Easter

Easter is my favorite. Please let me tell you why. I believe that because of the atoning sacrifice and marvelous resurrection of Jesus Christ, I can repent and be forgiven when I make a mistake. And just as He lives, we will all live again. To know that I can be with my family, even after this life is over, is everything. This knowledge brings me peace everyday, and helps me keep my focus on the things that matter most.


Our Easter Sunday is shaping up to be a real winner, and we haven't even eaten dinner yet. ;) I hope yours is, too, friend.

signing off for the weekend

This is one of my favorite weekends of the whole year. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous, and I am excited to get out and enjoy it with my family. Other things I am looking forward to: our Easter program at Church, ham + funeral potatoes for dinner, wearing a new dress (if it arrives in time!), and watching my kids dash like mad around my in-laws yard looking for hidden eggs.

I hope you have a very happy weekend, full of family and good food, and hopefully some time to reflect on our Savior, (and maybe a nice roll down a green, grassy hill) too.

We watched this video as part of our Family Home Evening this week. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a great way to spend 7 minutes.

See you next week!

our favorite banana bread

I've probably posted this recipe before, but after baking my third loaf this week, I thought it was worthy of a repost. It is sweet and soft and just exactly what a banana bread should be.

Banana Bread
makes one loaf

2 1/2 cups flour, or 11.9 oz
3/4 to 1 cup sugar, depending on how ripe your bananas are
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons melted butter
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
2-3 ripe bananas

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease your pan. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. Mash the bananas, then mix in the sugar, milk, and egg. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

One loaf doesn't last a day at our house. It is one of our favorite after school treats.

just some things

If, in a fit of crazy, I ever decide to cut my hair, please talk me out of it. I've never had long hair before, and I am loving it. One of my favorite things about it is that I don't have to blow dry it anymore. That is life changing, and that reason alone is worth all of the time I've spent growing it out!

Mike and I got a new bed. It arrived yesterday morning and I don't know if it was the new mattress, or that I was just really tired, or still getting over my sinus infection, but my nap that afternoon was heavenly. We moved up from a queen to a California king and are very happy with our Tempurpedic purchase.

Last weekend was our school's carnival. I hope they raised a lot of money, because I know it was a lot of work to put together. We all had a great time, especially our cowgirl Stella.

Sunday's are our favorite. I snapped this photo of the kids playing in Nana and Grampa's backyard before dinner. We always have the best time at their house, and the weather this past Sunday was gorgeous.


Are you doing anything special for Easter? We will be attending the Easter Pageant tonight. If you are in the area, you should come! We get there early, sit on the lawn, and eat our dinner while we wait for the show to start. It is always such a wonderful experience. Easter is one of my favorite holidays, and I am excited to focus more on the Savior and His sacrifice and resurrection this week.

This video by Elder Holland is one of my favorite things to watch this season. I hope you'll click over and take a look. It always puts me in the right place.


p.s. Happy birthday to my dad!

my new favorite chocolate chip cookies

Until recently, these were my very favorite chocolate chip cookies. I still think they are really good. But you know what? I make these now instead:

The New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

8.5 ounces of flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon course salt
1 1/4 sticks butter, softened
3/4 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
chocolate chips

Sift the dry ingredients; set aside. Cream the butter and sugars for five minutes, then add the egg and vanilla and mix some more. On low, add dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips. Chill the dough for a bit. Or not. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Mine are perfect after 11 minutes, but I let them sit on the warm pan for a few minutes more before I place them on a rack to cool.

They are salty and chewy and just about perfect.

(This is the recipe for a half batch, which still makes plenty of cookies.)

the sewing room

One of my favorite things about reading blogs is seeing how other people live, and how they decorate their homes. I hope you enjoy that, too, because I am sharing photos of my new sewing room today. I never in a million years thought I'd have a whole room like this to myself! I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

This room used to be Stella's and it was very very pink. I can't do anything about the pink carpet yet, but I did paint the walls. I used the leftover paint from my floors (Martha Stewart Flagstone), and I love the way it contrasts with the white bead board.

