Pinterest...I don't just pin! #2

I'm trying to get these posts done kind of quickly but also be organized a bit. This post is all wall or hanging stuff, mostly wreaths which I'm obsessed with right now.

This is my twig wreath. Tyler didn't like it on the front door, well, he really didn't like it at all, but I moved it off the door. It was getting bumped a lot and I had to keep gluing twigs back on. Now it is tucked back away where it won't bug Ty or get bumped.

These fabric flowers or rosettes are my favorite. I just found a tutorial on making a stretch ring with them and am going to do that soon. I made these to adorn my burlap wreath.
This is the wreath I did a class on for Super Saturday.
I did not see this on Pinterest but I bet it's on there somewhere. When I went to Utah my sisters in law taught me how to make it, it's just Lima Beans glued on a foam wreath form then spray painted. Easy.
These flowers I made with an old sweater of mine that I accidentally shrunk, a lot. You cut a circle, spiral cut the circle and roll from the inside out.
These are canvases my friend Kendra gave me that I stapled fabric onto, that is all over Pinterest.
Here is the back of my paper rosette wreath, the 97 cent pipe insulation that you can get 2 wreath forms out of. My friend Christie just bought some for my class though and it's gone up to a dollar something, still cheaper than the foam forms at the craft store.
I made this wreath for my mom for Christmas and I added some scrapbook paper to match her colors.
This is the first one I made, just book pages. I made it on a wicker form from dollar tree.

I got Legos from my husband for our anniversary...

11 years of wedded bliss. Ok, so maybe actually more like 8! Just kidding. Tyler and I celebrated our 11th anniversary last night, even though it is actually today. Money is tight because we are trying to be good and live within a budget and get and stay out of debt, so we had to be thoughtful and creative this year.

Tyler is a drummer, which I think is pretty hot. He asked me a few weeks ago if I thought he was ever cool. I told him no, but that was ok because I loved him and had fun with him, he didn't need to ever be "cool". Well, I have been wanting to get him another drum set since he got rid of his last one about 5 years ago. I knew it was definately not financially feasable at this time. I heard Melissa Bogle talking about her husbands new drum set and my wheels started turning. I told her that if he was getting rid of his old drum set I might be interested in buying it. That night I was like, "What am I thinking, even if he was only asking $100 bucks I really couldn't do it, Ty would be mad." Melissa's husband Darrin found me at church and told me that we could have it. I asked him how much and he told me he couldn't take any money for it, that it wasn't that great. I felt elated, and a little guilty, but it really was ideal, an answer to my prayers. Ty is always doing and getting great things for me and I really wanted to do something special and nice for him. He cleaned it up and I went and got it, he loaded it all up in my van for me and I brought it home! Tyler was very happy and told me that it is the nicest drum set he's ever had.

Ok, so back to my mean comment about him not being cool. I gave him a card first that said...

"Remember the other day when you asked me if you were cool and I said no? Well, I thought of something that you used to do that was cool. I know you think you aren't very good, but you are and you need a hobby and to develope your talents." That was something like part of what I wrote in his card. I really do love to watch him play the drums. It sounds good and he'll sometimes turn his hat backwards and I think he looks hot, yes, hot. I think my husband is a very good looking man and I love him dearly and I often wonder how it was that I was so fortunate to snag such a great guy.

So here he is still in his work clothes and no baseball cap of course, so he isn't looking hot here, but you can see in his face how happy he is. I did good this year, thanks Bogles!

So, Tyler was very romantic and creative this year with his gifts to me. One of them was a Lego set. Ha ha! It's true, but there is more to the story. I'll tell it with pictures, the idea is really that each gift is a substitute for what he really wanted to get me. Read the notes to really get the full story, it's cute...



This Lego set is actually one I've been wanting the boys to get. I think it's pretty cool. Hannah and Tanner Dockstader are moving in down the street from us and they came over today and helped me put it together. They have the same set at their Grandma's. It was cute how excited my kids and my kids friends have been that I got Legos.


So, we had fun. We saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 (don't take your kids unless you want them to see a bit of nudity though) and then we went to Taho Joe's so I could stay on my diet ( I did really good and I was down again this morning! I also had 3 servings of chicken left after I finished my dinner!). It was a great anniversary, Thanks also to my parents and sister for having all 4 kids overnight. We also got to sleep in, it was awesome.

