Twin helpers!

My parents have a yearly tradition of spending a week in Salt Lake City with my dad's twin brother and his wife, doing family history work. My aunt and uncle live in Hawaii, so they can never get together enough! My wonderful parents have been skipping out on the family history work for the past two days, so they can help us around the house and help me get my art room ready for classes. But yesterday I had a surprise, my uncle came to help as well! I LOVE seeing these two guys together, it makes my heart so happy! They are fixing our fence in the next two pictures. They also started making a holder/cutter for a large brown paper roll and put in 6 outlets in my art room, (talk about being hooked up!), finished the herb garden, as well as a few other little repairs here and there. They are coming back Saturday to finish some more projects. Man, who can keep up with these guys!?! (you should see when all 4 brothers get together, they could put "Extreme Home Makeover" to shame!)

And my beautiful herb garden. I love it more than I could love any other garden because my dad made it just for me!
Their visit has been more helpful than they could imagine. Bill works from 6-6 every day, and we have a huge list of home projects. They are really helping us get caught up with all of that. PLUS it's so nice to visit with family! I miss my aunts and uncles a lot. I have some pretty amazing uncles who can do anything! (my dad is one of four boys, ALL engineers!) And spending time with my mom and Aunt Karen was a real treat too. I have also been blessed with some very loving aunties. I love how big the world is, but it's hard when family is so spread out, you rarely get to see them!

THANK YOU Mom, Dad, Uncle Don, and Auntie Karen SOOOOO much for ALL your help. I hope we can do the same for our children someday, you are all such wonderful examples!

another small request?

I forgot to ask before, but I have been meaning to put a bug in everyone's ear. (trying to be as resourceful as I can :) I need art pictures for classes, whatever I can get. SOOOOO if any of you have "art calendars" from ANY artist/style, (or know someone who does), would you mind saving them for me at the end of the year? They are the best way to get images that stir creativity on my bulletin board. I still have calendars from the past few years because I like the pictures so much and thought I could use them somehow. I'm trying to find out if there is some way to get old calendars, like last years, for cheap. If any of you have suggestions, please let me know! If you have an art calendar of some sort, on the last page, jot a note, "give to Tara", drop me an email, and I will send you an self-addressed/stamped envelope at the end of the year. This would be a HUGE help! Thank you! (It's also a way to know that something you normally throw away will be recycled and used well by a cool friend :)

Thank You Daddy!!!!

My sweet dad, he has been devoting more days than planned to help me around the house. He is working on my herb garden here. We didn't dig up most of the herbs, we wanted to wait till we were ready to fill it so there is as little shock to the roots as possible. What you see here is just the box, almost ready to fill. He added some brick along the side to widen the walk way between the herbs and the stairs.

* The following picture and information is mostly for Jamie's benefit. :) It's a pretty simple box, and my dad is so resourceful, (if anyone wonders where I get it from), he found a lot of materials for free from the construction sites around.

So first he used treated wood, (not redwood that has to be coated like a deck, and has a tendency to rot faster over time), and made a simple box. He used some scrap sheets of galvanized steel from a construction site, cut them, painted them copper, bent to 90 degree angle, and screwed on the outside of each corner to reinforce the box. Then he took some plastic and nylon, (also from a construction site), and stapled them to the inside of the box so the dirt would not be right up against the wood and cause it to rot over the years. Last, he took this protective plastic yard edging, and screwed it all along the top inside, (it looks like wood, but it's not), to protect the plastic and nylon cover from the elements. We might make a winter cover for it later, to protect the plants during the snow season.
I love how the copper corners will look against the nice green herbs along with my nifty copper/wood herb markers. (if you have not seen them yet, go to my art blog)
Again, my resourceful father didn't want to spend the money on soil. He made this pretty cool contraption from left over construction site wood, to sift the dirt from rocks. He took the kids out to a dump site near our house to get the dirt, (which he will later mix with compost/manure), and the kids went to town with the sifting. But they also had fun with the mounds of dirt. :)

It's pretty dang cool, the sifter hangs from the beam and the kids just rock it back and forth and the dirt falls in the wheelbarrow.
Josh wanted me to take a bunch of pictures, so here you go.

This is a more accurate picture of the whole adventure. Josh was off exploring mounds of dirt, while Jade helped grandpa.
Thank you mom and dad!!! (my mom has been the organizing queen and helping me get the art room set up while my dad is slaving away in the sun) I love you guys SO SO much!!!

4th of July!

Bill took the kids camping on Thurs, literally 12 miles from our front door to the campsite. It's pretty cool to live so close to such beautiful mountains after all the time we spent living in "cities". Bill and the kids hiked up to some waterfalls, it was a pretty good hike, but they made it. Eddie and I joined up for dinner and smores before we went back home to our nice (un-deflating) beds. :)
Little Eddie being very independent and walking ahead of me towards the campsite.

