4th of July breakfast

we had a GREAT 4th of july! it started with our church breakfast on the 3rd. huge turnout with great food :) i was "in charge" of decorating. although it didn't turn out how i envisioned due to being gone for a whole week and coming back less than 24 hours before the event. but here's what i did...

these are soup cans that i painted and mod podged vintage 4th of july pictures onto. then filled them with crinkle paper, sparkle cupcake topped picks, white flowers and pinwheels.

for the 4th, we went with a group of friends from church up to tehachapi (45 min away) to watch there "professional" firework show. you could set up blankets and chairs on the high school football field to watch the show that was across the street. they had food vendors (popcorn, funnel cakes and shaved ice) and different live music entertainment. it wasn't as packed as i thought and we had a "BLAST" ;) one of our friends parents live in tehachapi, so we went there first to bbq our food, then walked over to the field and pigged out! after the show, we went to the nearby church parking lot to light off our own fireworks. turns out, they're not legal there ;) so we drove back down to bakersfield to a park and had our own show until 1130pm. nathan loved the big show, hated our little show and jaren spent it with him in the car.

looking forward to next year!

Baby picture frame

i was throwing a baby shower and wanted something different to give to the mom. since she had her baby a few weeks ago, i knew all the stats and decided to make a picture frame.

Michaels had 7 1/2 inch square un-finished wooden frames with a 3 1/2 inch picture opening. i opened microsoft word, found a digiscrap page i liked, made it 7 1/2 inches, added all the info, printed it out on cardstock and mod podged it onto the frame.

she loved it and so do i! i think i'll be making this one more often!

while my mom was dealing with her spider bite, i went and stayed with her for the week to help out wherever i could.

a common scene the week i was there... my 2 nephews and nathan climbing all over my brother.

although they're the same size, they're 8 months apart and are the best of friends. aaron (on the right) walks around with "his nay-nays" picture most the day. this night, he was feeding him top ramen for dinner.

**WARNING WARNING** brown recluse spider bite pictures ahead

initial bite was on a monday.

this is day 5...

day 7...

day 11...

day 11... part 2

day 15...

day 15... part 2

and the battle is still going on.

touching video

stay tuned...

upcoming blog posts:

princess pony birthday party
brown recluse spider bite (gross graphic pictures included)

4th of july decorations, ward breakfast and bbq

girls day/night part 2

oh my goodness, so i forgot to blog about something else we did! we asked for a room tour :) we rode the elevator up to level 9, or 13, i don't remember. the lady showed us the head honcho rooms that run around $189-$250. it's 500 sq. feet, which by the way is the size of my first apartment. besides the great view, it had a comfy looking bed and a very decent sized lcd flatscreen tv. but the best part, the bathtub filled from the ceiling! AND it had jets and lights in the tub for the ultimating bathing experience. the shower was seperate with big glass doors and nice travertine tiles. my ONLY hang-up... there were no doors that seperated the room from the bathroom area. which isn't a problem for me now, but i could see how that would damper your stay if you were traveling with kids.

our current picture...

for family... here we are... going on 5 years of marriage!

girls day/night!

i've become friends with 2 totally awesome and fun ladies at church! well it was one of their birthdays last weekend. so me and the "other one" (sorry to use your codename in quotes, not sure how you feel about being publicly blogged about and you don't have cell reception to text you and ask, ROFL!) decided to "kidnap" her and take her to lunch, shop, pedicures and a bbq back at her house. her husband knew of our plan, but she didn't, and it was lots of fun surprising her! our trip started out at the padre hotel here in town.

it's a very old hotel that recently had a $3-4 million facelift and it's just FABULOUS inside!!! the design was very modern with damask wallpaper, marble floors and columns, huge vases with beautiful fresh flowers and cute canvases that had local well known business logos on them. and these fun chairs in their lobby! (identity hidden for security purposes, lol)

we ordered a few appetizers to munch on (us knowing, but her not knowing of the bbq later that night), we didn't want to stuff ourselves. but oh how we wanted too because the food was YUMMY!! we had hamburger sliders that had fried onions that were so crispy and sweet on top and was smothered in cheese. mmmm!! also artichoke hummus with pita chips and thai eggrolls. and the waitress even brought us complimentary cookies that were also, very divine!

across the street was this thrift/vintage/consignment store. we spent 2 hours checking it out and still didn't see it all. we're definitly going back someday to finish it off!

then it was pedicure time! who doesn't love those right? i do believe we're counting down til our next visit!

the "other one" and i had our husbands/kids meet at the birthday girls house and when we dropped her off, she figured out we were staying and brought food to bbq. the kids (7 boys) played, the husbands talked "man stuff" and us ladies did what we do best... talked and prepared the food. we had burgers, DELICIOUS RIB EYE, cesar salad, potato salad, chips, grilled corn on the cob and watermelon. dessert/birthday cake was a frozen key lime pie. my mouth is watering blogging about this. better go eat lunch :)

thanks again ladies (and husbands) for a wonderful girls day! i'm ready for our next one when you all are!

