It's been quiet on the Blog...{Frosting Recipe}

It's been quiet on my blog last week. But it hasn't been quiet at my house!

I've been SUPER busy getting stuff together for PD's graduation! So proud of this guy who graduated with his Master of Divinity Degree on Saturday, May 10th. It was a long road! He started working on this degree the year after he graduated from college (the year we got married....we will have been married for 10 years come June)!

This is the best shot I got (I forgot my good camera)...oops!

During this time he has worked full time and traveled one hour and 15 minutes one way to get to seminary (sometimes as much as 3 times a week). We have had 4 kids in this time and also built a house (most of the house was built by him during the time of going to school and transitioning from the associate pastor to lead pastor). We moved into our house 2 weeks after our third (Kendra) was born (about the time I stopped posting on the blog....now you know why I took a break from blogging). All during that time PD was taking classes. I'm so proud of his hard work and accomplishment!

His parents came down on Thursday to help us celebrate and we had a graduation party at our home for all our friends and some family on Saturday. The weeks leading up to this have been busy painting and getting small projects done (many people in our church haven't seen our house yet....).

I share all that to tell you that my mother-in-law makes some of the best frosting I have ever had and has shared the recipe with me and I'm going to share it with you all! Hopefully she won't mind. I don't think it's a family secret recipe....if not....leave it to the daughter-in-law to spill the beans! ;)

Decorating Frosting:
1 pound powdered sugar
1 cup shortening (or 3/4 cup shortening and 1/4 cub butter or margerine)
1/4 cup milk (or 1/4 water)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Beat it like crazy in a mixer (we are talking like 10 minutes)!

Enjoy!

Here's a picture of the cakes my mother-in-law made for PD's graduation party!

Didn't my mother-in-law do a great job!! Also a side note: She used almond extract in the white frosting and vanilla extract in the chocolate frosting.

The graduation hats are made out of mini rolos and mini reeses peanut butter cups and a crunch bar

If you're wondering what that odd writing at the bottom, it's Greek for "it is finished" :)

Oh and if you're looking for a homemade cake recipe....look someplace else, we haven't found one we like any better than a good Duncan Hines cake mix. :) And bonus....the cake mixes were on sale for 99 cents this week! :)

Working on Projects....

Are you working on any projects?

I'm working on getting a lot of stuff around the house done (A lot of painting). PD graduates with a Master of Divinity a week from Saturday and we are having an open house here (at our home)...with lots of people....who haven't seen our house yet.....

...which means I better get things in order....like painting doors and trim (that haven't been painted before now)....

...and lots of decision making....

I'm very thankful for Pinterest...and friends! 

Sprucing up around here.

We moved into our house three years ago this August. My goal for the past 4 months has been making my house look more like a home. Which included pictures on wall, curtains, and just giving it a more "homey" feel. At the end of last year PD and I decided to get curtains for our windows (we have three VERY large windows in the living area of our house). I waited until I found them onsale and got some plain brown curtains. While I liked the curtains I thought they needed something a bit more to spruce them up a bit. So I went to Hobby Lobby and found some of this white and yellow damask fabric and added a stripe into each of my brown curtains (that's 8 curtains panels). I LOVE the way it turned out! It also helped to lengthen them a bit as my patio door curtains were a tad to short for my taste. PD also found this painting at Kohl's that we got for about $8 after rebates and such. I think it draws all my colors in together perfectly. It's very similar to the painting that is over my couch (same "artist').

Thanks for letting me share a bit of my excititment with you on slowly making my house into a home.

We are working on making a window bench seat for the living room, I'll share pictures when we are finished! I just primed and painted the board today! :)

Easter!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! We enjoyed our Sunday!

I promised pictures of the girls in their dresses. Well I didn't get individual pictures of just the girls but got the boys in it as well! :) I found a great tutorial for a flower for the top of the girls dresses here. I love the way they turned out and added just the right touch to the bodice of the dresses! They were so easy to make (even if you don't own a ruffle foot attachment for your machine). I also made matching hair flowers for them.

For the boys I serged up some quick bow ties (in about 5 minutes) the evening before from my tutorial here. :)

 My Crew:
Paxton, Donovan, Annika, Kendra

It's been a long time!! That sweet little girl in my last post is 2.5 years old, and she's a big sister.

After she was born life went crazy busy. 2 weeks after she was born we moved into a house which we built while I was pregnant (yes we built....most of it on our own). Also PD (aka daddy) switched roles from associate pastor to lead pastor.

But said house is the reason for my lack of blogging. You see we live in the middle of nowhere and we can't get the internet on the road we live on (as in there is no lines). All we can get is satellite but it's crazy expensive and real slow where we are at. Now for internet I use my iPhone until just recently when we got ourselves an iPad with a generous Christmas gift from our church family. So I can use my phone as a hotspot.

