Projects and Family Fun

I've been so busy this last week that I haven't had a chance to update anything. So, now that some of the craziness has died down I thought I'd finally catch up on everything.

Last week my kids were so excited about Easter. Hyrum wanted to make sure we left some carrots for the Easter Bunny. We actually did the whole Easter basket thing on Saturday, that way we could kind of separate the secular Easter from the real reason we celebrate Easter.


The kids didn't waste any time cramming as much candy as possible into their mouths before Mom and Dad would notice. Ella was excited to get her first Barbie, Sleeping Beauty. I didn't get any pictures of the kids all dressed up cute. I cut back on a lot of things this year actually, because I just didn't feel up to it. Like instead of doing a huge Easter dinner with ham or turkey and all that, we had steaks grilled on the BBQ. (They were so good!) We did actually color eggs, I just didn't get any pictures of them.

After our "Easter" morning on Saturday we began the huge project of repainting our living room. We have lived in our house for 1 1/2 years and haven't done any work on our house except painting Ella's room (which turned out really cute). Our house was built in 1942 and it was in some need up updating (although the previous owners did a ton of work) so I've been dying to start. Unfortunately, remodeling of any sort is really expensive and time consuming, so we just haven't been able to do a whole lot yet. I was really excited to finally start on something on our house.

Here's the pictures of our living room before we painted. The living room is actually in good shape, it's just kind of a blah color. It's a light blue color, but you can barely even tell because it's just so light and it didn't look really great with my light green couches.


I went against everyone's advice to stick with neutrals and decided to do something I really liked and thought would look good with the white crown molding and the light green couches. . . red. We downloaded our pictures online and tried out some colors and then when we went to the store we decided on cinnamon cherry. I was a little nervous because it looked really dark, but Ben was really brave and convinced me to take a chance.

I forgot how much work was involved in painting. Mind you I didn't really get to paint much since I'm on physical restrictions so poor Ben had many nights when he was up until 2 or 4 a.m. trying to finish all the painting. The red actually wasn't what took the longest, it was all the trim, crown molding, bookcase, and doors. None of the wood work was the same color of white so we got some powdered snow colored paint to re-do it all. What a project! But I love the finished product!

It's quite a drastic change, but I love how it gives the room some personality. We also got some blinds for the windows and some shelves for the walls. Now we just need a clock and something to actually put on the shelves.

On Thursday, Ben took the day off to finish the painting because my sister Kellie and her boyfriend Craig, and my sister Andrea were coming that night for a visit. Then on Friday my Mom and Dad joined the bunch. I didn't think we could possibly fit that many people in my house, but we did and it was so much fun!

We went to Ottavio's for dinner on Friday and it was so good. Then on Saturday we were planning on going to Thanksgiving Point to see the gardens, but it was terrible weather, so we went to Trafalga to go miniature golfing instead. I thought I was doing really bad, but I actually tied for second place with Ben. My Dad beat us by one stroke. That night we played games until like 2 in the morning. Games with my family really brings out the crazy! My sides hurt so bad from laughing, which probably isn't good considering I'm trying to keep this kid in for a few more weeks.

It was really sad to see everyone leave today. The house just feels so empty. Fortunately, I have the comfort of knowing that they'll all be back in a month for when the baby is born. :) We'll see if I can get any other projects done before they all come back, but I'm pretty sure we are going to wait on any more painting projects until after the baby is born.