Finally!!

Since we are FINALLY headed to Arizona for some R & R, Christmas, and New Years ;), I wanted to make sure of a few things.


House cleaned. . . bags with gifts packed (and not to weigh over 50 lbs or suffer a fee). . . go to last minute doctor appointment and confess I am flying this late in my pregnancy he he he . . . get quilt done!!!


I FINALLY have checked all of those things off!!



I am a little bit put off on the fact that pretty much all airlines are now charging for any bags that you check. The fee for our flight is $15 per bag!! That is ridiculous!! Didn't I already pay tons of money for the plane ticket to begin with? I believe that should include the curtsy of 1 checked bag, I mean it is called traveling when we fly right? Any way


I told family and friends that I would post pictures of the baby room when I got done changing things. Most know that I wanted to turn it into a cowboy room equipped with a new wall paper border, baby fleece quilt and my first pieced block quilt.

Various shot of the Baby Room.


I loved the fabrics that I had found and even though it was a learn as you go. . .by my self. . .using old math skills. . .and finding out how much detail there is to binding I am really happy with how it all turned out. One problem I had was how to quilt the blanket. I didn't want to pay someone over $150 to quilt it for me and quilting it by hand trying to stretch over a prego belly wasn't a good option either, so I ended up machine quilting the blanket with my sewing machine. Again, I had to pull math metrics from the brain to make sure that when I used chalk to map out my design I had my numbers right!!

I ended up doing a diamond design for the middle, a single line for the inner border, and parallel lines for the outer border so when they connected on the corners they made a square.

I love how this fleece fabric matches so great with my quilt!! Even the bucking broncos in the tan block match that of the wall paper!!

Sugar Cookies!!

Even though we are going to be away for Christmas , and maybe because I am pregnant, but I felt the need to make SUGAR COOKIES!! One of those huge mess projects with many no don't touch that it's hot, or No, not the red food coloring, but in the end definitely worth it.

Hard at work!!

Moving the little table in the center of the kitchen always helps contain messes!

HMMM the tasty treats!!

What else did I gain when we finished . . . a scary kitchen , oh well, so worth it!

Early Christmas SUIT

Our family is going to be spending Christmas in Arizona this year. I know you are thinking Arizona? She's from Idaho. Right, but I do have Grandpa Delwyn, my dad and his brothers that farm together think Arizona is a great place to have a winter get away house and that is exactly what we are doing, having a winter get away!! We will be there for almost 3 weeks!! Going between Grandpa Delwyn's house, Dad's house, and probably my aunt Gail who lives in California for a drop in Disneyland adventure!! The boys are so excited!


Any who, since we won't be able to spend Christmas this year with Nathan's side of our family we had Christmas with them early. Nathan's parents are traveling back and forth from Louisiana and this was the only time we would be in the same state for a while. I have no doubt our boys didn't mind one bit to get to open things early ;)


The hit of the get together with the Cottrell's was Clayton's reaction to his new suit he was given by Gr & Gr Cottrell!! His eyes lit right up and he said "I have a tie!! I can look just like dad now!"

That next Sunday Clay woke up at 6:30 (Nathan is gone already at this time being the ward clerk and all) and strolled into my room holding is entire suit on it's NEW hanger and his nice church belt, totally only half awake saying "Can I put my suit on now Mom?" other comments that day were "I don't want it to get wet when we go outside so I have to wear my coat too Mom, not just my new suit jacket -K?" "Mom you have to iron my shirt, it had some wrinkles!" This was in a tone of pure desperation from Clayton which I only could laugh at.
All too eager to pose!!


Hayden was a little anxious with all the gifts, like any two year old is going to be. He kept opening anything with wrapping paper in site. I loves his new blue coat that looks just like Clayton's. They call them their marshmallow coats. I guess that is what you could call a fluffy down feather coat huh!


Thanks Diana and Steve for such a fun Christmas time with you. We will miss not being with you and can't wait till we see you both again.

Bulletin

Knowing my husband is going to laugh at me I am posting this anyway...because I WANT to!! In our basement on the wall above our computer desk is a electric box. I never liked looking at the ugly gray thing so I made new bulletin board to hide all that ugliness.
When I was all done hanging it to the wall Nathan said "Oh yeah another thing for you to blog about huh!!" and then laying it on thick he said "Oh, man (sarcasm very present) you should have done before and after pictures for everyone to see!" This probably concluded in me smacking him across the chest or something. Probably a bad habit of mine that I tend to do whenever he teases me, but hey he is my very capable man of the house so he can take a small smack every now and then.


I spent $2.00 for the boards and used scrapbook paper that I had on hand!!I did this one first because I needed somewhere to put all those little papers that seem to accumulate around the computer and I never have to look for my phone list again, they will be stuck right on the board!!

Cowboy Quilting

Here is the quilt I have been working on. I have to say I enjoyed it and for my first pieced quilt done completely by myself it looks pretty darn good!!!
Here's my blocks that I am moving back and forth to see which way takes to my liking. The process took a little longer than I thought. he he he he
The top quilt all done with two borders and all!! The borders were tricky because I didn't buy separate fabric to make the borders I used what math skills I have left and pieced my extra pieces of fabric together.

