A Craft Filled Weekend

This weekend I got to go down to St. George with some friends for a Stampin' Up get together.  It was so fun to get so many new ideas for the holidays and find out more ways to use the things I already have.  We got to do 20 make-n-take items!  There were some great tutorials!  I learned a lot and had fun.  Then we stopped at Rocky Mountain Chocolates for one of their amazing gourmet caramel apple treats!  Yummo! (It's become a tradition to get one for the way home.)

I actually won $25 in free product for my "SPOOKY" sign in the "wow" category!

Here are a few of my favorite items!

We have to make this witch hat treat box for club next month!

It's a little pocket inside for a gift card holder! Cute!

There were some great fall projects too!

Labor Day Project

What did we do over labor day weekend?  Did we rest from our labors?  No way!  We took on a laborious project.  Dustin was hesitant but he knew we needed to get it done.  We refinished our garage floor.  It actually took more like a full week than a weekend.  First we had to clean it out completely...no easy task.  Wish I have gotten before pictures.  There was still a lot of junk left over from when Mark owned the house that Dustin had wanted to go through and not hastily throw everything away.  So we cleared everything out and filled garbage cans.  The floor was so bad from years of being painted and repainted.  Every winter tons more paint would peel up and get tracked in the house.  It was such a mess.  There were 3 different colors of paint.  So we pressure washed it to peel up all the paint we could.  There were paint flakes everywhere!  Then we sanded what was left of the last layer and prepped it best we could.  Then we had to do an etcher wash on it and finally on Tuesday night we were able to paint it with an epoxy...which will do much better than paint.

Before...awful floor.

Now...beautiful floor. Finally, a nice garage.

One of our Favorite Things

Slushies!

We love our Slushie Express!  One of our kid's favorite treats is for dad to make them each a slushy.  Sometimes we get to try out new flavors and help dad decide which flavors that Palmer Wholesale will carry for our Victorio Kitchen Products. Yum!

It's Canning Season

We only had two cucumber plants but we have had plenty of cucumber so this year I have learned how to make pickles.  We've done both fresh and processed, sliced and spears.

Here are some processed ones:

And last but not least, some black berry jam.  My favorite!

Thanks for the berries Hollie!  

Oh I also did a two batches of raspberry jam.  I had a huge box of frozen raspberry crumbles that I got from Alison's Pantry and decided to make jam out of it....so good!

My Baby's Going to School!

I can't believe that Leia is actually starting preschool!  She's my baby!  She can't be old enough to go to school!  Her teachers already adore her because she talks so cute and in such a grown up way sometimes.  I have to admit I am so excited for the 3 hour break (on most days) that I can do errands with no kids!  I can actually stop and read labels at the grocery store, or even try on a pair of pants somewhere without a little one crawling under the dressing room stalls trying to get away.  Yesterday was her first day and what do ya think I did?  I ran right over to JoAnn's and was able to get some things I needed for upcoming project with no one whining or crying and I could go at my own pace.  It was wonderful!

Leia chose a Toy Story back pack....there were lots of cute girly ones but she wanted the Toy Story one.  I shouldn't be surprised.

Back to School!