Deer in the city????

Ok, so we don't actually live in the "city" but we are in Mt. Pleasant City even though we consider it more of the country.   Last week we saw this cute couple across the street at the neighbors house just hanging out.....

Didn't see this very often at our old house.  

A New Chapter....

Things have been a little quiet here in blogland for me.  However, things have been less than quiet at home.  For the last several years (yes I mean several) we have had our house on and off the "For Sale" list.  It has been a long journey, lots of showings and an endless count of trying to keep the house clean.  A little more than a month ago, we received and accepted an offer on our house.  Let the craziness begin.  We were given 3 1/2 weeks to pack up and move out of our house - all at the same time I had to work up until the day before the moving truck shows up. 

And so the journey began:

The house is packed up and ready to go.

The moving van arrived right on time - we had the coolest driver ever.

There goes my baby (baby grand that is) up the driveway and into the truck:

And here we are crossing the state line to our latest adventure.

Yes, we have made a full circle back to where we started - It's nice to be closer to family after being away for over 10 years.  So...stay tuned for our adventures in the country.

FYI:

Rolls of packing tape - 24

Rolls of Bright Orange Duct Tape -  2

Number of boxes - 100's (or so it seemed)

Being closer to family - PRICELESS

A little bit of organization

Ok - so my cabinets in my sewing room were starting to look a little pathetic.  Everything was just getting thrown in wherever and I couldn't really find anything when I wanted it so I figured it was past time to do something about it.

I headed down to Michael's to buy some photo boxes (since we don't live close to an IKEA - had to make do) and I think the cashier was thinking I was a little crazy buying about 15 of them (they were on sale) - but hey, they work great and I love them.  What do you think?  This is just one of the cabinets that I organized.

Before: (sad I know)

After:

Now everything has a much better and prettier home and hey I can even find things now.

On to our next project

I thought we were done painting but no such luck. Sierra has decided that it is time to give her bedroom a face lift. After all she will be turning 16 pretty soon and thinks she needs a more "grown-up" room. So we emptied it out and are on our way to a makeover (I have ever mentioned that I love makeovers?)

This is what we have started with. Yes the walls used to be purple and white with lime green trim - don't ask.

Check back to see the results.

Homemade art work

I'm still in the process of working on my hobby room. It really needs some things on the walls to make it look complete. I went looking through stuff that I already had to try and come up with something new. I found three artist canvases that I had bought sometime along the way but never did anything with them (don't even remember what they were for). I dusted the cobwebs off my "filing cabinet upstairs" and came up with this:

(I know they are crooked but they are acutally just laying on the counter)

I did have to go to the craft store and buy some wood cutouts to put on them - the other circles are just stamps that I had. Of course I already had the paint so this was actually a pretty inexpensive project. Total cost: (not including canvases) $3.00

These kind of match my new curtains. They are red with black and white polka dots. I told my kids that my room is starting to look like Mickey and Minnie Mouse. But that's ok because I love it.

Is it a junk room or a hobby room ???

My husband and kids called it the junk room, I called it my sewing/craft/work in progress room. But it just seemed to attract clutter. So three days after Christmas I decided something needed to be done about it. Plus, I was tired of the color and bored with everything in the room. So I took action. I got busy cleaning it out and put Carl to work. The cabinets came down and the paint went up. Same cabinets just repainted them. This is what it looked like before:

And now for the reveal.... Here is what it looks like now:

The walls went from a light blue to a nice creamy beige. The cabinets are now black - new curtains and I am loving it. We even moved the countertops around a bit and the setup works so much better.

Oh, and as for the shelf I found at the thrift store (see previous post)... here is what it looks like now:

I still need to add a few items to this shelf but you get the idea. Now if I could just get everything put back away.

A wall redo

So this is what the hallway looked like before- I know boring:




So I bought a new shelf (Hobby Lobby), painted the picture frames black and added a few accessories that I already had and didn't know what to do with them. What do you think? Any ideas are welcome. I still feel like it needs something just don't know what.

Here is a close-up picture of the shelf. Sorry for the glare.

A little Spring Cleaning

OK - well, maybe it's a lot of spring cleaning. I haven't really deep cleaned my house since we moved in three years ago, so I decided it was definitely time. We have gotten a good start but still have a ways to go. We started with Sierra's room and this is where I sent Alexis to clean - You got it above the closet. She's the only one small enough to get up there.

