Nothing special in this post, well, maybe nothing special.

I’m debating if I should do a give-away.  I don’t know, you’ll have to let me know what you think…?

For now, here’s the decor I’ve been working on!  I don’t know about you, but Valentine’s Day seems to be pretty sparse around here decoration wise.  Until this year, I had 2 things for Valentine’s Day and that was it.  I have a few other ideas, but those might have to wait till next year.

I was planning on giving this set of blocks away to some lucky person, but I’m liking them too much!  Sorry, but I’m a selfish person, so you’re not getting these.

Why yes!  I did use my vinyl cutter to do the letter!

Here’s our front room mantel.

The “XOXO” letters were sold separately and were white.  So I got out my trusty spray paint (love that stuff) and made them black!  I like the more sultry/seductive look.

A Christmas candle I decked up with ribbon, and my cute chalkboard from this post.

This set of blocks measures the smallest being 7 inches tall and the tallest is 10 inches.  So these are a fairly good size.  I also considered giving this set away, but I’m really loving the red and white!

Here’s the same thing only on black with sparkly pink.  The pink on the “o” heart is the accurate color.  The lighting was really weird and I couldn’t get the color to turn out on all of them.

I made this wreath last year.  This was one of the 2 things I already had.

Here’s the other “kisses” set, only this one has the heart/lips block with it.  This is the one I’m considering giving away now.

It’s fun trying to come up with different ways to stack them.

Anyhoo, I’m still debating on the pink “kisses” set.  I’m having a hard time figuring out where to put it, so I just might have to get rid of it.  None of you are interested in it I’m sure!

It’s up and on the wall!

I wish I could say I did it all, but really, I just told Paul what I wanted and he did it (with me looking over his shoulder all the way).  I was so nervous during the actual cutting of the vinyl.  Something that large, it wouldn’t take much for something to totally mess it up.

And for those of you who know what I’m talking about… vinyl is kinda fun to weed!

The blue was done separately, but I think it adds a lot to it!

So, there you have it!

Just a side note, that measures about 23×33 inches.

Oh, and Jana, I’ll get a picture of that primary wall and post it later!

When I saw this bracelet, I headed straight for our toy room and found all the shoes I could.

I felt kinda bad about using my daughters’ barbie shoes, so I got online and order about 25 more pairs.  I’ll be making these bracelets for my girls, probably your girls… if they want one, my hair dresser… and a few other people I know will want one.

It was super easy to make.  Just punch a small hole in the shoe with a crop-o-dile (or the generic version of that).  The other lady put her shoes right onto the chain, but I put mine on extra links and then attached those to the chain.

Super cute, right!?!

As for the sneak peek, most of you have already seen it, but here it is again.  With my birthday and Christmas money, I got a large vinyl cutting machine!!!  My first real test was printing off the Primary theme for a wall at church.  Paul has done a few things with it, but the next major thing I plan on doing with it is this:

I’m going to add a small vine with leaves and maybe blue flowers to match the bird.  Oooh!  I’m so excited!  I’ll post a picture once I have it on the wall!!!

Okay, several of you have “heard” about the desk I did for one of Ashley’s Christmas presents, and I promised to post pictures… well, here they are!  (Don’t think I’m lame for giving her a desk.  She asked repeatedly and included in her note to Santa that she really wanted a desk for Christmas!  And she’s loving it!)

Paul wanted to document the process, so here’s me, covered in dust!

He he!

This desk was in pretty good shape.  It is laminate, and I had heard terrible things that people had gone through when they’ve tried to paint laminate, so I did a ton of research.  Basically, I had to sand the gloss off of it, use a really super good primer and then paint it!  I think the primer made a huge difference.

Here’s how it turned out!

I bought several scrapbook papers, cut them into quarters and then mod podged them onto the top!  Easy peasy, just took time and a lot of mod podge.  For the drawers, I just measured and cut, then pasted on.

Once the glue was dry, Paul put on 3 coats of a polyurethane finish so if would be water proof.  We still need to get a glass top to cover it, but that was it!

The Tuesday before Christmas I went to Eden’s class to help with a Christmas party.  I was in charge of the craft and this is what we did.  I searched online for ideas that didn’t include glue or paint since I didn’t want to deal with mess.  I liked the craft so much that I took all the extra supplies I had bought and made a bunch to hang from our kitchen lights that same day!  They’re still up and probably will be until I’m sick of winter.

Unfortunately I don’t remember where I got the idea, it wasn’t my own.  But you take 2 pipe cleaners, mine were silver, and cut them in half.  Twist them around in the middle and make the general snowflake shape.  Then I put clear plastic beads of varying shapes and sizes on the pipe cleaners.  I would have used fishing line to hang them, but for the life of me, couldn’t remember where I had put it!  So I used white thread instead.  Thanks to Paul for hanging them (we have really high ceilings).

Happy Winter!

I’ve seen several blogs doing a review of 2009, but I really liked the ones that did picture reviews!  So that’s what I’m going to do here.  I selected 2 (November has 3) pictures for each month.  Just a little caption over each of them, but not much to read.

ENJOY!

