Very Jane

Very Jane is doing a fantastic giveaway over on their site to ring in the New Year! First place is a Canon DSLR camera, second place, a KitchenAid mixer and third place is an iPad Mini! Check it out!

Delightful Order Giveaway

You should check out Delightful Order today for a chance to win one of her wonderful Message Center prints! You can use it for a child or a family (I'll be using it for the family if I win...the kids don't have too many individual activities yet, since the oldest is only 7) and they're gorgeous! Good luck to you all!

Nikon Giveaway

GroopDealz is giving away a Nikon D3100 camera! You can get up to 36 entries, which is pretty awesome. I currently have this camera and LOVE it! It's a fantastic camera and I love learning all of the things that I can do with it. It actually has a function ON the camera for you to turn your pictures into a coloring page! Can you believe that? So fantastic! Enter the giveaway right here! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Love quote

About a month ago, my cousin got married. For her bridal shower, I made her this cute quote in a frame. I used the same quatrefoil pattern that I used for my desktop background. Her wedding colors were black, white and hot pink, so I thought that would be appropriate. I loved the quote for my cousin and her husband who both love music and she's a very good pianist. I thought I'd share in case someone else was interested in it. I just saved it as a jpg, so anyone can save it as a picture and print it out. Enjoy!

Organized Desktop!

I've been working on getting organized for the summer. I'm not a very organized person naturally, as much as I like to think that I am! But I'm really trying to be better this summer. We'll be working on starting a schedule (starting Monday...today's the first day out and everyone's just PLAYING!), including chores and some exercise time for this chubby mama. But I decided to start with my computer so that my computer time could be more productive. I HATE having to search all over to figure out where I saved something, so I'm trying to make sure things are where they're supposed to be and that I can find things on my desktop. To achieve this, I made my own desktop organizer with a calendar. I've been getting the free desktops every month from www.leelou-blogs.com and LOVE that they have a calendar on them. It makes it so much easier for me to figure out what day it is, since those run together sometimes. So I made one that had places for my categories that I use on my desktop. It's sized at 1366 x 733 to fit my screen, but I figured I'd share in case anyone could use it. It's just a jpg, so you can save it as a picture and then right-click and choose "set as desktop background."  I love using it. The fonts came from www.kevinandamanda.com, but I can't remember where the background came from! If you know where it's from, PLEASE let me know! I want to thank them for an awesome background and see if they have other colors! ;) The small papers behind the categories are from Digiscrap Addicts, as are the embellishments and month name. Enjoy!

Oopsie!

So I have been working this week on organizing my kitchen and pantry. The idea was that I would be able to take out some cabinets that have been bothering me since we moved in. My kitchen is small enough without having those cabinets hanging there making it feel smaller. And 90% of the time, all they were doing was picking up clutter because it was a flat space to put things on when I was trying to clear the counter. So tons of the stuff I got out of there should never have been there in the first place. But I was able to reorganize my pantry and cabinets so that those cabinets were incredibly pointless! YAY! 

This is where I started. Sadly, not the same angle, but I wasn't about to take a picture of the mess in my house today! Those cabinet doors came off about a year ago. There's no glass in them. If there had been glass, I might have left them, but the previous owners had never bothered to get the glass for them. I really don't know why the builders said that they'd supply the doors but not the glass. It's bizarre to me.  But I wanted to be able to get to things more easily, so I took them off. I don't think I've got a picture of that. But today, this is what it looks like.

Looks better right? Look closer. See that, just above the window? Here, have a close-up.

Yup, there's a hole. In my ceiling. We were thinking they were just cheap, until we looked closer and realized that it was cut out AFTER the ceiling was textured and painted. Turns out that the builders didn't measure very well when they were building the frame for the cabinets. So they had to cut out a big bunch of drywall in order to add 2x4's to support the cabinets. It's kind of funny to look at it closely to see just how many screws they put in before they realized that they weren't hitting anything.  On the bright side, a giant hole in the ceiling is kind of just what we needed. You see, look back at that first picture. The light switch for the kitchen is between the couch on the right and the banister just past it. If I'm in the middle of cooking something and a cloud covers the sun and the light's not on, I've got to hope that my kids are in a good mood and will hit the light switch for me. So we're hoping that we'll be able to wire a switch in that's IN the kitchen now that there's a hole to work with. We're also hoping to take out the soffit. I've always hated it and would love for that part of the ceiling to be flush with everything else. So I'm hoping that my dad will be willing to help me with that since we have to patch, re-texture, and paint anyway. And I have a couple of holes in my wall that need to be patched while we're at it. I'm blaming the previous owners for mounting odd things in HORRIBLE ways, leaving giant holes in the wall.  So we're in for a bigger project than I was hoping for, but it fixes some of the issues that we've been having, so I guess when one door closes, another opens, right? In the meantime, my husband stapled some plastic over the hole so we wouldn't have to have insulation falling out until it's fixed. And I should mention that he did a great job of catching the cabinets for me. Although, I wouldn't have laid down on the counter and held up my hands and feet if I were him. But it was amusing. It's too bad my hands were too full for a picture!

