Happy Birthday...Jared!!

Happy Birthday Jared!

Now I am of course biased but Jared is the best friend and husband in the world. I'm so grateful he choose me to be his wife. He is immensely talented and has so much to give and offer. He is very patient with me and my acting like a 3 year old and my emotional roller coaster.

I'm grateful for this day to celebrate him and the wonderful person he is.

Not a bad guy

So Jared says I tend to make him sound like a bad guy. Most recently with putting up my ribbon board and him not doing it for me. So I want to set the record straight...he is a great guy. What he tends to do is try to teach me things so I can do it for myself but I am lazy and rather he do it for me. Plus if someone else does it doesn't it always look better?!!!

Today we had a wonderful day of hanging out together looking at baby stuff, getting rid of things, vegging and just being together. It's Jared's birthday present! He is an amazing guy and totally deserves a weekend of relaxing and just hanging out and I am glad I was able to make it happen. Tomorrow is his birthday and it's another relaxing day on the agenda.

Ribbon board semi-tutorial

How did I make my fabulous ribbon board you ask? Hmm well I didn't take pictures while making it so I'll do my best to explain.

I went to Staples and bought a large bulletin board (one for push pins). I then went to either Joann's or Ben Franklin and picked out a pretty patterned piece of material. I hadn't measured so I have lots of left over material which I have a project in store for it. :) I also bought some 1/4" ribbon to use. I think I used roughly 4-5 rolls. I didn't buy enough the first time so I had to go back and get more. So measure twice buy once?!!!

I borrowed a staple gun from some lovely friends. I then laid down my board and took the material and measured it to be about 2-2 1/2" wide all around. Cut it out and then laid it down and then centered the bulletin board in the middle. I started with one side and folded the material over twice to give it a nice edge and stapled my little heart out. Now I did this on the floor and so the ground kind of cushioned the blow but it made it harder to get my staples flesh and the wood was really hard. Oh yeah get the cork board with a wood edge. Anyways after I did one side I went to the opposite side and pulled the material tight and repeated the folding over and stapling. Repeat this for the last 2 sides. :)

From there I decided how I wanted to do my ribbon. Meaning how big did I want the sections. I started in one corner and then measured to a certain distance which was 5 1/2". I would staple my ribbon and then measure for the next one. Again pull your ribbon really tight when you are doing this. A few of mine are a little loose but I'm going to add the pushpins to tighten it up. :) So do the ribbon all one direction and then go the opposite direction. Now Jared suggested I should have weaved my ribbons which is a thought to help with the points being tighter.

Once you are done stapling trim up extra long ribbon excess and hammer on any staples sticking out. And whalaa you are basically done. You can add push pins to the centers and or glue on buttons or anything you like. Now you have a beautiful decorative board to put up ideas, pictures, tickets, bills etc. :)

I dug through my tin of push pins this morning. I have hundred's possibly a thousand + of them. They are from my room as a teenager and all of my walls being plastered with pictures of boy bands and got milk ads. Anyways I found my cute angel pushpins my mom gave me and found a way to weave them in and then the rest I used silver push pins. And while I was doing this I was thinking you could still do the push pins but glue anything to the top of them that you wanted. Buttons, flowers, fluffy balls etc.

I hope this semi-tutorial was helpful. Below are a few links that will be more helpful that I used.

Helpful Links...
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/ribbon-bulletin-board
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/ribbon-board?lnc=ea166c3b5acee010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=navigation_crafts_organizing-crafts
http://www.mormonchic.com/crafty/bulletinboard.asp

Handywoman

So during the summer or earlier I borrowed some staple guns and made this gorgeous ribbon board. I then had it sit around my house with no where to go. I had ideas for places to put it but just never did it. I was waiting on Jared to put it up. But that never happened (hey he owes me a quilt hanger). Since we moved our desk/office to the downstairs family room I've been thinking the perfect spot for my ribbon board is downstairs. So I asked Jared tonight for help. He brought me the level, hammer and drill. Told me what to do and watched me.

