Sweet Land of Liberty

What a fun 4th of July we had this year with lots of friends and family! A good friend and her fam came to visit from HOTLanta and it was so good to see her and catch up!
The kiddos had a blast with the fireworks!

A pic of the girls actually getting along. Too bad that a couple of minutes later, one was whipping the other with their glow necklace! Awww cousin love!!

Guess who??

Miss Pretty helping Daddy make homemade ice cream in our circa '75 ice cream makers!

This is always my favorite time of the year! Lots of fun memories!

Levicorpus!

So I went (like many fellow muggles did) and saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on Friday afternoon with my homegirl Gina! (aka: sista)

LOVE, LOVE, LOVED it!! Glad I didn't read the book right before so that I wouldn't sit and pick apart everything that was different. I could see it 20 more times!

(P.S. also loved the preview of "Breaking Dawn" that was at the beginning! Wheweee. . . gonna be good!)

We were invited to the cutest birthday party a few weeks ago. (speaking of Harry Potter). My good friend Camrann's son invited Miss Pretty to ride on the Hogwart's Express. Check out the fun pics:
Miss Ava gettin' tipsy on some Butter Beer (just rootbeer I promise!)

Operation Transformation has begun. . .

Just wanted to give ya'll some updates on some of my projects that I posted about earlier (see posts below).
Here is the "Before" shot of my new craft chair:

Here's the "After". Still not sure that I'm smitten with the aqua blue. It may or may not be red the next time you see it :)!

Here is the "Before" shot of the future home of "Corky's Craft Corner" - wow that was cheezy!!

And here's the work in progress. . . .

This is the stage we're at right now. Mostly painted, ready for some more shelving, peg board, my folding table and all my junk!

It sure is a lot brighter with the white paint in there. The hubby is going to be putting some lighting in there for me too. Never a good idea to use scissors in a dark closet. . . just sayin'! We found lots of treasures while cleaning it out, that I have been looking for. All of my holiday flags were stashed up there and I'm still not convinced that the hubby didn't bury them up there on purpose! Stay tuned for an update. . . .

We went to Idaho this past weekend. I always LOVE hitting the yard sales with my Yard Sale mentor. . .my mother in law! She knows her stuff. Well, here's the best yard sale story ever! We headed out Saturday morn, with myself, hubby's sis, and my MIL in the Malibu. It's got a BIG trunk and we'd already hit some yard sales and almost filled the trunk with toys, books, etc. In the back seat was sis and a bike that we'd found for Miss Pretty and the car seat. Well we're cruising through a neighborhood, when all of a sudden, we see some recliners and a "Siesta Sak"
with signs on them that say "FREE!" I got out to inspect the Siesta Sak because I couldn't imagine anyone giving it away for FREE! It looked perfectly fine! Now the decision came. . . how are we gonna get that bad boy home?? Well, we tried the trunk. . .full. Back seat. . . full. So we got creative and put everything in the trunk:
I was so proud of my MIL. . . .springing into action and even fashioning a rope out of a garbage sack to tie down the trunk so none of our treasures fell out!

Next was the real task. . .getting that sucker into the back seat!! Just close your eyes and imagine my MIL on one side pulling and myself and sis on the other pushing and shoving. At one point the Jehovah's Witnesses walked past and were wondering what on earth we were doing!! I could even hear the neighbors across the street giggling from their window. But hey, we got it in there!

When we got back to the house we opened that door that this is what it looked like! Hilarious! We took the cover off and washed it and it's in perfect shape. We of course still had to shove it into our jeep for the drive back to Utah. FUN fun!!

Some other summer projects:

Here's Miss Pretty painting a bird house for our tree:

And here's the "After" of the deer picture frame that I talked about in an earlier post. It looks much better and I love this pic of the Tetons!

Kris Kross will make ya JUMP JUMP!!

I'm so excited to share this funny story!

A few weeks ago, I got a call from my lil' bro asking for a favor.

He sent me this pic:

This is his bestie Nate and Nate's lil' bro. Nate is like a brother to me and I was happy to help out. . . .that is until I found out what my task would be. :)

I was given some gray courdoroy fabric, some different colored felt and some buttons. I was also given my own copy of this pic and was asked to fashion some adult sized jumpers for the boys to wear to surprise their mom for her birthday.

