Our First Home!

This is it- our very first home sweet home!

Let's take a tour of the main floor:

the living room with the dining room behind it


the kitchen


the dinette area in the kitchen


the family room

the powder bathroom.

Now let's tour upstairs:

the master bedroom

the ensuite bathroom

Kaleb's room

Noe's room

Gavin & Teague's room

the kids' bathroom.

Now let's look at the basement:

the rec room is "L" shaped, so this side will be the play room for the kids and all their toys

this side will be the play room for the grown-ups with my craft stash and where Len can write his novel.

And here's the backyard:

we hope to fit a swingset back here, but if it doesn't fit next summer we may remove the deck.

*I can't believe this home is ours! I'm so excited to move in and stamp our personality on it!

Anniversary and Status Change

Today is this blog's one year anniversary! Although, I didn't complete 52 projects this past year, I did complete some- so I count it as a success. I love to craft and still have tons of unfinished projects to complete, however I won't be posting weekly on here for a while. Tuesday I will have baby #4 in my arms and I will be busy taking care of him and the rest of my family. Soon we'll be moving half-way around the world again too. I will craft again though, and I will post my completed projects on here. Now that I'll have my first home I have a million more things on my list to do: painting, decorating, gardening, cooking, projects with the kids. I'm excited for all the upcoming plans!

Easter Inspiration

Next school year, I plan on having twice monthly activity days for my older kids with a few of their friends. Once a month we will do a "fun foods" class and then once a month we'll have an "arts & crafts" class. With all of the fun holidays and seasons it will be so fun! Here's some projects I already want to make with them.





These Easter Cake Pops are adorable and can be found at Bakerella.



This Easter candy dish is also super cute! Unfortunately, I could only find the picture on-line, but not the instructions. It looks easy enough though, just a small terra cotta pot with a larger draining dish, straw hat, felt ears, silk flowers, acrylic paint, and candy- voila!

The Best Creation

I haven't done any crafts for a while, but my body has been working overtime creating a new little body to house one of Heavenly Father's precious spirit children. I am honored and humbled at the amazing calling of "Mother" that I have. One year for Christmas my mom gave me a recipe book she had made with all of my favorite family recipes. On the very first page was a recipe for a "Daughter." Since I am now making a "Son," I wanted to share the recipe here:

Ingredients:
1 Year of Breastfeeding
3 Parenting Books
5 1/2 Bedtime Stories
17 Educational Toys
4 Reliable Babysitters
2 Important Talks
5 Sleepover Birthday Parties
18 Years of Education
377 Rides Home

Directions:
Mix ingredients. Let stand 18-21 years, opening bedroom door occasionally. Release. Hold breath. Results may vary!

Stir Crazy

This week has been LONG! I've been on house arrest and Gavin has been sick. So pretty much I've sat on the couch holding a toddler in one hand and occassionally a book in the other. I finished reading book 1 of "The Wheel of Time" and have started book 2 "The Great Hunt." I'm enjoying the story, but I'm about ready to pull all my hair out if I don't get out of the house soon!

Escape

This week has been extremely stressful (you can read more about it on my other blog), so I did a lot of escaping reality into literature.


I read "Fablehaven," book 1 in the series and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I can't wait to read books 2-4!


Ever since I've known Leonard (or at least since we've been married) he's wanted me to read "The Wheel of Time" series. However, the author had poor health and I was scared he would pass away before the series ended. I didn't want to start the story and not be able to finish it. Well, unfortunately the author did pass away in 2007 with the 12th and final volume unfinished. He did leave detailed notes on how the story is supposed to end though, and a new author, Brandon Sanderson will now take over where Robert Jordan left off. The volume is set to come out this year so I decided to go ahead and start the series now. I'm only 1/4 of the way in to book 1 "The Eye of the World," but I am really enjoying it too. I love reading good books!

2008 Edition

This week I have been busy working on our 2008 Blurb book of my blog, "This is REIL fun." I'm half-way done, so hopefully I can finish it next week and get it published!

5 x 5

Tomorrow is Kaleb and Noe's birthday, so this week I've been getting ready for that. I haven't really done anything creative for it though, but will post pics of it on my other blog later. Since I love all things media, I decided to do a little meme on here.

