Bad Green

Dumb Green Ideas

I am a fan of green ideas, but these are just terrible and good for a laugh!

My Christmas Present

My brother Ian got me a Flip Mino for Christmas. I opened it when it came because I hadn't heard of it before and wanted to see what it was. As it is a new toy I am still trying to figure out the appropriate length of time for videos and what I should take videos of. Mostly for my family I just took some videos of the girls talking about general stuff. Gwen honestly does talk a lot more than is evident in the following clips. While watching the videos Gwen always points to herself and yells out "My GG". Funny!




Two failed attempts at thank you Uncle Ian. I don't know why kids can't say Ian. Its two letters put together to form a word! E-N. Frustrating!





Any tips for adding videos to blogger? Right now I just have them in a folder on the desktop and I upload them using the video button on blogger. Is there a better way?

Agherfligaflager

Naomi wants her hair cut short. I have no problem with this! I think I will enjoy washing short hair instead of her almost 18" of locks!

I am thinking maybe Alice Cullen?


Or perhaps Katie Holmes?

She still thinks that these looks are too long! Can you believe her???

Possibly the longest blog post there ever was!!!

This blog is going to cover Halloween to the present, which is only a month, but there are tons of pictures! We'll start with Halloween and move to the pictures of the new house that is now decorated for Christmas except for the tree.

This is the Halloween decoration at the old apartment.

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Naomi's HILARIOUS toes! She can just do this whenever. It makes me laugh every single time!!

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The day of the move, also Halloween!! Beth came up and got pictures taken with the girls since she was going to a party up in this area as a fairy just like my little girlies!

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Naomi LOVES Beth! Look at her face!

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I was sorting through the winter gear and the girls found these. I think its funny that they were naked with all the winter get up on!

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Now for the house tour!
Backyard: I think its a decent size considering its a townhouse. YOu can see Antelope island in the distance. That truck is on Legacy highway, in front of Legacy is a nice bike trail.

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Kitchen:

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View of Kitchen from the front door:

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Dining room with backyard out the door:

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Living room:

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Living room from front door, little Hallway has laundry to the left, bathroom to the right, and heads out to the 2 car garage!

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My fireplace decorations:

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View from by the laundry area:

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I love my pedestal sink!

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I know its weird to just show a picture of the toilet, but its separated from the sink by this little pointless wall and it cracks me up!

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The beloved washer and dryer! All of the boxes and the blanket hold Christmas presents. The girls have no idea that they are right there.

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This is only the bottom floor. I will venture upstairs maybe next week when I get to clean some stuff up.

Its finally happened!!

Brian is done school!!!!! He took his very last final yesterday! Done! He got to ring a gong as he was leaving the testing center for the last time. So glad its over! Now its time for the big bucks! haha. I need to plan him a graduation party...

Coming soon...

I Promise that pictures of my actual house will be coming soon! I just need to get it together and start taking pictures. Unpacking has been slow this time, maybe because I know I am not leaving here in a year or less, but I think I have everything out of boxes. So now I just have to put it all where it belongs. Then the real fun will begin! Painting!! Yes, I do have plans to paint every single room in the house. I think I will leave the closets alone and for now the stairwell hallway, its like gigantically tall. But things are moving along and soon...pictures!

As for the house, I am loving it! And particularly I am loving my washer and dryer! They are awesome! I never knew that clothes could come out of a dryer smelling THAT clean and be fluffy and soft and get oil stains out of a 2 year old's shirt! Its like a magic machine! THey are fast and very quiet. It dried two very fluffy adult sized blankets and Brian's sweater in less than 20 minutes and then there was hardly any lint to take out of the lint shield - that was shocking! Plus I love my fridge too! Its got a water filter inside the fridge and dispenses the water inside. So I love it!

The girls like their new room which is pretty big. THey have not gotten into having a separate playroom as much as I thought they would, but I htink it is because its not all set up right yet. Oh and Gwen's favorite hobby is watching the washer perform! She screams each time it changes directions in the spin and loves it when the water comes out. Hilarious!