Master bed and bath

So, I've been working in my master bedroom and bathroom today. Kind of a follow up to my spring cleaning...or an extension of my spring cleaning which never got finished. Oops! I had two kids have surgery almost two weeks ago, so that meant taking some time off. And, as most of you know, if you have kids and take "time off," that really means you're starting over! So my master bathroom got cleaned today. I still need to clean the tub and mop the floor, and wash the bathmat, but the sink and counter are completely clear. My under-sink area has been organized into some bins that didn't fit someplace else. I'm really excited about that. It's nice to have bins to be able to pull out when I need something instead of having to dig through everything in there. I left only the things on the counter that I absolutely need, plus a little basket. I figured that I would embrace the fact that I don't remember to put away my ponytail holders and clips and leave the basket on the counter so that I could just toss them in there and put them away whenever I feel like it. I also cleaned out the window track in there. Have you ever done that? Admittedly, I've never lived anywhere long enough for it to need it until now, but still! It took a bit, but it's nice to have it done.  Recently I also made myself an earring holder as well, so it's nice to have that up in there. I'm 27 and my ears have only been pierced for 9 months. I don't really have a lot of earrings, so the medicine cabinet was working well enough, but it was starting to drive me nuts!  I took a few pictures of it, so I can share those.

My other project for today was finally putting up my "new" lamps in my bedroom. They were in my formal front room, but we finally put in an overhead light in there. (Side note: WHY can builders not figure out that overhead lights should be STANDARD not an option?!? It's ridiculous to have to pay extra for a light!) We needed the extra light, plus we put in a fan so that we could get some air movement in there. It was just so hot upstairs in the summer, so it's been nice to have it. But now we didn't need the lamps. We're trying to decide how to redecorate (or decorate...can it be REdecorating if it's never really been done?) our master bedroom, so we decided to use the wall lamps in there. They actually install on the wall (they're from Ikea), so I don't have to use up space on my nightstand for the lamp. I'm excited about it. Hopefully it works out. I'm hoping to finish cleaning/organizing the bedroom tomorrow and maybe post some pictures of my two bedspread options to get some opinions. In the meantime, here are a few pictures of what I got accomplished today.

Gallery Wall

I finally got around to putting my pictures up in my bedroom as a gallery wall. It's been on my list of things to do. I've had TONS of frames that have been gathering in a tub in my bedroom for almost the entire 9 years that I've been married. I have a bunch on the wall in the hall, which didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped. But this gallery wall turned out so much better than I'd hoped! My husband even came home and sat there and stared at it with me. He told me that I should be very proud of myself. Now, you won't get any kind of a tutorial from me on this because I'm a "fly by the seat of your pants" type of decorator. In fact, I got "done" and then looked over above my headboard and realized that one of the pictures I'd intended to put in the gallery was still hanging over the bed! So I ended up adding about 8 more frames. It expanded a lot, but I'm really happy with the end result. Want to see? ;) 

I still have a few frames that need to be filled. A couple of 5x7's and a few 5x5's, which should be interesting picking out. But I was pretty happy with how it all turned out, and as the Nester says, done is better than perfect, right?  I had been putting all of this off until I paint my room. Well, we've lived in this room for almost 3 years now and the frames had been sitting in the tub the whole time.  It wasn't worth leaving them there anymore. I figure I can always put things back up whenever I get around to painting. But that's been taking so long and we're SO overwhelmed with finishing the basement, that I think it'll be a while longer still. In the meantime, I'm going to try to make the bedroom as nice as I can for us. It's the LAST bedroom to get touched. I should've done it a long time ago. I'm planning on getting three small bookcases to go underneath these pictures. We have a TON of books that are sitting on the floor waiting for a home. My husband just moved some shelves downstairs so we need some new ones for upstairs. I'm also trying to decide what to do about my bedding. I bought some new bedding while my husband was deployed. It was a color scheme that I liked, but it didn't go with my headboard. See it's brown and turquoise and my headboard's black. Black fabric. They don't really mesh. But I just got back a quilt top that a friend made for me that's a gorgeous black, red and white that goes with it. So now I'm wondering if I should just finish that quilt and leave the headboard. I'll post pics tomorrow and take a vote! I just can't decide!

Spring Cleaning

So, I've been married for 9 years. We've been in this house for almost 3 years. Before that there were 6 other apartments (not to mention the in-between short stops at my in-laws and the 4 months after I got married that I still lived with my parents while my husband was deployed). And yet, I've never done spring cleaning. Shhh!!! Don't tell! Okay, I just effectively put it out there on the internet for all to see, so I'm pretty sure the secret's out. At least to all 10 of you who follow me. ;) But this year has been horrible! It's been a beautiful "winter" in Utah, if you can even call it that, but the kids and I have been sick almost non-stop! And by the time we got done being sick, allergies kicked in early! That's just mean! So I'm spring cleaning this year. I sat down last week and made myself a list, with little check-boxes and everything. I like lists...I just don't always like the work involved with checking things off a list. But I'm determined to do it. It helps that I'm counting calories and, in one hour-and-a-half cleaning session last week, I burned 340! That's worth it to me! That's two brownies...not that I would eat two brownies just because I cleaned. I would NEVER do that! ;)

