Craft table!

It's done!  I'm limping to the finish line on this one, but my new table is finally done.  And I love it.  I love it so much that you are going to get a long post devoted to it, with many pictures!

Actually, there are funny stories along the way.

So, the reason I wanted a new table in the beginning is because the folding Lifetime table had a few issues.  Namely, I had to take everything off every time we needed to use it for seating extra people, and it couldn't handle the sewing machine.  When I went at a quick speed, the whole table would shudder with the jackhammer motion.  So I started scouring the second hand websites looking for a dining table or desk I could convert over.  I was pretty specific in what I wanted, but after weeks, the perfect . . . table thingy finally popped up on a surplus site.

Isn't she awesome?  I know, not very good looking.  But it was (nearly) the perfect size and shape.  And it is very sturdy.  And, best of all, she cost $1.25.  That's right, I handed over a dollar bill and a quarter and took this baby home.  First up, she needed a new trim piece.  I wasn't willing to wait for Christopher, so I took a scrap from our pile and cut it to size.

Not bad for my first attempt at a circular saw.  Next, the table/counter/ whatever it was lacked a few inches in height.  My thighs could fit under it, but I would have to hunch over to work.  Which makes me really wonder what it was in its former life.

So I asked Christopher for advice and went and bought myself some lumber.  I tell you, nothing gets customer service like a girl walking into the lumber section all by her lonesome.  I had a guy following me within minutes who insisted on carrying my wood to the car for me.

Anyway, I flipped her over and made a toe-kick.

With that problem solved, it was on to making her less ugly.  Ombre is huge on Pinterest right now, along with geometric shapes like chevrons and stripes.  So I painted a nice base of white, decided on a pattern, and taped it out.

 Ta-da!  Purple ombre strips that widen as they darken.

Love.

Well, I didn't love touching up the stripes, but that's life.  Why oh why can't tape make perfect lines?  I had to go up and down each stripe with white to fix the edge.  But it looked awesome.  So I used my spray can of gloss to seal it in.  Only, one can wasn't nearly enough.  When Christopher (who, if you are keeping track, hasn't helped at all yet) saw it, he said that he had a can of clear coat he intended to use for something else, but didn't end up using.

So I sprayed on his can.  It looked like chalk, rather than a clear gloss, but I hoped it would dry clear.  And when it didn't, I took a better look at the can he gave me.

Not clear.  WHITE.  Opaque.  Non-transparent.

RUINED OMBRE STRIPES.

I don't think I've ever cried over furniture before, but there were tears on this one.  But, at the end of the day, tears were not going to magically fix the table.  So I repainted my stripes all over again.  Thankfully my tiny sample cans of paint stretched far enough.

As his penance, he came home from work that day with expensive, real clear coat gloss to brush on.  After another day of cursing painter's tape, and a day of three coats of gloss, I pulled her inside just before the rain is set to come.

And so she finally came home, a few days behind schedule!  And she is beautiful, so all is well.

I know it looks like furniture for Kaitlyn's room, but I figured that a craft and sewing table is the only place I could have a fun and crazy paint job in my house.  The rest of the basement is BYU themed for the projector to watch movies and games on, but this is my corner.  Might as well make a statement out of it!

Speaking of statements, Tyler has had awesome quotes lately that I need to record.  One day he was having fun playing with Daddy before it was time to go to school.  And then, with no provocation at all, he turned and said to him "really, Daddy?" with a flat, sarcastic tone.  "I do not like you.  I will see you tomorrow." And he walked off.

Another day, when he got his foot stuck in the snow at the cabin, he congratulated me on a good job "unstucking me".  Why, thank you.

And in other news, the baby is walking more each day!  She's nice and slow about it, which is just fine by us.  But it is fun to see her progress.

And speaking of Jasmine, I hear her waking up in her room.  So I guess that's all for this blog post!

Sweet baby Jasmine

I can't believe how big my little baby is getting!

When Tyler and Kaitlyn turned one, it just so happened that my parents were in town each time.  So we threw a party so that my mom's family could come down from Salt Lake and see them, and had some birthday cake while we were at it.  But this time around I just couldn't see the logic in a party.  One-year-olds don't really get anything out of that.  I couldn't just do nothing for her birthday though!  So, thanks to Pinterest, I came up with a new plan.

The cake smash photo shoot.  Sure, letting a one year old attack their birthday cake with both hands is nothing new.  In fact, I've even got pictures of my first birthday, eating the candle off of my cake.

I found one photographer on Pinterest that tried to claim that she invented the cake smash photo shoot ten years ago when her daughter was a baby.  Suuure.  She did have really cute ideas, though, and I got a lot of great tips from what I found online.

Prepare for the picture overload!

Basically, I took a couple of "before" shots, set the cake down, and before I could stand up and aim the camera, she had two fistfuls of frosting.

 The funny part was that she spent the next ten minutes on those two fistfuls.

And this was serious business.  We all spent a lot of energy trying to get her to smile, because all she wanted to do was sit there and slowly lick it off.

She did offer to give us some, which was nice of her.

