My New Fall Wreath at Quilted Euphoria

I'm guest blogging at Quilted Euphoria today!  Come on over and see how I made my new fall wreath from stuff I had on hand.

Have a great Sunday!

Chair Redo

My husband was recently helping a neighbor move.
After about 20 minutes he calls and says,
"you might want to come over for a minute."
Turns out, the neighbor was trashing or sending to the thrift store 90% of everything in the house.
I practiced great restraint and only took a chair, and a large frame {redo coming soon}.

The chair was solid, just needed a little paint and the cushion recovered.  It took about 1 hour and $0 {I already had the fabric and paint} to makeover this chair.

 For a minute, I thought about staining it, too, then decided I liked the white better.

The upholstery was an old mustard velour, which might have been kind of cool to keep if it had been in better shape.

Drumroll.

She's kind of a pretty chair, don't you think?

Red Bed

A few days ago, I found this sad, abandoned bed on the curb.

It was grimey and gross.  and sticky.  and it smelled funny.
But I saw potential, so I brought it home, sanded it down, painted it, stained it and assembled it.

Now it's awesome.

August Visiting Teaching {better late than never}

The Visiting Teaching Message for August is
"Taking Action in Time of Need"
The sisters we visit should be able to say, "If I have problems, I know my visiting teachers will help without waiting to be asked."  This means that we need to get to know our sisters and interact with them enough, that we know what is going on in their lives, and help if we can.  We can be instruments in the hands of God in helping our sisters. 

For my sisters, I bought some hand lotion {so our hands will always be ready to help} and printed the message on these full-sheet labels.  Then I cut them out and stuck them on the bottles of lotion.

You are welcome to print out the message and label here.  If you would like the yellow one, send me a note, and I will send you the link.

Happy Visiting Teaching!

Pure Awesomeness

My family just recently got back from a little road trip to the Oregon coast.  We saw some amazing things.  This was one of them:

Now, you guys have parobably seen and tried these, but I have never seen them here in Utah, so we had to try them, and they. are. amazing.

Am I the only person to have never tried these?!

I googled them when I got home and found several (uh-oh) ideas on how to replicate the taste.

The possiblilities really are endless.

Summer Update

I had high hopes of being able to blog consistantly this summer, but alas, no.

This is just a quick post to let you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

Remember this post?  Well, we all survived, and as I look back on that post, I can't help but notice that it sounded a little melodramatic.  It was a weird, scary day though.

We ended up not being evacuated, but this is what the mountain looked like when we went to bed that night:

and here's what it looked like the next day:

It was like there had never been smoke or flames or craziness the day before.
Thanks for all of the well-wishes and concern.

Our summer has been crazy busy!
We've been playing on the lake quite a bit.
The kids are getting pretty good at wakeboarding and love trying to get thrown from the tube.

{My toenails rarely look so pretty, that I had to take a picture...lovin' that Robbins toe.}

We've also been attending baseball and t-ball practices and games a few times a week.  It's been fun to see my kids learn a new sport.

Swimming lessons, too.

We've had a few birthdays,

...and parties and reunions,

and been busy with scout activities, girls' camp and youth conference.

I've snuck in a few projects--my favorite is this wingback chair that I made a slipcover for.

Our summer has been exhausting, but great so far.

Hopefully, we'll get the blog back on track when school starts again next month.

Have a great day!

P. S.  I normally don't like oranges in the summer, because they aren't as good as in the winter, but I had one the other day, and it. was. awesome!  Now I can't stop eating them.

The "Threshold of Hell"

I live in a pretty rural area.
It is beautiful and has amazing views.
It has easy access to boating and 4-wheeling.
The people who live out here are hardy and tough and good.
Every summer, out here on the frontier, there is a new plague.
The year we moved in, it was crickets.  Thousands of them.  Everywhere.
The next summer, it was voles {small rodents that are a little bigger than mice, but not as big as rats, with shorter tails.}
Some years, it's large spiders.
Some years, it's snakes.
But one thing we have to deal with every year are the fires.

{all photos taken by my neighbors}

A friend of mine, taking into consideration everything that we deal with out here, nicknamed the area "The Threshold of Hell". 

I'd say he's pretty accurate.

So we are at the ready.  We've gathered our belongings.  We are ready to go if/when that call comes.
Hundreds in our town have already evacuated.  Some homes have been damaged.

So we'll wait and see.