Thursday, August 30, 2012

What was I thinking?

You're probably thinking, didn't she already redo a piano? Yes, I did a few years back. I didn't want to move the piano again since it weighs more than our house, so I sold it. It wasn't exactly the type of piano I wanted anyway, and I made money on the deal, so it was all good. That was over a year ago and I've been wanting another piano. I debated on getting a keyboard at Costco (they had some pretty cool ones), but decided a piano was the route I should go. Big Man said he wants to take lessons, but when it comes down to practicing, we'll see. I saw this piano on KSL for $300. Someone left it in one of the student apartments at BYU, so the manager was selling it. I only ended up paying $250 for it, but wanted to redo it, so I spent additional money on the paint stripper, stain, etc. Here are the before pictures:






This is an  in-progress picture.  I spent HOURS stripping down the existing stain.  It took a lot longer than I thought.  It's amazing the difference the new stain makes. 


And here is what it will look like finished.  I still want to add another coat and then put the varnish on, but I was truly amazed at how much better it looks.  I also have to add some hardware, tighten up the front legs, etc. but I think it's going to work nicely.

The best part is the keys are in perfect condition..  A little yellow, but the sound is great.  I've read some Internet tricks on bleaching the keys, so that will be a project for a later time.  For now, this works great.

Goodbye Summer...

I was cleaning off the camera tonight and thought I'd add these pictures from Summer.
This picture is from 'Cousin Camp'. We didn't take a ton of pictures, but we had a great time.  There's a small pond with this  little paddle boat on it.  The Mover absolutely loved it.  She thinks she's as big as all the other kids.  It was a good workout paddling around the pond. 


My boys did Mutton Bustin this year at the County Fair.  They were pretty excited about it.  They both only stayed on a few seconds, but they didn't care.  They had a good time in the arena waiting for their turn as well.  They'd congratulate everyone that got done with their turn.  It was fun.  We'll have to practice up for next year.

This is not a summer picture, but I thought it was funny.  We're getting ready for Little Man's Cowboy birthday party next week, so today we drew the horse for 'Pin the tail on the donkey'.   Don't laugh at my artistic abilities, but I drew the horse and Little Man and his friend colored it.  I could hear them talking about how horses have big weiners, and before I knew it this horse did too.  Lovely, so appropriate for his party.  Boys will be boys, right? 

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

First Day of School...

The long awaited day has arrived. I have a 2nd grader and a Kindergartener.

To get ready for the big day, Big Man put his clothes out the night before. You can't tell he was excited,right?



Last night was 'back to school' night. We met their teachers, saw their classrooms, and had some ice cream. The boys both have a bunch of friends in their class. I think it's going to be a great year.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Demolition Derby

My boys went to their first demolition derby tonight and LOVED it.  The girls stayed home and had an early night.  Big man made friends with a cute married lady behind them.  He spent most of the night sitting with her. He's quite the lady's man.  This is not the first time he's hung out with an older woman.  :)  He made a good friend at the nutcracker earlier this year.  I think she was about 16 and he became fast friends with her.

 Little Man's eyes about popped out of his head with the first crash.  He said 'can they really do that'?  They came home pretty wound up but had a good time. 

Monday, August 6, 2012

Lego Birthday Party for Big Man.

I told Big Man that he could have a friend party this year. He did two years ago and so it was time again! It gets a little confusing celebrating his birthday in the summer. His real birthday is Christmas Day, but it all works out.

He's really into Legos and so I scoured the Internet for a Lego-themed party. I got some cute ideas and games, and yet kept it pretty simple (at least compared to what some of the blogs did).

This game was to suck up Lego pieces with a straw.  I gave each of the kids a bowl to put them in and then I timed them to see how many they could get.

This is the little goody bag the kids got to take home.  I made the coloring books with some printables I found online.  I sewed it down the middle to keep it together.  I thought they turned out cute.  With school supplies being such a good price right now, I threw in a pack of crayons for each kid and then got some dollar store candy. 


What's a party without pin the something on something.  We made our own Lego man.  I drew and Big Man colored.  I used the Lego font I downloaded to create the numbers.

The little container of Legos was a getting started game I did as the kids were arriving.  They had to guess how many Legos were in the container.  The closest one won a prize.  The Lego on the left is a 'bomb'.  Big Man created this.  All of the kids sat in a circle, I turned on some music and they passed the bomb.  As soon as the music stopped, whoever was holding the bomb was out.  They really had a lot of fun with this game.

I did this game out on the deck and probably shouldn't have.  It was HOT.  Each plate had a different point value from 10-40.  I made some bean bags and then they took turns seeing how many points they could get.

I opted not to have a big cake that none of the kids would care about so we made some cupcakes. It worked out well.  I also got some great ideas off of Pinterest.  One was to scoop the ice cream before hand and put it in muffin papers.  That way when it was dessert time all you had to do was pass them out instead of scooping it up.  Only one kid objected to the muffin paper ice cream, so we just dumped his out on to the plate-problem solved :)

Another Pinterest idea was stringing up the balloons with a needle and thread.  It was super easy and it turned out cute.

I learned a few things with the party.  The first one is to limit it to an hour and a half.  I made it two hours and that was TOO long.  An hour and a half would've been good.  

The games went a lot faster than I thought.  Because we were ahead of schedule, we ended up opening presents earlier than I would've liked, so then all the kids wanted to play with everything.  It got kind of crazy.

Overall, I would say it was a huge success.  Big Man has more Legos than he knows what to do with (Ok-not really), but he should be set for quite a while.


Pin It

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Not for the queasy...

If you can't handle throw-up pictures, look away now! I shouldn't laugh, but my kids like to throw up when they go for car rides for dad. Jeff had taken the kids on what I thought was a 5-minute car ride while I was on an online faculty meeting. An hour and a half later, Little Man comes running in to tell me that The Mover had thrown up. I go out to the laundry room and she is sitting in her car seat exactly like this (except screaming too).

Bless my husband's heart, he does not handle throw-up well. He does well with about everything else, but not throw-up. He still has nightmares about a throw-up experience with Big Man 7 years ago. I think this one ranked right up there with it. He ended up taking the kids over to the farm and that's where it happened. There was nothing to clean it up with, so it was a 20+ minute ride home with throw-up everywhere. Good times, folks! Good times.