We are crib-free

As of today, we are a crib-free home. The baby swing also moved out, less than 24 hours ago, and a big wooden shelving thing for toys--not shown--(since I've purged all the 'baby' toys that Brent hasn't used since early this year). We are going to keep the playpen for now, maybe by this time next year it'll be out too, and a new toddler-size toybox from Target has moved in. I love that it's just the right size for the amount of toys he had, and that there are NO hinges! Can't tell you how many times each of the older kids have gotten fingers pinched in toybox hinges.

Here's the before(just over a year ago, when we finished construction, carpet & painting and we had barely started moving Brent and his stuff in):

Here's what it looks like now:

Stop to smell the flowers

Brent thinks it's so funny to smell flowers. He is kind of sick today with a fever. I had him on my bed while I stopped in the bathroom for a minute. When I came out, I found him trying to smell the flowers on my blanket.

Sneak peek at our Christmas photo card

This year I made our family a Christmas photo card using Photoshop Elements. I had wanted to do this last year, but it didn't happen. These are the only recent family pictures we have with everyone. They're from a wedding reception we went to this summer, and they had a photo booth(so the bride & groom knew who was who in their guestbook). Collin loved it! May have to try this again next year, since it's so hard to get everyone to be in the picture especially with Brent literally on the run. You can click on the picture to make it bigger/more readable.

Here is another version of it, with ages added. Not sure which I'll be sending out.

Christmas decorating

Let me preface by saying, I have no qualms about decorating for the holidays or others who choose to. We tend to stick to doing our Christmas tree, sometimes hang up the kids' holiday artwork from school and that's typically the extent of our decoration. Not intentional, but so far about every other year we put our Fisher Price nativity set out.

Our neighbors, we love them to death, LOVE holidays. To say they go all out in decorating is quite the understatement. They like it, the neighborhood likes it, and our kids like it.

This is how they decorated this year(my first time using the panoramic feature on the camera):

We had gotten to talking with them about decorating, and they suggested we do this(below) for our house for some laughs. It's all in good fun, and they were helpful enough to give me some pointers, since I've never done outside decoration with lights and I know there are certain things Tom doesn't want to do so I don't ask him to help with those things much. I think it turned out okay for having no clue how to do words with lights. I wish we had some black electrical tape to cover the parts in between the letters. Spells "Ditto" and the arrow points to our neighbors' house.

Almost forgot, here's our Christmas tree. The kids liked playing in the tree box after we set it up(only a 2 piece, 6 foot artificial tree). And a picture of Collin, since I didn't have a Thanksgiving one of him.

Thanksgiving

We had an awesome Thanksgiving week! Kids were off school the whole week(that wasn't the awesome part, lol). I was ready to send them back by Saturday afternoon, maybe earlier. We had one of my younger sisters & her husband and their little baby girl come stay with us the whole week from Northern California. The kids were excited to play with a cousin, albeit much younger(turns 1 on Christmas day) and it was a much needed pick-me-up for me.

Didn't have any big plans for the week, but we managed a trip to Souplantation(the kids' first time, and I must say for 5 kids--2 under 18 months--and 3 adults it went VERY well. Much better than anticipated), and two times out with my sister while the hubbies watched the kids, and we also saw some chick flicks.

I got our first, non-mantle, family pictures up before she got here. One set was taken right before Tom went off to Kuwait and the others I took the Sunday before Thanksgiving and printed them out the next day.

Halloween pics

Here are our belated Haloween pictures. The kids made out like bandits between trunk or treat and once around the neighborhood. Drew had so much in his basket the handle broke before we were home. I ended up having to make Ivy's "Dorothy" dress myself, all in 1 day(jumper w/darts in front & back & zipper) since the costume I had bought ended up being way too big and I wasn't able to return it. In case you couldn't tell, Brent was seriously in love with his costume. He even kept the hat on, which amazed me.

More Halloween decorations

Here's our take on these "Spirit Jugs"--originally found here, with all the directions.  http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2010/09/todays-project-spirit-jugs.html

We did google to find all the images. I let the kids pick the pictures & I free-handed them with a sharpie. For the left (Drew's), I reversed the colors of an image I found so the light would shine thru better. It's a mummy, in case it's not that obvious. I chose the middle for Collin, since he was getting to bed. Ivy chose hers & was happy to color it in by herself. The eyebrows were a last minute decision. Hopefully, we'll be thru 1 more gallon of milk by Monday so I can make one more. I cut holes in the back with a utility knife and tried out some colored Christmas lights, since we don't have white or clear Christmas lights.

Haven't made the other Halloween decorations yet, since I discovered the printer does not want to print on anything thicker than regular printer paper. I was hoping to print the images on a heavier paper, but it didn't work out that way. We still may make them, just not till this weekend & then hang them up by the door on Monday.

