New Entry Table (Finally)

This post is for the peeps that I told about my entry table and now I'm finally documenting it. I'm a little sad that I didn't take any pics while I was building this bad boy. (Well, I took one on my phone before I painted it.)

So, here is the story. After moving to St. George, I really, really wanted a new entry table and some new couches. (more to come on the new couches some other time) I checked Craigslist every day, and none of them really stood out to me, or they were WAY overpriced. I didn't know what to do about buying one because they are way to expensive in a furniture store.

One day I was venting to my friend about my entry table dilema to one of my friends who lives here. She said, "I have a friend who builds stuff like this all the time in her garage, and she has all the tools." I talked to girl and she was very willing to help me build my own entry table.

The next step for me was to find a table that I liked. Ana White's blog was the perfect place because she has all the details and plans to tons of different wood projects. I found one that I liked, printed the plans, then headed over to get some help.







After buying the wood at Home Depot, it only took 2 days to build this awesome entry table. I customized it a little bit to make it taller, but other than that, the plans were perfect. Then I spent day after day sanding painting, sanding, painting, glazing, sanding, and painting until it was finally finished. I'm so happy with how it turned out!

Drab to Fab

It all started when I found this ugly door in our serial killer room in Kansas. (If you haven't heard about our serial killer room, it was sweet!) So I asked Caleb if he could take the door part off the window pane part. I wanted to make something cute out of it, and Caleb thought I was crazy, but obliged me.


There was more to it than you might think. It took some time to pry these babies apart, especially since there were about 5 coats of paint sticking them together like glue.


We hauled this ugly window pane with us to St. George. Then I got working on it. I had to knock out the glass, and chip away and the wood pieces holding it in place.


After all that, I sanded, primed (a lot) and painted it. It took many coats of paint since I couldn't sand down all that ugly green. Plus, when I thought I was getting rid of the green, there was all this red paint underneath it.


Here is a pic of my final product. Caleb told me later that he was impressed since he didn't think that ugly thing could turn out looking that great! (that is quite a compliment coming from a guy that doesn't care about decoration stuff at all.)


This is another view of the cute rose wreath I made. I love it! It took about 1 million hours to make, but at least I now have one cute thing hanging in my house.


A close-up of the wreath. Turned out pretty good, eh?

Aiden finally loses a tooth

Aiden kept showing me how loose his tooth was, and here he is wiggling it so that it is pointed horizontal instead of vertical. And if you are really lucky, you might get to see something in his nose.



Aiden lost his first tooth at school. He told his teacher that he needed to have his Grandpa pull his tooth because it was bugging him so bad. So she let him go to the office and talk with Grandpa. I think Aiden was a little scared to get it pulled, but wanted it out so bad! So he told grandpa he would have him pull it in just one minute. Then he goes to wiggle it again and show grandpa, when it just fell out. He was so proud to show me and Caleb when he came home from school. The tooth fairy came and gave him a whopping 5 bucks. I use to only get a quarter, so Aiden's rich. But the tooth fairy wrote him a note and told him that he got more for his first tooth. Two days later, Aiden lost another tooth. Now he wants to wiggle all his teeth and get them loose. It's an easy way to make some money.

Our new Home

I've had a lot peeps say stuff to me about taking too long posting pics on my blog. Sorry! We are doing really good in our new home in St. George. We love it! My parents tell me there is 2 feet of snow on the ground in Rexburg. Then we heard there has been a lot of bad weather in Topeka, that they closed down the law school. And I can't help but think, "Ah, I'm living the good life!" The temp during the day here is around 65 or 70 degrees. But then it snowed here too! It didn't last for long, but we made sure to play in it while we had it.


Cruiz making sure the tree gets some snow on it too.


The whole house.


The backyard.


More backyard, on the other side of the wall (and up against the freeway). But we do have an awesome apricot tree back here.


He's so dang cute!

Graduated and Moved!!!

It has been a while since I've done a post, but for good reasons. We have been so busy!!! Christmas is already a crazy time of year, but we had much more going on this year. In the last 5 weeks Caleb and I have taken a 22 hour drive to Idaho for my sister's wedding, celebrated a Birthday, celebrated an anniversary, took some finals in Law school, graduated from Law school, packed up our entire house, moved to Utah, celebrated Christmas, and last but not least, unpacked and moved into a new house. Whew!!!




Hopefully later on down the road, I will be posting pics of all the fun things that I will be doing to decorate my new house (my favorite part about moving). I hope everyone had a great Christmas!!!

P.S. That house pic is of my old house in Kansas. We now are living in sunny St. George! Yay!!!

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!