Dear book club girls,

I got my flower bed planted this year!

Only 2 of the 3 perennials made it through the winter (and a random patch a sage against the house and steps, but Charlie and Jack did a great job helping me pick flowers for this year.

I planted a small Hydrangea bush which is turning out to be especially high maintenance - but I love hydrangeas (they were in my wedding bouquet and I planted it for our anniversary).





The rest of the flowers are bright annuals and I'm excited for them to mature. I have a tendency to over plant so we'll see how it goes. We have dahlias, pansies, dianthus, portulaca, and lobelia.

Genius... but not mine

Another great idea from Design Mom on preserving your blog!

How? "Blurb. Blurb is a fantastic company that enables you to publish bookstore quality books in personal quantities — as in, you can publish just one copy if you please."

Since, unfortunately, this is really my only journal and scrapbook, I'll just take it to the presses... eventually.

Skiing at Sundance

Greg and I spent the day skiing at Sundance with our friends James and Jennifer. It was only my second time skiing but I'm coming right along and had a lot of fun... but I'm so sore!!!

Productivity ~ Lists

I stumbled across this cool site that talks about Getting Things Done. Here is a list of cool lists to make. I love lists.

Saving time ~ Bloglines!

You all probably already know about this site... but I finally got around to setting up my Bloglines- no more wasted time looking for new updates on all of my favorite blogs! Now my computer will tell me when I have something new to read!

What every chronic list maker needs....

A website where you can keep all your lists!!!! Gubb.net - how have I been living without such a wonderful thing.. and WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT???

The infamous BLUE dresser...

I got the idea from the kids' Pottery Barn catalog-- MONTHS AGO-- to paint this dresser dark blue for Charlie's room.

The dresser had bar-pulls on the bottom three drawers.. I just wood puttied the extra holes so that I could just use knobs instead.

Finally, it's finished. I'm very please with how it turned out. (And especially pleased to have it out of my storage closet.)

A fun project..

Have you ever distressed a picture frame? I've done in the past, but this tutorial shows you how to do it step by step... I found this link on one of my favorite blogs How about orange...

28 is gonna be a good year!

Happy Birthday to me (Saturday, August 18th)!

Just a little back blogging... I love birthdays. Anyone will do what you want and you can get nearly anything you want.. just because it's your birthday.

After a fantastic birthday breakfast (complete with 100% kitchen cleanup) we took a beautiful drive up to Park City to go to a classic car show featuring mostly mustangs but a few of my other favorite Fords as well. I've loved classic cars for as long as I can remember. Some of my best memories are riding with my Grandpa Hughes in his '55 Chevy and hanging around with him in his shop while he worked on his '57 red ford pick up truck.







Our friend TJ had his '73 Mach 1 Mustang entered in the show (the boys and Greg are pictured sitting in it above) - it took 'best in class'. Charlie loved the red Mustang, and Jack picked out the orange Ford truck - because it's orange - his favorite color. I loved the '57 ford pick up --- and it was periwinkle too!

After visiting friends in Heber, we dropped the boys off with my brothers at home and went out for sushi... could a birthday get any better??? It was a great day and it's going to be a great year.

Ski trip (I think I'm finally not sore from it!)

Yeah. So, we went skiing a week and a half ago. But as promised here is the documentation. We had such a good time laughing our heads off at each other. We took video clips.. but I'm warning you.. they are really really really choppy.

Steve's skiing attempt (he's too dang tall!) -



Steve, who seems to be naturally better at wake boarding:

Me having fun -



Me falling (Falling is my favorite part to watch so you might as well get to see my face plant too!) -

(I have more clips... Al's crashes are THE BEST! I have to upload them though and I will do it tomorrow... promise!)

I ♥ Harry!

I finally finished Harry Potter last night (at 3am)! I absolutely loved it.
I want to re-read the whole series again. I'm fascinated with how beautifully the story was weaved together.

Flowers

I think these photos taken by Allan Baillie are beautiful.

SHOES - mission accomplished.

Here is the dress that all of Katie's bridesmaids are wearing for her wedding:



I found several choices of shoes to go with it, however, I happened upon these at Target today. I was totally prepared to spend $$$ for some cute shoes.. but at $6.24-- who could resist??? That's $3.12 per shoe - they're practically disposable!




I also stopped in at Old Navy.
I got 2 of these tank dresses for $.97 each--- great swimsuit cover ups...


I bought a new bag and a straw hat. I feel like going on a cruise.

I know I'm crazy but......

I know I'm crazy but I'm just itching to clean stuff up and de-junk around here. I know it's not that bad, but I've been finding myself lately opening cupboards and drawers that make me want to scream. There's just a little too much stuff everywhere... especially as far as the boys toys go. They have some that I know they would play with more if they were a little more accessible.

So, we'll see what I do this week.

I might pick up one of my favorite clutter books at the library this week for inspiration.

It's called Clutter's Last Stand by Don Aslett. It's great. It always helps me start to notice what things are really cluttering my life.

I'm also going to go back to a website my friend, Genny, introduced me years ago. FlyLady is all about helping you take baby steps towards getting your home to be the way you want it to be.

But I only have this week to putter around. Next week is Katie's wedding week - I'm so excited! I just need to buy shoes for my dress and I'm all set. And I love buying shoes! Maybe I need 2 or 3 pairs to switch them throughout the day. I just want to make sure all my bases are covered.

Moon Lake

The first thing that Jack did when we arrived at our cabin was to grab two handfuls of dirt and rub it all over his face. Seems logical enough to me. He just wanted to remind me that we were camping and he was in no way he was going to stay clean during our trip.

We weren't there for more than 5 minutes before Charlie said, "I see a deer!" Greg and I were both like, oh, that's nice.. but then we looked and sure enough, there was a dear resting near a close by cabin. It let us walk up really close to have see it. We saw deer everywhere the rest of the weekend

Jack loved the chipmunks running around everywhere. He immediately started calling them "chicky monkeys"... he totally came up with that one on his own. Here's a little video clip of him saying it. It was so cute.

We went up with Dave and Nicole and all of their kids. Charlie had a great time playing with all of his cousins. They spent hours playing in the sand box (generally meant for tents), played lacrosse, hiked, tried catching chipmunks, and of course lots of fishing.

The fishing was the best ever. We've always loved it because it's so easy to catch the feisty little brookies. This year we just plunked power bait. We had a fish on nearly every cast. And they were all great sized trout. Jack was fascinated with watching them when we got them in the boat. Charlie became quite the little fisherman. Just in our boat we caught 40 fish on Friday and Saturday. Dave always had several more poles in the water.. he could have easily doubled that.