Transformed $10 gun cabinet... just look at her now!

I actually finished this project quite awhile ago but just haven't been up to blogging lately! It is a cool way to re-do an ugly old gun cabinet. I have to give all of the idea credit to this blog. She inspired me to do it and I searched for months on Craigslist for a cheap gun cabinet and found this one for $10!! Sorry for the horrible pictures but as you can see from the window we have a lot of snow but NO sun! It makes for some pretty lousy photos.
Here are some lovely before shots:

Mine came with the glass still in the door so I decided to keep it. I just had to use a lot of wood filler on the door and drawer where the old locks were. We made the basket part similar to hers.We had most of the wood and the bead board left over from other projects so it really didn't cost me much to finish it. The hardest part of the whole thing was painting it. I decided to try spray paint and it didn't go well. I just couldn't get it to cover really well and it ended up bubbling up in some spots. It was worth a try but I think I will go back to good old latex and a brush for the rest of my furniture projects!

Keep checking good old Craigslist, you never know what good finds are out there!

Caramel apple fun

We had our friends over and their kids to make caramel apples the other night. I haven't made these in years and it was fun!
Next time I would make my own caramel sauce instead of melting down the little packaged ones. They only took an hour to peel off all of the dumb plastic packaging!! They didn't melt right and the toppings wouldn't stick very good. Despite that, the kids had a good time making them and I know they liked eating them!


It was a fun night of carmel apples, popcorn and a movie!!

My house smells like apples!!!

Wow, that was one long break I just had from blogging! The summer and start of school was really a little bit more crazy that I thought it was going to be. While I have been reading your blogs everyday, I haven't been keeping up on my own. So finally this week I decided to get back at this. To start it off I have spent the week learning how to can things. It's been years since I have done it and thanks to my neighbor Kate who asked to do it with me I have figured it out.

We took the boys apple picking the other day and it was a lot of fun. Of course they filled up those bags so quickly that we weren't actually there that long!

I have made applesauce many times but have never canned it so that was the first thing to try. It was very easy and came out great. I even made another batch of strawberry applesauce too that turned out to be my favorite. My kids request a lot of cinnamon in theirs so that is why it looks very dark! This is Aiden helping to peel the apples! He had so much fun but I think he ate more than he peeled!

Today I made apple butter. Again very easy but mine too forever to thicken and in the process made a mess of my stove, floor, range hood, etc. Next time I will use the slow cooker! The final result is so yummy though so it was worth the work! I hope that you are enjoying the fall and apple season too!

Where oh where did August go?????

I think the title sums up things. I have been so busy this summer and it's been great. I really don't want to see fall this year even though I love the season. I am ready for school in a way to get back to some routines and the kids not killing each other all day. I am not ready for tired mornings, homework, major anxiety with my 1st grader who I know is not going to get on the bus until about week 2 of school....Not ready for gray days and bare trees, and no more flip flops and pool!
Well, it's coming and there is nothing that I can do to stop it! We better enjoy the last 2 weeks of summer and cram in all those little trips and adventures that I wanted to do with the kids. See you soon!!!

Odd Goodwill piece made over!

I found this odd little shelf at Goodwill a few weeks ago for $3 and carried it all through the store trying to think of somewhere to use it. I figured for that price it just had to come home with me. So I tried it here and there with no luck! It was always too short or too small. I thought it would be great to store books on in my son's room but his picture books are so tall that they wouldn't fit. So, I decided to turn it into a towel holder for our bathroom. Here is the before picture:
After I knocked out the middle shelf and sanded it down I got out some old paint and gave it a new look. The only issue was the paint was a wall color so it's in a satin finish. I might try spraying it with a clear gloss spray paint when I get to the store. For now, I am happy with how it came out and it works great. Here is the after:

I have another project that I am starting today and I can 't wait to get going on it!!! You know when you see a piece of furniture that someone has taken apart and totally redone and you love it? Well, that is what I saw months ago and I finally found one to start on. Hopefully it won't take me weeks to complete it but it's summer with 3 boys at home!! That means getting very little accomplished everyday!

4th of July pics

We spent a great day at the cottage that I spent all of my summers at. I have tried explaining it to my kids many times but they didn't really get it until they experienced it for themselves. We got to see a lot of family that we haven't seen in years so that was great. This is my mom's side of the family and since she has passed away I have really lost touch with everyone. My kids had a wonderful time!! Here are a few pics of the day....

This one should be last but I don't feel like moving them around!! Just another beautiful sunset over the lake. Aiden was very hesitant to get in the water because there were quite a few waves! After a while he was more daring and went in a little further.

This is Trevor using a raft that has a built in mask so that you can see what is in the water. They loved watching the fish under them!

Here are Karl and Evan taking the plunge together!

They jumped off again and again for hours!

Oh, here is a birthday picture thrown in! The boys help me celebrate a few days ago!

Another try at getting Aiden to smile for the camera. This one didn't go so well!! :)

I hope that you had a great 4th of July!!!

What's the BUZZ around our house????

