Living Room

I am finally getting around to sharing some pictures of my living room on the blog.  I have finally mostly finished decorating it, and I love how it turned out.  When we were looking for a house, and then coming up with house plans, I knew that one thing I would not go without was a living room right off the entry to the house.  My former house had the ever popular open floor plan, which gave everyone a direct shot of my kitchen and family room from the front door.  Since I do a lot of cooking, and projects, and my kids do a lot of playing, it was rare that these spaces were company ready.  I hated feeling embarrassed every time someone popped in.  I tried to tell myself I shouldn't be embarrassed for feeding my family, or letting my kids play, but ultimately it still bothered me.  So, a living room right off the entry that was always "company ready" was a big priority for me.

When you enter my house through the front door, this room is immediately off to the right.  It is not large because I didn't want to waste too much square footage on a room that wouldn't be used that much.

This is a shot of the front wall.  I planned this room around a couple of prints I have of my great-grandmother's paintings.  I love the soft colors in these paintings for a living room.

This room actually gets used a lot more than I thought.  People stop by a lot and we use it when the home teachers and visiting teachers come, plus my kids practice their piano in here every day, but otherwise it is off limits to them.  I originally wanted lighter colored furniture in here, but Jeremy convinced me that we should go a little darker.  Light colored furniture is just too risky with five boys - even if the room is off-limits to them.

A close-up of some of the decor on the piano.  My mom gave us the Christus statue as a housewarming gift the first time she came to see it.

And a close up of my side table lamp.  I bought two of these for this room before the house was even finished and the room was just conceptualized.  When I set them on the tables while I was decorating they seemed too short, but I still loved the lamps and wanted to use them. So I gave them a little boost with some old books that Jeremy had inherited from his grandma.  Now, not only did I get to use my lamps but we can all think of Jeremy's sweet grandma every time we are in this room.

This picture is blurry (sorry), but it gives you a little bit of a better idea of how this room is situated in the house.  As you can see, I still haven't invested in a cute rug for the entry, so we are still using a remnant of carpet.  We are finally working on landscaping the front yard, so hopefully I will be able to get a cuter rug soon.

And since I gave you a glimpse of our Easter mantle in the last shot, I will finish up this post with a few close ups.

The Easter mantle is coming down tomorrow and it will be nice to take a break from the cutesy holiday mantles for a month or two.  Tad and I will just have to read a few more stories and put together a few more puzzles to keep us busy instead.

Another Random Post

This post is another completely random one.  Oh well, I guess something is better than nothing. :)

This is a not so great picture of Dallin that I shot with my phone at his Science Fair in December.  He was one of the winners, and I totally forgot to blog about it.  Sorry Dal.  We are very happy that you won!

 He did a fun project to determine if the size of ice that you use in a traditional home ice-cream maker  makes any difference in the freeze time and consistency of the finished project.  It turns out it does!!  We had to make several batches and eat a lot of ice cream to make this determination.  Thank goodness for good notes, and good pictures because we had to space out the batches in order to stand eating so much!!

Drake and the rest of the first grade did their patriotic program.  It was awesome!  Drake even got to lead everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance.  He did a perfect job!!  I should have gotten a picture - but oops, I forgot!!

I took this picture from my front door a couple of weeks ago.  We had a lot of moisture this winter.

Which is great, because the desert that is usually brown and barren now looks like this!!

I took these pictures last week when we were heading to Phoenix during spring break.  It was so nice to see all the green and the wildflowers that were out.

Finally I am sharing the St, Patrick's day hook shelf that Tad and I decorated.  I liked this one so much it is still up.  I promised Tad that we will take it down tomorrow and put up a new Easter one.

It is so nice that Tad's boredom and subsequent excitement over things like this has inspired me to decorate for these holidays that I have never decorated for before.  It has made this little space in our entry really fun and happy.

I'm sure I'll be back to share our Easter decor soon.  Riveting stuff, I know.  Please try to contain your excitement.  Until then, have a good one!

Catching Up

I am just popping in to share a few recent pictures from our activities.

