Craft Room Progress

Now that we've moved the girls into the larger basement area, this left their room that looked like this:

To now look like this.  It was an awful catch all, junk room.

I decided I was going to clean it up and claim it as my craft room.

It's not finished yet, but the progress is coming along nicely.  Especially now that I have Fear Factory masks I can bring home and paint.  I have a space for that!

Tayler and Cali's Bedroom Renovation

Tayler and Cali's room needed an upgrade.

We went from a light blue room, which flowers all along the bottom half of the wall, and modge podge bedding...

To a turquoise room with pink and zebra accents, and a striped wall.

It looks great and fits them so well as they're growing into teenagers.

Over The Weekend.

The summer is coming to a close with school starting for a couple of my kids, and myself, tomorrow, and for the rest of the kids on Wednesday.

The plan over the weekend was to get everything ready for school, which is no small task when you have half a dozen kids, but we got it done.  Done enough, anyway.  There's still a few straggling things I'll have to pick up with the next paycheck, but for the most part we did it.

We got the haircuts done and got the kool-aid dye jobs done.

Tell you what, I can't wait for that fad to be over with.

The kids are excited, and that's a good thing.  We have our first high schooler this year, four middle schoolers, and only one in elementary.

This school year is going to be busy with three different schedules, and who knows what activities, but I have a feeling it's going to be a good one.

Over the weekend The Man and I attended a sushi making class at Rice Basil.  I bought a groupon for the class back in February and had given it to The Man for Valentine's Day.

If you have a spare afternoon, and a groupon, we would highly suggest the class.  We learned a lot about not only the art of making different kinds of rolls, but the art of eating raw fish and not getting sick.

Did you know wasabi counters the raw fish?

I didn't.

I think I should stop skipping it.

Granny Suzann called and invited us to see Footloose at the amphitheater.  So we grabbed the kids who were home and went with her.

"Now we are like Kevin Bacon!" Guardians of the Galaxy Reference.  And also, I can't keep myself from calling it Fooxloose in my mind.  Youth Conference reference (here).

We've taken to rearranging the basement.  We had the three older girls sharing a bigger room, but the bed situation was a little tight on the top bunk.

We also had an issue of keeping the bedroom clean and how exactly to monitor that.

So we've spread the girls out in the larger basement area (pictures to come later) and took all the storage and craft items from the larger area and put it into the room.

I'm claiming it as a craft room.

So this was my project on Sunday morning.  And probably every evening for the rest of the week.  Cleaning out all the junk we piled in there to make room for the girls in the big area, and organizing everything else so I can have my own space.

It's been really frustrating having all my craft stuff out where the kids could get into it whenever they wanted. Things have been lost and broken so many times.  I'm looking forward to having it out of reach.

And I can paint the room whatever color I want.

Coming up this week:
School starts for 7 of the 8 of us
My mom goes through surgery for her breast cancer
Another follow up on my lasik (seeing 20/15!)
Dentist appointments times 6

Also, this week I'm back on my schedule of being a better me:
Running before work (ugh, so early!)
Purposeful study of the gospel every night before bed (starting Talmage's Jesus the Christ (here), I can't wait!)
Flylady routines (here) are back on for cleaning/organinzing

I got thrown off with youth conference but I'm back on it.  I do so much better in life when I have a schedule to follow.  Otherwise, I just get lazy and procrastinate and get nothing done.

Okay, Monday, let's do this.

Cali's Growing Up. NOVA Rockets. SBO Election Posters. A Mess. MC Hammer's Pants.

Yesterday I got home from work and the house was full and busy.

I set myself up on the counter making dinner on the electric griddle (grilled tuna sandwiches with cheese and tomato).

Cali pulls up to the counter and tells me that, at school, she's been assigned to be the buddy of a little boy in our neighborhood.  The little brother of Tayler's best friend to be more exact, and Cali thinks that's pretty cool.  I look up in confusion.  I know the buddy system they have at school.  Big kids are assigned a younger kid to do crafts and projects with.  My confusion is when did my baby girl become big enough to be the buddy instead of the little kid?

She's still so little in my mind and in that moment I realize that I need to be thinking of her as becoming an older kid. It dawned on me that our family is facing a new transition of not just having toddlers, or not just having any preschoolers, but we're on the verge of not having any little kids anymore either.

