I been waiting for this for the last 7 years . . .

. . . it's NEW CARPET!!

Yes, I know that that may not seem so exciting to you guys but trust me, if you were living with pink carpet, you'd be happy too!!

This is the before pic of the familyroom. We actually had replaced the pink carpet in this room about 5 years ago-since it was so badly stained. This carpet actually wasn't that bad, but the quality of it wasn't that great, and I just wanted all the carpet downstairs to match. Notice the two clean rectangular spots where my couches were? Nice.

Moving along on the tour, here is the horrible, 20-year-old pink carpeting I was talking about-just in case any of you haven't had the priviledge of seeing it in person. This is the stairway. The first thing you see when you walk in the front door:

And just to the right of the entry way is our living room:

Ripping up the old carpet. Goodbye! I won't be missing you!

(Sophee decided she needed to take this picture of the carpet guy. I'm sure he was thrilled being photographed on the job) You see all the spots on the picture? No that's not a dirty lens, it's 20 years of dirt being released:

We had issues trying to figure out what to do with the piano. The only way to get it out of the room would be to take the legs off and put it on a special board on it's side. Meaning, we needed a piano mover. Unfortunately, the guy who moved the piano in for us 7 years ago was no longer in town, and there are no other piano movers near here. I was beginning to think that I'd have to call someone to come down from Vegas and pay a big chunk of change to have them hang out here for half the day just to move it. I called my piano tuner (in Kingman) out of desperation, to see if he knew of anybody that could help us out. He said there was no one around here, but suggested that we could probably just get a bunch of guys and have them lift it and move it to one side of the room, while they carpeted the other side-then vice versa. Thankfully, the room is big enough, so that's what we ended up doing.

First off, the guys moved the piano right up to the window on one side of the room. That was the easy part, as it only had to be moved a few feet, and it only had to be 'barely lifted' as to take the weight off the legs:

So the carpet guys laid the carpet on the opposite side, and stretched it into place. Then they rolled it all the way up to the legs of the piano. Now for the fun part!! The guys had to lift the piano up about 6-8 inches off the ground, over the new carpet, and completely across the 23 feet of livingroom! We had 6 guys lifting, and judging by all the groaning they were making, I'm sure the piano was extremely heavy!! This is the best picture I could get, as I didn't want to get in their way:

And here is the finished product!! The familyroom:

*It's kinda hard to tell the difference here, but it's slightly darker than the previous carpet, and much softer!

It's a cut-pile berber. I just call it the 'shaggy' stuff. Here's the stairway:

I decided to take advantage of the fact that the piano was already on the other side of the room and rearrange things. Since our living room is very long and narrow, I created a little 'hallway' of sorts with the couch when you first walk in-since we had plenty of room to spare. Here it is (this is to the right of the front door) I'm still in the process of decorating. Don't judge me:

Looking in from the opposite of the room:

Another angle:

Awww, it's a thing of beauty. Even if my husband was cursing it during the move across the room:

(Hey, he was the one who insisted on the baby grand when we went piano shopping!)

I am so thrilled with the new look!! Now the only pink carpeting left downstairs is the diningroom, which I plan to rip out soon. Since we plan on tiling that room, I'm just going to paint the cement until we're ready to do that.

And lest you think I might miss that lovely pink carpeting, don't worry, we still have it in the bedrooms upstairs. UGH! Well what can you do?? It will have to wait until we have thousands of dollars just laying around in the bank.

Sophee's 7th Birthday

Sophee had her 7th birthday last month. She campaigned hard to get me to let her have a 'real party, with friends-not just family members'. The other 2 girls jumped on board the campaign wagon, knowing that if I'd give in to Soph, then they'd get a 'real party' too.

So, I caved. Her birthday was on a Tuesday, and the party wasn't until that Saturday so we let her open her presents from us the morning of her birthday, and I took these cupcakes into her class:
They are chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and half a peanut butter cup (Soph's most favorite candy ever!) *On a side note, I did make a few 'back up' cupcakes in case anyone in her class was allergic to PB.

Here she is the day of her party:

The 'conditions' on which I gave the girls for their b-day parties this year were:

#1-it had to be at home

#2-it had to be simple

#3-I was not going to buy a bunch of crap to put in 'goody bags' that would just get thrown out anyway.

So, we came up with the idea that we would have a 'cupcake dance party'. I put all Soph's favorite dance songs onto a playlist and had the music playing when the girls walked in. We pushed the couches out of the way to make a bigger 'dance floor' and I got some cheapy play microphones (4/$1) at dollar tree and gave each girl one to 'rock out' with as they came in. The girls had a 'dance party' until everyone arrived, then I sent Kory out for pizza (Little Ceasars $5 pizza I love you). I figured if I had to have these kids for a couple of hours I might as well do it at lunch time. Just feeding them would take up at least 20 minutes. So we did pizza and juice boxes. Easy peasy. Are you seeing a theme here yet??