Happy Birthday to me!

So, this was about a month ago. I don't know why, but blogging has been at the bottom of my list and I have just not felt like doing it. My birthday this year was pretty great. Tyler bought me a red velvet cake from Costco. Red velvet is one of my favorite cakes, but really, red velvet cake ice cream from Maggie Moo's is the best. I intended to get a Hot Genoa Sub (the best sandwich ever) from More Than Pizza for lunch but forgot about it and ate a piece of cake instead. If you couldn't tell yet, I used my birthday as a whole cheat day:) We had 3 free kids meals for Logan's Roadhouse so we decided to go there for dinner. It is definatley not a very family like environment, it's kind of like a bar environment but the kids didn't seem to notice. They could have been pretty noisy and I don't think any other patrons would have noticed or cared.
One of our favorite things at Logan's are the peanuts. You can crack them and eat them and throw them right on the floor. See Peyton in the background? She was going for more nuts.

This is all from me, and I was far from done.

I wanted to include a picture of all of us and this is the one I had of Ben. He is always doing something strange it seems.

I'm pretty sure that Ty doesn't like to be in pictures because he always makes faces.

I got a really yummy burger and fries (it had been a LONG time since I'd had fries). I had root beer too.

Micah got his first adult meal, chicken fried steak, onion rings and mashed potatoes (he loves mashed potatoes).

Jacob had fun eating peanuts too, oh yes, and I'm sure he had at least 3 of those huge buttery rolls they serve before the meal comes.

I wont bore you with my gifts, but they were all very fun this year and my loved ones were much too generous. I did get the book I have been wanting, Mocking Jay. I haven't read it yet because I have a few others to get through first and I know I need to read those because they will not be as good as Mocking Jay. My mom has it right now and if any of you want in the rotation for it just leave me a comment or call me!

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes I recieved and to my sweet friends who took me out to lunch and bought me high quality toilet paper, you're the best! Tyler, thank you for the date before my birthday and the fun goodies I got to pick out on our date, (stretchy ring and silver hoops and black flower earrings) that was really fun. I learned that I do like to shop. And if anyone is wondering, I am now 32. Feel free to tell me I look much younger than that if you think that, please don't hold back. It no longer bugs me to hear I don't look as old as I am, it's hard to believe I used to hate hearing that!

A good Sweat

In my never ending quest to lose weight I have discovered a great workout that is less than 30 minutes. It is Jillian Michael's 30 day shred. There are 3 different workouts, 3 different levels. I have been doing them for several months now and I wish I could say that I've lost weight but I have not. However, my body is changing and many people have said they have noticed that I'm losing weight, so that's good. The workouts consist of a brief warm up, 3 circuits of 3 minutes of strength training, 2 minutes of cardio and 1 minute of abs and then a cool down stretch. It's a tough workout but if you can hang in there for about 24 minutes or so then you're done!

Don't I look nice after my workout?!

Cub Scout Day Camp

June 14th - 18th I can't believe this was already a month ago! Our summer has sure flown by. Cub Scout Camp was the first week after school got out, everyday from 9 am to 3:30pm at Reagan Elem. It's a pretty new school so the trees are very small and there isn't any shade to speak of. We were fortunate to have some abnormally cool days, a few anyway. I got a nice start to my tan, my farmer's tan that is. It was a sports theme this year which didn't excite me or Micah much but I ended up really loving it and wishing I had tried basketball when I was in school. This is micah and Keith during one of the basketball drills. Camille Fox (I think that was her name) was one of the teachers in that rotation and she was awesome.
Archery, one of mine and Micah's favorites, we both want bows now.

We had a guest speaker, do you recognize him? If you don't you probably don't care anyway, it's Pat Hill, the football coach from Fresno State.

My group of boys was able to carry me on a homemade t-shirt stretcher!

Cliff McKinney coached/taught flag football, that's Micah with the ball. You'd never guess he didn't like sports.

On the last day it was incredibly hot and the boys did all kinds of relay races, here is the frog hop.

This is my group, they were some pretty awesome kids and I am proud to say that I survived (barely) the entire week all by myself with this big group of Wolves.

