Curtains-a-la-mode

The title to my blog may seem a little odd. "Curtains-a-la-mode". When you see the awesomeness that is my curtains, you will understand the blog title.

I am an HGTV watcher. To many men strewn across the country, this is probably a very bad addiction that should be curbed. My husband is one of those men. Every time that he comes home and I have a new idea for our house, he groans and states, "You are not allowed to watch any more HGTV." I'm not a very good wife for completely ignoring his demand. I AM ADDICTED!!! (If Stephen had known this would happen when he really wanted to get DISH, he might not have ever signed up.)

One of my latest projects, care of HGTV, has been curtains in my living room. I really didn't know what I wanted to do and so I started looking at window treatment books in the numerous visits to my favorite sewing stores. Finding the one that I wanted, I went to a sister in my ward, who is a professional seamstress, Deana, to learn the ropes of curtain making. Lookie at what I came up with:

In talking to Deana, she told me to begin by mounting a board in the studs above my windows. I went to Home Depot a bought a 10 foot long mdf board. The board needed to be about nine feet long and I wanted to have some sort of decorative edging around it. I called another sister in my ward, Tiffany, to help me out. She is really good with wood and has a lot of tools to get things done. As a side note, Tiffany put her entire deck in by herself. She also did her kitchen back splash on her own. She's amazing. I took the board to her house and she cut it down and used her router to make it pretty around the edges.

I spent forever looking for the hooks that I wanted . I couldn't seem to find them anywhere. In talking to Kenna, I finally found the ones. Thank you Craft Warehouse.

Here are my curtains before hanging them up. Isn't the material SOOO cute! They had a screaming deal at Home Fabrics.

Here is one of the panels hanging on the wall. Wow...I can't tell you what a difference it made to our living room. It actually made it look like a home rather than a house. That sounds a little weird, but it is true.

Here's the finished product! I'm so excited! I was so proud of myself for taking charge and getting the whole thing accomplished on my own. They are hiding behind the couch, so it is kind of hard to see them. I gave you a few different shots.

Halloween Partay

I LOVE Halloween. I actually really love holidays, period, but I especially love Halloween because I never really got to celebrate it growing up. With my parents in the farming business, harvest came first...therefore no Halloween. I do, however, remember one year that we finished harvest early and so we got dressed up and went trick-or-treating to a few members of our church. Because of the person that my Dad is, we could only go to as many houses as we had homemade apples pies to give in return...I know it sounds weird, but it's my Dad. (Exit random detour)

This year I threw a 'bomb-diggity' party. Seriously, it was that fun! My original party list included twenty-four people and we ended up with sixteen. I think that it was a pretty good turn out.

With it being Halloween, of course I threw a costume party. It took Stephen and I several weeks before we were finally able to agree on a costume. Here's the picture. Let's see if you can guess. It should be quite obvious.

Yep. Mario and Luigi. Isn't it really clever? Stephen came up with it. When we bought the green hat it had a Boston Red Sox logo on it. I took my seam ripper and tore it right out. Krystal was really excited about it. Dang Yankee's fan. Stephen cut these logos out of felt and I hand stitched them on there. Don't they look cute?

This is Bob and Sara. Aren't they the greatest Raggedy Ann and Andy? Sara said that she got these costumes from her grandparents. They dressed up every year and this was one of their costumes.

Shane and Krystal. Surgeons. Krystal walked into my kitchen and poured Tabasco sauce on her outfit so it looked like blood. That didn't work so I gave her the ketchup. In the picture she is actually holding a serrated knife. That just sounds disgusting.

Jeff and Amanda. This one was hilarious. If you look real close you can tell that Amanda is pregnant. Pregnant nun. Jeff's arms seriously looked like they had tattoos. I had to touch his arm to see if they were really fake. It was kind of like nylon. They looked great.

Jeremy and Meg. Crazy biker dudes. Jeremy's hair was way awesome. I seriously love the jackets.

Marc and Kenna. When I opened the door to let them in I was so surprised...Kenna had a real rabbit. The magician and his assistant. Marc said that the suit he was wearing was his Dad's wedding suit. If you notice, the pants are high water and his jacket had polka dots. I really want to see his parents wedding pictures.

Here's a close up...of the bunny.

Michael and Grayson. They came dressed as.......themselves.

Morgan and Jess. Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife Beth. I was so shocked when I opened the door and saw their costumes. They looked hilarious. I couldn't believe how they totally pulled it off.

We had a costume contest and gave away the greatest prize...a twenty dollar gift certificate to the Edwards Movie Theatre! And the winner is...........Dog and Beth!!!