Our campsite was surrounded!

This little chipmunk LOVED the kids carrots. He slowly became more friendly and bold as the kids were dropping carrots for him, (and his entire family who showed up later). He even tried to take off with Eddie's bottle by biting the nipple and dragging it off!

Eddie LOVES marshmallows, as you can see by his gooey hands.
It's hard to see, but Jade made the most PERFECT golden marshmallow I think is possible for a 10yr old. She was proud, so was I.

We are back for the 4th of July, and the kids LOVED the fireworks show put on by dad.

What better way to top off the evening than with Jello-cake!
My parents came up on Saturday and helped BIG TIME around the house. My dad started building a beautiful raised bed for my herb garden. I will post pictures after next weekend when everything is done. I still need one more week to get my room all sorted, it's just taking me so long to sort through boxes I have not touched in YEARS. That's just sad. Plus, it looks like it's going to take a little more to start a "business", so please forgive my blog neglect. :)

Art room update :)

I have to start with one of the things Bill has done to support me and take care of the kids........making yummy jello cake. If you have never had this before, it's SUPER easy to make and really good. (white cake, poke holes everywhere with a fork, pour hot strawberry jello all over the cake, let it set in fridge for a few hours, then cover with cool whip)

It's coming along.....slowly :)

My Japanese paper behind all the holes.

Joshua's hideout is a bit more exposed, and it's turning into Eddie's pad for watching Signing Time, which he LOVES.
My wall sculpture. I might end up changing it a bit, but this is it for now. (I made, remodeled, or painted 12 of the plates, it was a fun diversion from organizing for a while)

Our weekend......

I will start by saying that I think I have the most wonderful and amazing (almost 11) daughter in the world. She pretty much was the little mother ALL weekend. This is the only picture I took of the kids, (Josh is scratching, not picking, his nose). Thank you for your incredible help Jade!
For those of you who have seen my art room, you will probably notice a difference in this picture. I used to have ONLY one light fixture, it was SO dark. Bill and a neighbor put in 12 can lights, and it made a HUGE difference. My sweet husband insisted that we paint this room to make it look better for my art classes. It's his wonderful way of supporting my business. :) I won't complain. It is turning out AMAZING! I love it! So the following pictures are of "before, middle, and after"........

It's kind of hard to see, but I took the top cabinets, cut out various holes, carved funky details around them, and then painted them white. I will finally put to use some of my colorful Japanese papers by putting them behind each hole.

The crazy thing about this whole project, is what it took to pull it off. 12 GALLONS of white! It took 12 gallons to paint our whole house on the outside in Vegas, and it took 12 gallons just to paint the top half of the walls, ceiling, cabinets, and shelves of this room. Then we put a gloss sealant on the concrete, as well as a gloss slate color concrete paint on the floor. We still have to add the semi-gloss white on the cabinet frames and shelf edges. Almost done and then I can move back in and decorate! :)

Random.....

Bill's side of the family got together for Father's Day. We have not been together like this in over a year, and even then, we did not have this many grand children together.

The grandkids

Josh doing his "flirty face" (not sure how I feel about that yet, but it's a cute little face with a stud nod going with it), and he loves his uncle Dave. Dave lives in Seattle, we hardly ever see him, so this was way fun.
Hannah was trying to take a goof picture where it looks like she has her cousin Gabby on one hand and her sister Lennon on the other. We did our best. It was tough with the light, I do not have a good camera.
Gabby told Jade she loves the monkey and zebra, so of course Jade whipped out a drawing for her.
It was so nice to visit with all of them. We love you guys!!!!

While I was typing an email, (to Lindsay actually), I noticed that I couldn't hear Eddie. He was downstairs last time I heard him singing, but I realized it had been a while.
I called and looked EVERYWHERE. I started to panic, since he figured out how to open the front door and escaped twice this weekend. (our bishop drove by and found him in the middle of the street!)
The LAST place I checked, was our bedroom, and there he was. He had climbed up on our bed, and just fell asleep.
I know every kid does this, but it's always super cute when they do it for the first time and when they are so little.

and yes, because I didn't move him right away like I should have, he fell off and bonked his head. I just thought this was a cute picture of Eddie. My mother-in-law has this on her blog, and I just had to steal it! I love his dimples!

So Lindsay rescued me, and drew up this cute logo for the boutique I'm a part of. The ladies settled on Posh Purse Boutique. It's growing on me, especially since Lindsay made such a cute little logo, that makes the name sound better to a visual person like myself. :)