Little Thespian

At the beginning of the school year, Isabelle could choose between before school choir or after school drama.  She chose drama.  We're good at drama around here.  Her little theater group performed their one and only play on Friday night.  a 1920's murder mystery.  They got to invent their character.  She came up with Olivia Rubick with a british accent.

 Her character turned out to be a little girl, which she was dissapointed in because that's not much of a stretch for her.

 But her character was a little brat, which is totally out of character for her.

 They were a cute group of kids from 4th-6th grade.  They did a great job!

 She loved every minute of it and is a natural performer.  Where do my girls get it from??

 Here she is with her drama teacher who wrote, directed and acted in the play.

She had a great time and I'm sure we'll have many more performances in our future.

Sisters are like that

Sisters are great for borrowing clothes, learning new hairstyles, boyfriend advice.  But......they're also great for copying their awesome decorating ideas!  And thank the stars above, my sister is a FABULOUS decorator!  She came to my house in August after I had only lived here a month and had all kinds of ideas of what to do.  She had this vision for my laundry room, and I couldn't see it until I saw it in her laundry room.  She actually built shelves herself!   Her laundry room takes the cake and mine is only a nod to hers, but it's sooooo much better than it was.
She was my inspiration.

The Before:

 Dull.  Boring.  Drab.

 It's not very big but it sure was dreary.  Stark white walls, dark dreary oak everywhere.  So many detergent bottles!

 There's no sink in the tiny bathroom off the laundry room, so this is where people wash their hands and apparantly smoosh the towels around the towel bar as tight as they will go.

The freezer.  It's really just a place to put laundry baskets.  And then the baskets go on the floor when we need to get in the freezer.  Makes sense, right?

The After:

 white painted cabinets.  YES!! 
 Stole the detergents in bottles idea from Bev too.

 Cute little crate from Marshalls.  Bev gave me the Nellie's laundry soap and antique bread pan for softener sheets.

 Aaaah.  No more smooshed towels.

 Also stole this idea from the Master decorator to redo my cart and put it in the laundry room. 
 She gave me her wall paint swatch and I marched to Lowes and got some mixed up pronto.  best paint color ever!

So much lighter and brighter.  I LOVE my laundry room now.  I go in there and just stand and look and smile.  My family thinks I've gone nuts.  I can't wait to keep going on the rest of the house.  Oak beware!

Another post about Emily

Isabelle is getting a little upset because there have been so many Emily posts lately.
Well, here's another one.

LDS Prom was Saturday night.  We spent a little time making this dress modest and it turned out pretty well.
Emily and her date made a deal that he would get the corsages and she would get his tie.  So here he is putting it on after he arrived to pick her up.

They had a great time and made such an elegant couple!

Last of spirit week

Okay, I have totally slacked off on the spirit week updates.  Day three was pajama day (can't they be more creative than that?  And I heard some girls were wearing nighties to school.  I mean, c'mon!)  Anyway, Emily told me she wasn't really going to do much.  So I slept in.

Day four was sports day and she just wore one of her tennis skirts and a top.  Not that exciting.

Today was blue out day.  Wear blue. All over.  So here she is.  She's been really busy with tennis matches, choir concerts, and working lots to try and pay for her choir trip to California next month.  Oh the life of a high school girl.

And just so you don't think I only post about Emily, here's a picture of a bowl of grapefruit.

And my dog Zero

Spirit Week: Groovy, man!

Here we are at day #2.  Can you guess?
Hippie Day in all it's peace and love!

I thought she should have gone with a tie dye t-shirt.  If only she had a VW bus to drive to school.

And now a before and after project I've been working on.  Amanda gave me a Pottery Barn gift card for my birthday.  I've been wanting some keys for awhile now, and PB has this collection of keys plus shipping to equal the amount of the giftcard.

I've had this old rustic frame for a long time.

Hmmm..... what if I could somehow marry the two together.  And this is what I came up with.

I wanted it to look a little worn and aged and luckily the frame didn't take to the spray paint all that well.  So you can kind of still see some of the wood.  It's kind of wierd, but there's probably not another one just like it anywhere.  I kind of like it.

Spirit Week: Nest Head

Here we go again.  Spirit Week at High School.  Emily will be diving right into all the dress up days at school.  And loving every minute of it.  Here is day one.  Crazy hair day.  I was thinking something with lots of pony tails or maybe even pipe cleaners.  Not creative enough for Emily.  Here's what she came up with after searching online:

Nest Head

Stay tuned to see what tomorrow brings!


