a natural consequence of reading at night for me.  I only last about 10-15 minutes before I just pass out!  So, the last few nights, I was asleep by 10:30, whereas I normally go to sleep between 11:30 and midnight.  (Note to self:  Brainstorm why I'm always so tired when I wake up at 6AM for work...).

Here are a few things we've done this week with no TV:

Bubble Party

Impromptu "dress up" and face making

Perler Beads - Joann Fabric for 50% off this week

We also bought Benji a Kindergarten activity book to make sure that he is up on some of his skills before he starts school in the fall.  He is blasting through that book and seems to know all the letters, shapes, and can sound out most words.  We also came back around to working on his addition and he does pretty well but he needs to have ongoing exposure to it.  Jo got a Preschool book even though he still has another year before preschool because of his late birthday and he hasn't shown much interest in it so far but we'll be working on it with him this summer as well.

I have been working on my cousin's baby blanket for quite some time now and every once in a while, I need a break. I need to work on something with a little shape to it. Something smaller that I can complete in under an hour. So I have been experimenting with crocheting different shapes and even tried my hand at some fabric flowers, thanks to my friend Holly, who showed me how to do them.

Here are a few things I've made so far.


1. 4th of July headband
2. Fabric flower
3. Fabric flower with button
4. Crocheted baby barefoot sandals

 I've got some other ideas in the pipeline as well and am getting pumped up about them.  I am not naturally crafty so it's a great feeling when I see that I CAN do it.

How have you been creative this week?

Fabric Scrappy Tutu Finale

Back in March, I posted about making a fabric scrap tutu for Calah's birthday party.  Well, since her party was this weekend, I got to put it on her finally!

I felt like it was lacking some depth:

So I added some pink glitter tulle to it by tying pieces of it onto the pink fabric scraps, then wrapping a longer piece around the waistband and tying to bows in the front.  This reminded me of the cartoon version of Cinderella when the mice were making her dress.  For some reason, I remember those bows they put on the dress more than anything.  If mice were great tailors in real life, I might not be so quick to boot the occasional field mouse out of the house!

Anyway, this is what it looked like on baby girl:

She's so beautiful, isn't she??

Happy birthday Calah Joy!  We love you and your silliness more than you will ever know.

Birthday Party Pics

Here are the pictures from the birthday party over the weekend.  The kids loved the car wash!

The child that does NOT like to get dirty!

The ham.

Calah was exhausted when it was time for the cake!

Other pics from the day...

The Owl Invasion & A Birthday Party

Last weekend was Calah's birthday party and we decided to have it at our dollhouse house and hoped the rain would hold off so we could be outside since there was no way to fit 30 people comfortably in our cracker jack box house.  

The plan:
1. I asked Hubs to build this cool kids' car wash I found on Pinterest (similar) out of PVC pipe, pool noodles and sponges.

2. I had printed off coloring pages and planned for the kids to make owls out of felt.  I cut out the shapes beforehand.   That was no easy feat, BTW.  My fingers were actually pretty numb for about 24 hours from all the felt cutting.

3. I wanted to make an owl cake.  I've never made anything like this so I looked around on Pinterest for ideas. (similar)  I planned to make Calah's cake out of bananas and applesauce so she didn't ingest all the sugar in the regular cake.  We like to give other people's children sugar and send them home :)

4. Sherbet and Sprite punch with food-coloring dyed orange slices for a colorful look.

5. Hors d'oeuvres and cake/ice cream bar.

6.  Calah would open her presents after cake.

What actually happened:

1.  Hubs made the car wash and the kids loved it!  They had a ton of fun and we have a newly-formed mud pit in our yard.  :)  Totally worth it though.  We have had a lot of cooler, rainy days here lately but I'm hoping we'll get to use it again soon.

2.  Between the car wash and moving the party back and forth because of the rain, I totally forgot about the coloring pages and the felt owls.  The kids seemed to really enjoy themselves outside and in the play room though, so I figured we could save those for later.  The boys were coloring them on Tuesday when I went home at lunchtime and we made some felt owls at home last night:

Benji's owl - he's flying!

Jo's owl - he has two sets of eyes; one blue set, one red set

3.  I made the owl cake but realized I didn't have the right size bowls to make it like the picture on the blog I found.  But, I took a stab at it anyway.  I used two boxes of Betty Crocker Yellow Cake mix with pudding and chocolate butter cream frosting for the body.  The instructions said to grease and flour the stainless steel mixing bowls and I did but Hubs came in and suggested that the bowls I was using may not be oven safe so I changed the plan to the corning ware dishes because that was the only bowl/pan I had for the shape I wanted.  BUT, I forgot to grease and flour it before pouring the batter in because I was in a hurry and so when the cake came out of the oven, it broke in half.  :(

I baked the two bottom pieces in a corningware dish

Then I leveled both of them - here's where you can see the bottom piece that fell apart.

Close up of the body with one part frosted

Here's what it looked like before I smoothed it out

This was the final product until I realized Hubs told me the eyes are too small

THIS was the final, final product: 

I used yellow frosting for the belly and the ears, red icing to draw on the nose and little hairs on top of its head, one Oreo cookie and two chocolate chips for the eyes.  These were "glued" on by some of the chocolate frosting.  I built the ears with smaller pieces of the leftover cake tops and supported them by inserting lollipop sticks (I didn't have toothpicks, but this probably would've worked, too).

All in all, it turned out well and everyone said the cake tasted great, too.  Success!

4.  The punch turned out great but I never did get the oranges thawed in time and the punch was pretty clouded with the sherbet foam so I don't think anyone would've seen my green and blue orange slices anyway.  The pin really doesn't give detailed instruction, so I might have to try it again a little differently next time.

5. I made meatballs in the crock pot and toasted ravioli in the oven with some Italian seasoning.  I liked them but Hubs said they turned out a little rubbery.  I wonder if that's the reason the bag didn't include oven cooking instructions...  "Uncle Dave" made some double baked potatoes that were dressed nicely ;-) and then we had fruit and chips and Oreos (yes, I bought a whole package for ONE cookie to use on the cake).  I bought candy for the ice cream and I think the kids had fun with that although I have a ton of leftovers now. #notgreatformydietplan

6.  We sang happy birthday and gave her the smash cake.  She did pretty well and by that, I mean she didn't cry or throw the cake on the floor, lol.   She dug into it and made a nice little birthday mess.  I didn't get any great shots of her, though.  About five minutes after we sang, she was still trying to eat the cake but about to pass out at the same time! 

After a few minutes of us laughing at her, grandpa was merciful and cleaned her up so I could put her in bed.

 

She fell asleep right away and woke up about 20 minutes after everyone had left.  So, we tried to get her to open presents but she was not interested at all.  I LOVED all the cute dresses she got and have been putting them on her any chance I get this week. 

It was a really fun and exhausting day.  The rest of the weekend was mostly just chill time with the family which was totally needed.

Thank you to everyone for loving on our baby girl this weekend and this past year.  We love you guys and are glad to call you family and friends!