Happy, Happy Me!

I spent quite a bit of time in our office this past week doing some cleaning and organizing.  I pulled out all my cardstock and orgazined it by color.

I put all my little items into glass canisters.

I went through all the little odds n ends of fabric and wood pieces I had laying around.  I finally filed all our statements and paystubs.  I felt like it took forever to get through everything and get my desk cleaned off.

It was well worth it though because I knew this was on its way:

My husband bought me a Cricut for my birthday!

I'm so excited to start on some projects!  Luckily I don't have too much to learn to get started.  We have one at school and I just learned how to use it before the end of the year.  I could always use some tips and pointers if you have any though!

30

Today is my birthday.  My 30th.  Not sure how I feel about that yet.  Good thing I have a whole year to get used to it!

Weekend Recap

David ran his first 5K Friday evening.  Here he is before the race (in the yellow hat, standing with his brother in the gray hat.)

Start of the race:

Just about to the finish line:

Crossing the finish line (love how that stupid guy decided to step right in between David & me right as I took the picture.)

I was pretty worried about him since he only trained for 3-4 weeks before the race.  He finished with a time of 35:56. I am really proud of him!  I'm pretty sure this won't be his last 5K.  He's already been searching the internet for races near us this summer.  Maybe I'll get motivated and try it too....wouldn't hold my breath on that one though!

I bought and planted some flowers on Saturday while David was at work.  The greenhouses were packed with people.  It's been awhile since we've had nice weather so people were ready to get out I guess.  We didn't do a whole lot last night, just hung out at home.

Today we went out for lunch then went to the library for awhile.  Otherwise we've just hung out at home and relaxed.

This is my last week at school!  Our last day is Friday.  I can't believe how quickly this year went!  I'm so ready for a break though!!

Hope you all have a great week!  :o)

Beauty

Stephanie from NieNie Dialogues.....

Ingalls Field Trip

Yesterday was the 4th grade field trip to the Ingalls Homestead in DeSmet, SD.  I haven't been there since I was in either 3rd or 4th grade so it was fun to look around.  It was really windy (nothing new) and I was exhausted by the time we left.  Some of the pictures aren't great since I was trying to supervise and take pics at the same time.  We were also rushed through some places since we weren't the only school visiting.

First up was a dugout home built into a hillside.  The Ingalls didn't live in a dugout here in SD but it was built as an example of what many homesteaders lived in before they built an actual home.

The sod walls inside the dugout.  One of my kids dug a big chunk out of one of the walls before I noticed what he was doing.  Yeah, I'm a super supervisor.

Our next stop was to the hayroof barn.

They had a calf and a few chickens inside.  The kids were going crazy climbing on the hay bales so I wasn't able to get a good picture of the inside.

Ma's house and the hayroof barn were reconstruced on the original sites.  We had to do a quick run through of the house so I didn't get the best pictures.  Looking at this house, it's amazing to think that they made it through the rough SD winter.

Looking left from the front door.

Looking right from the table.

The first bedroom straight in from the front door.

Standing next to the organ looking across the room.

Standing by the rocker looking back at the organ.

Next we got to take a covered wagon ride up to the old school house.  The  kids really enjoyed this as each one got to take a turn "driving" the wagon.

Inside the one room school house.

Outhouse for student/teacher use.

They also had activities for the kids to do: corn doll making, grinding wheat into flour, hay twisting, and rope making.

It was a tiring but fun day.

Tray Transformation

A few weeks ago I was browsing though a local flower shop.  They had a lot of cute wall art and this piece in particular caught my eye.

It was ten dollars, probaby a fair price but I thought I could probably make something similar myself.

I looked around at Goodwill and some thrift stores a few times but I never did find anything that would work.  Then one day I was dusting and I noticed this tray sitting at the bottom of one of my tables.

Perfect!  I took the handles off (they were just screwed on) and spray painted it black.  I threaded some ribbon throught the holes where the handles had been and hung it up on the wall.  I still needed some magnets though so I looked through my craft stuff.  I still had a few magnets that my friend Nicolle had sent me last summer and I found a some scrabooking embellishments leftover from another project.  The embellishments had a sticky backing so just I just stuck them to the magnets.

Cost break down:
Tray - already had it - free
Spray paint - stocking stuffer at Christmas from my husband - free
Magnets - from a friend - free
Embellishments - already had them - free
Ribbon - alreay had it - free

The result of my cost free tray transformation:

(Pics ---- Top-David's maternal grandma, Right-David's mom, Left-my Grandma H.)

Not bad for about 20 minutes of my time  :o)