This is where the magic happens...

or something equally awkward like that...

After five years of hand-me-down furniture (that I hated), mismatched bedding, and no decor of which to speak, Cole and I decided to make redoing our master bedroom a priory. My hope is to finish it before the weather gets nice so then we can focus our attention outside.

This weekend we were able to get the walls, ceiling and baseboards painted. In the first picture, the walls look purple, but are really Granite Gray. We also assembled the beautiful new bed that has been sitting in our garage for two weeks. The boys were good sports for my picture taking craziness.



I also started sanding my oh-so-lovely new-to-me ksl dresser. While still a hand-me-down of sorts, I am loving this and pretty sure it is going to end up an amazingly cheerful yellow!


With a lightfixture, bedding, art, and accessories to go...I'm so excited!

Adventures in the life...

My sister, Nicole, was on Spring Break for work so we got to tag along on a few adventures with her and Nixsen this week. On Monday, we took the kids to the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum. Need I say more? Crew loved it. He spent two perfectly content hours splashing in water, gardening, coming down the slide and building with giant blocks.

His eyes were as big as doughnut holes as he watched all the older kids run around. For a kid who is most speedy as a crawler, he was much more interested in me helping him walk from display to display. I think he definitely felt some peer pressure to be walking.

Cousin Nixsen felt like a pro at the museum and did such a good job of showing Crew just how everything worked!

And....totally unrelated to the information above, I got tired of our usual lunch fare this week and decided to feed Crew some pasta and marinara sauce. About two bites in, I realized what a messy lunch this would be. Yes, I had to mop and wipe everything within four square feet of his plate....but look at that smile! He was sick of my sandwiches, too.

Glamorous Yard Work

In addition to enjoying General Conference, we were able to steal a few hours in between sessions to try and keep momentum in the yard.

Earlier in the week, we had a visit from the aeration men.

I seriously hate all the turd looking clumps but Cole has me convinced it was a necessary step towards the luscious yard I so desire. I thought I could avoid it by saying it was too expensive, but it turns out that it's really cheap. Dirt cheap, even. :)

All the dirt clumps did result in some entertaining footage of the lil guy. Not sure how much dirt he ate before we noticed but the evidence is all over his face. The joys of parenting a little boy.

Untitled from Maura Lansford on Vimeo.

In our quest for the perfect-for-us yard, we are currently doing a lot of removing. It's free and getting rid of ugly is the first step towards making it beautiful! We're trying to brainstorm uses for 60 perfectly good (but ugly) cement cylinders.... Ideas?

Weekend Fun

After the busy-week-that-would-not-end, we were able to enjoy a work-free weekend together! Hurray! I know that everyone is busy so I don't want to complain (too much), but man, I love when the weekend comes and Cole and I can spend some time together. Even if we are just doing amazingly exciting things like...measuring the yard for a sprinkler system. :)

The yard was originally outfitted with a system of yore, but years of renters ignoring the yard made its fair share of broken, overgrowth-covered sprinkler heads and just plain sketchy plumbing.

Luckily, Cole has family in the plumbing supply biz, so we'll have some much needed guidance going into this project. On Saturday we took the first step - Drawing out the yard to scale so that the plumbing supply store can let us know exactly what we need. An hour or two in the yard reminded us just how much work needs to be done. Unless we want Crew to disappear into the hole from the old For Sale sign, we better get to planning!

We are also enjoying the fruits of our first-ever Bountiful Basket. The downtown pickup time of 7 a.m. was killer but then again, so was the produce. I can't wait to enjoy this food all week long...I'm seeing some spinach n' cheese raviolis, zucchini bread and general yumminess in our future and loving it!

Thanks to the generosity of my sister-in-law, the Jazz's less-than-amazing season and my hubby's low ball offer on Jazz Flash Seats, we enjoyed watching a baby-free Mavericks victory in style. It's amazing how much the game experience improves when you don't need binoculars to see.

As always, Cole managed to make friends with the wide arrange of characters who were sitting around us. I had trouble restraining myself from snapping pics, but lets just say the Jazz fans ranged from apostle-looking types to men with fewer teeth than my one year old. :) Such a fun date.

Our Hungry Caterpillar: Crew's First Birthday

To help distract me from the fact that my BABY is now a year old, I decided to focus my energy on planning a fun celebration with family and friends. Since Crew is too young to know or care about the party, I picked one of my favorite books to read with him, thus a "Very Hungry Caterpillar" theme. In my defense, Crew loves turning the different sized fruit pages.

We were lucky enough to be joined by lots of our family and friends. Thanks to everyone who made the time to celebrate with us.

(Especially the ones who drove all the way from California!)

We started out with a light picnic style dinner, complete with some of our favorite summer foods. Oh how excited I am for good produce again!


Once we were sufficiently full, we moved to the main event of the evening...the cakes...




Truth be told, this was Crew's second crack at smashing a cake. During his one year photos he had very little interest in anything other than the candle, so I was interested to see how round 2 would go....

Yeah. He figured it out just fine. Go figure.

Our lil guy is definitely a "share-er." We found that he likes to feed others as much as he enjoys eating himself.



The high chair ended up being a great place to snag a few pics with our guests.

Granjan and Granrand

The Lansford siblings

More of our favorite ladies

Some how we missed pictures of the Jones, Richins and our neighbor guests. Sorry guys!

After the food, we had fun opening Crew's gifts for him. He was a little tired at this point.

Maybe me too, a little. It's like I had never seen a Very Hungry Caterpillar-themed jack-in-the- box before...

Literally trapped by all the fun loot!

When it came time to say good night to our guests, we sent them on their way with their own customized snack mix. Just in case they were "...still hungry."

And because I had a little too much fun planning all the details...

Homemade Birthday Sign

Centerpiece

The candies are fruit-shaped runts

One year album and first finger painting project

Love my mini baskets.

And a very special thank you to Katie who designed the invites, waterbottle wraps, cupcake toppers, food labels and goody bag stickers. What a special touch!

Happy Birthday Crew. We love you!