So yesterday I decided to trim some of our bushes AGAIN. We have had so much rain in the past month that everything is growing like mad. Anyway, as I am cutting away I kept having those pesky June bug beetles fly in my hair and they were driving me nuts. I figured I had to just keep going or I was never going to get done. I started on another bush and cut cut cut and then I was swarmed by about 50 yellow jackets! I was still thinking that they were just the beetles(which never were actually beetles) and luckily I am a huge wimp and ran away. As I walked back over I realized that they were yellow jackets and spotted this...............

Yuck!! That's all I have to say :)

New look for the powder room!

I decided to tear down the wallpaper in our powder room last week because it was driving me nuts. The kids kept picking at a spot and it was growing larger and larger! What a mess!!! That paper did not want to come down and it took me 3 days to completely remove all the sticky glue and paper. I swear we had glue and little bits of paper stuck to all of our feet and throughout the house for days.

This is what the bathroom looked like before:

Now, after(sorry for the bad pictures and colors, there is no natural light):

This room sits at the end of a hall and is always very dark. I need to turn on a hallway light just to show someone where it is! So, I wanted to do a paint color that was pretty light and bright. I found a towel at Target that I liked the colors in so I used that as my starting point. The bright blue color kind of scared me because normally I use the more dark and warm colors in my house. I had an issue with the paint though because when I put it on the walls in that dark space it looked awful. It was way too bright blue and I knew that I couldn't live with it that way. So after I dumped a bunch of white paint with it I came up with a color that I liked. We decided to put up bead board and go pretty high with it. I love that way that it turned out. It looks very clean and bright in there now. I still can't find a nice picture for the walls or something to take up the space so it's not finished yet. I have a knack for starting projects and not finishing them so I need to find something quick! I am also looking for some glass knobs for the cabinet because the old ones just blend right in. Overall I am pleased with how it came out and now will start on painting the hallways which REALLY need some love!

Kids in the park

Here are a bunch of pictures from our day in the park. It was a hot Memorial Day here so we decided to go for a little hike and eat lunch at a beautiful park. Here is Aiden smelling some roses. I couldn't resist posting one of the rose pictures that I took. The smell of the bushes in that area was sooooooooo amazing! All I could think of was my great grandmother's house because growing up I spent a lot of time there and she had the most wonderful rose bushes. I would come home with bunches of them with the ends all wrapped in wet paper towels and then in foil!

The kids enjoying the little water fall. There were kids there who caught a turtle, frogs and a fish.

I had to throw this one in because Aiden cracked me up when I got home and saw this picture. He was hot and tired and wanted NO part of a family picture!

Hanging out on the bridge looking for frogs.

Oh 2 year old boys and cameras are not a good mix! I was thrilled to see we finally got a good one!

Hope that you enjoyed your Memorial Day!!

Making clay name tags for vegetables

Here is a simple project that you can do alone or with your kids to dress up your vegetable garden a little. My son and I took out our left over clay and made up little name tags for the plants. I let him use some cookie cutters or just free hand the shape. Then I used a toothpick to make a hole and spell out the words. Then we baked them and gave them a quick shiny glaze coating and they were almost done. The next part was the hardest! Finding a wire hanger in my house is impossible these days. I took the last remaining two we had and cut them up to make a simple hook and placed them in the ground! It was that easy and he loved to help me out!
Linked up with Hope Studios, Tutorial Tuesday

Baseball cupcakes

I made these baseball cupcakes for my son's team and they were a big hit! Thanks Jennifer at Hope Studios! She had these on her blog last year and I knew they were perfect for snack time. They really didn't take long at all to make and every once in a while it's nice to be able to make a fun treat for the kids. This time I used the red frosting in the tube from Wilton because I ran out of red coloring paste. Last time I just saved some of the left over white frosting and tinted that. I hope this helps for a good idea if you have to bring snack to your child's baseball game!

A night that went from bad to worse!!

So have you ever had one of those days that just went from bad to worse? I am sure that we all have and when you are in the moment of those days, you are not a happy person! But, after it's all over and you look back at it you can laugh!! Well I had one of those days this week.

My husbands grandmother who speaks very little English was flying home the other day and I was the one who needed to pick her up. After some arranging with a great neighbor to watch my oldest child because he had baseball, the plan was to for me to arrive early with my other two and watch the planes for a little bit. Well anyone who flies knows that things don't always go according to plan. I was checking her flight online and saw that it was ahead of schedule so I left early and got there with plenty of time to spare(or so I thought)! I walked in and looked at the arrival screen to see that her plane had landed early but wasn't at the gate yet. So I asked an employee to make sure that I was in the right area for pickup and she assured me that I was. I took the boys to the window and we watched for her plane to come to the gate. We waited and waited and waited. 15, 20, 25 minutes had passed and no grandmother. The 2 year old was DONE with looking at the planes and I found another employee to double check again. This woman said the same thing and said that sometimes it takes a while for the planes to taxi to the gates and for the people to exit. I explained to her that this woman did not speak English and I NEEDED to get her right when she arrived. Again, she could have cared less about my situation and just said to wait. So we went back to the window, chased the 2 year old many times and tried to keep them occupied. By now I am a stressed out mess because according to the screen her plane had landed 50 minutes ago! So now I tell the boys that we are just going to walk the airport and I spoke to a 3rd person about the situation who said just to walk and look for her!

