Call for help

When Matt worked at the credit union he had to wear a tie to work every day, and so he has quite the tie collection hanging in our closet. Now, Matt wears a uniform to work, which means less laundry for me (yay!), but that also means a growing collection of something else.

Metal hangers.

Yes, I gathered up all of these hangers and threw them on the ground just so I could take a picture.

And sure, I could have spent naptime a little more productively by, say, emptying the dishwasher.

But hey, it's all for the love of the blog.

Now here's where I need your help, trusty readers.

Being the crafty, environmentally conscious person that I am...okay, so I'm not that environmentally conscious, but hey, I'm working on it. Let me try that again.

Being...the person that I am...I need to figure out something to do with these hangers before they take over my house. I don't want to just throw them away, and although I've entertained the idea of just buying more clothes to fill them up, I'm trying to be more realistic :)

So please give me any ideas you have.

I need your help!

Happy Half Birthday!

This post (like many others) is dedicated to my favorite little man, who turns 6 months old today!

Colin is always working on new tricks, the latest of which include sitting up by himself, escaping his bumbo seat, and the army crawl.

When he wants to get out of his bumbo seat he starts with this sideways stretch, then he reaches down and plops right out. Fortunately, this has only happened once while he was unattended...

One of his first attempts at the army crawl. He only gets better every day.

He loves to squawk, squeal, blow raspberries, and make noise any other way he can. He also loves chewing on anything he can get ahold of, although he prefers electronics and spoons.

Standing is always better than sitting in Colin's opinion.

It took a few weeks, but Colin now loves eating food. He has tried rice cereal, oatmeal, peas, pears, carrots, bananas, and apples. He likes them all, but it took him a few days before he discovered his love for pears. Strange kid.

Look at those two cute teeth!

This boy loves his dad! Matt can get him to laugh harder than I've ever heard, and just one look from dad will usually get a giggle out of him. That being said, he is entering the phase of always wanting me. Especially at night. When it's about his bedtime he'll start crying and won't stop until I pick him up. Then he looks over at Matt and gets a big smile on his face, like he's trying to say, "See? I got exactly what I wanted."

This is a video of a little game they like to play called "Colin on the cob."

I'm pretty sure he gets cuter every single day. I still look at him and say, "Ah! He's the cutest baby ever!" I don't think I'll ever stop doing that, in fact :) He even looks cute in this snowsuit...

We love Colin to pieces, and I'm so glad that 6 months ago today he joined our family!

Decorating (Part 2)

I've been planning this next decorating idea since before we moved in to our house. Now that it's finished I'm even more excited about it!

We built the shelves ourselves using 1x4s and 1x2s and then painted them white. A majority of the frames we already had, but I also made a trip to Salvation Army where I picked up 6 frames for 50 cents a piece. A coat of white spray paint for the frames, and taDAH! We have the most awesome gallery wall that cost under $50. Now I just need to finish filling the frames...

My Big Birthday Surprise

I turned 23 this year...23 on the 23rd to be exact. I've been waiting to celebrate my Golden Birthday for quite some time, so this year I decided to extend the celebration to a whole week.

 To preface this story, I had been begging my sister Megan to come visit me for weeks. Towards the end of February she finally committed and forwarded me her flight itinerary. According to the email she was going to be here from April 6th to the 12th and I was so excited.

The best part of my birthday came late Tuesday night. Matt and I were watching a movie on our laptop in our bedroom about 10:30 when his phone rang. His dad was calling because a pipe had burst at their rental property, and he needed Matt's help to fix it. So Matt left a few minutes later, and I kept watching the movie. About an hour later, I heard the garage door and couldn't believe Matt was home that fast. He walked through the bedroom door, and I saw someone behind him, but I couldn't tell who it was because the light was off. Matt turned the light on and there was Megan. I was speechless, to say the least--speechless and confused--mostly because of that fake itinerary she sent me. It was pure genius!

She was here for 5 days, and we had a blast. I'd been planning things to do when she came in April, we just had to do them a little sooner.

We started off the day by having breakfast in a little diner we wanted to try in Tulsa. I went for a giant cinnamon roll (and a cup of fruit in my attempt to be healthy).