 My list ended up being three pages long. Single spaced. With two columns. To be fair, it's not ALL cleaning stuff. I did add to it as I was making the list. I decided that I wanted a comprehensive list of my needs and wants for each room. For example, moving the shelf that my dad was kind enough to put up for me, but he didn't bother to even remotely look whether it was centered on the wall that it's on. It bugs me every time I look at the clock. You see, the shelf is only two feet wide, the clock is centered on the five foot stretch of wall above it and the shelf is only three inches from the edge of the wall on the right. Yep, there's THREE FEET of space to the left of this shelf and I haven't bothered to move it. At this point, I don't even need the shelf there anymore, so the plan is to just take it down and patch the holes in the wall. It's not even worth moving it. There's also bigger things like painting, which believe me is a big project when you've got a great room like mine with vaulted ceilings and no stopping place for different colors. Just PICKING a color for that space is a huge job for me.

I also just realized as I was looking over another blog that I left things off! Cleaning above the cabinets? Did I think of that? Definitely not. Despite looking over there as I made the list and seeing the cobwebs above them. Oops! So, I'm putting it out there. Today I'm going to get the great room done. At least picked up, vacuumed and swept and mopped wherever that needs to be done. I may call my sister-in-law to come entertain me while I clean. Is that wrong? ;) She told me to! I need something to keep me going, though! And I want to see her cute little baby. It's been too long! After the great room today, I'll work on the guest room and my baby's room tomorrow. My other sons' room will be on Thursday and hopefully the laundry room too. Then Friday, when my husband's home, we'll work on our bedroom. Saturday will be wrapped up with the bathrooms and working on the basement. Hopefully I can whip this all out this week and get it done! Next week's weather should be fairly nice so hopefully I'll be able to move outside next week, either to the yard or to the garage. (There really should be sound effects for blogs. I feel like that deserves a "dun-dun-dun!") Wish me luck everyone!

Clara Dress

Well, I decided to go ahead and post a picture of my cute little niece and the dress that I made for her. She's teeny tiny (6 lbs. 8 oz. at birth and this picture was taken only 3 days later!) so it's a bit big. But it's such a sweet-springy dress that I hope that she'll get to enjoy this spring/summer. She's such a little sweetheart and I'm so excited for a new niece close by! She's actually my 8th niece. We've got 13 grandkids on that side of the family total and of them, only 4 are boys. Of those 4, 3 are mine! I miss having little girls around, since mine is so old now, so I'm enjoying the visits with sweet little snugglers. Hopefully you'll enjoy the dress. It's called the Clara dress from Peek a Boo Pattern Shop and it's available on www.youcanmakethis.com.  I got to test it out and had to cut the pictures a little bit close since this baby was born so close to my dress's due date!

*This post is my entry into Sugar Bee Craft’s Celebrating Spring competition, sponsored by Appliances Online and Beko Fridge Freezers.

New dress for Bubs!

Whoa! I left for a while, totally not meaning to (at least for that long), and I came back to a new Blogger! Holy cow! Guess I have to learn what the new buttons do. ;) Well, I've been working on a few projects, between people being sick. I've been enjoying being a pattern reviewer on occasion for Peek a Boo Pattern Shop. It's fun to get a pattern to try out for free. This one was a little trickier than the party dress I did a few months ago in a lot of ways. The party dress had tons of ruffles and had little buttonholes to worry about (and my sister-in-law loved it for my niece, btw!), but this one had piping, which I'd never done and was TERRIFIED of, and a zipper, plus it was fully lined. I do love fully lined dresses. I normally use "cheaper" fabrics for them, since it's not going to matter if you can see through the dress a little bit. And since I have four little kids who go through clothes like crazy, saving a little bit of money is really helpful. I was creative with the colors this time, so my daughter got a rainbow dress. She loves it, though, so I'm glad it worked out. She's almost 7, so she's starting to get picky about what she wears and I picked out the fabric without her. I was REALLY grateful that I didn't do all of that work, just to have her declare that she hates it and won't wear it. In fact, the opposite happened and I couldn't get it off of her the first day after I finished it! The piping wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, although I did discover that I liked using my regular foot, instead of a zipper foot. I don't have a piping foot for my machine and my mom didn't have one for hers (she's always just used the zipper foot), so that wasn't an option. I found with the zipper foot, that the fabric was always sliding out and I wasn't getting a clean line. So some of my seams on my piping are NOT pretty. But once I switched to the regular foot, I was able to put the piping under the foot on one side and it kept the fabric in place. It was fantastic. Of course, my machine likes to really pinch the fabric, so the piping was squished, rather than the foot being up high, so that might have made the difference. The zipper was really easy to put in, once I faced it the right direction. I had an oops moment, there, but quickly realized my mistake. Anyway, here are some pictures along with a link to the actual pattern with pictures of other reviewers' dresses. It's called the Birthday Girl dress, which I thought was really cute.  (Can I just mention how much I love the black and white dress at that link? That was a great choice of fabrics!)