On a side note:  Amanda's Scott reports to the MTC this week.  Her amigo, buddy, amore, compadre, best friend, side kick, love.
We wish him the best of luck on his two year adventure to Bolivia!  Hasta Luego, Scott:)

Tennis girl

Emily made the Tennis team.  She's on J.V. and was kind of upset about not making varsity.  But after getting creamed her first match with a girl who used to be #1 on Varsity, I don't think she's too upset anymore. 

She has since won two matches.  And she looks cute in a tennis skirt!  It's fun to watch her and it brings back memories.  Her Dad and I played on the tennis team together in high school.

Her loyal fans.  Small but mighty!

Savers: Part Two. a Star Sighting

Today the two girls and I went to Savers to take my old light fixture ( see Savers part one).  Emily wanted to go inside to look for a vanity.  So we're in there and Isabelle and I are looking at the girls dresses and skirts.  Isabelle gasps and nudges me and tells me she sees Cory McCloskey from Channel 10.  I say "What"? and I look up and there he is!  And like a dummy, I point at him and say "You're Cory McCloskey".

  I tell him how he interviewed Isabelle about her missing teeth at her school when she was a first grader.  He tells us how he pulled a kid's tooth on TV once and how he got alot of emails over that.  He asked Isabelle her name and shook her hand.  He was just in there shopping with his wife like a regular guy.  What's weird is that I walked right past him a couple weeks ago at the Phoenix Open too, just one of the crowd talking on his cell phone.  Anyway, needless to say, Isabelle was so happy.  Ever since he came to her school and talked to her she has thought alot of him and now she meets him again at Savers of all places!

Savers: Part One

Yesterday I popped into Savers to see what I could see.  I found some good treasures.
 First, I saw this little beauty:
It had good bones and I knew I could do something with it.  The ivey and little pink flowers had to go.  But it was in a nice pot and had a good grapevine cone shape.

So after I got it home, I took everything off of it and turned it into this:

Just jute or twine wrapped around it.  I didn't even glue it anywhere.  Here it is in it's new home.  I even recycled the ivy.

I also found four white plates to use around the house here and there.
 And then I saw this light:

It looked like it had all it's parts and was in very good condition.  And the best part is that it was only $20!

I've been wanting to replace this light above our kitchen table:

I'm going to replace everything brass in this house if it's the last thing I do!  So I bought the light and brought it home.  Dear husband happened to be home and after some grumbling, he started to work on putting it up.  So here it is in it's new home.  It may not be the new trendy chandelier rage that's going on right now, but it's a heck of a lot better than I had.  And for only $20!!!

I also got two very cute skirts, and a small glass jar to hold q-tips in the bathroom.   So that's a topiary, four plates, glass jar,  light fixture and two skirts for $45.

A good day.

What we gave, what we got.

Valentines is fun.  An excuse to give little things that say I Love You to the ones you love.  Here's how our family surprised eachother this year:

Emily worked in her room for a couple hours the night before to create one of a kind Valentines for each of us.  They were so cute.

She decorated this flower pot for me with a candy bar inside.

Isabelle made these suckers for her class.  Lips for the girls and mustaches for the boys. They're cute because when you have the sucker in your mouth it looks like you have big red lips or a black curly mustache.

She made extra ones for us.

These are the flowers I made for the girls.  I saw this on another blog.  They're easy but a little time consuming.  Different sizes of fabric cut out with corners rounded and curl the edges above a candle flame.  Then layer them on top of eachother and stitch together and add the pearls.  I made some with hairclips on the back and some with pins to go on clothes.

This is what I made for Phillip.  I had a brain freeze what to get him.  This is what I came up with.  I'm sure he would have liked a box of golfballs better.  But I'd rather be creative.   He asked me if we were still in high school.

And this is what he got for me.  Along with his helper Isabelle, they picked this out.  He smuggled it into the restraunt in his sock.  As we were enjoying our appetizer bread and talking about our day, he slipped it onto the table somehow without me noticing.  It was several minutes before I saw the box.  It was just like a commercial or movie!  I got to open a jewelry box in an Italian Restraunt.  Nice!

Lovely.  What a guy!

Hope you had a nice Valentines Day too.