SUYL: Kids Rooms

Today I'm linking up with Kelly's Korner for Show Us Your Life Friday!

The theme for today is Kids Rooms and Nurseries.

We are so excited about how Chloe Jo's room turned out! I had a specific vision for it and it came together great!

The best part is that she loves it, too. She will show her room to anybody and everybody that comes over!

I asked her what color she wanted her room and she said "Pink!" I then asked her what color her stripes should be and she said "Pink and pink!" I tried to talk her into a key lime green, but she was having none of it. HA! My little girly girl!

This is her room as you walk into the door. I love the plate that Russ' Mom gave me after she was born. That verse is one of my favorites.

 I think the striped wall came out so much better than I even imagined. It is perfect for a little girls room and I think it would precious in blues for a little boy, too. Maybe one day.

 I made the mobile while we were living in South Carolina and it travelled well. I also made the cross stitch a long time before I got pregnant in anticipation of a future baby. It is so special to me and I hope it will be special to her when she is older.

 This is on the wall with her closet. I always want her to know whose child she truly is. We are just borrowing her.

 I made her bow holder (and my, oh my, is it full!), the quilt that is draped over her dresser and the flower bouquet on her dresser. My Dad made the dresser and the adorable kitchen.

I'm so thrilled with how her room came out. I think it is perfect for a sweet little girl!

Link up {here}!

And the winner....

for the $5 Amazon.com giftcard is...

Drumroll please...

Congratulations! #6, you will be receiving an e-mail from me soon!

Baking with Chloe Jo!

"So, fiwst of aww, you have to put the yiners in the pan."

 "Den Honey (what she is calling me these days...goof!) wiw hewp me measuwe de ingreedients. I wiw pouw dem in de bowl and den stiw dem up."

 "Honey wiw mix de fiwst ingreedients because I don't yike de mixer. I den will hewp put the next ingreedients in."

 "Den I will powitewy smiew for Honey because she takes yots of pictures."

 "About this time I wiw get borwed and go pway. Honey wiw do de west."

 "Yook at the muffins I made!"

 "Nom nom nom."

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

 It's midweek, friends!

I haven't linked up with Jamie for What I'm Loving Wednesday in a looooong time!

I think it's time to remedy that!

Link up {here} to play along!

I'm loving that my little blog reached 100 followers last week! To celebrate I'm giving away a $5 Amazon.com giftcard! Go {here} to enter!

I'm loving the new recipes I've tried in the last week!

Fruit Pizza

 And homemade blueberry muffins (I'll have that recipe up soon!)

I'm loving that my parents are coming in tomorrow to stay a few days! They haven't been to our new house since we moved in so I'm excited to show it to them!

Speaking of our new house, I'm loving how well it's coming together!

The craft room is getting close to done and I'm so thrilled with how it is turning out! My vision is really coming together!

I'm loving that Chloe Jo is still loving Annie! She is watching it right now!

I'm loving that Chloe Jo really loves her new inflatable pool! I hope it lasts us a few summers!

And last, but not least, I'm loving this wall decal I ordered for the big wall that has nothing on it. I'm so excited to get it. It's going to look fabulous!

I'm going to do a video walk-through of our new house soon so stay tuned, friends!

Hope you all are having a great week so far!

Busy, but productive!

Whew, ya'll! I have had an insane, but soooo productive day! I only left the house once to go to the post office and Dollar General. The rest of the time I have been getting things done around the house that I had to put off because of our VBS week.

First thing this morning, I started working on the guest/craft room. I bought a cork board yesterday and hung that up about my craft table. I'm looking forward to pinning ideas and undone projects up!

 A while back I pinned a few pictures of walls with embroidery hoops and fabric on my pinterest. I knew I wanted to use the idea for my craft room. I've been collecting the embroidery hoops since we moved in and I drew up a diagram of where I wanted them all to go this morning. While I had to change up the diagram a bit when I actually started hanging the hoops, I love the finished wall! I do have 2 hoops that don't have anything in them. My mom is finishing a lavender and white quilt for the guest bedroom and she is going to see if she has any scraps from it that are big enough.

 I went ahead and hung the curtains, but I have to take them down to get the wrinkles out still. Actually, all the curtains in the house need to be ironed. I guess that will be a project for tomorrow.

 I am still wanting to get some letters that spell "CREATE" for the top of my shelf.

 And just because organization is a love of mine, here is my craft room closet. Love all the space!

 After finishing what I could in the craft/guest room I hung up the curtains I found for the master bedroom. I know they are plain, but I love them! Curtains just make it so much more homey! I just need to do the headboard to finish up our bedroom. I still need to finish the master bathroom, but I'm not worrying about that at all right now.

 This afternoon, while Chloe Jo took her nap, I tried mixing up the green paint for our living room again. I have mixed and remixed and mixed paint about a bazillion times trying to match the color since Lowe's didn't do very good. Today's try still wasn't perfect, but it is close enough that I went ahead and painted over all of the spots. I'm glad that I'm done with that!

