Cold Cold Cold

It has been so Cold Cold Cold here in Oklahoma. So we lit our first fire in our fireplace!!!

Sorry about the crappy picture it was my taken with my phone. I love having a fireplace...not only is in warm, but you can cook s'mores!!

I also got in the mood to put up a Christmas tree. My aunts Cherie and Kelly gave me this tree since they didn't want it anymore. I went out to Wal-Mart and bought a ton of ornaments and flowers to put on the tree. I had a silver and white theme going on. Then I got home and put all the ornaments on the tree and..I HATED it. So I took all the ornaments back to Wal-Mart and went another route. I had some Christmas ribbon laying around and just started wrapping. I am loving it! It isn't perfect yet. I am still adjusting and it needs a tree skirt...which I am in the process of making!!! Ill add an update when I finish!!

I am love Christmas!!!

Christmas for Thanksgiving!

Over Thanksgiving we were able to go to my parents house. Because this year we are not going to be at my parents house for Christmas we did our sibling exchange during Thanksgiving! It was so nice to spend time with the fam. It has been a while since we were all together. Everyone was there but Rachel, but she has a pretty legit reason...she is on bed rest. We were able to skype her after our thanksgiving meal and that was fun!

Every time we have taken a trip to or from Oklahoma there has been crazy weather. This trip was no exception. Check out this crazy fog we drove through for about 2 hrs.

Here are some pictures of the Christmas exchange.

I got some sewing stuff: pins, safety pins, elastic, marking pen and a tape measure. I really needed it all since I have been doing some sewing!

 

 

 I had Matthew! He got some cool T-Shirts!

Chris had Aaron, for some reason we don't have a picture of him opening his present but he got Fievel Goes West and An American Tale!

 Can you guess whose present this was??

These are the presents that I made for all the girls. Leather Bow Bracelets and Hex Nut Bracelets.

 We also gave my mom and dad their Christmas presents. My mom asked me to etch the Charity scripture for her and my dad wanted 125 grain 30-06 Remington bullets!

Judging from the leftover paper it everyone had a pretty good time!

This is Dalin pretending to be a turtle...

We also celebrated Bryan's birthday. He is such a kid...check out the train cake that he requested!

Trunk or Treat!

Happy Early Halloween!

Today was our wards trunk or treat. I LOVE dressing up for Halloween and giving out candy to all of the kids in our ward. This year we were also asked to be on the activities committee. 

I spent all day getting ready for tonight. 

I bought and bagged candy!

I baked Cupcakes! They are s'more cupcakes. They have a graham cracker crust, chocolate cupcake and a marshmallow melted and toasted on top! The relief society was doing a cupcake walk and I volunteered to make some of the cupcakes.

 I carved Pumpkins! These were going to go in our trunk, but it rained, so we had the trunk or treat in doors. Luckily these are fake pumpkins with led lights inside, so we brought them in!

 I made chili. It was my first try, and as you can see by this picture, I think it was a success.

Then it was time to get dressed up. Chris came up with the idea to be "tree huggers" Chris went as a tree and I went as a hippie!

For my costume, I already had the pants. I bought the shirt at Earthbound Trading Company at the mall and I almost bought the vest in the picture below too, but it was $22.00 which I thought was a little expensive...

But after trying on my costume at home without a vest I decided that I needed one...so I made one for FREE instead of going back and buying one.

 

Me and My TREE!! (in case you are wondering, he only had a white long sleeved shirt, so he is a sycamore tree!)

Besides dressing up like a tree, Chris put together a groovy playlist to play on his ipod dock while we gave out candy. The Who, The Byrds, Moody Blues, CCR, Jimi Hendrix, The Mamas and the Papas, Cream, and Iron Butterfly were just a few of the artist that our trick or treaters heard when they came to get our candy!

This was our favorite costume of the night...Baby Einstein!!

I love Halloween!