Now all I have to do is Batting, Attach backing fabric, Quilt, and then finally bind. Yeah I'll let ya know when I get all THAT DONE!!
I had to add this because it was one of those "That works perfect" moments. I had found this fleece at Joann's at only $3.50/yd!! Add that to a fleece throw I bought at Osco on my discount for only $1.50 and that makes an awesome little blanket. But what is cool is that it matches how I pieced my quilt and all the colors I had picked out perfectly. SWEET!!

If you can tell I added fringe to the top fabric and the store throw I bought had thread stitching around the edge so it made the blanket that much more cowboy style.

Stick EM UP!!

We have COWBOY FEVER around here. I told Nate that if we had another boy I was going to change the baby room into a COWBOY room. So since we are ( having another boy) I have put up a wall paper border and am working on a pieced quilt with lots of fun cowboy material to it. I'll have to post some pictures on those things later.

So what to dress my boys up in for Halloween . . . COWBOYS!! My mom had made them Real Leather Chaps the last time we were in Idaho. Combine that with a hat and guns to holster I had them sold!!

This is my good friend Melissa and her fun boys Ethan and little Blake!! Ethan was an awesome BATMAN and Blake is the cutest Lobster I have ever seen!! I told Melissa we should give him a stick of butter to hold!! We went trick or treating around my neighborhood. The boys had a blast and the decorations at the different houses were so creative. One house had you walk through their own cemetery and Hayden kept picking up the bones stuck in the ground and Ethan was the sharp shooter, gunning down anything that looked suspicious.



Hayden totally looks like Tony Stark from IRON MAN!! Watch out Robert Downey Jr. here comes your understudy!!

Bleeding Bats

Well so much for my attempt to put up fun decorations for Halloween. These poor bats were a sorry sight after the rain storms we had. I guess I need to use more quality materials then just plain construction paper next time. Thank goodness for all purpose cleaners with bleach and magic sponge erasers!!

Clay said it looked like they were bleeding but only black blood instead of red. After I took them down and scrubbed all the "Black Blood" Clayton told me our garage doors aren't so cool anymore, he wanted to make more bleeding bats!!

NO NO HAYDEN!!

I really have to keep an eye on Mr. Hayden!! The boys and I had just came home from grocery shopping. While I was putting away food, Clay and Hayden sat down to watch the end of a Sponge Bob show and I noticed Hayden had disappeared somewhere. Not too alarming I mean he is mobile and very capable but when there is no noise during the disappearance something seemed amiss. I asked Clay "Can you go see what Hayden is up too?"


"Yeah I think he went to go get his bear"


"OK go see" Feeling like the situation is taken care of because Hayden usually sticks to a task very admittedly so if he just went to get his bear he will be down in a minute I thought until....


"MOM, Hayden is in your MAKEUP"


This is what I hear from a wide-eyed running Clayton. My next thought...Oh Crap, what's it going to be mascara, eyeshadow, eye liner, combinations of them all oh man I hope it just all over him...



"HAYDEN WHERE ARE YOU!"


Well it appears he is capable of opening a SLIDE container of sparkling lip gloss!! Those things are hard even for me to open right and here he is dousing himself, the wall, and his entire dresser in sparkles!!!
the horror!!! I love this product!!!

At least he made himself a little table out of his step so no sparkles are on my carpet!! WHEW!!
After three complete scrubbing session of Hayden in the bathtub he still came out with Glowing cheeks" Man he is my wild one, but through out the whole thing the hardest part was keeping my smile away from him so he wouldn't think he did something funny! He was definitely told he did a NO NO!!

From ehh to YEAH!!

I love how my new curtains turned out!! Thanks to my awesome find of $1.00 a yard for the home decor fabric I found at Walmart and my go to person about sewing Anna Marks they turned out great!! The trim was the most costly out of the whole thing but I still used a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby to get just what I wanted. Now my cabinets don't look like they are floating in midair, the curtains connected them nicely!!

The colors match perfectly to my family room couches!! I still can't get over that the fabric was only $1.00 yard!!!!!

Thanks Anna for all your help!!! My "Is this how you do it ?" questions can always be answered by you!!

FALL FUN!!

The boys and I took a trip to DIDIER FARMS. I love everything about fall so going to a place filled with pumpkins, baby animals, Carmel apples, Halloween and Harvest Decor with donuts and apple cider is right up my alley!! The boys had tons of fun going up and down the rows of pumpkins picking out their own. Hayden came up to me struggling to carry a medium sized pumpkin and says "Mom, this is perfect pumpkin, right here perfect pumpkin" I love how little kids talk it just has its own form of cuteness to it!!

"Whoa big huge Pumpkins mom!!" Big Huge is a funny saying that Clayton gets from me. I guess it is my own way of trying to get the point across that something IS REALLY BIG!! I tend to get teased about the expression from family members!! ha ha ha

So much fun things to do even with me saying no to the kid carnival rides and pony rides that are outrageously priced. I think Clayton and Hayden both know where to go for horse rides and that's at Grandpa Ron's house!!

Highlights of DIDER FARMS were the new piglets born Sept 28 and baby chicks and a Pumpkin carver that the boys could watch make crazy faces!!

Nice serious pose boys!!