Hanson Crew

So I shared the other day that I recovered my kitchen chairs with some clearance fabric from Wal -mart for $3.19. I was so excited to finally cover them with something that matches the new paint and new picture I have above the table before we go on the market. Well, this week while we were out bargain shopping I couldn't believe my eyes. I found a curtain made of the same exact material for only $1.00. I wasn't sure if it would fit my kitchen window, but I bought it anyway with the thought of using the material to make something else with it (place mats possibly like Alicia suggested). Well, when I got home, it fit perfectly on my window! I was so excited because the entire new look (chairs and window) only cost my $4.19!!! What do you think? I think I am still going to try to make some place mats out of a different material soon. Unless I find some for a great deal this weekend at another neighborhood garage sale I am going to on Friday. I am really loving these barga...

We went to one of our favorite thrift stores yesterday in Kearney and found a fun post-shopping activity! They usually have a "Free" box outside the store and Ashlyn is the one who usually benefits from the box. She has gotten some dollhouse furniture, clothes, hats, and some books from there. But yesterday they had a bunch of holiday stuff. The boys and I grabbed 2 of these little kits, one snowman and one Christmas tree activity. They had a blast making the snowmen and of course eating them after! Thanks so much Trash and Treasure for the fun find!

I am easily frazzled. Or I should say my OCD tendencies keep me on a tight leash most days. So when something seems simple to fix and I can't figure it out it really stresses me out. I spend hours researching how to fix it and usually can't sleep until I convince my hubby to fix it or replace it (depending on what it is that is broken). I am that weird person who will drive in a tornado storm to return a movie to avoid a late fee - I think I was born this way? Long story short, our answering machine somehow got changed to pick up on the 3rd ring. So that meant I had two full rings to get to it or my entire conversation would be recorded in the other room. My kids even picked up on that one and would occasionally go into our bedroom to hear just who it was I was talking to (or what we were talking about). We are still living in the 80s in our kitchen and do not have a cordless phone there. So I am typically cleaning or cooking near that phone when it rings. If I happen to be dow...

The guys did an awesome job yesterday on our house. We almost got the entire front painted in about 6 hours. We have another friend who will come sometime next week or the week after to help John finish the other 3 sides and the top of the front. He's a professional and can probably do all three sides in less than the 6 hours! We are excited! And I really like the colors. I am still trying to decide what color to do the door. I am thinking a dark brown instead of the burgundy I have now. What do you guys think? The railing will be the olive green trim color, I just couldn't get it done before the severe weather started last night. Here is the house so far and a picture of the house before any work was done :)

I went ahead and recovered my kitchen chairs again this weekend to match the "new" kitchen theme we are going for now. We went from black, red and white fabric to a really nice California wine fabric that matches our big painting above the table. The best news, I got the fabric on clearance at Wal -mart for $1.50 a yard so the whole project cost me $3.19....I am looking for some new place mats for the table next. I didn't have any luck at the 3 huge neighborhood garage sales I went to this weekend. I'm going to try Pier One's clearance next, so I'll keep ya posted....here are the before and afters of the chairs. Now if only I can keep these ones nice and pretty through the summer as we are showing the house.

So today was a hard school day for Joshua. We are prepping him a little for his Kindergarten assessment next week at FCA. So our experience in left-handed handwriting has not gotten off to a great start. There was a lot of crying, whining, and alot of really BIG letters. We are hoping he can write his full name by next week with the correct spelling and size (big J and H, lower case everything else). He has been writing all year at pre-school and seemed to be doing great, until we actually started sitting down and working on it together. I'm not sure if my standards are higher than his teacher or not, but I am clearly not a lefty!! So my conclusion after working with my first boy and one who I believe is pretty bright academically, Poor Jonathan! We really should have named him COLE or JOHN or BOB!!! Maybe we should go back blogging about nicknames for that child! Joshua is already considering JOSH now that handwriting took us an hour today!!!

For Ashlyn - 10 days! For Joshua - 12 days! We just love the MWF schedule both of our kids have for school!

So we made it home today from Omaha - John was there for business and I tried out a mini-vacation as a single mom! All in all, it went very good! We got about 100 pics to share so I will probably make a small slide show this week sometime. I had to share 2 pictures tonight though that really captured the entire 4 day trip. The kids and I had a lot of fun together and on a really good budget. Some highlights included tons of hotel swimming, an early morning walk together at a near by river walk, the Omaha zoo, visits with a few family members and friends, an awesome spaghetti restaurant and a horse drawn carriage ride around downtown Omaha. Oh, and we WALKED ACROSS the MO river in between some cable TV shows we don't normally get to watch! It was very memorable. We were able to get some pretty cool balloon hats at the restaurant on Sat and then wore them on our carriage ride. The kids thought they were in a parade! People were waving and yelling out "cool hats" to them lik...