I have never decorated for Valentine's day before, but my little boys had so much fun decorating the house for Christmas, and were so sad when the decorations came down, that I decided to do a couple of things for Valentine's day.  They loved it!    I made the ABC sign and I just gathered some stuff I had around the house for the rest of what is sitting on the shelf.

Tad gets pretty bored now that he is home all day without his brothers, so one day we made this cute wire heart banner.

I love how it turned out so much I just had to share another shot of it.

We spent another couple of days making this cute watercolor heart banner.  One day we painted paper with watercolors in cute little patterns.  Then the next day we cut the hearts out and taped them to some bakers twine.  We then hung it on the fireplace mantle.

Speaking of the fireplace - I have spent most of the past year with the fireplace looking like this . . .

At last, Jeremy has had the time to finish it and I am happy to show you that it now looks like this . . .

Much better!  I love it!!

A little bit more of a close up.  Ignore the mess in the fireplace.  We use this as a heat source too, so there is a fire in it every night.  

And a close-up of the top section.  I am working on getting this thing decorated.  I will share it once I am happy with it.

Jack had his 2nd Pinewood Derby this year.  He made a DeLorean hoping to win show.  It was cool, but kind of chunky looking next to the sleeker looking cars built for speed.  Amazingly that big chunky DeLorean was pretty fast and took 2nd place in speed.  Last year he took third in speed, and this year second.  Not bad! 

Jeremy has now helped make eight pinewood derby cars for his boys.  Only seven more to go.  We have turned the corner!  Hooray!!!

Two years ago, we took Dallin and Thomas to the Oregon Coast and we have been promising the little boys a big trip for them.  We all decided to take another trip to Disneyland.  Tad was just a little bit too little the last time we went, so it was fun to take him again when he could really enjoy it.  Of course, Drake and Jack had a ball too.

As you can see, the first day there was pretty crowded, but between hitting Frontierland and Adventureland first (They were soooo empty first thing in the morning) and then using our fast passes, we were able to get a lot done on day one.

Another picture from our Disneyland day.

The second day we hit California Adventure.  It was fun and not too busy.  We were able to ride all our favorite rides twice and still have time to go back and hit a couple of our favorites at Disneyland, and a couple we had missed there because it was so busy the day before.  That night we finished off the night seeing World of Color.  It was pretty cool.

 Here is a shot of the boys enjoying a Red's Apple Freeze at Car's Land.

This trip had to be pretty short because Jeremy needed to get back to work, so we only spent two days at Disney.  Our last day we headed straight to the beach.  They boys enjoyed about an hour there playing in the sand and water and collecting sea shells.  It was pretty foggy at first, but it had mostly burned off by the time we left.

After the beach we loaded up in the car and drove home.  Thanks to GG and Grandad for letting Dallin and Thomas stay with them while we took the little boys on this trip.  It was a good time!!

Thomas is 11!

Thomas had his eleventh birthday a few weeks ago.  The years just fly by don't they?

We are so grateful to have Thomas in our family.  He is very smart and hardworking.  He is also a great big brother.  There have been many evenings that I have gone into his room to say goodnight and he is reading a story to Tad.  The other morning Tad came in and told me that he had a bad dream the night before, but Thomas helped him.  When I asked Thomas about it, he told me that Tad woke him up with his crying.  When Thomas asked him what was wrong, Tad told him that he had a bad dream.  Thomas said a prayer with him and asked that Tad would only have good dreams.  Tad told me "It worked."  Now every night when I put Tad to bed and listen to his prayers, he always prays that he will have good dreams.  What a great lesson he taught his little brother and what a great example he is setting for him.  We love you  Thomas!!

Jack's Birthday

Jack just had a birthday and is now nine years old.  I don't know why I am always so shocked when my child turns another year older, but it gets me every time.  I can't believe how fast they are all growing up.  I mean just look at that picture.  Who is that big kid?

Jack had a great birthday with his choice of cupcakes, dinner, presents, and a family bowling trip.

Jack is such a great kid.  I have yet to meet anyone that does not like Jack.  He is kind to everyone and always looks for the positive in every situation.  We are so lucky that he is in our family!

