Finished!!

So I am totally caught up on all my blogging for the last 2 months!!  Yay!  I wanted to have it all done before Collin's birthday on Friday and I did it with 2 days to spare!

But that is not the only accomplishment I am proud of this week!  You know how I love my projects....  And the table has been in the works for a long time and it's finally done!

I didn't really take a good before picture but here's one of Brady eating french toast on the table one morning so you can see the color it used to be.  It was also really scratched and the chairs pretty much had no finish left on them.  We received them as a hand me down from my in-laws when we got married.  She had painted the backs and legs green to go with her stuff so I repainted them black gloss when we got married.  But the black gloss paint was majorly chipped from being moved and stored (in our shed in AZ for 5 years!).  So it was definitely time for these to get a little face lift!

BEFORE



Here's the underside of the chair you can also see the color of the
finish and where some of the old green was sprayed on

I stripped off and sanded what was left of the finish and stain on the seats.  I painted the backs and legs a satin finish black before I put the new stain and finish on.



Did I mention how annoying it is to sand completely and
tape around round spindles??  Not my favorite part!



AFTER!

It looks so much better!  The table looks a little lighter than the chairs because the wood on there soaked in the stain a little different than the seats but oh well!  Plus, in this picture the flash is reflecting off the table even more so it makes it look more obvious.  But I am done and it is back in our kitchen!  I started about a month ago and got the table done right away but then I had to stop because of the heat.   I couldn't work out in the garage again until last week.  So we used folding chairs around the table until the chairs were done.

This is the more fun project that I also completed this month. 

Angry birds!!!  Who else is addicted to this game??? 

Anyway, when it got so hot out, I needed an "inside" project.  I found free patterns and a tutorial online, went and got the fleece and got started.

The idea started to formulate in my head that I wanted to make these a while back.  When we first moved here, Brady invented this game he called "Pluckers".  I have no idea where he pulled the name out of but that's what it is.  It consisted of throwing around these soft plush baby blocks with Aaron in the living room.

Then the game Angry Birds became an obsession on my phone-for me and Brady! :)  He he...  He was asking to play it all the time on my phone and I only let him play it for a little while at a time.  Erica gave him a plush red angry bird and he loved it and slept with it at night.  When I saw the tutorial I thought that I could make these and we could play a real-life version of the game Angry Birds and it would be even better than Pluckers and he wouldn't be asking to play it on my phone as much anymore!  Score!  He loves them!

Here he is in the basement playing.  We set up the green pigs all over and throw the birds at them to knock them out-just like the game!

If you look closely enough you can see one baby pig on the top of the TV, one on the chair blocked partially by Brady and the one he is trying to hit on the corner of the white kids table.  You can also see the black bomb bird up in the air right over the shelves. 

Here's a link to where I found the tutorials in case anyone else has some Angry Bird fans in your house!

Angry Birds Link

I loved this tutorial and it was pretty easy to follow, especially for a novice sewer like myself.  I cheated a little-I did not do all the appliques on the face.  After the 2nd one I did, it was taking forever because I wasn't very good at it.  So instead of appliqueing with the fleece, I used felt and hot glued!  Much easier and quicker for me and it looks pretty good. :)  It feels pretty good to get my projects all done.  Now it's on to birthday party planning.  I have already completed a couple things for that but I'll post those pictures when we do Collin's birthday party next week with our families.

Berry Special Birthday Girl!

It is so fun to have nieces! Since I only have boys, I get to live out all my visions of pink and pretty through my nieces! Birthdays are so much more fun to do for girls because you can go as pink and girly as you want. With boys-not so much! :) So I love being able to help my sister plan the girls' birthday parties and help with the decorations! She did a Strawberry Shortcake birthday for Ava, but not with everything in Strawberry Shortcake printed things. We mostly used strawberries, pink, red, a little green and a little Strawberry Shortcake here and there. It turned out so cute! These tissue balls seem pretty popular all over now and pretty simple to make!

Here is a cute little garland/table runner I made using a tutorial I found here. I have been hitting the craft blogs hard recently and finding some really cute things!!! She did it with shamrocks but you can really do it with any shapes so I used the strawberry and flowers from the invitations and decorations to trace. I also had a lot of pink and red things I had made for Valentine's Day that I brought along that went with the theme perfectly!

Here's the cute birthday girl Ava with her cake! 4 years old and getting prettier every day! She must take after her Aunt Jessie- wink wink! ;)

Brady playing the strawberry beanbag toss game. I used a simple strawberry pattern I found online and made some beanbags with the leftover felt I had from the garland.

