Artisitc Davis

At Preschool Davis learned a song that has the letter sounds and also two words that start with that letter. He sat down the other day all by himself and drew out his song. He has been singing it all the time and he is so proud of his pictures. The only thing he asked me for help on was what a question looked like. I'm hoping to get all the pictures labeled in the next few days.

Check this out!

I was featured today on I share printables for my Harry Potter Potions labels that I designed!

I am SOOOO excited for this project! I have wanted Halloween apothecary bottles for a couple of years but never could get around to making them. Since I decided to do my house like Hogwarts I wanted the potions from the books. I got designing and here are the results!

I found my bottles at thrift stores and in my pantry and distressed the glass to look old and spooky. If you want to learn how I distressed the glass check out this tutorial. After the bottles were ready I printed my labels on card stock and cut them out. I used a even layer of modge podge on the back of the label and stuck it onto the bottle. I continued to hold the label down for a few minutes and kept checking to make sure that the label had not bubbled up. After letting it sit for about 10 minutes I put a thin layer of modge podge over the front to make it more durable.

My kitchen finally has a potions set and it only cost me about $14 for the bottles and cork stoppers.

It was a bonus activity to go around the kitchen and mix things up to go inside of them! It was like we were really mixing potions.

Grab your own Harry Potter Potions labels here.

You can see my other Hogwarts inspired Halloween decor and free printables here! 

As for the rest of my house....

 If you are not a big Harry Potter fan I made this Raven print you can grab here instead!

There were so many cute Halloween Printables out there. I chose these to put up in my home:

Halloween Bunting designed by Moselle and found at Blue Cricket Design
Halloween Subway Art from It works for Bobbi
Trick or Treat bag label from the Graphics Fairy

I'm sure there will be more projects as the month goes on but I'm so happy with how things have turned out this year. Davis keeps saying how spooky our house is! In fact he even prayed, "thank you for our spooky house." :-)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The tears finally came

If you know me you probably know that I cry pretty easily. But the last few months when it came to my Mom I haven't been able to cry. Ive cried about other things but when I talked about my Mom or thought about her passing it felt like there was a barrier that was holding the emotion at bay. I think I feared that if I opened that door and cried there would be pain waiting there.

And then tonight my friend Andee, my sis in-law Sarah, and I went out to dinner and to our annual Women's Conference for our Church. The messages were inspiring and uplifting and it put my heart into a vulnerable state. On the way home the conversation turned to Andee's good friend who recently passed and I shared an experience about the night my Mom passed and the tears started coming.It was like there was a dam inside of me waiting to burst and the tears came no matter how hard I tried to hold them back.

Thankfully we were close to home and I was able to run and hide away in a quiet place alone. I listened to the beautiful music of Kim Reed as I cried. Her music was such an important part of my Moms journey for us. The tears flowed and sobs escaped. I was wrong about the tears bringing pain, no hidden pain came. In fact it was like a healing balm of relief to finally release the tears.

As I listened to the song "Going Home," a song that for so long represented my Mom leaving this earthly home, the words took on new meaning. They brought me comfort that words can not describe and a meaning that has changed me forever. I am healing. I use to be afraid of healing. Afraid that if I healed it somehow diminished the impact of her life on me. Now I see that healing is the best way to honor her.

I love my Mom. I will always love my Mom. No one in this life will ever take her place. In some ways only I can do that. I am her daughter, the one she trained and raised and through me she will live on forever. She raised me to be strong and resilient. To not only survive but thrive. I hear her in my mind saying "YES!" the way she always did when she was really proud of me. Not only do I hear her in my mind but I feel her in my heart. I know she is porud of me.

I am healing.

I am a Queen!

I am so happy with how our new blog has been going! We have been averaging about 400-600 hits a day. Yesterday we had 772 hits! I designed a 9/11 printable that Pam posted and 1,266 people have viewed that post! I'm having such a good time! Not only is it something I  enjoy but its reminding me to enjoy my kids! Not that I normally don't enjoy them but I am seeing them and my role through a different lens.

We have such great boys! I believe Becks is finally starting to get a little less crazy :-)

Really all I wanted to say today is how much I love my boys, John, and my little life. I love that I get to create everyday. I create food and decor but more importantly I create love and memories and the feeling in our home.

I am the Queen of my little kingdom! I love that through my hard work and patience I am creating the home I always dreamed of having.

Fall time brings SOCCER!

Soccer season started last week but we were gone so today was the boys first game. John and I switched it up this year. He is coaching Caleb and the Green Machines.

While I am coaching Davis and the Purple Flames!

What a difference a year makes! Caleb did great! It took him a little to get back into the groove but by the end he was really getting in there and going for the ball. He scored a goal and assisted on a couple of their other goals.

And then there was Davis....last year he was picking flowers, running in circles, and falling down on purpose. Today he scored a couple of minutes into the game and I was so happy. What a great way to boost his confidence! Two seconds later Davis cuts from he outside and dribbles the ball to about 5 feet from the goal, shoots, and scores again! He scored 4 goals today! Sarah caught his 4th goal on camera!

