Congrats Xazmin!!!

As of midnight, the giveaway closed.  Thanks to all who entered, I’ll have the winner posted later today!

Quick reminder, the giveaway closes Thursday

(tomorrow)

Feb. 18th at midnight (MST).  Thanks to all who are

entering!  Good luck!

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First things first.  I was fairly on top of things this year, so the girls got to give out somewhat unique valentines.  I got the idea from this site, although I’ve seen them on several sites now.

Quick, easy and not that expensive.

Now, for this next picture, I went to the vinyl store (and for some reason none of you wanted to come with me) and found a special kind of vinyl.  Don’t try this with just any kind of vinyl or you’ll totally ruin your iron.

Basically, you do up a design (mirrored image), have the machine cut it, weed it and then iron it onto the shirt or pants or bag or… the options go on and on!  I have so many ideas I want to try on shirts and so many other things!!!  And since the vinyl was in their scrap pile, it cost me only a few cents and I got 3 shirts out of it!

I’m really loving this vinyl stuff!!!!

Now on to the part you’ll care about.

INTRODUCING THE FIRST EVER GIVEAWAY ON THIS BLOG!!!

So I decided I would just keep the blocks I made, especially since it’s too late now to get them to you by Valentine’s day.  So, I’m going to take the advice from my friend Xazmin and just give away a “wall saying” in vinyl.

Restrictions:

1-Sorry, but I’m still new at all this so I’ll have to limit the saying to 3 feet in length.  I know that’s not very long, but I don’t want to screw up a really long thing.

2-Also, to keep it fairly simple for me, your color choices will be black, chocolate brown, white or a light beige color.  I figure those colors will match just about any decor.

Other then that, you can pick whatever saying you want.  If you prefer vinyl to put on a tile instead, just let me know what size the tile is and I can do that for ya instead.

So, how do you win!?!

*I’ve decided you can enter 1 time each day, by leaving a comment (on this post only) till the giveaway is closed.  Or, if you’re one of those people who read my blog but never comment, you can email me your entry once each day.  (please don’t do both, just enter one way or the other way)

That’s it!  Nothing fancy, nothing you need to blog about, just enter!

The giveaway will close next Thursday (Feb 18th) at midnight (MST) and the winner will be posted Friday (Feb 19th).

If I only receive entries through this post, then I’ll use the random generator thingie.  If I get entries through both this post and email, then I’ll count up each time people entered, put their name on that many slips of paper and toss them all in a hat and let one of my cute daughters pick the winner.  Does that make sense?  I hope so.

Oh, and Jana, I will ship it to you, overseas, if you win!

Good luck everyone!

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!