summer is soaring by...

School is looming on the horizon for the first time in our home, but until then we plan to savor every last bit of summer freedom we have left...

a mini tour

Thank you for your excitement about our happy house news! I am still letting the fact that we are now homeowners settle in... it is a bit strange that although we made this huge life-changing purchase we won't need to start packing anytime soon, but it is the best feeling knowing my key chain is just a little bit heavier because we achieved our biggest dream! 

I haven't had a chance to take decent 'before' pictures yet, but here are some pictures I snapped with my phone yesterday. The house definitely doesn't feel like home yet in the state that it is in, but we will change that over the coming months...

We have an orange front door. Not sure if it will stay this color, but it is fun! You also see a peek at the amazing wood beamed ceiling which was the main reason I wanted to look at this house in the first place. They had me at hello, those beams.

This is the faux paint job and random metal tiles glued on the wall in the master bedroom. The previous owners made some odd decorating choices throughout the house to say the least. You can tell they were trying to fix it up, but their efforts just... well, failed. 

And, here is a peek down the hallway which ends with some built-in cabinets. I don't know what it is about built-ins, but I just love them and wish there were more!

First on the agenda is to demolish the kitchen (which I didn't get any pictures of yesterday). We are starting from scratch there and soon you will see why...

116 days later...

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE! FINALLY!!!

It took 116 days from the time we went under contract to now holding the keys in our hands - a timeline we were not anticipating but got through one day at a time. So we are over the moon excited we can now call this little patch of land with a house on it ours, and we are definitely ready to get this renovation started. We have loads of work ahead of us, but with a lot of love this house will be the perfect home for us.

I hope you will follow along on our journey as we do our best to transform this 1958 ranch house back into the beauty it was meant to be. Time to roll up our sleeves!

(One little girl was not very excited, but she was also not feeling very well today. Poor girl.)

art birthday party

For the Little Miss' fourth birthday we had an art party at our favorite park. It was her first friend party and she was so excited. I was a little worried it would be too hot, but we had the kids drink plenty of water and in the end I am glad I chose to have the party outside. It was so much less stressful for me since I didn't have to clean my house or worry about having enough room for a bunch of energetic kids. They also had tons of fun playing together and using their imaginations - more fun than with any games I could have come up with for them to play. The bonus was us moms had lots of time to chat since the kids were so content playing!

I kept the decor and food really simple to cut back on cost, and also used the leftover cups, straws, and  napkins from Lark's party. Now this is where you are going to have to humor me, but the cupcakes are supposed to be like artist's palettes. I carried over the blue/green ombre theme from the invitations with the M&M 'paint' and then made 'paintbrushes' out of pretzels dipped in melted white chocolate with a little bit of blue food coloring (not mixed all the way in so as to look more painterly). The chocolate chip represents the thumb hole - but you could totally tell that, right? ;)

They tasted good. Just ask Lark...

Instead of a traditional hanging birthday banner LM helped me make a birthday table runner. It also doubled as an example of the art project we were going to do. Each child was given a piece of watercolor paper, and using painters tape we helped them tape their first initial (or let them go wild and tape whatever their little heart desired). They painted all around the tape with watercolors, and then we sent them off to the playground while the paint dried. Once it was dry we carefully pulled the tape off to reveal their works of art! 

As a thank you for coming, I gave each family a print from Bear Cave Studios (a local art studio that teaches classes for kids) with a quote by Picasso saying, "All Children are Artists" - because they really, truly are and I think they should know it.  

LM was spoiled with lots of gifts, mostly art themed, which have kept her busy in the happiest way. Thank you so much to our generous friends and family!

and then she was four

Yesterday was the Little Miss' fourth birthday. Overall, I think I am pretty okay with her growing up, but then I open an email from the preschool she will be attending this Fall and start tearing up just looking at the starting date. She keeps reminding me that she needs a backpack soon, and I have this nagging thought in the back of my mind that it is about time for her first real haircut (that she didn't administer herself) to chop off the mullet ringlets. The ones that curl so perfectly after a bath.

