What I Look Forward To...

I know it's weird, but every year, I look forward to the Parade of Homes. I love looking at homes, seeing the floor plans, looking at the beautiful decor, and dreaming of owning a fancy house in the future (probably in at least ten years, but maybe we'll be surprised and it'll be sooner). This is the first year that Lance and I have actually bought tickets to the Parade of Homes. Two years ago, my parents bought tickets, but went out of town before they could finish looking at the homes, so they gave the tickets to us. We went to less than half of them, but we LOVED it!!! Last year, we didn't get tickets because we just simply didn't have enough time with all of our celebrations and with Lance starting school.

So, this year is our first time going to every single house. You may think that we're nerds because we love to look at houses when we just bought a house almost two years ago, but it's something we enjoy doing together. I've always wanted to be an interior designer and Lance loves dreaming about the future in our dream home.

So far we've only gone to half of the homes, but they were all lovely! Even the small homes are nice! There are all types of homes included in the Parade of Homes list.

It's fun to see how the professionals decorate, too. It's way too fancy for our budget, but I got a lot of ideas that I can mimic if I want to. One of the houses had a chalk wall in the kitchen! I've seen a lot of ideas on chalk walls. You paint the wall with chalkboard paint, and it's like a chalkboard in your home! I think it's a cute idea for a house, especially if you have kids. They'll say, "I'm bored," and you can tell them to put their artistic skills to work. Then erase it all and start over the next day!

I've also noticed that cabinet styles are changing. There isn't just simply the wooden look any more. There's the rustic wooden look (which I'm not too fond of, but a lot of people are), there's clean white (which is great, because the cabinets in my house are white, and it's good to know that I'm in style for being in such an old home), there's the distressed look (this look is used in white, black, or any other color you want), and you can also mix and match. There were a few kitchens I saw that had two different colors of cabinets. It worked well, surprisingly enough.

I also noticed that wallpaper is coming back. Don't immediately cringe! It looks nice! It's mostly used in bathrooms or laundry rooms, and the wallpaper patterns are very classy looking. I'm so glad we haven't torn down the wallpaper in our laundry room yet! It's a little dirty, but I think with a little tender loving care (and a few cover-up pictures) it will look great!

I didn't want to post pictures of the homes in Parade of Homes because they worked so hard on them that you should get tickets and go see them yourself. But here is a home that was by one of the homes in the parade. It amazed us! It's pretty much a palace. Lance called it "Belvedere," which is a palace in Vienna, Austria (he went to Germany and Austria on his mission, so that's why he chose that name). It has Greek-like statues in the front, and there's also a golf course! There are two places to tee off across the ravine on the way to the house. Lance was especially excited about that. So here is a picture of that.



Another thing that I look forward to every year is flowers! I know, I post a lot about flowers, but I love them so much! And they're all so different! Here are a few pictures of recent blooms in my yard.

You gotta love June! It's rose time! I love this fuchsia color!

Here is a red wild rose. You get wild roses by trimming the rose bush too low. They grew that way last year, so it wasn't us who did it. But they're still beautiful, and they smell as good as regular roses!

I'm not exactly sure what this bush is. It is abundant in my flower bed. I thought about pulling it out, but I think it's too cute. Don't you love the white flowers where the petals seem to hyper extend? I think it's in the nightshade family, but I'm not 100% sure. Last year we had these and some with purple flowers instead of white. Maybe we'll get some purple ones later.

These are California Poppies. They're so cute! I had some poppies last year come up, but they're more lush this year!

The best for last! Have you ever seen a red lily that wasn't in a fancy, exotic bouquet? I haven't before this year! And I have two bushes of them growing in my flower bed! I planted them a year ago in spring, but they didn't flourish last year. This year, they did! They're gorgeous!

What do you look forward to?

Welling Family Reunion 2011

Last Saturday we headed up to Lava Hot Springs for a family reunion. It was with Lance's family. It was tons of fun seeing his aunts, uncles, and cousins. We don't see each other very often, so it's lots of fun to catch up with everyone. Here are a few pictures of all the fun!

I'm playing with some of the girls at the swing set. That was the happenin' place to be for the little ones.

The kids and some of the adults had fun playing Red Rover and Duck Duck Goose.

Everyone decorated hats. Lance and I are sporting our Welling Originals. I decorated mine with polka dots and he decorated his with smiley faces.

We had so much fun!

I Finally Have My Dishwasher Back!!!

For the past couple of months, our dishwasher has been out of commission. We have a portable one, because old houses don't really come with dishwashers unless the kitchen has been remodeled. And, no, our kitchen was not, but luckily, we already had a portable dishwasher before we bought the house. It's pretty old, but it still works fine. Well, it did . . . until the hose attachment that hooks onto the faucet decided to wear out.

I'd put it on, think everything was fine, turn on the water, and SPLASH!!! The attachment hit the bottom of the sink every time. So, I've been washing by hand ever since. Not my idea of fun. Needless to say, my kitchen has seen cleaner days.

