Olive and the basement

One last coat of paint was all that was needed in the basement and the painting that needs to be done before the carpet goes in. I asked Olive if she wanted to help me paint or watch TV and incrediably she chose to help. She was very cute. Her area was under the stairs and she kept up with me for an hour! So that's it with the painting. (For now any way...) Thanks for the help Olive!

Ahh! Spider!

So today I was innocently picking tomatoes. (I can't believe how many we've had this year!) When I almost put my hand through this big girl's web.

It's so hard to tell in a picture, but she is HUGE! I got the marker because she is just a little bigger around than a marker and her body is about an inch long. Add in those legs and OHH BOY!
So, after I stopped freaking out I was able to find out that this is a golden orb spider and though she will bite if provoked, she's not poisonous. (But, let's not test her out, shall we?)
We named her Goldie (Olive wants to call her Yellowie.)

This must be the same kind of spider that Charlotte (as in Charlotte's Web) because sometimes they are called "web writers."

Button pancakes and football practice

It was time to shake up breakfast! Jonathon usually makes crepes on Saturday mornings, but since he had a 7:30 meeting (don't feel too bad for him, he was well fed with "the works" breakfast during the meeting.) I don't know about any one else, but breakfast around here is getting pretty boring. So, since we've already had cereal, eggs, waffles and toast this week, it was pancakes again. We all like pancakes, but they are so, well, normal, old, boring, you know what I mean. So, to get the kids to eat their breakfast we tried "button pancakes." They are just like regular pancakes only the size of a silver dollar. Then, instead of eating them with a fork, the fun part is to pick them up and dip them in your own little container of syrup. It actually worked. Olive, who NEVER eats breakfast fell for the novelty and ate 5. I'll mark that one off as a success.





Cedar is finally 5 and we are so excited for his new opportunities in athletics. We chose football for this season, mainly because it's close and a great program. This one is through the local Baptist church (who says Mormon's and Baptist's can't get along?) I love that the focus is on learning, having fun and good sportsmanship. He was so excited today that he wore his Jersey and mouthpiece most of the day.



One more plus for football practice is the little friends that the girls can play with! Yea! Everyone wins!

The Blue Room

I finished painting the girls room yesterday. I decided to stick with the blue that looked a little less bright in a 1x3 rectangle sample in Lowes. Once everything was put back together I liked it a lot more than the original super bright blue! The kids all helped put on the wall stickers, so of course there was no holding back! Cedar was even jealous and asked why I didn't put fairies up in his room. I really hope they weren't mistaking on the package that said that they come off walls. I hope that they meant that they easily peel off, not that you have to get the sander out to remove them... There are a lot of stickers!

Yep, that's still the bucket bed!

Aspen was the sole decorator of her side of the room.
Aspen loved putting fairies all over the place.
Hey, those are fabulous curtains! I bet whoever made those is really cool!
The cloud suggestion was great!

Do you remember the famous Pink dresser story?
Up next...Painting the basement!

Cedar's Room Before and After

The last week and a half have been dedicated to Cedar's room. I was going to paint his room over a year ago. I even painted the ceiling. But before I actually bought the paint, more beautiful art work showed up on the wall. I didn't want to cover up the pictures while there was still a huge chance that more would show up in the coming weeks and months. As a tribute to the artwork that I scrubbed and finally gave up and primed with the worlds stinkiest super heavy duty primer (That really works, but you can't breathe in the room for 2 days, by the way..) Here is some of the art work along side the new "I promise I won't hurt these walls, mommy." looks.

Next to the closet.

In the dormer.

Along the far wall.

I love these squares that I got at Lowes. They are wall stickers that (reportedly) come off and leave no sticky residue. So far I think they are great. They remind me a lot of contact paper. What is super about them is Cedar can still hang his pictures up on the wall as long as he tapes them onto the squares

Next up...The Girl's room

1,000 words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this weekend was a novel. A really long novel. A Harry Potter type series!

So, maybe it's a bit obvious that I, I mean, ahem, Jonathon got a new camera. I, I mean, ahem, we have been having a lot of fun trying it out.

Here's the weekend tour. It's backwards because moving pictures around in blogger is ok with only a few pictures, but this mini-series is a bit loaded.

Saturday morning after the build and grow make a pirate ship at Lowes, my very cute children insisted on blowing their hard earned $$$ at the dollar store. Aspen and Olive got glow stick wands. They were going to save them but after we were all ready for bed Olive dropped hers and it started to glow. It was getting dark out and Jonathon was just finishing up mowing the lawn. Well, they looked so cool that the little kid in Jonathon and the rest of us little kids couldn't resist trying them out on the trampoline. Then we started playing with the camera and the results were really cool pictures, really late bed time and a really fun spontaneous family fun time.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them to full screen. They turned out really fun!

Check out that face on Jonathon. And his soon to be new wall paper.

Aspen waving a wand and Cedar doing a flip.

Olive and Aspen jumping.

Cedar

Somehow, Cedar made a shadow on his light thing.

Jonathon doing a flip

The fun and crazy kids!

Saturday morning we built pirate ships at Lowes and so we got to paint them Saturday afternoon.

Aspen is trying to set a record on how fast she can do a 100 piece puzzle. 20 min is about the time it takes. (So far!)

Mowing, mowing, mowing.....


