Helping out an Orphanage!

A lot of you might know that I have a sister living in Egypt right now. Her boys go to school there. I want to give everyone the opportunity to help out some orphan kids that live there if you can. My sister's son Grey (second grader) is holding a read-a-thon at his school to raise money. The purpose is to raise money for an orphanage that is too small to let the kids go to school every day. They have to take turns going to school, while the others stay at home.
My nephew will read books, and you can sponser him by pledging a certain amount of money for every book/minute that he reads until November 27th. It can be any amount! Anything will help.

Here is the link to my sister's blog to find out more details.

All you need to do is leave a post on this blog with an amount that you are willing to sponser and a phone number if I don't already have one for you. I will contact you after November 27th, and collect the money to send to my sister in Egypt.

This is a great way to serve and it is going for a good cause. Please help out if you can!!!

HALLOWEEN

My friend was giving Aiden a ride home the other day and she asked him what he was going to be for Halloween. His reply, "I don't know, my mom hasn't told me yet."
I laughed so hard when I heard that. We always make homemade costumes every year for Halloween, which means if I have some time, I can make some cool costumes. This year, I felt like I didn't have near enough time because I have been so busy lately. So we decided to have our boys be mummies. Aiden wanted to have a skeleton painted on his face too, so he would be more scary. (no time - sorry Aidey-guy)


The problem with being mummies, we later found out, is that it took forever to wrap up our boys in their mummy gear. After finally getting them all wrapped up, the strips of fabric came falling off after 5 minutes. Pretty soon, it looked real dumb, and I wish I hadn't decided that would be their costume. Plus, the boys hated it. They wanted it off pretty quickly.


Here we are as Mario and Luigi. The hats didn't take me to long to make and the facial hair is just felt. Caleb borrowed these overalls from the neighbor who we've talked to about twice since we've lived here. The guy wears overalls to work everyday, so Caleb thought it would be okay to borrow them from him. Well, he did (I wouldn't go with him) and they were high waters pretty bad. That is why Caleb has the look with his overalls down to the middle of his stomach, cuz he had to lower them as low as they could go. Then he had to wear regular pants underneath too, so he wasn't a nerdy Mario. The nerdy Mario just wasn't the look we were going for.
Caleb would go around saying "Mamma Mia."




So, I whipped up some masks, and vwa-la! We changed their costumes to super-heroes. Cute and fun and easy too.

P.S. My sister made these awesome capes for my boys for Christmas last year!

Necklaces, Necklaces, Necklaces!!!

Do any of you out there have a bunch of necklaces, and don't have a very good place to keep them without getting them in a jumbled mess? I know I did, and that is all it took. When I was visiting Idaho this summer, my cute sister-in-law gave me the idea to do a necklace holder (thanks again Audrey). So when we got back home, that is exactly what I did. It was super easy too if any of you wanted to make one yourself.
This is all that you need. (and Mod Podge glue)


First, I sanded my board. I also asked the sweet hubby to drill some holes in it for me after I decided where I wanted to put the pegs. Then I painted it the color I wanted. (I wanted the color to be pretty universal, so I could put it wherever, and it would still match) Then I waited for it to dry. While waiting for it to dry, I measured my paper to the size of the board, and cut it to fit accordingly. Then I just glued the paper down with mod podge. I painted the pegs black, and stuck them in the holes. It was already a tight fit, but you could glue them in if you're worried. Last, I put some hangers things on the back to hang it to the wall. Here is close-up pic.


Here it is: all finished up and looking cute!


I love how it turned out! I could easily put more necklaces on it too. This project only took me a few hours total, and it was easy peasy.

Happy Birthday Cruiz

This is the Happy Birthday banner I made over the summer. Me and Ang (my sis) each made one. Soon this banner will be famous in our family because each time it is someone's Birthday, this banner will make its way back up on the wall for good use. Good thing it turned out pretty cute!


Cruiz with all his loot! I think his favorite present was the Magformers.


For Cruiz's Birthday, we went to Cabela's in Kansas City. It was a big hit; the kids really enjoyed seeing all the animals and fish. They even got to feed some fish too.



Me and Aidey-guy checking out the water buffalo and elephants.




After Cabela's, we found a park nearby and had a picnic. After spending some time playing around at the park we went to an Asian market, and let the kids pick out their very own treat. Of course, Caleb and I picked out lots of our own treats too.



Caleb showing Cruiz how it's done.


When I asked Cruiz what kind of cake he wanted, he kept telling me a Submarine cake. I asked if he could think of any other kind of cake he would like, but he just said, "Nope, I just want a Yellow Submarine cake." So that is what I made him.

Stuff

I know I've been a slacker with blogging lately, but I don't have any new pics to share. I think it gets kind of boring when peeps post really long posts and there are no pictures or anything exciting to look at.
We've been busy with everyday life, but nothing super exciting or blog worthy I guess. Aiden played city league basketball and loved it! He did really well, scoring almost every single game. The games are pretty funny and entertaining to watch. There are some kids that have no idea what is going on.



Aiden shooting his 2-handed shot...

Also, Aiden just did a 1 mile run at his school last week, and he was the first kindergartener to finish the race with a time of 8:12. He was so happy when the race was over. I'm so proud of him for trying so hard and doing so well.

Another 10k

I had a 10k race on Saturday morning, and was pretty happy with my finish. Last year I did this exact same race and finished with a time of 50:44. This year my goal was to get under 48 minutes. I ended up finishing the race in 46:45. I beat my time by 4 minutes! Yeah!!!
Plus, as a bonus, I won a free 1 hour long massage. What more could I ask for?

Before and After

I have been wanting to redo my bedroom ever since we bought a new bed 2 years ago. Caleb told me I could get whatever I wanted, but I have never found anything I love enough to spend a lot of money on. Then I went to Pottery Barn Outlet with my sister and found this cute white duvet cover for $30. It seems like those kind of deals never come up for me, so I just went ahead and bought it. I was excited and a little nervous because it was white. When it finally hit me that I could do so many different things with this duvet, my wheels started turning. I went through color schemes over and over again in my head. Finally I came up with pink, black, and green for my colors.

This is the before pictures. Kind of sad I know. I have a queen sized quilt on my Cal. King bed. Looks pretty awesome huh? Now you know why I wanted to redo my bedroom so badly.



This is what it looks like now. I love it!!!





I made the pillow shams, and the decorative pillows to match. It was really fun picking out the fabric for them. My friend helped me with the patterns which was fun cuz then I got some girl talking time in while making them. I also sewed the ribbon on the bottom of the bedskirt. There was no bedskirts out there with fuchsia pink out there, so I bought a cheap one with sage green on it. Then I sewed the pink ribbon on it later to make it match. I think it turned out super cute.