doily wall art/a wreath around the clock

trey boy is sitting on the floor next to me with

48 g.i. joes waiting for me to play with him as i type.

this will have to be fast!

i had a bare wall...

it had a red clock hanging on it and that's it...



so i went to the garage and found these wood blocks i have had in my garage for a year!

i had bought a long piece of wood at home depot...had them cut it into pieces...they will do this for $1 a cut i think.

then i sanded them down and painted them with some brown paint mixed with water so it was more like a stain.



then i taped them off with blue painters tape,

spray painted one color and waited for it to dry,

lightly glued around the edges of some paper doilies with a glue stick,

sprayed another color on top, and peeled the doily off.

then when the paint was dry...i roughened them up with sand paper to make them look worn.

i love how they turned out! so fast and easy! the kids helped!



when i was finished i hung them up. the wall needed a little something more. so i hung the clock back up. still i needed more.

i found this wreath in my garage and it fit perfectly around the wreath!

i have decided we should all be putting wreaths around our clocks!

holy cute!



it goes perfectly next to my dining room wall!



now go get some doilies, wood blocks, a glue stick, some sand paper, and make yourself some doily wall art!

wahoooo!

oregon blueberries

Dear Lucy,

I had a wonderful time picking u-pick blueberries with you...

I had to drive you back to the bathrooms 3 times in 45 minutes so you could pee...




we picked 11 pounds of blueberries...
you ate way more than you picked...



your poop is now blue...



let's do it again sometime.



Love,

Mom

grandma and grandpa's house

When i was growing up my now mother-in-law taught me piano lessons.

I was not really interested in playing the piano...

mostly I took them because I loved playing at her house.

They have the most amazing walnut tree. Hanging from that tree has always been a swing of some sort.



I still love to come to this house. My mother-in-law Jan has worked hard planting all kinds of plants and berries.

She ordered these Tey Berry plants a few years ago...they came from England.




She has more raspberries than any of us can eat!
I have declared raspberries to be my favorite berry.



They have 5 acres. This garden used to be a pasture for the cows for many years. They turned it into a garden and it has been well fertilized if you know what i mean :o)

Every time I came to visit last summer, they sent me home with a box of vegetables from their garden.

I figure I can pay them back in grandkids :o)



These flowers planted in random pots by their back door make me happy.



Right now they have this sweet baby calf at their house. He was born with his legs very bull legged. He can barely walk.



He let's us pet him and has the sweetest face.
He is a little fighter...and I like that about him.



I will always love coming to this house.
I have so many childhood memories here and now memories with my kids.

In the summer they have lot's of visitors coming to stay, and there is always talk about how small the house is.

I have told my husband many times that my dream is to live in a house that is a little too small out in the country somewhere...that way we can all be huddled together inside but when we go outside we have plenty of room to roam free.

salem art fair

if you know my little family you know that we don't like to sit around.

it just doesn't feel right...



saturday we decided that our adventure would be to heading to the salem art fair.


i love this sweet smile...lucy often wears that smile when she is so proud of herself or so happy she can hardly stand it...that butterfly button she made at the art fair is definitely something to be proud of.




my lu and i



the kids made swords...



here is trey attacking his mother with the sword...



we stopped by grandpa bill's calligraphy booth to say hi!



from the art fair we headed to my husband's parent's house to hang out with cousins...



lucy, and my friend erin, and i snuck away to pick blueberries and buy some scones...



trey and lucy ran around like wild aborigines around grandpa and grandma's 5 acres...i asked trey to smile as he ran by and he did this...



and here is lucy with her face all scrunched up in the tree swing...



we are loving our kids at these ages and have the best time on all of our adventures.

trey turns 6!

it is 9 a.m. and trey is still sleeping...

i think that means he had a good birthday.



he had a water balloon fight, treasure hunt,

and played a "throw the cupcake at trey's dad game."




my husband was a very good sport.
he had no clue he would be doing this...it was great.



all of the kids got to take a few chances at swirling their cupcakes in a pan of frosting and then taking a shot at trey's dad.

they loved it!



these hanging balloons were a hit...but didn't last the whole night.



happy birthday trey...
you bring so much to this family.

we love you buddy!

not your grandmother's doily

hi my name is tanya and i buy doilies at antique shops.

then i take a shirt that i almost gave away to goodwill because it just wasn't quite doing it for me...



and sew one of my doilies to that very same shirt...



i tuck that shirt into a pencil skirt and head off to church...



and then i am a happy girl again...



see honey it doesn't take that much to make me happy :o)

what do you get when my husband's brothers come to town....

axe throwing...







fish catching...







salamander hunting...



chipmunk trap setting...



and catching...



polar bear swimming...





needing to be rescued...







what may or may not be a tennis ball, soaked in lighter fluid, attatched to the end of a rope and lit on fire...

do not try this at home. it takes highly skilled maniacs to pull off a stunt like this...


(photo's taken with shutter set to 30 seconds...thanks peter and justin for helping me with that)

skim boarding...









and cousins reuniting...









i grew up with my husband and his brothers, so i should have known a little about what i was getting into marrying into this family.

can you ever really know though?