Score!

I found an ad on Craigslist for a lady that had closed her scrapbooking store in Mesa and is trying to get rid of the rest of her inventory from her home. I paid $36 for ALL of this stuff. I got 114 12x12 pages (cardstock, vellum and other papers), 305 eyelets and dot-lets, 2 sets of acrylic stamps (1 mini and 1 med.), 2 acrylics blocks for the stamps, 2 pages of rub-on letters, a med punch, a border punch, a box of sticker-chipboard letters, another set of rub-on letters, a couple of pages of sticker & embelishments, a whole box of little brad style embelishments and a small ink pad. Wow! totally worth the drive to Mesa (abt 30 min.) Anyone reading this from the phoenix area that scraps, she still has tons of stuff, I could give you her phone number. She is really nice, I was even a few dollars short on cash for everything I had picked out and she gave it all to me anyway. She has it all set up on racks (except the paper, but it's all separated in boxes )so it was easy to go through.

The Old Man

While I was getting the last picture of Josi off of my phone, I found this picture I had forgotten about. For those not at my Grandma's house that night, my dad is pretending to be an old man. I use the word "pretending" very loosely :) Apparently this is not a random occurance.

Super Hero

This morning Josi has been running around saying "I'm Super Josi!" It all started when Hyrum dropped his fork on the floor at breakfast. They were sitting at the bar eating pancakes and Hyrum can't get up and down himself. Out of nowhere Josi just busted out " Super Josi will get it"
She didn't even remember she was wearing this hand-me-down Superman Underoos t-shirt.

Tiny Harvest

First of all, I got my curtain rods so now my curtains are up. I just have to hem the bottoms now. I really like how they turned out. They really add color to the room. Now I just have to make a few pillows. I didn't have enough fabric left over, like I thought I would though, so I will have to get some more.
Now to my current harvest. I was able to get 5 ears of corn off of my plants last week. They are tiny though. They were only about the length of half a normal ear, but they were the same diameter. I don't think I planted mini corns, but they all were. They tasted really yummy though. Maybe they were stunted by the chlorine water that leeched over into our yard from our neighbors pool either leaking or just draining.

And yesterday I picked these two tiny little tomatoes. The chapstick is just for size reference. I didn't realize I was planting a miniature garden. The bigger one is from a "patio plant" that I thought were cherry tomatoes when I bought them. So it is between the size of a regular tomato and a cherry tomato. The tiny one is about the size of a grape tomato. I thought that plant would be a roma tomato when it started getting tomatoes on it, but I guess they are just grape tomatoes. I don't mind, I love grape tomatoes. And there are several plants that are regular romas, they just have green tomatoes right now.

I had actually picked a grape tomato a few days ago, but I gave it to Hyrum to take inside, and he squished it.

"Date" Night and The Dude

On Saturday we all went to the drive-in theatre. Our 4Runner is the best for this. We lay the back seats down and take our pillows and snacks. The drive in is also awesome because you get two movies for less than the price of one at a regular theatre and they let you bring your own food. The kids end up sleeping through the second one, which is nice too.

This is our chill little Hyrum (rightfully dubbed "The Dude" by Nana & Papa) enjoying the ride to the theatre. He is so funny!

More of the yard and house

So I finally got my curtains done. I still haven't found a curtain rod that I like so they are set out on the couch. Imagine them hanging up. I need Karin's interior design expertise to decide what style of curtain rod I should get. Wood to match the furniture or the rubbed bronze to match the light fixture and table. Tough choices.

I also found the blocks I want to use for my retaining wall across the backyard. Unfortunately there were only 27 of them because I found them on Craigslist. Good news is they were cheaper that way. I haven't seen these anywhere else. I had the picture in my head of exactly what I wanted. Now I hope I can find more of them somewhere.

I am going to have to get a LOT more of them to go all of the way across the back. It will be a very gradual process. This is only 1/3 of the wall. And I want it twice as tall.

I Hate Jam!

But I love Jelly. Jam just has too many little slimey bits in it. And I hate biting into the seeds. Yesterday at the grocery store I found that strawberries were only $1/lb so I called my mom for a jelly recipe. It said I could get about 3 1/2 cups of juice out of 8 lbs of strawberries, which would make 6 pints of jelly. So I bought 8 lbs of strawberries. When I got home I found that I only got the $1/lb on 4 of the 8 lbs, the rest were $4/lb. Still cheaper than buying really hard to find Strawberry Jelly. Especially since I ended up getting nearly 10 cups of juice and was able to make a batch of jelly, a quart of syrup and still have enough juice to make another batch of jelly. I just need to buy another box of pectin. Today was a relatively cool day. It was 76 when I got up and is still only 83 at noon. It worked out pretty well. Way more fun and fullfilling to make it myself than search for it in the stores. And so yummy!