knock knock, anyone still visit this blog?

my poor blog has been abandoned the past month :( let me clear off the cobwebs and i'll fill you in :)

of course i've been crocheting!

puff stitch beanie

wacky monster beanie accompanied by nathans cheeeeese face

we had a family movie night at church the beginning of summer. we watched kung fu panda. one of our family favs for sure!

jaren is on the activity committee (they're the ones who put this on) and came up with some pretty neat decor ideas. we bought red poster board (2 for $1) from the dollar tree. man do i love that place! i also picked up a few rolls of electrical tape to use around the edges of the posterboard to make them not so drab. then he (we) came up with some church sayings and used google translator and had them translated into chinese characters and glued them to the poster board. so if they're not right, blame google ;) jaren also made 25 origami cranes that we taped around some of the posters.

i made "panda" cupcakes, kinda sorta?

i found a po picture online and added text that said, "enjoy the movie, or else" and printed it onto brown lunch sacks to use as popcorn bags. i suggest doing this only if you have a top feed printer!! i don't, mines a bottom feed. and i broke my less than 30 day old printer!!! so i jumped onto kodak.com and "chatted" with there 24/7 technical support about my broken printer. EXACTLY 23 1/2 hours later, i had a BRAND NEW PRINTER at my doorstop thanks to the big brown truck :)  and thank you kodak for having great customer service!

k, back to the popcorn... we had 2 homemade caramel corns, jalapeno cheese, cheddar cheese and basic popcorn. they were all SOOOO good!

the "concession stand"...

we bought chinese takeout boxes and filled them with candy for each of the kids to have. i printed the CTR logo in chinese on labels and cut them out and stuck them to one side of the box.

the other side was a kung fu panda picture i found online and added text that fit the nights theme.

fun was had by all!

Nathan at 16 months

even though he's now 17 months ;) for starters... accidental matching can be so cute sometimes :)

nathans stats: he weighs 30 lbs and is 34 inches tall

he can say:
daaaaaaaaad
mom
i do
ya i did
fish
papa
backpack
nathan
ball
mimi
please
more
dog
bye bye
night night
no-no

he can sign-
please
dog
more
eat
no-no

and of course, in true kid fashion, we can't get him to do it around anyone else but us.

Buttercup Purse- Made by Rae

remember your first night out with the girls after having a baby and you've used your diaper bag so much you don't know where (or have) a normal grown woman purse? lol. yup, that's me right now. so off to googling i went for a free purse pattern tutorial. i came across the buttercup purse on the made by rae blog. it was such an easy pattern to follow! i was able to make 2 in 1 day. the pattern didn't call for piping, but i thought i'd give it try and i love how it turned out!

crafting overload!

currently working on this... pattern found here...

i think car seat canopys are great! i wish i would've thought of it when nathan was born. but of course not ;) i have a friend who's days away from having a baby and i knew she wanted one. random funny story... she bought the same exact fabric i did hours after i did at the same store and was going to ask me to make her one. but of course i was already planning on it, lol. but the one thing she did request was a slit in the front so her toddler could peak in on baby anytime. i really should stop crafting at night because the pictures turn out horrible in my dark dining room!

ANOTHER fleece blanket with crochet edges. here's the pattern i followed.

i had a hard time falling back to sleep the other morning, so i got up and thought i'd give smocking a try. LOL. *SHOUT OUT TO MY MOTHER IN-LAW* i wish you lived closer because i totally would've called you over for a 5am sewing session! martha stewart (of course) has an excellant video tutorial on how to do it. get this, it's normal thread on top, and elastic thread in your bobbin. its just genius if you ask me!

i helped my 11 year old niece sew last weekend for 10 hours. we were unstoppable! she has a hawaiian day coming up at school and also a special year end dance that is black/white theme. joanns fabric had pre-smocked fabric where you get the size you want and just sew it up the back. so we chose this print for her black/white dance. we shortened it to a length she liked and used the scraps to make the straps and also a matching headband. and woot woot, i had a 50% coupon, so we paid $7 for this dress!!!!!!

for the hawaiian theme top, i couldn't decide between a pillowcase style, or smocked, so we did both. there's 3 rows of shirring under the bust line. and of course being the sweet gal she is, she wanted to make tops for her little sisters to wear that day too. and of course they all had matching headbands as well.

here she is modeling her top ;)

the beanie i made the other day, here's the same pattern but with a floppy brim added. i'm seriously OBSESSED with buying this ladies crocheted hat patterns. i have *almost* all of them.

i made CTR (choose the right) necklaces.

i traced a 1/2 inch washer onto scrapbook paper and cut it out. then glued it to my washer. used my cricut and cut vinyl ctr's. then used diamond glaze to seal it. diamond glaze adds a clear, glass type, raised effect finish. then used sheer ribbon for the necklace, added a bead and clasp and that's it.

my sewing/craft to-do list was finally finished! but only for about 2 hours until i remembered i'm going out with ladies in my ward this weekend and don't have a purse! guess i'll get going on that tomorrow...