Halloween decorations

I'm not one for really for decorating for holidays besides Christmas, but I just found these and this is too cute & easy to pass up!

The directions(and printouts) are on this page: http://papercrave.com/paper-crave-halloween-freebies-halloween-garland-two-ways/

Pinterest.com

Just started up a Pinterest account, and let me say this: it is so fun! It's virtual inspiration boards. It's nice because I can put all the things I like together, and find it in one spot. Plus, it's not taking up space in the house and things aren't being thrown away/moved around. I've been "pinning" a lot of home decorating/organizing ideas, clothes ideas, hair ideas, photo layouts, family picture poses/outfit ideas.

Thru that, I found the link to this blog post about finding family picture poses online & making them your own. http://www.homestoriesatoz.com/2011/08/how-to-prepare-for-fabulous-family-pictures-family-pictures.html

A tip I found there was to google "what to wear photography" and click images, and up will come hundreds of coordinating outfits for the whole family. One thing I have noticed, as far as the decorating & the fashion, I like nice stuff. It just doesn't look that way in all of our house yet, or the way I dress. I'm still learning to find my way/style. You'd think at 30, I'd have more figured out by now, but that's not the case. Also, it's hard to have nice stuff & still have it be nice and be kid-friendly. I think I also have mildly expensive taste, which is why we don't have a lot of "nice" stuff. lol

Anyway, here's the link to my Pinterest account. If anyone's interested to make one for themselves, I can email an invite.

http://pinterest.com/icab/

P.S. "Icab" has a double meaning. First being, the initials of all the kids. Second, somedays I feel like I'm a chauffer transporting kids from one place to another.

Shooting at Seal Beach hair salon today

For those who aren't local, this is about 10 miles from our home. So tragic this happened. The irony of the situation is that I was at another hair salon today just 2.5 miles away and had just left the area less than 30 minutes before this happened, to go get kids out of school--early outs this week. Didn't have my cell phone with me at the time, but on Tom's way home from work this was all over the news and called to check on me. We're sad it happened in such a nice, quiet area but so incredibly thankful that I'm okay and that the salon I went to was not where the shooting took place--especially since I had my consult today & found a really good stylist! From the tidbits I have heard/read  from people who are familiar with the salon involved, is that the shooter was an ex-husband or soon to be ex-husband of one of the stylist. What a poor choice that man made to involve so many people. Now the owners of the salon, as well as others, are dead.

http://news.yahoo.com/8-killed-southern-california-salon-shooting-234451134.html

So cool!

One of my sisters found this online. It shows 13 pieces of clothing(2 are shoes) and how to mix up the pieces for a whole month! I'm going to have to go through my warddrobe & pare down. This is great for the warddrobe challenged like me. Here's the link:

http://bananarepublic.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=72560


Here are a few screenshots I saved.

The calendar:

Halloween

Can't believe it's almost time for Halloween again. Here were the kids' costumes last year. We had Collin as Larry the Cucumber(Veggie Tales), Drew as Bob the Tomato(Veggie Tales), Brent was a "top banana"--found at Burlington Coat Factory when I was looking for something else, and Ivy was a "Geisha girl"--I made the kimono and belt.

This year, Brent will be a scarecrow, and Drew wants to be a lion(we have a vest thing from when Collin was younger but he really didn't like it). Not sure what Ivy will dress up as, maybe Dorothy from Wizard of Oz since we'll have a scarecrow & lion? Collin will likely be Larry the Cucumber again because the costume is so tall and he doesn't have any qualms with it.

Here's the picture of Brent's costume:

Here's the one picture I have of Collin with the lion costume from four years ago.

Shear Frustrations

A first: something I've never blogged about. Let's just preface this by saying, I have never had such horrible haircuts in the past 15 months as the other past 11 years of being married. Basically since Brent was born. Got my first post-baby haircut when he was a couple months old. It was cute, but high a-line in the back & heavily razored. Took 8 long months just to get it back to square one. Fast forward to 4 months ago.

I had an old friend who, like me has naturally curly/wavy hair. She had just gotten an amazing haircut & was asking around how to duplicate the look on her own at home. Someone had mentioned to google "Curly Girl Method." Intrigued, I decided to do the same. Basically, there is a book called Curly Girl: The Handbook by Lorraine Massey on Amazon.com that explains the best way to take care of curly/wavy hair. The jest of it is going shampoo or sulfate-shampoo free, as well as avoiding silicones & alcohols in hair products.

