Categories
Life

Matchy-Matchy

My boys don’t match exactly too often, but when they do, it makes me laugh and remember all the identical dresses that my mom dressed me and Amy in. Amy wore those dresses for forever!
Here are the matchy matchy boys getting ready to go swimming at the Madsen’s:
matchy.jpg
Cute eh?

Categories
Life

Summer has begun

We have finished our first bag of popsicles, I love summer–
popsicles.jpg

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Uncategorized

Thank Goodness for Aunts

On Tuesday while I was in the Midst of Painting, Aunt Cat came down and spoiled the boys rotten. I was grateful for the help with the boys, as it allowed me to get a little bit further in my painting project. The boys had a great time, and she bought them a few new toys. Tucker has been saving for a robot, but Cat found one for a great price, and it has not been put down since we got it. And Truman got a new motorcycle, ball and snake.
newtoys.jpg
We love you Cat, thanks for coming down to help with the project, and spoiling the boys rotten.

Categories
Life

A new member of our family

No I am NOT pregnant, but we do have a new member of our family, I would like to introduce (Drum Roll Please):
The Green Machine
truck.jpg
Toph starts his job in SLC tommorrow, and we thought it might be nice to have a second car so we wouldn’t have to wake the boys up at the crack of dawn to drive Toph to the bus station.
Toph’s co-worker was selling this beauty, and now we are the proud owners of our new truck.
As you can see the boys love it,
trucknboys.jpg
especially the tommy lift in the back
truck2.jpg
I am sad not to be a one car family anymore, but grateful for the convenience that comes from having two cars.

Categories
Life

My New Kitchen

Last year when we moved in (Yes, we hit our year mark on Memorial Day Weekend, can you believe it?) we repainted everything in our PG house. Everything was white. Everything. I needed a little bit of color and spice in my life, so we repainted everything. My husband didn’t, and I don’t think still, understands my reasoning of repainting the ceilings white, but it was so nice to make our home our own.
We’ll I have been saving up since last year to repaint our kitchen, and the paint finally went on sale, and I had enough money, so last weekend the project began and only just finished on Friday.
You can see the process I went through, I promised a few friends I would post the pictures, so they could see the process, and repeat some of it. I must be honest in saying though that it was a TON or work, so when you do it, stock up on prepared food. It was the only way our family survived with out a fully functioning kitchen, as you will soon see what a mess it became–

Here is the before pics of our kitchen:
before1.jpg
before2.jpg
The kitchen ceiling had not been painted yet, so we started there (doesn’t it look nice? Thanks hubba!):
ceilings.jpg
(We removed the food, doors and the hardware) Then I sanded everything, with a little help from Tuck, before he left for Logan:
sanding.jpg
I did a test run, oops, too brown, it looked almost purple. I shed a few tears, then went back to home depot to see if they could remix and add more black to it:
badtest.jpg
A few hours later here is my test door, much better:
perfecttest.jpg
Painted the Primer:
primer.jpg
It is hard to see in the pictures, but then I painted a buttercreamy yellow color on the cabinet faces:
yellow.jpg
Followed by the pooh brown color(a few coats):
brown.jpg
Finally the Black:
black.jpg
I distressed it:
distress.jpg
Then did a walnut stain:
stain.jpg
Followed by a clearcoat, a few layers. Now that the inside cabinet units were done, I started on the faces in the garage, sorry no pics of those, it was the same process.
In the meantime, we did not have any kitchen furniture, and the boys stood around a chair to eat, at first they thought it was fun, but then it got old, see the looks on their faces:
notable.jpg
After the cabinets were done, we started on the walls. I had found a color that I love the sample of, called brookside moss, after I got it up on the walls though, I was overwhelmed by the intensity of Yellow in the paint.
limegreen.jpg
So back to home depot to have them remix it. we tried it out again, and it still wasn’t right, so we added more brown, and then it was right, here is the first and the last color, The picture doesn’t show the real color very well though.
colorwall.jpg
It was perfect, and here is how everything turned out:
done1.jpg
done2.jpg
done3.jpg
Again, the pictures do not show the true color, but I hope you get the idea, it it sure nice to be done with this HUGE project!
It took alot longer than I had anticipated. I think that is because I ran out of clear coat, had to change the color of the paint to make it “just right”, and a few other minor things. I have no excuse for my nit-pickyness, but I think that it might have something to do with my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Lambert, who engrained this message in our little heads: “If you can’t find time to do it right, how are you going to find time to do it again?” This is a message that has stuck with me thru my many years since 5th grade, and as I was painting everything, I truely did think I have got to do this right this time, I don’t want to live in this mess again!

Categories
Life

Almost a Week!

It has been almost a week since my last post! I have been so SUPER busy this week, and been focused on so many things (especially my latest home improvement project–the kitchen) that I have not taken the time to post! I have made MANY mental notes for specific Blogs, and hence the reason for so many posts today!