Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Two Months and Growing!


Hard to believe that Jed is already 2 1/2 months old, but he is!  At his checkup yesterday, he weighed in at 14 pounds and 11 ounces, and was just under 25" tall.  Our doctor says he can't believe a 10-week old is as tall as he is.  (At least he's proportional!)  Jed is sitting happily in the 90th percentile for height and weight.  What a chunk!

Monday, August 20, 2012

Savvy's Baptism

Savvy was baptized in Birch Lake by Pastor Marlin Bjornrud, on August 19, 2012.  We are so happy and proud of our little girl!

Saturday, August 18, 2012

McCarthy Beach

A little late on the post, so hopefully you'll forgive me.  Last weekend the family (minus Riley, who was camping with a friend) went to McCarthy Beach State Park for a little swimming and fun.

The lake is very shallow, and that equates to less worry for the parents.  I sat on a shaded hill with Jed, watching Jesse and the other kids having a good time in the water.  Here are a few pictures of this little summer outing.










Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Can't Get Enough of Those Cheeks!

Jedidiah, almost two months old

More Storage!

For months it's felt like my kitchen cabinets were shrinking.  Junk was being left out on counters and we were wedging things into the upper cabinets and lazy Susan with desperation.  I've been on the hunt to find a shelf unit that I could use as additional pantry-type storage.  After scouring CraigsList, rummage sales and Goodwill to no avail, I finally settled on paying for a new one at Target.  This one was $99, but totally worth it already.

While I was rearranging things to fit on the new shelf, I was also wondering how I could get rid of the half-empty boxes of pasta and oatmeal cluttering my cabinets.  This was what I came up with.

Half-gallon sized Mason jars do the trick nicely, and look pretty too.

Friday, August 3, 2012

DIY Spice Jars

Anyone who knows me intimately knows that I have a slight case of OCD.  I like things to be pretty, in order, and uniform.  Since I am raising five anklebiters at the moment, my limits are pretty much stretched to the max in the order department.  I look for projects that help me streamline my work, are nice to look at, not to hard to finish, and that give me something to do besides sit in a corner, mumbling, rocking back and forth chanting the theme song from Fraggle Rock.

Here's my latest project:  baby food jars into spice jars.  Bonus:  I had a baby food spinner storage-thingy, and I painted that to go along with the whole she-bang.


I started with baby food jars that my friend, Coni, generously donated for the project.  She needed to get rid of them anyway, so win-win.  I washed and thoroughly dried the jars before transferring the spices over.  Also, because of the whole "wanting everything to look uniform" hang-up of mine, I printed labels using Microsoft Word.  Handwritten labels on the tops with a white paint pen would have worked too.


Then I found this baby food jar storage spinner in the basement when I finally got around to cleaning up down there post-construction.  Score!


A can of spray paint and voila!  A spinner that no longer looks like cheap plastic to hold my transformed jars.


And now I have this nifty spinning spice rack on my counter.  When going through my spice cabinet, I chose the ones that I use the most, since I had a limited number of jars.  I still have space for two more jars on the spinner, once I acquire a couple more empties.


This project cost about $2 worth of paint out of the can, and I'll have the rest of the spray paint for future projects.  Jars were free, and I already had the labels sitting next to the computer.

My OCD is satisfied for the time being, and now I need a new project.  :)  And I should say that I got the idea from a Pinterest post, so it wasn't entirely my idea.  I did, however, add the spinner.