I can't believe that I have officially started to LOVE reading! I am reading the Redemption Series by Karen Kingsbury and am already on the last book of the series (book 5). I started about 2 weeks ago and each book is a little over 500 pages! It is so addicting and it's taking up most of my sleep time...I am excited about the car ride now tomorrow for our trip to Omaha :) This compulsive backseat driver is totally not driving! Not when I can get a couple hundred pages in! Sorry for the lack of posts lately - not much to talk about. We are packing for a mini-vacation this weekend (Thurs - Sun) for John's annual Maids franchise meeting. While he is soaking up some interesting new marketing strategies, the kids and I are going to enjoy the 4 star hotel swimming pool and Omaha Zoo. We'll also get to enjoy having cable TV and fast food for the whole trip :) I'll try to take some pics and share then when we get back. Oh, we are also planning to paint again next...

The kids and I made Lily centerpieces this year for our Easter Dinner. We got the idea from Joshua's preschool. The Lily is the child's hand with a pipe cleaner inside (the fingers are curled back so the flower opens a little more). We bought some big green straws from a Kearney coffee shop and taped on some leaves. Ashlyn, Joshua, and Caleb made their own bouquets and Jonathan stuck one of his flowers in each vase. We are going to leave them out for another week since they turned out so cute...

We got to spend the morning on Thursday with some friends that are visiting from South Carolina and good friends from church at Fun Run. Joshua and Chancellor were baby friends before they moved. We finally got to meet their adorable little girl from Guatemala, Mikinley. They are now expecting a 3rd child, a little girl! Here are some fun pics from that day... The crew (minus John) all going down the Lightening McQueen slide together Little Landon at his first "play day" all wide awake. His mom let me hold him quite a bit :) His mom Lisa enjoying our "baby"-that slide sure was fast and a lot of fun for everyone! Eli, Joshua, and Ashlyn posing outside of a fun obstacle course Jonathan and Isaac playing in the house outside of the vending area Sweet Mikinley who was just as adorable in person as on her mom's blog Good friends, Chance and Josh shopping in the store (hard to believe last time they saw each other they were in diapers I think)

Meet our new visitor, a gorgeous red cardinal that has not left our yard for a couple weeks. He wakes us up every morning with his adorable little chirp and is such a beauty to see in our empty tree as it begins to bloom. The bad news - he isn't very smart! He spends his afternoon charging at our windows, primarily the new office window and the skinny windows around our front door. Sometimes its kinda funny. He does is over and over and over and then flies back to the tree. Others times, it scares us. We'll be watching a movie or eating in the kitchen and we hear a loud bang. Then another. Then we remember it is our new funny friend. John told me last night that he think he might be seeing his reflection in the glass and thinks it is another cardinal. He said they are very territorial. I think he just realizes that MO weather these days is very confusing and its time for some indoor heat! There he goes again....

So our crew got to watch this one yesterday and it was pretty cute...Disney is actually making some pretty good flicks again! We recommend this one to our friends and family...

The boys are getting used to talking on the web camera a little with Papa Phil so we tried making a little blog video. That way all those who don't see us much can see the boys "in person." Caleb speech is getting so much better and you can hear him talk on the video, although he was kinda put on the spot and didn't know what to say...can you understand him? Jonathan gave it a shot too, although you can really only hear "bye-bye". He wanted his balloon the whole time that was by the computer. Have a great weekend!

So we cancelled our big "party" again this weekend and hope to paint at the end of April or beginning of May! We might not actually be on the market until school gets out which was a small praise for me. The bad news is that we only want to try and sell through the summer so now it might only be on for about 3 or 4 months...in this market it should be interesting to find out if we actually get to move. If we stay, I already have some fun new projects planned...more to come about those later... We are excited that HSM 3 finally became available at the Redbox this week for $6 so we own it now. I'm telling ya, we just love this invention...renting movies for $1 and then owning them for $6....the only better thing is getting the movie rental for free on Mondays or with a large soda pop from McDs. Very exciting! Now on to school work again...

One of my favorite thrift stores here in Kearney is having an incredible sale April 1-4. All of their clothes are just .50 no matter what the cost was before the sale. They are trying to get rid of my of their clothes inventory to make room for more and we found some great deals!! Gap, Old Navy, Ambercrombie, and Children's Place....plus some cute jackets for Ashlyn and I. If any of our KC friends are bored tomorrow, come check out "Just a Second Thrift" next to Dollar General (you could walk to our house from there!) Most sales like these will be picked over by tomorrow night...so hurry up for some great bargains!