Hat crazy

Well some awesome lady friends from our Homebuilders group crochet these amazing hats and I've decided to try to learn. Thus far I have made two baby beanies over the last two nights.

First attempt (before I weaved in my tails and took about an hour and 45 minutes)

Second attempt (45 minutes also before any tail weaving because I want to try out the size on Lana)

I still need to accessorize them by adding a flower or something, but I have to learn how to do that first. Now that I have two hats to work with, I feel I will be able to do it easily. Watch out friends and family you may just be getting some beanies or etched glass for gifts this year.  I love this crafty fever I've caught!  My resolutions included not just sitting in front of a tv and actually making some of these Pinterest crafts and recipes.  Speaking of, tonight's dessert apple dumplings, WOW!! I will share the recipe in another post and I will have to take a picture on another batch because we ate all but one. It was down right shameful and glorious all at the same time.

Well goodnight peeps! Stay warm!

The house be changing!

We have got a wild hair to remodel our main floor and so we made it so. Our laundry was being done downstairs in our dark and dingy unfinished basement. Our pantry was enclosed with some bi-fold doors that did not appeal to storage needs. Our formal livingroom and diningroom were not well utilized in the current layout.  It was a big job to adjust these situations. But our patient and very talented contractor Rob Gabriel was up to the job.  Here are some pictures of the before, the process, and the final product. We LOVE it!

Pantry before:

Diningroom before:

 

In process:

Old formal livingroom (view from entry)

Out with old pantry in goes walkway from kitchen to new diningroom

Closing old opening between livingroom & diningroom and my glorious pantry is created.

New diningroom

New pantry (excuse it's messy appearance) I still have some accessorizing/organizing to do.

Old diningroom is new craft room/laundry room/office

Washer & dryer on opposite side (personally I don't think my pictures are doing it justice, but I want to post this while I have time.)

Of course there remains Pinterest projects, decorating, and all to be done and make this room even better.

First trip out of the house in a week

Lana has been super sick for the first time in her whole ten months. She has ran a fever, rafted a river of snot, and coughed until the cows come home. Poor baby! I have kept us in quarantine for the whole week, missing the lobster New Year's Eve celebration and many other friendly gatherings. However, I'm seriously against going out and spreading the germs and contributing to a germy society. Ha! Well today Lana still is not a 100% but I felt it might be safe enough for a short outing to get some presents for some sweet friends girls and some craft supplies to finish some baby gifts.  It helped her take a good hour and 45 minute nap so that was nice, so nice I joined her.  I was exhausted from her lack of sleeping last night. Oh how I long for healthy days for all again!  To look at our princess during the day would make you think I was lying about her illness...

Glass etching success

Today Lana took a good nap and mommy got to etch some glass!  I've seen tons of Pinterest pins on cool projects related to glass etching and have been meaning to get around to it for a while now.  I wanted to start by putting our last name on a casserole dish.  Meal train love is so awesome and after those yummy treats go down the dishes remain. I do not know about you all, but I forget what belongs to those kind cooks.  I think it turned out well and I hope to go back and add some design to it or something.

Materials Needed/Used:

Vinyl for stencil

Silhouette Cameo

Armour Etching Cream

Foam Brush

Dish

I will get better at taking pictures along the way and making these posts more entertaining. I promise. Right now I'm just trying to get away from posting everything in Facebook and doing things during nap times :) Happy etching!

Lana is a frequent flyer already!

Our baby girl is no stranger to travel.  Having family out of state and all has created a need to break her in early.  The trips I am going to talk about below added three states, four flights, and the first road trip to her traveling log.  She was almost three months old when this all took place.

The first adventure began with a trip to San Francisco.  Daniel had a work conference there and so Lana and I were fortunate enough to tag along.  The trip started out with a delayed flight, which led to us missing our rental car reservation and the trip to see Muir Woods.  Oh well there are worse things and we will make it back again someday I'm sure.  The first night there Lana slept EIGHT hours!  Things were looking up!  Our first day was rather low key, Daniel went to his conference and Lana and I just took a stroll around the hotel area to get a lay of the land.  We saw the famous cable cars, which we later learned from a very serious tour guide, are not to be called trolleys as they are cable cars.

