Outdoor Fun

Its a bit odd to be having such nice weather still but I guess that's what's to be expected when you live in Arizona. We will eventually get more fall weather and even snow one of these days but for now we'll enjoy the beautiful weather we've been having. Most days its in the upper 70's and perfect, so what do we do on such a day? Go to the park of course! Silly Olivia took her shoes off and roamed around barefoot, one day she'll learn how wonderful cute shoes are but for now the effort is wasted on her. The girls had a blast running around and climbing and sliding down everything they could get to. We'll totally be repeating this experience for as long as we can.

In Love

Its true I'm in love with ceramic things, it doesn't matter what it is; bowls, animals, any kitchen wear, I love it!!!So when I was perusing a near by thrift store and laid eyes on this beauty I had to snatch it up and make it part of my ceramic collection. It now resides next to my kitchen sink to hold all my accessories when I'm cooking or cleaning dishes. I love it.

Refrigerator Magnets

Oh the wonderful uses of refrigerator magnets, they are totally coming in handy for doing Preschool at home. I made a chart with almost all the letters on it and I have Savannah match up the letters. If I'm with her during the activity I tell her what the letters are and she's doing well at catching on. Today while she was doing this Olivia took it upon herself to hand Savannah each letter. After Savannah would take the letter from her she'd say, "Ok Olivia, we need to find the "E"" or whatever letter she was holding, she didn't know them all but she got quite a few right. It was pretty cute.

BOO!

 Well its that time of year and here at our house we're getting ready for Halloween! I actually have mixed feelings about the holiday itself but I do like decorating for it, its more the candy I could do without. It has become my tradition to mod podge a saying of some sort onto our pumpkins. I think its super cute and this way I don't end up with a nasty rotting pumpkin on my front porch. Savannah and I did decide to put a face on of our pumpkins this year which was perfectly fine with me. The girls love to look at them and touch them whenever we leave or come into the house. The mod podge holds up well too, I've had them rained on in previous years. Overall I'm quite pleased with the final result.

 

The mod podge holds up well and I've had them rained on in previous years. Overall I'm quite pleased with the final result.

Goals

So I've felt like I've been in a bit of a slump lately. It shouldn't surprise me that I have been because I usually get in one after there has been some kind of change to happen in my life. Life here is going good, we're all settled but I'm still trying to figure out where I fit in and what my life will consist of here in Arizona. I'm basically a single mom since Jacob is busy from 6am-9pm Monday thru Friday. I've felt a bit lost and overwhelmed at times as I try to juggle everything that goes along with moving and restarting your life. Setting up all our utilities, changing our address with from all our previous bills, getting insurance set up, finding a new doctor for the girls, making new friends, trying to fill our days with something so we don't all go crazy, and so much more. This past weekend we had General Conference, it was wonderful and this was the first time that I've watched having certain questions I wanted to find answers to. It was amazing to me how I could find something in every talk given that answered my questions. During the Saturday afternoon session I decided I needed to set some goals, I needed something to strive for each day to bring more structure into my life and in turn the girls. So to make my goals even more real and to help me try to achieve them I'm going to share them with you.

Read my scriptures every day and read my lessons for Sunday classes at Church.
Say my prayers morning and night and say them on my knees.
Work out Monday thru Friday even if its something small.
Limit time spent on the internet.
Have school at home with Savannah Monday thru Friday.
Do 1 act of service each week.
Say kind words at all times.
Put an effort into how I look everyday, no pj's till after 6pm.
Have structured meal times for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

It was amazing to me to see how quickly I stopped doing these things after we moved, we were just flying by the seat of our pants and really lost all our structure. I hated it and I hated how it made me feel. I don't need to have every minute of my day planned out but just having the basics planned has made all the difference. Not wearing my pj's all the time has been a huge difference for me, I'd get dressed if we were going out but as soon as we got home I'd put my sweats back on. I just felt so lazy and unmotivated to do anything. Today I know we aren't going anywhere, its raining and I had Jacob take the car to work and school so we'll be home all day. I knew I couldn't stay in my pj's so I put this on instead, its still super comfy and something I won't mind wearing all day even though we're just kickin it at home plus its the first time we've had colder temperatures and I was quite excited to bust out some fall clothes.

In addition to my goal setting Savannah and I sat down and made a set list of chores that she is now responsible for. She's always had tasks she needed to do around the house and she is always a good little helper but now she has specific things she has to do everyday. In addition to these chores she also gets an allowance each week, I think Jacob and I decided on .25 cents for her to start with. I know she's going to be bringing in the money, lol. We both felt like this was an excellent way for her to start understanding the importance of saving money and being responsible. So far this week has gone well and she has done all her jobs, I'm working on making her a chore chart which I'll share later with you. Well there you have it I think I'll do well keeping my goals so far things have gone well but its only Thursday. The thing is though that I've already seen the biggest difference in myself and who I am as a mother by doing these things that I really don't think I'll want to stop.

