Before and After

Going to goodwill can be so much fun sometimes; you just never know what you will find!  It's especially fun on half price day!   A few weeks ago we went, I can't remember for sure what we were actually searching for but I spotted this from far away (I mean how could you not see it the thing is HUGE!)

Oh how I had to have it!  This Canvas is a whopping 3ftx4ft!  And the price?  A STEAL at $5!!!!  How could I pass it up?  I wasn't completely sure what I wanted to do with it at the time, but for $5, who cares!!!  

I did finally decide to try something out and that began with painting over the whole thing in black (Adam was quite upset about this because he was quite taken with the original painting)

Originally I just did the edges, but decided you might be able to see through to the other colors so just did the whole thing to be safe.

This little guy supervised.

And here is what I ended up with!! 

I'm not gonna lie, I like it but I don't LOVE it.   I think it might be the fact that everything around it is brownish.  I thought about trying to antique the paper but I am pretty sure that would have been disaster.   So in case anyone is wondering how I actually did this, its some music I got off the web, edited in Photoshop and then blown up as an engineering print at staples ($7.50).  Then I used spray adhesive to put it on the canvas and modge podge over the whole thing.  The modge podge actually didn't work out the best, there are some definite wrinkles and the paper tore in a couple spots.  From far away you can't really tell, but they are there and I know it!   It's not too bad though for a giant piece of 'art' that cost less than $15.  I might just need to find somewhere else to put it (though this spot fits perfectly and I don't know where else in my house a giant 3ft by 4ft piece would fit!)

REVIEW: Quaker Soft Baked Banana Nut Bar"

I received this complimentary Quaker banana nut bread bar for review from influenster.com in my VOXBOX.   I kinda had high hopes but it was really just OK.  It tasted like banana, but it was also kinda dry.  It was soft, but also crunchy in some places almost like it was overdone.  There was a lot of fiber in it which was nice and so I do feel full from eating it.  I think I will stick with Quaker Granola Bars - their always a winner!

Quaker Soft Baked Bar - Banana Nut Bread

Made with real bananas and almonds, Quaker Soft Baked Bars Banana Nut Bread flavor has tasty ingredients and key nutrients to help provide fuel to start your day.

-5g Fiber*
-20% daily value of 5 B Vitamins
-6g of Protein
*Contains 3.5g of total fat per serving

Where to Buy

You can find Quaker Soft Baked Bars at most major retailers.

Suggested retail price: $3.29 for a box of 5 bars

VOXBOX

So I recently joined influenster.com; it's a review site and they send you free stuff to sample and review.  So if you see some random posts with random reviews that's why!

Trying so hard

Charlie is trying SOOOOOOO hard to crawl.   Both Charlie and Adella really want to move and mostly they can get wherever they want by rolling or scooting, but Charlie is super determined to crawl.  He started off by just getting on his toes and putting his head down and using any amount of strength to propel himself forward a few inches.  Now he's actually starting to figure out how to get on his knees and I have caught him basically army crawling a couple of times - he only goes a few inches at a time.   The crazy thing is that neither of them can sit up unassisted (they are close to that too but just haven't quite got the ab strength I guess).   I was fairly certain that you had to be able to sit before you can crawl, but Charlie might just prove that wrong!

I've tried to get better pictures but I have to be super sneaky; as soon as they see the camera they zone in on it and stop whatever adorable thing they were doing.   But you can clearly see in this one that he is up on his knees, if you look close you can see he is down on his right elbow ready to army crawl away!  As I watch my babies learn things its just amazing how things just start to come naturally.  It's really amazing to watch growth and development in such a little body!

High Centered

Charlie was after the water bottle, but the darn polar bear got in the way!

Stand off

 I put these two down on this blanket, right next to each other in the middle.  I left the room to take care of the dirty diapers, came back less than a minute later and found them like this.  These kids crack me up!

Events!

This last week I was preparing for two events, hence the reason why blog posts were a little scarce, I spent pretty much every moment the twins were asleep either cleaning or preparing for the parties.  First up I threw a baby shower for my good friend Laurel who is having a little girl in a few weeks!  We are so excited for them and excited for our kids to have play dates soon!   Unfortunately I only took pictures before the food and none at the party.  FAIL!!!

