She's a silent winner

Well, Trunk or Treat is behind me now.  It was fun, but it will be more fun to go next year to just have fun.  Organizing something attended by almost three hundred people is alot of work.  And although I didn't win any of those cute awards in my Sheriff costume, this girl did:

She won best child costume, but she doesn't think she's a child.
There were so many original, creative, cute, funny costumes there.  I'm glad I didn't have the difficult task of judging them.

I didn't get a picture of this guy until we got home.  The picture doesn't do it justice.  I sprayed his hair black (it hasn't been black in years),  he HAD  pointy ears on, the makeup is a slight green, he's wearing a convincing starfleet uniform but he was a little too cranky to smile.  I can't believe he let me dress him up as Spock!  So many people didn't even recognize him.  You know it's a good costume when that happens.

Live long and prosper!

BOOOOoooooo........

This is what I'm doing for the tables for our ward trunk or treat.  Easy.  Inexpensive.

 I'm going to put them on the tables with some candy corn and mini pumpkins.
And look how cute these are!  One of my counselors made these to put on big candy bars for chili, costume & jack-o-lantern awards.

Very Cute.   I want to win one!

Happy almost Halloween

Forgive me, Mr. Brown

I made several pieces of furniture while in high school wood shop.  They were all made out of oak.  Fast foward twenty five years later and I'm now painting over all the oak.  Mr. Brown, my woodshop teacher was the best.  He insisted on doing it right and making it out of the best wood, which is oak.  I don't really think he would like the idea of painting it.  Alot of people are like that, can't imagine painting over wood furniture.  But I'm not one of those people.

So here's my formerly oak china cabinet (no before picture, but you can probably use your imagination).  I removed the upper glass doors a few years back. 

This past week I painted it white, distressed it and applied a glaze.

I don't know why I waited so long to do this.  In fact, that's what the husband said "You should have done that to it in the first place."

I just don't know if it looks good next to the white buffet, now turned TV cabinet.  It isn't distressed and antiqued, it's just white.

What do YOU think?

what I've been painting

I realize it's October and I should be blogging about all things pumpkin.  But I must show you my most recent finds.  My patio has been furniture defficient for a long time.  It bugs me that I don't have a comfortable place to sit out there.  I kind of wanted rocking chairs out there, I imagined that would be really relaxing to rock and look at my backyard.  I looked online and in stores.  Walmart has some wooden rocking chairs for $50 each.  I liked them alot, but just couldn't bite the $100 bullet.
While yard saling with my girls on Saturday, we spotted a wicker rocking chair.  I just about ran the car into a pole to get to it.  And would you believe it was only $5?!  It was natural wicker color with dark green trim.  So what. Paint will fix that.
After a couple of days, I thought I'd check craigslist to see if I could find another one.  And would you believe I did?  Just a short drive and $30 later, it was mine. (I didn't want to talk her down to $5, but I should have)     It was already white but needed repainting.
Then the next day I found some chair cushions at Walmart on clearance for $8.50 each.
Let's do the math, shall we?
Wicker chair: $5
Wicker chair: $30
Cushions: $17
Paint: Free, it was left here by the previous owners
Total= $52

The $30 chair is the bigger of the two.  They aren't the exact same chair, but pretty close.

 

The cushion has to be squeezed in to fit the smaller chair, but it's fine.

I'm pretty pleased and hope they last a long time.

I'll show you what else I've been painting tomorrow.

 

Bookshelve makeover

This is how my built in book shelves USED to look:  Very wood.  Very shiny wood.

This is how my built in bookshelves look NOW:

Just a few days and some paint.  It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  I've been putting it off forever.   But it's really so so so much better.

The items on the shelves are the star of the show now.

I may have gotten a little carried away and put too much stuff on them.

Did you know there's an art to styling bookshelves?  People write articles about it, are obsessed with it, dedicate their lives to it.  Well, maybe not.

It takes alot of skill, of which I have none of.
I opted to leave out some shelves in order to place some bigger scale pieces ( that's a professional term for stuff).  I don't know if I'll leave it like this or not.

*Sigh*  Timeless, classic built ins.

My baby is 12

It can't be true, but the calendar doesn't lie.  My baby turned 12 today, at 10:15 a.m.  She was so excited for this day to come.  I'm not entirely sure why it's so exciting to turn 12, but boy, she's excited.