Friday after school was such a hot day! We jumped at the invitation to walk over to our friends house to swim in their pool!

Cedar is so proud of his little chameleon. He worked sooooo hard for it. Being in kindergarten it can be hard for a little boy who likes to run and jump and shout to remember the rules ALL DAY. His teacher had just started the new "rewards"systems of if you don't "pull a bear" (it's like writing your name on the chalk board, or getting a warning etc..) for the entire week. That means NO messing up (How hard is that!) then you get a toy out of the treasure box. We were all routing for Cedar. Keeping all of the rules all of the time is tough! He would pray every night and was so proud every day when I picked him up that he had made it through the day without pulling a bear. And by Friday, he did it! This is his memento of all of that hard work. Really there couldn't be a prouder boy around!

Phew, we made it! This is the second blog I've posted today. I'm ready to read some of your blogs now! Keep 'em coming (Hint hint Marie, mom, dad...)

Banana bread

Today was banana bread baking day! I love banana bread and I love that it's one of those things that I feel like I actually know how to make and it turns out well (almost) every time.

It's one of Olive's favorite too. There is so much that she can do to help, it's great! I usually triple it because our store sells a bag of ripe bananas for $1.49. Enough for at least three. It's simple and makes a dense, dark bread, not too sweet and perfect sliced with butter!

From the Fannie Farmer Cookbook

3 ripe bananas

2 eggs

2 C flour

3/4 C sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350*

Grease loaf pan.

Mix the bananas and eggs together in a large bowl until mashed together.

Stir in the flour, sugar, salt and soda.

Put batter in the pan and bake for one hour.

Remove from pan to rack to cool.

I also tried to make some wheat free bread for Jonathon. I used the same recipe but (obviously) substituted equal amounts of my favorite wheat free mixes and flour (Kini-kinick, Bob's Red Mill and soy flour) and then I added 1/4 cup apple sauce and 1t xanthum gum. Jonathon said it needed a little more salt, but other than that is turned out pretty good.

Self portrait by Olive

Olive came home from school today with a picture of herself that she drew. It took me a minute to realize what a good job she did. She got he pink and green stripes beautifully! When I realized this and told her that I was impressed that she drew herself with the same clothes on, she said, "Yea, everything except the buttons. My green couldn't draw buttons."

The close up of the drawing.

And of course, I can't just take one picture (I love digital!) Here is a cute one of her while I was trying to get her clothes.

This old house, continued

Before I get to the house update, here is last Saturdays upward flag football tryout for Cedar.


The before picture going upstairs. (I had already taken off the rails before I remembered to take a picture.) Notice all of the art work on the walls. Here is something I didn't know yesterday, but I know today. Pen, marker and crayon bleed through paint. If you are going to paint over wall art like I did, spend 10 min. with one of those "magic erasers." I just figured I would paint over everything, and it would be gone, right? Ummm, not quite. Paint covers dirt, finger prints, fading, chocolate milk and most of the normal wall art that is found in most homes. (Yes, chocolate milk IS normal wall art at our address...) We'll see how many cotes of paint it takes to cover up the rest of the wall art... I'm on 4 for around the rail area. :) I still have another coat of paint before I take the after pictures of this, but even with the magically appearing marker and pen, it's looking GOOD! I now know why when you go to choose paint there are about 10000000000000000000000 choices of white. It's so you can take home one of each of them, match it PERFECTLY to the wall that is really high and hard to paint and then when you miss a spot or 12 near the top, or bottom or where ever, no one can see it. Love it!


This is the closet in our bedroom that we tore out to make a nice little alcove. I just put the first coat of paint on and it's looking good too!




And the basement is ready to paint. The ceiling is textured, the window is done and it is dry! I will prime it tonight!

Next up is the carpet quote - This afternoon!

Updates and cute pictures!

The Kindergarten performed at the first PTO mtg at school. The bottom right shows two of Cedar's kindergarten friends. Noah, Cedar, Aiden.


Olive. Dancing, dressing up and sleeping in curlers.


Aspen. Ooo! You're too cute to be scary!



Cedar. 90% natural smile.


One of the top ten reason's that I am glad school is in. My very cute kids remember how much they actually like each other when they are not forced to spend most of their waking (and sleeping) hours together.



Sunflower update: Wow! We had to cut them down because they were just too heavy. We saved a bunch of seeds for next year and then set them at the edge of our lawn. We called this our birds and squirrel grocery store. That way they will have lots food stored up for the winter.

Basement update!

I knew that no one would believe me unless I had actual photographic proof. So here it is. Our basement is actually getting done!!! Wednesday I called around to get quotes and one of the guys that a friend of mine had recommended gave us a great price AND the clintcher was that they could start the next day! (the above photo's are what it looked like Wednesday after I cleaned it all out!)

So here is day one progress. 18 wall boards, 9 ceiling boards.

Carpet is being quoted next week. We are going to do the whole house!! That means that I have until the carpet is put in to get everything painted. Nothing like putting a fire under you to get something done! It all has to wait until next week though. This week I am babysitting an escape artist for my friend. She usually goins to a head start early learning program, today though, when I took her I didn't know that if you were there late they wouldn't take her. So for her last day she gets to spend it all with Olive and I. The gates are up and the doors are locked! I appreciate my kids personalities so much more this week!