The Man hauls in with sacks from Hobby Lobby and Tayler and Sean in tow and they start unloading their craft supplies onto the counter.

I pull various items of plates and food items out form under them so I can keep working.

They're making rockets for NOVA.

West is cutting and sanding in the garage, Tayler and Sean are designing and hot gluing on the counter, while I try to finish dinner up.

Cali set herself up with the extra wood pieces and made a rocket too.

As they're using the hot glue guns to put their rockets together we laugh about the time when Casidee was three years old and I made an entire mummy costume with nothing but an old sheet and a hot glue gun.  I had her put on a sweatshirt so I could test how loose/tight the ripped sheet needed to be so she could still move.  I wrapped the sheet around her arm and picked up the glue gun to glue it in place on the sweatshirt before taking it off of her when she panics and starts crying, "don't shoot me!"  I realized that all she knew was that I was holding a glue gun to her arm, and mom was about to pull the trigger on that gun.

It ended up well, I didn't even burn her, and she had a new fascination for crafts.

Brynn set herself up with posterboards and the makings for SBO election posters.

She's running for 6th grade President.

She passed the first round with her application and essay to be allowed to run.  Now it's on to hanging just two posters up in the cafeteria for her peers to see.

I finished grilling sandwiches and stationed myself at the laptop on the counter to print out the pictures she'd need.  Two of herself, and two of her school's logo with the mascot.

She came up with two ideas for what we hope are catchy posters that will help her name stick in people's minds.

Her mascot ends up declaring "Brynn for the Win!" on the second poster.

There's a mess in our TV room as it's under construction again.  This time we're putting in ceiling lights and surround sound in.

It turned out great, The Man does some pretty incredible work.

And a crowded feeling to the office as all the TV room furniture has been pushed into it, along with The Man's desk which is now pushed in a corner.

Last night I snuggled up on the couch with Jayme and Casidee and introduced them to the wonders that are MC Hammer (and his pants) and Milli Vanilli.  We watched a few videos together on my phone, squished in the corner of the couch together, and it occurred to me that as busy as we are, nights like this one show me we're doing just fine in taking care of our family and giving our kids the help and attention they need.  There's always room for improvement, but I think we're doing okay.


After a fumbled attempt at some of the verses and rhymes between The Man and me, the girls were interested in the actual thing.

And the pants, oh the pants.  Cas kept asking, "but why?"

I've been asking that question for over 20 years.(But just barely over 20).

Spit. Chocolate Caramel Bundt Cake. Fire in the Oven.

This weekend I had to admit to the employee at the Fed Ex store that I was shipping spit.

Our oven caught fire.  Except not fire, fire.  More... welding wand fire like a sparkler.

And I made a pretty good chocolate caramel bundt cake and I'm going to share the recipe because it's too good to keep to myself.

Oh, and I studied for my midterm which is today.

Biology is going to be the death of me.

Speaking of biology. I have history of breast cancer in my family.  There's a post on it here, but even better a very recent post here that I just did for my English class.  They explain the history of this but it's a concern for my doctor that I might have the breast cancer gene (brca gene) based on the fact that my mom had breast cancer at the young age of 38.  I guess that's a red flag for it.

We've been trying to convince my insurance to cover the test for the gene since without insurance it's a lovely $3,000.  But my insurance denied the request claiming they needed two generations of evidence of the gene where we only had one.  

The catch is that my mom is adopted so we really have no way of knowing about that second generation.  

Our concern isn't breast cancer so much as it is ovarian cancer.  I guess, according to my doctor, that once ovarian cancer is far along enough to detect, it's too late to do much of anything about it.

So I would like to know one way or the other.  Because if it turns out that I do have this gene, we can just do some preventative surgery to remove my ovaries and not worry about  it.  I'm done having kids anyway.

With my new job I have new insurance so we're trying it again.  

Normally my doctor, who is amazing, would have just sent the test off for me, but it's a matter of spitting into a tube and I, not anticipating that before I went to my appointment, had gum in my mouth.  So he sent everything home with me to do myself.