What's been going on with us....

Annika just turned 7 and we have about 6 weeks left before she is finished with the first grade. We are all ready to be done! We are ready for spring to come (it's currently about wind chill of 10 degrees) and we still have a good 1.5-2ft of snow. She can't wait to play her 3rd year of soccer. She does a wonderful job!

Donovan is 4.5. He's not in school yet, but is reading some easy words and can count to 120. He LOVES music. It's not uncommon to see him directing at anytime. He has recently over the last couple of weeks started plucking music out at the piano. He just got glasses in August and he's very excited that he can "see". At least he now sees that trees have individual leaves. :)

Kendra (sweet sassy Kendra) has entered our life and has been quite the whirl wind. She is fun and very sassy. She has her own way of doing things and isn't afraid to tell you! If you were to meet her
the first thing she would probably say to you is, "what's your name?" Then "where's your dad?" She definitely makes life interesting!

And last we have Paxton. He was born last July. He's 8 months old and constantly on the go. He's been pulling himself up for a couple of weeks and has slowly starters to cruise along furniture. He's by far my youngest puller-upper and cruiser.

I still love sewing as much as ever and have started making a lot of things for my kids. My time is limited as I am homeschooling Annika and with a preschooler and two toddlers running around the house. :) Staying up on my house chores, laundry, and schooling take a bit of time, but I still try to make time to craft. :) It's hard to believe I started out by making mainly cloth diapers. :) I'll share some of the stuff I've sewn over the years in another post. :)

I'm hoping to make time to get caught up on my blog again!

Here's a picture of our four monsters at Christmas.

Van is 2!

Happy 2nd Birthday to this little guy! 

We were blessed 2 years ago with one of the sweetest little boys!

You can see more at our family blog.

Baby Update!

It's a GIRL!!!!

Annika was very excited to hear this! When the ultrasound tech said "it's a girl" Annika put her fist in the air and had a big smile on her face!

I have a few pictures to share. We got well over 15 pictures (and a DVD) but baby wasn't co-operating to well so the pictures aren't the greatest (I think that's why we ended up with so many, the ultra sound tech I think felt bad).

A few pictures:

Everything is checking out good! Baby weighs in about 13 ounces and my due date is the same (August 13th).

The only problem is that I have placenta previa. Which is common in pregnancy (although this is the first time I've had it). Basically it means the placenta is in the way of delivering baby and if the placenta doesn't move up than a C-section is required (you can read more if you click on the link, if you want the long version). In most preganacies this rights itself and by the end things are just fine. I'm guessing ours will also, but just in case I go back in at 28 weeks for another ultrasound. I can't complain to much as I've only had one ultrasound for each child, so I'm looking forward to see what baby looks like at 28 weeks. :)

And less you think they could be wrong (since they were with Annika) we'll take a second look than! :)

Van "Performs" ;)

I put this in the wrong spot (it was suppose to be on our family blog, it will go there also)...but I'll keep it here! :)

____________________________

Donovan took a short nap today (only about 1.5 hours). I'm not sure he was feeling all that great when I put him down tonight. But he had a good afternoon (he actually slept less than his sister...which is saying a lot b/c she's not a big napper, but she's just getting over being sick...the good ole' MN crud...as called by many people near us).

But I was able to take a few videos of him and the things he has learned:

First up is a video of him counting. We are thinking he learned to count from Annika for two main reasons.
1) I know personally I have not worked with him all that much, and...
2) He skips the number 12 when he counts...so does his sister! :)



Next ups is a video of him singing the ABC's (w/ help). But he does a pretty good job! :)



He also loves the Tupperware shape ball.



He's been able to put the shapes in these for a bit now. I love to watch him (and Annika) learn new things. He's definitely learning a lot! Now if we could just get him to tell me he has to go potty BEFORE he goes! ;) But he's still little still! :)

Van got a New Shirt

Now normally I wouldn't share all of Van's clothes with you (unless I sewed them), but I didn't sew this one (I actually got it for pretty cheap)! But it's a pretty cool shirt!

Sorry it is not the greatest picture, but I have a little 19 month old that is almost impossible to make him stand still! ;) Also pardon the "stain" on the shirt (it's actually a wet spot). :)

Looks like sometime around August 13th we will be adding one more to our already crazy family. We're excited, but a bit nervous (as we will now be outnumbered)! ;)

On another note: (just thought of this) I went looking for a shirt for my little guy and the smallest I could fine was a 2T. My little man is just now moving out of 12 month shirts.

And I thought we were busy now....

Life is about to get more busy for us! No I'm not pregnant!!! We are in the beginning process of building a house! For the past 5 years we have lived in the church parsonage (which was a blessing) but I'm ready to have my own home! We had plans drawn up a bit ago and we are soo VERY excited to embark on this next new adventure in our life. Right now we currently live across the parking lot from the church when we build our house we will only be about a block away! What a blessing it is have a church family behind us!

What will happen to the parsonage we now live in you ask?!?! Well it will be converted into a church annex which will house a pastor's study (which is VERY much needed as P.D. has been studying in the church office/Pastor's study) and we will have space for Sunday School classrooms (also very much needed) and downstairs we will have a place where the teens can meet on Wednesday Evenings besides in my living room (not that I didn't enjoy it, but this will be so much easier)!!

Want to see my house plans?!? I'm not sure how big they will be or if you can even make anything out on them, but here they are!


We went with smaller bedrooms and bathrooms and went for larger kitchen, living, and dinning area since we LOVE to entertain and have people over! We will eventually finish off the basement as the funds come in, but for now it will be unfinished but think of the HUGE sewing room I will have (as there will be no walls down there to begin with!! ;)

Be prepared to go on a photo tour of our "Building a House Project" throughout the next 6-9 months. I plan on sharing what's going on and what has been accomplished during this time!

Crafting of a different sort!

Last week we had our Vacation Bible School Week. It's one of the busy times for P.D. and myself. Although it's a lot of work it is also a blessing!

Usually P.D. is around to help me coordinate stuff for the decorations. Well this year he took the a couple of teens to Northland International University for teen camp, so he was gone the week before VBS. This meant that I was in charge of doing working all the decorations, and taking care of the kiddos for a week on my own, and I ended up getting the worse sinus infection I have had in a long time (about 2 years).

I was able to get A LOT of help from some wonderful ladies in my church and also was able to recruit the help of some VERY hard working teen girls!!

The Theme was "Egypt Files: Decoding the Mystery of the Gospel" From Answers in Genesis.

Here's what we ended up with! Crafting of a different kind which included more paper and LOTS of paint!!

Another Tutorial Coming Soon...

We are headed out for vacation tomorrow evening after the Sunday evening service. We'll be gone until June 2nd. Unfortunately I didn't get my shirt tutorial finished up, so you'll have to wait until I come home. Sorry. Today will be a full day of laundry (lots), and packing the car up (yes we are driving). :) We're going to drive about 4.5 miles on Sunday evening and the rest of the way (which I'm told is about 10 hours) on Monday. I'm trying to pack enough things to make the car ride enjoyable for the kids.

Okay I'll leave you with a few pictures of a skirt I made for Miss Annika a year ago, I saw a picture of this and fell in love with it, however at this time I was kind of afraid to try something new (especially without a pattern). I got the fabric from Walmart for a $1. I figured if it didn't turn out I'm only out a little bit. Well it turned out and I absolutely love it. But remember I said that I didn't know exactly what I was doing (as I had no pattern), well it ended up being too big. It's sitting in her closet just waiting to be worn, it is one of my all time favorite things I have ever sewn! I'm going to try and make a new one when I get back and maybe I'll even get a tutorial thrown up!

Hope you all have a great week! I know I will as I'm visiting family in Colorado and enjoying the mountains!

It's kind of hard to see but it has pleats in the front.

Then Life Happened...

Life....that's the reason I haven't posted lately. I have a few minutes now as Van is down for a nap (kind of unusual) and Miss A is sleeping (it was a late night I think she got in bed at 11 pm). I have TONS to share, from skirts I made for myself (although I think I want to remake a few of them as soon as I can find zippers), skirts for Annika, and I'm almost done with this outfit...I have yet to do the ruffles on the capris.

However yesterday I was going to try and sit for a bit and do some sewing, I even got up early to do some laundry (Tuesdays are my laundry days). I put my first load in at 7 am than the kiddos got up and we did our usual morning routine and I finally got down at 8:46 am to change it over and found that my laundry/bathroom down stairs had an inch of water all over the floor (that's not suppose to be there)! I than went into my bedroom and noticed that yep...the water had leaked into my closet and almost all the way over to my bed (luckily the laundry room is tile, however my bedroom is carpeted). So off to find a dry/wet vac and vacuum out my room and the inch of water in the laundry. The day ended with the Sewer guys coming and emptying our tank (now mind you we have lived in the parsonage for 5 years, I don't know anything about sewers but we hadn't had it cleaned since we lived there and I don't know if it has ever been cleaned)! YUCK....it stunk (literally)! :)
Oh and I forgot to add it took almost a good 1.5-2 hours to find the man whole to the septic system...needless to say we couldn't see the cap and no one could remember where it was (parsonage was built in the 80's).

