New Contest.... Baby Blankets...

I love these contest!  I love seeing what other people can create with their talents.  This blog mother just had a baby a few months ago and has a great talent.  She is making minky baby blankets, the perfect size for car seats.  Check out her Etsy shop HERE.   She is doing a give away, and with babies in the house you can never have too many blankets.  :) 

Tic Tac Toe!

I am pleased to announce that Don has started his company.  He is working for Aquaveo full time and in his spare time he is programing applications and games for the Android phones.  He started back in November, so a simple project has been perfected and RELASED!!!  He has a website for his company... to check it out go HERE.  The company name is Crystal Studios... the website however is that name without the U.  One day maybe we will have the correct website, but for now help spread the word.  I am so proud of my hubby for such an accomplishment.  He is a wonderful programmer and has a talent to be proud of.  I look forward to the many more projects that he chooses to create with his talent! 

Bathroom Mysteries...

WARNING:  There will be some unpleasant pictures in this post.  If you don't like that stuff view at your own risk!

Before I get started there will be more to come, but here is the start.

When we moved to our home in Orem last January, we made a list of things that we would like to change and update... some of those updates have had to be moved up to a more recent date because of the mysteries. 

The perfectly knowledgeable person... HA, that put in the bathroom, decided that it would be a great idea for the shower to put laminate over partical board!   Needless to say that didn't last.  We found this wonderful surpirse....

Ok so it may not be all that gross, but showering with it is not very pleasant.  We also found some black mold growing and feared it was growing in the walls, so we decided to update the bathroom.

There will be before and after pictures posted but right now we are down to the bare minimum.  We have insulation, and the drywall is being put in tomorrow, tile comes in on Tuesday, and Wednesday they are starting to lay the tile.  I am way excited to see how it turns out.  We are still trying to see if we can replace the floor, but if not, at least we will have no fungi growing in the bathroom anymore! 

Girls Room Finished!

Recently I posted about the girls room with repainting and all that.  Well I have finished all that I can think of for now.  So here are the updates.

I took this fabric:

And made curtains for the closet.  With having a dresser in the closet we are unable to have the closet doors on.  So this was the solution that I came up with.

Also I finally got Rebecca's name done for the wall.  So now both of the girls have their names on the wall.  I really love this simple, yet decorative accent to the room. 

The last thing was a bow holder for all of the girls bows.  We have so many and the bow holder that I had, just wasn't cutting it.  I have had my eye on this type of bow holder...  

...but haven't figured out a way to do it yet, so I came up with this cheap and frugal solution. 

I think it will work for awhile... until I get tired of it and think it isn't working.

The First Part of April.

We started off April celebrating with our friends Jon and Crystal, their youngest turned one conference weekend.  We are very blessed to have many friends that have kids the same age as our kids.  It makes getting together with people easier… because we all understand the many distractions that can happen in such a short time.  Anyway, during the birthday party Rebecca had only had a VERY short nap before we arrived, and we ended up being there long enough that she was tired!  Don started to keep her attention with a balloon… and this was the result: (this is a still picture, but if I can get the video uploaded I will share it)

I can’t believe how blessed I am to have two great kids that are so easy going. 

We also got to go bowling with some other friends one weekend and the kids had a great time.  Here is B and Aubrey.  They are only a month apart in age so it makes for some great times when we get together.  Just the other night they came to our house and Aubrey was tucking B into bed.  It was so cute to watch them interact.  I loved seeing them play together in roles.  

We had taken Aubrey bowling a few weeks before so she was a “pro” at bowling.  When we started, I went up to help her carry the ball, and she would put her hand out at me in the “talk to the hand” position and tell me, “Mom, stay back.  I do.”  And then when she got the ball up, she would look back just to make sure I was still standing back.  I love how she is growing up and becoming more of a big girl every day. 

Here are some fun pictures of the girls… I love spending time with them.  

The Girls New Room!

When we moved into this house over a year ago, I told Don that I could live with the wallpaper... only for so long.  I mean after all it is a kids room, only it looks like a boys room.  I have two little girls I want to make it a room for them, not what someone else wanted for their kid.  So after some thoughtful thinking and digging around I finally decided that it was time to take action.  I was able to get the wall paper down in less than one 2 hour nap.  It was great!  So then I had this room with three baby blue walls, and one white wall with stains like no other, and no amount of soap and water was going to get those off.  So here are the before pictures... ok picture.  

For the lack of a better excuse, I was lazy and didn't take more pictures of the before, but just imagine the blue color on three walls, and the one with the wall paper was white underneath. 

