Yet another page from the quiet book

Not as exciting as others...but it's in there so i'm sharing it with you! Just a simple shape-matching game but Des really likes velcro and pulling stuff off. I have another couple of pages yet to go but I have to scan them in and my printer is currently in a pile in my hallway. Ya know, with all the other stuff that's been moved so we can finish our floors? Yeah. Kinda makes me crazy but I'm doing my best to keep walking around it and not stress. Big piles of stuff and I don't really get along.

Next page to scan/post is a Noah's Ark page! I got the finger puppets from IKEA so its all ready for action. Soon to be posted!

Helper Des

Can he build it? YES HE CAN!!  Ok, so maybe not build but Des was able to at least WALK around with his dad's spiffy tape measure and pencil. He thought he was pretty neat helping dad with our floors.

Ever pulled up 12 year old carpet? Its yucky. Very, very yucky. Here's proof from only a THIRD of our room. This is the amount of dirt under the carpet pad. 

I don't like to do the dishes

So i'm blogging again! Des got a sweet four-wheeler for his birthday from his aunt LuRey and Uncle Timmy. He's still trying to master it, mostly he wants us to push him (and he knows he has to put his legs up on the front fenders so they don't get caught!) So he'll climb on, stick his legs up, look at me and smile. These were taken a few weeks ago but they're still cute.





Oh and don't be fooled. He didn't actually go anywhere. Just sat there and looked around. He's more partial to his stroller. LOVES it. We go to the park and he doesn't want to play. No swing or slide can compare to how much he loves riding in his stroller. Crazy kid.

Sorry it's sideways

Its what I get for using free software. I tried turning it but it wouldn't save so you get to turn your head instead.

This is Des' favorite new thing to do..."run". Its mostly walking fast until he turfs it but its pretty funny. And at the end you can see his other new thing too: saying "oooh, wow!". He started saying it the day we got back from ABQ and says it all the time now. I have no idea where he picked it up.

And you get to see our new floors! We still have to finish up the kitchen but so far, so good!

While I figure out what I'm doing with my life...

I'm going to let you see another page in Des' quiet book!

In other news, the day after I got home from ABQ, we found out that the hardwood floor place was having a sale so we took the plunge and bought 500 sq ft of lovely wood flooring! So not only was I trying to catch up on laundry and housecleaning, we were tearing up our nasty carpet and scrrrraaaaping up our yucky linoleum and laying down beautiful "Golden Teak" floors. Hopefully we'll be finished with the kitchen this weekend and I'll post pictures. Next on the list: find an area rug and get our state tax return to *maybe* get some carpet for the upstairs. We'll see. I'm kinda tired. Kolt said we're paying someone to put our carpet in though so maybe it won't be so bad.  

That's it for now. I need to take some pictures of Des and his cute little hair-trim my sister did. Apparently last week was the week for haircuts (all the grandbabies on Kolt's side had haircuts, plus me and Des). 

I've returned!

Just got back from good ol' Albuquerque today. The baby is stinking cute, the family is doing great, and I have a headache. We'll try to blog something fun tomorrow or this weekend....

:D

Oh man, Oh man, Oh man!!

I get to go play with this baby TOMORROW!!! Woo-WOO!!  This is my sister's new little sweetie pie and I'm so excited to meet him. He was born this morning just before 1 am. What a cutie!

Cars!!

Ok, so I feel bad to just post the boring, old apple tree for today PLUS I'm super excited to show you my newest page!

The wheels button on and off...and that's about it. Kolt says its dumb but I don't care. It's cute!!  :D

The Finished Apple Tree

I finished the Apple Tree page. I just added the basket so you can stick the apples in it when you "pick" them. I didn't want to do it out of felt because the velcro would just stick. I know its not that exciting but it's something. 

Oh and GLEE COMES BACK TONIGHT!!! AAAAAAAHHH I'm so excited. Oh man. It's replace my used-to-be-favorite-show-Bones-but-then-they-completely-RUINED-the-subplot-that-kept-us-all-watching and I am seriously hooked. 

