I Love My Days Off

Today was a crafty day (my FAVORITE). I made some cute bows for our canadian Gert and her new baby girl, got half way done painting a dresser, and started to prime our night stands from our bedroom! I can't decide with the night stands though if I should paint them black or white? Our bedspread is mostly black with a white design, and I painted our bed frame white. I think the white would help make the room look brighter, but the black would be more striking. So it may take me a couple of days to finish them if I can't decide soon!

should i paint it black or white?

A Change Of Heart

As I was cleaning our room yesterday I took a look at the desk I painted the other day, and thought I wonder what that would look like with a little distress? So with a little sandpaper and 20 minutes.............

TADA! It looks awesome, and is so much more my style. Like my dad kept saying the whole time we were doing wedding decorations "Why do you have to take something new and perfect and turn it into a old peice of junk?" Why? Because it is AMAZING! I will have the whole thing done tomorrow (hopefully), and will post  better pictures

Family Camping

This last weekend we went out to Sawmill Canyon with the Littlewoods for Connors last weekend at home.

 By the time I got off work and Friday, and we got the trailer packed and functioning in Shelley we didn't pull into the campsite until 11:30 that night. Luckily Pres took a energy drink to keep him awake because by the time we got half way there I was out like a light. We just left everything hooked to the truck and went to bed in a very un-level trailer, that was FREEZING. Luckily the heater kicked on in the night and warmed it up a bit, and we had a couple of blankets. We got to sleep in on Saturday (something we NEVER get to do together), and then headed out on the wheeler to look at the gorgeous trees. I took my big camera with me and decided I was going to shoot the whole weekend in Manual. I try to use manual, shutter, and aperture as much as I can, but I chicken out a lot and switch it to auto. So needless to say I took a lot of bad pictures, but I learned a lot and got a few good ones!

When we got back from our ride Kade was up and about, and as soon as he heard the fourwheeler he had to go for a ride. Of course the wheeler wouldn't start until he sang the hakuna matata song. He his so dang funny! "If the world turns your back on you, you turn your back on the world" He's getting very good at performing he starts out loud, gets even louder in the middle and at the end of the song he says the last word very quiet and drags it out. He uses his hands a ton too. I think everyones favorite part was... it's our probem free hilosophy hakuna matata.

The boys needed to sight in their rifles so they could go hunting so we all jumped in the trucks and found a good spot, with a bunch of muddy puddles. Kade loves muddy puddles. You could tell he wanted to jump and splash in them so bad, but he was good and just threw rocks in them.

Microwave Smores

I love to bake, a little too much actually, because I bake sweets all the time! With no family around to share them with we eat them all. It's not too good for our waist lines. So last night when I wanted to make brownies Preston came up with the idea to make smores over a candle. Well we don't have big marshmellows or chocolate bars so we made them in the microwave with mini marshmallows, and chocolate chips. It was so much fun just being our goofy selves.

Preston doesn't  wear a shirt in Pocatello so that he can fit in with all the other high class people here :)

High and Tight

Preston likes his hair very short (I blame Basic Training), if I would do it I think he would have me cut it once a week. So somehow his hair got very long, so this last time we cut it he had a major bowl cut! I tried to talk him into leaving it for a day but of course he wouldn't! I think he can pull it off pretty dang good!

Wedding Pictures

just a few of my favorites

Michelle Fowler Photography

ROTC Family

Preston has been doing ROTC since he started school a few months ago, seeing if that is what he really wants to do within the army. Well today he contracted so we are in for the long haul. After this semester he has four more to go until he graduates. When he graduates he will commission as an officer. Once he commissions, he has to serve for 8 more years. We are almost to the year mark since he joined the army so he will be in for 11 years. It's kinda scary thinking our lives our committed to this for so long, but I know Preston is happy and that he really enjoys being in the guard, so I'm happy. He has already accomplished so much, being platoon guide in basic, getting excellent markmanship at basic, being platoon leader for ROTC, competing in ranger challenge, and more that he forgets to tell me about because he acts like it's no big deal, even though it is. I know that he is going to go far in this carrer and I couldn't be prouder of my solider. It will definitely be hard I know. We will spend a lot of time apart, but we already did that once for four months and I still can't believe how much we grew and how strong that made our relationship. I never in my wildest dreams being an Army wife, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Halloween Clothespins Magnets

Well I joined the rest of the world and started using Pinterest... I LOVE IT! I wish I would have used it when I was planning our wedding, there is so much to find on there. The only problem is I am really bad at having great ideas, and never doing anything about them. So I decided if I'm going to pin all sorts of things that I love, I have to actually do some of them. So...............

I made Halloween magnets! They honestly took about 20 minutes max to do! Just start with a few clothespins, acrylic paint, scrap paper, and mod podge. I painted all of the clothespins except for the front and back. Then cut out strips of papers and used mod podge to adhere them to the pin. Once that is dry apply mod podge ontop of the paper to give it a finished look. I didn't like how it looked with just the straight edges of the paper so I went around the sides with paint to make it all look more connected. I bought magnet tape at walmart (it has adhesive on one side to stick to your object) and just cut a strip into four pieces and stuck it on the back! Easy Peasy, and now after two months of marriage we finnally have magnets for the fridge!

My New Addiction

COUPONS! It felt so good today going grocery shopping, and saving $28.52! Everything I bought was stuff that we actually use too. I hate how on extreme couponing they buy 10 bags of croutons just because they can get them for 25 cents. I think I'm going to do most of my couponing at Albertsons, they have the best deals and I had 3 of there double coupon things!  I saved 63% there (no I am not physco and figured that out on my own it tells you on your receipt)! It only took me about an hour last night to cut out all my coupons and I would say 28.52 a hour is pretty good pay, so I'm definitely going to keep at it! As long as my grandma will let me have her sunday coupons!

