Face Lift

The Spring house improvements are still in progress....and will be for awhile. We decided since Kevin doesn't want a screen-door, which i would love to have, we would paint the front door. We knew we wanted it to compliment the house (i use to want a red door, and that was OUT of the question in Kevin's mind). So we picked out loads of samples of brown paint. We stuck them all on the door and started eliminating them pretty quickly.

So without further ado.
Here is yesterday's adventure...

*Before shot of front door
actually from last summer - first one i could find.

*sheet hanging in door to block out critters
outside view

*Inside view

*Kev "de-gooping" around the window
there was the sticky seal stuff that stuck outside the frame of the window

*Kev posing nicely for me during the
"de-gooping" phase

*First Paint!

*painting in progress
see that nice tape job?! that was all me!

*close up of my tape job
Ya, i'm that good! ;)

** FINISHED DOOR!!! **

We love it!
So now we are the little Brown house with the Brown Door.
Does it scream, "The Brown's live here?!" :)

*my friend Sarah B told me that her neighbor painted her door 5 times because every-time she pulled up to the house the lighting was different and the color was off and she didn't like it.

I think we got it RIGHT the first time!

future beautiful

So this morning we got to start our day out at the Twin Falls LDS Temple. We were asked to help to some yard work. It was fun. Then we went and found Kevin a shirt for Brown Family pics that are happening at the end of this month. YAY! Then we were off to Buhl/Filer to go find us some fruit trees. (Thanks Philip for letting us borrow your truck while you are out of town!)

We got two apple (Gala & Jonathon) and one Mormon Apriot. We are super excited. They are beautiful trees! Not those scrawny types you get at some stores. We had previously purchased a few fruit plants...blueberry, raspberry and blackberry. I'll have to get pics of those tomorrow.

Then it was home to do our own yard work.

As we talked to the guy, Gene, who's company that will be doing our sprinklers in a few weeks he gave us some good ideas to help with our yard. So i spent the afternoon (2:30-5:15) doing this...

The future home of hopefully a beautiful flower bed.
We are extended what we already had.

Yardwork Mayhem...

So we are going to be putting in sprinklers and grass seed this year. YAY! We are SO excited. I wish we could do a fence as well, but that will have to wait. So last summer we convinced my parents everyday of their trip up here to spend every morning helping us weed our back yard. We got it done. THANK YOU PARENTS!! Well we kept on it and had it nice and cleaned out for Winter to lay down all it's snow and cover it up till Spring. Well the snow this year never came. But the weeds sure did. Dang them! So Kevin & I were attempting to re-weed the yard to get it ready for the Sprinkler guys to come. Well by hand was taking WAY too long and you felt like you got nothing done.

So then it was...JAMES BOND to the rescue!!!!
(seriously our friend is named James Bond. Super nice Family)

He let us borrow his (his parents) Tiller.
That was was a LIFE SAVER!!

So...here is Our Day's work in photos....

STARTING OUT...

LUNCHTIME BREAK....

FINISHED!
(well Tilling...we need to still rake)

Thanks again Bond's for letting us use the Tiller!

We sure are feeling the physical exhaustion & pain from all that work.
Not to mention the Sun exhaustion!
But it will be totally worth it!

too cool

I couldn't find my usual sunglasses this morning so i pulled these BEAUTIES out of the back of my drawer. Takes me back to the early/mid 90s.

Don't i look SO cool?!?!

newest nephew

Straight from Heaven this morning.

Our newest nephew...

Emmitt Arnold Brown

I think he might be a good mix of his brothers. Mostly like Karter, but the dark hair (under the hat) like Karson did when he was born. He is precious.

Congrats Jeff & Barbara

beautiful color

Kevin's Ankle.

Isn't that color Beautiful?!

I think it's time to retire from Basketball!

yummy in our grass

Apparently there was something yummy in our grass
at lunch time yesterday.

craftiness continues...

I think having crafty friends makes me want to be crafty.

My friend Emily helped me make a car seat cover for my SIL Shauna for my nephew Thomas. Well i've kept that knowledge somewhere in the back of my mind and have brought it forth to make one for my SIL Barbara for my newest nephew (to be born April 13th).

