What are your favorite decorating ideas??

What am I up to lately?? Trying to stage the home to get ready to try to sell it. Since I have never really gotten into the decorating scene...I need a little help here. I've started to decorate our "bare bones" home to give it that homey look. Thank you Roberts Crafts for the 75% off sale!!

So this is what I have so far...

Some reason the collage repeated some photos. I have more stuff but I am currently on the hunt for some side tables to display them on. I think I need more floral throughout the house but it is a little scary trying to get the pieces to look right.

What do you guys think? What are your favorite decorations and where did you get or how did you make them??

Kyler's Run In With The Stair Trim

We've moved some things up from the basement into the garage temporairly so we can finish it. The boys favorite is the futon pads. They loved jumping and sliding on them...until Kyler had a run in with the stair trim we were storing right next to it. Yikes! The edge was a little sharp and cut his lip and cheek pretty good. I felt so bad for him. It looks awful!! It happened saturday and I took the pictures this morning. It still looks really bad! It's hard to see from the picture, but it looks even worse looking at his lip from below. Poor guy!

Connor's 4th Birthday Party

Connor's Medieval birthday party was saturday and it was lots of fun. Randy was kind enough to help with the decorations (with slight protests) but he did an excellent job. Randy built a castle entrance over our double gate on our fence. I didn't get a picture of it before it came down but it was awesome! We started out by decorating crowns and handing out swords and sheilds.

Then everyone praticed their sword fighting skills by popping bubbles with their swords.
Kyler's crown was a little too big for him!

Here they are heading into the dragon's lair (trampoline) to jump before sitting down to hear their quest. There was a dragon that heard it was Connor's birthday and he had hidden a dragon's egg for everyone to find. Inside the egg was a magical surprise. We went on the search for it, but found a watermelon instead. The silly dragon tricked us! So we ate watermelon.

Then we brought out the castle cake for Connor. The wind was blowing too much for me to light the candles so we finally used the shields to block the wind enough to light it. The smaller candles just happened to be trick candles so Connor had a fair share of blowing them out!

Before Connor would open any presents, he had everyone chant "Open it, Open it!"

Then the real dragon egg appeared...a pinata!! I made it following Janele's instructions on her pinata website. The kids got lots of candy and some bubbles to take home with him.

I've even been told by a few mothers that their little girls slept in their crowns that night! Kyler liked his so much he has been playing with it ever since!!!!

It was fun to see friends and family for his party. Both Connor and Kyler sing Happy Birthday and pretend to blow out candles at least once a day since both of their birthdays.

Some Pictures

These are just some misc. pictures of the last couple weeks at our house.

Playing with the pool.

This was a cute picture I took of the boys getting ready for church on father's day.

Kyler sleeping with his red bear and blanket. He has boycotted afternoon naps in the crib so here he is on the couch.

Connor was pretending to be a little kitty cat. He made his own little bed in a basket and then feel asleep.

A Medieval Birthday

We've been getting ready for Connor's First Friends Birthday party this Saturday. It should be lots of fun. Here is the picture of the invitation we sent out(with our address and phone # covered up). We rolled it like a scroll and delivered it with a royal blue ribbon tied around it. I decided to go with a medieval theme after finding lots of fun ideas for one off of my sister in law's new website http://www.fun-pinata-party-ideas.com/ . We are keeping it pretty simple with the games since the group of kids will be around the age of 4. I won't divulge the activities and decorations just yet. It will be a surprise for the party guests. ;)I'll be posting the pictures and highlights after the party.

Photos Of Us

Ok so I finally got some photos pulled out of storage for a quick timeline of the way we have aged over the past 8 years (and my many hairstyles ). My wedding photos are still missing in boxes somewhere so I will have to skip those.

1999-2000 A picture from a valentine's dance right before we got engaged.

Engagement pictures- not my favorite. The photographer made Randy wear this shirt over nicer ones.
2001-Couldn't find pictures of us together, but these show how young we looked back then.

2002- This was when Randy was working out of town for months and months. Snagged him for a Christmas picture when he got back.
2003- Our trip to seattle. This picture was taken as the sun was setting on a dinner cruise.