What I Do With My Time Now

Ever since I got the craft bug about a month ago I had been finding some really cool sewing patterns that I wanted to try. The only problem, I didn't have a sewing machine and you can only use fabric glue for so much. (I used it on the my place-mat pillows and it is already starting to come undone) I found pinterest and my desire to have a sewing machine only increased! Then...about two weeks ago one weekend when Chris had a huge amount of homework I decided to home and have some family time. On Wednesday of that week my mom called me and said that someone was GIVING her a sewing machine. It was an older machine and she wasn't sure if it still worked, but she was going to take it in and have it looked at and if it was good, then I would get to keep it. A couple days she called and told me that it was in fact a great machine and now she was considering keeping the "new" machine and give me her machine. My mom used to have a great machine, it was her mothers, but earlier this year it broke and it was going to cost too much to fix it, so had to buy a new singer. It wasn't as good as her old machine but it was still a good one. I didn't care which machine I got I was super excited to be getting any machine. Long story short, mom kept the older "new" machine and I have her machine! 

The first thing I did was fix Chris's shorts...

The first fun thing I did was sew a new Temple Bag!

I didn't take any pictures of the process because I was learning a new sewing machine, but I LOVE the finished product.

 It transforms into a garment bag for my temple dress!

There is also a large pocket on the front to hold all of my other temple stuff.

 

 My 'new' sewing machine!

 The sewing desk was my mom's and my grandma's! I wish I had a picture of the machine that my mom kept. It came with the coolest sewing table I have ever seen. It had so many drawers and shelves. The coolest one was a secret shelf that you pulled out of the top of the desk that held spools of thread.

 

This is my mom's old machine, the desk was made for it and it tucks in when you aren't using it. It was going to be thrown away, so I decided to keep it with the desk. It has a lot of memories with it and I think it will look cool in my 'way in the future' sewing room!

Now the only thing to decide is what to sew next!

Gettin Crafty With It

These last couple of weeks I have been getting into a DIY mood! I keep looking at crafts online and then...my sister-in-law Natalie introduced me to Pinterest. I can't get enough of it!!! 

Anyway....

The other day I was looking at crafts online and found this blog! We had been looking for an ottoman, but when I saw this I knew that I had to have an ottoman like that!

So I made one...

I found an old coffee table on Craigslist and bought it for cheap

I didn't like the color of the legs so I sanded them and painted them a dark walnut

about halfway through sanding one leg I realized that I could remove the legs, and that made sanding easier!

Next I decided and marked out where I wanted my tufts.

Of course I had HGTV going in the background!

Then I added 2in of foam and about 1in of batting.

Now the hard part...picking the fabric! I was dreading but also excited about this part. It was super hard because I wanted the ottoman to look good in the room not only now but in the future no matter what decor we have!

There were so many options!!!!!!!!!

I finally ended up on this one!! and I am sure glad I did!

Now that I had the fabric, I needed to cover my buttons I was going to use to tuft. This part took FOREVER! I had seventeen buttons to cover but it felt like 100.

Then on to the tufting. As far as work wise goes, this was the WORST part of making the ottoman. It was also the part that Chris helped the most on. In a nutshell, I drilled small holes where I wanted to tuft buttons. We used an upholstery needle and some thick thread/string and pushed the needle through the bottom then threaded the button back on and then pushed the needle back through the hole and stapled and hot glued the extra string on the back of the table. That sounds pretty easy until you realize that when you press the needle back through the foam and batting you have to find the tiny hole blind, which took some a lot I mean A LOT of time!

After tufting I pulled the fabric and stapled it under the table...

...and TA DA! a new ottoman! I am in LOVE LOVE LOVE with our new piece!

As you can see in this picture I have been playing with adding some trim to the legs...but I am still thinking about it!

What do you think??

On another note I completed some small projects too.

One I made...

Place-mat Pillows!

The other two I didn't make..

New Curtains...that are long enough (maybe too long)...

 Next LAMPS! I found these at Wal-Mart and think they go great in our space!

 We also purchased the Civil War end table under the lamp, it is a little short but I am working on a way to make it taller!

And that ends my DIY crafting of the last couple of weeks blog! 

I can't wait to figure out what I am going to do next!