I am SO proud of myself because i did it all by myself! I am not a sewer at all and i was petrified to do Shauna's and had Emily do the majority of it. So this time doing it all on my own is quite the accomplishment.

so here you go....

I love how it turned out.
Kevin said if Barbara doesn't like it we'll keep it. ;)

more creativity this weekend

Apparently my creativity knew no bounds this weekend. LOL.

So a few weeks ago i found this awesome (so i think) watch.
I knew that i wanted one.

So my friend Sarah B. and i have been talking about it and there is a girl she goes to church with that makes them. Sarah was thinking we could also some how make the watch bands interchangeable. So i was super jazzed about it. So jazzed about it that I've been doing ALOT of internet researching to find things possibly cheaper on line. Then i showed the pic to my friend Laruen and she's like..."we can easily do that and make it interchangeable."

So off to Micheal's Craft store we went.

So....here is my newest watch i made this weekend.
LOVE IT!!!!

It's alot more difficult to photo graph your own arm
with a big massive camera then i thought it should be.
oh well. you get the point.
i love it.

I threw a party!

I am not one to throw parties...
but i really wanted to make these so i took it upon myself and did it!
It was a success! I think people had a really good time.

These are mine i made last night.
Thanks ladies for coming and crafting with me!
If anyone wants to book a party HERE is how to contact Ashley.
I'd totally come to your party!

not dead yet

My MIL gave me a little start off her African Violet plant. It wasn't thriving at home since it doesn't get alot of light so i brought it to my office. I think it likes it here.

A pic that Jackie took

I was painting one day and Jackie took this pic. So I high-jacked her blog and posted it here. Kevin

Phone Photos

Kevin downloaded some photos off my phone.

Karson with Santa at our Ward Christmas party 09.
We were watching the boys for J&B since they were at a work party.
Karson was very curious and weary of Santa.
Kevin got him to sit with him.

Kevin cleaning our ward bldg last summer.
Thought that vacuum was awesome.
Tho apparently very warm!

Karter & Karson with the snowman in Jan 2010.
It was more of an ICEman by then.
They tried to put the carrot back in for the nose.
He fell over...

Kevin trying to 'fix' the Iceman.
It didn't work.

but according to Karson..."have mommy fix it, she can do it."
Barbara must be super woman.

Videos

So this past Sunday we went out to visit Kevin's parents. Keith & Tisa brought over snowboarding on the Wii. I've never snowboarded so it was interesting figuring it out on the Wii Fit board. But anyway...My in-laws square dance and my MIL does the whole puffy skirt thing. Well i found one in the other room and put it on. They dared me to be wear it while snowboarding and said if i do better then them they have to where it on their next turn. I'm glad Kevin remembered we can record on our phones.

Jackie

Keith


Kevin

New Art

Thanks to my nephew Sam i have some beautiful new artwork in my office.

THANKS SAMMY!!
I love it!

mice update

We haven't found ANY more mice (or poop) in the garage since we killed those two. So hopefully that's all there was. We also blocked the entrance to the garage we believe the mice were using. So hopefully that's the end of them for a LONG TIME!

houses updates

So we went to the locate callege here (CSI - College of Southern Idaho) for a Home and Garden Show. I was reminiscing that if my parents had dragged me to this i would have been complaining the whole time. And here i was some 20 years later and SO excited to go and see what they had to offer. We signed up for some free quotes on sprinklers and rain gutters and asked alot about sheds, since we want to continue to park in the garage and slowly the lawn/yard care items are taking over. They also have some other venders for things, such as scentsy items, hand made crafts etc... One of our favorites was one called "Bistro Blends". More on that in a moment.

Yesterday i got the call from the rain gutter guy saying he happened to be in town and asked if we could meet. i said yes i can be there in 10 mins. So i hurried home to meet him. I got my boots on cause it's all mud and melting snow in the back yard and so he was telling me what he could do to fix our "lack of rain gutter" problem and he noticed a few things we hadn't seen since we haven't been out back much...seeing how it's winter! Our "addition" on the porch that builder put in cause they screwed up the original porch is "settling" so it's slanting ever so slightly. Also a BIG piece of siding had "popped out". WHAT THE CRAP?! So as soon as Kirby gave me the quote i ran inside to find our builders # to get ahold of the siding guy. They "sent him a message". So pretty much if i don't hear from him my noon today I'm calling his butt every 30 mins. :) Cause I'm mean like that.