Enough about that, than after we got all that figured out we had to head out to a softball game (I play catcher for our church softball team)...that ended well as we won 11 - 7 (something like that).

I did however get a new "toy"!!!! Check this out!! I'm soo excited!!

I got it from a lady whose father got it from an auction, she purchased a pedal for it for $25 and she sold it to me for $25!! I've been looking for one and planned on spending about $200 (that I had saved up) for it. Now I have one for an 8th of the price and have money left over for fabric?!?!? It's a BabyLock BL400. It however didn't come with a manual, but alas I found one the same day and ordered it so I'm waiting for it to come in the mail!

Well I'm off...today is story time at the library and that's our one venture out of the house during the week since we live 15 minutes from town. :)  Hope you enjoy your day!

Looking for a New Car?!?!

I just wanted to share this group of pictures I took of my son and put into a story after I looked at all the pictures. I was actually just trying to get a cute picture of him in his shirt and tie for church, but I got a lot more than just one! :) Van at 9.5 months old! :)

 So...Are ya lookin' for a new car?!?

 You are?!?!? I got just the beauty for you!

 

Look right over here.

 She shines like a sparkling diamond...

 What do you mean that's not what you want?!?

 It's got newer tires, new battery...

 It's got EVERYTHING you could possibly want!

 What can I do for YOU...to get you to buy this car?!?

 Price....price you say?!?! 

 For you, I'll knock $500 off!

How can you refuse a deal like that?!?!

 Boy...oh boy...you're a tough sell!

 This is my last offer...take it or leave it....$700 off!

 You'll take it?!?!? Now we're talking!

 Baby, let me walk you to your new car!!!

A little life, a little shoes, and a little fabric

My poor Van has been having trouble gaining weight. Since he was 4 months old he has only grown a little over 2.5 lbs and only about 1/2 an inch, at his 9 months appointment (yes I said since 4 months).

Needless to say he's just a little guy. He is still in 3 month clothes (some 3-6 months). We went for his well baby checkup 2 weeks ago and they wanted to see us again today. To help him gain weight we have decided to start supplementing w/ formula, which must be working some because he gained .6 lbs since than (but still not good enough for the doctor, we go back in a month). 

And because he's soo stinking cute!

But today on our way back from the hospital we stopped at the thrift store...did I mention I LOVE thrift stores?!?!? But we live in the middle of nowhere (really we do)! So at the thrift store I found these REALLY cute shoes! I couldn't pass them up they were brand new for only $2!! I have NEVER owned a red pair of shoes (you see I'm a tennis shoe kind of girl) so I shopped out of my comfort zone.

Oh and I found this super cute skirt (a bit big for me and not the most flattering style, but you can bet that I will be fixing it up)!!!

Of course I don't have anything that really matches the shoes (well I do have red shirts, but most are BRIGHT red). PD had the day off work (he usually takes Monday's off since he "works" all weekend, so we headed down to the cities (which is about an hour away). I got to go to JoAnn fabrics (yay!). So I picked up some fabric to match my new red shoes to make myself a skirt (and a few other fabrics). They also had patterns for 99 cents so I picked up a few of those also!

New Tutorial (sewing)

I just finished up a new tutorial today! I am soo excited about it! I love sewing and to finally be able to make my own tutorial is exciting (especially when it comes to sewing). I'm hoping to get it together and post it tomorrow!!

The reason I don't sew as much...

This picture was taken w/ my new digital camera (I'll share some about it later)!

It's been awhile!

It's been a long time since I posted on here....I'm not doing to good am I?? Life just seems to get more busy with the more kids you have and the more your husband works...kind of stinks sometimes! :) Here's a pair of longies I just finished for Van-man w/ a matching hat! I used the tutorial and pattern from Katrina's site:





By the way Van-man is going to be 4 months old next Monday...how time flies!

I believe I have done more stuff and I'll post when I have time. Today (and tomorrow) I'm off to help at an in-home daycare. I've been helping this lady for a couple of years and she's going out of state for a funeral for the weekend.

No Sewing...But Pictures!

I have been toying around lately with taking pictures. I really enjoy it!! So with some of my spare time yesterday I took the two kiddos out to take a few pictures. Here's just a few of them! Not bad for having a 2 year old who didn't want to cooperate! She's really into picking flowers these days, so it's amazing what a little bribing can do. ;)

Miss A and Little Van-Man

Don't forget to stop and smell the....flowers!

Gotta {love} feet!!

How sweet is my Little Van-man?!?

The best of the both of them!