Lana struggled a bit with burping and napping for some reason, but she was a trooper.  Since I am so behind on blog posts, the details are a bit murky, but we saw the sites and overall had a good time.  Fisherman's Wharf was a neat little area and we learned that trying to get there by walking and pushing a stroller is not the approved method.  We took a cable car back, which our legs enjoyed and our ears did not.  Lana for whatever reason cried practically the whole ride.  Our sincerest apologies to our fellow passengers for that little San Francisco treat.  We ate at a variety of places both inexpensive and not and never really could find the good eats we were hoping for from the west coast.  The last day Lana and I had to take a tour to make sure we saw everything the city offered.  We got to see Ghirardelli Square, the Painted Ladies (aka Full House scene), the house from Mrs. Doubtfire, and the Golden Gate Bridge!!

The action did not stop there.  We got up bright and early to leave San Francisco on Friday to start our next big adventure.  After encountering the urine-filled elevator to get to the train to get to the airport, our flight back to Denver was on-time, delayed, and on-time again.  We made it back safely to the Mile High City and were very tempted to make our way to home sweet home, but we needed to get on the flight to St. Louis for Daniel's cousin's wedding reception and some much needed time with Grammy and Poppy Duck.

Bet ya cannot guess what happened next?  Yep, you guessed it, our flight was delayed.  This delay; however, was a gift from God Himself.  The weather report had included some nasty storms in St. Louis and little did we know that when we were about ten minutes from landing, a tornado had hit and blown debris over the runway closing the airport.  We flew around for a little bit longer before they decided to take us on to Kansas City to wait it out.  Once we were on the ground there and checked in with everyone to make sure all were safe, we waited and waited.  Little did we know the flight crew had one hour left of flying time that day and time was ticking.  Next thing we knew we were gathering our luggage and renting a car to drive.  The end of the story is not nearly as dramatic, thankfully.  The St. Louis visit went by too quickly and before we knew it we were on our way back to the airport for the last flight.  Lana was a CHAMP through it all and we enjoyed our big adventure, for the most part.

We build furniture!

Pinterest really keeps our house busy these days!  I love trying new things and thanks to my Pinterest addiction, I have discovered Ana White's blog.  She makes everything and gives you the plans complete with  the tool list, cut list, etc.  Armed with ZERO knowledge of how to use power tools of any kind really and a very patient husband, we were off to build our first piece of furniture.

Our house was built in 1977 and for whatever reason our family room and living room do not have overhead lighting so we had to incorporate lamps, which I love, now.  Since we have started our home decor projects in the family room (check out our Pinterest inspired shelving post-when I get it up ha), we felt we  needed end tables to hold our lights.  We decided to start with some Rustic X End Tables.

As Ana White instructed we read through the plans and the comments to be as familiar with our project as possible.  Our exciting Friday night consisted of a family outing to Lowes to grab our wood and the Kreg Jig.  The following morning was go time.  After Daniel returned from his hike, he gave me my first tutorial on the miter saw.  I must say I'm a quick study and after measuring all of my pieces twice so that I could cut once, I knocked out the cut list times two since we were making two end tables.

These beauties now complete our family room!

 Now I just have to stain them and they will be finished. Wonder when I will get to that??

Hello my name is Carmen and I'm a Pin-a-holic!

I'm trying to revamp this blog and get it going again.  What better way to do so than to share these yummy treats I found on Pinterest and tried out on my Fourth of July guests.  There was a  lovely corn dip from Miss Sammi Sunshine, some scrumptious Bacon Wrapped Guacamole Poppers from Paradise Grove Avocados and a delicious Sangria from Jessica Fike Photography (odd I know, but that is where the Pinterest post took me).  The reviews from my dear ginny pigs were that the corn dip was good, but my chips were not strong enough so word to the wise, buy the good stuff.  The Sangria was finished off completely and I did not have a glass so you will just have to try that out for yourself.  My fruit consisted of a peach, black grapes, strawberries, a granny smith apple, a pear, and an orange.  The poppers were well received, which when is something bacon wrapped not right?  I will say I waited until the last minute to get the jalapeños (or to send my dear, sweet hubby to battle for the last 11) so I was stuck with the small ones.  More to come...hopefully.