I look forward to next year and being Jacob's Den Leader for Cub Scout Day Camp. There were a lot more activities and rotations that I didn't get pictures of or that I didn't post. Everyone did a great job. My favorites were, basketball, archery, wood working (tool boxes), swimming, music, waterslide, map and compass (even though our group lost and I sweat like a pig running all over the school). I'm sure I left some out but they really were all fun. Thanks to all who helped put it together and kept it going!

The Family Camping trip that wasn't

Every year the boys look forward to Fathers and Sons and I look forward to girls night with my daughter, mom and sister. This year however, the ball got dropped and Fathers and Sons, which is usually Mother's Day weekend, or very close to it, fell into the same weekend as our Family Camping trip that had been planned and on our calendar for many months. So, the boys went to Fathers and Sons and Peyton and I went to Soda Springs with my family.

Diego sat on Peyton's lap almost the entire way, she loved it.

She is the cutest little camper ever.

Well, Dustin is pretty darn cute too! He loved the fire, his mommy did her best to set up barriers, which he climbed.

Morgan found a very pretty adult king snake with the same coloring as her baby at home. It bit her and musked her but she stunk herself back to camp so we could get some pictures of it.

Peyton slept well, I watched her many times during the night. I was cold, the ground was hard, and I didn't leave enough room too stretch my legs out. What happened to the days when I could sleep anywhere, anytime and in any position?

While Larry, Lindsay and Morgan were fishing, My Mom, Dustin, Peyton and I hung out at camp and my Mom and I had a good conversation about "the old days" and my dad. It wasn't girls weekend by any means but it was good.

Morgan, me and the kids had some fun playtime and nap time in the tent. What was so not comfortable the night before was feeling surprisingly good!

Peyton, my little nature girl, found a really cool frog on the window of our tent.

Diego had some nap time too.

All the specks you see in this picture are ladybugs, billions of them. They were everywhere, EVERYWHERE. It was awesome.

Whats camping without getting dirty?

My day in the hospital and more fun stuff

Well, to say I'm a bit behind in blogging is an understatment! I lost access to my external hard drive. The connection was broken (I think Miss P knocked it off my bed while I was uploading pics to Costco). Anyhow, I am back in business thanks to my wonderful husband who took apart the hard drive and held the connection long enough to retrieve all of our photos, literally held by his own two fingers while being slightly electrocuted. He later put on a rubber glove that lessened the pain and then he found a c-clamp that Santa gave him last Christmas. So, I'm back in business.

Tyler took all of this week off while the kids are out of school for Spring Break. We had high hopes and dreams of taking them all to Disneyland, but it just wasn't in the stars, or in the budget. So we planned on just doing something fun and inexpensive each day. I had been having some pretty bad low back paing for the last few weeks and then I thought I had a bladder infection, no pain, it just felt like I had to pee ALL the time. I put a call into my Dr a week ago yesterday, Friday. I never heard back. Monday morning I took my sister and her baby to his Dr's appt at 9am. Right after that we were going to kick off our week with something fun. Well, by 9:30 my back pain had gotten so bad I was crying and it quickly escalated to the point where I knew we had to leave Dustin's (my nephew) appt and get me into urgent care. My Dr. said they had nothing until 1pm. I asked my sister if she could drive, that's how bad it hurt, my sister has no license. She declined and I somehow managed to drive us to urgent care. By this point I feel like I am literally dying, a slow painful death. The lady at the window hands me some forms and tells me to fill them out and bring them back to the window with my insurance card. HA HA HA, I don't know exactly what I said, but I handed them to my sister and told her to fill them out, she did what she could and I set them back on the desk. By the hords of people I could tell it was going to be a VERY long wait. I was pretty sure I would be dead by then. Morgan called Tyler to come pick us up, drop her and the kids back at home and get me to the ER. NOTE: if you are in severe pain or need to be seen immediately, don't bother with urgent care.
Ok, so we go wait in the van, I climb into the backseat amid several mismatched shoes, dirty socks, trash, wrappers, a sandwich bag (this is fortunate, I'll be needing that in just a few minutes). I make a mental note that if I live through this we will be cleaning out the van. The pain has actually gotten worse by now and I feel the need to vomit, remember the sandwich bag I saw and use it. You see, although the bag is small, the day before had been fast Sunday, and I wasn't feeling well, so I had hardly any dinner and I hadn't eaten yet this day, so it was plenty big enough to hold the contents of my stomach. After what seems like hours Tyler arrives and we're headed for home. Peyton held my hand all the way home and it really did help, I no longer wanted to just die.
We arrive home and I deposit my baggie in the laundry room sink on my way to my room before escaping inside myself to become one with the pain. Somewhere along the line it was decided that we would call an ambulance and I waited again for what felt like hours. 4 men arrived and questions were asked and answered and I was put onto a gurney and wheeled out right before my kids shocked faces. Peyton was crying a little but I later discovered that the boys were merely entertained. The 2 men that rode in the back with me were very nice and tried to calm me down. They said it sounded like it could be a kidney stone or my appendix. My sister mentioned it could be a kidney stone earlier, so that's what I was leaning towards. I got to the hospital and went straight into emergency (benefit of taking an ambulance). They pretty quickly got me hooked up to an IV after some minor difficulties, asked more questions and then decided it was probably a kidney stone. They gave me morphine to help a little immediately, and then an anti inflammatory to help more but not for another 20-30 minutes, and they gave me something for the nausea. 20 minutes later I was feeling good and feeling a bit embarassed about my dramatics. I must say though, that was way worse than labor pains because it was constant, absolutely no relief. They made me give a urine sample (which I had to go into the ER restroom for BAREFOOT, twice, because they lost the first one) found blood in my urine and determined that I was not pregnant so they could do the CT scan. They did the CT scan and found a stone 4mm around. Any bigger and they woulkd have had to operate. I was a little scared to be sent home, scared that the pain meds would wear off and I would be in severe pain again. They sent me home with Zofran for nausea and Norco for pain and a "hat" to pee in and strainers for my urine. I passed my stone late that night and I definately did not need to starin my urine to see that there was a stone in it! I was going to post more about the rest of our week, but that was pretty long so the rest can wait.

