Projects: Misc and thoughts

I thought I would share a few miscellaneous projects I've done recently.

This first one my sweet husband helped me with because I couldn't get the router bit out by myself,

and I was up to my ears in red fabric... lol aka working on the bench cover.

I have some seasonal decorations I put in this frame, but I haven't finished the ones for spring and summer.

So it tends to hang empty for those months.

One day I was reading my scriptures and a conference talk or something and I thought, "ooh, I really like that quote, I should make it into a sign or something and put it on my wall."

Then a little while later I thought the same thing, by the end of reading I had like 5 quotes I really liked.

So then I thought to myself, "You don't have that much wall space."

Thus, I needed a different plan,

and so the chalkboard idea came to be.

You can buy the already made blank chalkboards at the home improvement stores,

for a while they had ones that were just about exactly the size I needed,

but apparently those were promotional items and weren't being sold any more.

So I got the bigger one and had them cut it down. 

 I really like it because I can change it as often as I'd like.

I really love the bottom quote,

it says, "Marriage is a gift from God to us; the quality of our marriages is a gift from us to Him" 

(Elder L. Whitney Clayton).

I've never thought about marriage quite like that. I love being married! I love my sweet husband! But I've never thought about how the effort and love I put into our marriage is a gift from me to my Father in Heaven. Which is also neat because we can't give a lot of gifts to Him,

but showing Him how much we love our spouse and truly cleaving to our covenants and our spouse are ways we can show our appreciation for the wonderful blessing of marriage He has given us!

The other project is one that we've been meaning to do for a while.

Our food cupboards have been getting quite cramped, so we cleaned off one of the shelves we had in the garage that wasn't very full and moved it into the laundry room.

Someday we hope to have cupboards in there, but until then this works.

I like that I can see everything really quickly!

We had an ant invasion a few weeks ago, and that is what really kicked us into gear to get this done!

I pulled everything out of the cupboards to vacuum them out and then decided, rather than shoving it all back in I may as well organize it all and finally put it on the shelves like we'd planned. So my sweet husband helped me clean off the shelves and then moved it into the house for me.

Then I organized it all! I then organized our canned food and noodles and all the other food that didn't fit on the shelves in the cupboards in the kitchen. I was even able to fit all the extra cans we've had under our guest bed for food storage in the cupboards so that we can cycle through them as well! It was a very productive day!

Quick Update

I just wanted to quickly update you all on our weekend.

My wonderful in-laws came to help lay sod on Saturday, 

they got here late Friday night during the last quarter of the BYU football game (which we won!).

After the game, we were all pretty tired and knew the next day was going to be a bear.

So we headed to bed.

We woke up early on Saturday (we planned on picking up the first load at 7 AM).

My sweet husband and father-in-law headed to the sod farm,

while my sweet mother-in-law and I worked on spray painting lines where the sod would go,

we ran out of a spray paint after finishing the backyard and headed to Home Depot to pick up some more.

We called my sweet husband to see if there was anything else he needed,

he said no and told us to head back because they were almost home.

So we turned right around, excited as can be, and got home just before them.

But...

the truck was EMPTY!

Uhh... didn't you forget something?!

It turns out that the sod guy got the sod farm just after they did and said something along the lines of,

I'm so sorry, you didn't leave your number, so I couldn't get a hold of you, but I'm being evicted from my house today so I can cut the sod for you, but you'll have to load it all after this first pallet 

(I'm sure it was all one long run-on sentence too).

Since we were going to have to unload it ourselves anyways they decided that loading it as well would be too much, so we'll get sod this weekend if all works out!

We spent Saturday instead organizing and cleaning our garage for our home inspection and listening to General Conference! It was so good! 

I loved all the talks, I especially loved this talk! It spoke right to my heart!

Sunday, we listened to General Conference and then after my sweet in-laws went home we watched the rest of our adoption classes online.

Yesterday, was our home study.

I'm not sure what I was expecting 

(I think something along the lines of a cleaning check at BYU).

It wasn't quite what I expected, but it was good.

Our caseworker talked to us for a while, basically did the interviews we had before again.

Then she looked at our home, told us to change a few minor things, 

and then told us we would hear from her soon!

She told us that she received two calls from prospective birth mothers on the way to our home!

Not that they will be our birth mothers, but they could be!

I know Heavenly Father is preparing someone so special for us, someone that will change our lives forever!

And we can't wait!

Command Central

Lately I've had this real urge to get organized.

I think it has to do with the fact that our home has been a mess for some time now

due to all our remodel projects.

Don't get me wrong,

where we are remodeling still is a mess.

But I enjoy having little pockets of places organized.

Some day they everything will be!

But onto the reason of today's post.

Wednesday was a really slow day at work,

so slow I read TWO Better Homes and Gardens Magazines.

The January issue had all these great ideas about organization.

The one I liked the best was this "command central binder".

Basically it is a simple way to organize all those papers you don't know what to do with 

because you need them fairly regularly.

Or you just don't know what to do with.

They even have a wonderful guide that you can download so you can make one yourself!

I knew it was a success when my sweet husband said in awe when I showed it to him,

"Now that is organization!"

Have a wonderful day!