December.

I'm finally blogging about the holidays! We'll start with a quick pic of the family when we went to see the lights at temple square.

The girls had their dance recital at the Festival of Trees on December 3. They did such a great job! They are the shorter girls in the group, below, in the center of the pic. Trin in front, Bailee in the back.

On December 12, for FHE, we decorated gingerbread (aka graham cracker) houses. I hot glued the houses ahead of time, so the kids had time to just decorate them, without them having to worry about the house falling apart. It worked like a charm!

But of course, there was too much going on for me to remember to take the picture of the final results! Oh well. They were cute. Trust me.

The girls sang in their Winter Song Festival at school on December 20th. They each sang a couple of songs, but the video camera was low on batteries, so I only got a portion of each of them singing.

On Christmas Eve, we went over to Grandma & Grandpa Chapmans for the annual party with dinner, nativity, and gift exchange. I didn't take my camera! We had a lot of fun though.

I made a point to make sure all of the presents were wrapped BEFORE Christmas eve, so I wouldn't spend the whole evening wrapping gifts. It gets exhausting. So I spent the whole month of December working on the wrapping. It was nice to not have to do any the night before Christmas!

Instead, we read some Christmas books and set out cookies and milk for Santa, and carrots for the reindeer.

Christmas morning, the kids were so excited to get up. They got up around 7:00, and we hurried and opened up our stockings, before we had to get ready for church, which was at 9:00.

After church, we finished opening all of the gifts. I only took these 3 pictures first thing in the morning, and didn't take a single picture after that. What's wrong with me!?

Christmas 2011 was also a special day for me, because it was the first day I made a turkey, all by myself! I got the recipe from my SIL Dawna, which she got from the Food Network. It was really not as difficult as I thought it would be. I have to say, it turned out perfectly! It was moist and delicious. I had tons of leftovers that I used for other recipes. But alas, I failed to take a PICTURE!

We also did a family picture for our Christmas card (it was late November, I'm out of order). I wanted to re-create our family picture from 2008 that we did on our bed. So, we did.

Our Christmas card.....

And on New Years Eve, we went to the annual party at Ty & Shannon's. We played Just Dance 3, and some other games, and ate lots of yummy food. We left shortly after midnight since we had church at 9:00 the next morning.

Halfway to ONE!

Laundry/Mudroom Makeover!

Okay, don't judge me too harshly by these "before" pictures. I thought about cleaning out the laundry room before we started this project, and then taking the "before" pictures, but that would almost be like lying.

My laundry room really did look like this. The top of the washer & dryer was always a catch-all for anything junk. If it didn't have a place, it ended up on the top of the washer & dryer. I tried to keep it clean, but it just seemed impossible. I also didn't have a place for my laundry baskets.

There was no place for all the junk mail, or the kids homework either.

My laundry/mudroom comes in from the garage, and it is literally about the size of a closet. You can see the width of it is just a bit wider than the width of a washer & dryer, and that's about it.

Eww eww ewwwww! I'm getting anxiety just looking at these pictures. I can't believe we lived like that for so long!

Look at all of that wasted space up near the ceiling.

The room used to actually be a little laundry room and a closet. It really was so cramped that we just decided to get rid of the wall to make the room bigger. That was like 11 years ago. The room was never finished after that, as you can see.

Some nice scratch marks from the dog we used to have....

So I got my inspiration from Pinterest. To see my inspiration board where I got the ideas, click here. I knew exactly what I wanted! I explained it all to Kevin, and he immediately got to work. We started this project on October 29.

We gutted the room, and Kevin started his magic.

Kevin wanted to get it done quickly, so instead of dealing with mudding and taping the damaged sheetrock, and waiting for mud to dry, etc., he bought this panel board instead and covered all of the scratches/holes, etc.

The little helper.

Almost ready for paint!

He built this pedestal for the washer and dryer. He installed the tray that keeps water contained in case there is a leak. He re-routed the drain as well.

Kevin painted on November 7.

And drumroll.......

I am literally IN LOVE with my laundry room now! I even enjoy doing laundry a little bit more. :) The washer & dryer raised on the pedestals keeps kids from touching the buttons, keeps me from having to bend down so far to get the clothes in & out, and gives me a place for my laundry baskets! Brillliant!!

I also went through all of my household cleaners and kept getting rid of them until I could get them all into the cabinet above the washer & dryer. My goal was to not have ANY bottles of cleaner in sight. I wanted it to look finished and clean, not cluttered like it was for so many years.

I now finally have a place for all of my weekly ads, coupons, scratch paper & notes from school.

This has to be one of my favorite parts about the room. Each of the kids has their own clipboard hanging above their hook to keep homework! It's been SO fabulous. I was always losing and misplacing homework!

And these baskets above the hooks/clipboards hold things like my toolbox, old Walmart sacks to be recycled, among other things that never had a place to go until now.

And this is my other favorite part about the room. Each of the kids has their own basket to put their shoes in! No more tripping over 1,000 pair of shoes every time we walk in the door. I love that they are out of sight. :)

Pure happiness!

It literally took Kevin just over a week from start to finish. I had to borrow my neighbors washer & dryer during the project, (thanks, Megan), but I'm so thankful he was able to get it done so quickly. He is just. plain. awesome.