My new fancy dress

I have been wanting to make this dress ever since I picked up the polka dot fabric for super cheap. I made it for a fancy edge night event thing, which we didn't end up getting to because Wes was half dead, but I'm so glad I finished it because I love it :). I made the back out of a jersey so I didn't even have to put in a zipper or back darts in it like a cheater. Such a fun project!

I used a tutorial but had to do some things different and totally drafted he pattern by myself, so I have to say I'm pretty excited with how it turned out! Plus it have me an excuse to buy some sweet high heels :). 

Bathroom Remodel

 So back in March we did our first full-blown home improvement project- our master bath! It was so much fun and it turned out pretty good I think! I know its been awhile, but I neglected to take after pics until I had it completely finished...which wasn't till yesterday because I had to cut this little booger down. It only took all of Lyla's first nap of the day. Haha, I'm not super handy but I get things done one way or another :).

I promise the cut is straight! haha it's just the outlet was installed crooked....I think lol

It was our very first project as homeowners, so I probably took too many pics but oh well :) Some of our awesome friends in the ward let us use a bunch of their tiling tools and we painted fixtures instead of buying new ones so we were able to keep a pretty good budget. I love working with Wes even and even our cute little kids. Can't wait to do more now!

Here are some before shots:

I forgot to take before pictures until after we had started taking down the light fixture to paint it...

Carpet under the sinks...delicious

There was tile in the toilet area...but not my favorite

First order of business was painting over the boring tan. I picked out a nice toothpaste green color which I love...I think Wes likes it too haha. We painted the weekend Wes's parents came out so they could "watch the kids." As you can see, kids weren't the only thing they were helping with :).

Besides the carpet under the sinks, one of our biggest motivators to re-do the bathroom was the wall above the shower. Since we moved in I constantly scrubbed it, but the mildew stains kept coming back. A little stain blocker, new paint, and oh a much needed new window make it look SO much better!

After painting the walls, we stained the cabinets, added hardware, tiled the floor, painted some fixtures, framed out the mirror, and got some new bath mats and shower curtain. Here are some pics during the fun.

Such a good little helper :). He was SO excited to use the loud sander.

Yeah we totally stained all the cabinets on our carpet in the bathroom so we would be forced to quickly tile :)

Wes's perfect toilet hole haha. This is our first home improvement project as homeowners...we're proud of the little things

It was my first time ever tiling. I mortared and laid the tile while Wes cut and measured all of them. I wasn't bad, but Wes was mad because he said he couldn't get a picture of me working since every time he tried I had a nice plumbers crack.  I get that from my Dad :).

I absolutely LOVE the way everything came out! I cannot believe how much bigger the space feels and I love that its more defined as our bathroom space.  Now we are about to re-do our entire main level flooring...woohoo for home improvement projects! :)

We framed out the mirror with some trim thanks to my handy husbands skills (and his skil saw bahaha)

I love our 12X24 tiles :) They make me happy

We stained the cabinets with the General Finishes Gel stain and it actually turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it was going to. And I love the way it looks. Much better than builder grade oak!

It's a lot of the little things that I like most about the bathroom...

This little mirror frame was an ugly hospital sterile yellow color. We painted it to match our new frame around the big mirror.

The toilet paper holder we had before was broken and one sided so the toilet paper fell of EVERY TIME I went to use it. So nice to have a working one haha. That boob light used to be gold, the shower curtain rod was white and the track lights were a horrible dirty ugly cheap chrome color, all fixed with a little magic brushed nickel spray paint :)

We seriously had very little storage in our bathroom so we installed these tip-out drawers onto what were just false front drawers. I cannot say how much I LOVE this addition!

Here are some side by sides because, well, I just can't get over the difference. We thoroughly enjoy our new bathroom.

Let the Savings begin

Is anyone else like so stinkin excited? Disney projects are so much stinkin fun :)

Some Haps

So Mom and Dad got to come hang out with us on conference weekend and it was so much fun! Mckay of course got to catch a fish with Dad and I think it made his life :).

Practicing his skills...with no pants. It was so funny, every time he went to release the line, he had to shake his butt to get the bobber to come down haha. Lyla also liked it because she would chase the little bobber around until he reeled it back up.

Real men fish without holding the pole to make room in their hands for bit o honey's haha.

She doesn't cuddle...it's not fair :) Papa's got the magic touch

She wasn't super fond of how the boa felt on her skin haha

We're not public health workers...just doin our part to get the word out lol...I thought this was a pretty spot for a picture but none of us realized the banner was in the background

It had been pretty warm the week up until the day Mom and Dad got here...then it snowed like 4 inches :)

Mckay and Papa got to go to the zoo together while the girls went shopping! It was cold, but Mckay couldn't stop talking about how much fun he had

Apparently camels pee funny...that's what Mckay learned with Papa at the zoo haha

Also, Wes and I got to go on a real live date the other night! I have been watching a girl in my ward's kids a couple of times, and so she owed me one on the babysitting front. Captain America was AWESOME and it was so nice to get to spend some alone time with the hubby before his life gets all summer crazy!