I thought the point of marrying a handyman is so I didn't have to do things like this or learn how to do this kind of stuff. Where did the wires get crossed? Handyman does handy things right?!!!

Anyways here I am putting it up!


I figured out where it was going to go with the template and made sure it was level.



Then I drilled in the holes for the anchors to go into for the screws. Did you know you shouldn't just put screws or nails into the dry wall and expect it to hold?



Then I had to manually screw in the screws.

I had to hammer down all the staples that were sticking out. Using a staple gun is cool but hard. Thanks Sara and Amber for letting me borrow those again! Now you can see the project I did with your help!



It is totally level!!!!

And TA DA!!! My ribbon board. I'm going to add silver push pins at the points and start adding things.

something easy, semi-healthy and with chocolate

I've got young women's tonight and I decided to make a treat for my girls. I wanted something easy, semi-healthy and with chocolate. What are the possibilities with that list of criteria?

Popcorn with chocolate drizzled!!!!! Duh!!!

I ran upstairs and popped some popcorn with my air popper. (How many times can you fit the would pop in a sentence?)

Then I laid it out on some tin foil to let it cool.

I melted some chocolate chips (usually I use bark Chocolate but for once I am out). I did this on medium heat in intervals of 30 seconds. I'm trying to be patient and not heat it up too fast. I hate it when it's discolored.

Now since it was chocolate chips it didn't have the same consistency as bark chocolate so I decided to use a Ziploc bag and drizzle it on that way. Which I don't think I'll go back to drizzling with a spoon now. So much nicer, cleaner and easier. :)

After you are done drizzling your chocolate you let it cool and harden. Again chocolate chips harden at a different rate than bark chocolate.

Then you break it up and serve it. It's super yummy and not too unhealthy. There's no butter or oil on the popcorn or salt. And while I was making it thinking about doing a post I thought of some things you could do to jazz it up! You could add marshmallows, peanuts, pretzels...just about anything trail mix type. Now of course this lowers the healthy portion but oh well.

Did this tutorial of sorts help at all?

Routine!!

I've got me a routine!!! I've been working from home now for a month and this week I finally decided I need a routine with 2 things at the top of the list. Exercise and practicing the piano! Two things I neglect way too much and I struggle to find time for until now.

I'm getting up after family scripture study instead of going back to bed. I go workout on my Wii for 15-30 minutes, then have breakfast with Jared, send Jared off to work, practice the piano and either go shower or start working. Now granted it's only been two days but it feels good and I am accomplishing a lot by getting going. It's going to be fabulous. Now with the little bit of exercise I've lost .4 lbs...oops...I need to work on eating more fruit and veggies to ensure my little boy is getting all of the nutrients he needs.

All Packed Up

Christmas is finally over at my house.

:(

My goal was to have all of Christmas packed up and put away 2 weekends ago but that didn't happen. I got the little tree done and the downstairs but not the upstairs. I worked on it a bit last week with my nephew Jeffrey. He was a pretty good helper overall. I could tell he really liked helping. He has a lot of energy and wants to be a part of things.

So tonight Jared packed up the tree and I took everything else down. Now there's a huge pile of boxes and bins to go up to the attic to be locked away for 10 months at least.

The nice thing about putting Christmas away is it makes me clean and it makes me rethink some decorating of spots.

The living room I must say looks pretty fabulous! We rearranged furniture just a smidgen and it feels more open. I'm going to get rid of my coffee table. It makes the room feel small and it's just another flat surface to accumulate stuff and dust.

