I made my bed

I love www.ana-white.com! She has fabulously simple and stylish woodworking plans for all kinds of furniture around the house. I finally built a headboard for our bed and couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out. I simply hung it on the wall with D-rings screwed to the back of the headboard hooked onto screws attached to studs.

Oh, what do you do in the summertime?

I've put off posting for far too long. We were just having so much fun this summer! I made some collages of our favorite outings. Click on the pictures for a better view.

First, we went to LaPine for our annual Wilcox Reunion. Good Times!

 

Then, we spent a delightful 4th of July with my sister's family. Epic water fight! After we got home, we climbed up onto our roof to watch fireworks, which is not as scary as it sounds. We have a really low pitched roof.

 For our Langford Campout, we went to Quinn River for a few days. We tried out our new mini kayak and some yummy dutch oven recipes. The absolute best was fresh homemade ice cream with our apple crisp!

 

And our last big trip was with our good friends, the Palmers. We went to Paradise Campground. Bee-u-tiful river right by our campsite. Gorgeous falls and pools and flowers. Lots of hiking, but that's all good. What wasn't so good was the crazy windy road we took to a trailhead. Eek!

 

To be perfectly honest, I was sort of looking forward to school starting. Summer wore me out! But now, I'm already looking forward to the fun we'll have next year when the sun comes out again.

Update on the Langfords

Shonee and I bought a landscape print on our anniversary this year, and we needed an odd size frame for it. Since I am getting into woodworking, I thought I'd give it a whirl.  Here's what we've got.

Then I went and volunteered to build this little side table for a friend of mine. I really like how it turned out.
Since I already had sawdust everywhere, I decided to whip out this drawer divider system that fits my things perfectly. No more "junk" drawer, since Dixie Taylor said if it's organized, it isn't junk.

Montana performed as Mr. Mayor in the Seussical Jr. production put on by his 8th grade class at Howard Street.

Everyone in the cast did a fabulous job! 

Montana surprised everyone at tryouts with his charming singing voice.

Mr. and Mrs. Mayor scolding their son JoJo.

Our first hike of the year happened on New Years Day. It was freezing!! But we had endless fun poking holes in the ice layer on the little creek.

We had our annual family snow trip. The weather turned out fantastic. We took our camp stove and had hot lunch and bottomless cocoa.  That's the only way to do a snow trip, in my opinion.

Savannah spent 72% of the time with her hat or gloves off. Brr!

Sledding down the hill in awesome powder.

Having the sun come out made everything more fun, even crawling through a snow tunnel.

 

 Montana conquering the 4' snow pile. It was a rough climb.

Hooray for family traditions! This is one of my favorite, the Nativity put on by the nieces and nephews.

And of course, we have our own, exclusive LEGO nativity set. Note the trash barrel, Bethlehem was a tidy city.

That's all for now! Hope you had fun catching a slice of our life.

kitchen color

I finally settled on a paint color for the wall between counter and upper cupboard. I took it from a plate that Rebecca gave me years ago.

I think I got a pretty good match.  It adds a bit of springtime to the kitchen and makes the white crisp.  Now if only I could do something with those counters! 

Kitchen Progress

WARNING: If you like the look of shellac-coated wood, don't read this post.

When we moved in two and a half years ago, this is what the kitchen looked like:

Not bad, but a little heavy for my taste.

Then, two and a half weeks ago, it looked like this:

Also not really to my taste, who likes "primer white", and randomly placed non-kitchen furniture?

Finally, after two and a half days of solid work, it looked like this:

Hoorah! It looks so much better!  I want to paint the backsplash wall, but I'm having trouble deciding on a color.  What do you think?  Also, in my fantasy world, I get new countertops too.

Working Toward Simplicity

We live in a modest 1300 square feet.  Three bedrooms, two bathrooms.  It works very well for us. . . . for now.  I've got three girls in one 10 x 13 room.  It's a bit crowded.  Just imagine when those three girls are all teenagers.  The chaos.  The drama.  The angst.  Things could get ugly.
So I've been thinking about how to increase my living space and give the girls some breathing room.  I've spent countless hours playing on http://www.floorplanner.com/, designing endless variations on a theme - more room.
Should we add a room to the middle of the back?

Should we add it to the back corner and remove an existing window?

Should we convert the garage to a bedroom/music room?

We've gone round and round about what to do.  It's just so darned expensive to do any of it.  And the garage room would need to be able to revert to a garage if a future buyer wanted it that way instead of as a room.  Too much wasted money and effort.  I've driven myself and my poor husband crazy with thinking and talking about it.

The real fact of the matter is that the girls don't mind sharing a room right now.  We fit just fine with what we've got, and there are better ways to use our money when we're talking that much in one chunk.

My goal is to work on living a more simple life, and remodeling is not simple.

Here's another alternative using their existing space more effectively:

I'm not a huge fan of bunkbeds, because they are a pain to dress in linens.  But, it's not my room.  My girls like this concept.  It would give them space for homework desks.  It would work beautifully in their long, narrow space.  It's one tenth, or less, of the cost of a remodel.

What do you all think?

Things we do. . .

Alena received a Fairy Flower Press Fashion kit several months ago from Auntie My, but she hasn't been able to use it since we've been stuck in Winter for ages.  Now, it's Spring, there are flowers, and her creativity is off like a shot.  Check it out:
 

She didn't end up pressing and drying the petals, she just used them fresh.  This means that the dresses are very temporary, but she's okay as long as there are pictures.  In fact, she strips the dried petals off the cardboard dress form and designs new ones whenever she wants.

Today, we had some very expensive dirt blown into our backyard for instant garden beds.  Yes, I am that lazy.  A friend of Shonee's gave us a bunch of berry bush starts, and we need to get them into good soil pronto.  We don't have a tiller.  We don't want to spend hours trying to dig through sod.  Excuses, excuses.

 

I made myself some new hiking pants with actual tech material.  The first pair I made a year or two ago were in some kind of raincoat material.  Very water resistant, but not very breathable.  This stuff is the same you get in a pair of hiking pants from REI or North Face or wherever.  It's water resistant, breathable, quick-dry, khaki. Very cool stuff!  I learned from my first pair to move the cargo pockets up so they don't dangle at my knees while loaded with hiking goodies.

Savannah had a money making scheme recently where she danced and sang for us.  You can't quite see the collection jar at the bottom of her pedestal.  Emma was the costumer and makeup artist.

Montana survived and thrived in his last year of "childhood".  He is now officially a teenager!  He finally got scriptures with his own name imprinted on them.  I honestly didn't know he wanted them until he told me.  I feel like he will really care for them, because he actually asked for them and was excited to get them.

Does it ever feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders?  Poor kids.

We went hiking to Shellburg Falls on a sunny Saturday recently.  They have this fabulous old pump that the kids always like to have a turn on.  The water is very rusty smelling (and tasting, I assume), but who's pumping it to drink?  Not us!

Shonee was hunched over the trail with the camera about 6 inches from this guy, trying to get a shot of him with his tongue out.  I guess he got it, huh.  I was standing safely 5 feet away.  I do not like snakes.

That's our fun.  Now to plant the garden before nature does it for us.  I don't intend to grow a crop of weeds and preserve the extra for winter.