Decorating Fun

BEDS

My Boys Room Project started clear back in May when I decided to refinish the boy's beds.  They are the beds Rob and Randy used as children so they're pretty old and looked pretty haggard.  We don't have any money to buy new beds and my neighbor refinishes furniture all the time and made it sound like no big deal.  So I thought, what the heck.  Not only was it a big deal...it was a nightmare.  I was trying to do it as cheaply as possible so I decided to just sand them down rather than buy some stripper.  My same neighbor said she always sands rather than strips.  Little did I know at the time that she always paints so she's only sanding to create a smooth surface she can paint on.  I was going to re-stain them so I had to get all the color out and it took FOREVER.  I decided to try the stripper on the second bed and while it definitely helped with the sanding time, I still had to sand a TON and the stripping process was a pain in the butt in and of itself.  2 months later after hours and hours and hours and hours of sanding and stripping and my entire basement covered in sawdust, I was able to refinish them.  I think they look great.  As with any homemade project (especially first-time projects) I can see all my screw-ups.  But they don't bug me, I still think the beds are awesome.

PAINT

While the beds were torn apart downstairs in the middle of this process, we sold the baby crib and changing table.  So their room was pretty much empty.  No better time to paint right?  Randy isn't a fan of paint, he wants the entire house to be one color.  Plus, it seems like such a waste to paint over new paint doesn't it?  So rather than painting the whole room I decided to paint some stripes to give their room a little flavor.  I picked the colors based on the bedding we already had. 

CURTAINS

I was planning on making some curtains to match and was already planning on brown with the blue and orange stripes when I found some awesome brown black-out curtains at Kohls.  With all my Kohls deals I got them cheaper than the fabric would have cost me, plus they look great, they're black-out, and I didn't have to do all that work.  I just sewed the stripes right on the top.

PICTURES

In the last General Conference we were encouraged to have a picture of the temple in our kid's rooms.  I got this idea to take a picture of the boys in front of the temple and blow it up (I just LOVE Costco's $6 16X20s.)  I also thought I might blow up a picture of the boys being sweet together so they can always be reminded that they are best friends.  Then, when looking for extra sand paper in the basement, I found 2 matching 16X20 frames I got a while back for super cheap on Walmart's clearance.  So there we have it.

I don't think I'm very good at decorating.  I don't feel like I have any natural talent.  I recognize great decorating skills when I see them and I'm pretty sure my house looks like a four-year-old decorated it in comparison.  And yet, I love my house.  I love my own decorating because it fits me and makes me feel at home and happy.  And who doesn't feel good after a job well done?

Oh yeah, one more thing...the boys love their room!

Summer = Yardwork

Yardwork

One of the huge advantages and huge disadvantages of owning a home is yardwork.  I love my big yard. I love that my kids have somewhere to play right out the door and I don't have to go sit at the park everyday. Our big yard will be especially great later this month when we host a reunion at our house.  We have can have family parties and the boys have an entire football/soccer field (when the get a little older and more coordinated that is).  But man is it a lot of work.  Weeding, mowing, fertilizing, landscaping, planting, digging up and replanting, etc.  Randy's back has been injured for what seems like forever. Around Mother's Day (planting time in Utah) my Dad who is seriously the best dad ever showed up with a tiller and helped Randy get the garden in. And while we're on the subject, my dad helped with the sprinklers and the trampoline hole and is about to build us a freakin awesome swing set.  I'm one lucky girl...even if I have to do yard work.



Notice the little boys chillin in their lawn chairs while the big boys do all the work



Living in Lehi

I LOVE where we live. 

Location

• Close to the freeway
• Convenient to Utah County and Salt Lake County
• Right in the middle of both of our parents (we see my parents about 10 times more often now, it's great)
• Surrounded by cows and horses, they really do make good neighbors
• Fantastic view of Mount Timpanogas  (the pink pictures below taken from my back porch)
• Fantastic view of the sunset over the mountains in the west (the orange picture below taken from my front porch - about one minute after I took the pink ones in the east, weird huh?)

Neighborhood
I love our neighborhood.  Everyone on our block is super friendly and we all get along really well.  I was better friends with my neighbors here in the first month than I ever was in 5 years in our last house.  The ladies on the block and I do a little preschool for our kids then we usually hang out and visit afterwards.  Last week we took the kids to Arctic Circle for lunch while we visited. I would feel comfortable calling any of them to watch the kids if I ever needed to or asking for any favor for that matter!  When the weather is nice you pretty much always find someone outside.  Everyone has kids and they all like to play together.  What more can you ask for?

House
And last but not least, our house.  I LOVE our house.  Obviously it's not literally perfect and if I had an unlimited supply of money there are a few things I would change, but it's so fabulous that I feel like it's perfect.  I love the spaciousness. I love the storage space downstairs.  I love the main floor living.  I love how big our yard is.  I love the landscaping we did ourselves this summer.  I love my master bathroom/closet.  I love that we have a front room for when people come over and the house is a mess.  I simply LOVE our house. 

While life certainly isn't perfect bliss, I have to say that between our sweet boys, our fabulous new home, our good jobs, our great families, and having the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives... we've got to be some of the luckiest people on the planet.  I'm not just saying this because it's Thanksgiving this month; I feel like this all the time.  We have been so blessed and I am so incredibly thankful.

Our Yard is almost done and Morgan hits his head AGAIN

We spent the entire summer putting our yard in from scratch and doing pretty much all the work ourselves (ok so Randy really but I did help some). We're trying desperately to finish up the last stuff before it snows so Randy was a trooper putting rocks in our park strip during the rain today.  Here are some before and after pictures (check out the pretty rainbow):

It's a good thing Morgan is super smart because it means he probably has a few brain cells to spare.  This kid hits his head ALL the time.  Today he tripped going down the stairs out onto the patio and fell smack on his head as usual.  He hit so hard a rock was stuck in his head.  And since I'm putting pictures up I thought I'd add the ones from a few months ago when he dove head first out of the shopping cart.  They make todays look like a little scratch.



Here are the shopping cart pictures: