I should be packing...

but there are some things I want to document before we no longer have a computer to use. First, we spent the day painting the walls and ripping up carpet at our new house. It already looks better but there is a lot of work left to do before we can move in. We had been hoping to find someone to refinish the hardwood that was under the carpet but apparently no body wants to do it for the amount we want to pay...imagine that. It looks like Justin will get to dive in and learn how to do it on his own- I just hope he doesn't sand a hole through the floor :). Here are some of the before pictures, I will have to take some "post day one work" pictures tomorrow.


These pictures were taken a few weeks ago and not really for the purpose of a "before and after" but maybe they will give you a hint of what we are dealing with. If not, here are some tidbits we learned form the neighbors today:
- This family was nice but a Korean family that spoke no English so no one really knows much about them.
- In this house they had several dogs, a muskrat and chickens (yes, you read correctly) living in the crawl space. This does explain the odd smell in there and the chicken wire over the entrance to the crawl space from the house. I am glad I am not the one who had to clean up down there! Wow, definitely no regrets in pulling the flooring up. I am soooo not an animal person.
- Apparently this family only owed 50,000 on it when they were foreclosed on. Instead of selling the house for $100,000, they asked over $200,000 which no one in their right mind would pay with it in this condition. Therefore, they were foreclosed on and apparently left in the middle of the night, taking their boiler with them (thanks HUD for replacing that) and also all of the doorknobs, I might add.
- At one point this family had a stove fire that tragically scarred what would be a gorgeous stainless steel gas range. We are left with the remnants of that fire.
- There are planters in the back because the lady was a gardener and there is already rhubarb sprouting up around the yard.

So this is now what we know about our new little house. Aren't you jealous that this loveliness is not all yours???

I don't really want to write about what we did yesterday, I don't have the energy. That will have to come later but here is a shot of the girls enjoying their S'mores.

And because I have had s'mores on the brain lately I finally decided to try a peanut butter s'more tonight. I toasted a marshmallow over my electric stove, spread peanut butter on a graham cracker, put chocolate and that and voila! An amazing- too good for words- Peanut Butter S'more.

A friend suggested I try it with a peanut butter cup and that will definitely be tested out soon!

When Mom is in the Shower...

While I (mom) rush to take a five minute shower the girls can, dump out every toy in the toy room, eat every cracker within reach, and strip off their clothes and climb inside moving boxes...

Their cuteness is what keeps them alive...

Our lives...

Nothing major has been going on in our lives lately (except for getting ready to close on our house this week) except a lot of time playing outside in the perfect 65 degree weather. If it weren't for all of the trailer parks, Anchorage could be heaven on Earth in the spring.
Justin went camping Friday night with some of our friends. The girls and I were going to go to but we woke up Friday morning to pouring rain and colder temperatures so the girls had to stay home. I was disappointed but it wouldn't have been worth taking the babes. Justin was a little worn out after his trip and Macy refused to take a nap Saturday afternoon so this is what I was greeted with after I put Kylie down for bed.

Yes, they were both out cold. I placed Macy into bed and told Justin to go lay down and then enjoyed an evening to myself, which was kind of nice although I had been looking forward to hanging out with my husband since he had been gone the night before... oh well.
And then this morning the girls insisted on helping me make frosting for our cupcakes for today's linger longer after church. Justin seemed to get a kick out of this. What he doesn't realize is this is what happens whenever I try to make anything.

And then some of our wonderful friends bought themselves a nice new bike trailer so they kindly gave us their old one. Justin couldn't resist testing it in the backyard after dinner:

The girls were huge fans. We are off tomorrow to get them some proper helmets so we can go on a real bike ride.

And here is Kylie playing outside. She really enjoyed laying in the grass and searching for rocks. She's pretty adorable, if you ask me.



And to answer any lingering questions about our new house, here you go:
1. No I am not excited to move. I love my ward and the part of town we live in, I love being by the coast and so close to the airport. I will miss our friends and location a lot.
2. No, it isn't bigger. But it is ours. After having owned our homes since we got married, we have hated renting up here. Finally though,we are getting a little house. It has a heated garage (a must for up here) and a fully fenced yard. Those things I am excited for. Homes are crazy expensive up here so it has been difficult to find something in our price range, especially since we still own our house in Spanish Fork. We ended up buying a HUD foreclosure so, you guessed it, this new place is going to be quite the project. We are going to work on flooring and painting before we get in there and hopefully we will be able to fix and replace things a little at a time. (Ok, everything needs to be replaced, but we will just have to be patient...) I don't love the part of town we are moving to (ghetto but not terrible) but at least we will be really close to Target and Joann now :) Justin is going to love having projects again and we are happy to not be throwing money away on rent anymore. Hopefully, after some sweat equity, we will be able to sell it for a bit more in a couple of years and then get something that we will like more, but that will come in time. We were thrilled to discover hard wood under the nasty carpet so hopefully that can be refinished fairly simply and cheaply.

So that is the story on our house, because I keep getting questions and I realize that I have not explained the situation well. Wish us luck and if anyone knows anywhere in Anchorage to get cheap doorknobs we need a few! (The previous owners took them all when the left :))

I did it again...

Check out this great deal:

3 Kashi frozen pizzas
3 Kashi waffles
6 KAshi personal frozen meals (really good pesto or primavera)
2 bottles of BBQ sauce
total spent: 8.94

Not bed when considering it was 61.87 before sales or coupons... and the BBQ sauce ended up being free. I have several more of these coupon packs and cereal and BBQ sauce coupons that I plan to go and use tomorrow.

Not much else going on around here. I took Kylie to her third Dr. Appointment of the week and it turns out she has Pea and carrot allergies. Interesting. Unfortunately, that doesn't explain her diaper issues so now we get to go lactose free for two weeks to see if that makes a difference. Hopefully she can tolerate the soy milk I got her today!

And Justin is off bear hunting. He really wants to get a bear and make a rug out of it. At least that would save us from having to buy a rug for one of the bedrooms in our new house, right? And we should also be closing on our house by the end of next week, so wish us luck and hopefully Justin can refinish the hardwood floors without too much of a problem before we have to be out of this house. I am tired just thinking about it.

Last Year I loved it...

But now that the children don't want to sleep at night- or in the morning, I am ready for fall! Keep in mind it is actually light about an hour before sunrise and an hour after so we are only really getting about 5 hours of darkness.
No wonder our family of four is sleep deprived...

Cents of Style

One of my very best friends, Courtney, is doing a giveaway to promote her wildly successful business: Cents of Style. Go to her blog to see the rules and to enter.
Good luck!

And Krazy Coupon Lady is doing a giveaway of one of my coupon organizers! Go there before it ends!

Prepare To Be Dazzled

I used to be bg in to couponing. Most people that know me know that I like a good deal and I refuse to ever pay full price for anything. When we moved to Alaska I became a little discouraged with the coupon thing because the food up here cost so much more and they didn't have half as good of sales as they do in the lower 48 so I haven't been as vigilant the last year or so. However, my friends at Discount Queens and Krazy Coupon Lady have re inspired me so look what I did:

My bill would have been $41.41 if I had paid full price. Instead I got all of this out of pocket for : $2.45
For a 94% savings.
Yes, I know I am cool.
Wait and see what I pull off with Diet Coke later this week.

Cuddle Buddies

This was too cute not to take a picture of.
By the way- I am giving away some cute stuff at nicholecreates.blogspot.com!

Meet My Ballerina/ Tinkerbell

We received a bag of hand me downs from a friend recently but I didn't go through it really until last week. Inside was a leotard which Macy has fallen in love with. It has become very difficult for me to get her to wear anything besides it so when we are staying at home, I don't even try. Some days she is a ballerina and she twirls and leaps around the house endlessly. Other days she is Tinkerbell and she flies around putting Pixie Dust on all of her toys. Either way, she is too cute not to share with the world.

And there are more adorable pictures on my other blog for those of you interested in seeing my girls model their newest dress. Enjoy!

New Blog

So in order to relieve my family and friends of my sewing adventures and my sewing buddies from my child adventures, I have started another blog. Nicholecreates.blogspot.com
This will showcase my sewing projects and I will also use it to advertise my Etsy store. I would love it if you would "Follow Me" there because I will be doing a giveaway sometime soon! Thanks for putting up with me for so long. :)

Hello Again...

Hi, its just me again and I don't have much interesting to say. Our family has been playing outside and enjoying the sun as much as possible this week so it has been difficult for me to finish up these last lingering projects but here are some more to check off of my list! These are all posted in my store now so if you know of anyone that would be interested, let them know!


I finally put the finishing touches on Macy's sleeping bag and I love how cute it turned out. In reality, she has been using it for months but it looks much better now that the binding is sewn on. This has been such a great thing to have for little trips and I hope we will get some use out of it while camping this summer!


And here are my girly stacks of wash cloths that have been staring at me for weeks, begging me to finish them so I finally decided to tackle these tonight. How cute are these, seriously???

Thanks for checking in again. I promise to post some cute pictures of my little gals here soon!