A missing piano book

The house is empty and quite again. Ed and Leslie and their kids left Saturday. I figured when I got home Saturday afternoon that I would do the dishes, clean up the nail salon in the living room and get some laundry going. Boy was I wrong! I laid in bed watching TV with Jared and took a nap. After I woke up I still didn't feel like doing much but I had a lesson for church to finish preparing so I worked on that in bed. :)

Yesterday I worked from home so I tried to get a few loads of laundry done. 3 to be exact!!! The whites were the most important!!! I did 3 or 4 batches of dishes and worked on my ISO documentation for work. ISO is going to be the death of me. It's fancy, Sarbanes and Oxley approved organized documentation for processes. After getting all of that done I finally took my shower for the day and started getting ready to go to my piano lessons. I found all my books except one I wanted to take with me. I had a church piece I wanted to start working on. I knew I had the book last Sunday evening and it couldn't go very far from the piano. I looked everywhere and cleaned things up a bit. And still couldn't find it. Time was starting to run out and I was frustrated. I sat down and said a prayer asking for help to find it. I looked at a few more places and then decided it wasn't meant to be and went downstairs and was going to call my Sister in-law to see if they hid it from the kids. When a thought hit me it's in the piano bench. I ran upstairs and opened it up and there was the book plus one I didn't realize I was missing. I sat down and thanked my Heavenly Father for helping me to find my book.

When there's little kids in the house things get hidden and forgotten about. We've found a few things in different places. But I sure loved spending time with my family. And the house is almost recovered, things just piled up after they left because I was being lazy. Leslie and Ed helped out a lot with the dishes this time and had the toys all picked up before they left. Aunt Emily just made a mess with dishes by making breakfast and the nail salon which still needs to be put away.

Aunt Emily's Beauty Salon

After breakfast today I took Talia and Coral for a bath. After they had some great fun splashing Aunt Emily they got dried off and I blow dried their hair. Talia has hair like Aunt Emily it dries in less than 5 minutes whereas Coral has her mom's hair and it takes a bit to dry.

After we did hair and got dressed we sat in the living room and painted nails. It's a special nail polish that smells. Coral choose Purple which smells like Grapes. Talia choose Orange which smells like Oranges. And I chose Pink and it smells like Raspberries.

The girls are all cleaned up, beautified and ready to go for the day. I really loved spending time with them like this. I got to do this last Saturday too minus the nails.

And while I was playing with the girls Uncle Jared was playing video games with Jeffrey. He felt like a big kid playing Uncle Jared's racing car game.

Auntie Em's Daycare

Ed, Leslie and the kids have been in town this week. :) Yesterday I added Corey and Connor to the mix. So 5 kids with one Auntie Em downstairs eating muffins, taking pictures, watching a movie and playing together.

Corey got up on the desk and instead of telling him no like I should have I decided it was a photo op time. And the greatest part was I said do this and Corey listened to me.

Talia and Coral were fighting over who is next to lay on the desk and get their pictures taken.

Coral was last but still adorable and followed direction well.

I really loved how these turned out and I only posted my 3 favorites. Connor and Jeffrey weren't fighting over their pictures being taken they kissed each other on the cheek until Ed interrupted that and then played other games.

Email Inbox Management = Personality Traits

Is your email inbox a reflection of your personality?

It very well could be. Is it neat and tidy never over a page full of emails? Do you have a spot to store any important emails? Do you read and delete forwards? Or do you hold onto all your forwards? Do you delete everything? Or do you keep everything you've ever received in your inbox? Do you respond to emails in a prompt manner? Or do you wait and forget about them?

How did you answer? What do you think your email inbox says about you?

Well let's take a crack at myself...this morning in my yahoo inbox (yes I have multiple email addresses and for good reason) I had 1,800+ emails sitting in my inbox. I have 17 folders to store emails and yet there were 1,800+ emails just sitting there. Sometimes I organize emails into their folders as they come in but most of the time I don't because conversations are flying back and forth. Now every once in awhile I come through my inbox and sort things out. I delete emails and put the ones that I feel need to be saved into a folder.

