My kid's idea of dressing up

Our ever changing world

This morning I opened the door and realized we had a fresh snowfall. So I yelled out "look, it snowed!". Ivan came running and had a disappointed "oh". I said "that's not the reaction you had to snow in Texas. You were excited about it there". He replied "Now, I'm excited for it to melt and spring to come". Ah well, it'll be here some day. For today, I'm excited that it is not so cold and that the sun is beaming gloriously. I'm tempted to go for a walk, I'm also really really wanting a nap and at the same time I'd love to get some more painting done.


I got some painting on the stairs done. We picked our green/blue color from a showroom on the Benjamen Moore paint site. They had a room that was cheery, warm and reminded me of a Spanish, southern place- which I thought would be totally fun for a basement. So that is what our stairs became and then I thought to paint a Mexican inspired tile on it. It wasn't until I had painted a couple that I realized I was replicating many TexMex restaurants! So now we just need a bowl of chips and salsa at the end of the stairs and VOILA, we are back in Abilene! ha,ha.


a close up of my tile design.


This green feature wall was the last wall to paint in the basement. We weren't sure if we'd want it this bold color too, but then we decided to go for it and we love it. Of course I could not let it be with just that, I had to add a little embelishment! I'm so glad Brian lets me piddle like this with all the paint. So fun. I did the main design in our white trim color and the edge detail in the wall color. Over the archway, I did the reverse colors. Just a few more paint projects and I'll be done with the house stuff and on to Emora's portrait. I've picked out her picture already and am so excited about it. I love learning each detail of my kid's faces- so fun.


How is the world around you changing?

color, color everywhere!

Everything is getting a face lift tonight. Arwen is over for a sleep over and she is painting the kid's faces. I am about to paint fake tiles on our stairs and Brian is painting a feature wall in our living room downstairs. He brought in a gorgeous painting a friend of mine gifted us with that decided our color scheme in the family room downstairs. And some days, the lover paints the skies amazing colors and light to dazzle us with wonder. So thankful for all the colors in the world. Life would have been so bland in black and white.

a lot of painting

Painting a room is fun. Painting an entire basement is a lot of paint. It's fun and exciting, but so much work! And really, I haven't been involved much at all in the work part of it. When Brian was working with Randy on their house flipping, they had 4 guys and would paint a whole house in a couple of days. They taped a day and used a big sprayer to put on texture and then the paint. The nice thing with this is that he didn't have to tape, but without a sprayer and with many different colors, he couldn't just slap it on either.

He put primer on the stairs today, so maybe soon we can get that part done.














The kids and I have enjoyed the week off from school schedule. We got to party it up with the cousins a couple of times. We went to Regina Tues. and got to swim while we were there. Yesterday, we got to skate. I haven't skated in about a decade, but I tried it and my knee was pretty ok. So that was very, very exciting. My friend also came to the pool for a bit, so she kept the kids while I did a few laps. That was also very thrilling, although I realized how horribly out of shape I've gotten. Oh if only there was a pool in town! I am looking forward to the lake melting-- anyone got a wetsuit they want to get rid of?

living up our week of holidays

The paint is still drying on Ivan's "stage". I painted his spotlights and the rest of the speakers today. He and the girls just sang "Burning Ring of Fire" in front of it. When we rewatched the video, Ivan was saying "I know, it's really loud. I probably left my speakers on too loud" He cracks me up.


A couple nights ago, I got these painted on the recessed ceiling of the guest room. The room is very strange because there were 3 sections of pipes that could not be raised up to the nice high ceiling level of the middle. So instead of loosing all that head space and making the whole room short, there are three sections where the ceiling drops down. My philosophy of weird things you don't like is to make it extra special like a highlight of the room. So we did a spotlight in the corner dropped roof and I painted some detail on it and we did dark brown/studio like paint on the underneath.





We are surprised by how much we like the downstairs bathroom colors. We kind of just picked out a color and the green came out much darker than we'd thought, but we like it. It will be the kid's bathroom mostly. We have two walls of another color in the entrance of the bathroom. We ran out of the green and used a mixture of our stairs color with white. We ended up liking how they complement each other though.


Next we have the stairs to paint. I have several ideas that I want to do with painting there too. More fun for me!! Meanwhile, Brian gets to paint boring things like window ledges and closet doors. We are praying he gets work soon. He had a potential lead that we hoped would pan out for this week, but it was not to be... yet. The door is still cracked open, but we need it to swing wide and let him through. So you can join with us in that prayer if you wish.

OK, the kids are waiting for me to face paint them. Dominique is going with her big cousin to the dance studio tonight. She is very excited and will have fairy decor and tutu in honor of the honor!

Some of my latest projects

Here is the dog house I made for Saba. I converted a non working fridge into an insulated, easily washable, home on wheels. I removed the cooling mechanism by opening up the back and letting my husband hack saw it out. That hack saw terrifies me, so do nail guns. A bunch of the insulation in it was wet and frozen, so I replaced that, took out the wall separating the freezer and fridge, took off the freezer door, used caulking to seal, then decorate it and painted the caulk. She fits perfect and can even stand in it. She hasn't hung out in it yet, except to lick all the peanut butter out that I had dabbed in it as incentive for her to try it. But I feel like I can kick her out of the house and into the yard at times now. If she doesn't use it, that's her fault, I have a shelter for her. And if we need to go somewhere for a night, we could leave her out and she'd survive without us.




The blue-green color will be the color of our stairs into the basement, once we have sanded, repaired and repainted them.


Here is Dominique's room decor.







