It doesn't get better than this!

For Christmas Elise got a sewing machine. She has been just dying for one of her own. This pink beauty is a hello kitty sewing machine, complete with a grommet kit and a foot pedal. When she pulled out the instructions she immediately found a project that she wanted to make. A handbag. I don't really know what I was thinking but somehow it never occurred to me that I would be doing all of the "sewing" with her. I thought I would have to step in here and there, but I didn't get that every project would be accompanied by an adult. (Notice I said "adult" this time...not "me". In enters Paul - ) Luckily for me Paul has taken sewing classes and knows his stuff. I happily handed the first project over to him. Here is Elise sewing with Paul watching closely.

And stepping in to help... Did I mention that I love this man?

And here is the final product!! A HANDBAG! (The girls call this pose "fashion" like an adjective. Ie: You're posing so fashion!)

And I couldn't resist putting this one in. Since it has gotten cold we aren't outside playing with the chickens as much as we were over the summer. That has not stopped our feathered friends however. They have started a game with us where they come up the three stairs of the deck and "knock" on the back door with their beaks to get our attention. The girls then play a follow-my-finger game with the chickens. It actually cracks me up. Who would have guessed that after all the Christmas gifts that the chickens would provide the real entertainment!

We hope that Christmas was wonderful for each of you and that these last few days of vacation are restful ones.

Christmas Card...uh, sort of

Well, I feel I must explain. As most of you know, I am usually very early with our Christmas cards. I have had a few friends ask me if everything is ok since they haven't received one. Truth be told, the only thing that wasn't ok was the fact that I never got a family picture done, which meant that I never got on the Christmas cards. So, if you haven't received our Christmas card and are wondering what happened, rest assured we still love you! Here is your Christmas card and the photo that would have gone in it if I had done it in October like I usually do. Merry Christmas! We are still around and plugging away. And rest assured that you will be receiving an actual Christmas card next year!

loveseat before and after

Here is the before of our lovely find. I spotted this gem on the side of the road at an estate sale for $30. The fabric was worn and stained, as you can see, but she was still a beauty! As it turned out this chair is over 100 years old. What luck for me to snatch it up!

When we decided on the room that this would go in we wanted to match the fabric to the area. We went with a pale yellow with small green flowers. It has a texture to the fabric and creates almost a quilted look. The wood trim was in excellent condition but we wanted to darken it and antique it. I used a walnut stain that I put on, then waited a few minutes and wiped back off again. This ended up darken everything but leaving a heavy excess of stain in the crevices so as to create an antiqued style. Now, after that point I have to say I was in over my head. Because this bench is so old I had a wicked hard time figuring out how to get the upholstery off and then ended up ruining my "template" for the upholstery that I was putting on. Oops. As embarrassing as it is this project took me eight months to complete. Oh well. It's done now and I love it! Now that I have two reupholstery projects under my belt I think I'll just head on to that rocking chair in my living room! How exciting!

Green Eggs and a Cast

We have been LOVING eating our chickens' eggs and thought we would share the fun. Bela's chickens are called Americanas or Easter Eggers, which means that their eggs are usually blue, green and pink. So far we have only had the green. It makes it very exciting to gather eggs to see what color they might be. And as an added bonus I occasionally get to ask the kids if they want green eggs and ham for dinner. Bela is holding up the brown next to the green so you can see it better.

Another exciting event at our house has been Bela's new fashion trend. She broke her arm a few weeks ago while riding her bike. She went to turn while going way too fast down a monster hill and lost control. She flew over the handlebars, got a concussion and broke her wrist. Our neighbor, who is an artist, painted these lovely butterflies and flowers for Bela. It was almost a tragedy to get the cast off!

September Catch Up (Now that it's November)

Eeekk! How do you catch up now? Well here it goes. September was a birthday month. Aspen is now 10! Crazy! She is so darling and getting so grown up too. We had a great time with family, presents and cake. The pictures left a little to be desired, but here she is, just as cute as ever.

Also in September Bela got to go horseback riding with dad and Grandpa Rose. This picture looks like she is being tortured, but really truly she had a great time. Secretly I think she is entering that preteen stage of "I must act bugged". Her horse was Frosty and Paul's was Panda. Apparently Panda was well named...hungry, slow and lazy. They had a great time! And just to prove it, here are a few more.