After breakfast we drove around and showed Megan some of what Tulsa has to offer (no pictures). And then that night we went to a Mexican restaurant, my pick, for dinner. We also had an ice cream cake, but no pictures of that either, sorry!

On Friday we went to Oklahoma City. Our first stop was Pop's on Historic Route 66. They have over 500 flavors of pop. Bad news when you are indecisive...so we chose 12 to sample.

We also visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial, the site of the terrorist bombing in 1995, and we hung out on the temple grounds for a while.

Other activities included pedicures, spending forever at Joann Fabrics, and eating at the Cheesecake Factory. When I type it all up like that, it sounds like we didn't do much, but in the end, we slept in, relaxed, and had a good time hanging out. Isn't that the best kind of vacation? Thanks for coming, Megan! We had a blast, and we can't wait for you to come back. Oh, and thanks for the best birthday surprise ever!

Decorating (Part 1)

I have a lot of plans for how I want to decorate our house. So far, I have completed two of them.

This rocking chair used to belong to Matt's grandma. It's a really nice glider, but I hated the upholstery. It wasn't my style and it wasn't very nice fabric.

I found some green home decor fabric that I thought would match Colin's nursery, and I went to work. The hardest part of the project was creating a pattern. I used some scrap fabric to trace a pattern onto after I did a little measuring, and in the end it turned out pretty well.

The second hardest part was the tufting (sewing the buttons on). There are three buttons on both the front and back, and because I was just using the thread and needle I had on hand, it was a little tricky.

And here is the finished product. I think it looks a million times better. Now we're contemplating staining the wood to match his crib and changing table (the dark wood to the right of the chair is the end of his crib).

I have at least three more things I plan on doing/putting up in the nursery before it's finished, then I'll show you the whole room. I hope you're excited, because it's going to be awesome!

The other project I've completed is the living room mantle.  I bought the mirror at Bed Bath & Beyond, but I was able to make the wreath with things I had around the house (including the wreath). In case you can't tell due to the poor picture quality, those are fabric flowers that I glued onto the grapevine wreath.

I also have my Willow Tree Angel collection displayed on the mantle, but most of it is cut off in this picture. I'll have to take a better picture next time...like use my camera instead of my phone :)

I hope you like it so far--I still have a long way to go before I have everything the way I want it.

Getting Bigger Every Day!

Not only have I not posted in awhile, it's been even longer since I've posted pictures of Colin. He seems to be cuter and get more personality every day.

 This little drool monster has 2 teeth coming in! We noticed the first bottom one about two weeks ago, and the other bottom tooth yesterday. Luckily, he doesn't seem too bothered by this teething business.

We had a ward activity with a luau theme. This lei is made out of napkins and all he wanted to do is eat it, so had to hurry and take this picture.

 Mastering the handling of the spoon is something we're still working on. In fact, we're still mastering eating off of the spoon too :)

 His newest toy. He seems to love it so far, and it's pretty handy to stick him in while I do various things around the house so he can't roll around and get into trouble.

We bought this shirt before Colin was born, and I've been dying to put in on him since then. He wore it today in honor of March Madness. Go Cougs!

He is only 2 weeks away from turning 6 months old. Where has my newborn baby gone?!

Yard Work

Our move went very well last week, and we are officially moved into the house! We're even mostly unpacked except for boxes full of decorations and Christmas stuff which are sitting in our guest room. 

I am happy to report that after moving all of our things 1,200 miles, and two more times since then, we only ended up with a shattered glass lid and a glass pan.

One thing I didn't mention previously about our house was the koi pond in the backyard. Awesome, right? Not so much. I didn't look that great, and it required taking care of the four koi living in it.

We decided to post it on Craigslist as free if someone was willing to come pull it out. Matt posted it around 9 AM, and within a few minutes, he promised it to someone. Within a half hour, he received 4 more text messages and a phone call. Who knew koi ponds were in such high demand?

It took about an hour for the couple that wanted it to pull it out, and then we were left with a giant hole that we filled with dirt.

The joys of homeownership!