Dance time

Bailey and Lilly and their friend Matthew had a great time dancing to a game on the Wii.

They were so cute. They did this for over an hour.

Lauren's Birthday

For Lauren's 7th Birthday she had some of her friends come over for a 'Make your own pizza party'. At the party I made a little sweet shop table so the girls could fill their candy bags with all sorts of treats. They loved the treats, but also had a great time making their own small pizzas.

Look how grown up she's looking!

We love you Lauren! Happy Birthday!

more Christmas 2011

We first went to Levert, MA to visit Granpa King, the Downey family, and Grandma Muriel and Omar. We had a wonderful dinner there with all of them and had a good time with the Downey cousins.

Then we went to stay at my parent's home for Christmas. We had fun visiting with cousins and Aunties and Uncles. We missed Amy and her family but had a great time Skyping with them.

Trisha with new baby Elise Ruby- what a beauty!

Christmas 2011

We had a great Christmas season. Before we left for my parent's house we hosted our annual neighborhood Christmas party. We also had our girls open a couple of gifts that we didn't want to pack with us in the car. After bath night (hence all the wet heads in this picture) they all had fun opening up this new doll bunk bed that I had found at an antique store. I then gave it a pop of color by spray painting it a bright pink. There were many squeals of delight!

Here are some pictures of what our home looked like for Chirstmas-

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Steve did yet another great job on a project- framing our bathroom mirrors.

We have a standard contractor-grade mirror, but we were ready for an updated look. We did some research and found on this blog a good tutorial, but there are many good ones out there.

Steve removed the bar light and did some sheet rock repair. Then he added new sconces. We also painted the whole bathroom.

So here is the before:

and this is how it looks now:

Next up- new faucets.

Getting ready for Christmas

Have you been on Pintrest yet? I love this site where you can find many inspiring ideas like how to make a book wreath. Yes, you got that right- a wreath with pages from a book that you just tear out and hot glue onto the back of cardboard. Cheap and cool looking. I got my inspiration from this blog. Oh and if you're on Pintrest you can follow me here.

I love getting ready for Christmas and this year we are making some crafts. Alison and I are going to make some small felt purses for her friends. I've also been busy making ornaments.

Family Pictures for 2011

For our family pictures this year we had our friend Ashley take them. She did a great job and we all had fun. We took them at her in-laws beautiful horse farm (which is not far from us). They also have a gorgeous Victorian farm home on the property that dates back to the Civil War.

Tea time!

Lauren

Alison

Lilly

Bailey

November happenings

We had a great November. Our Thanksgiving was wonderful to be around the Sample family. The girls had fun visiting with their cousins and even performed a musical number for all the adults after our visit with Mama Jean. We had great food and a beautiful day.

The kids were especially hungry for dessert. Thanks AJ and Leon for your hospitality.

Aubrey and Charlotte came to stay for almost a week to visit in November. We had fun with them, but poor Charlotte had a fever for a couple of days so we did some hang out time at home. The girls had so much fun playing with her. Of course, Aubrey (mini me) and I had a great time talking and even got out one tiny night out (tiny- meaning: we dropped Alison off at Activity days and went to Ann Taylor Loft for half an hour and then came home).

I've been teaching a gymnastics class again in our basement. We had fun learning ballet, working on the balance beam and learning a routine to perform. All these girls live close by and are Alison and Lauren's friends so it was a blast when we got together for class.

Steve and Lauren went to a daddy- daughter dance in November. Lauren was thrilled to have her dad all to herself. Steve even got her a pretty corsage.

We Have Our Ironing Board Back!

We have wanted a console table for our living room for quite some time. Up to now, our console table has been our ironing board! We found some styles we liked on the Internet but none were close to the dimensions we wanted. Therefore, I decided to build one. I have had this goal to learn more about woodworking and this project fit right in. We used white maple for the tabletop, apron and legs and used dark walnut for pegs. Here are pictures I took along the way. It was a great learning experience and it has gotten me more excited about building more pieces.

The tabletop was built using 3/4" thick 2x6 boards with splines between the boards. Using splines may have been overkill but I wanted a solid tabletop that could support a lot of weight.

Here is the table top after it was glued up. I was a bit worried about cupping so I added breadboards to each end of the tabletop. This was something new to me. A breadboard end is a piece of wood that is joined to the end of a larger panel. The purpose is to support and maintain the rigidity of the tabletop, while allowing the tabletop to shrink or expand (due to humidity) across the grain. I cut slots in the tongue of the tabletop and used dark walnut pegs to hold it in place. Also, the breadboards hide the end grain of the tabletop. This feature took a long time but it added a neat detail to the finished table.

The apron and legs were connected with mortise and tenon joints. The mortises were made by drilling and then cutting out the rest with chisels. The tenons were made on the table saw and finished with chisels.

Here is the table base fit-up. The groves along the outer edges of the apron were made using a router with a triple fluted bit. This added a lot of detail to the apron.

In order to connect the tabletop to the base, I used buttons. These allow the tabletop to expand and contract somewhat with humidity.

Here is the completed table!

I really like the look of white maple. The completed table had a lot of wavy grain patterns showing and I wanted to highlight that with the finish. I learned a lot about finishing furniture during this project. The biggest thing I learned is that it is a LOT more involved than I thought. For example, white maple is a difficult wood to stain (should have figured this out before making the table, hey?). Finishing this piece ended up taking just as much time as building it. I sanded the table for a long time and then applied two coats of walnut stain and then five coats of clear polyurethane.

Here is the finished table in its new home. The table turned out great and I am looking forward to building more furniture in the future. The ironing board is now happily back where it belongs and is used as an ironing board just as much as it was when it was a console table.

Halloween

This year the girls dressed up as Wizard of Oz characters. Alison was Dorothy, Bailey and Lilly- the munchkins, and Lauren was Glenda.

We also did our annual visit to the pumpkin patch and lots of other Fall things like making caramel apples, Booing people, and going to some fun parties.

Happy Halloween! (Lilly)