Xavien's Birthday!

Xavien turned 7 this past week!  He has been SOO excited for his birthday. I have always struggled a bit with Xavien's birthday presents because a month later comes Christmas.  This year for his birthday Xavien asked for Trash Packs.  So from Matthew and me he received Trash Packs and Nana and Papa took care of all sorts of other presents.

Xavien's favorites this year:
Colors - green, orange, black
Song - Fearless by Olivia Holt
Primary Song - Follow the Prophet
Scripture Story - Samuel the Lamanite
Story- Skippyjon Jones
Animals - Dalmatian Dogs
Food - Bacon (He requested BLTs for his birthday dinner! )

Xavien is an amazing boy!  He is all-boy but very sweet, loving toward all his family.  We are lucky to have Xavien!

Scarves

Recently I started making these ribbon scarves.  They are really easy to make but it does help to use wooden knitting needles.  It only takes about 3-4 hours and 1 skein of yarn.  I love the way they look!

I made one for my girls and I am giving some as gifts to various people.  Check out your local Michaels or JoAnn's for abetter variety of yarn.

Halloween

This year for Halloween the kids had 3 parties to attend.  Their school does a harvest festival which is essentially a Halloween carnival.  The Trunk or Treat at church and then the regular trick or treating.  I consider that a party as well because of how many friends you run into while walking around the neighborhood.  We even purchased some outside Halloween decor.  My favorite was the half buried skeleton...

Kanayla decided to be a blue sorceress.  She got a lot of compliments on the dress.

Ivie was Bloom from the children's tv show called Winx.  Basically Bloom is the fairy of fire(dragon flame).

Xavien was a ninja. Matthew found these cool knives to go with his costume.  Xavien loved showing off his skills. 

I think that they all had a great time.  We definitely have a years worth of candy!

Crafts for my Sister

My sister keeps after me to put up some pictures of some of the crafts I've finished lately.  So here you go Tiffany! :)

This is a Ribbon Christmas tree.  I was asked to teach how to make them for our ward's Super Saturday.  I had to learn how to do it myself first but I think it turned out well!

These are flowers made from brown lunch bags.  I found the idea on pinterest.  I love how they look and how cheap they were to make!

This is a stitchery patten I found on a website a while ago...I think it was youcanmakethis.com.  We need some more Thanksgiving decorations and I made this for some of our family members for a Christmas gift this year as well.

In our kitchen there is this random opening in the wall.  It would be perfect for artwork.....but since nice artwork is out of our price range I have been looking for something to do with the area.  I found this idea on pinterest for making an flower out of scrapbook paper on canvas. Soon the walls will be the bright blue in the flower.

First Day of School

School starts really late here in the Northwest...after Labor Day.  It still feels unusual to me because I am used to starting school the second week of August in NC.  But here are pictures of the kids on the first day this year.  Kanayla is in 4th grade, Xavien in 1st grade and Ivie is a Kindergartener!

Soccer 2012

Kanayla just finished another season of soccer.  We tried to sign Xavien up for soccer as well but he missed the cut off age by 3 months.  Bummer but next year for sure!

The cool thing about our soccer league here was that there were no games on Saturday.  All games were played on Monday and Wednesday evenings.  So our weekends were still free!  Kanayla enjoyed her season this year on the Orange Tigers.  (I don't understand why their team name was Orange Tigers, it seems kinda of redundant to me but whatever...)  Her coach thought Kanayla was a very talented goalie.  Matthew worked really hard with her on understanding the game and her ball handling skills. 

Team picture day-- it was pouring!

Kids Bathroom

It is no secret that we lived in apartments for a long, long time.  So I think it is pretty natural that I can not stand white walls anymore.  When I am done there will not be a white or beige wall in my home!!  But I have a husband who is a painting perfectionist and is unwilling to let anyone other than him paint so the color is slow going.  In fact for Mother's Day all I asked for was for him to paint a room. 

I knew that I wanted the kids bathroom to be turquoise. I had found a sea turtle with the color in it.  I designed and made their shower curtain to go along with that theme.  I still have a few more things to do in their bathroom but I love the color and the feeling like progress is being made in my home.  (I even got Matthew to agree to paint 2 more rooms before my parents visit in August. Yipee!!)

The sea turtle that gave me the color inspiration.

You can see the shower that I embroidered all the circles on.