Living Room stuck

So, I am pretty clear about most of the ideas I want to do in the house. I am, however, stuck on the living room. Right now it is red and that will do perfectly all through Christmas time because its Christmas! Anyway, eventually I want to switch over to blues and greens in the living room. Usually what I do is fine an inspiration room and take ideas from that or a few inspiration rooms. I am having trouble find just the right inspiration room though! I found one that I like the colors ok, but the walls are tan. So, any suggestions on what color I should paint the walls?? Here is my quasi inspiration room:
I really don't want it to look too beachy! I don't like the beach house look very much for my house. So any ideas?

I am really going to have to start painting soon, at least the girls room and maybe the kitchen because all of the tan is driving me crazy! Maybe I'll paint ALL the little rooms and then do the living room last. I am excited for the laundry room because I am going to paint it a pumpkin orange because you've got to have a bright laundry room!!

Here is my idea for the girls' bedroom. Its the easiest one for me to do because I've been planning it so long. Here are my inspiration rooms:



And then this is my inspiration colors for the Master, we will not have the zebra stripes though!:

Haunted Apartment

I'm currently wondering if our apartment might be haunted - or perhaps it was one of those dreams where everything seems real. Last night i was aware that I was having a dream about a ghost haunting our apartment. When I woke up from the dream with fright, I felt a slight tickle on my ear as if someone was breathing on it. I get tickles often so I just pulled my covers over my ear. When I did that, Brian suddenly leaned over very close to my face and was breathing heavily onto my face. I thought it was weird because of the timing. Its almost as if the "ghost", if you will, made Brian do that so it could keep breathing on me. That was the first time I wondered, "Am I dreaming now? or am I awake?" What's odd is that I kept having that dream about the ghost throughout the night. At one point I woke up and looked into the kitchen area and thought I saw a figure standing there, I'm pretty sure it was just the stack of boxes. Another time I woke up I thought I heard people talking, could have been the neighbors. Then just before i woke up I heard a basketball bouncing as if it was right next to my bed. My initial thought was that it was Brian bouncing a basketball right next to our bed and I thought he must be crazy! But he wasn't even home. Even more odd was that neither one of the girls got up in the entire night. Usually at least one of them wakes me up for something. ANd lately its been Naomi having bad dreams and coming into bed with us. (She is oddly dreaming about wolves again which happened right after we moved into Wymount and she was terrified of the wolves!) I feel like there were some other odd happenings in the night but I can't remember them all right now. Weird, right? Its either the stress, the fact that its Halloween, or there really is a ghost. If there is a ghost then at least we are moving out, unless its attached to one of us! woooo!

Tips

I'm looking for some tips for organization/storage.

What do you do with your kids' stuffed animals? Right now I have them in a hamper which is ok, but there are stuffed animals in the bottom there that NEVER get played with and I feel sorry for them. What do you do with yours so that the kids can play with them, but they aren't just strewn about the room (which honestly ours are sometimes just strewn about the room for days on end).

Also, for any crafty people, what do you do to store all of your supplies? I have mine in this awful box that I bought at Ikea and its falling apart. It was cardboard so there was my first mistake, but I didn't have very much when I purchased the box so it all fit nicely, now I have a lot of craft supplies and its just bulging over and I have things in plastic bags and I don't like it!! What do you do to keep your stuff in order and make it findable and usable, but still somewhat portable. I don't ever need everything from the box, but I also don't have a craft room, its just the box in the closet. In the new place I might have a more permanent spot for it, but it still won't be a room. I've thought of getting little plastic storage boxes and separating things out by type and then putting all of that in a bin or bigger box. Anyway, any tips would be great!!

Future Playroom!

I have to, have to, have to do this in what will become the girls' playroom in the new house! It will be tons of work, but I love it so much! I can't wait! Sadly, my dreams have me painting every single room in the entire house! haha. why can't I just settle for tan paint? Oh yeah, cuz its boring!! haha. I'm ready for color!

Scary!