So today I made some serious progress I got it down to 688 emails currently sitting in my inbox. I feel pretty good about the accomplishment. I know I've got a ways to go still but the most important part I feel is I actually deleted forwards. Usually I save them into a folder but several months ago I actually stopped reading them from people and just straight up deleting them. I still have my folder of saved forwards to delete. We shall see how long it takes me to delete them. :)

So what does my inbox management tell you about me? Any thoughts??? I've got a few. :) I try to be organized and sometimes I take great strides to get organized but eventually I get overwhelmed or don't care for awhile and let things pile up. I hold onto things that are not necessary to hold onto. I get attached to things easily. Those are just a few things I noticed.

Remember all that snow!

This is from last year at Christmas time. Remember all that snow! We took Connor for an afternoon one day and he played inside with us and outside too.

We built a big snow fort!

so stinkin' cute!!!

Oh my gosh this is so precious! Look at young Connor was. He was so stinkin' cute!!!

I'm Going to Kill my Husband :)

Okay so this video cracks me up too! I was having way too much fun with Jared's video camera. I made him run like I was trying to run him over with the car.

Can't Physically Keep Your Mouth Closed

I was running through pictures for my cousin and found this video and thought it was funny. It makes me laugh!

Silly Goose!

Leslie and the kids came up a few weekends ago for some more time together! Trying to squeeze in as much as we can before they move yet again. At least it's in the states this time.

Here is Talia gorgeous as ever!

Coral being a silly goose!

Oh look there's the ducks and a goose!

Okay so Leslie was telling me about some time she spent with old friends on New Years Eve and was talking about in high school she could fit her fist in her mouth. I was like I have to see this. She was a little reluctant but you can't tell someone that and then just leave it without them seeing.
Look at Coral smile!

Jeffrey had some gum and wanted to show it off.

Got Milk?

You're gonna need it if you want to eat these. I didn't have milk and I am dying for some now. I got a delicious recipe off of Craftaholics Anonymous. I decided I hadn't had breakfast yet I'd go whip myself up some. :)

I did a few things different...I shifted the dry ingredients together and I used canned milk because I didn't have any milk. We go through milk way to fast in this house. I can't keep up and I only have 1 husband, 1 teenager and 1 pregnant woman living here.

Anyways one thing I would suggest is melt your butter first because it says it should cool. And I didn't read that minor detail so I threw it in hot...not sure if it makes much difference but thought I'd share. I served them up to myself with maple syrup (I don't have fancy syrups yet) and whipped cream. The whipped cream is a must!!!!

So if you've got milk and want to bring it over I'll share the pancakes if you share the milk! Anyways enjoy and thank you Linda for sharing!

Interesting Equilibrium

Our ward has an interesting equilibrium that my sweet husband pointed out to me last night. There must always be a certain amount of woman pregnant at any one time. One sister just gave birth on Sunday and yesterday someone found out they were pregnant.

There's at least 3 currently that I am aware of. We are not quite sure what the number is of how many woman should be pregnant at one time but we are on the watch for a few more ladies to announce they are pregnant soon.

Nesting?

I'm a cleaning machine! Well at least I am trying to be. Jared and I made so much progress between Christmas and the New Year and I want to get it finished. I worked in the downstairs laundry room/bathroom on Saturday for like 3-4 hours.

I scrubbed down the walls, the base boards, toilet, sink, washer machine and dryer. That place was so beautiful! No more spots on the walls no more gunk around the washer machine lid. It was all made possible by my Scunci! Do you know what a Scunci is? It's a steam cleaner that I bought years ago and haven't used since I moved into my house. I was a sucker for an info-mercial. Jared made fun of me.

Next up is the family room which I did some work out here but haven't quite finished. After that my craft room again...just need to put stuff away again. And after that it's on to the future Nursery. Now that we know "for sure" it's a boy I am going to empty and clean that room top to bottom and then paint it and bring in furniture as I get it.

I am really excited to one have a clean house and I am doing my darnedest to keep it clean and two to work on the nursery!!!

So I either just got a cleaning bug, tired of filth or I am nesting. But in my opinion I've been nesting for the past like year.

I was in Zion today!

