Costumes and more

Whew!  It has been busy around here.  My first challenge was my old calling- we had our big "craft day", and I was in charge of a little FHE kit (short, spiritual lessons for young families) where each of the 30 lessons had an object you could pull out.  But of course, right when I had so much to do finding all of those little pieces, I got a new "job" at church- 2nd Counselor in the Primary.  I have to say this was a bit of a shock for me, and has been a lot to tackle.  I have never done anything with the little kids at church before!  I am perfectly at home working with the ladies my age, or even with the youth, but I am a fish out of water with little kids.  Hopefully this will help me in my life as a mother.

Once I got through all of that chaos, it was time to focus on another big assignment I had.

Doctor Who.

Yup.  I signed up for this.  I am really good friends with his mom - well, this whole family, actually.  And she told me that he really, REALLY wanted to be Doctor Who for Halloween, but they couldn't find a jacket.  Well, I think they did find a couple, but they were over $50.  So we worked out an awesome deal.  She bought the supplies (we found $1.50 Walmart fabric as a miracle) and I counted the hours I spent making the jacket, bowtie and suspenders.  And in return, he has been giving Kaitlyn piano lessons to pay me back, hour for hour, for his own costume.  In theory, I can play piano just fine, so I tried to teach her myself over the summer, but it just wasn't working.  If Jasmine is awake, she freaks out if she can't join us on the piano.  And if she is asleep, then we are trying to keep quiet so she can stay asleep.  Plus, everything always works better when you have a scheduled goal to meet and a third person to be accountable to.  So Kaitlyn has been doing leaps and bounds on piano since she started!

This jacket was a good stretch for me.  I consider myself fairly good at sewing, at this point.  But a fitted jacket is certainly one of the tougher items to make out there.  And following a pattern is something I am out of practice with- I usually just make it up as I go, but that was out of the question this time.  My most difficult section was the front pockets.  I read that section a dozen times and spent an entire hour just making the first pocket because I could not figure out what they wanted me to do.  In fact, when I saw how hard it was, I dashed upstairs to google "doctor who jacket" and see if I really had to make those pockets. Yup, Doctor Who has pockets.  Back downstairs.

And when Spencer tried on the jacket to test the fit, he was floored.  "There are real pockets!  All of my jackets for church just have a fake flap there!!"  Well, that would have taken 5 minutes.  But hey, at least he was thrilled about it!

My favorite part was actually the inside pocket.  There isn't an inside pocket in the pattern, but Doctor Who needs one to pull out his sonic screwdriver.  And since this jacket otherwise just looks like a tweed jacket with elbow patches, I decided to have a little fun with that pocket.

I made a TARDIS out of felt.

That was the best part because it was a surprise- and when he opened the finished jacket and saw the pocket, he was literally jumping around the room and shrieking about how awesome it is.  Reactions like that make it all worth it!

And I finished it in time for Kaitlyn's first piano recital.  Since his mother teaches piano lessons (and has for years), all the kids can perform together.  And since it was Halloween, they all performed in costume.

"But first, I have a joke."  And the best part was that Kaitlyn came up with her own jokes!  She got a "Phineas and Ferb Halloween Joke Book" from the Scholastic book fair at school, and it turns out she has been reading it more than I knew, because when they practiced telling jokes before they performed she came out with joke after joke.  With actual punch lines.

I love the dangling crossed ankles.  The song she played was actually really, really easy for her, but it was entitled "Halloween" and their theme for the night was minor key, scary stuff, so it worked.

Her costume, by the way, came from a garage sale.  She spotted it and decided that was her Halloween costume on the spot.  I had to take it in a bit for her and add the hat and a broom, but it certainly made my job easy this year.

And Spencer, of course, had a Doctor Who joke to tell right before he played the Doctor Who theme song.