2004- Family christmas pictures. Connor was 6 months old in this photo.

2005- Relaxing on a trip with my parents in Hawaii.

2006-Family christmas pictures. Kyler was 6 months in this picture.

2007 At my sister's wedding in Idaho.

2008
This was taken in January while we were on a Caribbean cruise. The lights in the background is from the theatre stage.

We looked so young in our first photos. How time does fly!!

Happy Anniversary!!!

We just hit 8 years in marriage. Wow, once you have kids the time does fly!! So I decided that to celebrate it on my blog I should tell the story of how we met and got married. Some of you might know bits and pieces, but here is the whole story (from my point of view) ;)

After I graduated highschool, I spent a year at Ricks College. Which I loved. The summer before the second year, I got it in my head that I was going to "help save" my older sister from an abusive relationship from her boyfriend. So instead of going back to Ricks, I moved me and my sister to Salt Lake in a last minute attempt. The roomates I had at Ricks were amazing. Little did I know I was going to get the exact opposite experience in Salt Lake. I moved in with a distant cousin that I met a few weeks earlier and we got an nice apartment in the heart of Salt Lake. This is where my troubles started.

My cousin allowed a party girl to move in and split rent with us. Oh, the bad memories of that apartment!!! I had set me and my sister up for online dating since we did not know the area very well and we also started going to the Lds business college ward. This ward just happened to be the same ward Randy was going to.

I did not have a job in the beginning, so I would go on dates at night time and then save the left overs for the next day's lunch. It worked great for a while...until the guys taking me on the dates started trying to get more serious, even though I told them I was just interested in friendship.

Well, I met Randy at one of the church activities, playing a game called catch the flag. We spoke for a little bit and he decided I was cute and that he wanted to ask me on a date.

Our First Date

We went roller blading in Liberty Park. I was definitely not very good at it. I even bruised my tailbone when a car swearved at me trying to be funny as it past. We talked about my woes in dating and he came up with a very cunning and convincing plan. He told me I needed to "take a vacation from dating". I needed to tell all the guys that I was going on dates with that I was going to take a week off from going on dates. He said he did the same thing (right...) and it worked great for him. Well, we finished off our date by going to a Dee's restaurant where we were surrounded with very interesting people and had a waitress named Bubbles. Acrossed from us were a pair of drunk guys. One said I looked familiar and asked were I was from. I told them my name was "Molly" and was from Rexburg, Id. Randy said his name was "Peter". One of them said they had an ex girlfriend from there and I pretended I knew her. He started asking me questions and somehow I got them all right. It must of been because he was drunk!!

Randy's trickery

So I followed his advice and told the guys I needed a vacation from dating. During that week of vacationing. Randy came over every day to "hang out". By the end of it all of the guys were convinced that I was dating Randy and I had to finally get a job. haha! Funny Randy!

Dating

Randy once told his brothers that guys were like microwaves, women were like ovens and I was like two sticks that you rub together. That was because I was not so sure of dating him in the beginning. We were just friends for a while and it really frusterated him. Randy was roomates with a guy that was depressed and drinking alot and my roomates were always fighting and one was always on drugs...so we spent alot of time together, not wanting to go to our apartments.

There was a time that I told Randy I wanted to slow down the relationship, in which he promptly moved back to St. George where his parents lived. I think it only lasted for about a week or two. One call from me and he moved back up. We got better roomates.

Engagement

We got engaged a little after valentines day in 2000. We chose the Bountiful temple to get married in. We got married 6/3/2000. My mom went crazy with details trying to make everything perfect. Our wedding was in Bountiful but the reception was 2 1/2 hrs away so it could be at my parents house. (something I do not recommend doing)We sang a song for the wedding..From this moment by Shania Twain. We had a jazz player at the reception and had some family friends sing some songs for us.

Our Marriage

Our marriage has never been what I would call dull since both Randy and I are animated people. We love to travel and spend time with family. Randy works very hard to support me being a stay at home mom with our kids. I am glad that we took the time to become friends in the beginning of our dating because it has really helped us as we hit bumps in the road along the way. Love you Randy!