We went to the appliance store to see how much it would be to fix it, and it would cost more than the thing was worth at this age. $75! For a dishwasher this old, it just wasn't worth it. So, we decided to fix it our own way, which took a lot of clever thinking (Lance is a genius) and plenty of time in the hardware store. The entire fix was around $10. Much better than $75!

Lance cut the input hose to the dishwasher and put a new fastener on it. Well, it's pretty much just a hose end. You know, like a garden hose. Then we had to get a couple adapters to make it the right size for the hose, and viola! It doesn't pop off every time I try to turn on the dishwasher! It's not the most sightly thing, but hey, if I don't have to wash by hand, I'm all for it! Oh, and the hose where the water comes out is still the same. We just let it hang in the sink. It works marvelously!

Here is the machine in action! A little odd, but hey, it works!

This is how it all fits together. A couple adapters, a hose end, and the hose clamped onto it. Lovely, I know.

Here is how it fits when it's put away. A little cramped in there, but nobody really sees that unless they're really snoopy or move the dishwasher.

No more hand-washing dishes for now!

Continuation of the Longest Project EVER!!!!

Yes, our hardwood floors are still not finished. (sigh) In fact, the project has gotten bigger! We have decided to redo the carpet in half of our living room so that we can get it all done in one shot. So, there will still be carpet in the sitting room area, so it can be nice and cozy in there. But where our table is, it is going to be hardwood floors! Which, is a wonderful thing, because then, if someone spills at dinner, it won't fester in the spongy carpet. I'm so glad we're getting this done before our kiddos finally decide to come. Could you imagine all the stains that would be on the carpet? Not to mention all of the moldy, disgusting germs that would form in the carpet without us even knowing! Our table is in the living room area because the kitchen doesn't have room for a little breakfast nook, let alone a full-sized table!

Lance did most of the work pulling up the carpet. He's the strong one around here, so he gets stuck with the tough-guy jobs.



I mostly helped with cleaning up the floor when the carpet was rolled-up. The pad disintegrated under the carpet because it was so old, so I used the shop vac to get it up.



The floor in the living room is much different than the floor in the kitchen. It looked more like laminate, but laminate wasn't around in the 70's, when the carpet was put on over top of the hard floor. So, after some research, we figured out that it is engineered hard wood instead of regular hard wood. This means that it is a lot thinner, so you can't sand near as much. We're thinking that it will still hold the stain if we sand just a tiny bit to rough it up. Well, we're crossing our fingers, at least. There are also a few spots that we need to patch up in the floor, but that shouldn't be too hard.



One more parting picture! Lots of carpet makes lots of garbage! Ha ha!



Wish us luck to get this all done before fall!

Wet and Wild

Lance and I recently took a drive up the canyon to look at how the rivers are flooding. It's pretty awesome, but like he says, "it's really cool until it becomes a problem." It isn't a problem for us right now, but I know that there are people who have flooding problems with their houses and land. Here are a few pictures.

That's always a bad sign when it's on the ROAD!!!

They weren't kidding! This water is on the opposite side of the road than what the river is on!

This is a train yard. They let the river go so high that it filled the train yard!!!

Sandbags at a camp site!

I sure hope nobody lives there! Well, I guess they wouldn't any more!

Mother Nature's Artistic Touch

I just wanted to share a little bit of eye candy with you. These flowers are from my snowball tree. I love when it blossoms! I wish the blossoms would stay year round . . . but then they wouldn't be quite so special.

Magazine Holders

Hello everyone! I'm still on my constant quest to organize my house. This quest never ends because I keep finding newer, better ways to organize. That, and there's also the fact that I'm not a naturally organized person anyway, so "Project Organization" gets sabotaged quite often. I think I knew where things were much better before I was organized. But slowly I am changing. One day I'll get my act together.

Anyway, I had a new project recently. I made magazine holders. They're very similar to magazine holders you see in the stores, but a ton less expensive. I've seen them sell for like $7 a piece! Um, can you say ridiculous? One drawback I noticed with mine, though, is that they're not quite as sturdy. They like to lean if you have too many or too little magazines in them. But with the right balance, they do great. You could also stabilize them better by adding an extra box inside the first one, or by doing anything you think would help stabilize it. That's the great thing about crafts. You find what works for you!

So, I started out with cereal boxes. One of the boxes is a cake mix box, and it works really well for Reader's Digest or Prevention magazines.


Then, I tore off the box tops.


Then, I measured and cut the sides of the boxes at a diagonal so that you can see which magazines are in there. (If the box is facing you, only cut the right side or the left side. If you do both sides, it will look funny and not be very useful. But cut the front and back parts of the box. I know it sounds complicated, but the picture should help you out.)


After all of the shaping of the box was done, I hot glued fabric on the outside of the box. You could use fabric, wrapping paper, or scrapbook paper.


Here is the finished product! Super easy and super inexpensive!


If I were to do this project again, I'd probably use wrapping paper instead of fabric. The fabric was hard to keep tight. And hot glue was probably not the best idea either, for a person who burns herself at least once a month on hot things. I think I might invest in some rubber cement soon. Good luck with your crafts!