For my Gratification a Fall house tour

Its not really a full house tour.

 And its truly being posted purely for my own gratification. Seriously, taking pictures of the crafts I made and putting them on the blog is like giving myself extra credit points or gold stars. Silly I know. I do actually enjoy the process though. It just that I don't have a lot of people over and since my sisters both are far away the only way to show them is this way. (hi Becky and Jessica) My wonderful hubby and the boys really could care less if i decorated for the different seasons, but us girls are different, we like to decorate and compare notes.

Confession, I had what the women in the movie "moms night out" refer to as a "moment". -by the way that movie made my laugh SO hard!- meaning I kinda freaked out because the kids peed in the tub and the other thing (so gross!) and I had a ton to do around the house and there was a huge spider .... you get the idea, it ended with me going out to shop and everyone else staying at home. The confession part is that i spent like 3 or 4 hours at Michael's and target getting ideas and trying on a lot of clothes that I did not buy...

Anyways so I ended up buying that adorable Owl in the table center piece , the kids love it because one of our favorite books is Owl Moon.

without further rambling

Pictures.

PS the kids helped clean up (and Mitchell) while i was out, they are so nice!

Look at how much our raspberries grew!

This may seem like an odd picture; It is. We just recently tore up the sod and put in the gravel under the garbage cans! Its looks so much nicer now believe me!

The Rest of last weekend and up through today, summer break

So last weekend we pretty much ran a ton of errands and made sure that we kept the house clean and the kids happy. We went to several more parks, grocery shopping and of course Church. We went to grandma and grandpas after church which was a lot of fun for the kids! I also made some down time for myself to do some big catch up on my reading! I have read so many awesome book lately and even just this weekend. So nice! Also Mitchell and I are reading a book together so we spent some time doing that too. (Books I read this last week or so include several by Sarah Addison Allen, I also read and enjoyed the School Of Essential Ingredients, Hiking Through, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, A million Little Ways, Mindfulness Revolution, The Biography of Howard W Hunter, As You Are, and, His Needs Her Needs.)
This week we have pretty much gone to the library the park, cleaned painted, tried to keep spiders from overtaking our yard. Done some smaller projects. Mitchell was able to go Golfing and i did have a "girls night" where my running buddy and i decided to meet in the evening while the hubby's golfed and do P90X.
I am trying to up my running routine in hopes of reaching my half marathon goal with better success since i was plateauing for a while.
I painted the two upstairs bathrooms yesterday and they are so much fresher feeling now i cant believe i waited so long to do it!

Today we went to Great grandma and grandpa west's house and then we went with a whole bunch of cousins to the Babby Farms Zoo and Petting zoo. The kids had SO MUCH FUN! It is so nice for them to be near family!

We decided this week to sign up Eli for Preschool, we originally had decided not too because of $$$ but we realized that since we do not have a lot of kids his age around here that we know we needed to do something for him.

The Babby farms was really very cool they had bison and yaks and Zebras and Kangaroos and wallobys and all sorts of crazy fun animals most of whom you can pet or feed. The bison obviously you don't even touch the cage and the Zebra will bite you unless your feeding it (it does not just like to be petted) but it was a really fun place and we had a great time. Wednesdays are discount days if you bring donations for the food bank or salvation army you get 1/2 off regular admission!

my game of musical chairs

Really this post is about how a few months ago I re arranged the furniture in Eli's room, and made that room adorable. I believe some people use the phrase "blog worthy".
I seriously considered locking the door to that room and making it "the guest bedroom" that is a fantasy I have.
But its Eli's room and it was messy but cute for several months.
Recently we got a set of bunk beds. Which meant that in kaydens room we now had, a dresser a crib an armchair, a tall book case, and a set of bunk beds. It was a bit too much.
So i went to Eli's room which had a dresser a bed a night stand and a small chair. And I ruined my perfect bedroom layout.
So here are the before pictures (i took the pictures so in 18 years when some of the kids leave i can remember the room arrangement i liked so much).
and tomorrow I will take the now pictures (as of this moment my kids are upstairs not taking naps in their rooms so pictures have to wait.
PS. Kayden's room was set up pretty cute too, but i didn't take any pictures of it, bummer. But take my word for it, his room was delightful as well.