But, well, she is four now and tells me she is just going to keep having birthdays, so I suppose I will have to get used to these coming-of-age type things.

She requested an art party with friends and I was happy to oblige such a fun theme. I must give credit my to good friend Crystal for setting up a play date with all of our friends that just so happened to be on LM's birthday, and then she allowed me to take over and turn it into a party - it helps when other people do the initial 'save the date' for you ;)

Since we did the whole rainbow thing for Lark's first birthday party, I decided to go with a less expected color scheme and do an ombre blue/green theme throughout. For the invitations I used these two fonts and simply emailed it out with directions. I just don't know if I'll ever be prepared in time to mail invitations out, but with an art/paint/ombre theme you could really run with it and do something pretty... 

Pictures of the party and the art project the kids did to come! 

date night in salt lake

  

A couple of weeks ago we went out on the town to celebrate Husband's big 3-0. We dropped the girls off at my sister's house for the night and drove away knowing they would be well taken care of and excited that we had an entire night to ourselves with the added bonus of sleeping in the next morning. I mean, really.

We discussed what we were going to do on our drive to downtown Salt Lake. Having no real plans is not an ideal way to start a date, wouldn't ya say? Lucky for us, despite our lack of planning it turned out to be a great night. So, if you are local and need a date night idea, here you go...

First off, dinner at The Copper Onion. Everything we ate was delicious, but I cannot stop thinking about the beef stroganoff Husband ordered. It will haunt my taste buds until we go back and I can order an entire plate to myself, and I don't even particularly like beef stroganoff.

There is a bit of a wait you say? Well, if you coincide your date night with the Gallery Stroll (like we totally planned) (related, I am seeing another date night idea here...) then a short walk down the street are some fun art galleries and vintage shops to browse. They stay open later on Gallery Stroll nights. The pictures below were taken in The Green Ant.

After your delicious meal simply walk right next door to the Broadway theater for a movie. This is the place to find more obscure or independent films. We saw Moonrise Kingdom on our night out.

But what if you don't have a babysitter waiting at home and you couldn't decide between the two movies that you wanted to see? Well, then drive over to The Gateway theaters and turn your night into a double feature of course! And don't forget an orange chocolate chip cookie at Bear Country Cookies and a caramel apple at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (right next door to each other, so convenient!) because you know two movies warrants two desserts.

Side note: We had enough time after dinner before our first movie started that we drove over to The Gateway to buy tickets for our second. That is when we got our two desserts (ate the cookie then, saved the caramel apple for later), if you go later they may be closed. But I am sure The Copper Onion has yummy desserts!

Have fun!

starting an art journal

  

Yesterday we started a new on-going kid's project - making an art journal! The plan is to spend some time on Sunday afternoons documenting something we did the week before with collages and words using anything we can find laying around the house. I want to foster a desire in LM to record the big or little moments of her life and hopefully help her on her way to be an avid journal writer - something that has been important to me in my life and I think will be a healthy habit for her to form. The bonus is she can explore and discover how she can express herself through art, and it is fun!

I already think that next time I will have her use a blank journal/sketch book so I won't have to keep track of her pages and figure out a way to make them into a book later - we'll see how it evolves, but this worked for now. She decided to make her page about the water slides we went to on Saturday. I helped her decide on a concept for the art since this was her first time doing any sort of collage. She drew everything and I helped her cut it out. Then I wrote down what she told me about the day,

"I love daddy to come with me on the water slides. I love mommy and daddy and Lark to come on the water slides with me. They were FUN!"

My favorite part was the little drawing of her going down the slide...

I didn't get any real life pictures of her going down the slides since I was holding Lark in the pool, but she was really brave and went down them several times even though she was a little scared of the noise and the splash at the end.

I did snap this picture of her though... and yes, she is bringing back the sunglasses holder trend ;)