Saturday morning, a whole week later, I finally brought myself to pull that test kit out.  It came with a small bottle of mouthwash.  Fill the little cup full of mouthwash, swish for 30 seconds, and spit the whole lot of it into the specimen tube.  Twice.

Seal it up in all sorts of different levels of plastic, slap the mailing label on it, and drop it off at your nearest Fed Ex store.  

Except Fed Ex, seeing that it was a medical specimen package, wanted to know, in front of everyone else who was milling around the counter, what was in it?

"We can't always handle these.  You might have to drop it in the box.  What's in it?"  He asks, as he's holding it in the air.  Obviously worried about "not handling it" as he has it in his hand at eye level, peering at it.

All eyes are on me.

"Spit," I announced loudly.  I guess if you can't crawl under a rug you may as well just own it.  Yes, thank you for asking, I am indeed mailing spit.

At least I didn't pee all over it I suppose.

And just for the record, they're allowed to handle spit so it's all good.  

We had a pretty fun get together on Saturday with a few friends and my sister McKell and her man, Scott, who just so happened to be having a birthday so at their request, I made this cake:

I was going to post the recipe but I think I might wait and do that tomorrow since I just had a lovely introduction that included talk about spit.

Tomorrow I'll post the recipe for this cake, caramel and all.

And pictures of what it looks like with 43 candles on it.  Happy birthday Scott. :)

To finish the weekend off our oven caught on fire.

Sort of.  It wasn't the up in flames everyone out of the house type of fire.  It was more of a welding rod, looks like a sparkler type of fire.

Excuse the mess on the bottom of my oven.  Of all the things I take on in my life, cleaning the oven is obviously not one of them.

I might lose good mother/wife points for this, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make right now.  

Brynn wanted to make brownies.  Mom (that's me) was buried in studying for her midterm and dinner was leftover lasagna.  Heat it up when you're ready for it. A far cry from our usual level of Sunday dinner expectations so Brynn decided, if nothing else, they were having hot brownies for dessert.

(Not that anyone was actually complaining about it.  My family has been crazy supportive of my having to do homework and studying.)

She mixed it up and poured the batter into a 9x13 and put it into the pre-heated oven.  A minute later the girls start calling out in panicked shouts, "Mom! The oven is... lighting up!"

So I check it out.  Sure enough.

"Hey babe?  There's something going on with the element."

It was cracked and sparking and even though the oven had been turned off, the sparking wouldn't stop.  This wasn't something either of us had ever encountered before and we didn't know what to do.  West tried to douse it out with a wet paper towel.  

That didn't work.

After several more failed attempts to douse out the sparks, West thought if he cut it we could just pull the burning piece out.  But cutting it made it burn at the new broken end, even worse than it had been.  

I'm not going to lie, we were panicking.  He starts telling me to call 9-1-1 because he can't get it to stop and in that instant he yanks the stove away from the wall and unplugs it to throw the whole appliance out into the yard to avoid starting our house on fire.

And with that it went out.

So.

If the element ever breaks and starts sparking on you, just hit the breaker.  I kind of feel silly about how frantic we felt about the whole situation but I guess if it's not something you've ever seen before and you can't get it to stop after five minutes of effort and suddenly it gets worse...  I suppose we were validated. But now I'm sharing the information.

It's normal.  And it still feeds off the electricity even if it's not on.

Luckily we don't have to buy a whole new oven, just a new element.  I can handle that.

House Renovation. So Far. Before and After Pictures.

Once upon a time we had a waterfall spout from our kitchen ceiling.

Try after try we could not find the leaky culprit so in a five minute decision we took hammers to the bathroom that sits above the kitchen and gutted the whole thing down to studs and subflooring.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Or history in the making since we're not actually done with the whole domino effect yet.

From the bathroom redid the kitchen ceiling which used to have a drop down ceiling and florecent lights.

Then we turned a walk in closet next to the bathroom into a second laundry.

We were already re-doing the plumbing, we might as well, right?

While we're on the subject of tearing up our house, let's work on the main floor.  It needs a facelift.

And though we are far from done with the changes that will be made to our house, I present to you, our house and what we've done so far.

Ignore the fact that we haven't actually decorated yet.

This is just showing fundamental changes.

We'll get to the frilly fun stuff soon.