Today we had Stake Conference. It was amazing. We went to the adult session last night also. My favorite part was everyone singing together. I commented to Jared last night how full it was and just what an amazing feeling it gave me. Today it was even better! My friend Sara was playing the organ and she rocked it!!! I was so overcome with emotions I couldn't even sing anymore (which honestly is pretty typical of the hymns because of the words and the meanings behind them). I thought about it and why I was so touched at this particular moment and it dawned on me that being together as a Stake was unifying. We are all human and trying the best we can, we make mistakes and fall short so much but we are not expected to be perfect by ourselves. We are to be perfect in Christ. I felt very much like I was in Zion today listening/singing with everyone. I am so grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I cannot express enough my gratitude for the bounteous blessings bestowed upon me. I am in awe of my Savior and his love for me and each child of God on the earth that has lived and ever will live that he would come and live as a man and endure so much pain and ridicule to make it possible for us to return to live with him. I am so grateful for music and the feelings and emotions is stirs within me. And I am grateful for this experience I had today.

Time for a Vacation!!!!

I want to go on a vacation again! Somewhere warm and hot! GIVE ME A CRUISE PLEASE!!!! Or Mexico where I can do death defying things like falling into a cenote where the only thing saving you from certain death is a little mexican dude a 1/3 of your height, and a moldy mattress.

IT"S...A...GIRL!!!!!

Can you believe it? Do you believe it? Yeah me neither....

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Just kidding! It's a 100% BOY!!!! We are so thrilled!

His legs were crossed at first and then he opened them and strutted his stuff long enough to get a picture and then was like okay now you know no more for you. It was just an amazing experience to see him move, kick, swallow, his heart beat and everything. It was just so cool. We've got lots of pics and a DVD now too to remember it with more.

The Ultimate Pickle Ball Points!!!!

Christmas 2009. Every year there is a Christmas Eve party on the Lutz side of the family usually at Jared's parents home.

Connor, Brooks Jr. and Corey all loved playing the piano together. Well maybe not so much together but they had no real choice. It's a popular toy with the kids. Luminaries are popular and are a tradition from New Mexico.

Christmas Morning!! Olga's sister spoiled her pretty good with a lot of cool shoes and clothing items. She got rain boots so now she's prepared for the rain...speaking of which why isn't it raining.

Olga even knows how to make me cry. Olga printed off a few pictures of her time her with us thus far and arranged them in a black frame to match my decor downstairs when I finally put together the family wall. Olga is very athletic. She enjoys swimming but last time her eyes were so red we decided to get her some goggles. Can it be? Did Santa hear my wish? Olga was spoiled with a guitar!

Wow I got a Wii box with dish towels!

Instead of just being on the phone with my mom this year we did a video conference. Olga got to have a tour of my Mom's house in Idaho.

Christmas Afternoon!

Here is Jason casually looking around on Christmas afternoon at his parents house. So we did Christmas morning at our house and then went to Jared's parents house for Christmas afternoon and dinner.

The ultimate pickle ball points!!!! I got brought in on a little secret on Christmas Eve. For my gift exchange gift I got some silly string. Jason immediately pulled me aside and filled me in on a joke. They(Jason, Heather and Jason's Mom) randomly picked a present tag name "Bubble Lights" from the gifts for Christmas day that when it was given out everyone would have silly string and attack that person. Well Bubble Lights was called and the owner was Jacki! We all grabbed our silly string before she could even open her present and attacked her. Connor and Corey both started wailing and freaking out. "Paint on Mommy!" Neither of them understood what was going on and we were all cracking up laughing and spraying Jacki. We had to put a hold on Christmas so we could get the boys calmed down and clean up the mess. Connor and Corey might be traumatized for life about silly string. But oh my goodness it was hilarious!

After presents were all done (after round 2). Everyone was just hanging out mostly doing their own thing. Olga took my camera and started exploring with it and having fun. She got the boys in front of Jared's Mom's new mirror and had fun doing that.

Olga also took pictures of a picture of Jacki and her family.

And she got Connor to have fun with the mirror too.