The Princess Room...After!

Sorry it took so long to finally get it done. It's as done as it's going to be before Christmas and Birthdays, anyway...ssshhh!

I actually worked on this room during our fall break weekend, the middle of October.

The pictures really don't do it justice, but here goes anyway!

On Thursday we pulled the wallpaper. For some of the kids it was a dream come true to actually have permission to peel the wallpaper after so many years of being threatened by it. It took longer than I hoped, but surely wasn't as bad as some of those nightmare stories of removing wallpaper and surely not the dream the girls room downstairs was. A little in between the two. The kids pitched in and it started going pretty smoothly, but that is all I accomplished the first day.

On Friday, We washed the walls, getting the gel stuff and any glue and dirt off the walls. The room already had the trim in the middle of the wall and the baseboard still looked pretty good, so I left those alone, I didn't paint them. I painted primer on the bottom half to seal any glue or junk I might have missed in the wallpaper mess. Then painted an almost white on both top and bottom from my never ending paint can. Every time I paint another room with that bucket of paint I think I don't have enough and sure enough, not only is there enough, but there's still some left over. I always think of the little widow in the bible that fed the prophet when she didn't have enough for herself and son and she was blessed to always have just enough every morning to eat again. I really didn't think there was enough paint to finish the room. But sure enough there was, and now I'm thinking maybe I can get the upstairs bathroom out of it, too!! I know, give me blessings and all I want is more!! :)

Anyway, On Saturday we sponged the bottom half with purple. I again was very blessed to be able to use the same purple I used in Bethanie/Emily's room downstairs. It matched the border perfectly, you'd think I bought it for the border, but nope. All the paint and supplies I had on hand! Makes the remodel even cheaper!! I did however purchase the border and wall stickers. Doug, Melanie, & Bethanie put up the border and voila!! I had Doug, Jon & Melanie bring up the bunk beds and they were sleeping in their Princess room that night!! It was still a little stinky but we kept airing it out by day and every day it was better and better!

By Tuesday we had moved the crib in there, I now have 3 little princesses in our Princess Room!

They all love it, Nattie Bug wouldn't leave the border alone, she kept peeling and pulling at it, but she seems to be leaving it alone the last few days, I hope she's done with that now, only time will tell.

I really lucked out, I found the dresser and the bench/toy box at the DI (thrift store) already pink and white! Not all the toys that were in there are back in, I'm still trying to decide exactly what else I'm going to put back in there.

Do they look happy about their room??? This was Saturday, their first night back!

Eat, Please!!

I just couldn't resist, when she started signing some more today at lunch I had to get it on video. It was funny because she was signing it for me while I was putting her in her high chair. When I ran for the camera and pulled it out, she started to cry...I'm sure she was thinking that's not eat! Thus her distress at the beginning of the clip, but she did cooperate and we got it on video. Here it is, Such a Cutie!!

The Princess Room, Before....

Here's the before pictures, mess and all!!

This the view from the door...

We had a day bed with trundle. We started out pulling the trundle in and out every morning and every night. It wasn't so bad, but eventually we rarely put the trundle away at all. It took up a lot of the space in the room.

I actually liked this wallpaper, the only problem I had with it, was that the girls started to peel it while they were sleeping. I tried to piece and glue it back together for a couple of years, but it got to where I couldn't piece it anymore. I couldn't believe how ugly it made the whole room. If you click on the picture, you can see all the peeling around the beds.

I just recently bought this pink and white dresser from DI (thrift store). I was truly disappointed that it didn't fit in the closet. This is where we ended up in trouble with this room. With the dresser out of the closet, it just sucked up the space and the room really went downhill. I had to put the toy drawers in the closet but they all didn't fit, then they just stopped trying to put things away. Hence the piles of toys just thrown on the floor there.

This corner isn't so bad... Just too much stuff in this room.

This is the closet, the whole room was just an ugly mess.

Here's a close up of the worst of the wallpaper mess...

The plan was to pull the wallpaper, paint and put up a border. I have one more thing to do and then I'll take more after pictures and post them.

To be continued.....

Copy Cat

Bethanie was listening to music and noticed that Natalie was dancing around. So she got up and was dancing with her. After a bit, she noticed Nat was copying some of her moves. So she tested her theory and started to do things she could mimic. As usual, she did much better mimicing her sister before we started recording, but this is cute too!! (Sorry the quality isn't that great, it's a video recording from Beth's phone, tranferred to mine, transferred to a card, transferred to the blog, whew!!!)

I love her shoulder shaking at the beginning. Beth said she was even shaking her head back and forth before the recording. Oh well, we try. Kim was the only other one in the room, so she did the recording so that's why we have more of Beth than Nat, but I love Beth's dancing as well!!

Happy Birthday to Jon!

Just a quick note to say...

Happy Birthday to Jonathan!!!

He turned 20 years old this week.

He took me to see Into the Woods at Hale Center theater, then we came home and had Chicken Enchiladas and pie. I bought a chocolate cream pie from Costco, and then sent Dad to get a banana cream pie and pecan pie from Marie Calendar's.

Last week I went with him to the Distribution Center and bought him a set of scriptures because that's what he said he wanted for his birthday.

I love this picture because you can tell he is totally humoring me by letting me take it!!

How Cute Is This???

Natalie has been, for a few months now, signing certain words like more, milk & please. Milk being the most common. If she wanted a bottle of milk she would ask for it by signing. I wish I would have thought to get a video of that, too. Just recently it's becoming more common, again. Last night we got this video of Natalie Saying and Signing Please and I had to share it with you...