I hope.

I apologize in advance that a lot of these pictures where taken with my phone and I'm no professional photog so they're not edited or anything for better quality.

Bathroom Before:

We'd already started pulling up carpet, I'm just glad I had the presence of mind to take some before pictures before we really tore into it.

During pictures can be found here here here.

Bathroom after.

Ignore the fact that we don't have mirrors above the sink yet.

 The Man made the room bigger and rearranged the layout.

We now have a private toilet room so the mirrors and sinks can be used while someone needs a little privacy.  Kind of a big deal when you have half a dozen kids.

Quite the difference, huh.

The office before:

We'd already moved the furniture to begin but I'm still glad I got these pictures because the difference blows my mind.

Office during here here

Office so far (since we haven't decorated):

TV Room before:

This room always felt so dark, even with the blinds open and the lights on.

Once again I took pictures after furniture had been moved and we were getting ready to tear into it.

TV Room so far:

(Like the beach towel that we're using as a rug in front of the door to catch wet feet?)

Dining Room before:

Before paint and new floor:

After paint but still before new floor:

Dining Room so far:

It's still a work in progress.

And we still have plans to end our love affair with those pink counter tops.

But for now it's time to pause the tearing into the nitty gritty of the house and start decorating and finishing the rooms we've done.

I'm so in love with this house.

Screw the Mantel, I Don't Even Have A Dining Room Floor Right Now.

Remember to enter for the double book giveaway here.

The Navigator is still in the shop.

On Friday I drove the monster truck.

On Saturday I drove the monster truck.

On Sunday I drove the monster truck.

Do you know what it's like to scrape snow off of windows that are above your head while wearing a skirt and heels?

The Man needed the monster truck today so I'm on my own.  Actually, I was pretty okay with that.  I had some time off saved up at work and I thought, "I can clean up all the messes that have accumulated during the construction of our house and wrap some presents."

So I emailed my boss and told him I still didn't have a car and I would just take a personal day and stay home.

He responded with, "you shouldn't waste your personal days.  You need to use it closer to the holiday when you can be with your kids and be doing Christmas things.  I can send an agent to come and get you."

And I shrugged my shoulders.

Whatever.

I didn't really want to clean anyway.  More dust will be made.

Over the weekend we crossed off two of my December bucket list items (here).  We watched The Muppets Christmas Carol and had a hot chocolate bar.

The pinterest picture I was taking the idea from was this:

{pin}

Let's be real.

My hot chocolate bar was by no means this cute.

And I'm okay with that.  I think we, as mothers, put way too much pressure on ourselves to make the things we do over the top presentable.

I sat the bags and boxes of goodies on the counter and told the kids to have it.

Where they disappointed that it wasn't in individually labeled cups?

No.

And neither was I.

We seriously need to give ourselves a break.  We can't get caught up in the little stuff that doesn't even matter.

My kitchen was full of giggling and excitement as the kids threw all sorts of goodies into their mugs.

This December is starting out on a good foot for me. We only have a Christmas tree up, no other decorations of any kind.  I don't have lights on the outside of my house, I don't even have stockings hung, and I certainly don't have my mantel decorated.

Screw the mantel, I don't even have a dining room floor right now.  (Which is the room where the fire place is).

And yet there is still magic in the air.

The kids laugh together and whisper around the tree.

They randomly break out into Christmas songs at the top of their lungs, or hum them while doing their chores and homework.

They curl up together on the couch while we watch Christmas shows on TV.

They secretly whisper to me about the plans they have for the sibling whose name they've drawn this year.

And it isn't about the decorations.

It's about the feeling.

The feeling of doing things for other people.

The feeling of knowing that we have a Savior.

The feeling that we're a family and we're creating these memories.

*Remember that year when we had to eat Christmas dinner on the office floor around the Christmas tree because we didn't have a dining room floor?*

And we'll giggle because it was the best Christmas ever.

As long as Santa doesn't fall in the holes when he comes down the chimney.

(Also this weekend we tried hot chocolate in the crockpot, another December bucket list item and oh. so. good.  Do it now.  Find the pin here).

(Also, we made these mini peach cobblers.  Like a snickerdoodle with peaches. Do it now. Find the pin here).