First Day of School

These girls were so excited for the first day of school! You can tell that Aspen is going into 5th grade because of that confidence radiating from her. Then there's Elise--so THRILLED to be in 1st grade and finally eat school lunch! She looks so happy. Our Bela was excited, but as you can see from that face there was a certain amount of nervousness too. They loved their first day of school. Everyone gave a favorable report. The most notable was Elise who is our happy-go-lucky, mellow spirit. She said that the first day was great and then proceeded to list the many fun things they did and then added as a side note, "but there was one thing..." She told me that at one point she went to the bathroom and then she got lost. She said that she couldn't find her classroom and she walked around the whole school and finally, "I just decided to sit in a corner and cry." Oh! It just gets me every time I think about it. A teacher saw her and showed her the right place and took her to her classroom and all was well again. Other than that...a spectacular first day of school!

Violet had to get in the fun too. Preschool...here we come!

Martin's Cove

As many of you know, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The beginning of our church is full of history of a people willing to sacrifice all to get to Zion. These people were known as the Mormon Pioneers. Their stories are more than inspiring. One very significant point in the story of the Mormon Pioneers happened in a place called Martin's Cove (which is located just outside Casper, Wyoming). The Martin handcart company arrived in the West far too late in the year and got caught in a record breaking winter storm with no supplies, no food, more than 1/3 of the company having died and with no hope of being able to arrive in Salt Lake City on their own. Their stories are amazing. Through the grace of God and the inspiration given to faithful members in Salt Lake the Martin handcart company was rescued and the remaining living nursed back to health. This year, as a family, we recreated this trek through Martin's Cove and ended our journey with our 8 year old, Bela, being baptized in the Sweet Water River as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We had fun, were touched by the stories and received an increase of God's Spirit as we tried for three days to live as the pioneers did so long ago.

Bela and three of her cousins dressed in white, ready to be baptized in the Sweet Water behind them.
Bela and her dad, waiting to baptize her.
We got to recreate the pioneer crossing of the Sweet Water. It was a welcome relief from the scorching heat and whipping dry wind. Look at those smiles!
This is all you see for miles. It is beautiful. Now, more than 150 years later, the trails are well manicured and groomed.
We even got to square dance! We had a great time. These two were my favorite. Violet and cousin Cohen even got into it.

Vacation 2011 Part 3: San Diego!

The last leg of our trip we went down to San Diego. We actually were about 10 miles away from Mexico before we realized that we had gone too far, but we did eventually make it. We have some very good friends that moved in April, so we went to stay at their house with them for the day and overnight. It was short, but super fun! We went to the beach, then swam in their pool and then went out for a celebratory dinner. By the time we were on the road to come home we were very ready for our fabulous 9 days to end. I still think that the best part of any trip is being back in your own bed.

Here is Aspen with L and G. Honestly I have never seen a better match than these three girls.

Bela and E on their way to bed. What goofers!

Vacation 2011 Part 2: Disneyland!

We began this leg of our trip at the Instacare discovering that Elise had strep. Goody. So, we got her some medication and arrived at our hotel with a day to relax and gear up for the park the next day. Unfortunately, all during the night Violet then threw up. You can only imagine how much room service liked that at 3 am. Truth be told they couldn't have been nicer. By 9 am everyone seemed to be feeling well enough for us to take a slower day at Disneyland. At this point I feel I must apologize to anyone that attended Disneyland that day. I think we infected the entire park but, let's face it people, how can you spend that kind of money and then not go? Really. We actually had a great day, went home, went to bed and got ready to gear up for the next day. Too bad for us, Elise was up in the night throwing up this time. Once again, she felt well enough the next day and we went again. However, by the third day we all were feeling great! Being sick was truly the only downer on the vacation. We had so much fun at Disneyland going on rides, watching the parade and fireworks, and eating ice cream. When we weren't in the park we were at the hotel napping and swimming. It was just the perfect combination of fun and relaxation...minus the throwing up.

Vacation 2011 Part 1: St. George!

