Family Pictures

tree swing

The tree swing is one of the boys' favorite places to go, especially with their dad. We walk to it from our house in a forest that our neighborhood backs and they go so crazy high it freaks me out. Josh got to join in on the fun this summer when he was visiting. This is one of the many things we will miss when we move.

And now we are moving...go figure

I love our house. I have spent a huge amount of energy the last 7 months making our house a home. I have loved changing the feel of each room, making them my own, and creating something I am proud of on a resourceful budget. Here are some of the projects I have been up to the last 3 months, all of which will be taken down and many of which will become obsolete when we move to Denver in a few weeks. Oh well!

My happy and bright sign reminding me to not kill my children.

My bright paintings and two fun stools (one the right size for Thatcher and one for me), and a piano! I didn't make the piano, but I would like to paint it someday (an idea vetoed by Ty), but at least it was a $150.00 craigslist find. Now our home has music (something we really needed) and even more noise (which we weren't really lacking).

This is my favorite of all the projects and I hope it works wherever we move. Keith made this darling little table that I have always loved and I painted it. 

A craft club project. Everyone else did FALL, but I thought it was too cute to only have up as a seasonal decoration. I think it should say ATE because that is usually the case, but Ty thinks I should alter the E and have it say FAT.

Silly labels. I made a bunch more like this sprucing up my pantry and I am midway through a big spice reorganizing project. It is all so silly, but it makes me happy. My mom probably never thought that buying me a silhouette would enable my OCD in a whole new way.

I spent a lot of time changing the look of the kitchen after I got the awful rooster wallpaper down. It was so fun to add light and I love the way it looks now. I hope I can use any of what I have made in our new place. This is a ruler to measure the kids through the years (thank you pinterest).

This collage was so fun to put together and see the difference something that costs no money can make on a room. I used burlap for the mats, black and white photos of flowers, and any old frame I had that I could paint white. The round frame is from an old broken wall clock my mom gave me and I have held on to.

Sunflowers. They make me happy. I love them and justified buying them by counting them as the flowers I didn't get all year. I made new valences too. The fabric came from shower curtains from Marshalls. (I tried the faux pinch pleat look idea from pinterest but am not a believer that it makes the valences look that much more fabulous.)

This project was a disaster. Good idea, bad execution. Once we move I will figure out what to do with this chair that now has 6+ coats of paints on it. Chairs are a huge pain to paint. Never do it!

Silly hemp covered salad dressing bottle. Nice easy project when you need something easy to cover up an ugly outlet.

This wasn't exactly my project, but it is something we were all proud of and a reason we are sad to move. These are our pea plants at their peak. We had so much fun finding and eating peas all fall and hope that we can have a little garden wherever we end up moving.

 I made these shirts for Thatcher's preschool class. Now #4 will be missing from the line up, not that they ever lined up in order. It makes me sad that he will be missing out on these friendships even though I know he will make new friends faster than any of us.

I just made and put this vinyl bird on a branch up a week before Ty's interview. It makes me sad to think of the things I can't take with us like Hadley's gray striped wall that I love so much and now her sweet bird on branch. I know I can always cut more, but it still makes me sad.

labor day

We were able to spend Labor Day at the cabin again this year and had such a nice time. We had friends come down both Friday and Saturday for dinner and spent the rest of the time playing in the water, relaxing (as much as you can with three kids), riding bikes down to the crossing, and enjoying everything about the cabin. The only thing that went wrong the whole weekend was when Thatcher face planted off his bike as we were unloading the car...then landed on his face again on the swing when we were loading the car to go home. It was so sad to see my baby covered in blood, but he has since recovered.