 She finally gets to shave the "jungle" on her legs as she calls it and wear just a wee bit of makeup, and ditch primary and become a Beehive, and basically grow up before her mother's eyes without my permission!

  I've told her to knock it off, but she doesn't listen.  She just keeps on growing up anyway.

My little girl.  My baby.  And I know she'll always be my baby, just like I'll always be my mom's baby.  And she was always her mom's baby.  That's just the way it is.

We're all just a bunch of babies.

Happy Birthday sweet Isabelle.

ZIPPER

My camera that I've only had for a year and a half has kicked the bucket.  I'm kind of lost without it.  So I will revert to my old point and shoot.  The blog must go on.  This post is about the new addition to our family.  I'm pregnant.
Heck no I'm not!!
This is about this crazy girl's love of animals.

She has more than enough love to go around.  You can see how much she loves this guy:

She has been asking for another puppy for a longgggg time.  I finally told her when she can buy the puppy herself, we'll get one.  So she worked, babysat and saved her money until sure enough she found the puppy she wanted.   I wasn't really ready for it but how can you tell that to a girl you've made a deal with?
So we added this little cutie to the family last week.

 Just wook at that witto face!!

Her name is Zipper.   aka Zippity Do Dah, Miss Zip, Zippie, etc, etc.
She's just a little thing, probably 2or3 lbs. right now.  She'll get to be about 10 lbs.  She a chihuahua terrier mix.  So far she's just about the easiest puppy we've ever had.  She knows how to go in & out of the doggy door and loves to go outside.  She's only had a couple of accidents on the floor.  She sleeps when she's tired and plays when she's not.  Her and Zero have become good friends and love to play.  But when he's tired of her, all he has to do is jump on the couch and go to sleep.  It's good for him to have a companion when we're all away from home.  A new puppy is an adjustment for sure, but everyone in the house just loves her.

  And no one is happier than this girl!

lemony sunset bubble clothes

I just put all the words together describing this post.  It's a mish mash.

First off is this lemon cake I made yesterday.  I got the recipe off pinterest, but instead of making the cake from scratch, I just used a french vanilla cake mix I had and sifted it and added lemonade concentrate and buttermilk and egg whites according to the recipe.  Then frosted it with a lemon cream cheese frosting.  Oh my goodness gracious sakes alive it was good.

 Next up is this picture I took of the sunset the other evening.  It was just before a big dust storm, so the clouds were all weird colors.  Too bad it wasn't a big rain storm.

I did a little photo shoot of Isabelle about half an hour before this glorious sunset.  This was our favorite one.  I really like it.

And finally, I really don't like to hang clothes up on the line.  But since I have a nice clothes line and outside is basically like a big hot dryer in the summer, why not save a little extra energy and just do it. By the time I'm done hanging them up, they're practically dry.  Ahhh Arizona.

Hope you enjoyed my lemony sunset bubble clothes update.

She's a Trekky Girl

Oh the Trek.  What can I say?  Except I'm so glad it's here and she's on her way.  Because I'm not really a seamstress, we decided to buy her trek clothes.  Can I just tell you that we went to at least four Goodwills and a Savers about three times each looking for long skirts.  I found several long skirts at each store but they had to pass the Emily pioneer fashion test.  The blouses were pretty easy, but you kind of need to match the blouse to the skirt and if you can't find a skirt then you don't have your outfit.  And you need to match the apron to the blouse AND skirt.  But, we finally got it together.
  Here is Miss Emily Pioneer.

They'll have a great time, I'm sure.

And here's the Fathers Day cake the girls made for their Dad.  Yep, he's a golfer.

San Diego part 2

Last summer we went to San Diego while Phillip had a conference for work.  I blogged about it.  The girls and I got the sunburn to top all sunburns.  Last week we went again.   Same hotel, different conference.  We stayed across the street from the Gaslamp Quarter downtown.  Walking distance to lots of  restaurants and shopping.  A short drive to Sea World.  Trolley hopping to Old Town.  Easy driving to Coronado.  The girls and I had a great time.  I love San Diego.

Here's why:

 Dolphins.  Seriously so cute.

 Rides that get you wet and give you wet ride hair.

Three girls that will pose for me whenever I ask.

A super view from our hotel.

 Biting into a lemon wedge on a dare.

 Bike riding around the oh so lovely neighborhoods of Coronado Island.

 Playing on the beautiful beach.  Sunscreen applied.

 Eating ice cream for dinner, because we can.

Farewell San Diego, until next time.