And here are some new tricks of Lyla's that she's been showing off. I just cannot believe how big this girl is getting!!

She has got the bye bye wave down, but we have a hard time getting it on video :).

She likes her walking toys a little too much...

Yay! And then here's one of Mckay's special trick. Haha. I was doing cartwheels and stuff and every time he told me he was going to do a cool trick...this was what he did literally 30 times in a row. I think he got dizzy after awhile haha.

Clementine Poppy Seed Muffins

don't mind my terrible picture taking abilities lol

So when my in-laws were here last weekend, they bought us a large Costco-sized bag of clementines.  While I love clementines, there are quite a lot and they weren't all that sweet, but they were juicy and pretty good. I wanted to make some type of baked good, and I came across a clementine poppy seed muffin recipe. Sounded delicious, but had terrible reviews, so I sort of combined it with a lemon poppy seed muffin recipe and omitted some spices I don't like and this is what I came up with. The muffins were moist and delicious and I will be making more today to freeze a bunch :). Anyways, here's the recipe I ended up with:

Clementine Poppyseed Muffins:

1/2 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup plain yogurt
3 clementines
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 heaping Tbsp poppy seeds

Preheat oven to 350º.

First mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and poppy seeds in a bowl. Zest 2 of the clementines and add the zest into the flour mixture.  Now you get to decide how to use the rest of your clementine in the muffins.  I peeled and diced mine into small chunks and added them to the dry ingredients, but make sure you cut them somewhere you can reserve the juice that escapes while dicing (I used my cutting board that has a groove on the outer edge), you will want that juice for the wet ingredients. If you don't want chunks in your muffins you can skip the dicing and just juice them for the wet ingredients. I liked the chunks okay, but because some of the clementines were a little bitter, it made for some not so great bites of muffin here and there. When I make them today I'm going to skip the chunks and just add the juice. But the chunks would be nice if the clementines were sweet.

I just used my mixer with the whisk for this... Cream butter and sugar together for about 2 minutes until light and fluffy. Add in eggs and yogurt until combined. Either juice your clementines at this point and add the juice, or add the reserved juice from when you diced the clementines.

Add the dry ingredients to the mixer, and stir just until combined. Scoop the batter into greased muffin tins, filling them 3/4 of the way. Bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned.  Dump out on a wire rack immediately to cool. I made about 15 muffins with one batch.  I'll let you know how the ones I make today turn out ;).


Update: Okay so the muffins i made today with just the juice were AWESOME. it also added to the awesomeness that i made a little glaze with the juice of one clementine whisked with about 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and poured it on top of the muffins. mmmmm...

Lately...

So it's been quite sometime since I posted anything, and I wanted to let you all know that we are alive :).  We had a great Christmas and New Years! (though we did miss out on all the fun you guys had in Utah...)  Wes and I actually stayed up till midnight on New Year's Eve, and then got up at 6 with the kids the next morning- yup, I don't miss staying up late at all haha! For New Year's Day we took both the kids and saw Frozen which we all LOVED.  Mckay and Lyla were both soo good throughout the entire movie; I just cannot believe how grown up both of them are.  We then set a record for movies seen at the movie theater in one year because Wes and I got to go see Catching Fire for our anniversary and it was AWESOME!

Anyways, here are some of the other things we've been up to of late...

My little stud the first day of sunbeams. I cannot believe he's old enough to be a sunbeam already! He also told me he was going to grow up to be a princess after class. There are 7 girls in his class and then him...he got confused lol 

Mckay started swim lessons in December and he will resume them in february. Despite his face in this picture, he absolutely LOVES swimming and is doing super well! He'll swim by himself the 3 feet to the edge of the pool when his teacher asks him too :) We are blessed to have our community rec center so close by.  Their classes are so cheap!

Mom requested some Christmas pictures...we didn't take very many. Sorry mom :)

So I've never really had someplace to hang up clothes I didn't want to dry besides my door frames (sooo annoying), so when we found this adjustable flag pole holder at Home Depot for $6 I was pretty excited :). We just stuck a wooden dowel in it, mounted it opposite my washer and dryer, and...

voila! A disappearing drying rack haha. I am pretty excited about this dumb thing, I won't lie.

My new throw pillows made from cutting a king pillow in half...get on yours Marie!

I've been wanting to do this ever since I saw it on pinterest. Snow painting with hot water mixed with food coloring. We had a lot of fun playing in the snow.  We haven't had too much of it yet this winter :)