And now this is what the room looks like...

 I need to get Rebecca's name done and put on the wall above her crib.

I ask you to imagine some kind of fabric covering for the closet.  I don't know if it is going to be green, purple, or something sheer like over it.  I just haven't had the chance to make it to the store yet.

I am pretty pleased with how the room turned out.  When we had the painting done on the walls and nothing was in the room, I was so second guessing my choice in paint for her room.  But then everything just came together when it was all in there. 

Disney On Ice - Worlds of Fantasy!

On Saturday we went to Disney On Ice.  We had a great bunch there and enjoyed the whole things.  The big hit for Aubrey was the Princess Pre-Show, where she got to see Tiana from Princess and the Frog, and then she lit up when Cars came out on the ice, and was kind of so-so through the rest until TINKERBELL!!!  She lit up when Tinkerbell started.  I loved listening to her sing along to all the songs.  She was also telling me who all the characters were from the shows.  I loved giiving that to her, and am glad that she enjoyed it. 

I so couldn't believe that we walked in with only cloudy skies, and came out with snow flakes falling.  And then we concluded the day with dinner with my family and headed home.  All in all it was a great day with family. 

Homemade baby food...

I do have to say that I thought I would never do this.  Making your baby food at home when they are first being introduced to it, that is just not me.  It is so much easier to go to the store and pick up the pre-made packets from Gerber or Breechnut.  

Having said that, I recently read a friends Facebook post about how easy it is, and how much money they would be saving, so I thought that I would give it a try.  I didn't go all out.  I picked six different foods to make, avocado, cucumber, banana, apples, carrots, and yams.  As we speak I have done the cucumbers, avocado, apples, carrots and bananas, and the yams are cooking.  So I can't wait to get the yams off the stove.  

Update:  The yams are done and I have a two more whole ice cube trays of Yams.  Adding only to the monthly count.

Here are the carrots, apples, avocados, cucumbers, and bananas.  I bought these ice cube trays new so that I would use them just for that.  They were way cheap too, $1.17 for three of them! 

 

In less than two hours, I steamed carrots, and pureed them, cooked apples and pureed them, sliced bananas and pureed them, (I added a little formula to these to help with that process for consistency, you could also use milk), chopped the cucumbers and sliced the avocado and the yams are on the stove cooking.  Once those are done it is basically pureeing those and sticking them in the ice cube trays.  Once that is done I will freeze them for a few hours, then pop them out of the trays and place them in labeled bags for the future.  The cucumbers will just be finely chopped and frozen so that i can thaw those and mix with yogurt for breakfast. 

In shopping today I bought:

Cucumbers:  $1.00

Yams:  $2.29

Apples:  $2.89

Carrots:  $1.98

Bananas:  $1.38

Ice Cube Trays:  $2.34

Freezer bags:  $1.32

Total Spent:  $13.20

And this will last me just about a month than a MONTH!!!! WOW!  Saying that just makes it so Sweet!  (As I have not yet seem how many cubes I will use for one sitting, this is counting three per sitting).  Considering I was spending at least $35 a month on baby food, I think I can handle less than half of that for the month.  I am not saying that I won't buy pre-made baby food, becasue there are some foods that I just wouldn't think about doing.

I want to thank Mary for doing this... for as I have only done it today, I am seeing the blessings of being a more resourceful mom.  Anything I can do to help out in little ways, helps up stay on top of things better, and isn't a penny in my pocket better than in theirs?! :)  

On a personal note for moms out there that have little ones yet to be in this stage.  I would recomend that you buy the stage one foods and let their system try it out and see what foods they can handle, as some babies have major allergys.  This way, yes it may be more money, but you are not waisting money on making a bigger amount that you won't end up using.  Once you know what they can have, I would change to this.  This is my second child, and I did all pre-made bought from the store food for my first, and we started doing that with our second.  I have realized that this is just another step in helping out where I can, and how much healthier I know my baby is going to be.  I know what is going into her tummy for I am the one picking out the food, not some company.  With that said, I have NO problem with baby food companies.  

Such an easy task and so worth the time and money saved!

How could I have forgotten?!?!?!?!

I so totally never posted pictures from Rebecca's Blessing.

So here she is in her beautiful dress!

 

And Our family of four!

Updated Finally!!!!

Well I seriously log on everyday to check who has updated their blog, look through all of them and log back off.  I just have lacked the will to blog for the past two months.  Of course those last two months were very busy, and slow.  So lets try this out and get everyone updated.  Here it goes...