And eventually she got a bit more into it.

One thing I didn't see online but wanted to try was involve the siblings.  So I ordered a matching cake and had Tyler and Kaitlyn join her.  Jasmine immediately decided that their cake looked better than hers.  Quick, she's distracted!

In fact, she was so in love that she crawled over her own cake (tutu and all) to get to Kaitlyn's small piece.

Here you can see my set up.  I got some bulletin board paper from the school supply store, cut spare scrapbooking paper up into some bunting, and made a floofy tutu for her to wear.

She tried to steal some of Tyler's cake too.  He adores that baby to pieces,  but he was not about to let her take his cake.

And of course, eventually she was entirely coated in frosting.  She also made it her mission to yank off her hairbow, so that was coated in purple frosting and eventually tossed to the side.  It was a lot of fun!

Presents were also interesting later, but not quite as much.

And because I love comparison pictures so much, I dug out the pictures from Tyler and Kaitlyn's birthday cake.

It cracks me up to look at Kaitlyn's tiny stick arms, especially since they are wearing the same shirt!

And of course, my favorite part of my birthday posts.  The snapshot:

*When Jasmine refused to come on Leap Day last year and decided within weeks that she didn't care for being cuddled either, I thought we might be in for a stubborn little girl.  And while we'll probably hit a stage or two of that later, I think she is much more like my mellow Tyler.  She lets us know when things are not going her way, but she mostly is just happy to mosey along and take things at her own pace.  She wasn't in a big hurry to hit milestones like crawling or walking, though she did take four wobbly steps on her birthday!
* She eats most of her food by grabbing it off her tray, though occasionally she'll let me spoon feed her.  Her favorite is blueberries!  She usually tries to eat an entire carton in one sitting.  Of course, the biggest difference from her big siblings is that she still LOVES to nurse.  I'm used to my babies being done about now, but this girl still takes all she can get.  While that has been great for my waistline, to be honest I'm looking forward to some detachment someday.  I'm not going to force it though.
*Currently, she doesn't have any consistent words, though she loves to babble.  She also loves to wave to us, give high fives, and she tries to imitate lots of our silly antics.  She's been imitating the more mundane things too, like picking up a hairbrush and trying to brush my hair, trying to use the remote, and babbling with a phone at her ear.  Oh, and she doesn't like being kissed or snuggled much, but she does kiss me sometimes.  With her mouth wide open and a little tongue sticking out.  When I try to turn so she kisses my cheek, she hunts around until she finds my mouth.  Um, at least the sentiment is nice?  She is sure proud of herself when she does it!
*Tyler is still her biggest fan in the world.  Lately he has taken to picking her up and carrying her around the house, which we protested until we saw how much Jasmine loves it.  She just laughs and laughs!

Overall, she really has been a sweet little girl.  I'm not going to lie, having a baby in the house again has been an adjustment, and it hasn't always been easy.  But she has been a wonderful addition to our little family, so I can't complain!

St. George

When our friends asked us a week or so ago if we wanted to come down to St. George with them, we jumped at the chance.  It was a great deal: good friends, the chance to babysitter swap and go out on a date, warmer weather, a fun town, and her parents have a beautiful second home down there for us to stay in.  In fact, this was the view from their kitchen.

We ended up spending most of our time lounging around the house, since both families have a little nursing baby, but I don't think that was a bad thing.  We hardly saw the kids, since the four older kids spent the whole weekend running around in the yard.  Sometimes even in their jammies.

Jasmine was very excited that we let her crawl around on the warm concrete out there.  She is constantly trying to head out the door when Tyler comes home from school, so when she got to run around with the others and chase the remote controlled car, she was in heaven.

And I have to throw this picture in just because it is so Kaitlyn.  Climbing all over, and using big hand motions to get the gist of her long-winded stories across.

My favorite part of the weekend was that we each got in a Valentine's date.  The other couple went out and wandered the Parade of Homes for a few hours one day, starting with the home three doors down that has the same layout as this one (and not as much view).  But for our date, we ended up making a little bit of a splurge.

The house was just 5 minutes from the mouth of Snow Canyon, so we went horseback riding!  Christopher had never actually gone on a horseback ride before, and I hadn't been out of a corral on a horse since I was a teenager.  Sure, these trips are just a slow walk on a trail, but when you are surrounded by beautiful red rocks, it is a wonderful and relaxing way to take in the scenery.

One thing I learned quickly, however, is that no matter how awesome the landscape is, trying to take pictures one handed while steering a bumpy horse with the other hand is not the easiest plan.

But the way the sunset lit up the rocks was too beautiful to leave my camera in the bag!

I was also fascinated by the blues and greens in the vegetation next to the red and black in the rocks.

And our guide was really great to chat with as we rode.

The only other activity we really fit in was a trip to the pool.  Which made me glad that I brought along my waterproof camera.  Underwater shots!

Someday we'll convince Tyler to close his mouth in the water!

Kaitlyn loved jumping in.

And then there was baby.  She thought the water was a bit cold, but still decided it was okay.  Since our house is still covered in snow up here, we certainly decided it was worth it!