Utah Trip

Our kids went to school clear through December 23rd, so we don't go back to school until January 9th.  With all of that time, we decided to make the drive up to Utah to see my family during the first week of our break.

There was a lot of snow on this trip, but the roads were really good, so we decided to take a little longer route and drive past the Manti temple, to show our boys where we were married.  I just love this temple.  It is always so beautiful, but I found it especially beautiful in all of this snow.

This is the other side.  Love, love, love this temple!!!

While we were up there we decided to take Frontrunner up to Salt Lake with my dad, my sister, and her family.  We visited City Creek.  It was fun to see it all decked out for the holidays.

We took time to admire the candy ornament windows. They really are amazing!

When the lights came on we visited Temple Square.

 
I always love Temple Square, but it is especially fun at Christmas.

We finished the trip with the ride home on FrontRunner.

We also visited BYU campus and went to a BYU basketball game.  It was so fun to be there again.  I can't believe it has been so long since I was a student there.

Most of all, we just enjoyed visiting with family.  It was great to be in a Utah for a little while again.

Christmastime!

We had such a great Christmas season here at our house.  We were able to continue a lot of old traditions, and started a few new ones (thanks to the Light the World campaign).  I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have, but I will share a few that I snapped here and there.

First up, I am sharing some of my Christmas decor.  Boring, I know, but no one in my family ever gets to see my house at Christmas, so here are a few pictures for you.

 Sparkly Christmas pillows in my living room.

And a sparkly "Let it Snow" sign that I thought went perfectly with my pillows.  Normally, I am not much of a glitter girl, but I make an exception during the holidays.

More of my favorite Christmas decor on top of the piano.

 And of course I have to share my hook shelf with all of our stockings.  Finally, some traditional Christmas colors.

I didn't take any pictures of our family room decor or our tree this year, because that room has been a bit of a mess lately with Jeremy trying to finish up the fireplace.  It is worth it though.  It is looking good and almost finished. I can't wait to share it with you.

I did, however, take a picture of our newest Christmas addition.  This is an advent calendar from Pottery Barn.  I love Pottery Barn's advent calendars, but not the prices.  This one is not current, but I found it new on ebay for a fraction of the price.  My boys had a lot of fun adding an ornament every day.

Here is Tad standing in front of it with the gingerbread house he made in preschool.

Jack, just after the Elementary school's Christmas program. He did a great job singing with his grade, and he was also selected to be part of the special group that sang the opening number.

Here is Drake after the program.  His class sang "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" and he did great as well.  They wanted their picture taken by this tree because it is our old Christmas tree.  I bought it 11 years ago for $15.00, the day after Christmas.  It has served our family well, but this year we finally got a new one and gave this one to the elementary school to decorate with.  They creatively turned it into a Christmas tree from"How the Grinch stole Christmas".  Love it!!

For one of our Christmas activities that we pull out of our favorite pocket advent calendar that I made several years ago, we made these puffy snowmen that have been all over Pinterest for years.    The boys like them, but we found the medium kind of hard to work with.  Jack had a great time playing with his, but them couldn't get it back into the shape of anything resembling a snowman.  So, we just made his a melted snowman.

We hung them in the windows of our dining area and they were a happy addition all season.  Since we are not keeping them, they are still up in the windows as part of our winter decor.

Don't you love our un-landscaped backyard?  It is our big project for this Summer.

Another one of our traditional pocket calendar activities is making sugar cone Christmas trees.

 The boys look forward to this activity all year, and it is sooo easy.

Here is a look at their finished masterpieces.  Jack was sick that day, so he made his later.

Finally, I am sharing a non-Christmas related project, but it took up some of my December and I am happy with how they turned out so I can't help myself.  I made these little Choose the Right blocks for my cute Primary kids.  We handed these out to them when we introduced the theme for the year.  I want them to have a daily reminder of what we are focusing on in Primary. Hopefully, at least some of them will look at them often and think about it.  I know my boys already love theirs.

It was a great Christmas season.