Now, our airport is small, only two concourses, and it was empty at this time of day. No reason for her to be delayed this long. I decide to head to baggage thinking maybe somehow she walked by us and is waiting down there. Nope, nobody down there. Then my 6 year old yells, there she is mommy! There she was, outside in the FREEZING cold with one of the porters on his cell phone trying to call a ride for her! She was so upset because she couldn't remember any phone numbers to call and really can't communicate that well. Of course she was more upset because she thought that something had happened to me and couldn't figure out where I was! It was awful to say the least. She was shivering and had stood for 1 hour in the cold waiting for me. Now why she was outside, we still don't know. The only thing that I could figure out was that she probably arrived at the same time as me and we passed each other. It all worked out in the end but I still feel sooooooo bad about it.

Now I had missed most of my son's baseball game and was debating to just scrap the idea of going. I was still upset and it was so cold and raining. I decided that since it was his 1st game that I really needed to go. I drove over to the school and tried to find a parking spot. Of course there were none at this point. I drove a little further and decided to park on the side street that I parked on last year. Then as many of you know, I loaded myself up with the chairs, toys, diaper bag, sweatshirts and walked across 2 fields to get to his. I watched the last 15 minutes of his game and was kind of glad to not have to wrestle a 2 year old anymore and go home. (Oh and I forgot the umbrella in the car too)!! So I pack everything back up and realize that I better carry my little guy because it's so late and he was pretty much done for the night. Now since my husband is a coach I still hadn't talked with him at all about what had happened and he couldn't help me carry anything because he has all of his stuff and was parked on the opposite side of the school. So we start walking and Aiden says that he has to go potty. I assure him that we will be home in a few minutes and there is no where to go there. Then I hear my name being called. It's a friend who I haven't seen in a while and our sons just played against each other. We chat for a few minutes and all of a sudden I feel my had that is holding my son on my hip being filled with pee! It went through my coat, all over my shirt, down my jeans and starting filling my left shoe! UGH!! Mind you I am still in full conversation with this woman. I quickly say that I need to get him home and start walking for the car. Trevor, my 8 year old is laughing at what just happened and I start laughing too at this point. What else can you do?? Aiden thinks it's hysterical that he just peed all over his mother and he isn't getting into trouble! Good times people!

Now we make our way back to the car soaking wet from pee and rain to find a nice parking ticket on my truck! Are you kidding me??? I just wanted to go home, shower and curl up on the couch! I was so spent by the time we got home.
After everything was done, I am glad that I could look back and laugh but man, that day was not one that I care to repeat anytime soon!!

Fake necktie onesie and holy jeans repair!

Well here is a two in one post. First, I saw this great tutorial a while ago on how to turn a plain onesie into a one of a kind! I have just been waiting for someone to have a little baby boy so that I could try it out. It was so easy and took me only a few minutes to make. I wish I had seen these when I had 3 little boys but they just got to wear the plain white ones instead. The fabric wasn't my first choice but I kind of had to match the orange stitching on the onesie. Plus I had a 2 year old with me that really needed a nap!

Next thing is that anyone who knows those 3 boys knows that we have a serious problem with keeping the left knee of ANY pants from being ripped open. It really only takes a few wears and the knee goes. I have tried so many things and now the oldest doesn't want a patch on his anymore and they look terrible. Even the khaki church pants get worn so quickly and they barely wear them for a long time. Again I saw another smart blogger who has the same issue and they came up with this tutorial. Since I already had the Wonder Under sitting here from the necktie thing it worked out perfectly. It really took me about 5 minutes total and I saved another pair of otherwise brand new looking jeans from the "play" clothes pile. The hole is still there and as we all know that you pay big bucks now for jeans with holes in them already. This way the hole will not get any larger and lose those threads across that make it look better.

Now if someone can help with a fix for wind pants I would be SOOOOOO grateful. My son literally burns/melts the nylon when he slides on the gym floor at school. I have tried catching the rip early and sewing it but it just doesn't hold up. Plus they have that weird mesh lining in them which makes it awkward to sew through.

Well I hope I helped another parent out there today with a good fix for a common problem!!

Derby car

The club that my son goes to at church participates in a derby car race and he has been waiting for the past few weeks to race. Last night he finally got the chance and it was really cool to see all of those boys so excited about what they had made. Here is a picture of his before we changed the wheels(they are nice and smooth now)!!My husband was going to race some other dads but decided to give his wooden block to my nephew who isn't in this group and has never done a derby race before. He was very excited to use the power tools and craft the car the way he wanted it. I didn't get a finished picture of his though :(

Evan is holding my nephews car here because he had to leave early. Here are a few more pictures from last night and Trevor with his trophy for the car that closest resembles a derby car and cool car design. He was thrilled!