As for the rest of the kids, I made a deal with myself.  I could not figure out for the life of me what Jasmine should be.  And when I saw the cute Costco costumes again, I went ahead and grabbed the ladybug just because it was cute.  But it bugged me that I would do that two years in a row for her.  I don't want her to look back at pictures someday and see all the elaborate paper mache and sewing I did for the other kids and think, "gee, thanks mom".  And of course, I realized as soon as I bought the ladybug that Jasmine is Cookie Monster.  We call her monster all of the time because she is either our happy sweet girl - or an absolute menace if she is hungry.  She wakes up starving every day now that I don't nurse her overnight, and if you so much as cut the banana in half before handing it over or give her the wrong kind of cereal there will be a five minute tantrum.  MONSTER.

As a side note, Cookie Monster has a very deep, male voice, but when you search for "cookie monster costume" on the internet it is mostly girls in blue tutus.  I have no idea why that is.

But I told myself that I couldn't make her a cookie monster costume unless I got the jacket done first, since that was such a huge task.  Thankfully, the dress came together in just an hour or two.

And when she needs to be warm, I can even use the black long sleeve shirt and tights from the ladybug costume!

I used cookie crisp cereal for the hairbow, and then ironed on felt for the face and cookies on the dress.

Her favorite part was the shoes, as always.  I tried the first one on to test the fit, and she cried when I took it off.  And then once that one was done and I went back downstairs to finish the second one, she followed me around and pointed to her bare foot with an "eh?" to say "where's the other one?"

And so all costumes were ready for the annual neighborhood party.

Jasmine actually loved trying all of the games.  She spent a lot of time putting the ring on the castle . . .

. . . and was really proud of herself for that.

The photo backdrop, however, was not very interesting.

And this photo might be terrible, but I like it anyway.  She sometimes gets into a "sequence" - yesterday in church she would climb on my lap for a hug, the jump off, run down the pew, and tap another lady's purse with her foot, and then come right back to hug me.  Repeat 10 times.  And that night, she found a hill on a front yard to run down and hug me from behind, then she would go the other direction, come back, and do it again.  She isn't a snuggler, so I take what I can get.  And my friend didn't know how to work my camera, but again, I love the smiles anyway, so I'll take it :).

There were some fun costumes that night!  This girl guarded the pumpkin patch (I honestly thought she was a decoration the first time I walked by).

And this kid did a really great job with his.

But the favorite for the night in our family was the "cake walk".  (Kaitlyn was very confused when I called it that, since there was no cake involved.)  Tyler and Jasmine both LOVE walking and running in circles, so once Jasmine figured out what everyone was doing she trotted along with the rest of the kids.

When she happened to win, people tried to get her to go get candy, but she just got confused.  "I have a job to do- I need to walk in circles!"  But once I opened her Twizzlers and gave her a piece, she happily went back to the circle.  And then when she finished that piece of Twizzlers, she immediately went over to get more from the prize bucket.

Kaitlyn loved it so much she went back the instant the costume parade was done . . . and played by herself for a while.

Such funny kids!

During the Condo

While we were renovating the condo, I barely kept up with life, to be honest.  In fact, I didn't even download pictures, so making this post will be a discovery for all of us.  What on earth did we all do in the last month that wasn't at that condo?

Hmm.

I made good use of garage sales.  I got the covers for these chairs for $1 at a tent sale this summer.  I picked out the name that didn't make sense, kept the "Sarah" because I could, and then kept hunting for bean bag filling.  But then I found a bags of pillow stuffing at a garage sale and they could finally come to life.  Jasmine sits in her little chair every chance she gets to watch TV.

I also made the girls matching dresses out of a XL women's skirt.  50 cents!

I find it funny that Kaitlyn is so used to this by now.  In fact, this was her idea.  She picked it up and asked if it could be a skirt for her.  When I figured out there was enough left over for a Jasmine dress, it was a happy accident.

Kaitlyn knows what she likes, though.  Sparkly and twirly.  This is my favorite kind of project!  The tiers were already there, so all I had to do was make a top section using the existing side zipper.  Fun to figure out, yet quick to make.

What else did we do?

We went to all the home BYU games so far.  The team is . . . a box of chocolates this year.  But our seats are great, and we have a lot of fun!