We began our family vacation this year with a trip to St. George for the Reynolds family reunion. While we were there we got to tour the St. George Tabernacle, which thankfully had a splash park in front to cool us from the 100 degree weather. We took a day trip to Zion National Park and went to Weeping Rock and Emerald Pools. We also couldn't forget the fun at the parks getting together with all of the family, which included shooting homemade rockets. Along with that we swam in the pool at our condo and did lots of exploring and playing with the cousins (2nds and 1sts). We had a great time! After our four days in St. George we then headed on to Disneyland...more to come!

Party anyone?

June is birthday month in our family. Between our two sides of the family there are 9 June birthdays to celebrate. Our little family contributes to 3 of these, all within the space of 4 days. We love it! So far Bela and Violet really enjoy having birthday celebrations together. We had the family over for cake and homemade ice cream. The girls had a great time opening presents and playing with their cousins. Here they are opening their gifts. Thank you so much to all of you that came! The girls loved their presents!

Before the party we woke up and got donuts and then went for a hike on our mountain. I am just amazed at the determination of our Violet. She hiked the whole way up all by herself on those short little legs. Here she is explaining to Paul that she's a big girl and doesn't need to be carried. Look at her hand gestures. Good grief, she is a big girl.
This was the view at a rest stop. The beauty of the landscape that I grew up with is so different than Utah, but look how beautiful it is where I live now. Utah has a beauty all it's own. (It helps too that it has been a record breaking year for rain...)
At the end of the day this is what I found. Violet now has to make room in her bed for daddy bear and baby bear. She LOVES these bears. She's holding baby bear in her arms.
Happy Birthday to my two sweet girls. We are so lucky to have you. We had a fabulous day!

Moving Day....FINALLY!!!!

Yesterday was finally moving day for our lovely chickens. For those of you that didn't know we got 8 chickens a few weeks before Easter. Each girl has two that are theirs. Aspen's are Peep and Rosie, Bela's are Daisy and Sunny, Elise's are Sarah and Sweetie and Violet's are Blackie and Brownie. (I bet you can guess what colors hers are!) We have had so much fun with them!!
We taught them to climb into our hand when we put it out. When they were little they would even fall asleep. They've had to be inside for the first 5 weeks because of the cold and safety.

As they got older though we would take them outside to get used to the dirt and grass. We discovered that they didn't like the grass at all. They were too light and would float and sink as they tried to walk. You can see from this picture that they got nervous and all climbed onto my leg. The last two were trying to push their way up too.
After much stinking and knocking over their food we finally got to move them outside yesterday! Hurray!! (Seriously, people would come into the house and wonder why we were so smelly.) Paul and I built their coop and moved into into place just in time. They LOVE being outside! Here are the girls showing them where their new home is, and the coop from the yard. Welcome home chicks!

Birthday Girl!

Here is the birthday girl! I cannot even believe that she is now 6. Looking at this picture makes me realize that everyone should be this happy on their birthday.
She had a great day...school, balloons, family, parties, ice cream cake, presents and the most important part: another year older!

Posing

These pictures were taken a few months ago when Paul was just playing with camera. Violet asked him to take a picture of her. This was the result:Apparently she was not pleased with the result because she asked him to take another one. When he went to snap the picture she said, "no, wait dad, I'm not ready." Then she laid herself out on our bed and said, "ok, I'm ready now." Here she is: The poser. Oh the house of girls. What are we to do?

Another Before and After

Last week I was going through photos of the last little bit and found these two that I never shared. We put in a patio and fire pit last July. Today, when the high is 11, I feel a bit of hope from looking at these pictures. The grass will grow again, the raspberries will bloom and fruit again and by golly we again will eat smores. Everyone is invited!

Before and After

A few months ago I became very inspired by this lady. Her blog teaches (among other things) how to reupholster furniture. Actually, truth be told I have emailed her and she is the nicest, most helpful lady on the planet. I wish that I knew her personally. Anyway, she made everything look so easy that I decided to tackle my own project. I had this chair in my den that just didn't cut the mustard.I decided to redo it and just LOVE how it turned out. This chair is actually one of a pair that now go so nicely in the room. I realize that in fact I CAN DO THIS! It made me so excited I'm now not afraid to reupholster some other things in the house! I'll keep you posted!Here is the pair in the room. I am just in love!