COUPONING

I'm excited to give coupons a try. I'm just starting out slowly, I spent a hour or so tonight clipping store coupons and manufacturers coupons, and made a plan. I even have a few doubler coupons for Albertsons, so tomorrow, I'm going to give it all a shot at Albertsons and Fred Meyers. I'm hoping that I figured out all the math right, and that I save some good money! I'll post my haul tomorrow!

Farewell Weekend

This weekend we went to Shelley for Connor's Farewell. We headed down Saturday after Preston did Honor Guard at a veterans funeral, to take family pictures. Everyone was running behind schedule so we didn't have someone there to take the picture like planned, so I gave my camera to Grandpa Littlewood, and gave him a crash course on how to use it. He took a few so I could look at them, and Kade wasn't looking in any of them, so we tried again and got Kade's smiling face. However when I put the pictures on my computer, the second half of pictures looked horrible! I don't know if it didn't focus or if the camera shook a little bit but they did not look the best. I did what I could with photoshop, but it's still not the best. The Littlewood boys are not into taking pictures, so this may have to do for a couple years until Connor gets home.

 After pictures we were playing with Kade out in the leaves on a little 50 bike. It was so funny to watch his face! He couldn't have been happier.

 Sunday Connor gave his talk in church, and did a great job. We had a delicious dinner that Lory made, and spent some fun time with family. It was a great weekend.

Tuesday Stimulus

My co-workers at the bank watch a lot of movies, and the other day they were talking about the last Harry Potter. I had to stop them since I hadn't seen it yet (yes I read the book but still didn't want them to give the movie away). So they told me that on Tuesdays at the Reel Theatre, movie tickets are $1.50, and they have cheap popcorn, and drinks. So I txt Preston and asked him to go on a date with me :). I should have gone home and finished painting our bed but we both had very busy long days, and we decided a movie was just what we needed to relax. The theatre is literally right down the road (about half a block away), so we enjoyed a cool night walk. The threatre was very small it only had two sections of seats but we got right in front and loved the movie. I made Preston have a Harry Potter marathon before he left for Basic Training, and he actually liked this one, since it was more dark, and had fighting and stuff. It was a great date night, and the best part, we spent no money on gas, we got two movie tickets, a popcorn and two drinks for $7.50! We will definitely be going to more movies on Tuesdays!

Bed Remodel

After refinishing my desk, I got the bug to refinish a lot of things in our house. We have NO carpet in the house, every room is either tile or wood floors. We miss not having carpet but the wood floors do look nice, however ALL of our furnishings are wood also, and none of it is the same color. It drives me nuts, I like to have color and diversity (what I would do if I could paint the walls)! So I decided to start with the bedroom. My mom and I had colombus day off (oh the joys of working a federal job) so she drove down to Pokey and helped me work on our bed frame. It was a lot more of a process, than we thought it would be, and I'm glad my mom was there or I would have given up. So to start we had to sand off the varnish, then we put a coat of primer on, while the primer was drying, we ran to Home Depot to get some white paint.

 It's cheaper to buy the already mixed color, but they only had white in semi-gloss, and I was worried that would be too shiny, but then my mom found some that was satin finish. Perfect! We get home start painting the bed and we notice that the smell is so strong, so my mom looks on the can to see how long it needs to dry in between coats, and it says it can take up to 24 hours! We accidentally bought oil based paint! We started to stress because we had used water based primer and weren't sure if that would mess everything up. We called my dad and he confirmed there was nothing we could do, except hope that it wouldn't start to bubble up. So we decided to finish the frame and then go get water based paint for the drawers. So we had to have Preston make a trip to CAL Ranch to get mineral spirits to clean the paint brushes and of course we didn't have any glass cans to use, so I cut off the top of a milk jug, and hurried cleaning the brushes hoping that the thinner wouldn't eat through the plastic.

 We then ran to Fred Meyers (because it's closer) and got water based paint, and finished the drawers. Pretty much the only thing that went right was we got to go to Mama Inez for lunch! I didn't even get the second coat of paint on the bed until Wednesday, so we slept in our front room for three nights, and the house was a MESS! Everything from our bedroom was just put where ever there was an empty space!

 Even after this whole fiasco I still plan on doing our end tables and a chest of drawers, so wish me luck!

Hadley Senior Pictures

I had so much fun taking Hadley's senior pictures, she is such a fun girl and so gorgeous! We found some really neat places to take the pictures, that fit her personality and likes perfectly!



just a few to start out with



Revamp

So when moving into a new house and getting things organized and put away, you realize a lot of stuff you need. My mom gave me a desk from when I was young, that she had painted pink. I absolutely loved it then but now 10-12 years later, it's not exactly my style. I got the idea to paint it black and use it as a side table in our front room. Since I had to go to Shelley this weekend while Preston drilled in Idaho Falls, I took it with me and worked on it at my parents. It only took a couple hours of actual work, the rest of the time was spent letting the coats of paint dry.



before




before




I did one thin coat of off white paint







I forgot to take a before picture of the hardware, but it was a really dull gold finish,
so I just used some silver spray paint and a matte finish coating to keep it looking old




and the after, I just took this with my cell phone but once I get everything on it I'll take better pictures

 I had so much fun doing this! Once we got it home though we decided it didn't look very good in the front room, because it is definitley a desk not a table, so I decided to use it as a dressing table in our bedroom, our bathroom is tiny and I have no room to do my makeup or hair while Preston is in there. I have a big mirror that will be perfect above it, and a metal chair that just needs a new cover to match. I can't wait to start doing more projects like this. I have caught Preston's bug of looking on craigslist, not for trucks but for old furniture!