A Foggy Morning

It is a very delightful day indeed when I can take my husband's dog out for a run. I have been trying to do this 3 or 4 times every week. Some weeks are better than others, as everyone knows. This morning, when we were out, it was so foggy, I thought I would take a pic. You can't really see, but the fog is rising up off the lake in the far distance. It was quite a sight. Of course, Gracie, the dog, didn't care. She just wanted to catch a duck!! That would really not be delightful!

Unique Christmas Gift

Wild Man Beard Conditioner!! Who would have thought? I have been looking all over for small gifts that are unusual. Here is a little something that I think is so funny, and quite unusual, which I purchased for my brother who sometimes sports a goatee or a beard, mainly to annoy my mom. I found is off of http://www.etsy.com/shop/wildroseherbs and it was fairly inexpensive. They delivered very quickly and I can hardly wait for him to open it!

Breakfast at The Hangar Cafe

So, a few lovely days ago I turned "29" again, and to celebrate, we decided to go out to breakfast. Here we all are, with me being the photographer, as usual, eating at "The Hangar Cafe" at Chandler Airpark. If you haven't been there, I highly recommend it. It is a small, little place, but extremely good. Love it! They offer some traditional breakfasts and are open until 2pm every day. That was a delightful day!

Merry Christmas Banner!

I was walking through my local Pottery Barn the other day. They had a banner very similar to this hanging above their stocking stuffers, which said, ironically "Stocking Stuffers"! I loved it, and so instead of hanging up my lighted garland in the entryway, decided to do something similar. This is what I came up with.

These are easy to print on card stock. Punch 2 holes on the top, one on each corner, just inside the red border. Then, string it with ribbon, or twine, to hang it. Couldn't be simpler. Love IT!

A Simple YW in Excellence Night

We recently had our YW in Excellence Night. It was a simple evening, with the girls singing some songs they had learned throughout the year for various things. We had a videography committee that had made videos of girls answering various questions about personal progress. Some of their answers were so amazing. I loved all of them. We combined those into a video presentation.

And then the girls showed off their amazing projects they had worked on. But we got this idea from Jenny Phillips at http://www.jennyphillips.com/ to go through old Ensigns and cut out various pictures of Christ and mod podge them onto blocks of wood. They were basically free. The only things is when you are using magazine pages, the paper is different than if it were scrapbook type paper, so when it dries, it is a little bumpy. I did not mind this. I thought it looked as if the picture were old and was really lovely. We displayed them all on a table and let the girls choose which one they would like to take home. A simple evening, but nice.

Simple Nativity

October & November flew by! I can hardly believe it is December 1st! Nonethless, the Christmas season definitely is in full swing. We recently, and by recently, I mean yesterday, finished 27 sets of these little beauties!

The free pattern came from Melinda over at Under My Polka Dot Umbrella. Here is the link for the pattern : http://undermypolkadotumbrella.blogspot.com/2009/09/nativity-patterns.html

It is a pretty simple pattern and we went ahead and just stained them, since we had so many to do...27 sets x 12 pieces each is a whopping 324 pieces we traced, cut, stained and individually wrapped so the girls we gave them to could open a piece every night for a "12 day of Christmas" experience.

We gave the girls cards that went along with it to read every night. Here is the link to the cards we gave away.

The artwork we used came from one of my favorite sites: http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/

and is titled Noche de Paz Cards. Love them.

The daily quotes came from a great little book "52 Weeks of Fun Family Service" by Merrilee Boyack. It is available at www.amazon.com.

Some Awesome Pics

So, a couple of days ago, I was over at my friend, Jeannine's house & she asked if I wanted to see a project her son, Devon, had finished this summer. His project was to make his little brothers & sisters a playhouse. He had come over at one point to borrow a certain saw to cut an angle for the eaves, so I had known about it. I have to admit, it is pretty great!

He even made the stained wood floors look uneven to look like they are old! There are old strap hinges for the door with an automatic closing spring installed on it. I love that he has it up on a few blocks so that it won't have water damage either. The roof is galvanized tin & apparently they love it, because it is christened inside with their names in chalk on one wall! I think he did an amazing job. What do you think?

The following pic is one of their chicken coop that he built last year. I especially like the watering system they have. I don't have one nearly as nice, and I have plans to install one like it in my coop for my little birdies.

As you can see, on the left of the picture, outside the chicken coop, is a 5 gallon bucket. What you cannot see, is that it has a lid with a screw top cover so you can easily fill with water, or put a frozen water bottle in there to keep the water cold. We all know that chickens do not like their water too hot, and here in Arizona, it definitely is HOT. Anyway, on the side of the bucket, near the bottom Devon drilled a hole large enough to insert a PVC pipe into it. The point that the PVC goes into the bucket is then sealed with a plumbing putty, or water tight glue. The PVC pipe then has an elbow attached to another longer piece of PVC pipe about 2 1/2 feet long with an end on it. This piece is the piece with 3 nipples on it. These the chickens go up and peck. As they peck, water comes out. No more shavings or dirt in the water! YAY! I love it! One thing they did say they would do a little different is to raise the bucket up higher to increase the water pressure as it comes out.

This is the link to purchase the nipples online. My friend Jeannine bought them at Farmtek.

http://www.farmtek.com/farm/supplies/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10052&storeId=10001&langId=-1&division=FarmTek&productId=17662