Christmas in November and a birthday

Grandpa and Grandma Conder came to visit the day after Thanksgiving to celebrate Christmas with us. Our family has made the executive decision not to travel for the Christmas season (the two little/impossible) angels/maniacs played the principle major role in the decision.

We exchanged gifts, ate yummy dinner, watched a movie while enjoying carmel popcorn, played wii, and drove around looking at Christmas lights among other things while they were here.

The following day we celebrated grandpas birthday....how old are you?

We always have a good time when they come to town and the kids never want to see them leave. Clover even asked for them to take her away with them to Utah....I wonder if she would have ever wanted to come back home.

Good times.

No more curls

Just for the day we straightened Clover's hair. Before she even left the bathroom her loving father quietly cornered me and needed reassurance that her curls were going to come back. I reassured him that I only straighted her curls with an iron and didn't change the hair follicles themselves....geez, a dad and his daughters curls, who knew.

Fireplace

Stevey made this for me....
(it's almost complete)

I love fireplaces in the winter...love love love them. I have been asking for one for the last two years and this year we were finally able to get one.
I had visions of something awesome and original and it took FOREVER to figure it out. We were thinking of something in stone, but just couldn't find the perfect stone. When the idea of barn wood came to us we knew we had a winner of an idea and Stevey decided to check Craigslist for barn wood (go figure)and found this. A young kid from Rigby, ID had just torn down his recently deceased grandpas barn and was selling off the wood to earn money for college...and he was selling it very cheap. The faded red paint (no lead) and metal patches on the wood were already there and it was exactly what we were looking for.

We found this slate tile at a local dealer here and it was perfect. The stone we used around the fireplace we got for free....just some extra rubble laying around at another local dealer that let us take what we wanted.


The mantel wood we purchased from a different barn wood dealer for a great price because we had the right connections..thanks cw!

Anyway, we LOVe it. You might be thinking, "but it doesn't match your other furniture or wall paint..." No need to worry, it isn't a new project can't fix.