Piggie Bank Page

I finished this cute page last night and I love it! I had to figure out how to make the "money" and I'm happy with how it turned out. The "coins" are just images I found on the internet printed on silver and copper silky-polyester fabric. Then I sewed with matching silver/copper thread around the images and cut them out. The paper money is actually fabric I ran across at Joann's that was PERFECT. Seriously. perfect for this page. I just cut it out and sewed up the sides. Unfortunately the fabric only had full images of the fronts of the bills so each one has the same image on both sides. But I figured it wasn't that big of a deal.

In other sewing news...I was thinking I might start a different blog where I stick all my quiet book pages and other sewing stuff in. And I'd allow google searches to pick it up (this blog I don't.) Also, the main reason for doing a sewing blog would be to round up contact info for fabric stores around utah because I've found THEY NEVER ADVERTISE IN THE YELLOW PAGES. All the fabric stores around here that I know of are just by accident or word of mouth. SUPER annoying if you are trying to find cute fabric and all you know is Joann's. They rarely have something special that you just gotta have. Perhaps I'd even write a little description of what they offer (i.e. Amy Butler/ or quilting fabric/ or contemporary prints--like IKEA) .

I was going to just have people send me the info as well as asking around for cute places. I dunno. What do all you sewing/crafting/cute people out there think? Would you appreciate the work that would go into this? Is it a waste of time? Am I trying to create a monster?! :)

OR even better... I just had this idea. We could set it up with several authors who could post stuff like projects and info and do it that way. I know several of the cousins are crafty, crafty, crafty... Or we could do the "guest post" thing too if you don't want to commit.

Anyway, let me know. Thanks!

Luckiest kid in the whole world

Des got a sandbox from his grandparents' Davies for his birthday! We tried it out as soon as it got sunny and he loves it! At first we just played in the empty box while we figured out where to put it. Our yard is about the size of the sandbox so it wasn't too hard....

Then once we figured out the perfect spot, we dumped in a bag of sand. We have five more...but one seemed to do the trick for now!

Of course des had to try out how sand tastes...
I was just glad it wasn't the other side of the shovel. Eventually he licked his hand that was COVERED in sand. That didn't go so well for him. But I was happy to see he didn't like the taste.

He even figured out today that when I shake my head and say "no" it means to stop doing what you are doing. Even if he starts back up again just to get the reaction...at least things are clicking in that slightly large noggin of his.

Did I mention that we went to the dr's the other day? His head is in the 95% and his weight and height are both in the 50%. nice. Like an orange on a tooth-pick. :D Except this toothpick weighs 23 pounds! I got me one sturdy baby!

If I had some cash to burn....

I'd totally spend it here!

P-A-R-T-why? Because we GOTTA!!

Des's first bday was CrAzY fun and we had lots of people come a celebrate with us! I LOVE when my sister-in-law comes to functions because a) she's great anyway and we always have fun and b) she has an amazing camera!! YAY! So most of these pics are courtesy of Rachel--THANKS!!

Here's the birthday boy all ready to start digging in! I stenciled his shirt for the big day (get the instructions here on a fantastic blog I read every day!) Easy-peasy and super cute! And a shout-out to Kellie and her bf in the background--yeah!

Here's the birthday cake from HECK it caused me a few hard-to-sleep nights and a little of my sanity. Disclaimer: one of those blocks was harmed in the making of this cake. It may have been attacked by a butter knife with a vengeance. Kolt says I need anger management. I say only when it comes to making crazy cakes. But I was mostly happy with the end result.

Oh man we were excited to see what would happen. We knew it was only a matter of a few seconds....

And then his mom chickened out and put a bib on. "Party-pooper!" we all yelled.

He LOVED the cake, this face has nothing to do with his enjoyment or lack-thereof. He actually ate cake until the gag reflex started kicking in and we rushed in to administer 4 cc's of milk STAT!! (seriously. Gagging, face was red, eyes watering...and my grandmother had a white tablecloth on the table in front. Not good.) But we saved our little patient and spared the tablecloth a chocolate fountain of horribleness.