January:

Our first ever, brand new couch and love seat!

February:

Eden lost her first tooth at age 4!

Draper temple open house!

March:

HAWAII!!!

Eden’s 5th birthday!

April:

Fun at Temple Square!

My gorgeous ‘belated’ birthday present!

May:

Mandy’s 3rd birthday!

Horseback riding at Grandma’s!

June:

Ashley’s 8th birthday and baptism!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house!

July:

A really yummy 4th of July!

Our 10th wedding anniversary!

August:

Fun at the Fair!

First day of 3rd grade!

September:

First day of preschool!

First day of Kindergarten!

October:

We go a dog named Entai!

Locks-of-Love!

November:

Amanda

Eden

Ashley

December:

Choir at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (and other places)!

Dad (Grandpa Rick) came to visit!

There you have it!  Our 2009 in pictures.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Most of you have already seen this year’s Christmas card, but for those who haven’t… here it is!

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2002- Our adorable angel, Ashley.

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2003- Still just Ashley.

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2004- Ashley and Eden – Eden’s arms remind me of cabbage patch dolls, so cute and chubby!

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2005- Our take on a classic painting.

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2006- All three!  This card has been most peoples favorite out of all of them.

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2007- We took like, 5 pictures and called it good!  They were that cooperative.

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2008- Sweetness!

Like I said in the title of this post…

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Every year around Christmas time, I make my three girls Christmas dresses.  This year, I slacked a bit and just bought their dresses from Costco.

Instead, I made myself an outfit.  Well, sorta.  I made a pencil skirt and matching necklace and bracelets.  Here are just a couple of pictures of them, I haven’t ironed the skirt yet, so these are more just detail shots.

It’s a simple pencil skirt that goes below the knees.  Here’s the detailing I put on the left front side of the skirt.

The pictures make the beads look orange, but they aren’t.  The second picture is the most accurate.  Oh, and a side note, I hand dyed the beads!

Here’s the necklace I made to match.

The extra beads at the top right side of the picture are the bracelets I made.  So, there you have it, that’s the gist of what it looks like.

I think paired with a black top and black knee high boots, it’ll look really snazzy!

I hope I can fit into it.  For some reason, when I sew for myself, everything ends up too small, even though I cut the pattern out larger than I really am.  Does anyone else have this problem?  Here’s hoping I can lose 7 pounds before Sunday!

Ashley and Eden are in the school choir.  Nothing too big, they just have to be at school an hour early on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  At the performance they did last weekend, a reporter from Deseret News was there interviewing the chorister and taking pictures.

Check out this site! If you skip to 1:48 you’ll see Eden!!!  The lovely piano music you hear in the background of the video is me!

So far they’ve performed at the Festival of Trees and downtown at the Joseph Smith Memorial building.  They have been loving it!  Here are a few pictures of those two performances.

Mandy and me on the shuttle from the parking lot to the festival.

Riding Trax!

They have 2 performances left!

Ugh, where has the time gone?

I know I said the next thing I would post are the girls in their costumes.  But when you get sick the day before Halloween and spend 3 days in bed trying to recover, you don’t care too much about taking pictures.  I was planning on having them dress up again, just so I could snap a few shots, but oh well.  Most of you saw them anyway.

We’re all feeling much better.  Thankfully we all survived the swine flu, well, everyone except Paul… he never even got it!

Here are 2 pictures I did get.  This first one is of Eden in her mermaid costume.  She loved the wig.

This one is of Amanda wearing a skirt and flower that I made out of Halloween bandannas!  This wasn’t her costume, just a cute outfit.  She was Belle for Halloween!

And here are a few pictures I found on my camera that I’ll post just for fun!

These last 2 pictures are of a gully right across the street from our neighborhood.  The first picture was taken in the morning, so the shadows are a bit deep.  The second was taken the same day, just in the afternoon.  What I love about these pictures are all the layered colors!

Sorry for the overload of pictures.  I guess that happens you you try to play “catch up”.  Next up, hopefully I’ll post the main reason why I haven’t been blogging.

This post is mostly for a reference for me.  I have to take pictures of how I decorate, or next year, I’ll pull out all my stuff and won’t remember the cute things I did with it the previous year.

So here’s a few pictures of my Halloween decor.  You don’t have to look, and it’s definitely not all of it, just some of it.

I’ve seen these cute bats all over!  Even at Christie’s house!  I wanted to do them outside, but didn’t have any felt, so I used what I had on hand, black cardstock.  Paul likes that they’re coming out of our vent.  I’m going to be doing this in one more spot.  It’s super cute and super easy, just a bunch of tracing and cutting.

I made this “Boo” set this year.  I don’t know what I think about it.  I think next year I’ll tear off all the little decals and mod podge some cute Halloween paper all over it.

You might remember our cute “girl” skeleton from last year.

Here’s the other mantel.

And a close up of the “Halloween” letters, I made at Enrichment night last year.  So easy to make!

And of course I have to include the haunted house the girls made!

Well, that’s it for now.  Looking at these pictures makes me realize, I’m not that great at decorating for Halloween.  Oh well, I’ll work on that.

Up next… our kids in their costumes!