I have 1 rebellious hair strand by my face that likes to be straight while the rest of my hair does not. A couple months ago, it had grown quite long and I had cut it on my own (HUGE mistake, I have NEVER done that before and never will again) and ended up getting it fixed by a professional. A couple weeks ago, it was looking rather nice, at an almost shoulder length but I had been bitten by the short hair bug. Despite multiple people telling me to keep growing it longer, I went in for a short trim and well now it is up by my chin. The irony is it was cut by a lady who says she has curly hair--I think she straightens it a LOT though. I told her this last time: no razor, no texturizing, no a-line and she acted like there was nothing left to do with my hair.

It looked okay until the first time I washed it and now a week & a half later I am at my wits' end trying to figure out if I should stick it out again or go to a different salon that specializes in curly hair so that it can be fixed. It's not responding to my usual styling & won't do what I want. The cut would be a lot more than I usually pay--but I typically end up going to one of the cheapest places in town. If I go and get it "fixed" agin, it should grow out awhile before needing a trim--several months because it's a different type of cut. Cut dry & customized to me--called DevaCut, created by the lady who wrote the Curly Girl book. There's a salon less than 10 miles from me. I found it from a website called NaturallyCurly.com and there's a Salon Finder as well as a review section. At any rate, maybe I just need a consult and see what's recommended for products. Could just be a need to change product or needs more layering, like I suspect it does.

the cut that started it all:

8 months later:

About a month ago at a wedding reception:

A couple weeks ago(took with the webcam on our sort of broken-but still functional laptop): not terribly bad but the layers were getting long & weighed down.

The 24th:  this is what I ended up with. Literally hated it less than 24 hours later.

Saturday, the 1st(one week later)--ironically this is after having washed my hair & styling it.

Yeah, so maybe I should go talk with someone who specializes with my hair type.

And for reference, this pic below was 2.5 years ago, while Tom was in Kuwait so somebody knew how to cut my hair:

Smart-alecky maternity shirts

Thought these maternity shirts were so funny! We are more done than a Thanksgiving turkey though. Found the link from my mom.

http://blogs.babble.com/being-pregnant/2011/08/25/these-hilarious-maternity-t-shirts-almost-make-me-want-to-be-pregnant-again/

11 Years..time flies

This summer Tom & I celebrated our 11th anniversary. I made him a small book of "Top 11 things I love about you." I found directions online and I'll try to find the link to it if anyone's interested, but you cut out close to 4"x6" size of cardboard(we used cereal boxes) and cover both sides with scrapbooking paper. I wrote a few things in it(one per page), and hole punched three holes on the left vertical edge & tied with elastic ribbon. Oh, and I decorated the front with a scrapbook paper that had an alphabet on it, to give it a ransom-note type look.  I had originally cut out the cardboard and covered it, in the hopes someone or multiple someones would do a "top 30 things about you" for my 30th birthday this year, when we had friends over--my 1st ever "birthday party" that I invited people to--but that book didn't pan out since it was pretty busy and subtle hints don't work..lol

This was #4 on my list: his singing. He made videos when he went to Kuwait almost 3 years back of his reading books to the kids. This one, he sent to me for our Valentine's Day apart. Obviously, he adapted the words to "Hey There Deliah" a little bit. He also had serenaded me, with a different song that spoke so much of our relationship at the time, when we were dating with a song in our singles' ward's talent show. Both times made me cry because I know he loves me so much.





For our anniversary date, our dear friend/neighbor watched the kids. It was our first date without Brent. We ate at Sizzler and afterwards went to the beach and walked into a head-on wind! It had been hot the whole week, but it was ice cold for being a summer evening.

Blog Makeover

Thought I'd revamp the blog a little since the family pic in the header & the pics of the kids on the sidebar were getting outdated. I had fun playing with digital scrapbook stuff in photoshop for both the header and background. I've rearranged some stuff too. The short blurbs on the kids w/pics that used to be on the sidebar are now in something called page tabs that are across the screen under the header. There's one for each kid, as well as some tabs for links & quotes(I'm still working on the pages). Just a more streamlined look I guess. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the "home" page, you'll find the blog archive list that also used to be on the side, as well as a new feature that Blogger has to get email updates when there are new posts.

Big News--Backyard

Can't believe I forgot to put this in my updates, but we finally got some sprinklers & sod put in our backyard right in time for Collin's birthday in early August. We had a couple spots where nothing would grow after construction last year(like where they had put their main trash pile--we had opted to dump the last of construction trash to off-set the cost of having a heater vent in Brent's room that the architect forgot to put into the plans.)

It's so funny, because for a couple weeks Brent didn't know what to do on the grass barefoot & would run off.

Before:

Rota-tiled & evened out:

After:

Did get that last piece of sod put in, but never took an updated pic