This desk (inherited from my parents, from Ballard Designs) used to crowd the tiny office off the kitchen. Now I have plenty of room to spread out my projects, and keep an eye on the neighborhood while I work. The red lamp is from my favorite part of Ikea - the as-is room.

Here's a round-the-room tour for you. First, the view from the door. My sister-in-law gifted me her old cutting table and it is the best. No more kneeling on the floor to cut out pattern pieces! It's a life saver.

My dress form is out of our closet, and can finally stop creeping up on us. Hooray! This little cabinet used to be our changing table, but now it holds all of my fabric, yarn, and ribbon. I donated most of my stash, and threw away almost all of the rest of it. Now I am down to bare bones and it feels excellent. This cabinet also holds my serger. If you consider yourself even slightly a seamstress, get a serger. Please. They make everything better. Mike found my Babylock Evolve on Craigslist a few years ago and I use it on almost all of my projects.

For my fifteenth birthday, I picked out this rocker. I know, I am a nerd. But I still love it, and I am so glad to have a nice sunny room to put it in. My fittings usually involve mothers, so this will be a nice spot for them to sit and visit. And hello from the fitting mirror!

This room is a dream. I kept it very spare on purpose. I need a clean slate to have a creative mind, and every time I walk into it my mind is quiet and I am ready to work. Just in time for Prom season, too.

end of the week things

The kids have settled into their new rooms, I think. Elliot doesn't wake Oliver up a million times anymore, and the girls make sure to share secrets and tell stories each night before they fall asleep. It warms my heart.

I am still getting the rest of the house organized, taking lots of junk to the DI and sending the rest of it to the trash. It feels so good to get rid of stuff! I love the idea that everything in your house should have a specific purpose or be something that you absolutely love. It's a process and I am working on it.

Mike is the assistant coach for Oliver's baseball team this year. Elliot tags along to practice and Mike snapped this photo of him last night. It's so sweet. I wonder if he knows he's not really on the team?

I'm going to spend the weekend sending good thoughts to my sinuses. Hopefully that helps clear them up. How about you?

Spring at our house

The orange blossoms are blooming! The trees and ground are covered in delicate white petals. It is all so gorgeous. But here's the bad news: I have been nursing a sinus infection for the past two weeks and I can't smell them. Boo. I'm going to let myself pout about it for one minute, if that's ok. Orange blossoms are my absolute most favorite smell and I am so sad that I am missing them this year.

But our wisteria almost makes up for it. You wouldn't guess that I live in the middle of the desert with all of those lush blossoms. The flowers don't last long, but they sure are pretty while they do.

Along with the orange blossoms and the pretty wisteria blooms, there have been some major closet clean outs, slip and sliding, and baby chick tending happening around here. Even though Spring marks the beginning of the end, sinus infection aside, so far this has been a good one.

the girls' room

I shared a room with my sister, Leslie, until she left for college. It was the best thing about my childhood, and I think we are such good friends to this day because of it. I wanted that for my girls, too. For the past few years, Mabel and Oliver had been sharing a room in the basement. Now that Elliot is old enough to move downstairs with Oliver, it was time to put the girls together.

This same antique, marble-topped, cupboard sat between mine and Leslie's beds. It is my favorite piece of furniture, and I am so glad my girls get to use it.

The reading lights and bedding (except for the big white pillow cases that I made out of some old sheets) are from Ikea. The headboards are old crib parts, and the dream catchers are from pit stops between here and just about everywhere else.

This room is tiny, and it's in the basement (next door to the boys). Once we cleared out the old guest bed, I was starting to worry that two beds wouldn't fit!  But they did, and somehow, magically, the wall paper and trim make the ceiling feel about 10 feet tall.

Mabel and Stella have only slept in their new room for a few nights, but I can already see a difference in their relationship - a closeness that wasn't there before. There are five years between them, and hopefully those years won't matter much anymore.

good news

He's still my baby after all.

The Great Bedroom Switch of '13, step one

I moved Elliot into the basement with Oliver today. He's been so lonely by himself upstairs, and hasn't been sleeping well (so most nights he ends up in bed with us, which means none of us are getting any sleep). I think it was time for him to have a roommate. But does this mean I can't call him my baby anymore?!

progress: wallpaper

The first thing we did when we got the keys to our house seven years ago was to start ripping off the wallpaper. If you had told me then, that one day I'd be hanging wallpaper on those very same walls, I would have thought you were crazy! But here we are.