Don't get me wrong she isn't always so accomodating. Just that morning Melanie was trying to get her to say or sign please and not only would she not do it, but she was screaming NO!!!!!! Every time Melanie would remind her if she wanted it, she had to say please. At first it was funny, because it wasn't that she didn't understand what we wanted, she was telling us there was no way was she going to say please. We ended up having to "put" her on the couch because she was having an all out temper tantrum!! Not so cute!!! She did redeem herself last night by being the sweet little girl you see in the video.

Uplifted, yet again!!

I just wanted to put a link to this particular post of one of my favorite blogs, "A Daily Scoop". She is writing in response to one of her comments, but she is quoting a talk from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and it is pretty amazing! I love the spiritual boost I get from this sister in the gospel. She has truly made a difference in my life in how I look at and deal with things!!

Go read this post/talk it is goood stuff!!

http://adailyscoop.blogspot.com/2008/10/quick-response.html

Halloween Dance

It's a funny thing here in Utah, Maybe it's just in Davis County, but it seems that you can't just ask someone to a dance. You have to be creative in not only the asking, leaving them clues to guess who is asking them. But you also have to be creative in the answering.



Ben was asked to the Halloween Dance. As he was pulling into the driveway from work, there was a girl running away from our porch! She had left a big pumpkin there for him. He thought it would be funny to go over to where she ran to hide. She shooed him away and he came inside with a laugh. But the laugh was on him, it was a different girl's name inside the pumpkin!!

He decided to actually carve the pumpkin with his answer!!

Cute, huh!!

Primary Activity Service Project

Our Primary Quarterly Activity this time was a service project. At first I was a little put out, because they were asking the kids to go Trick or Treating for canned goods on October 11th. The kids were supposed to have their costumes by Oct 11th. I sometimes have a hard time getting costumes ready by Oct 31st, now I have to have them ready by the 10th???

Well, Somebody loves me, because I walked into the DI (Deseret Industries) on Saturday the 4th, (we went in between sessions just to check it out). And there seemed to be a frenzy in the front of the store...As I looked closer, lo and behold they had just pulled out racks and racks of...you guessed it....Halloween Costumes!!!


I'm sure you can't understand my jubilation, because usually by the time I'm thinking what are we going to do this year, it is the week of Halloween and things are pretty picked over, no matter where I go. We do have a box of costumes, but most of them are getting too small or too beat up. We usually make something work, but anyway, my point is that, this was truly a blessing!!!


I worked my way through the crowds and was surprised that even though some were pretty mutilated and beat up, there were some really good things too!! I found something for everyone!! At the time, I wasn't even thinking about the activity, I was just thrilled to be finding stuff to work for Halloween.


I came home and was very lucky that everyone liked what I picked out for them. I guess there weren't too many opinions of what they wanted to be quite yet, they were actually happy with what I found. Truly, another blessing!!


Anyway, So on Saturday, they got dressed up. I didn't let them get completely decked out with the make up and accessories, I figured we'd save that for the school parties and actual trick or treating part. They had to get bundled up because it started to rain and the rain turned to snow! They walked around the neighborhood with wagons trick or treating for canned goods for the Bountiful Food Bank. They really didn't seem to mind that they weren't getting candy!


They went back to the church and painted pumpkins and ate donuts and goodies and then came home.


I thought it was a nice change from all the parties, they got a chance to learn about and do some service for someone else!! When I explained that there were people who didn't have enough food to eat, and they were helping these people, they thought that was pretty cool!

General Conference

This weekend was General Conference. We love General Conference for lots of different reasons.


The kids love the Bingo and all the goodies. This year they thought the two hour break in between the sessions was too long. They kept asking me when it was going to start! We not only had the Bingo, but we also had some wonderful packets that had all sorts of activities and fill in the blank kind of things for them to fill out. It was great.




We had 4 TVs through out the house on, so that we weren't all stuck in the same room.


Another great thing was that we have the new digital boxes so we could actually see them clearly! Before we had a lot of interference lines. Clear as a bell! Nice!!


We got to enjoy Conference in the comforts of our home, we could stay in our jammies all day, if we wanted to.



There's always great food to eat...Pumpkin choc chip pancakes, pizza, Costco cake, ice cream, hoagie sandwiches, chips and dip, poached eggs on toast...Good stuff!!



Uncle Merlin and Aunt Delores came from Spokane and Andrea came from Provo to attend a missionary reunion and attend a session of conference. They watched a couple with us. It's always great to see them and visit with them. We always end up staying up too late we love talking so much. We aren't very nice to them in that way. They left on Sunday to see Ryan and Kerilynn in Chubbuck, ID.


All in all it was a great weekend... great food, great company, and great talks from the general authorities of the church. Can't get any better than that!!

Play Group

Our neighborhood Mom's have restarted our play group again. I actually was missing the association. And besides isn't it a lot like a little Relief Society group? Who knows what you'll learn??

Here are a couple of pics of the girls.

Tiffany was so excited to go, be there and play, off she ran to get right into the group and get her turn and play.

Natalie had a funny reaction, she didn't even want to go into the yard. She was pulling on me, I had to pick her up and take her in. She wouldn't go play for quite some time. Eventually she got down and picked up some balls. Little by little she started to go play.

Makes me wonder what nursery will be like. Maybe not too bad, Melanie was just called to serve the first hour in nursery. So she'll go in alright, but will she stay when Melanie has to slip out???