perking up the pad

We have been living in the same house for almost 8 years now. 8 whole years! It seems like we just moved in a year ago. Ever since the first day we moved in we had been planning on painting the interior of the house in fun colors. Well, I had planned on painting fun colors. It turns out that the bosses, a.k.a. Jeremiah and his parents wouldn’t particularly love vibrant blues or deep dark red or sunshine yellow  on their living room walls. So my dreams of livening up the living room were smashed to bits. Ok, not really. I guess I agree with their philosophies of keeping the living area neutral. So now, 8 years after we talked about painting the living room I finally did it!

Here is the terrible before picture. In all of it’s messy pre-contruction glory! yowzah!

We picked out a pretty khaki grey called Stonington from Valspar. It is light enough to keep our room from looking like a cave since we don’t have a lot of natural light in this room, and it adds richness and warmth.

And, as you can see, I couldn’t leave it with just a boring coat of paint. I dreamed of damask stencils and I found a way to make it possible. The big stencils themselves normally cost about $50 each, or more! I fell in love with this design and found a way to make my own. My cutter only does 12 inches wide and the stencil needed to be 24”. I eventually ended up piecing together 4 pieces of stencil plastic I bought at Hobby Lobby. They were carefully cut and taped together to form a decent $4 substitute for the $50 stencil.

This was about the time that Mason caught a nasty virus and ended up sick with bronchiolitis for a week, putting a quick halt to my stencilling. The latter stayed up in my house for about 3 weeks while I nursed sick kids back to health. (Simon and Ryan got sick too.) And I slowly finished the wall, one print at a time.

Mason would watch baby Einstein or practice his new skill of rolling around to get where he wanted to go. He is such a good baby!

And then one day I actually finished! I love how it turned out! It looks just like I pictured it in my head.

The reason it took so long is that I had to roll on each stencil, wait for it to dry, then apply the gold accents. Then I could move the stencil to the next position.

The gold adds texture and a touch of glamour. With a house full of males it is nice to add a little feminine touch here and there.

So now you are wondering, “what did ‘the bosses’ think?” Jeremiah likes it ok, his mom loves it as much as I do, and his dad is just happy he doesn’t have to live here. haha.

 

Now to put my pictures back up and I’ll be ready to move on to the next room!

January 2012

I can’t resist this much chubby cuteness.

This is Mason at 7 months old. He has two cute teeth and lots of baby fat. Just after I took this picture he spit up carrots all over his green tie and now every time Ryan sees this picture he tells me that Ryan threw up “orange stuff”. haha.

Mason loves his Jumper and he has learned how to jump super high and even swing himself in this thing. It’s high quality entertainment for the rest of us.

His favorite toys are: anything that mom doesn’t want him to have, like keys.

I got a new camera for Christmas with 14x optical zoom so I was testing it out at the park. It’s great to be able to take pictures of the kids on their bikes from all the way across the park. Me + my new camera = love.

Mason learned how to sit up all by himself. Dad helped him practice.

As you can see he is a drooler. He finally got his top two teeth in February so his clothes aren’t always sopping wet anymore.

As I mentioned, Simon loves science. This is one of the many experiments we have done. We made cornstarch “oobleck”. There was oobleck on the counters, the floor, his clothes, his hair. It was more fun the you can even imagine. He still asks me at least once a week if we can make oobleck again. It is pretty amazing stuff.

And here is our little drummer boy. He sits on the floor and bangs on the bowls while I make dinner every evening. I love this age!

Catch up- New Years 2012

Since we decided to stick out Christmas in the desert we were craving some cold weather and snow for New Years. So we drove up north to Round Valley to spend New Years with our parents.

Brian gave Jeremiah a load of firecrackers for Christmas, and guess who was the most excited to watch them.

I’m a little concerned that he might be a pyro when he gets bigger. haha.

Like his dad.

Ryan didn’t like the noise so he stayed inside and munched on pretzels while we froze to death outside. But it was totally worth it!

Jesse and Randi made the trip that weekend too. They are always a ton of fun. We played everyone’s favorite board game “The Logo Game”. Ok, so no one liked the game but it was fun to hang out with these two crazy kids!

I couldn’t resist sneaking a shot of the sleeping baby. Why do they have to grow up so fast?

What’s that? The best Christmas gift ever! An ABC train puzzle!

Before we came back home to Mesa we took the kids sledding at the old ski run. Best. Day. Ever.

It was cold and we had to cut our day short because the kids didn’t have snow pants and Simon forgot his socks. But they had a tremendous good time. I even got to take Mason down the hill a couple of times.

Ryan rode in our teeny tiny blue sled and he would fly like lightning down the mountain. Then he would wait for mom or dad to go get him and pull him back up the hill to do it all again.

Mason even tried the tiny sled but he wasn’t a fan. So we gave it back to the big boys.

I didn’t get any more pics of the kids on the hill but let me tell you the had FUN! We can’t wait to do it again!

Catch up–Christmas 2011

 

This is going to be the start of mega posting because I am determined to finally catch up on all the things that have happened through December, January, and February.

First up, Christmas.

We put up the tree and got out the boy’s favorite part: the train!

Our sweet little Mason turned half-a-year on Christmas day.

We always find time to decorate a few sugar cookies.

We had our first Christmas in Mesa and it was so different than what we were used to. I absolutely loved waking up Christmas morning and seeing our boys faces when they saw their loot from St. Nick. It was quiet, maybe a little too quiet. We missed the snow and the chaos of splitting Christmas between 2 families but we had a blast and I may try to convince Jeremiah to make this a permanent tradition.

The problem with waiting too long to blog about a big event like Christmas is that I have already forgotten some of the funny little stories that would have made it into this blog post. We did have a great time though.

Ryan got a Lightning McQueen laptop and Simon got a RC Car. They also got a slot car track and Simon got tons of science stuff, including a volcano making kit and Science experiment books! He is a science nerd and we love that about him. He asks a billion questions a day and he wants to know how everything works. Surprisingly he even seems to understand when I give him the complicated scientific version of why things happen.The boys also got hex bug robots and a couple new Thomas trains and track sets and a whole bunch of other great stuff. Ryan’s very favorite thing he got was a stomp rocket! We let them play with it in the living room because we are cool parents. 

I made Mason a crinkle taggie toy that he played with for about 3 seconds. A couple weeks later we lost it at Wal-mart . Good thing I didn’t spend too much time putting it together or I would have been broken hearted. For the older boys I made a Lego/Train mat. It’s a big circle with tracks and roads painted on it. It has a drawstring along the outside so the boys can just push their toys into the middle and turn the mat into a bag to put away.

Breakfast was “campfire” eggs and fried ham. A mixture of our family traditions. Choosing our own traditions was so much fun! I can’t wait until we get to go through all this madness again.

That is the cliff notes version of our 2011 Christmas.