We started the party with a game of pictionary. We had everyone come up with words and put them in separate bowls and played boys against girls. Some of the things that we had to draw were incredible, if that is the right word for it. Some of the examples are: Bean with Bacon Soup, Burn Victim, Roller Derby, etc. Crazy words, crazy people. I really don't want to say this, but the boys won.

After pictionary, we had a break for the wonderful goodies. Stephen made the really awesome smoothies. I froze whipped topping in the shape of ghosts and them put them on top of the smoothies. The looked really cool and I'm sad I forgot to take a picture of it. I made a bajillion cupcakes that had cute orange and chocolate frosting with cutie patotie Halloween sprinkles. I also made WAY to much nacho cheese dip. So if anyone wants to come over for nachos, I have a ton.

We then had a rousing game of Upset the Fruit Basket. I'm not going to explain the game, but it is way fun. I LOVE parties! We then announced the costume contest winner. A lot of the couples left after that and then we chatted and played Catch Phrase. It was a fun time! Thanks for all of you that came!!!

BOO!

We have been "BOO!"ed. I've never been "BOO!"ed before. Coming from a farm, we never really had neighbors to "BOO!" us.

Last night Stephen and I were sitting on our couch when someone knocked on our door and ran. We opened our door to homemade cookies, homemade bread, and this cute little poem:

"BOO!
To our good friends on our street.
Our homes' locations made us meet.
You now have been Boo'd, but who could we be?
We'll never tell, it's a secret you see.
We placed these goodies for you and yours
Then we ran fast, after knocking the door!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Place this Boo on your front door
And make sure you Boo two neighbors of yours!"

My only problem is that these secret friends of ours made THE most delicious chocolate chip pecan oatmeal cookies in the entire world. I REALLY want the recipe. Ggggrrrrr what is a woman to do...

Super Saturday

Party for the Relief Society!! On Saturday we had our annual "Super Saturday". This is where all of our Relief Society sisters get together and make crafts or take classes to learn different skills. I have been so excited for the last month. I signed up for the cupcake class.

A sister in our ward, Jamie, decorates cupcakes in the coolest way. Jamie had a table set up with some of the cupcakes she had decorated. Sorry, I forgot to bring my camera to the class so you'll have to use your imagination with my descriptions. The coolest cupcakes were her spaghetti and meatballs. She had a group of twelve cupcakes placed closely together and then using a tip on tubed icing, she drizzled white frosting on top of the cupcakes to look like noodles. On top of the noodles she had ferrero rocher chocolates as the meatballs. As her sauce she used raspberry jam and drizzled it over the meatballs. As her final touch, she grated white chocolate over her masterpiece to look like Parmesan cheese. IT LOOKED SO COOL!!!!

These are the cupcakes that I decorated. They are not nearly as cool as Jamie's, but I tried. This first one is for Halloween...just in case you couldn't tell.

These cupcakes are my turkeys. They were kind of destroyed in my car. Originally they looked like big orange, white, and brown feathers. In the car they melted and fell. It was chocolate that we drizzled on wax paper and put in the freezer to set...the sun made them 'unset'.

These are my cute coconut snowmen. As an aside, everything that Jamie used in her cupcakes are edible. And I mean EVERYTHING!!! This was way fun. I am now learned in the art of cupcake decorating...kind of.

Ta-Da!!!

I found this tricycle at Ross on Friday. I was SOOO excited! I have finally begun to decorate my planter shelves. This is the first. Hopefully more is to come. Now I just have to find some cute fake plants to put in it.

Sleep Talking

Last night at 2:17am Stephen woke me up.

Using his full voice he said, "Guess...what, Kami. You...are...a traveling hazard, you really are! It's like a danger zone for everyone on the road." Stephen laughed and went back to sleep.

I got out of bed and wrote it down. I wanted to be able to use it as blackmail sometime.

Homemade videos

***WARNING***

NO BLOOD WAS SPILLED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS VIDEO...

This is what I have been doing for the last week. I have another week to go to finish the project. Let me explain myself to those of you who are not familiar with these practices...

Stephen is a bottle salesman. I could try to glamorize it, but that is what he does. To make money on the side I do little projects for Stephen's company. One of the more charming side jobs is cutting tubes.

These tubes are used in numerous types of bottles. Think of the little bottles of soap you have sitting next to your sink. You stick your dirty hands under the running water and then place a hand underneath the soap and use your thumb to push the tube that dispenses the soap. THOSE ARE THE KINDS OF TUBES I CUT!!! It all sounds very prestigious, I know, but someone has to do it. I take the pre-manufactured tubes and cut them to the specific length that the customer needs for their different types of bottles. TADA!

Plug for Stephen...If you ever need any sort of container for canning or food storage, go to containerandpackaging.com. They rock.