Have any of you passed a kidney stone before?

VERY cute apron (in my humble opinion)

Well, it is most definately time for another post. I haven't felt like taking the time to blog lately and was thinking I didn't really have much to blog about, until tonight. I took a picture wearing the apron I just made for a prize for my friends baby shower on Saturday. I thought, hey, I can blog this! So I uploaded my pictures from my camera and was a little amazed at how much I actually have to blog about. I thought that not much more was going on than some deep cleaning and decluttering around my house, but we've been up to more than I realized, so, if I can get my act together, I'll blog more often the next few weeks.

On a sad note, and before you get to see the cute apron, my Grandpa Frank passed away on Saturday. We knew it was coming, he had a stroke just before Christmas and then in February found he had a quick growing cancerous tumor in his lungs. My grandma is now living alone and that makes me sad, so I will try to visit her with my kids often, hopefully not so often we bug her! His funeral will be this Saturday morning.
And here is the apron. My friend Stefanie Adams brought me all the fabric and trim and I wasn't very excited to make a 5th apron. I ended up really enjoying it though, funny how some beautiful fabric can make sewing somthing so much better.

Just for the record

We'll start with Christmas Eve. The traditional reading of Luke 2 done by my mother in law
While the family plays the parts...Bryan and Helga as Mary and Joseph and Makyla as baby Jesus (each year this part is typically played by the most recent family to have a new baby)

Tyler, No room at the inn.

Micah, Sore afraid.

Wise men and their gifts

All the cousins that were there this year, my kids, Essien and Makyla.

I made all my nephews, my boys, and Ty matching jammie pants. When I bought the kids pattern I laughed that it had a dog shirt with it, and then I ended up making Diego one with the scraps. I thought the boys would like him matching, they did. Santa even brought him a treat in his stocking.

She woke up just in time, before the opening began.

My sister and Nephew spent the night with us so were there Christmas morning.

Jacob got just what he asked for from Santa, a MAN'S wallet.

Santa got Ben a Wally, remote control, like he wanted last year ($80), and was still very happy to get it this year ($35)!

Peyton had fun playing with some of the tools my mom got Ben, Santa brought her a pack in play for her dolls, but her favorite gift was the buggy my mom got her.

Peyton also got many Barbies, Barbie clothes, baby dolls and baby clothes that she loves. She is almost ready for bed here as soon as she reads her baby a story!

Christmas was wonderful this year and we were truely blessed and are really looking forward to another wonderful year!