Put On a Happy Face

I've expressed this concern before, but sometimes I worry that my blog makes my life seem too . . . plastic.  By putting all of my good news and happy pictures on here, I fear that it might seem like I have some perfect little life.

Of course, there is a reason for that.  When I look back on my day, the good parts are the ones I want to remember.  I'd rather not have an eternal record of many of my struggles, day to day.  Some are too private to share: some are bad memories I want to block.  I'm a big believer that focusing on the positive is a key element in improving our lives.

And yet, without that balance of good and bad, is this an accurate record of my daily life?  Or is this as ridiculous as Pinterest, which posts pictures of delectable and calorie-ridden deserts next to a model's Photoshopped and unrealistic body with her "exercise tips" that will have you looking like her in no time?

I think the reason that I am thinking about this today is that, quite honestly, the last week has been kinda horrid.  I was being rather depressed about stupid things I can't change for a while.  A main one is our house.  We bought this house because my husband wanted a project to work on - something we could buy cheap when we were young and poor and slowly work on and make beautiful.  But now he is rather burned out on house projects, which I can't blame him for.  I would never be able to count the number of man hours he has spent hammering and painting and sweating over this house.  The outside looks amazing, and I adore the laundry room he built for me, among other projects.  But even beyond how burnt out he is, now he just doesn't have time.  That's the real kicker.  I had been slowly gearing us up to replace our kitchen, since there is no room for Jasmine to eat dinner with us once she exits the high chair, but a few extra things have crowded Christopher's off hours and there just isn't time for a kitchen reno of all things.  None on the horizon either.  So every day I go back and forth between telling myself to stop being a "first world problem" whiner and be grateful that I have a kitchen that functions, to looking at the holes in the cabinets, the drawers that can't close properly and the countertop that is literally peeling off on the sides and comparing it to the stupid HGTV shows I probably need to stop watching and get upset again.  I'd being doing better about this if I hadn't decided years and years ago that we would have to get a new kitchen when/if we had a third baby.  (The bar seats four people, not five.)  I probably wouldn't be that upset about it if I hadn't been looking forward to it for so long.  And yet, now that I realize no renovations are anywhere in my near future, all I see is stained bath tubs and ugly carpet and the long list of things we would replace "someday" when we first bought the house.

And then, one by one, we all got sick.  None of that was too noticeable in my book until I got sick, and then everything in the house just falls apart.  I am SO glad that I hit my worst part over the weekend so that Christopher was here to pick up the slack.  Saturday I woke up with the fever and chills.  Ugh.  I always forget how bad that feels until I get the flu again and then I lay there in agony.  Thankfully, that part only lasted a few hours, but with mom barely able to move for a few days, my house may take a week to look presentable again.  (Please, no one come over here yet.  I mean it.)

But when I looked at the pictures I took on my camera in the last week or so, all I saw was happy faces.  We managed to get all of us up on the snowmobiles to our cabin before I got sick, and some friends came too.  That is the bright spot about not spending much money on our house: we had enough to have a cabin.  I'll that quantity over ritzy quality any day of the week.

I'm so glad that our kids get to grow up with this experience.  A chance to get away from cell phones and schedules and TV and just sled down the hill or go for a hike.

Tyler got some serious distance on his sled!  He told us he was sledding into the forest.

And just when I started to sick enough that I didn't leave the house much (but sat around feeling sorry for myself and my kitchen instead) a friend called and asked me for a favor.  Honestly, I think she did me one.  I needed a service project last week.  A few minutes doing something for someone else, even as simple as a photo shoot of her beautiful daughter that I turned into invitations to her baptism, did me a lot of good.

(Sorry, the invite info is faded out on here.  This is my blog, not hers: you're not invited!)

And we had fun!  She was so cute.

Most of all, I'm glad I was well enough to go to Kaitlyn's gymnastics show.  I love the place she takes gymnastics from!  She knows what she is doing and teaches them good technique and form, but she is not pushing them for perfection.  At the show, I could tell that at each level, she designed the routines not to just be things they could to perfectly to show off how good they were, but included things the class was just getting the hang of so they could push themselves for the show.  It wasn't about a perfect show.

And Kaitlyn loved it.

The song that Kaitlyn danced to is called "Put on a Happy Face".  And I think that was the right song for my week.

Sure, sometimes the happy face feels like a lie because you are hiding things that are really going on in your life.

But putting on a happy face and focusing on the positive is what helps us to BE positive.

And by the way, Kaitlyn was the smallest gymnast in the entire night by at least a few inches.  Multiple girls and moms came up to us afterward to tell us how cute she looked up there.  She didn't do all of her stuff perfectly, and in fact she even fell on her head on her handstand!  But she put on a smile, kept going, and had a great time.  We took a video of the performance, but I also took a video the other week at practice and posted it here.

Another mom asked me to take pictures of her daughter too that night. No problem!

These girls were really good.  Especially because they flung themselves into smiling the part!  So I guess that's what I'll keep doing too.