I can't wait to move her in down there and get control once again over all the kid stuff! Space, we need space!!

Ivan and I have been going back and forth on what to paint in his room. I've found awesome pictures, but he doesn't like any of them. Had great ideas, he didn't like those either. Then Brian said, "I don't think he wants anything". So, his will be much less interesting, but he did concede to let me paint some speakers and spotlights for his pretend stage, which will actually be his closet. He is not ecstatic about the fact that it will not be a REAL stage, but he aint no rock star yet, and we are not building him a studio! He'll just have to share Brian's studio/guest room/sewing room/art room.

If you had an extra room on interesting space in your house, what would you want to use it for?

Dominique has a style all her own. Have you noticed? The louder, the better. And while Ivan can be loud, his clothing choices are not as eccentric, albeit more restricted. He only has certain shirts and pants he will wear. It took getting some dancing outfits for Dominique to decide that black was ok to wear, but she doesn't like her black socks. Nor will she wear grey, even when we had added girly decorations to grey sweatpants, she will not wear them.





Emora is getting picky with her clothes too, but she has been excited to wear clothes from her cousin Immy.



This has gotta be one of her cutest pictures.

I also have a son. Apparently I never take pictures of him anymore. I'll have to make an effort now that I've noticed. But with him at school, I don't see him most the day and the half of the day when I see him is usually pretty busy with making supper, breaking up fights, reading, bathing and heading off to the bank to clean, so I'm not really thinking about picture taking. Then when I do get the camera out, he likes to be a goof, which is fine, but not every single time!!

Tomorrow is the last day of school before our extra long break- he has a whole week off. We will be going to birthday parties, skating, the library and hopefully a much needed trip into Regina, maybe even to look at carpet??? !!!

a little angel

I love seeing my kids when they are napping. So precious, innocent and beautiful.


She didn't have her nap this day and she had gotten very quiet. The kids were all on the computer, but I guess it finally overloaded the littlest one.


The sun was playing in her curls as she played with the trains.



Um, this picture caught a streak and it wasn't from the sun either.






Hope your day was filled with beauty, sunshine and some fun too.

painting, painting and more painting

We have some eager helpers...








Of course Brian has been in paint mode and me too, only I get to do the fun stuff. I painted Saba's new dog house and have had her outside all day. It is above freezing, so she doesn't even need it today, but I feel so much freedom now because I feel like she has a place to rest if she wants one. Before I didn't have a shelter, I felt horrible putting her out because the ground was always frozen cold and there was no where to get out of the wind. It is so wonderful having her out. I like her way more this way. We came home and I even wanted to pet her!

Now I'm on to room details. I'm painting a castle and some flowers on Dominique's walls with a few words. Ivan wants a stage. I came up with several BRILLIANT plans for him, but he doesn't like any of them yet. He wants us to build him an actual stage with lights in his room. That isn't going to happen, so we are trying to find the happy compromise. ACK-- this kid can be difficult at times!

It's so incredible to have some warmer weather and see things melting. I don't know that spring is really here, it's a bit early, but what a relief from the terrible cold we'd had. When it is cold, they say to dress in layers. The girls do that all the time, although I'm pretty sure this is not what they meant. They like to wear dresses in the winter, so instead of fighting, I tell them they have to wear a long sleeve shirt and pants under it. The look leaves something to be desired, but it keeps us all happy.

Happy Valentine's day!!

What a fun day! Ivan is having a party at school that he has been excited about all week long. The girls played while I worked on decorating Saba's dog house-- almost done- pics to follow.


We got this mailbox up in time to get stuffed to overflowing with inhouse mail to each other.


It's so cute watching Ivan and Dominique and Emora write each other about 5 notes a day!



and finally our walls are getting color and lots of it.

So far these are the only rooms painted. Ivan's colors were invented at the last minute from other colors we had left since the paint we had for his room froze and was ruined. We think it worked out pretty well. I am looking forward to adding their decorative wall art. Brian is about to go get trim and doors, then finish painting the other rooms and install trim. It's melting outside and I get to experience spring again after all these years! So fun.

it's color time!

Now we are at the really fun part of the basement- color!!! Brian started with Dominique's room. She had picked pink and purple. It's really bright in there and really pink and purple! But with the trim it will be pretty. She loves it.

Brian saved Ivan's room for when he got home from school so Ivan could paint too. The bad news is that we were going to reuse the green paint we had originally picked for the living room that we thought was too pale. Brian has had it in the garage where it froze solid. He brought it in a few days ago and it thawed out, but it thawed into a unmeltable mass of goo and won't remix. The good news is, Ivan just wants color. He is so excited about painting his room he's decided that we should just use any old color we've got. He run's from one wall to the next, use this, or this! We do have some left over green from our living room, but not enough for his entire space, so I just convinced Brian to mix some of our colors and see what we come up with. Worst scenario, we mix, it's horrid and he has to go get more paint, which is what we are looking at anyways. Speaking of Ivan being colorful, here is their fashion show of everyone in Dominique's clothes. I'll be keeping this one as sabotage leverage during his teen years.

Here, we were at the Koop's where the kids were doing some play. They of course were doing a play for us because they wanted an excuse to wear goofy costumes.



Did you like dressing up as a child? Did you put on plays? for who?



My siblings and I were always putting on plays for my parents. Then they got a video recorder and we (Jenn) rewrote children's story, we did costumes, makeup and accessories and recorded ourselves. We thought we were highly entertaining and it really was pretty hillarious, mostly because we got to see us in our younger years and hear my brother's voice again before it deepened. I know we will always treasure these memories and recordings of our theatrical geniuses!