We have a lovely little back patio that the girls like to play on. Usually I just let them play out their by themselves while I do dishes or read. Today I heard them talking to someone while I was in my bedroom packing a box of books. When I came out to see who it was there was no one there. I asked who it was and Naomi said it was the tall boy. This means nothing! So I stayed in the living room to watch. Then a boy who was probably 8 or 9 comes running along the building and comes over to our patio and then asks if he can come in. I said no. He asked why. I replied, "well, we don't know you" So he introduces himself which was nice, but still we don't know him, nor do we know his parents, or even where he lives for that matter. So he asks again, can he come in. I once again say no and get the girls to come inside so we don't have to deal with it any longer. When I told Brian about it, he just says "awww." I was like, "awww"???? He thinks its sad that the time that we live in has gotten to be like that. But even so, we don't know him, he's twice Naomi's age, a boy, who once again we don't know! Naomi and I had to sit down to have yet another talk about talking to strangers and why its not ok to have them into your house.


On a lighter note:

Gwen has decided that her hand is a baby! Yes, instead of playing with a babydoll or any of the myriad toys they own she has decided to pretend that her hand is a baby. Its cheap, at least! The baby cries and needs to be swaddled sometimes. It also eats! Now when Gwen plays with her toys, I can sometimes see the baby playing along with her. She "walks" it through her pop-up books or Noah's ark. Its funny and strange I think too!

How I make the Tutus

Here is what I do to make the tutus. I originally found some online tutorial for it, but I can't find it so I am going to type up what I do because some of the ones I am finding now are not as easy as what I do.

I order my tulle online from PaperMart.com

I buy it in the 6" spools. I find that easier, but you can buy the bolts and cut the tulle to 6" wide pieces - cut the entire length of the tulle. I generally try to put together 2-3 colors, but even just one will look great. Naomi's tutu dress took almost 5 rolls so approximately 150 yards and Gwen's only used 3 rolls about 75 yards. I wanted Naomi's to be really poufy and Gwen's to lay a little flatter.

All you need next is elastic and ribbon, if you want it. I buy elastic that is about 1" wide. I don't know if the width really matters though.

I first measure how long I want the tutu to be. So if you want a dress measure from under the arm to wherever you'd like the bottom to lay. Then you cut the tulle to be double this length in strips. So gwen's dress is about 21" long so I cut it to 42". I like to find something that is close to that size so I can wrap the tulle around and around it and cut once. For these dresses I wrapped it around a small Ikea table that was 21" across last time I cut cardboard to the size I wanted. You wind up with a lot of 6" x 42" strips. You can do skirts as short as 10" which would be strips cut 6" x 20".

Then you measure the elastic around wherever you want it to be placed. I have read that if you take off 2 inches from this measurement that should work. That hasn't worked for me yet. When you tie the tulle onto the elastic it stretches out so I just tie the elastic and work with that so I can adjust when I get closer to being done. This time I just left it tied and put tulle over the knot, but last time I sewed the ends together once I found the right size.

I pull the elastic up over my leg up around my thigh so its at a comfortable working level. Then I just grab pieces of tulle and I tie them around the elastic like this:

I pulled the knot really tight for Naomi's which is what made hers so poufy. There is a lot of tulle wrapped around that elastic!! Gwen's was not pulled as tight. You can do every other color, but i like to do 2 strips of one color and then 1 of another. You can vary it up. I think it gives the colors dimension instead of just striped. Gwen's butterfly tutu goes 2 brown, 1 orange, 1 cream, 1 orange, 2 browns.

Once you get all of the tulle you want onto the elastic then you can try it on for size. With my girls I always have to undo the knot and re-tie it tighter, usually a lot tighter. The tighter your knots are the more the elastic stretches which also means it will stretch less overall once its on so you do need to leave some stretchability in the elastic. Like I said at this point you can probably sew up where you had the knot, but I didn't this time. Then you finish it off with a little more tulle tied around where you sewed or where the knot is to cover it up.

You can tie ribbon around the elastic to have a nice bow in the front or back. If you did a dress just loop the ribbon around some of the tulle and up over the shoulders to hold the dress up. Then I just tie ribbon around their waist. You don't have to do that, they could just run around in a pouf of tulle!

Gwen's Butterfly Costume

Oh Yeah! I made them both in one day! What a relief! I was starting to feel anxiety that I might not be able to get them done! Whew! I know, Gwen's wings are too big, but Monarch wings are Hard to find!! She will also have something underneath hers come Trick or Treat. Also, I can't decide if I should change up the ribbon for shiny black ribbon. What do you think?