The makeover of a chair

I got this chair about 10 months ago from Savers. I kept it in the garage for a few months waiting to finish it before I finally just used it as the office chair. Unfortunately the seat cushion was uncomfortable so I moved it to my sons room where I would not have to worry about it.

Finally yesterday I got moving and refinished it.

I layered a few paint colors mixed with plaster and distressed it.*

I used 80 grit sand paper and then went over everything with fine 220 for a smooth finish.

The fabric was left over from some other projects.

I love how light it looks finished. Its the perfect place to read bedtime stories, which is one of my favorite things to do with my kids. 

The bedtime story last night was The Cloud Spinner.  (A very cute story)

*Note- I used sample size paints that where about 3/4 full and then mixed in about a teaspoon (a little less) of the plaster it helped the consistency of the paint so that the finish would not be so latex-like. This is not the "proper" way to do this but it was incredibly cost effective and I had no problems with the finish. I normally sand before I paint wood but because I was going for a really distressed look anyways I did not worry about sanding this chair. I did cover the top with a clear wax to protect the finish. 

Paint power!

Cool tittle right? I know you are all hyped up now waiting to hear about this power.
Its the old news kind the wow that makes a big difference kind.
We painted our bedroom last Friday! New drapes coming soon and hopefully in a few months I can get new end tables.
Its all coming together. My inspiration for paint color was  restoration hardware and Ballard designs I kept seeing a really neutral gray in those catalogs and loved it.
Here are some unedited pictures, (because editing is just not something I do as of now).

Also and more importantly here are some pictures of the kiddos playing with bubbles. I love how such simple things are so enchanting to children, they played in these bubbles for a long,long time and i sat watching them and daydreaming about them staying this age forever.

I am going out of town all week on a family trip to Yellowstone! We are so excited to spend time with nana and papa Hill. I am also excited to visit my aunt and her family in Rexburg!

Happy birthday to Great Grandpa!

Yesterday was my grandpa's birthday! To celebrate we took a trip to the park. Always fun times. Its wonderful to see my children play with their cousins and second cousins and make memories similar to the wonderful memories I have of family gatherings.
Those are the types of memories that make me feel positive about life!

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Saturday I went yard sale-ing with a good friend of mine. I had five bucks in my wallet and on the 5^th stop I found a large side table lamp for …. You got it $5. Pretty sweet deal, I could not resist.

My Pinterest board is full of pictures of lamps and they usually look like this:http://www.potterybarn.com/products/warren-pulley-metal-task-table-lamp/ or This:http://www.potterybarn.com/products/glendale-pulley-task-table-lamp/?pkey=e%7Clamps%7C113%7Cbest%7C0%7C1%7C24%7C%7C11&cm_src=PRODUCTSEARCH||NoFacet-_-NoFacet-_-%3Fcm_sp%3DMyRecs-_-LeftNav-_-Search%7CLamps

But for 5 dollars it will certainly work as a temporary fix. Eventually I hope to be able to carry out my design plan. It is really a creative and artistic thing to decorate a room, a well-appointed room is art (to me at least). I so love to make a beautiful and comfortable home that works perfectly for our family.

So without further ado here is the 5 dollar lamp.

 -coming soon an incredibly exciting (or unexciting) lamp shade recycle/update!

Colored Dishes.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned my mismatched colorful clearance isle dishes?

Here they are! (Well three of them-the rest are tucked into the cabinets).

I love the color that a few patterned dishes add to space. Like flowers after winter it’s so exciting and stimulating.  

Aren’t kids wonderful?! I get to be with mine all day-and a lot of the times I am up with them at night too. Somehow the moments of shear exhaustion at 2 am become the most precious memories.

Its those memories that standout in my mind like colored dishes in a (mostly) white kitchen.

(I know, I know,  I wrapped those two topics together pretty smoothly didn’t I?)

Happy Wednesday world.