Happy Valentine's to Me!

The kitchen is my domain. Really, I love to be in my element, cooking in the kitchen. But, I have never liked the vines on the walls of my dining room and everyone who knows me knows that I do not like white walls. So, finally, after 4 years...I am getting my kitchen painted.
Step 1: Prime over the green vines and green paint under the chair rail. We did this one weekend.
Step 2: Cut in Toasted Coconut above the chair rail. This was my job.
Step 3: Roll Toasted Coconut onto walls, all the kids helped Chris with the rolling.
Step 4: Original hand-painted artwork on outlet and light covers done by the girls.
Step 5: Cutting in and rolling of Red Delicious below the chair rail. (To be done over two weekends as it took 8 coats!! of red to cover the primer.)
Voila! The kitchen/dining room of my dreams. Reminiscent of warmer days and many Mexican dinners of the past and many to come in the future.
This picture shows the colors as they really look, the red matches my Kitchen Aid perfectly, Thank you Chris for your many tireless hours of painting red on red on red. I love it!!

Why I love my family

Happy Valentine's Day!! Amber, I love you because when you decided to stop sucking your thumb, all it took was the simple childlike faith in Jesus to help you and the promise of a pillow pet for you to stop. So now, after 2 years of sucking, you are thumb free and have a new friend to keep you company at nights. Oh, and I love you because you randomly wear stickers on your forehead.
Krystal, I love you because of your new found sense of style. You are growing up and trying to be independent and part of that independence is picking out your own outfits. I love what you chose to wear to the Valentine's party (and yes, that is a slip with pretty lace at the bottom).
Although it's not pictured, Clarissa, I love that you helped Dad make breakfast for me on Valentine's morning complete with flowers and a card and then made breakfast for your sisters; eggs and toast with fairy sugar sprinkles.
Jared, I love that while we were all making Valentine's cards you turned on the Primary songs and sang along with them. I really appreciate your sensitive and loving personality and hearing your beautiful voice. And then to top it off, you graciously helped your sisters to finish their cards. They are so lucky to have you as a big brother.
Chris, I love that after all these years, you still love to get out and boogie with me on the dance floor. I love that you came up with the idea to be the only couple dressed up like the 70s at the stake Valentine's dance and that we could have so much fun together just being crazy. I truly am blessed with a wonderful family!

A Winter Treat

There isn't much I like about winter in Virginia, but occasionally Mother Nature gets out paints other than drab gray and white to provide us with a beautiful display of her talents. This is the view from our backyard on one of those occasions.

Crafting and Creating

Amber's hair is getting long. She likes to refer to herself as having Rapunzel hair, thank you Disney. I enjoy creating pretty hairdos, but she doesn't let me do it very often, so I was lucky to capture this fleeting moment.
Jared with his Ninja training center Lego creation. Much cooler close up, but he's too cute to leave out of the pic.
On a whim, Jared decided to build the London Bridge out of K'Nex. Any guesses as to what profession he is most likely to choose. By the way, I should be getting paid for all this name brand advertising.
A friend of ours was collecting blankets for birth mothers of adopted babies so we decided to make it a family service project to make a couple and donate them. Jared wanted to do a fleece tie blanket like the one his Aunt Michelle gave him years ago (in the background on the chair). He picked out the fleece and did it all by himself, including adding ties to the middle. I didn't get a picture of the one the girls made. They picked out some coordinating flannel and Clarissa sewed it together on the sewing machine. They both came out really good.
A friend taught me how to make these hair bows and a couple nights later, the girls and I made a bunch more. They enjoyed picking out the fabric and embellishments and even did some of the twisting.
Here's Krystal wearing one of the hairbows on a headband.
I have been working on printing many of our photos to decorate the house with. I got this collage frame on sale and couldn't wait to fill it with family pictures of famous or interesting places we have visited. It is hanging in our hallway.
This is a one-of-a-kind creation by Amber. She collected scrap wood from Chris's workshop and glued a broken necklace and beads to it. I love how she came up with this idea all by herself. What a budding artist, modern art, that is.

Closet Make-over

My New Year's Resolution had to do with getting some things around the house organized. The first place I tackled was the junk drawer in the kitchen. For less than $10 I bought several plastic bins and now everything has a spot. I love it. But, as you can see from these pictures, our closet was in need of a total make-over and it was going to cost more than $10. Handy husband to the rescue.

Before

After

Chris designed (according to my specific instructions) and built custom fit shoe bins and clothing shelves for both his side and mine. Now, not only does everything have it's own place, but with added shelving, we have a lot more room.
Isn't it beautiful! And yes, it will stay this organized with the clothes in color order. That's one of those crazy things about me that I don't want to change.

Recipe for Pizza and a Fun Friday

1 Tablespoon yeast
and a Teddy Bear on skates.

Add 1 Cup Warm Water (not hot)
and take turns hand grinding wheat.

Add 1 teaspoon sugar into yeast and water
and teach the kids to roll out the dough.

Add 1 teaspoon salt
and let the kids help with assembly.

Add 2 Tablespoons oil (I use olive) and stir.
Admire your work, pesto with turkey and marinara with pepperoni.

Add 2 1/2 Cups flour (I put wheat and white in mine) and knead.
Dig in!

Roll out dough and move to pizza stone, no rising necessary, then add sauce, cheese and toppings.
Dance in the kitchen.

Bake at 415 degrees for 15 min.
and top off the evening with a face full of chocolate ice cream.

Revolutions, Hamlet and MSG

This winter break has been a lot of fun. I mean, the kids were fun when they were babies and all, but nothing beats being able to test my athletic abilities against the children while sledding in subzero weather (guess who crashed every time), or test my patience against theirs while doing a 1000 piece puzzle (which is actually a 998 piece puzzle now) or test their spelling skills against mine in a good game of scrabble (imagine my surprise when Jared beat me with a word he didn't even know was real!). And in all this fun, I've learned some interesting things about our kids as well; for instance, they have nicknamed many of the rooms in our house - the school room is called "the goo room" (Thanks to Amber's mispronunciation), the living room is called "the lizarding room" (Thanks to Clarissa's mispronunciation), and the bathroom in called "the poo room" (no explanation needed I hope).

But not all the funny word usages come from the girls; when Jared and Chris were out sledding yesterday, Jared informed Chris that the snow must be full of MSG because he just couldn't get enough of it. Then, tonight while we were tucking him into bed he started talking about what he wants to do for his New Years Revolution. We got a good laugh while we teased him about revolting against chores, schoolwork, his sisters and of course MSG, then let him explain that for his New Years Resolution he would like to resolve, not revolt, to make his room look like a space shuttle. We told him to go ahead and design it which was followed by a query as to whether or not we had a Hamlet down in the basement. We had to explain that although we have a stage for performing Hamlet in the basement, we are not in the habit of keeping Shakespearean characters in our basement. We finally figured out that he meant a hammock, not Hamlet and that he wanted it for his space shuttle bedroom.

I wish that every day could be this perfect and I wish our kids would never grow up. I will be sad when the days of "goo rooms", "lizarding rooms", revolutions and Hamlets are gone and my children will always beat me at games of athleticism, patience, and spelling. But until then, I will try to enjoy every moment. I sure do love these kids.