...AND...

The next time you purchase a bottle of perfume, or lotion (not a squeeze tube) you can think of me. The hard working laborer. Cutting tubes.

Quote of the Day

Speaking to Krystal and I, Stephen said,

"I think you guys get your goofy attitude from your dad and your sassy attitude from your mom."

Awaiting your reply Mother...

Farm Life

Stephen finally got a taste of what harvest is like. We drove ten wheelers, we rode in semis, we picked clods, we picked potatoes, we rode motorcycles, we threw clods at the porta-potty...harvest really is fun!

Friday night I drove Kelsey's truck while she went on a date. It was really fun to get to drive again. It's been a LONG time. I got in the truck and went blank. I forgot the shifting pattern, I forgot how to turn on the belt, I even forgot how to turn the engine on! It was pretty pathetic. Everything came back in a hurry though. When you are under time constraints, your brain magically functions!

Saturday was a slow start in the morning...at least, slower than usual. We awoke to a beautiful sunrise on a very cold morning. Stephen got some awesome pictures!

Saturday we began by helping Kory and Charisse can spaghetti sauce. Doing it with Charisse gave me a lot more confidence in being able to do it myself next year...I think I can, I think I can.

Here is Krystal, Karli, and I finally entering the field. Technically that is a one person motorcycle, but when you are really cold, you cram as many people together as you can to keep warm.

Here is Stephen watching how to load the truck. Every time I would tell Stephen about harvest, I think that he got bored. When explaining harvest, it doesn't sound too exciting until you get to do it.

We can't forget Kory! He's loading Mom's truck. She got a new truck this year! She's very excited because now she has bunk beds. Kory had to experience the awesomeness and so he drove her truck to the dump.

Stephen and I rode into the dump with Kory and Charisse. This is us sitting on the top bunk. It was really cool. No one under 18 is allowed at the dump and so when Mom brings Karli with her she hides her on the top bunk and no one sees her! The windows are tinted so you can see out, but no one can see in. Sneaky little Karli.

While at the dump Kory went through the same process I did with the semi. He forgot too! See, it's not only me. Eventually he got backed in and unloaded.

We ended early on Saturday so the guys could go to the priesthood session of conference. Before they got ready Stephen wanted to go on a motorcycle ride. As soon as he got on my Mom's bike, Emmett hopped right on. Stephen was a little surprised, but very excited. Stephen wants a dog SSOOOOO bad! This is Stephen and Emmett and Charisse and Kory!

I got on the back of Stephen and we drove off. After riding for a minute, the bike was acting really weird and wouldn't go very fast. Stephen stopped and Emmett jumped off. He looked at us and said with his face, "You weren't going fast enough." He then started to run in front of us and then looked back as if to say, "Let me show you." I'm serious! That is exactly what he was thinking...you could tell.

After the guys left for priesthood, the girls had chill time. We had so much fun! Grandma came over to just be a part of the gals. We were chatting it up and laughing, while Grandma kept complaining that she couldn't hear a word we were saying. She didn't want to hear what we were saying anyway...

When the boys returned, we met Kelsey's beau, Nathan. After a brief introduction, we began a rousing game of Sardines...in the dark of course! Mom and Dad's house is no big enough to play with the lights on. Just to let everyone know, I was the best hider. It took everyone the longest to find me. People would come into the bath room, where I was hiding, and leave again without even noticing me. It was great fun. The best part was when Mom was the last person to find me. Stephen was second to last and so when she finally realized that she just yelled, "STEPHEN!!" It was really funny. I think that she was nervous that all of us were going to jump out and scare her.

When it was Stephen's turn to hide he barricaded the door we were counting behind. He thinks he is so funny. We had to shove through a whole bunch of chairs and pillow cushions.

The next morning we awoke to this:

A TON OF SNOW!!! It was falling in huge flakes and was not letting up. We had our traditional omelets for breakfast and then Stephen and I, along with Krystal and Shane drive home. Before the drive home Shane did this...he is wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The picture is blurry because I zoomed a lot because I refused to go outside in that weather. Bbbbbrrrrrrr.

ThANkS MOm aNd dAD!!!! We had fun!

Lunch with the Ladies

I went home to visit the family this last weekend and was able to meet some high school girlfriends for lunch. I don't think I have done that since I graduated...over eight years ago!

I know, I'm really awful.

I met with Angela (Rudeen) Mortenson and Jamie (Walmsley) Harmon. I remember when I was a little kid, I thought that adults were really boring because all they did was talk. Well...that was all we did and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Thanks girls for the awesome lunch date! We definitely have to do it again sometime. Now I just have to figure out how to shorten the drive from Boise to American Falls...