My mom, me, Ava and Melissa

I love this picture of us girls!! :)

Here's our 4 kiddos-this one is probably better than any we have taken all together recently! :)

Baby projects

So not too much going on here right at the moment......just doing last minute things and waiting for Baby Brother. In the last couple weeks, I have had a list of projects I wanted to get done. Several of these included sewing projects for the baby so I knew I needed to get on it and get them done before I had him. I haven't had much to get ready for the baby's room since we are moving in 2 months, I am not doing his room until after we move. So I had to get crafty and do some other projects instead. These are some of what I have been working on:

Nursing Cover Up (Hooter Hider, Udder Cover, etc...)

Turned out super cute I think!

A car seat canopy - cute brown, green, blue strips on the outside and brown and white design on the inside.

And of course, ever since we got this car seat back out of the attic....guess who wants to pretend to be a baby? He's goo-gooing and ga-gaing right now as I am typing this. Funny kid! And here is the cutest little baby thing of all................I did not make this one!!!!

A friend of mine makes the cutest little denim/bandanna bibs as baby gifts (I got one from her when Brady was born). A while back, Aaron had given her son some old camo clothes and flight suits to dress up in. She took some of that material as well as the little ribbons and buckles and the name tag and made this cute bib for the new baby Gray. Isn't it the cutest thing???? So creative! I have these types of things laying around my house and I never in a million years would have come up with something like this! Thanks Emily!

A little something special....

So, there's a couple reasons why I'm posting this. I think part of the story is funny and the other part is to help Aaron feel like he is still close to home even though he is far away.

When Aaron deploys he has to bring his own bedding with him: sheets and pillowcases, etc.

For the last 3 deployments he has brought with him purple sheets that I used to have on my twin bed in college and when we met actually. They were the only twin sheets we had in our linen closet because we no longer had any twin beds in the house after we got married. Our guest bed is also a queen.

So every time he would go to deploy I would say "Aaron, you don't have to take those purple sheets with you. Let's go buy you some new ones."

And he would say to me "No, they remind me of you because you used to sleep on them."

Seriously, how could I argue with that?

But this time, I had a better idea and a way for him to not be embarrassed by purple sheets. Ok, so he obviously wasn't embarrassed because he kept using them-maybe it was me embarrassed to send my husband "away to war" with purple sheets! I was going to make him some homemade pillowcases so that way it was made by me instead of something that was used by me. And the fabric choice you may ask -- BYU of course! I had my wonderful sister-in-law Erica get me some BYU fabric, since she is in Utah. I wasn't going to make the whole sheet set because that would just be a lot for me to do and by the time I was done, you might not be able to tell which was the fitted sheet and which was the flat sheet!

So I bought him some navy blue sheets that he took with him Blue is the only color I think he sees sometimes! If you don't believe me, look in his closet! Good thing he's in the Air Force right? Anyway, I just made the pillowcases to go with his new sheet set and I'm excited that he will get to use them and the purple ones are here at home with me!

The finished product

Brady's testing it out for me

Hope you like them Aaron!

Christmas projects

When we were shopping at JoAnn's the other day (like the 3rd time in 5 days or something like that!), Brady found a little wooden train ornament. It's the kind you can paint and put your picture in. So I broke the bank and paid 50 cents for it!

I decided that every year we would get one of these little ornaments and let Brady paint it and put his picture and the year on it. Who doesn't love looking at things we made as little kids and our parents saved, right? So that will be our new little Christmas tradition with Brady and any other children we may have. To do a little Christmas project together.

Concentrating very hard! (Don't you love the very non-Christmas vinyl table cloth?)

Like the paint shirt he's wearing?

Finished product on the tree!

I've also been working on some projects of my own. For some reason, I've had a sewing bug lately and have wanted to make some projects. So I saw this idea on someones blog and decided to make stockings for our family. We didn't have any and these were too cute. Plus, there was a direct link to a website with print-out patterns and step by step instructions and pictures. For a non-sewer like me, it seemed do-able.

I think they came out really cute! I have them hanging over our back sliding doors since we don't have a fireplace!

I also made a couple cute things that 2 cute little 2-year olds are going to open for Christmas so I can't post pictures of those yet. But I'm sure my Mom will take loads of pictures of Brady and Ava together after they open them!

I'm not trying to get compliments here and say that I am the best sewer around, because if you look close enough at any of them you'll see that I'm not! But I am kind of proud of myself for figuring some of these things out on my own and actually completing a project on my own of something that I am not very knowledgeable about. Aaron was teasing me about being so domestic and told me I should get working on making our own soap now!

Actually, the next domestic task I should learn is to make a good pie crust! The last time I tried from scratch, I ended up balling up the falling apart and sticky dough (don't ask me how it was both of those at the same time!) and throwing it in the garbage. I buy frozen now! :)