9 months.

Before I tackle the huge amount of pictures for this, I thought I would share this with you.

Luke is now 9 months old.

It is weird that's he's already that old. Before having him, my goal was to focus on each step, to take it all in and take nothing for granted. Well, he hasn't let me really indulge in the baby phase for that long. He has other plans in mind.

Stats:

He's around 21 lbs.

This month, he started cruising on the furniture and even took his first step.

He is climbing stairs when we aren't looking.

He has now refused to eat any type of baby food and only wants to eat what we are eating.

He throws a little fit when something is taken away from him. He bounces adn crinkles his nose and starts whining. It's pretty funny.

He makes funny faces...he crinkles his nose as he breathes in and out of his nose really hard. That's pretty funny too.

He will get into anything.

Definitely a mama's boy.

When he's not tired or hungry, he is the happiest little thing in the world.
I love him to death and know he was meant to be in my family!

Highly recommend!

I was contact through CSN.com to do a review on any item in any of their 200+ online stores. Anyone else seen these sites?!
They are awesome.

They have everything.

Not kidding.

THey have a site JUST for bunkbeds!

It is amazing.

So I was having a hard time figuring out what to use my $60 gc for it.

But as I was looking around my home, thinking of something I really wanted to get, I found this on their site:

LOVED IT

So I had to get it. I needed something new on my walls in my new home.

It arrived a few days ago and I ripped open the box...which, by the way, was heavily protected by LOTS of foam sandwiched in the box so as to not break during shipping..well done ;)
*sigh*

I love it. It looks awesome on my wall.
It is made out of a lighter wood, so it is not too heavy to hang up. The style is wonderful.

I highly recommend checking out CSN.com. They constantly are having sales and discounts and free shipping all the time.

Tell them I sent you too...maybe I can do another review ;)

For those of you

who are curious, I posted before and after pics of the dress-turned-cardigan project on my craft blog, The Crafty Clique.

In other news, just still unpacking. I love the mistake house we ended up with....

Oh did I not tell you?

A few days before leaving to WA, the property management calls and tells us that our rental that we had signed for, fell through.

SAAAWWWWEEEETTTT!

After a nervous breakdown, we also found out they had another one that just went up for us.

4 bedroom, fully fensed yard, same neighborhood, 2200 sq/ft.

Ok, I think i can cope with that.

So yes, we have unpacked the essentials. But we aren't going to unpack anything else.

The one draw back of this house is that the owner will be putting it on the market to sell in about 8 months.

So as much as I love to pack, i'm just going to leave 1/2 of our house in boxes.

We are having fun with Joe not working until Aug. 3rd.

So far, I am loving this place.

I have a lot of pictures I want to post but have no time right now to get them up, but hopefully soon.

Revamping some clothes

So let me just set up a bit of a background for you, paint a picture, as you will of our past year.

We have had no money.

Like seriously, having 3 kids, husband being a student plus small income...

My monthly budget was $20.

I kid you not.

So this past May, my side of the family did some family pictures.

And to get ready for those, I wanted something cute and unified as a family.

Yet the problem was again, we had no money. More details of the story here on my family blog.

So after thinking of what I was going to do, and after scouring the many wonderful craft blogs, I had some ideas.

Could I make something myself?

I think I am too chicken to make something from scratch that would actually look good.

But I could dismantle some old ones and refashion them!

It was worth a try :)

So my first victim?

This grey pregnancy dress that I found at DI. I don't think it is actually a pregnancy dress. It is a size 16. Anyways it was perfect at the time. This was last Septmenber.

And who knows when the next time I will get pregnant so I tossed into the DI bin.

And please ignore my swollen self!

So what I basically did was use some scissors and cut right down the middle.

then i trimmed the bottom in an "a-line" fashion.

I don't know if that makes sense but the back part hits the bottom of my butt and the front parts are angled down from there.

In my family pictures, I used a piece of lace and tied that around my waist to help it keep still.

I was pleased with the results! It has given me a new eye to old things.

I also whipped up that headband i have on too. I used some scraps and did a basting stitch down one side then gathered. I hot glued it into a flower and put a bling in the middle. Hot-glued it on some felt and then on a headband.

Can you tell I am proud of this?!
I am!!

It's about time.

The biggest fear I have as a family is not having a good family portrait taken. And until now, that has been the case. Nothing ever worked out really.

So about a month ago, we went to UT for my brother's mission farewell. It would be the last time my family would be together for at least 2 years so we took advantage and took family pictures.

I'll admit that it was a big deal for me. This was my chance to get something together and hopefully take decent pictures! So days before leaving, I was stressed. I wanted my little family to look "together" and "unified". That's the hardest part. So it started with the girls dresses. I definitely wanted them to wear those. So white and yellow. Then I looked at Joe's wardrobe...hmm...lacking. But he had a nice grey shirt that would work. So from that, I went with Grey, White and Yellow. Luke's shirt was an awesome find at Old Navy. So all that was left was what I'd wear. It is seriously lame how much stress it was for me. I couldn't even sleep some nights. yes, lame.

But inspiration came the day before we were leaving. And when I say inspiration, I mean frugality. It was kind of a challenge really. I was trying to make new clothes out of old ones. And I wanted to match the rest of the family. So after going through my DI pile, I grabbed a grey dress that I had worn when I was pregnant huge. I then cut it apart and turned it into a cardigan.

Then I whipped up the headband and earrings to throw some color on me.

And I am happy with how we all looked unified.

Well here are the cream of the crop. And I am pleased with how they turned out too.

Hopefully soon

I am so lame these days. But I do have a good excuse really. I just finished to WA

I am dying to do/make something but it's just not logical right now.

My house looks like a explosion site and I expected that. I've moved enough times to not set too high of expectations on myself.

Otherwise, I would feel pretty crappy right now!

But in my down time, I look through other blogs, most of them are just awesome. And through my searchings, I have found this website, CSN.com. Have you heard of it?

They have things from Dining room furniture to wall decor & bed sheets. THey are awesome and have everything you will need.

We are currently looking for bunk beds for my girls so I decided to see whta they got. They have a exclusive shopping site JUST for bunkbeds...I mean, they have over 200+ websites!!

You can find anything! We also need a rug...

Anyways, thought I would let you know about it because it's pretty cool!

And hopefully soon, the moving madness will be over and I can start doing fun decor stuff for my house!