 Right when you walk into our house, there is a huge wall that I haven't decorated. I did hang two family pictures up there, but they were not big enough and didn't look right. I moved those and have been contemplating what to do with that wall. I finally decided to order a vinyl decal scripture to put up there. I am so excited to get it in the mail. I think it is going to look fabulous!

 After Chloe Jo woke from her nap we tried a new recipe for Blueberry Muffins. I was given two containers of blueberries and thought they would be yummy in muffins. Chloe Jo loves helping me in the kitchen (except when I'm using a loud appliance like the mixer or blender!).

 The muffins turned out as delicious as they look...

...even though the baking powder I used expired 6 years ago! HA! I guess when I cleaned out the cabinets when we moved, I missed this! 

 Last week I ordered an inflatable pool from Target. It was one of their daily deals so I only paid $27 with shipping for it! I came yesterday and we put it on the patio and blew it up. We couldn't play in it then so I waited until this afternoon to fill it up with water. After supper I let Chloe Jo play in it for while. She had a blast!

 While she was playing, I put the leg anchors on her swing set.

 While I don't love how they look, they do exactly what they are supposed to and anchor the swing set to the ground. At least it gets the job done!

I love having so many things to do during the day! My parents are coming in Thursday for a few days so tomorrow will be cleaning day.

Don't forget to enter the give-away for a $5 Amazon.com giftcard. It is going to be in the form of a code so all I'll need is an e-mail address. Only 5 people have entered so you'll have a great chance of winning!

My Recipe Box: Fruit Pizza

On Saturday evening we went to a party at a friend's house to celebrate our successful Vacation Bible School. They provided brisket and asked everyone to bring a side dish or a dessert. I have been wanting to try making a dessert pizza so I found a recipe online to make. It turned out fantastic and was a big hit! If you love fruit, cream cheese and sugar cookies, you definitely need to try this!

Fruit Pizza

Ingredients:

2 12 oz packages refrigerated sugar cookie dough

1 8 oz package strawberry cream cheese, softened

1 8 oz container marshmallow creme

Fruit of your choice (I used strawberries, blueberries, grapes, bananas and kiwi)

1/2 cup white sugar

1 pinch salt

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/2 cup orange juice

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 cup water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice cookie dough and arrange on greased pizza pan, overlapping edges. Press dough flat into pan. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until done. Allow to cool.

2. In a large bowl, soften cream cheese then add marshmallow creme. Blend together and then spread over cooled crust.

3. Arrange fruit starting with the outside and working in. Dip bananas and apples (if used) in lemon juice so they won't darken.

4. Make the sauce to spoon over pizza. In a saucepan, combine sugar, salt, cornstarch, orange juice, lemon juice and water. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until thickened. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Spoon over fruit. Chill for 2 hours then cut into wedges and serve.

Enjoy!

Don't forget to enter the give-away for a $5 Amazon gift card!

Kiev, Ukraine Journal: 11-3-1994 and 11-4-1994

Do you all remember waaaaaaaaaaay back in March, before we moved and our lives became the chaos, I had started posting from my journals from when I traveled to Kiev, Ukraine back in the 90's? Well, I almost forgot about it, too. It has been in the back of my mind, but I just never did post anymore. I have finally dug the journals out again to share with you all! Yay! Right? Right? Okay...I know the only ones who will really care are probably my Dad, Mom and sister...and maybe not my sister so much. At least it will be on my blog for me to enjoy!

And to refresh your memory, I'm leaving all the bad spelling and punctuation my 12 year old self wrote down. Italicized comments are from me now.

November 3, 1994
"We went window shopping today. dad had to go to the institute. Shops were lining the bottoms of the flats. We were going to cross the river but Michelle did not want to (of course Chelle got her way). We finished unpacking our clothes and we had lunch. We had tuna, crackers, and peanut butter. Mom let us read her journal. She writes like it's going to be published some day (The Incredible journy of Jody), ha, ha. We stayed at the flat most of the day."

I find it so funny that I made fun of my Mom. I was such a brat...still am in many ways. I bet she is so happy to have those journals that have all kinds of details about everything in them and not just that we had tuna for lunch.


November 4, 1994
"We went to the market with DC (I am just using initials to protect the identities of those my 12 year old self slanders...by the way, I spelled the ladies name wrong anyway!) today. The market was like the buses, packed like sardines. In the meat section people were cutting of raw meat fat and eating it. It looked disquisting (I think I meant disgusting, *shudder* at my horrible spelling). We met FL today to. She's another misionary wife. At 6:00 we went to the institute and watched a borsh contest. Borsh is a type of a vegetable soup. I met RC at the contest. She's real nice. R is 11 yrs. old and in the 6th grade. Olga won the borsh contest. After the contest we had a similar game to bobbing for apples. We had to take a bite out of an apple hanging on a string. I played and our team got second place out of two teams. We got lifesavers for a prize. It was real fun. Then we went home and started our journals. That's basically all that happened today."

