Tuesday 29 November 2016

November Happenings

Ana and Tristan went to Fall Formal.  I was mopping the floor when Tristan came to pick her up so Leo took some photos, but they were cruddy.  Good thing I can steal photos that his mom took and posted on Facebook.  :)


Cecelia (Tristan's mom) told me they left the dance early and came to their house and just watched tv with his parents.  Party animals.  ;)


I made a really easy pencil skirt for Ana that someone had given me the fabric for.  And as I said on Facebook: nSometimes I make fast, easy projects and I think, "Why don't I sew stuff like this more often???!!?" And then I start drooling over 1870's bustle dresses and all sanity is lost again. At least Ana benifitted this time, although she wasn't really happy to model."




















Some creations of Sebastian's.

Frodo's first time in the snow.  He loves it, by the way.

I went to the library book sale and brought home a TON of books--they had some really great ones!!  Leo told Nicolas he would pay him $10 if he read the green book--Lando was so excited!--it's War and Peace.  The other two books are the ones I actually picked out just for him.

I love how Frodo stretches his back legs out.  So funny.

Elena shooting her bow.



I went hiking with Frodo behind our house a lot before the weather turned frigid.  So pretty.  I had Jubal and Land with me--not a fast hike--they were playing in the dirt on the trail somewhere.

Jubal dumped a huge container of curry powder and a huge container of red pepper flakes.  Awesome.  
He also unwrapped the presents I had just wrapped.  Which by the way--Christmas shopping is all done, and all my presents are wrapped minus one.  Yay!  I can't wait till Christmas!!

Crazy cute boys--I love them so much!!!



Monday 28 November 2016

Thanksgiving Weekend










































Thanksgiving was fun!!! It felt so relaxed and it was nice to just stay home and have it with our own family.  The snowfall was perfect timing too!  All morning while I cooked, the kids and Leo played outside in the snow.  Then we had a delicious dinner, ate pie, and watched Finding Dory.  On Friday the girls made blankets to donate--Elena and Isabel made 6 fleece tied blankets, and Ana made two baby quilts.  Someone had given me tons of fleece and the half started quilt so I decided NOT to keep it all hanging around at my house and put it to good and immediate use. And then we played games at the church gym with our friends the Lairds.  Leo changed the brakes in our van.  And we had more pie.  Yum.  On Saturday Ana spent the day with Tristan, and then that night Leo and I went out for an early anniversary date.  We went to the Wolf Restaurant in Saratoga--I had delicious crab legs and steak and Leo had steak.  Then we went to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  It was a great weekend!!!  And I decorated my Christmas tree, the kids' tree we did together the Sunday before.  I love Christmas!! (Thanksgiving is really just a precursor to the absolute wonderfulness of Christmas!)



















The end.

The Young's Came to Visit!!!!

























Sometime this November--Veteran's Weekend--my sister Andrea and her family came to visit us!!!  I'd been harassing her a long time because when we were moving to Rawlins she talked and talked about how we could do all this stuff together and how she would come visit us, and she never had in over a year!  We had planned a weekend in August to get together, but then we both had crazy schedules and we cancelled.  Anyway, I'm SO glad she came out.  We spent a day at my house, mostly the kids shot Elena's bow.  And we pulled a lot of cactus thorns out of her daughter Harriet.  Then on Saturday we went up to the Medicine Bow Nat. Forest and had a hotdog roast and cookies.  They stayed for Sacrament meeting on Sunday and then headed home.  I unfortunately took no photos.  Leo snapped a few on his phone.  It was great time, although 14 kids in a house is crazy!!  :)

Monday 7 November 2016

Our house one year later.

I spent all of September and October working on our house (and part of August).  We've yet to finish the banister, but we did take down the wall of mirrors in the girls room, patch that wall and paint it and the baseboards in the girls' room, replace the carpet in the girls' room, the boys' room, Ana's room, the hallway and my bedroom.  I took down popcorn ceiling in all those rooms, and painted the boys' room completely and stained their baseboards and doorframe, and actually all the rest of the baseboards and door frames in the upstairs that we hadn't done when putting in tile.  Also painted Ana's room--it was supposed to be two walls but ended up being three when I tried to patch over some spot on her blue wall and the colors didn't match. And then when I painted the hallway ceiling that color didn't match the ceiling color in the rest of the living room.  Here's my Facebook post about that major stressor: I had this big fiasco a week ago trying to paint the rest of our upstairs ceiling when the exact same color, exact same paint from the exact same store didn't match what I had painted 8 months ago. They even came to my house to verify and "I've never seen anything like that in 40 yrs!" Was the response i got. But they had no solution to fix it. They called the paint company and they said it had faded. I will never buy their paint agian. So I drove an hour to buy Sherwin Williams, it doesn't match exactly but it's a heck of lot closer. Weird. And now today I finished Ana's ceiling and patched up her blue wall only the store I bought it from didn't have the same kind of paint, so they were nice and substituted a Benjamin Moore instead for the same price, only it doesn't match at all, so now I'll be repainting that wall as well. Errrrrr.....

Anyway, the ceilings in the living room and entryway still need repainted so it all matches and doesn't drive me crazy, but I have the paint to do waiting for when I have a ladder and the time.  I think I'll wait till when I can afford to replace the entryway light, it will be a while in other words.  

And then I stenciled my ceiling.  I thought it would take a week.  It did not.  Three weeks.  It took me three weeks and much pain and tears.  For anyone thinking of stenciling a ceiling, here's my tips.
1. Seriously rethink this idea.  Choose a wall instead.
2.  You need to wash the stencil fairly frequently because the paint will build up and weigh down the stencil causing distortion in your pattern.
3.  It doesn't have to be perfect but a little tiny paintbrush was my best friend for days and I still look at it and want to fix things.
 
4. Plan on it taking a long time because I found I tired pretty quickly and if I tried to keep going I just made more mistakes--that's really the main reason it took so long.  Also, book a visit to the chiropractor.  Being 6 months pregnant doesn't help either.
And that's it.  I like it though.  And Leo really likes it too.  So I guess it was worth it.  I still would like to do so much on my house, but it's kind of depressing because as soon as we fix up one thing it seems like another thing breaks, or I notice all the marks from kids on my newly painted walls.  It makes it much less motivating.
 
 I want to move this light into my bedroom

and buy this chandelier to go in the dining room, but that will be a while too.

Anyway, the rest is just a jumble of pictures.  Sorry, I just kind of dumped them all in. 
 
  
Ana's room no longer has orange carpet.  And the boys' room no longer has orange walls and green and orange carpet.