Garden time!

Another new year another time to start the seeds for our garden. Last year was our first attempt and it went pretty well so we are starting again. This year we are trying to do annual flowers to help cut costs. We also bought a couple of grow panels to help our plants grow inside without direct sunlight. We did this because we only have one window that gets enough direct sunlight to grow plants inside and that is located in the kids room.

I found a 12x12 panel with LCD red and blue lights for around $50. I bought 2 because of how many plants that I am doing and also a couple of timers so that I wouldn't have to remember to turn the lights on and off. I took a couple of pictures so that you could see what the panel looked like without the lights on and with the them on.

I made a thing to hang the panel from out of PVC pipe and put it up in my bedroom.

I have done a couple of posts in one sitting so please keep reading.

Valentine's Day celebrations

This year for Valentine's day I not only wanted to show my wonderful husband how much I love and adore him, but I wanted to show my kids.  I bought Dallin and Isaac both a metal box that has a lock, a little pad of paper, a book, and a pen that has four colors in the one pen. They both love their gifts a lot. Since valentine's day fell on late start monday for february I actually hide the books in one place and the locker with the pen and paper in another. I put the pen and the paper and locked them in the boxes to add another little delight. They had fun running to find their gifts.

For Jeff it was a little harder as it seems to always be. We are trying to pay off a car loan and came up with an incentive to use our allowances to pay it off faster and Jeff said he wanted some of his money put towards that, so I did that. Jeff was also going to buy one of those fruit bouquets for both of us, but it was just too much money, so instead I went and bought some fruit, some melting chocolate, and a melting pot and over the past couple of days we have had a little fondue party while watching one of our shows. All of that cost less than the one bouquet so I think it was worth it.

Jeff also found a book that contains 80 songs that we can sing together while I play the piano and he printed those off and bound them in a book as a joint present. He also gave me two more books in the Nicholas Flamel series that I am reading. The last present that we got is rock band 3. We tried to not buy it, but we kept coming back to it, so we now own it and are glad that we do.

That night Jeff had to go and run Dallin's Jr Jazz practice so he was out for an hour and a half, but I went into tooele and had some pictures printed for Jeff to display at his work and I also picked up some sushi from a place that just opened up in tooele. The food was good, but not as good as when we get sushi from the black pearl up in logan. We ate the food at our island while I held the baby. It wasn't the most romantic, but we still had fun. We then went downstairs and watched one of our shows on the tivo and later I melted some chocolate.

We had a really fun time and I love being married to Jeff. He is a wonderful husband and father. I would not know where I would be if not for him. He has given me three beautiful children and has helped me and continues to help me greatly with each of them. We had a wonderful night together.

Valentine's Day decorations!

A month ago, I was looking at a few of the blogs that I follow to get ideas on crafts and I came to the realization that I do not have any valentine's day decorations. I immediately started to plan on what I wanted to do to rectify the situation.

I came up with a valentine's day house to start with and a wreath to display. I also decided that I was going to host a craft night for anyone who wanted to come and make a house with me. I have gotten a lot of compliments on the christmas and halloween houses that I made so I knew that people would want to make them.

I set the date and I had a couple of people want to do them with me. The trouble is that I forgot how long it takes to complete a house. I thought we would have been able to do it that night, but it actually took the next saturday as well. In total it takes 5-7 hours, wow that it a long time, but the houses look so cute afterwards that it is worth the time.

One of the people that came to do my house asked if I wanted to do some of the crafts that she is doing for valentine's day and I loved a set of three wooden hearts on dowels. So I got the kit and made those as well. Another of the crafts that she had is a grouping of words/sayings about valentines that would have been cut into vinyl and since I have a silhouette I decided that I could make that one on my own so I didn't get the vinyl from her source. I also wanted one for every month so I had to redo how they were done to fit what I wanted. I finished everything except for the wreath and the board by valentine's and I just finished the board yesterday.

Here are the photos:

I also did a board on the back of the valentine's one for January, when I finish the rest of the boards I will post pictures of all of them. This past month and brought me back to the love of crafting. I am way to excited to start my other projects.

More random Kaden photos!

A couple of weeks ago, Kaden started doing a very funny thing whenever someone would walk by him on the floor. He started to raise one arm straight up in the air. I thought it was really cute that I had to see if he would repeat it over and over again. He did and he also did it again a couple of hours later when Jeff came home. I forgot at that time to get a picture so at 5 am the next morning I got out my camera before putting both of us back to sleep. Yes, 5 am at this time he was still waking up once in the middle of the night. Here are the pictures.

At first I had a hard time taking a picture of his one arm extension because he kept putting up both of his arms, but I finally got one for all to see how cute my baby is.

The best Christmas gift!!!

It took us a little while to get enough time to put together the last christmas gift and Dallin thinks it is the best, but a couple of weeks ago, Jeff and I took a saturday afternoon and put it together. We gave the boys a basketball hoop that can be set at heights from 8 to 10 feet. While we were setting it up Dallin kept coming in and seeing if it was done yet. It was cold in the garage and so he didn't stay long. When we got it all set up we called him out with Isaac to come and see their present. Both of the boys loved it and they started playing with it right away.

Currently the hoop is in our garage and their has actually been a couple of semi-warm days so that Dallin could go out in the garage and play. Dallin loves basketball and is doing really well this year on his team. A lot of the other teams are really aggresive when it comes to how they defend so Jeff taught Dallin how to do a screen for his teammates. Dallin goes and makes sure that his hands are straight down by his legs and stands in the way of the defender so his teammate can go around him. Some of the time his teammate doesn't really know what he is doing, but Dallin is doing well and that is what counts.

Here are a couple of pictures of the boys playing with the new hoop. Yes, it barely fits in our garage at 8 feet.