Makeover - Part 2

Do you remember this picture? This is what our kitchen was looking like after we painted it right before Christmas.

Well, I'm happy to say that the kitchen is finally done. After living here for almost 3 years, we finally got it to where we want it. This is what it looks like now.

It sure is nice to able to scratch one more thing off the "to do" list. Problem is... for every one we scratch off, we seem to add two more to the bottom. Does it ever end????

Makeover - Part 1

So it all started a week before Christmas. Yes, I decided it was time to finally paint the kitchen. I know, you're thinking - "is she crazy, this close to Christmas?" Well, apparently I am. However, my sweet husband hired a couple guys to come do it for me - as his Christmas gift to me -what a great Christmas gift. These guys showed up three days before Christmas and had the kitchen and my master bathroom done in one day. Now here it is almost a month later and I'm still trying to get everything put back above the cabinets, but I thought I'd post some pictures before I forget again.

I forgot to take pictures before the guys got started so the "before" pictures are from right before we moved in. Things really didn't change much between then and now - except maybe for a few things on the walls and curtains on the windows. The kitchen has been plain old white and the bathroom was a real light green which I hated from day one but didn't dare change until now.

**Notice the white wall between the upper cabinets and the countertops and also under the stove vent. That will soon change - that just may be makeover part 2.

Kitchen before:

Kitchen After:

Bathroom before:

Bathroom after:

Another Before & After

We decided that this was the summer to put some work into the front yard. Carl was a good sport about all the plants I brought home from work and was really good about getting water to them and getting them planted - we even added a little bit of grass.

Before:

After:

So what do you think???

Our week in a nutshell

This week has been kind of quiet. Not too much going on here. Yesterday was the day to take Sierra and Alexis shopping for back to school clothes and shoes. We did so well that we were done and back home by 12:30 p.m. Not too bad.

Later in the evening we decided to take the four wheelers out for a ride:

When we got back from riding, we thought it might be a good idea to check the garden and we found several surprises:

It looks like we are doing something right with the garden.

Garden Update

It seems as though while we were gone our garden grew by leaps and bounds.

Our little row of tomato plants - when we got back, the leaves from half of one of the tomato plants had been eaten completely off. Any suggestions on what to do about that? We have no idea what kind of bug/insect did that.

We've got tomatoes- just not ripe enough yet.

Here is Jake's cabbage plant that he started from seed. There are two heads of cabbage on this plant and I have no idea what I am going to do with them or when they are even ready to be picked. If you have any ideas please send them my way.

Our strawberry plants are doing really good however, I don't think we are going to be getting too many strawberries this year. Maybe next year will be more prosperous.

New Mexico Winds

This is what can happen to a person's mailbox when the New Mexico winds decide to kick up:

Yes, this is our mailbox. Since we live in the middle of nowhere and have nothing blocking the winds here, they get pretty strong sometimes. The winds have gotten as high as 60 mph.

Summer Flowers

Here are a couple pictures of the flowers that I have actually gotten to grow this summer in containers that I planted back in May.

It's the first time since we moved from Salt Lake (8 years ago) that I have gotten flowers to grow. When we lived in Las Vegas it was just too hot to grow much of anything. So as you can see I'm really enjoying this.

Pathetic Little Garden

Well, here is a picture of our pathetic little garden. There are actually two of these boxes. We have tomatoes, 1 cabbage plant and soon a couple cucumber plants. The dirt here is actually just sand so we had to build boxes and fill with top soil in order to have a decent garden. We tried to grow the tomato plants from seed but once they got about 8 inches tall the dog decided to eat them. So, off to the store we went to buy some plants. Jake is doing this as part of his Cub Scout requirements. We will keep you posted on the progress.

Yard Work

Today we decided to do some yard work. Since I work for a landscaping company, I am always bringing home new ideas. Carl is hating it. But yesterday I brought home a new tree. Who would think that you could grow a palm tree at 5000 feet? I'm excited to see how it does in our yard. Jake was able to pass this off for one of his cub scout requirements. He had to help plant a tree, so it may as well be in my yard. There is still a lot of work to do. I'm just getting started.