Christmas Decorations

December 23, 2012 by Mom on the Make 1 Comment

The kids and I decided to take a few photos of old and new Christmas decorations around our house, as we’re making cookies today.

Remember Ziggy? I was given this ornament when I was in elementary school, and Fozzie Bear sometime in middle school, I believe.

These little houses came from my childhood as well. We also purchased a few more at the Dollar Tree to add on to our town scene. The kids love this setting! Don’t you love how mammoth the snowmen are compared to the houses? They were purchased at the Dollar Tree this year, so not quite to scale with our sweet little houses. 🙂

This gold ornament tree was recovered from, guess where, my parent's garage. The kids loved decorating this cute little tree.

This gold ornament tree was given to us by my parents this year. The kids loved decorating this cute little tree.

Bam Bam has been enamored with nutcrackers this year and just had to have this cute one from Home Depot.

Our cute nutcrackers and Russian nesting doll.

Its becoming quite a challenge keeping the little ones away from the hidden presents throughout the house and hidden in closets. Thank goodness Christmas is almost here!!

The Pouring Rain Swim Workout

October 22, 2012 by Mom on the Make 2 Comments

Yes, it was dumping rain this morning when my iphone alarm went off at 5:25am. Did I let this stop me from going to swimming you ask? No siree.

I threw my wonderful North Face long coat on, my black and white checkered rainboots and headed for my car.

The smell of the air when you are experiencing your first rain in about six months is wonderful. Its like a mixture of pine and fresh lake water. I just love it.

I live in California, so our pools are outdoors. I’m an outdoorsy kind of gal. I have swum in many indoor pools, having gone to college in the East, but it just is not the same experience.

When it is raining, its even a more fun experience. My friends always ask “How can you get up so early to swim when its raining?” “Are you nuts?”

The thing is, you’re already wet. Duh. Its neat to see the rain clouds and feel the rain falling on your arms as you bring your arm out of the water to take a stroke.

Anyhoo, here are the details of today’s workout…..

Swim Workout for October 22, 2012
400 swim
200 Kick Swim
8×75 on 1:15
3x {200 pull on 3:00, 2×100 on 1:30}
8×25 choice
Total: 2600 yards

I feel so much better having swum this morning. Mountain Man always sends me a text telling me he’s proud of me when I get up to go to workout. This morning, he said he was SUPER proud of me this time. 🙂

Love, love, love the rain. We turned off our sprinklers….yay! I do not have to stress about my newly planted vinca minor flowers getting enough water.

Beautifying my Backyard

October 1, 2012 by Mom on the Make Leave a Comment

Remember back in June when I was discussing our backyard makeover?

Well, we have finally figured out what groundcover to use for the area below our crabapple tree – Vinca Minor (Bowles Blue).

This area has been driving us nuts for the last two years.

What do we do with this patch of dirt filled with weeds and remnants of old black plastic that was put down to prevent weed growth? 🙂

When you’re not an expert in the field of landscaping, this is not the easiest answer.

We were given the advice to try vinca minor for its hardiness.

Whenever I ask a specialist at a nursery for plant advice, and they see me with my three kids in tow, they tend to start discussing their “hardiest” plant types. No surprise there. 🙂

We were told that with the vinca minor, the kids can run through it, and it will not affect the flowers at all.

Now that is music to my ears.

Well, I’m hoping that the picture below will improve substantially with our vinca minor plantings.

Our “before” photo of the poor area below our crabapple tree. 🙁

I want the area below the crabapple tree to resemble the coverage below…..

Vinca minor groundcover grown out with full coverage.

Vinca Minor flowers up close

Our Vinca Minor is planted

I will post photos in a few months to show how the plantings worked out. Until then, lots of watering and waiting.

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So excited to see the beautiful purple flowers sprout up, and finally get rid of this unsightly area.

Easy DIY Halloween Home Decor

September 19, 2012 by Mom on the Make 4 Comments

The kids are excited that Halloween is around the corner.

After the first few weeks of school are under their belt, the focus becomes Halloween, and what should they dress up as this year.

A vampire, skeleton, jelly bean, cup of noodles, frozen yogurt, mario from mario brothers, batman and scooby doo are a few ideas currently being tossed around in my house.

In the spirit of Halloween, I’m excited to share a VERY EASY diy halloween home decor idea: a lighted Halloween themed vase.

I was inspired to make a halloween themed lighted vase from an article at buzzfeed focused on EASY DIY projects.

The article suggested finding a mason jar and putting in white christmas lights for a home decoration. I decided to change it up a bit for Halloween. I purchased a $3 string of candy corn lights and put them in a glass vase of mine.

I decided to display my newly lit vase in a corner of my kitchen. We all love the result! 🙂 Its our little lighted spooky corner now.

Easy Peasy DIY Halloween Decor: Light up a vase with halloween lights.

We added a spooky spider to our lighted display.

Our lighted Halloween vase at night!

Another View of our kitchen corner with a touch of Halloween spirit. LOVE my lighted vase. 🙂

What I love about this idea is that we can use this for all holidays to bring a punch of holiday spirit to our decor.

Red and green lights for Christmas, red heart shaped lights for Valentine’s Day, and pastel egg shaped lights for Easter, and on and on. You get the idea.

So fun and so easy!! 🙂