He was awesome! In fact he even went over to the other team to help them out since they were really short players.

As always we had our supportive cheering squad!

Okay so maybe it looked more like this,,,,

And even more like this!

We are so happy soccer season is here again!

Erik & Sarah

Things have changed a bit here in our house this last week. John's sister Sarah and her new hubby Erik have moved in with us for a little bit. It has been delightful and fun to have them here so far. They have been helpful and great with boys. Erik has his birthday just a few days after moving in  and we got to celebrate with all of his favorite foods (and he has great taste!)

We are very happy to have them here with us!

Happy Birthday Uncle Erik!

Primary art

Caleb brought this paper home from Primary today. Allow me to give you the translation that came with it.

I thank thee for my family.

I ask thee for a sister ( sorry buddy - NOT happening)

I thank thee for my Lego man, airplane, CTR ring, light saber, Pokemon cards, Mommy. and Daddy

I ask thee for a car, my own scooter, and a skateboard for Mom

Lake Powell

John and I had the opportunity to go away to Lake Powell this weekend with 3 other couples and NO KIDS! It was such a blast! We stayed on a beautiful house boat that had 4 bedrooms! House boats are SO cool! I never really got why everyone thought Lake Powell was so great but now I get it! Besides being huge the little canyons you can go exploring in your boat are awesome. Our view looked like this:

On Friday afternoon the most wild storm came in right as John and I got there and so we relaxed and watched a movie while the storm blew over. When it did we drove in the boat to dinner. You know life is good when you can drive your boat to dinner! It was super yummy food at a beautiful marina.

The next morning we slept in and then loaded up in the boat at 11:00 and didn't come home until 8:00 that night. We went up the lake about 40 miles to see Rainbow bridge.

It was spectacular! As you can imagine there was a whole lot of this happening!

Thankfully only a little of this :)

Poor John can hardly move today but it was so worth it! He cleared the wake on a wake board for the first time and he was in heaven to be surfing again! As we headed back to the house boat we had another storm move in and it was amazing to watch the way the water ran over and shone on the rocks.

Thankfully it was very brief! At one point we had the moon rising on one side of the lake while there was an  amazing sunset on the other side!

It was one of the best weekends Ive had in along time. Good friends, good music, good food, beautiful scenery, being on the water, and most of all hanging out with my John. Its was so fun to go out and relax and enjoy spending time doing nothing together.

He is truly my best friend and I think he is one of the most fun people to spend time with. I dont know how I got so lucky!

Oh vactaion I will miss you!

Please come back soon!

Over the Big Moon!

A few months ago my friend Pam came to me and said she wanted to start a blog that was all about home - recipes, routines, traditions, games, learning activities....a place where Moms could get ideas. I thought it was a great idea and said I would do some posting. As we talked more about it it became a joint effort and we both did a few posts here and there but with summer going full swing and me still dealing with my personal stuff we just never got it all together to launch. Until now!

I was a little nervous about taking on a project when I just finished eliminated all the extra things from my life and seriously do I really need another blog! But this blog is something that I feel passionaly about. I have so many cool ideas bouncing around in my head. A lot of the time I get distracted by the day to day mundane routines and this will give me the push to get them done. 

Another big reason for doing this is that I think families are becoming disconnecting and it scares me for the future we are creating. I want to share ideas about how parents can spend more time enjoying their kids . I feel passionate about strengthening the family and this gives me a place to support family and family life. Being a Wife and Mom is one of the most amazing gifts ever!

We will be posting 5 days a week so come check us out!

Over the Big Moon

Auntie Lisa

 SO. IN. LOVE.

We went to Prescott this weekend and met our newest little niece Natalie. It was so fun to watch Nic and Steph with their new little girl in their new little home. It was like rewinding the clock 7 years ago and watching John and I all over again. What a cute family and what a cutie little girl. More pics to come soon!

A CA girl in the gardening world!

I didn't grow up gardening but I did love planting things. I remember every once in a while I would plant a random pack of flowers and dote over it for a while. We did have a lot of fruit trees (Fig, lemon, grapefruit, tangelo, orange, avocado, Kumquat, and we did have strawberries for a while). The thing is in CA you don't have to do much, things grow pretty good on their own.

I started to dabble more in gardening when I lived in Seattle and loved it but mostly I grew flowers. When John and I lived in Orem we were allowed to plow up a little part of the yard to plant a vegetable garden and it did great...until we moved when everything was ripening.

In AZ we finally got our backyard in and planted a vegetable garden and then picked up and moved again right when the fruits of our labors were starting to show. So even though this is technically my 3rd vegetable garden I really haven't had a lot of hands on experience.

Why am I telling you this? Mostly to try to rationalize the words that came out of my mouth in front of my garden sesei Lea.

Lisa: "Look over there we have a watermelon growing!"
(walking over to admire).
Lisa: "Hey my watermelon turned into a cantaloupe!"

Ya, I'm still learning....A LOT!