Also we've had the JOY of dealing with MICE in the garage. Thankfully not in the house. yuck! But last night we found how the mice were getting in, so we are fixing that tonight/tomorrow since it's pay day today! WOOT WOOT! I really hate getting paid just once a month.

So back to the BISTRO BLENDS (click their name for their website). They totally sucked us into their booth. We were going to stop anyway, we love tasting things. But i bet we ate half a loaf of bread between the two of us just tasting all there was. Of course we bought some cause we are suckers like that. But it's TOTALLY worth it. YUMMY!! We bought a little 4 pack of Vinaigrette/Marinade/Bread Dip (2-Basil Garlic Parmesan, 1-Thai Sesame Ginger & 1-Rosemary Roasted Garlic Cabernet) and one bottle of Barbecue/Grill sauce (1-Honey Ginger Teriyaki). I can't wait to use them! I think we might have found some Christmas Presents for this year. :)

photo booth

Thought this was pretty funny.
So i thought share.
Nothing too exciting with us right now.
Sorry no updates lately.

shout out

So i have found a new store that i LOVE.

I just need to practice at becoming 'more crafty'.

I have a lot of friends that can show me the way.

I took Lauren with me to check it out (again) today.
Sorry James. ;)

Whenever you want to come visit me I'll take you out there.

There is ALOT of cute cute cute material & patterns there!

THE QUILT BARN

doctor update

went to see Dr. Aaron Brown yesterday. I really like him & not just because of his last name. He checked out my knee; had me go get an X-ray make sure there wasn't a little bone that got fractured off causing the 'catching' feeling i have in my knee.

X-ray showed a Normal knee.

So we are currently running with the it's strained idea. If it's not better in a few weeks then we will do an MRI. I hoping we don't have to go that far. He gave me a brace and some exercises to do. the brace did help yesterday with the few errands we did. He did give me some strong pain meds for when i sleep and they totally knocked me out last night. I slept like 12 hrs. which was lovely. Feels pretty good this morning...tho i haven't really been up and about much seeing how i just got up about 15 mins ago. :)

finally home...

We got home last night about 1130pm-ish.

It's so LOVELY to be home.

Now off to the doctors in a few hours to get my knee looked at.
(i hurt it at the vball tourny on Saturday)

busy week

this week is turning into a very busy week/end.

Sick Monday
Got the muffler fixed on the car Tuesday
Wednesday work lunch - that's just enjoyable
Thursday bake cupcakes for a funeral luncheon (for Friday)
Friday have hair appt & last rec league vball game
Saturday all day vball tournament at CSI
Sunday nephews baby blessing in Utah
Monday morning 4am leave for Boise airport for work trip in CA (central).

Trip to the big city...

...of BOISE!

A few plans got canceled yesterday morning and so we decided to get out of town and head to Boise. It was SO nice to get out of town for a few hours. We enjoyed it.

First stop was the Nike outlet store
to see if they had some shoes for Kevin...

& we found some...YAY!
(Hard to find good fitting 14's that Kevin actually likes the look of them)

Then we went to the mall and looked around, then went at got some
dinner at one of my FAVORITE places....

Then walked around the store Cost Plus World Market.
Forgot about some of the cool stuff they have there.

Then I wanted to hit the Kitchen Store in the Boise outlets.
I LOVE kitchen gadgets!
And we found two little gems we walked out with...

Hand held cheese grater
(Kevin been really big into the 'real' Parmesan cheese)

And an apple core-er, slicer, peeler thing!


I'm very excited for this!!
Kevin's mom has one & it's wicked awesome!

puzzle

For three weeks a puzzle has been on our dining room table. We've had the puzzle for a few years and have never done it, so Kevin decided to finally break it out. It was pretty dang hard, but we are glad to say we finally finished it tonight. YAY!!!

Surprise in the mail...

HOW COOL ARE THESE?!

THANKS Eric, Ro & Boys!!!