Bubba makes a robot.

This is one of his more simple creations, but still pretty cute.

I don't know where I find the time...

These two keep me busy as can be.

And we're selling our house soon, knee deep in the process of getting it ready to go. I painted from 7am to 9pm Saturday. And started right over again Sunday and made it more than half was through the day. Threw that activity mapping for Fibromyalgia's sake right out the car window, and thus suffered all day Monday. Somewhere in there, perhaps it was Friday?, I found the time to make a few layouts this week.

These pics were so priceless I made a layout for each boy's album.



Loving the black background for these super-colorful pictures lately.
These two are for the 2010 family album:

Off to paint kitchen cabinet doors. Ugh.

Upcycled PIllow

Remember that 40 lbs I lost last year? Well, I got rid of a all my huge clothes, but had trouble parting with this massive, soft, and barely worn brown sweater dress. I paired it with a boring old oversized pillow in need of an update, and ta-da: and upcycled sweater pillow. Perfection.



Making this pillow wasn't as easy as I had hoped. I thought cutting the knit fabric would cause it to unravel, so I turned it inside out, pinned and kept it in place, and sewed it by hand a little more than 3/4 of the way. Then, I removed the pillow, flipped the sweater right side out, cut the excess pieces off- including the still-attached neckline and short sleeves, and pulled it back over the pillow. I pinned the opening to a nice folded seem, and sewed it shut, again by hand. I finished it in one evening, and I love how it turned out. Very durable, and cozy as can be.


I also made 3 other pillows the same week- all reusing pillow forms we already had in our house. I find this process to be very budget friendly- I wash them in hot water with bleach and dry them a few times, and they seem good as new, give or take a little lop-sidedness. I have been rounding up discount fabrics all around for about a year now. I am trying to build around a dark red vintage-style rose patterned fabric I plan on making into curtains at our new homes. I have something 10-12 yards of it waiting in the wings- I found it for $3-4 a yard and about died. Finding additional, similar or matching fabrics in stripes or other rose or paisley prints has been a great fun task. As usual anything brown goes, too.

The super soft brown pillow in the top left hand corner was a clearance fabric at $5 a yard, and I only needed about 2/3 of a yard. The other left hander, the yellow paisley, was also on clearance. The bottom right was not on clearance, but it was on sale for 1/2 off! I love the pink in the stripes, coordinates perfectly with a velvety pink abric I have saved for my wicker chair cushion at the next house. I've gone with pink long enough- these boys are going have to deal with me easing pink back into my home little by little.



I still have 6 more pillows to make...

Promising pictures as they get made.

Also, this is the only picture I have taken of Ben's lost tooth so far. Great pictures of pillows, not so great pictures of the kid's tooth- you see where my priorities lie. Haha.


Also promising much better pictures of the toof later.

Valentine's Day and some Scrappiness

I have been trying to squeeze a little bit of sanity into my life right now. We have tools and paint cans all over, and the kitchen cabinet doors are off ready to be painted. There may be boxes against most of the walls, and I may be trying to keep all the painting I've completed scratch and dent free, but darn it, I am still going to take some time to sit down and gaze at a magazine, or scrapbook. After all, I have physical therapist's orders to activity map* so my fibromyalgia doesn't flare up.
*Activity mapping is the concept of doing one or two very physical activities in a day, spreading out the most physically demanding things on your list over the week, instead of doing it all in one day and hurting to point of being useless for 3 days after.
So, this weekend I made these layouts with pictures from 2009 & 2010. I am LOVING scrapbooking right now.

We also had a nice mellow Valentine's Day. We spent about $15 on both kids. Ben got this $10 Lego set, (and two pairs of athletic shorts for spring/wrestling). He's obsessed with having the whole colllectors set of certain types of Legos. This is his 4th Egypt lego set, and he reminded me about 10 times since I gave him this, that he only needs to more sets to complete the collections. Note: the tooth is looser than ever, and still not coming out!!

I found this lap desk for Hunter for $7.50 at Target, along with a $.98 pair of Buzz Lightyear gloves and two pairs of athletic shorts for spring.

Goofball.

I made some Red Velvet cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting- it has become a V-day tradition here. So yummy!

And beautiful, I might add.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Tooth Fairy, Coming Soon!

This little dudes smile is about to change forever!
He has two very loose teeth, bottom front and center, the same two teeth he got first. Mom's prediction is today at least one will fall out.
Stay tuned!

Busy Winter Things

We took a little one day trip up to Minnesota so Theo could meet with the gentleman he is replacing and have him show him around his new unit. Theo loved the facility- it's much newer than his current one, and isn't shared with the Navy and Marines. We took the visit as a chance to familiarize ourselves with the area.

In order to spike the boys' interest we thought we'd venture to the Mall of America's Lego store. Theo quickly looked up travel channel food ideas in the area for lunch and decided he wanted to try a Juicy Lucy at the 5-8 Club.


Mine had chunk of bacon- because if I'm eating a burger, it's gotta have bacon.

The Lego store did not dissappoint. These murals of a Moose and Lake Scene were comprised entirely of legos.

Legos of every color size and shape you can purchase by the bucket.

The boys were pretty excited about this giant Lego Woody. Ben was trying to take it apart, of course.

The outisde of the store was museum worthy.

Here is the town we will be moving to. The lake was obviously frozen over, and hundreds of ice fishermen, hockey players, and ice skaters were taking part in a beautiful winter Sunday.

The park had hockey rinks at the ready- and they were packed.

Driving along the lake.

A neighboring town, possibly where we will send the kids to school.

Bridge over the river.

The residential streets caked in snow.

Another neighboring town's lake, scenic Catholic church in the distance.

Driving between towns.

We barely made it home in time for a huge blizzard to come through, dumping a total of about 16 inches of snow on top of our existing impressive snowfall amounts. Our power went out about 10pm, and we quickly added blankets to the kids' beds, and pulled the curtains shut, even padding some windows with pillows to trap in heat. 6 hours later, when the power kicked back on, the whole house was well below 50F.

The kicker with this storm were the drifts, and resulting sculptures, some 6 feet tall.
Here is the view out our dining room window.

The back porch. Silliest looking drift- about shoulder height! We could barely get Laura outside to go potty.

Trying to get the door open.

And worst of all, my rose arbor shred to bits-- the wood actually ripped. The winds were fierce!
Before I get back to my morning duties, I have to share my latest scarf. It's a beauty! And a steal at $22- the yarn nearly cost that much. This picture is taken at sunset.

Same scarf in the midday sun.

Hope winter is treating you all well!