Of course, there was the game with the 2 hour rain delay.  We hadn't looked at the weather forecast, so the only rain cover my Mother-in-law had to offer us was a bit red-neck.

At least we stayed mostly dry.

I took a break from the condo one day and took the kids to our city's little heritage festival.  There were booths with actors telling stories about the history of our town, some games to play, a potato sack race, some hats to try on, and a place to saw off little sections of a log to keep.

We also went to Kaitlyn's school carnival, which was a disaster.  They held it mostly inside since it was cold, and there were way too many people in a school with the tiniest gym and most itty-bity cafeteria I have ever seen.  Jasmine was miserable before we even got there, and Tyler is having a hard time with winning (he gets kinda mean) and losing (he collapses in a sobbing heap on the ground).  Kids cut in front of Tyler, they ran out of food, and . . . well, I was done.  But here's a picture before I got fried!

Oh, and we haven't been to the cabin since we started work on the condo, but I must have forgotten a few pictures.  First of all, we hit the jackpot a couple of months ago!  Daddy found a moose antler in March, and we thought that was amazing.  But then I took the kids on a walk and found the match!

Our neighbor said that she has gone on a walk every morning for years and never found anything.  We really lucked out!  Now we just have to figure out how to hang them up.

We also got lucky enough to have awesome neighbors.  We went over to say hi, and he let us try out his zipline.

That was really fun.

And as a celebration for a finished condo, we took a trip to Moab last week with some friends!

We stayed at the KOA, which had a perfect hill for the kids to try out the balance bike.  The idea is that they coast down without pedals to get the feel for steering and balance before we take the training wheels off.

They had so much fun, they were coasting down every chance they got.  Daddy, of course, had bigger hills to climb, and had a great time on Slickrock.

Our friends were there to go Jeeping, which isn't our thing, so we went on a hike instead.

This trail was actually great- lots of trees and shade along a creek.  I wish I had taken my good camera to get a good picture, but . . . it is heavier, and we had Jasmine to pack along.

The creek crossings were a bit more interesting, but they got the hang of it.

Tyler wasn't so sure about clinging to the side of the rock, however.

And we also took a trip to "Sand Hill".  I was amazed that there could be a place named sand hill among a rocky desert, because doesn't that describe everything you see?  But low and behold, this hill meant business.

The two dots almost to the top are my kids.

This one didn't want to climb up the hill.  She was just thrilled we were letting her play in it!  She would pick up a couple of fistfuls, throw them down, and then laugh at how awesome it was.

Such a good friend!

Most of us just stayed at the bottom.  I'm glad one mom went up though, because she said that Tyler was cresting the next hill over by the time she got up there!

Oh, and we had to visit our favorite park too.  The musical instruments are fun to play around with,.

It was a lot of fun!

And when we got back home, we took off the training wheels on their bikes, and off they went.

The Condo

Whew!  I haven't blogged in a long time because we have had a major project underway.  But we are finally done!

Christopher has been thinking about being a landlord for a long time.  It is a pretty good way to make some money on the side: you invest in real estate, other people foot the bill and pay you to live there, and he is very good at all the home repairs and updates that would come along with that.  We bought our first condo a year or two ago, and while the tenant that came with the place has been pretty bad, it still convinced us that it is a good idea for us.  So we saved up and put in an offer on another one.

Since that was a short sale, however, the bank didn't get back to us for 10 months.  At which point they said that they accepted our offer- as long as we closed in two business days.  Amazingly, that part didn't turn out to be the difficult part.  The funny part came when the Realtor went over there to check on things, and her key didn't work.  Imagine her surprise when a college-age girl answers the door.

"What are you doing here?"
"I'm renting this apartment."
"From who?!?"
"The owner."
"No, you aren't!"

