preschool

First day of preschool!!

booking it out of there!!

rocket man and recipes

Okay... So I guess some of you guys were serious about wanting to know how I did the Rocket Man art for our bonus room.

If you go to Home Depot, you can  buy a HUGE piece of board called.... I don't know what it's called. It's painted white on one side and it's brown on the other. It's about 1/4 inch thick. A sheet of it is around $12 dollars. You find a nice man who works there and ask him to cut it for you--- he'll cut it however you want. We wanted it as long as we could, so we had him cut it in half lengthwise. We ended up with an 8x2.5 foot board. And oh-- they aren't always white on one side-- sometimes they are all brown. For these purposes, we wanted a white one.

Then I used my handy Silhouette machine and started making LOTS of documents with the text of Rocket Man on them. Holy smokes... this is no easy (or fast) process. And I wanted it all to look different-- (I didn't want the font to be the same every time "Rocket man," or "oh, no no no," was on the board). So I basically made a new document literally 100 times. The fonts I used were:

Pea Anderson
Pea Ashley
Pea Christy
Pea Jenny Roman
Pea Laura
Pea Robot Strong
Pea Steph

I switched between all these fonts and changed the sizing (and picked words that I knew I wanted a LOT bigger).

Cut them out on my handy machine, and put them on the white board. If I had done it how I had planned, all the text would have been the same font and the same size, but Dave had a different idea-- so I listened to him. What do I know, anyway? He was right-- it turned out cool. I almost hate to show you my inspiration, because of course it is cuter than mine. But HERE it is.

8 hours later... you'll be done! And just nail that sucker right into the wall. :)


The recipes I've tried lately:

So about two weeks ago I made THESE for dinner. Pumpkin waffles and cinnamon syrup... they were really good. But then I had almost a whole can of pumpkin left-- and you can't just let that yummy pumpkin go to waste, so I had to make a couple more pumpkin things.

So then I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies. I had never made this recipe before. And wowee.... they were pretty good. Dave even said they were the 'best cookies' he's ever had!! so try them-- and make the frosting too.

Then I had a little bit of pumpkin left and Veda was about to have her half birthday. So I looked all over Pinterest for a pumpkin cake recipe and found THIS one.

labor day

I hope you all enjoyed the last day of summer. I know we did.

• had cinnamon rolls for breakfast
• made chocolate chip cake (for breakfast... jk) :)
• had a BBQ with Chris and Sarah
• kids took naps
• made some headbands
• went to the beach with some friends
• had ribs for dinner
• gonna watch a movie with dave  

I'd say we had a pretty good day. Tomorrow... preschool.

sunday

This morning before church i asked dave if it was cool or dorky that Quinn, me, and Veda were all wearing home-made clothes. He said "cool." He's sweet.

And let me ask you-- when's the best time to make your little girl some summer dresses?? In the fall, I tell you!! Quinn has out grown a bunch of her church dresses-- and the only kind that i know how to make are 'summer'- type. So that's what she gets. She'll just wear an undershirt or a sweater when it gets chilly. Until I learn how to make a dress with sleeves....

and the girl would NOT cooperate for a picture, and these are the best i got. I made her this one, plus a blue one that's the same style. I'll take a picture another time.

I made my skirt-- from THIS tutorial. I was asked to teach the young women in my ward how to make a skirt-- and this is the one the leaders chose for me to teach. We'll see how it goes. This was the one I made for me as an example.

thank goodness that hendrix had ALL store bought clothes on for church. (although in this picture he's wearing the backpack i made him... geesh. I'm bordering on dorky.) :)

and Veda is wearing the dress that I refashioned from one of my old shirts.

Hope you all have a Happy Labor Day!!!!!

new park

we went to the park yesterday morning. if any of you know quinn-- or have been to the park with her before, you know that she does NOT do things like this. she is growing up. Going up ladders, going down slides ALL BY HERSELF.

"I did it!!"

hendrix riding a dino

and pretending to eat wood chips. this picture makes me smile for many reasons.

REAL men wear babies in slings.

veda at 6 months

no stats for this little lady yet, but here's what she's up to in her 6 months of life:
*She's SO GOOD. super sweet, smiley, happy, charming little girl. she goes with the flow, good in the car, puts up with her older brother and sister (and mommy) and the 'love' they giver her all the time
*not sleeping through the night. but sleeps from 6:30 til 1 or 3 am. so not too bad.
*scooting like crazy. yesterday she scooted from the office to the bathroom (and if you've never been to my house, come over and i'll show you how far that is) :)
*likes solid food-- sweet potatoes, rice cereal, pears, and bananas. bananas are for sure her favorite
*can say: "mama, I love you." okay... she can't really do that. but that would be awesome.
*growing a bunch of hair. she's got hair all over her head that's almost an inch long-- plus a handful of hairs on the top that's 5 inches long. it's kinda a mess... i've never had to deal with crazy baby hair before. if I don't smooth it or put mousse in it, she looks nut-so.
*no teeth. and no signs of them yet. another late teether like hendrix!! (Quinn had a couple teeth at 4 months)
*she's all around pretty great. We love her to pieces.

we heart cousins

last weekend we had chris and sarah over for some home made ice cream and to run through the sprinklers. sadly, all my pictures of the kids in the water were either blurry, or bum cheeks were showing. but it was fun-- and my kids really love their cousins. in fact, "aunt sarah's house" might as well be disneyland-- that's how much hendrix likes to go there :) here's cute little grace trying out the water.

and hendrix was a great influence-- getting grace to join in playing in dirt

rockets

i guess we like rockets around here. see? and these pj's

and chris's shirt that i made too:

and I just finished this for the play room wall. it's the lyrics to Rocket Man. It has more significance than just that it's about rockets-- it's a song that Dave has always sung to the kids. (even before Rocket) So when we were picking a song to put on wall, Rocket Man seemed like a cute option.

you better all tell me how incredibly cool this is because it took me a LOT of work. just kidding.. you don't have to tell me. but it really did take me a LONG time. There are a few parts that bug me that I want to fix and I still need to add a couple things to the right hand side, but it was enough done that we hung it up. When I 'finished' it yesterday I was pretty happy about it-- the kids thought I was crazy. maybe i am.

veda's half birthday

Guess who is turning six months old??!! okay, so it's tomorrow. but I consider myself to be quite punctual-- so we celebrated today. And yes- with a party. maybe some of you remember the past half-birthdays at our house? They are all celebrated in the same manner, and are just an excuse for this cake-loving-lady to eat cake. Quinn's half birthday party.

hendrix's half birthday party.
And here's Lou's cake

no, Veda didn't get any. Do you think I'm crazy?

she looks huge in this picture. Where has my baby gone? oh yeah.. she's six months old :)

the lighting was good today so I got about a dozen darling pictures of her. If you recognize this same shirt and headband in lots of pictures lately, don't be surprised. veda did get to enjoy some sweet potatoes instead of cake.

and she liked it

oh yeah.... one more for good measure.

hendrix being a super hero

it's a good thing hendrix is around to rescue the orange people

wall art

it's a wonder any of you still read my blog even though i consistently take pictures with a crappy camera. we finally put some pictures up in the office/entry way. it's been a blank wall since we painted a couple months ago. but i got this idea off of Pinterest. and this looks WAY better in real life. i really need a new camera and to take this picture not at night time :)

how many?

how many pictures can i take of myself and veda over a weekend? too many :) i took three actually.




and dave and veda