Happy 24th of July

We were at Mayby mill on the actual 24th which was fitting because we got to look at a house that was built in 1860. Our stake had a fun pioneer celebration and emergency preparedness day. We had lots of fun and had a really good turnout. 

 My little Pioneer girl

 The kids got to pet a chicken

 and milk a pretend cow

 and shave with a butter knife

 Cute Daddy and Lilly

 There was also a waterslide and some baby wading pools. Lilly was quite the modest pioneer.

Grandpas Visit and a Trip to DC

 Uncle Nick came home from his mission and he was such a good sport to sit in the back of the van with the kids. He sure learned alot of patience and good people skills/ manners on his mission.

 We went to Maybry Mill

 The boys doing their manly shooting

 Grandpa in Air and Space museum

 Jack and I read a book where someone had stole Lincolns thumb. We were very glad to see he still had all 10 digits.

DC was a long drive. We had to make a stop off at Adam's favorite speaker store.

Charlie's 4th Birthday Party

 Our Incredible Family

 Mr. Incredible led the kids through super hero training as he shows them the proper way to do a push up. The kids won prizes for doing push ups, pull ups, and races to prepare for battle.

These are the imfamous swords that I found on pinterest and ended up costing me more than just buying some outright.  Charlie did have alot of fun putting them together and I was able to use the noodles twice. I took the noodles up to girls camp and the girls loved swimming with them.  For the party I made superhero capes and super suckers with capes and masks. We had a giant battle and Uncle Nick was good enough to play Syndrome as the 25 kids battled against the forces of evil. Charlie loved it so much that he had a meltdown when people started leaving because he wanted his party to keep going.

I have a love hate relationship with Pinterest

I LOVE Pinterest, I really do. I love going on there and feeling inspired to create things. There is something wonderful and special about creating things with your own hands.  The thing I don't like is that Pinterest is like Mormon Mommy Blogs, people put their best stuff out there, but the overload of things on there can make a person feel guilty if she is not baking gourmet meals, recycling and redesigning the families wardrobe and making all her own organic cleaning supplies.  I have found many great ideas on pinterest that I have used for activity days. The hard thing for me is adjusting my expectations based on the skill level of my girls and our itty-bitty budget.

My project this past week started when I went to this celebrating Home party and saw all the beautiful Home Decor including this painting that I just loved.  Like I usually do, I thought, "hey I could make that." So I went to the store and started checking out the supplies. Luckily I stopped myself before spending $60 to recreate a painting that with their sale was only going to cost $50. So I splurged and I bought it.

When it came in, my co-workers began to tease me asking if I even had a single thing in my house that would match my new painting. I thought, "Well, no, but it would look nice in my bedroom. Maybe I can find a good bedspread that would match." I got online and I found one but it cost $90. Plus $90 more for pillows and shams.  I decided to wait for my birthday and then see if I could ask for it, but I didn't want to spend that much on a bedspread.

Then, I started looking on pinterest and feeling crafty. What pushed me over the edge was that darn Joanne's mailer coupons. That is our only craft store in town and so I started invisioning making my own bedspread. It was college days so I drug my husband and his college ID along with 3 screaming kids to the mall and tried to pick out fabric and quilting supplies before all patience was gone (that lasted about 30 seconds). Nothing was on sale so I wasn't able to save that much because I forgot my 50% off coupon. Then we were down at a Walmart with fabric and I figured Walmart has cheap fabric so I bought a bunch in differnt colors because I didn't have my original paisley to match to, several of them didn't end up working for the quilt. I then found my coupon and went back to Joannes and bought the backing and  returned the full price batting for some 1/2 price.

I have a baby quilt someone made me that I just love so I decided to copy it and enlarge the scale.

 So I stayed up late a couple nights with Adam doing his homework and began cutting and sewing. I am not the best seamstress and definately not the most detail oriented person. This is my finished project, however, and I do like how it turned out. I'm not sure it was frugal, however because in the end, I spent over $100 on supplies and several hours of work. But it is handmade. It is very big 110 X 110" and I was able to make my own shams and throws :)

Stay tuned to my next project where I puchase $30 worth of materials to make $24 birthday party swords that I could have purchased at the dollar store for $1/ each....