It turns out that when the previous owner was in the foreclosure process, a friend of his tried to buy the place.  The financing fell through, so he didn't get it.  But at some point in that process he got keys.  He then later switched out the locks, and while the bank was lazily getting around to accepting our offer, he rented it out.  He gave the girls a low rate so they wouldn't ask any questions, told them their huge dog wasn't a problem (against HOA policy in the complex), and pocketed everything they gave him without giving the HOA a dime.

Who does that?

Anyway, when we told the girls that we, the actual owners, were raising the rates to normal and they couldn't keep the dog, they moved out.

Which left us with bigger problems.  See, these are the pictures with the listing.

Yup.  These are the pictures that make my husband say, "let's buy it!"

Once the clutter and tenants were gone, we were left with this.

This picture is pretty typical for the unit.  Basically, the previous owner worked at a tile store, so I guess he brought home random extra tiles and tried to find uses for them.  I don't know what made him think that would make a good backsplash, but he was too lazy to finish the project or cut the tiles to fit around the outlets.  The outlets, of course, were all different colors and ages.  The wallpaper border was partially torn down.  And, the pièce de résistance was the cabinets.  There were about four holes in them for knobs that never got installed.  Our best guess was that one day, they decided to paint the cabinets.  So without removing the doors or even opening the doors, they sprayed them white.  And when the can ran out, they left it as is.  They missed and sprayed the countertop and tile floor as they went, just to make it extra snazzy.

I saw a HGTV show once where the host saw a paint job like this and said that "this isn't home improvement, this is vandalism!"  He had a point.

So my big job was to paint the cabinets properly.  I removed all the doors, sanded them down, cleaned them with deglosser, painted them (2 coats on each side), and then we put it all back with new hinges and knobs.

 Instead of replacing the countertop, we are testing a new type of paint meant for laminate countertops.  I don't know how well it will last, but at $20, it was worth a shot.  It was certainly an improvement over "pee" yellow.

Ta-da!

There was a section next to the fridge with other random tile on the floor, so I figured we would cover it up with some new cabinets to add extra storage and hide the hack job.

Not bad now, eh?

The rest of the rooms don't have "before and after"s that look as fun, but they were also a lot of work.  We replaced every door hinge and knob along with almost every outlet and light switch, repaired all the holes in the drywall, painted every single surface, replaced both faucets, replaced every single window, and fixed or installed missing closet doors.

 We also replaced the floor in the laundry room and the front entry (which had not one, but two layers of ugly tile).

More random tiles on the wall in the bathroom.  These were so well glued on that all of the drywall behind them came off with them and had to be replaced.

And these tiles were put in the the bathroom window, which unfortunately is in the shower itself.  I don't know what caulk they used to put them down with, but they just lifted up to reveal the nastiest smell I have ever witnessed.  We lifted one up and put it back down immediately on our first walk through, and the smell reached the kitchen by the time we left.

I really don't understand how people attempt things like drywall repairs, do a job like this, and walk away.

Much better.

I am just glad it is done.  It was actually fun, in some ways.  Neither of us was as emotionally attached to the choices we made here, so instead of debating endlessly over things like we do at the house, we could just shrug and pick one.  And since I was there so much to help, I ended up learning a lot of the jobs that Christopher usually takes over.  He taught me how to switch out outlets and light switches, and I actually did most of them in the place.  Every day I would pick Kaitlyn up from Kindergarten and drive over there, put Jasmine down for her nap in one of the rooms, and Kaitlyn would wander around and help me or read a book to me until we had to go get Tyler off the bus.  In fact, Kaitlyn really loved helping!  I think her favorite was using a hammer on a screwdriver to bang the tiles out of the front entry, kitchen backsplash, and bathroom wall.  She did a great job.

The evenings were a bit tougher, since we had all of the kids.  We would usually put up the baby gate to keep them in one room, set up the Kindle to play Sesame street, and try to get something done.  But Jasmine is at the stage where she wants to be a part of everything that goes on, and she didn't like being trapped in there one little bit.  There was some bribing with candy involved, I have to admit.

But we are DONE!

Anyone want to rent an apartment?
(We've have a few showings today, and will have more tomorrow, so here's hoping!)