And then it was time for presents!! Des got as much, if not more, toys as he did at Christmas! It was INSANE but good thing we had a bunch of helpers who were more than willing to open some presents. Des did the usual "open one and was done" thing. I'm still trying to get my head around how great everyone was to bring gifts and hang out and all of that stuff. Thanks again, everyone! It was a great day and a great party!

p.s. look at how long my hair is getting! Ack!! Time for a stinking hair cut. And it looks way brown in this photo too. Dang it. Where's my hair stylist when I need her??!

Des AKA cutest batman ever!

Um, ok I wish this was more centered but it's hard to get a kid on the move to be "centered" in a photo. But its pretty much my favorite photo from the past few days. I just love how he's marching and smiling with his two little teethies. It makes me giggle every time I look at it!

Happy Birthday Des!

I can't believe my baby is ONE YEAR OLD today! This time last year I was starting to push! Aack! But as we got up this morning and he started doing his little des stuff I smiled. Even at 7 am he's pretty stinking cute.

He's chattering all the time now, although refuses to say anything more than "dada" and "alldone" even when he's said "mama" and "doggie" more than once.

He laughs at things all the time, thinks his mommy is pretty stinking hilarious when she pretends to sneeze...

He's got two teeth on the bottom and two more coming in the top.

His hair is reaching baby-mullet lengths and his dad keeps telling me to cut it. :( But I think the red will stay (at least for a little while) so a hair cut would be cute...

He's walking all over the place now, my dad calls him Frankenstein, I call him my little monkey. But that's how we walks--stiff like frank and his arms up in the air like a crazy monkey.

His favorite book is "Blue Hat Green Hat" and he even points to the different animals as we read.

We're working on ditching the bottles...mostly because they're so stinking convenient I'm having a hard time. Des mostly could care less although he does like a good bottle in the morning and before bed. We're on our last can of formula, when that goes so do the bottles!

Des loves going outside, even yesterday when he was at my grandma's he kept walking over to the door and asking to go out.

So I guess that's it for what my muffin is doing these days. His Dr's appointment on Monday will tell us how huge he's grown (weight, not height) so that should be fun.

The next page in Des' quiet book

It's kind of simple but way fun still. The flowers are removable and have pipe cleaners in the stems so they're bendy. We took this to church last Sunday and the little girls behind us LOVED the flowers so we shared.

Sewing the "vase" was tricky but after unpicking the sides a few times I employed my walking foot on my sewing machine and the problem was solved. The fabric was too slippery for the normal foot. I did the top of the vase a little bigger so it hangs out a bit for easy flower-sticking/access.

A service Auction

Last night my Relief Society held a service auction. What's a service auction, you might ask? Well, they passed around a sign-up where you could donate items or service to be auctioned off. I donated Baby Windsor ties but other popular ones were cookies, hair bows, books (I won these!!) , baby sitting, house cleaning, etc... It. Was. So. Fun. !. yes the "!" even gets a period. We all got bidding points for doing stuff like reading our scriptures for the past two months, cleaning out a closet, if we went on a mission, saying hello to a neighbor, stuff like that. We tallied up our points and that's what we got to bid with.

I was a little skeptical at first and a little worried no one would bid on my ties. Oh was I wrong. People were jumping out of their seats, bidding cards waving, prices being screamed out. There were even some harsh words being thrown out during the bidding--"She doesn't even have a baby!!" was heard amongst the crowd. And there were three ties. It happened all three times. Crazy. At the end I had to announce that you could buy a tie if you wanted. That seemed to make people happy. (this makes it seem like people were unhappy but they weren't. Just some friendly competition and we all just went on to the next thing we wanted. It was just funny.)

Other hot items were home made cards, scrapbook stuff, cinnamon rolls, éclairs, a baby tutu, and five hours of babysitting, the use of a cricut machine.

So, for those who are in a planning position for RS, I TOTALLY recommend hosting your own Service Auction. Have the bishop be the auctioneer (unless he's soft spoken, because it gets pretty loud. Our bishop has a big booming voice so it was perfect). It was really fun and cool to see everyone's talents