Christmas Presents!

The other night before bedtime, the kids got to open their Christmas Pj's. Because they were wrapped in identical paper each tried to convince us that their present was actually their siblings. After trying to reason with them, we just let them open their sibling's present. Here they are in their Christmas Pj's.

As with any Clark kids photo shoot, the outtakes are typically my favorite. Case in point. :)

We are going to be taking a bit of a blogging break until after the holidays. We will be back with all kinds of new and cool stuff to share with you after the holidays.

 

Introducing our Christmas Tree

We are finally finishing decorating our house for Christmas. The outside lights and wreath went up the other day, but alas part of the lights flicker (and they are not supposed to) and we don't keep them on long for fear of them shorting out. Just another Christmas light saga. Doesn't everybody seem to have those stories? The pumpkins made it off the porch and into the compose pile. So, its beginning to feel like Christmas...oh wait the weather forgot the memo since its been in the 60s and 70s this past week not that I am complaining. I'm a warm weather girl. :)  We thought we would introduce you to our tree and since we have lots of sentimental ornaments we thought we would share them with you.

Chris and Megan's childhood ornaments...

Ornaments from our travels...

Derek and Brooke's Ornaments...and as I am looking at this collage more closely I realized that the mp3 player at the bottom is actually one of my ornaments that I got in high school when there were other mp3 players out there besides iPods. ha! Its one of the kids favorite ornaments since it plays music.

Family Ornaments...

These are just a few of our ornaments. :-) Decorating our Christmas tree is one of our favorite things to do together. This year Derek was so excited to "put decorations on the tree". It was really fun to watch him help. Here are my cute little helpers.

And Derek putting the star on top.

 

Making Cookies

The kids and I "made" cookies from the Nestle pre-made dough. They helped put the dough on the cookie sheet and tried to sample the dough.

Project #2

Well, we expected to have our Laundry Room completed at the end of our diy-a-thon. Alas, sickness has prevented that so instead of completed of a completed space we are happy with adjusting to it in the interim.

Here are the boys painting. We went with a slightly greyish toned color called Quill. I love it! Since the laundry room has no natural light it can be frustrating with yellowish tinted walls to tell if there really is a stain on a shirt or is it just a bad reflection. This is also as close as you get to a before picture since we are really bad about that.

Derek got to help paint and he was thrilled that he even got a little roller like Daddy's. He could care less that his spot to paint was behind the washer and dryer.

We then replace the light fixture to have 3 light bulbs which greatly increased the lighting. It is like a totally different room in there!

This is not what our laundry room looks like now. The sink unit turned out to be junk. Right after this picture we discovered that the cabinet was cheaply put together, structurally iffy, and was cracked in the back. So, we returned it. We are waiting for the kids to get better so we can take a road trip to IKEA for a cabinet.

Brooke and her Babies

While Chris and Derek took one of their many trips to Lowe's during our diy-a-thon, Brooke and I played dolls and read books before bedtime.

Accent Walls and Textured Paint

As part of our Master Bedroom painting project, we decided our room needed a little umph. Our room gets very little natural light so if we were to paint it a color darker than its antique white it would look like a cave, and not in a good way. So, we decided to paint just the wall behind our bed. I had been campaigning for textured wallpaper, but Chris didn't want to deal with wallpaper so textured paint won. We went with  Valspar brushed suede paint from Lowe's. It was the right blend of color and subtle texture.

The instructions had you roll on the first coat and brush on the second coat. Chris rolled the first coat and it went on FUNKY. It had spotty coverage and you could see every spot of the roller made as you can see in the picture below. We considered painting another coat on, but decided to follow the directions exactly. No, it wasn't the way Chris rolled it because I intently watched it and it was all paint.

To paint the second coat, the directions instructed us to use a 4 inch brush and brush in a combination of short and long X's. The second coat went on so much better! In the picture below, the paint is really wet so it didn't dry with that much texture but it gives an idea of what it looked like.

The end result is awesome! The paint had a type of grit in it which left a physical texture in addition to the textured look.

So here is the before...

and after!

Our First Bedroom Painting Project

As part of our DIY projects, we decided to paint our bedroom. This was the first time that we painted the room where we slept. With our previous painting projects, we have been able to retreat to our room from our painting. This was the first time where we couldn't retreat from the mess. As with any new project, we learned new stuff about each other like when you have to move the bed away from the wall and 6 inches to the right to paint the ceiling, it could drive one of us a tad nuts. :-) Its never dull in our house.

Here are some before pictures.

We repainted three walls and the ceiling with the same color, Antique White. We still had original builders grade paint so we went with a higher grade paint for better durability. We did quite a bit of painting in the evening so the lighting for these pictures is rough.

Yes, we did leave the pictures up on the accent wall until we could decide on the exact color. For the wall behind our bed we chose to do an accent wall with textured paint which I will show in more detail later.

Finally done with the walls and ceiling! And what kind of parents would we be if we didn't show our cute "helpers"

Derekisms

Its about time for another round of Derekisms. Derek never ceases to make us laugh with what he comes up with and we like to share our amusement so here goes.

Conversation 1: Derek upon entering our room early one morning.

Derek: Daddy, I growed so much my bed is too short. 
Chris: Derek, you have a full size bed. I highly doubt you outgrew it overnight.

Conversation 2: Derek's reaction to finding out that we were going out to dinner that night.

Derek: Daddy, this place is stinky-pee-you-e
Chris: They have chips and salsa
Derek: Ok. We can go in now.

Conversation 3: Derek walking into our bathroom one morning

Derek: Daddy, you cough.

Chris: Yes I did, Derek.

Derek: You have to cover your mouth when you cough even in the shower.

Conversation 4: Derek after waking up from a very long nap

Megan: Hey bud. Are you awake?

Derek: Mommy, you have pretty brown eyes. I have blue eyes.

Conversation 5: Derek upon seeing a van with a Christmas tree on top

Megan: Derek, what does that van have on its roof?

Derek: Why do they have a tree on their top? Christmas trees come from the aggic [attic] and then we put decorations on them.

Conversation 6: Derek at breakfast

Chris: Eat your breakfast

Derek: I have to stir the cheerios until they are dizzy before I can eat them.

We don't make this stuff up folks!

Happy Thanksgiving!

http://pinterest.com/pin/15410823694693581/

Car Wash

**The diy-a-thon continues. We will have lots to update you on early next week. Until then enjoy the cuteness of the kiddos.

Last week, when the weather was actually warm, the boys washed the cars. Derek was THRILLED to wear his bathing suit and play in water again.

Operation Christmas Child

**As an update to our diy-a-thon, we have finished most of our bedroom projects. Today starts laundry room projects with electrical. Things haven't moved as quickly as we had planned, they never do, but we are happy with the progress so far and not too far off track.

Our church was participating in Samaritan's Purse's Operation Christmas Child. This ministry receives packed shoeboxes full of toys, toiletries, and other fun items for needy boys and girls around the world. As a family we packed a shoebox for a little boy who was roughly Derek's age. The kids and I went to the store and picked out presents that this little boy would like. There are no pictures because wrestling 2 kids through the toy aisle was enough of a workout.

The night we packed our shoebox, Derek put in the shoe box all the goodies from the store.

And since I forgot to include the shipping costs and tape on the label, I did it the Saturday night before we needed to turn them in at church. :-) What? You thought I had it together? Ha!

This was from a friend's Facebook post showing all the boxes on stage this past Sunday. Some of the rows are even double stacked! I am so glad that we are able to be a blessing and show the love of Christ to kids around the world.