5 FAVORITE BOOKS:
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Lord of the Rings
The Joy Luck Club
The Count of Monte Cristo
Pride and Prejudice

5 FAVORITE MAGAZINES:
Better Homes and Gardens
Woman's Day
Family Fun
Creating Keepsakes
Ensign

5 FAVORITE MOVIES:
So I Married an Axe Murderer
Ever After
Notting Hill
Life is Beautiful
It's a Wonderful Life

5 FAVORITE TV SHOWS:
American Idol
Jon & Kate plus 8
Project Runway
Lost
Monk

5 FAVORITE MUSIC ALBUMS:
U2- Achtung Baby
Sarah McLachlan- Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Morrissey- Bona Drag
Natasha Bedingfield- Pocketful of Sunshine
Killers- Hot Fuss

*This was actually hard to do, I have lots of favorites!

Only One or Two Years Later

The kids didn't have school on Monday, so we invited our friends Lauren & Minji over to play. Kaleb, Noe, and Gavin had fun playing with Minji while I taught Lauren the basics of scrapbooking. It inspired me to finally finish the above lay-out. I made the pages at a scrapbook class in February 2008, all I had to do was add the pictures and the little details. The pictures however are from February 2007! Can you tell I don't scrap very often anymore? I have a lot of catching up to do even though I don't scrap our snapshots anymore.

That's why I started blogging, so each year I could make a blurb book of our family history. Now I need to get over to my other blog and finish up 2008, so I can make a blurb book for last year!

Being the huge fan of Harry Potter that I am, I picked up "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" this week. It was a fun little read. Now I want to add "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," and "Quidditch Through the Ages" to my collection. I'll also be curious about the mini-prequel set to come out later on about an adventure James Potter and Sirius Black had together.

Welcome to Inkworld!

I loved Cornelia Funke's "The Thief Lord" and was excited to start the Inkheart Trilogy. They did not disappoint! Inkheart is a fantastic tale of characters from a book joining our world. Of course, when you finish it you'll want to continue the trilogy, but this book could stand alone.


Sequels tend to disappoint me, but not Inkspell. I think I liked it even better than Inkheart! I love escaping into books, and since that happens in this story it was a fun twist. However, this book does not stand alone you have to read the next one.


Unfortunately, I haven't read Inkdeath yet. We got the first two in paper back as stocking stuffers for Christmas, so I don't want to buy this one in hard cover. The school library has it, which is great, but of course it's checked out. I'm on the waiting list though and hope I'll get my turn with it before we move. If not I might just have to buy it in hard cover because I don't think I can wait for it to come out in paper back.

Creative Kids

This week I've been organizing more of our office. I wonder if I'll ever be finished! It has been the catch-all of our papers, pictures, memorabilia, art projects (& crap) for the past 3 1/2 years, and was seriously neglected. As I've been going through stuff I've found some of the kids' art projects from school. They're so cute, but we just won't be able to keep all of them, so I snapped a few pictures to remember them. (There will be more pictures added to this post as I continue going through stuff!)
The above picture is of the Mice the kids made to celebrate Chinese New Year last year. Kaleb's is the big daddy mouse, and Noe made a mommy with 2 babies.


They also made some clay earths. (Kaleb's has the flag, Noe's is the other).


Noe's life-size Macaroni Penguin from her Animal Expert project.

Kaleb's fossil print from their Dinosaur unit.

*I hope all of my children will love creating their own works of art all through out their lives!

Slow and Steady?

I just feel like a snail these days S L O W L Y trudging along. There are all these things I want to do, but I just can't seem to get them done. I worked on several things on my to-do list: organized more of the office, traded the Chinese New Year decorations for Valentine's Day ones, started reading "Inkheart," but I didn't finish any projects. I really wanted to scrapbook this week, but with all of the normal errands/activities plus the miscellaneous ones that always get thrown in it just didn't happen. Gavin and I spent a fun day at a modeling shoot yesterday with 6 other kids on a nature farm. You can see pictures from it on my other blog. Hopefully, next week I'll have a finished project for this blog.