The second event was a YW Activity - Personal Progress Olympics!  It was this idea I had back several months ago and so glad we could make it work!  I hadn't really ever heard of a personal progress fair, but after googling around apparantly they aren't too uncommon, so I decided to go for it!  We made it Olympics themed because its almost the Olympics!  The girls got tickets for each of the 'events' they would complete or start at the activity.  Our events included having the missionaries teach them how to teach the Plan of Salvation, a mom's panel about divine qualities needed to be a mother, discussion on the holy ghost, and a lesson in conducting hymns.  The mom's were invited and we sent them home with a challenge to have the girls help plan and prepare meals for two weeks.   We also ended by giving them a "Go for the Gold" challenge and read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year.  I loved that Virtue is Gold and fit so perfectly for that challenge!  We also broke up the activity by having games in between (minute to win it games themed around personal progress values).  For never doing something like this before it turned out great and many of the girls expressed how much fun they had and we should do this all the time!  I took lots of pictures at the event, but I always feel funny showing pictures with other peoples kids in them, so I'm only going to share some of our decorations.

These were the tickets the girls got to remind them of the experiences we either started or completed that day.  I designed them somewhat off the Olympic tickets for this year.

Challenge!  We added a little gold satchel with hershey's gold nuggets as a take home reminder.

Becoming best friends

I can see it already happening, these two are going to be best friends!  They are starting to play together and no matter how much the roll across the room they somehow always end up right back together.   Adam was able to snap these super cute pics one morning of them playing right before breakfast.   

Of course once they saw Dad with the camera they were zoned in on him!

Entertaining Adella

Often Adella wakes up early from naps (well earlier than Charlie anyway) and I have to think of ways to entertain her that don't involve being in the room where Charlie is napping.  If I set her down she often screams and it will wake him up.  She doesn't like me to sit either so we take walks around the house and check stuff out.   Often we stop in front of this mirror and check it out.  She thinks it's pretty cool!

My kids are too cute

I had this epiphany today; My Kids are too cute.  It doesn't matter what they are wearing, what the background is, or what they are doing.  They. are. A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E!   Prideful much?  GUILTY!   But seriously, I do have a point.  You see on Saturday my adorable kids will hit 6 months, and my talented Sister in Law Rachel has agreed to snap a few pictures for me.  And that led me to panic here at less than a week away - what should they wear, what should we do for a background, props!  Should I make something?  Should I buy new outfits (I can see Adam cringe as he reads this)?  What do I do?   And then I realized, it does not matter!  My kids are stinking cute no matter what they are wearing or how cute the background is. So rather than stressing all week and trying to do the cutest thing ever that will cause scores of people to pin my image on pinterest, I am going to spend the week playing with my babies while they are still babies (PS they are napping as I write this so I am not ignoring them! HAHA!).   And IF I have time and IF I feel like it maybe there will be a cute outfit, or a cute backdrop (I actually already have a backdrop from a party last week I may just recycle).  And you know what my kids will be just as cute either way (oh please let them smile though!).    

And just to prove my point, here are a bunch of pictures of my adorable kids playing - I am even trying to get over the fact that my absolute favorite one is the first one I took while they were still wearing their bibs (YES THEY STILL SPIT!   It's much less, but I still would rather change bibs than outfits all day!).  And you know what?  It's OK because that's our real life, spit and all!!!   As a side note, we held a fun personal progress activity on Saturday for the YW; we had a mom's panel where the mom's talked about divine qualities that are needed for being a mother, things the YW could work on now.  I said that it was important to have a sense of humor and know how to have fun because there's a lot of spit and if you can't laugh at spit in your hair, on your face, on your clothes then you will not have fun being a mom!

OK, sorry for THAT tangent, as promised pictures!  A whole bunch for you grandparents out there!

BEST SMILES EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't know if you can tell, but this is an action shot of them rolling over at the same time - I guess they already know how to play follow the leader!

Back to our tummies!

Fun at bedtime

Lately these two have been so much fun at night.  They used to be just quite grumpy when it was time for bed, and they still have their moments, but they are starting to become so playful and giggly.   This night after baths they were rolling around on our bed playing and we just had to snap a few pictures!  Plus notice how its actually Charlie smiling in these ones!!!!

Rough life

Learning to move  can be rough.  It takes great stamina, physical strength and determination.  And then there's this other problem...

You can get seriously stuck

and all your mom does is go grab the camera

When all you really want is a little help here

making a super sad face eventually does the trick.