Quite a fun project considering that I'm very far from being any sort of seamstress. But Gracie and I made the best of it, as you can see:

And I have to say, I was pretty proud of my sewing skillz!

The best part was getting the pics of them on! Here are some, but for the full effect, check out my Facebook page. There's a video that I posted at the end of June and it will make you cry with laughter!
This one's my fave!

Thanks Nate for letting me be a part of this!

My Summer Project Preview. . . .

Now that summer is finally here, I have some big projects for myself and our family!! #1 Get organized! #2 update mi casa so that we can enjoy it!

Operation Organization:

Our lovely home has 3 bedrooms. One occupied by myself and hubby. One occupied by Miss Pretty. One looks like this:

Yikes right?? Well it's supposed to be a craft room, but instead it has become a "catch-all" for all the junk that we don't know what to do with. Somewhere under there is a table with my scrapbook supplies and a cricuit. But it might take a while to find that! :)

So you're probly wondering "Why are you showing us your junkiness??" Well people, I'm going to be condensing that up there to fit into this closet:

Envision with me, if you will, a "craft nook" that folds away when we need to access our crawlspace (that's filled with lots of other treasures). It should be a fun and interesting transformation. I will have to declutter and dejunktifiy a lot, so if you call me and I'm in tears, it's only because I may have had to part with something! :) We're hoping that room #3 can be a guest room until the day comes that we finally have another babe!

On to operation transformation:

This dazzling "civil war" chair (okay not really, family joke!) was sitting on the side of my MIL's house just begging to come to Utah! She's going to be part of my "craft nook". I'm heading out pretty soon here to pick up supplies to give this beauty a makeover!! Stay tuned. . . .

And last but not least, I found this at a yard sale. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE yard sales?? It's amazing what one can find for a fraction of the retail cost! Anywho. . .I brought this bad boy home and said "sweety. . . come and see what I got for you!" I thought the deer print was pretty humorous and I bought it strictly for the frame! Well he couldn't believe that I would throw that away! He snatched the print right up and said "you can't throw this away! It's signed and dated 1979! It's valuable!" It's currently hidden between our mattresses right now! I will update later with what I ended up doing with the frame!

Look out Piccaso. . .

I've been very inspired by some fun blogs that I've found. I've listed them on the left. They do amazing things with junk and I'm just in aww of how they are able to do that! Well, I decided to start some fun projects of my own and try my hand at all that creativeness!!

A few months ago, a friend of mine gave me this cool looking chair that belonged to her grandmother. It was part of a very cool retro 50's dining set. I tried for the longest time, to think of something funky to overhaul the chair. Finally one day a couple of weeks ago, I need to channel some of my craziness! So I stopped into my least favorite store and picked up some spray paint, fabric and decorative thumbtacks. Enjoy the transformation!

Before:

After:

Work+Calling+Family=CRAZINESS!!

It has been a LONG time since I felt that I had a minute to sit and blog!! So sorry! Life has had me running around like a crazy person. . . oh wait. . . I am a crazy person!! May and June were a bit of a blur for me. Work was craziness and not a place I wanted to be, but felt like I spent the majority of my time there :( Boo! My calling had me busy busy! I felt like I taught or spoke every week! I taught 2 coupon classes, spoke in sacrament, taught 2 R.S. lessons and conducted all of May! Those poor sisters couldn't get rid of me if they tried :)

And then I was supposed to find some time in there somewhere for my family?? But I made it! It's July 1st and here I am, sittin' on my duff, blogging again. . . aaaahhhhh. . . feels good.

As you can imagine, with all that, I didn't get too many pictures taken, but the ones that I did, I will be posting in this post and the ones above.

A month or two ago (I can't remember, isn't that sad??) we had a sibling day out. It was much needed, as I often have withdrawals when I don't see my bros and sistas often enough! We took the chitlins to a Jump n' Bounce place. HILARIOUS!! We giggled and laughed all day! Then we went to my bro's after that and laughed some more. I just love my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews! Here are some pictures from the bounce house fun!

I was surprised Miss Pretty attempted the big daddy!