30 November 2011

the great couch recover

back in september (on the day of the poop-scipade), Dallin and i went to buy fabric to recover our ailing couch.  this couch has been through a lot.  it first belonged to my sister Jen and then to my brother Ben. after several years of love, we received it.  it has been a wonderful couch but was in desperate need of a makeover.

we didn't get around to recovering it until november.
here is the before:
 
and here is the after:


my mom did most of the work. she is a total pro! i was not brave enough to do it on my own and she talked me through every step of the way and finished it off for me. i LOVE the new couch, it looks amazing if i do say so myself!

November 2011 & Thanksgiving

i'm slightly ashamed that i didn't take very many pictures in November. a lot of the month, we were packing everything up so that we could move to a different (smaller, 2-bedroom) apartment in our ward.

fiona left, sabrina right:
they love to wear these hats, are always putting them on themselves and each other

our Thanksgiving dinner: 
this year, our Thanksgiving was small. just Dallin and I, the girls and Jana & Mark.  
our first time cooking a turkey was both successful and delicious!

even sabrina (pink) and fiona (purple) enjoyed the turkey, beans, yams, stuffing, etc:


playing on some of the things we gave away in our move. 
they are so concentrated!
sabrina left, fiona right:


10 November 2011

messy!

remember this post (birthday cake) and how sabrina dove right in while fiona stayed a little calmer?

well, it turns out it's with all food. not just cake.

sabrina:




fiona:

07 November 2011

beanie babies

since i've joined pinterest, my list of DIY projects has grown at an exponential rate.  dallin says that before i can do any of them, i have to refinish the couch (we bough fabric for it months ago) and refinish the chair i rescued from the dumpster.  but i don't want to do that until we get into our new apartment next month...

so what do i do?

i decided to cheat and crochet the girls some beanies!
 now, historically my efforts at crocheting (or knitting) end long before whatever i'm making is done, so dallin had some doubts as to my abilities to actually finish this. so i watched a few youtube videos about different crocheting stitches, got frustrated, tried a new stitch and had a finished beanie within about 45 minutes! nailed it! so then i made another one. and some flowers to go on the beanies.  i just did a really simple crochet stitch for both and had them both done in about 2 hours.
looks like the girls are going to have a whole new collection of beanies this winter!

now, they aren't profesh, but i'm pretty proud of them.


and the models are cute too :)


01 November 2011

Halloween 2011

we had really good intentions with Halloween this year, but it just didn't pan out the way we planned.  

- we were going to let the girls carve pumpkins, but turns out they're too little to handle a knife very well yet, so we carved them instead (which turned out very cute) :)


- i was going to dress up like Mary Poppins, Dallin was going to be Bert (the chimney sweep) and the girls were going to be mini chimney sweeps.  however, the night of our ward Halloween party, Dallin had class, so i dressed up and took the girls on my own.  no one knew who i was supposed to be and they thought the girls were dressed like ninjas.  so i made the girls little money bags and they went as burglars instead.
sabrina left, fiona right:

fiona:

sabrina:

sabrina left, fiona right:


- Dallin never had a chance to dress up ( he was very disappointed, he LOVES Halloween) and I had to dress up too many times ( i don't love Halloween so much).  For work I dressed up as a bumble bee one day (my co-worker was a ladybug) and the other day i dressed up as Justin Beiber (low pants, purple shirt, green hoodie- it worked well with my boy-short hair).  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you ask), pictures are not to be found...

Here is a picture of most of my nieces and nephews all dressed up on Halloween:


despite things not going according to plan, it was still a lot of fun! we'll plan better next year!