Part 1: DIY Farmhouse dining room table.

I'm so excited our new dining room table is getting close to being finished! I first saw this farmhouse style table on Pinterest and pretty much fell in love with it. I sold our old table on craigslist a little while back because our family has grown quite a bit, so I knew we'd need a bigger table to fit around:)

Loved the look of this table, so we are following this tutorials staining process, but we altered the construction process quite a bit. My hubby combined several different plans, so I can't share just one link for that.

 

Once I saw the farmhouse table and bench I knew that's what kind of table I wanted to get for the new house.

It's even 100 hundred times better now that my hubby is building it....going to be a very special piece of furniture now for us to be able to watch our kids grow around this table and have family over for holidays.

Since we are in our apartment Mason has been using his grandpa's garage to build the table.  Here is the stages thus far:

This was a month ago the night we bought the wood....just laying it out to decide what length we wanted the table to be.

Then I don't have pics of all the in between steps to get to this finished table skirt frame and support for the table top....but here it is!

Attaching the table top to the frame...

Three generations of great men working on the table.

My husband with his completed table top:)

Looking great! Just have to add legs and sand/stain the table.

Can't wait to have it finished and in our new home:))

Creating artwork for Breyton's room.

Finally got around to doing the project I've been meaning to do since we re-did Breyton's room awhile back.
Breyton and I really love the way they turned out! They are images of some of his favorite things and kind of sentimental to me since they use 'artwork' of Breyton's from when he was 19 months old that I had been saving.

Obviously this idea came from something I saw on Pinterest awhile back and we made it our own.Basically you take blank canvas and paint it any color. Then you use paper your child has colored on to cut out images or shapes to modge podge to canvas. I used paper B had water-colored on because we do that way more often than crayons. The images I cut out came from the print on B's bedspread in his room to go along with the aquatic adventure theme.


So we started with water-colored paper and cut out images:

Then painted the canvas in orange and blue...then ready to modge podge cut outs. Here's the finished project...which I decided to outline in black marker to make them pop off canvas a little more. Pretty simple and fun art for B's wall.

 

Summer TIme-Putting up the pool and fence!

So Mason finally agreed we could get a pool this summer:) I'm very happy since the summer's here have been getting so hot it makes it rather impossible to enjoy being outside. Breyton and I spend most of our time outdoors, so its going to be great to have a place to cool off that's a little bigger than the kiddie pool option! We definitely tried to start off as low maintenance as possible for having a pool, so we can better learn how to upkeep without getting in over our heads lol. Therefore we went with an easy set pool. It's been up a little over 3 weeks and was a way bigger job than planned with getting it up and all the extras we had to do with it.....such as discovering what we thought was a level spot in yard wasn't level enough and building a fence around it.

We got some quotes to have a fence built for us, but the pricing was outrageous....so of course without any prior experience we decided to build the fence ourselves. Seemed like the best option, and we are still glad we chose to, but it may be our first and last experience with putting in a fence. Whew, it's a LOT of work.  However, I must say we did a pretty darn good job for having no help! (Except of course for Breyton's "help").

The fence looks pretty good and most importantly has withstood 2 storms, so it must be sturdy enough. We can finally say it's all complete thanks to plenty of hard work. We have already been enjoying the benefits though and look forward to the rest of the summer. Come fall time we have plenty of big plans for turning the fenced in area to a backyard patio for a fire pit, etc to make the area useful year around when the pool isn't up. Excited for the possibilities!

Before the fence:

During the fence building:

And after:

Update on adventures in gardening:)

Some may say I'm easily entertained and I wouldn't disagree with them......but seriously growing a garden has been so awesome. Not that it hasn't been a hard work, but it's rewarding work. I mean just look how beautiful growing food is!!

I've been fascinated at the small stuff and I may be the only one, but watching how plants grow up a trellis without any help is just pretty cool. haha I've been around gardens a lot and even helped pick from them, but I guess because I was never responsible for taking care of it, so I didn't notice all the details God has so perfectly designed. These little vine 'arm' things just grow off the plant searching for anything to attach to so the plant can grow upward and it's neat to watch how fast they can wrap around plus how sturdy they are.

Also didn't realize vegetable plants grow flowers right where the vegetable itself begins to bud and grow.

So now we've come pretty full circle from seed to harvest just waiting for a few slow growers to start producing fruit.....here's a look at the garden from a little over a month ago and its grown A LOT since then as you can see.

Oh, and here's one of my cute little helper.

The start of Breyton's first garden:)

We started the process of getting a very small scale garden going! We are currently planting tomato's, carrots, peppers, cucumber, and strawberries ....maybe a few others too. Breyton has enjoyed helping pick stuff out and definitely loved the dirt and planting seeds. Even though its harder we are starting from seeds because its much cheaper and trying not to invest more than necessary until we see if it's going to be successful.  We have a pretty redneck setup with random yogurt cups, styrofoam, and whatever other containers I had in the house, however it's working well. Our little seeds were planted last Monday the 20th, but are all already sprouting....B loves watching them come up and grow! Looking forward to this spring and summer;o)

Breyton with his little tomato seedling that just sprouted!

 A few of the others that sprouted first....

Homemade ice cream adventure...

We tried yet another recipe we found on pinterest today.......and it was super yummy! I'm quite impressed it turned out like it said it would considering how simple it was. Homemade ice cream in a bag and it tasted EXACTLY like regular homemade ice cream. Breyton had a ton of fun helping make it...he loves to repeat the ingredients after me as we put them in and then he got to help shake the bag for 8 min. He ran around in circles and rolled on the floor with it saying 'shake-shake'! lol Of course his favorite part was helping eat it:o) He kept saying "mmmm-mmm" and "more,more". It was really fun and can see a lot of possibilities off add -ins instead of plain vanilla...so we will definitely be making it again! Yum-O!

                                             Helping shake the bag!

                                                 Running around......

                                                        The result.....

                                         Eating it....

                                                    Yum.....