I ordered my wallpaper from American Blinds and watched this entire series of how-to videos. It was hard, and took forever, but I think it was worth it. I love the results. Would I wallpaper again, though? Probably not.

I still need to put up the trim and install some lights, but then the girls can move in - hopefully this weekend. I've been dreaming about this room for years, so I am excited for it to finally be a reality.

Spring Break + Lemon Cake

Spring break is off to a great start. Mabel and Oliver are making a movie with the other kids in the neighborhood (with auditions and everything), Oliver had his first baseball practice last night (hooray for little league season!), and Stella and Elliot are still mostly good buddies.

After seven years in our house, I finally finished installing our baseboards, and now they just need a coat of paint. But first, wallpaper! Hopefully I'll have some photos to show you soon.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a recipe to try, this lemon cake is fantastic. It is so moist and lemony. I think it's the lemon syrup you spoon over the warm bread that makes it my favorite.

I hope spring has sprung wherever you are. It's supposed to be 95 here tomorrow, so I would say that winter is officially over. Sigh.

It's the weekend!

It's raining today. That makes me happy. Sometimes I spend all of spring dreading summer, that I forget to enjoy it. So it's nice to stay inside and be cozy for a few more days.

We made a very successful trip to IKEA yesterday, where Elliot had to try out all of the beds, of course. With realistic eye closing and snoring, even. We are getting ready to do some bedroom switching around here, which is always fun. But first I have to figure out how to hang wallpaper. Thank goodness for youtube.

Next week is our spring break, so this weekend feels extra exciting. I hope you have a good one!

this week

The week after a vacation is always sort of a drag, but here are the highlights so far:

We got a new chick!
We sold our old hens a couple of weeks ago and are starting from scratch.
Here's hoping that this one is not a rooster, and that the cat leaves "her" alone.

For FHE, Oliver hit a golf ball through the window.

I couldn't even get mad. It made such an amazingly perfect hole.

Mike planted a garden.

We "helped", but mostly just enjoyed being outside.
Our days are warming up already, but our evenings are perfection.

Yesterday we stayed in our pajamas all day and Elliot and I even took a nap together on my bed.

In two months he will turn three. Aack! I'm in denial.

What's happening at your house this week?

Fabulous Las Vegas

Mike had a convention to attend in Las Vegas last week, so we took the kids out of school and tagged along. Las Vegas is not my ideal vacation destination, but we ended up having such a fun time! We stayed at the Hilton Grand Vacations Club off the Strip, which was fantastic. No smokey casino to walk through, no bar, no showgirls. Just a ping pong table in the lobby and a huge suite complete with a full kitchen and washer and dryer. It was the way to go.

In general, we tried to avoid the Strip, but we did spend a little time at the Bellagio one afternoon to see the pretty conservatory and fountains. Another day we had tickets to see comedian/magician Mac King, and the kids loved it.

The Las Vegas Natural History Museum was great. Lots of stuffed animals, a few live sharks, and an Egyptian exhibit. It is just the right size and kept everyone's attention for the entire visit. Plus, it had a playground next door, which was good for getting some wiggles out.

Our room was such a nice surprise. The hotel seemed brand new, there was lots of space to stretch out, and did I mention the full kitchen? So convenient when traveling with children. You don't have to be a member of their vacation club to stay there, but I can see how people get suckered into it. It was just the right hotel for our family and really made our trip a success.

One morning we went to the Springs Preserve. It was a beautiful day, but I sort of wish we had made the drive to Red Rock Canyon instead.

We stopped at the Hoover Dam on the way home and I'm glad we did. It was a marvel!

I am a major homebody, but sometimes it is nice to get out of my routine for a minute, you know? And really, it doesn't take much to impress the kids. I'm pretty sure it was the hour spent at the ping pong table that secured this vacation as "the best ever". I can't imagine what they would have thought if it had actually been warm enough to swim!

Hooray for trips!