Next we decorated cupcakes. I wasn't exactly sure how many kids were going to show up, so I made a ton of cupcakes. Here's all the sugary goodness:

Decorating the cupcakes served 2 purposes. The first being entertainment-of course, and the second was that I put their finished product (4 cupcakes for each child) onto a cute paper plate and wrapped it for them to take home (along with one of the helium balloons used for decorations, and their play microphone) that was their take home 'goody' without me having to spend a lot of money on them. See how resourceful I am?? I know, it kills me.

So here are the girls in action. We had 8 girls show up, so the table was full!!
(I had to stick Audree and Josh in the diningroom).

They all had a blast, and loved decorating their cupcakes! Oh, and we played a few games too:

Then came Sophee's favorite part, opening the presents:

I just had to include this picture of the cute dress Sophee's school teacher got her:
(BTW, she is growing out her bangs to look 'just like Kaylee')

Ok, back to the party. Here is Sophee with her brownie/ice cream cake that is filled with-once again-Peanut Butter Cups. The ice cream cake was a decision I made to make my life at the party easier. With this cake I didn't have to dish up any ice cream, or figure out which kid wanted only cake, or only ice cream, or both. Yes, I know, I'm a genius. Apparently it turned out to be very yummy. I wouldn't know though, as I'm still off chocolate.

When we were filling out invitations Sophee insisted that we invite her school teacher. I agreed that we could give her an invitation but warned her that her teacher probably wouldn't be able to come, since teacher's don't want to spend all their Saturday's off at every students b-day party. (I was trying to prepare her for the disappoint when her teacher didn't show up but . . .)

Sure enough she did show up . . . at the end of the party. Apparently she lost track of time doing some gardening and when she realized what time it was she rushed over, in her grubbies and all, but we didn't care-Soph was super excited that she came!!

Sophee and her teacher, Ms. Dunzweiler:

What a great way to end a great party. The good news is that Audree thought it was so fun she is thinking she'd like to do the same party. Whew!! That will make my life easier. As for Kaylee, well, she's still in the planning stages. Anyone have any ideas on how to have a cool teenager party at home??

I'm stumped, and quite frankly, a little terrified at the thought of having to entertain a bunch of 13 year old girls.

As Requested . . . a new yummy & easy meal

My SIL was asking me the other day when I would be posting some new, easy dinner ideas.

I have a few good recipes to share, but rather than trying to take pictures of the cooking process myself I decided I would just share the link to the recipe with you. Just click on the name of the recipe below.

Teriyaki Chicken Pita pockets:
(Photos and recipe from Controlling my Chaos Blog)



There are detailed instructions, with lots of pictures, but don't let that confuse you into thinking that it's not a super simple recipe-because it totally is. And boy is it worth it!! Yum.eee. We all loved it!

As a bonus, the author of the blog includes a really cute little recipe card that you can print out at the end. So go, try it. You'll love it.

P.S. Next time I make this I will definitely use at least 4 chicken breasts, just so that we can have leftovers.

Don't look behind the couch ;-)

Shortly after I took down all the Christmas decor I decided that my house needed a deep cleaning. I got a wild hair and decided to actually move the couches and vacuum behind them.

Here are the 'treasures' that I found:


Thanks to a certain child (ahem, Sophee) and a certain husband (who shall remain nameless) I ended up with almost a full Wal-Mart bag of fruit snack wrappers! I know, it's embarassing, but I'm just keeping it real. It had probably been at least 3 or 4 months since I last moved the couches. For the record, I do tell my family-many times daily-to throw their garbage in the trash can. It just doesn't seem to be sinking in. It's just easier for them to wait until I'm not looking and then throw their wrappers over the back of the couch, or stuff them in the cushions.

I also decided to remove the cushions and vacuum out all the crumbs. I know, crazy huh? I don't know what got into me.

Once I started though, Audree decided it looked like fun and decided to help out:

Sophee, on the other hand, decided that this looked like more fun:
(Notice Audree still working hard-yep, that's my girl . . .)

"Mom, watch what I can do!! Take a picture".

In the end, Audree pointed out to Sophee that since the majority of the mess was hers she should have to help. So, here she is, doing her part:

Of course, I didn't get any pictures of Sophee using the hose to suck up her shirt, and her skin.

It's just all fun and games for that kid.