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.