I'm so glad I specified that we got second out of two teams. It's definitely better than saying we lost! HA! 


Stay tuned for the next entry. I laugh so hard every time I open those journals! Uh...maybe you had to be there...


Don't forget about the give-away for a $5 Amazon gift card! I haven't received many entries so you will have a great chance of winning!

Blog Blah

• Yesterday I was behind a truck that had a bumper sticker that read: "THE TRAIL OF TEARS is the path where they cried." For real. Can anyone say redundant?
• I took Chloe Jo to McD's the other day and the news was on. The anchor for this particular program's name was Megyn. As in "I have an appointment to go see me gyn." People, please think about how you spell your children's names! That goes for you, parents of Jagr! Let's all say it together, "Vowels are our friends."
• Yahoo had a picture of Leann Rimes on its homepage recently. Um, ick. How much weight is she going to lose? And you know if she looks emaciated and nasty in pictures, she looks much worse in person.
• I know that summers in Oklahoma are about awful because of the heat, but girls, if you have to constantly pull down the inseam of your shorts, they are too short.

GIVE-AWAY!

Somehow, during all the turmoil that is my life right now (I know I'm being soooo dramatic) this little ol' blog has reached 100 followers!

That makes me mucho happyo!

Because I am mucho happyo, I'm going to give one of you fantastic readers a $5 giftcard to Amazon.com!

Excited, yes?

Me, too.

So the rules are as follows:

1. You have to be a follower of this blog.

2. Leave me a comment saying how much you love me (I kid, I kid...sorta). Just leave me a comment that includes your e-mail address.

3. You have 1 week to enter.

4. Just 1 entry per person, please. Duplicate entries will be deleted...if I even notice...

Good luck!

Getting There

On Thursday evening I had a few hours of down time so I got a few things done for Russ and I's bedroom.

First, I have been planning on making a shadow box for Chloe Jo for a long time and have just never gotten to it. I figured now was a great time since I hadn't hung anything in our bedroom yet so I finally finished that project. I love how it turned out. I think it is so sweet!

 I then hung all three shadow boxes.

 I also hung our initial letters. I, obviously, still need to find curtains. The ones that we used in our last bedroom were several inches too short for the windows in this bedroom.

 I still need to make a headboard (I think I will do that project next month). I have picked out fabric for it so I just need to get the supplies together. I probably will make the curtains out of the same fabric as the headboard.

This weeks project is to put the rails and headboard for the guest/craft room bed together and get some of the decorations together.

I'm slowly checking things off the list!

Typical

And We're Off!

I have been having such a hard time keeping up with this ol' blog lately! We have just been so busy that I have not had hardly a minute to spare for any computer activities.

This last week was full of final preparations for our VBS. I finished making decorations on Tuesday and then worked on lesson plans and getting organized the rest of the week. On Saturday we had a work day at the church building to get all the decorations put up and organize our classrooms. Everything turned out fantastic! It is so nice to be part of a congregation that really cares about serving the Lord and will work to bring the Word of God to the community!

I took about a bazillion pictures of the decorations! I feel like we really did go all out!

This is the sign-in table in the vestibule.

 This is another view of the vestibule decorations.

 This is the podium of our auditorium complete with treasure chest overflowing with treasure, a pier and a sail boat! This really turned out great. We covered the whole thing with burlap to make it look like sand and it worked perfectly!

 Love the treasure chest with Ruga, the monkey, sitting on the pile of treasure!

 This is just a better view of the sailboat and the pier. My brother-in-law, Chris, is the VBS director so he dressed up as Captain Solomon Fearlord and led songs from the pier. It was so fun!

 This is the hall with 3 of the classrooms. It is very narrow so I had to take pictures of each section to show it all.

 We did one side with a beach theme and the other side with an ocean scene. Again, we used the burlap as the sand. 

 I really love how the hallway came out. It looks so much better than the vision we all had in our heads!

 This is a sand dune with a ships wheel stuck in the sand.

 On to the ocean side. Love the sun setting in between the mountains.

 This is the map I worked very hard on. I think it turned out fantastic!

 This is the last section of hallway. It is really fun to walk down the hall and see all of this!

 I know this post is getting long, but I want to share my classroom pictures, also.

This is the door. I was planning to write the names of the kids on the boats, but I forgot tonight. Maybe I'll get to that tomorrow.

 I have one very large bulletin board in the classroom and this is it.

 This is actually a white board, but I wasn't planning on using it so I covered it to make another bulletin board. I really wanted to use the fish net!

 This is the ship I made and at the last minute and I had my friend, Tia, cut me out some clouds. They really gave it that little extra oomf.

 And this is the last wall of my classroom. Of course I had to make and island with a treasure chest!

I always enjoy decorating, but I also know that it is not the most important thing about VBS. I was happy to bring a great lesson to my 3 students tonight and am looking forward to teaching them more lessons from the book of Proverbs during the rest of VBS!