My little ham

I couldn't resist posting these pics. They are my favorites of Hazel right now. She is such a smiley girl.

White powder mustache

I left Hazel in her room alone for a minute and when I came back she had a white powder mustache. I looked around at the floor and saw amidst the toys and books, the bottle of baby powder. The best part was her smile, like she knew she had gotten into something that she shouldn't have. She posed so perfectly for this shot!

Walnut Gathering

Last summer I was doing dishes when I heard something fall onto our roof and then roll all the way down to the gutter. It kept happening until we figured out that it was walnuts from our walnut tree beside our house! When fall rolled around they were everywhere and we'd get a couple of Indian families that didn't speak a lick of English come knocking on our door asking if they could gather them. When it was getting closer to Christmas time, we decided that we should go and collect them to give as gifts to a few of our friends, so I started telling our visitors that they could only gather a little bit. Because they obviously didn't understand me or my attempt at sign language, they still left with bagfuls, and soon after that it snowed, so we ditched the idea for Christmas gifts. However, now that the snow has melted, there are still walnuts everywhere! For family night a week ago, David suggested/insisted that we still gather them even though I think they've gone bad by now.

Here are some pics of us gathering our walnuts.



The walnuts are still in bags in back of the house so we have a running bet to see who's right about whether they are still edible. The funny thing is, our bets are always for massages from the other person and I've lost so many times that I now owe David about 4 hours of massage. So now whenever I win, it's really like I'm just paying off some of my debt.

Here are some of the projects I finished for Hazel's room. The mirror with Hazel's name is hanging above her crib and then the polka-dotted frame is one I found a while ago at DI. It was banged up and had polka dots that were too symmetrical and a cheesy saying printed along the bottom. I painted over it a few time, drew my own polka dots, then sanded, painted, and stained it. I still have a lot to learn about the whole staining and antiquing wood process, but so far I'm enjoying it and finding that you can really do whatever you want!

Janelle

I've been trying all weekend to post these pictures but it seems that my pics are too big to load, so here's two of Hazel's room now that I have some decorations up on the wall. As you can see, some of the frames don't have pictures yet, but that will come soon. I'm going to make a slip cover for this chair that matches the bedding on the twin bed. I stole this chair from David's office, promising to buy him a new office chair one day--he refused but I still have it here so...we'll see!

I played around with some paint and dark stain on these frames on the wall and I think they came out pretty cute. I have some close-ups that I'll try to post later. This room was so much fun and even though there's still a lot more to do (we're actually going to be texturing and re-painting her room a lighter lime color), I'm happy with it now.

Janelle

It's been a long time

Well I finally had the chance to sit down and post our updates and the server's down, so I can't download any pictures. I rarely do read long and lengthy posts on other's blogs (I really just like the pictures!), so I'll keep this short and simple until I can put up our latest pics.

David just closed on his biggest deal yet with a restaurant named Jasoh that is moving their location into Ogden. He absolutely loves his job and it has been a blessing to us so far. I'm working with my first author on his novel and anxious to see how the entire process of publication pans out. Hazel is crawling, slowly but surely, and keeps us on our toes daily. We are making progress on our kitchen and I actually have pics to post of Hazel's room once I can.

Question: how do you all make your blog templates so cute? I've looked through the templates available and they are all plain, but most of yours have little flowers, cute colors, etc...how do you do it? Teach me!

love you all,
Janelle, David, Hazel

Give 'Em Cheese

This is Hazel's cheesy smile that she's been doing lately. You can tell that it's not her real smile because she does it when she knows we're smiling at her and she'll got from this face right back to a serious face. I love this little girl.

Some updates! Let's see...I am about to begin working on my first fiction manuscript once I finish this last book on editing that my boss wanted me to read. David is still doing a great job at NAI and is absolutely loving it. We got some work done on our house this weekend. David scraped and painted the hallway into our bathroom that had some old chipping paint on it and I started painting the frames for our new cabinets! David made us new cabinet doors for my birthday and so I'm removing the old yucky ones, painting the frames a bright clean white, and then I will start on painting the doors he made. Lots of work, but just one thing at a time...

I am so reluctant to share pictures until our house is totally done! but i know that's no fun, so give me just a little longer and I'll share our progress with all of you. boy, this house has turned out to be such a challenge, but it really has taught me so much. It's fun to start to know your house and its quirks, especially these older houses. I know that I have to unplug our space heater in the living room when I want to vacuum our rug because I'll pop the circuit breaker; in the mornings you can always hear this light tapping in the kitchen and I finally figured out that it's the birds getting their breakfast from our roof; we have two light switches for our bedroom and sometimes one of them decides not to work, but you can always count on the other one to pull through when that happens; and the one that used to freak me out the most--sometimes the wind will cause our door to make this sudden creak like someone is trying to force it open. I used to run to the door and see who was there, but nope, it was just our old door. Our old door that never closes all the way unless you lift the handle just slightly to help it get into place. I love our house.