Betcha Can't Guess...

...what my last name starts with!

Here's my latest home project.

I love it.

And we've still got room on the wall in case

we come across more letters we love or another idea on how to make another one.

I spent less than $30 for all of it.

The white sparkly one, the lower case orange, and the uppercase red

all came home with me in my suitcase from Utah,

when I stopped at the Wood Connection.

The vinyl letters also came from there - in the clearance box for .50 - $1 a piece.

I made the yellow one - it's cardboard wrapped in yarn.

The green and brown ones were found at Michael's for .99 or less.

And the blue one with a threaded letter I made myself from scraps around here.

I'll post a tutorial on that soon.

Here's another look:

 

Day in the Life

I read on a friend's blog about the challenge/encouragement

to Blog Every Day in May.

So I thought I'd try it.

Before I had even heard about the idea, I tried to post

on my family blog about my toddler's birthday,

but the pictures won't upload.

So like any lazy blogger, I gave up.

But I really have been trying to do better about blogging myself and

reading other blogs.  I really like it - but for some reason I haven't been much into it lately.

 And here's a great opportunity/challenge to get back on track and

into the habit of doing better.

I'm sure you're all frantic to find out what a day in the life is like over here at

Mary Poppins Perfect.

Let me tell you, it's full of excitement.

If your definition of excitement is:

- get up between 5 & 6

- read scriptures, check email & facebook, sometime workout

- breakfast & shower

- get the girlies up & fed breakfast while the baby drinks a bottle

- get the baby up

- let the kids play, sometimes read the paper, dink around online

- homeschool or preschool co-op, laundry

- continue previous step of play/paper/online, sometimes adding in dishes or other chores

- snack for baby between 10 & 1030

- baby in bed for nap between 11 & 12

- feed girlies lunch

- personal time: may consist of nap, computer work, planning for homeschool, tv, etc; basically anything I can't do with kiddies underfoot

- get said kiddies up & fix snack

- read books, continue other things with kids

- welcome husband home, run errands or work on home projects or hang out with family

- dinner prep

- dinner, family devotional

- bedtime

- free time! read, piano, online, sometime workout, projects, tv with hubby, errands alone

- bed between 9 & 11, depending

Occasionally we have the car during the day so the kids and I can visit friends or run errands during the day,

but that really doesn't happen too often.  Which is nice sometimes, especially

on the auto budget - dealing with only 1 car - but sometimes our big house gets pretty small.

I've been trying to find a nice playground near our house that I'm willing to walk to...the closest one is a bit

too big for my kids (just a few ladders, monkey bars, & a slide) - we tried another one that's a little farther, but there's no where for me to sit except the grass, which was wet & there was a lot of garbage

in the bark, so I didn't like the baby playing there.  And it didn't really have much, either.

But the other day we were driving through a nearby neighborhood & noticed one that looks promising.  So next time we go for a walk we will probably head over that way.

Kitchen Table

Back in 2007, when we had just one child and my husband

was in Afghanistan, I found a great deal on a new table at a sidewalk sale.

It was a round black pedestal table, with four chairs,

for about $150.

It looks a lot like this one.

And it served us well.

Except for when I wanted to cut out a lot of fabric,

spread out anything, serve food on the table at the same time that we ate,

or have company over for dinner.

Especially as our family grew.

So after we finished our tv console, we started working on a table.

And it's finally done!!!

Woohoo!

And here are some pictures of the process, well I guess just

the staining, since I can't find any of the actual building.

You'll just have to take our word for it that we built it in the garage.

 So beautiful!

And one of the best parts? 

It was less than $200.

And very easily seats 8 comfortably.

If you are interested in making one for yourself, you can find the plan

here, from Ana White.

We did make a few changes to the plan.

We used three 2x12s for the top, with 2x3s between them.

I think the rest is pretty much the same as the plan.

If you've made one of these, or another of Ana's plans,

I'd love to see it.

Painting the Living Room

You may be wondering how our Christmas was.

It was great. 

Short and sweet and just our little family.

Very relaxing.

How many of you can say that?

Well, it was relaxing until the kids went to bed.

Then we took down all the decorations and cleared out our first living room.

It's the room that you enter from the front door.

Since the other living room is adjacent to this one, and you can basically see both rooms

completely when you are in the other, we haven't yet decided on what to

call each room.  Sometimes one is the 'fireplace room',

or the 'circle couch room', or just 'the other one'.

One of these days (or years) we will nail it down.

So here are some before pictures, so you know what a white wall looks like.

You can see my husband prepping the window with tape.

He put a bunch of plastic sheets on the floor, but instead of taping them all down,

he used a putty knife to tuck them under the baseboards.  It worked great!

We weren't too concerned with the baseboards, because they are of some sort of

laminate material that the paint wipes right off.  And if it dries before you 

notice it, it takes less than a minute to get the paint off.

Easy peasy.

 Front corner

 He's so far away...the room is 27 feet long!

 The girlies were occupied upstairs with a movie,

which is a super rare occurrence around here.

At least for the kids.

 The color we used is Pistachio Ice

It's a Valspar color (which is available at Lowe's),

but we took the sample over to Home Depot and bought Behr paint.

We didn't really have a reason, that's just what we did.

 He really was excited to paint, even if he doesn't show it.

 Here are two after shots.  I tried to include the arch, since we left that white,

so you could get an idea of the change in color.

I'm sitting on the circle couch and looking at the walls right now, and the green 

in the picture is not the same green that are on the walls.

Maybe sometime I will take another shot of the wall and it will be more accurate.

Probably after we get some more work finished in here.

Junk Show

I went to a junk show this morning,

Junk Salvation,

and it was AWESOME!

I picked up a couple of things....

 As I'm sure many of the attendees felt,

I wished I could purchase multiple things from each vendor.

But I had to be responsible....

....such is my lot in life.

Most of the time.

I have even utilized them already!!

I bought them both for the laundry room,

and here they are, 

looking and fitting perfectly, I might add.

 Here's a close up of how the tray

is being used.

I put in our homemade laundry soap (love!),

a tide-to-go pen, and the dryer sheets.

Looking forward to the next show!

If they come near you, I sure recommend checking it out.