Bookcase

This is my most favorite project I've ever completed I think. Once again I have now before pictures to offer because I'm horrible at remembering to do that but just think of a light wood colored cheap laminate bookcase. That's what this used to look like and now it looks FABULOUS! I once again started by priming the entire bookcase. I took off the back first because I knew I was going to add fabric to it because I was way to lazy to paint a chevron print on the back. Once the bookcase was primed I decided to spray paint the bookcase white. I was sick of painting with a brush so spray paint was a good choice for me. When I went to attach the fabric to the back of the bookcase I used spray adhesive. It worked really well and is still holding strong 2 weeks later. Then I just reassembled it and put it in its place in the kitchen and started filling up the shelves. Our kitchen isn't huge so this is a nice place to put things that we have that I think are too pretty to put in a cupboard minus the blender of course. Although its kind of cute in its own way. Also this project was pretty inexpensive, I used 2 yards of fabric which I got on sale from Hobby Lobby so I think it totaled around $9.00 give or take a little. I still had primer left over from previous projects and I always have spray paint on hand, you never know when you'll get the whim to change something up. We already had most of the things I put on the bookcase, the cake stand is new and was also purchased on sale which makes it even more perfect.

Computer Desk

So you know those boring generic laminate desks you can get at Shopko or Walmart? Well that's what this desk used to look like. It was an imitation dark brown wood armoire that looked fine but honestly I'd been toying with the idea of painting it for quite some time. We just happened to have some yellow paint from when we had painted our kitchen years ago and I knew it would be the perfect color for this project. My first step was to take off all the hardware on the desk and set it aside so I didn't lose any pieces I mean it would pretty much suck if I couldn't put the thing back together after working so hard on it. My next step was to prime the entire thing inside and out. Now I'll be honest, when I first started this project I only did the outside but after I had that all done I realized how much I wished I had taken the extra time to paint the inside as well so I went ahead and did it. If I were smarter I would have done it all at once. After my primer was all dry ( I only waited 1 day but I should have waited 2 just to be on the safe side.) I started applying my color. This part was so satisfying, I loved the results and I was so excited. I once again only waited a day to let it dry and I should have waited longer but I have no self control and couldn't wait to use it and get it back together. On the inside I stuck with white just because it feels really clean to me and also because I didn't have enough yellow to even consider using it. For another fun touch I cut down some cork boards I already had and hot glued them to the inside of one of our doors. This way we can hang up things that usually ended up cluttering our work space which isn't that big to begin with. I also added the small baskets on the top shelf to hid extra cords we have which I also already had around the house. In total I think this project took 3 days and cost me $0.00 because I already had primer, paint, cork boards, and baskets. Oh and you get a small glimpse of some of my Halloween/Thanksgiving decorations that I put up, lucky you.

Our Kitchen

Have I mentioned before how I hate the lighting in our new house? Its nice for us but for picture taking purposes and wanting to use natural light its a nightmare. Well I know some people have been curious as to what our new place actually looks like so I thought I'd start with our kitchen because it was the cleanest room the day I decided to take pictures. Its nothing spectacular by any means but I like it and it serves its purpose which is the most important thing after all. Also in each picture you get a glimpse of a project I've done since we've been here. You can see the new cover I made for our ottoman, how I repainted our bookcase, and our repainted computer desk. I'll cover all those more in future posts so get excited! Actually don't because I didn't take before or after shots or anything because I was just too stinking excited to get the projects done!

Preview

So we haven't gotten Savannah set up with preschool yet, its a bummer really because I know she'd love it. Currently she's on a wait list and I'm hoping and praying she gets in this year, if not we'll probably have to wait till next year. So I've decided we're doing preschool at our house starting Monday. I'm finishing up packets and activities that I'll keep in a designated school spot and we're going to have school every day. While at Costco today I saw these fun flash cards and at $8 I decided not to pass them up. As soon as we got home Savannah asked if we could have school so she could try them out so I of course let her dig in.

The cards cover the whole alphabet and you just match the letters to the correct picture. They're simple enough and don't take her very long to get threw but its good practice on recognizing her letters and seeing how things are spelled. Its also nice because its an activity she can really do on her own while I try to keep Olivia from pulling cards off the table and running around with them.

When she was done putting all the matches together she was so beyond thrilled and proud of herself for finishing. I also like the cards because there are so many more things we can do with them. Eventually we can use them as spelling words and I can have her fill in the blanks, they can be regular flash cards where she just has to tell me the letter, see all kinds of fun things. So far I think they were a great investment.

Fair Time

So I love going to the fair! Its really one of my most favorite things to do actually and I was really bummed when we were going to miss the fair in Boise because we had so much fun taking the girls last year. Well imagine how excited I was when I saw they were having the Prescott Valley Fair just down the road from our house! Savannah and I were counting the days till it opened and we couldn't wait to go. A bonus was Jacob's parents were going to be visiting us that weekend and were going to come with us. It was just a small fair but it still had all the essentials; animals, fair food, and rides. It took Savannah a bit to warm up to the animals which wasn't a surprise. Olivia just stared and waited till we would let her out so she could start petting things. 

Jacob had lots of fun taking the girls into the petting area and he even got Savannah to pet some of the animals! It was very impressive. Both the girls had a blast and we had fun walking around looking at everything. Poor Savannah was too short for most of the rides which made her very sad but we told her that meant that next year should would probably be tall enough. This picture of Jacob's mom cracks me up so I just had to include it in this post.