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And I know there are a lot of pics of the same thing, but she smiled in all of them! And we all know that is a feat for her! Apparently she likes it!

Naomi's Fairy Costume

I made this! Today!! I started late this morning and its done! I am really impressed with myself. If you can't tell for sure, its a fairy. She is a "pink tink" as she calls it. The tulle itself cost under $10 since I bought it online. I already had the ribbon so $10 for a custom made halloween costume - awesome! For actual Halloween she is going to have something underneath (maybe a leotard) with some bright pink tights. I do still have to make her a flower clip - as in I have to learn how to make flower clips.

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I forgot the wings:

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I don't know where this face came from, but WOW!

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And a hint for Gwen's costume that I will be making sometime soon. You can tell she has never had her haircut in this picture; its time!

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Now for fun a picture of Gwen - who fell asleep directly in front of the TV, in Naomi's sweater.

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And here are the body organs that I had to throw away because of the smell. The grapes were actually bubbling! GROSS!!

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What a day! And its only 11am!

Last night poor Naomi woke up and was crying because she missed a friend's baby sister, Danica. I thought that was extremely weird. She kept waking up so I took her temperature, and she had a 101 temp. So I brought her into our bed so she could rest. She wound up using the bathroom like 3 times in the night, just to pee, but still it kept me up!

She seems better today, but still stuffy. So we had to cancel the fun kids club we were in charge of at our complex. The sad thing is I know that she got sick at the doctor's office. Seriously, how can I rectify that situation? Its not just sometimes, its every time we go to the doctor. My kids are very susceptible to stuff!

Then when I went to feed them breakfast I found that the syrup had been put back incorrectly in the pantry. Syrup EVERYWHERE! Thank heavens for the internet that told me to throw a lot of salt on it and then scrape it up with a spatula.

One of the Halloween decorations i had been wanting to try for a long while is specimen jars. So two days ago we went to the store and bought cauliflower for brains, ginger for a swollen appendix, and grapes to look like eyeballs. We put those in water with food coloring so it looked like we were harvesting body organs. I remember thinking a few days ago that it would eventually wind up smelling weird - but I forgot that I had thought that in my excitement and just did it! Last night I kept smelling something gross. I thought that it was the flowers from Naomi's party because you know how after a few days they just get that smell when you don't change the water enough. I threw those out this morning. But the smell was lingering! What was it?? I just couldn't tell! Finally I walked by the organs. There was the smell! Particularly the brain! I had to throw them all out and wash all of the jars. That lead to cleaning the whole kitchen since we had the salt all over the counters from the syrup cleanup already!!

Crazy day already! Now Naomi is begging for a bath because somehow she spilled orange juice all over her stomach and it is sticky. I have no idea how that one would have happened because there is no OJ anywhere else.

Naomi's Birthday Party

Naomi's party was on Saturday. As far as parties go this one was the biggest bust ever!! I had all but one of the kids call to cancel in the last 24 hours - most of them were sick. I hadn't invited very many because it was to be an ALL kids party as opposed to the ones I usually do where its all adults and we eat and chat and the children run around playing. So that was really a shame and hard to sit down to explain to a 5 year old why only 1 person is coming! She had fun though because she has wanted a playdate with this girl for a long time!

As you probably know Naomi is in love with pink and only pink - you'll see in pictures in the next few months that her fall wardrobe consisted of ALL pink shirts! I chose this to be a battle not worth fighting! So for her party she wanted it ALL pink and she wanted unicorns. And that is exactly what she got! Here are the pictures:

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Party favors: beanie baby unicorns, party horns, a giant unicorn lollipop, and your birthday hat which represents your own personal unicorn horn!

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Pink lemonade cupcakes served with pink lemonade on a unicorn plate!

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Naomi's handmade Happy Birthday sign that had to be ALL pink! She didn't want white or black or silver. ALL pink! And I did it!! I didn't know it was possible.

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These are Naomi's presents - the two unicorns on the shelf. She loves them!

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This one was from Grandmom!

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At least Naomi had fun! It really makes throwing a party feel pointless when no one comes to play. Has me rethinking the entire party-throwing love that I have.

Halloween decorations are mostly up - so pictures of that will come shortly.