Shopping

This is what I bought yesterday, 5 minutes after I got it home.


Oh, you can't tell what it is, well it WAS a 2 cup measuring cup. The red is the lines on it.
My sweet little Hyrum decided he wanted to see what it was and pulled the bag off of the counter. This is probably the worst part of having tile floors.

Girl's Night Out

Last night our ward had a girl's night out salon/spa because this weekend was the father/son campout. We did our nails and had facials, had snacks... girl stuff. Josi was so excited to go. As soon as Ben got home she was in the garage telling him what we were doing and that it was just for girls, no boys! At the end we had a Project Runway style fashion show. We broke into 5 teams and each team got 2 bags of items that we had to create 2 outfits with.

Josi was one of the models. She fits better into a garbage sack than any of the adults did. Here is in the middle of the design process. This was a face she was pulling all night long. She had gotten laughs the first few times, and like any 4 year old, she kept hamming it up. Our bag consisted of garbage sacks, tissue paper, double sided tape, toilet paper, clothes pins, ribbon, yarn, hawaiian leis, and safety pins.

Part of our team was a lady that I met while we owned our video store. I hadn't seen her since we sold the store, but she was there last night. I was really good to see her again. She and I worked on this dress together.

There is Josi 5th from the left or 6th from the right. Our other model is to her left. I had little to do with her outfit. This was the judging of the designs.

Here is our finished product. Josi was a great model. She got a chocolate bar for it. Our design won! That is a garbage bag and tissue paper on her head, held on with a rubber band. Her dress is a garbage sack held together with clothes pins. Her belt and sleeves are tissue paper. She has a toilet paper train that you can see in the top picture. She was ready for a day at the Kentucky Derby or a night at a grand gala. Such a cutie. I was told I was in charge of Halloween costumes by a lady in our ward. It was really fun. Josi had a ball.

Happy Mother's Day to me

After bringing the furniture home, Ben took the kids out and left me home. He said he wanted to have a little personal time with them. Made sense, summer is coming on fast and won't see them much for a few months. I was happy to have a little time to myself and I took the time to blog and work on my dad's website a little and watch one of my favorite movies, Pride and Prejudice. Not the condensed version with Kiera Knightly, but the A&E version that is 6 VHS tapes long (I am watching tape 6 now). I am going to have to get it on DVD now though, because tape 3 wouldn't play at all and 2 of the others were not working properly either. Kids!
Well, Ben just got home and the kids lugged in a package, grinning ear to ear, exclaiming Happy Mother's Day and Happy dirfday Muders (Hyrum).




Ben had taken the kids shopping for me. He gets sweeter every year. Hyrum picked out the card and Josi picked out the Hannah Montana wrapping paper.
I asked if I was supposed to open it now or wait til tomorrow. He said I might want to open it now, but I could wait til tomorrow if I wanted.







So I opened it now. Inside was ....




the fabric for my curtains in the front room! And a new feather pillow for the bed. (Mine was a hand-me-down from my mom when I was in junior high and barely resembles a pillow anymore, but I totally love.)





I didn't want Ben to feel bad, but it was the wrong color. It was red, instead of the burgandy I had picked out. I finally got brave enough to tell him, and he said that the lady at the store said they had two of them, but one of them was out.
Of course, it was my burgandy one. Ben, typical male that he is, couldn't tell the difference and got me the red.





It is still beautiful and looks great in the room. It matches the few other decorative things I have in there, like the candles on the table. We hung it up on the blinds to see how we liked it. Ben says he likes it better, and it is growing on me.










Here is a close-up of the fabrics.




I guess next week I will be making curtains, festoons and sheers. I can see now that I am going to have to line the fabric. It looks striped where the sun shines through it. I still have to pick out the rods for them though. I am not sure of the style I want yet though.


Hyrum's own personal gift to me, just in time for Mother's Day, is that he is all daytime potty trained. He still has to wear a diaper at night, but he hasn't had an accident during the day for nearly a week. And he goes when he gets up in the morning. I am so happy I don't have to buy diapers any more. At least not for a while. (Nothing implied!) Thanks Mom and Karin for the cold bath trick.