Dream Home

I've been spending a lot of time dreaming about having a home some day and an infinite amount of money to decorate it with. There are a few blogs that I've really been loving lately for their home decor. Probably top of the list today is Dear Lillie, I like basically every room in her house. And there's another blog doing an online Parade of Homes starting tomorrow that I will definitely be checking out.

I really want to have a beautiful bedroom that's like my own little piece of heaven. I remember seeing this bedroom redo on Divine Design (my absolute favorite show on HGTV) a couple years ago. I LOVE this room. I like the colors, and I would really like to have a big enough room and the money to have a bedroom that looks like this.

I like this lady's living room / kitchen area. I like how bright and clean everything looks. And I like the colors. I'm sure you're starting to see a theme in the colors that I like.

I've also really been loving white and green home accents lately.

I want to do a little girl's room that looks just like this.

And I kinda want to put chandeliers like that one in every room. So far Ryan isn't on board with all of my design ideas. Oh well, in 10 years when we actually have a home and the money to design it with, I'll probably have changed my mind entirely.

Bubble Blower

Lucas got a bubble blower gun thing from grandma for Easter. He thinks it's the most amazing thing ever!

Easter Festivities

Just playing around in the bed.

We started our Easter festivities on Saturday by going to a city sponsored Easter egg hunt. There were so many kids there, though. It was ridiculously crowded, and every single egg was picked up in about 60 seconds. And I'm not even exaggerating here. Lucas didn't get a single egg. But there were some lambs there to pet so Lucas got to enjoy himself a little bit.

For his Easter basket Lucas got a good mix of food and toys. I put two chocolate chips in each of the plastic eggs. He LOVES chocolate chips so he was pretty excited about those.

Here he is enjoying his basket. He probably spent a good hour going from one thing to the next. His favorite was definitely the toy story coloring stuff. And he ate the entire bag of yogurt puffs before church. It was Easter so I just let him.

We went to Ryan's parent's house for Easter dinner. It was delicious. I made strawberry short cake for dessert. By far my favorite spring time dessert. We also did a little Easter egg hunt for Lucas in the back yard. We were actually surprised at how much he got into it. After the first egg, he got the hang of it and was running around looking for the rest of the eggs.

First Egg...

Hey, there's another one...

I am loving this whole egg hunt thing...

Why aren't there any more eggs dad?

It took us a while but eventually we convinced him that there weren't anymore eggs hiding in the grass. We'll have to hide more next year. All in all it was a pretty good Easter spending time with family and playing with Lucas.

He is Risen

And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!

For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father

—Doctrine and Covenants 76:22–23

Earth Day

Over the last few years we have been becoming more environmentally conscious. I know there are a lot of arguments for and against the idea of global climate change, but I just don't really worry about that either way. I figure God gave us this beautiful Earth so we should try to take care of it. I know I probably could be a little better, but Ryan and I have made some changes to try to be more Earth friendly.

We use reusable shopping bags. Once we started using them, it was actually really easy. I just keep them in the car by Lucas's feet so that I remember to grab them when I enter the store. They hold so much more than normal bags, I usually only use 3 or 4 at a time. I feel really good about myself when I do, too. And it's nice not to have huge piles of plastic bags to try to remember to take to the store to throw in the recycle bin. We were really stock piling plastic bags for a while there.

We've been recycling lately too. We have to take our stuff up to Ryan's parent's house because we don't have recycling at our complex. At first we were just doing the big cardboard boxes that we felt bad throwing in the trash, but once we started putting stuff aside, there were just more and more things we realized could be recycled. I can't wait till we move to California and we have a recycle bin. Almost everything we throw away can be recycled.

All of Lucas's cartoons have had episodes about recycling. I love it.

There is a big trend in crafting lately towards recycling old items and clothing and making them into something better. Ryan ripped a pair of pajama pants and he threw them in the trash. I grabbed them back out and made Lucas some pajama pants. He LOVES them because he recognizes them as Ryan's pants. He pats his legs and says "dada".

And we got a more fuel efficient vehicle. It's diesel so we get 45 mpg, and its emissions are 30% cleaner than a gasoline engine. And we even got a tax credit.

So this Earth Day, take a second and try to think of something you can do to help. There are lots of easy changes you can make.

Licking the Beaters

I taught Lucas how to lick the beaters today. He is a very fast learner.

Who can resist cream cheese frosting?

