Chair Makeover

Well, I have wanted a chaise for my bedroom, so that I can cozy up with a good book and relax, however, you know that i'm always looking for a good deal, and I found one! The cheapest I saw one in the store was at least $600, but I wasn't willing to pay that for something that would become more of a feature piece than an everyday use chair. So I found one on Kijiji (a buy and sell site) for free, but it was trashed. So I dragged Mark into Marda Loop Calgary (kind of a ghetto part of town) where he complained about how I was wasting my time and that he would have to take it to the dump in a few weeks, (fair enough, I did drag him to the ghetto area and then make him pick up a trashed chaise) but he was still kind enough to help me load it into the van and take it home. That was last saturday. This is what it looked like.


Trashed right, It was scratched on the arms, no pillows, and the material was disgusting. So I did a few online tutorials for reupholstering, there are some great ones out there, and went to work. This is how it turned out! I'm pretty impressed that it turned out so well, considering I really had no idea what I was doing, I finished it today! And It is my new favorite piece of furniture in the house. Here is what is looks like now!


Ps, I'll be posting christmas pics soon!

TUTU Princesses

Ahhhhh.... She is such a girly girl, when she was born, I was like what the heck do I do with a girl, I had no idea, now I do!

Loves to dance....

The skirts turned out so good...

Here is Peyton`s!!!!

This took some serious effort to get her to stand....

My Cute Baby Girls!!!

These make the whole picture worth it right!

Redo`s and Tutu`s and Convocation!

So, It`s been a bit as per usual, seems like these days i`m biting off more than I can chew, what else is new right! But hey it`s keeping me busy and keeping the winter blues away, (not that we`ve had much of a winter so far). I decided I wanted to redo our crib that we bought second hand for cheap, it has been white for the entire time we`ve had kids, and now that it`s my last... I wanted something fun for a girl, so I went and bought some paint, and got started. This is the before,

Plain white and o-so boring, so I thought I`d spice it up a bit, little did I know it was going to be a month long job, but it was so worth it in the end- here is the result!

Oh how I love when things turn out (which they rarely do because my patience runs out and then I slap it together any way I can just to get it done!) But this time, I really enjoyed my endless hours of stripes, and taping and stripes, and so on...well, it was worth it.

We went up to Edmonton at the end of November for Mark`s convocation, it was pretty cool, if a little bit pretentious at the same time, still I`m glad we went, I think it meant a lot to him to finally walk a stage for a degree, even if it took him until his masters. I was so proud of him, It was a great day!

Ok, this is a bad pic, I`m not even sure if Mark is even in the pic, but you get the idea right!

I like to think i`m creative, (even if it`s not true haha) I decided I was going to use some leftover organza material that I had used to make a canopy in our room for some skirts for the girls for Christmas, so I called my friend Angie, (who is an awesome sewer) for some help. She was awesome, she came over for the afternoon and helped me hash out some ideas on how to make a layered tutu skirt with this material. Thanks Angie for putting up with my serious lack of sewing skills (like straight lines).

Well, after I finished with them, I had to just had to try them on them, and Taylor (who is overly dramatic) turned it into a ballet show of course, she had to show me a few of her moves, (that she learned on So You Think You Can Dance for sure) and made me get the camera to document it. She was pretty cute, even if a bit bossy. LOL, that`s my girl, just like her mama, I think I have some pics of me at that age pulling the drama queen pose too. Here she is, I even got Peyton to pose pretty!

Laugh until you cry???

So, this last week was our primary presentation, which we almost didn't attend, i'll let the story tell you why.

Those of you who know me, know that I can be a little disorganized, or forgetful if you will. (an understatement to be sure) So the kids brought home their pieces of paper with their lines on them, and told me not to lose them, which I accidently promptly did, (i'm blaming it on mark though because he goes through everything in the van and throws it out without looking at it). Anyways, the morning of the presentation I remembered the kids had lines, tried to find them unsuccessfully, and so I told both of them, tell your teachers that I lost your lines and that they need to go over them with you. Well, we got to church late and they didn't get to see their teachers until they went to sit with them on the stand. So i'm thinking the most logical thing that they will do is whisper the message to them while they are sitting in their seats so that they know to help them right, well I'll never make that assumption again (you know what they say about assuming) well, that was pretty much what happened, I made an a** of U (kolby) and me. Now, let me preface that I look forward to primary presentations because undoubtedly every year, some kid makes a comment that makes us all laugh till we cry right, well I guess it was my turn this year. My darling little Kolby got up and as he is standing at the pulpit, talking right into the mike, says, "My mom lost my part." Well, I guess he was the "accidental" entertainment for this primary presentation. I laughed as hard as I have in a long time, and actually once I got past the part of knowing that I am not a stellar mom(which wasn't really hard to get past anyway) both Mark and I got a good chuckle out of it. Haha, thanks for the laugh Kolby. Can't wait to see who's kids turn it is next year!

Family Pictures...

This spring for Mark's job, his principal wanted him to put up pictures of his family ( I know shocking right, he didn't have any of us in his classroom) So we roped Randea into taking some pics for us. She did a great job, and Mark ended up switching jobs so he never used them, but I think i'm gonna do Christmas cards this year on the computer if I can figure it out and use them for that. We'll see how it goes, but in the meantime, here they are.

I ended up using them in the house in the bonus room in a collage of pictures, love the effect that it ended up as, I'll post pics later of it.

Boys Day Out

Mark took Kolby to the ice caves this year with a friend and his boys, and Kolby had a blast. So did Mark actually, it was in the kananaskis, and they went in july when it was nice and warm. They drove about an hour to get there, and then rode their bikes to get to the actual caves.

Kolby did pretty good but about half way there he had to leave his bike chained to a tree and Mark put him in the bike carrier. It would have been a good trip if some boneheads didn't find Kolby's bike off the trail and slash the tires and the seat. Really, who does that? Lame! Oh well, it was a sweet bike so I garage saled another bike and we replaced the seat and tires with the garage saled bikes tires and seat, and now it's as good as new. Love that Mark is handy enough to switch things like that over, even if it meant I had to start it just to get him to do it. Oh well they had a blast anyways, despite the bike issue. When they went in the caves, it was so cold that they had to wear winter jackets! Mark said Kolby was a real trooper!

Kolby still remembers the ice caves, and brings it up every once in awhile (mostly to rub it in Taylors face that he got to go and she didn't) But I'm glad that Mark spends time with the kids doing things like this, those are the things I remember as a kid doing with my dad (like all the swimming trips to the WL pool) man we had some good times! Mark is a pretty awesome dad!

Calgary Stampede

This year my parents came over from BC and we all went to the Calgary Stampede. It was really fun this year, the kids were able to go on rides without crying their eyes out, and they had a blast. They went on a bunch of rides and really enjoyed it. We all had a blast, besides getting separated several times, and wanting to scream with Tynen when he had a break down, it was great fun. But I must say, the stampede is definitely on of those things you do only every few years.

The kids wanted to show grandpa that they knew how to handle a tractor just like him, so the hopped on.


And that they could handle a horse. Just like grandpa...


Oh yeah, and they couldn't miss out on the big tank and the army man... I think Kolby was more interested in the gun than what they had to say, but whatever works...