My Little Cutie-Patootie

Pregnancy Scrapbook

When I was pregnant with Lucas, I saw a lot of cute pregnancy journal books that I wanted to get. But there were so many other important, expensive things that we had to get at the time that we couldn't really justify getting one. I also couldn't ever pick one that had everything I wanted, and didn't have stupid stuff that I didn't really care about. I really only wanted like 10 pages of info and pictures, not 30. So, I just decided to write down the stuff that I liked from some of the books, and then record the info in my own scrapbook. I also kept a journal throughout the pregnancy so that I could remember what happened and when.

Well, as most crafts go, I'm only just now getting around to working on it. I did a baby shower page like a year ago, but I didn't work on anything else. Good thing I kept a journal so I don't have to try to remember everything. Anyway, I think it's turned out pretty cute. I stuck to the basics and kept it simple so there's a possibility of being able to do this with every baby.

Since this is supposed to be a journal as well as a scrapbook, but I'm not a huge fan of my handwriting, I typed out the journaling sections on the computer and printed them out. Put a cute paper border around it and viola! I used my silhouette to cut out almost all the cute borders in the scrapbook. It took a bit longer than it would have if I'd had a punch, but at $25 a pop for border punches like this, I can take a bit of extra time. The silhouette has really changed the way I scrapbook.

For the ultrasound pictures, there wasn't enough room on the page for all of them, but I wanted to keep all the pictures together so I made this cute envelope to hold the rest of them. I'm going to start making envelopes more often, they are so cute. I used this tutorial to get it to be just the right size.

I really like to use what I have when I scrapbook. I try not to go out and buy more paper for specific projects. I was working on a certain page, though, and I chose a cute pattern for one side, but there wasn't another one for the other side of the page, or a coordinating paper that I could make work. I was thinking of a specific paper in my mind that I thought would look good, but I didn't have it, and I wasn't even sure if I would be able to find it. Lucas was coloring with crayons next to me and I saw that he had the exact color that would match, so I decided to get creative. I used a plain white piece of paper, a white and colored crayon, and a snowflake for texture.

I drew on the white crayon with the colored crayon to deposit some of the color on the white crayon. You could probably just use the colored crayon instead of both the white and colored, but I wanted to be careful and keep the color to a minimum. Then I put the snowflake behind the paper, and rubbed the crayon back and forth over the snowflake.

And now I have matching paper and I didn't have to spend any money.

I still have so much scrapbooking to do, from before we even had Lucas, but it feels really good to have something done... at least until I get pregnant again.

Look What I Just Whipped Up...

Lucas has grown out of the two baby ties he has, and since easter is coming up, I wanted him to have a nice tie to wear to church. Also, I just think ties on babies are adorable so I want some more that fit him. Anyway, I saw this tutorial the other day and while I was going through some of my crafts I found the perfect fabric to make Lucas an Easter bow tie, so I just decided to whip one up this morning. Realistically it did take me some time. It was about 2 hours, with Lucas running around. That's not too bad. When I get around to it I'll post pictures of Lucas wearing it. And I think I'm going to make a few more, maybe even try a regular baby tie.

Toy Story

Lucas has become a big fan of Toy Story. This is the only movie ("mee moo" as he calls them) that he has watched all the way through. We've tried some other ones but after 10 minutes he asks for Buzz. He can say Buzz and Woody. And he loves all three of the movies equally. I have seen each of them so many times you could probably show me any clip and I could tell you what movie it was from and what's going on. I'm getting sick of them, but just barely, they are really good movies. I let him watch them all he wanted while he was sick and now I'm afraid he's addicted. It better hurry up and warm up outside so that I can distract him from becoming a couch potato.

He's also really into coloring right now. I print off Buzz Lightyear pictures for him to color. He's pretty good about only drawing on paper. He's not very picky about what paper, though. And he thinks that everything white is paper, like our mail, the TableMate, and one time the wall. He's getting better, though.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, we're all starting to get better. Thank goodness! And Lucas learned how to blow his nose. This development is seriously life changing.

Waiting...

We haven't posted in so long because we really just aren't doing anything worth posting about. I feel like we're stuck in a rut and I'm just waiting for something to happen. The weather started to get warm and we took some fun trips to the park, and then it snowed again and we stayed inside and watched TV. Then it warmed up - and then got cold again. I'm not a huge fan. We were going to take a very short trip to California a few weeks ago, but that plan got the kibosh. Ryan and I were going to go on a date this weekend, but now the whole family is sick. Lucas has kind of lost his voice which is very sad and pathetic. He was trying call to me in the car yesterday and his voice was barely a whisper. He fussed for a bit when I put him down for his nap yesterday and I could hardly hear him. And Lucas's birthday is coming up, but it's still too far away for me to really start buying presents. So if you have any fun ideas to spruce up our boring lives, let me know. Maybe I'll make a bigger effort when I can breathe through my nose again.