Girls' room makeovers

I'm really excited about my new custom shelving in my craft room closet. We had it put in on Friday.  I've got the closet all organized and filled up, but I'll wait to share pictures until I'm finished with everything I'm doing in there. We are going to be putting a bed in there too, so we can have a second guest room. I've got it painted, and I'm really excited about how it turned out. Once we get the bed, bedding, curtains, and finishing touches, I'll get some pictures.

When I was taking pictures of my new closet, I remembered, I still haven't put pictures of what we did in the girls rooms. We did most of this back in June, but it's never too late for pictures, right? This is Kiersten's room. She picked pink for the paint, and we had the beadboard installed. I was going to wait til I got the dresser painted to take pictures, but oh well. the dresser has pen all over the side and on the drawers, so I plan on painting it to match her bed.

We had to paint her bed to cover all the pen marks on it, so we decided to go with white for the ends, and painted the side rails a lipstick pink. It was miserable painting in the garage in 105° weather, but it turned out pretty cute. Her room is bigger than in our last place, so that rug is way too small. But it works for now until we get it replaced.

We also had her closet customized, since she just has the one small dresser. I love how it turned out, and I love having everything up off the floor.

this side is for her hanging clothing.

And she has her bathroom just the way she wants it.

This is Karalee's bathroom. She loves having her own space, and it's nice that she can take care of herself pretty well these days. She pulled the towel rack off the wall, using it as a ballet barre. So once that gets fixed, she'll have somewhere to hang her towel up again.

She shares her tub/shower and toilet part with Evie, so that's how it ended up decorated with Mickey Mouse stuff. She likes showering by herself now, instead of having to take a bath with her sisters.

Kara decided she wanted her room to be painted purple. We let her choose 2 shades of purple. I didn't really like these 2 colors in the store, but it turned out really cute. We had the chair rail installed to divide the 2 colors more cleanly. Her rug is also too small, so she'll probably need a different eventually too.

I'm so glad we did their rooms right away. If we were decorating her bedroom now, she'd for sure want a super hero theme, and I'm not sure I could let her do it.

I hated the curtain rods, and was set on getting rid of them, but Ben decided to paint them the same dark purple on her wall, and now I love them! They used to be an ugly, dark wood grain, and I was surprised how much better I liked them after a little paint.

She didn't get a custom closet, but she does have a walk in, which is pretty nice, except when she "cleans up" her room, she just shoves everything in there. I painted it purple too.

This is Evie's part of the bathroom. There's not much in there now, but I'm sure as she gets older it'll start filling up with stuff.

We haven't done anything to Evie's room yet, but I do have some ideas. So later this picture will be good for a before/after comparison. Evie got new bedroom furniture when we moved in. Her bed is a trundle, so that will be nice for when we have lots of company at the same time.

The other side of Evie's room.

They all love their rooms, and it is nice to have them separated. Hopefully Evie's room will get some attention before the end of the year.

Kiersten's smashed face

On Wednesday, Kiersten tripped on the way home from taking Kara to the bus stop. She landed right on her face. One of her hands was scraped up too. She was so upset when she saw a tiny speck of blood on her hand. She really freaked out about it. So I was worried about how she'd act when she realized her face was covered in blood. I was right to worry. She was hysterical. I put some neosporin on it, and cleaned it as best I could before school.

I had to practically shove her in the door at school. She was so worried about what the other kids would think. I couldn't get a bandage to stick because she was crying so much. So after lots of assurances that she looked beautiful, she finally went into class. She walked in with her hands covering her face. She said that two little boys at school kept calling her "ketchup nose", which really set Ben off when she told us about it. He told her she should punch them in the face, but luckily, she agrees with me, that is the wrong thing to do. Yesterday she wore a bandage over it, but still thought she looked "widiculous". It is actually healing up better than I thought it would at first.

Now she looks in the mirror and says, "where are the scrapes? I can't even see them anymore"

Super Baby!

We found this super cute onesie at six flags on sunday, and Evie had to have it. Though it's a supergirl one, she keeps calling it her "batman jammies".

not sure how Ben got her to hold this pose, but I think it's so cute.

She even has a little cape on the back. She was running all over last night saying, "fly! fly! fly!"

Today Kara got out of school 3 hours early, so I decided to do some crafts with the girls. The first thing we made were ghosts. They each got a styrofoam ball, a piece of white fabric, and a long piece of ribbon.

I just had them wrap the fabric around the ball and tie the ribbon as a neck. Pretty quick and easy for them.

Then we made faces with sharpies.

I put a face on Evie's, and she wanted nothing to do with it, once she saw.

None of the girls would keep their eyes open for a picture. It was all I could do to even get Evie to hold hers long enough for a picture.

I sewed a few loose loops on the top of the heads, and then hung them from the tree with some yarn. Here are Kara and Kiersten acting scared.

I also decided to make a halloween tree. I saw something like this on pinterest, but couldn't find it again, so I just had to figure out my own instructions. It wasn't very hard at all. I cut a bunch of 1" pieces of scrapbook paper, curled the bottom with scissors, and started pinning them around from the bottom up.

I just did that all the way up. I think I could have used fewer patterns, but didn't want to undo and redo it by the time I realized it looked kinda busy. I also cut way too many strips.

I liked the way it turned out, but the top was bothering me, so I decided to make a star for the top. I cut 3 stars from white paper, and just glued the patterned paper on each side, and then slit it from the bottom and top, so it would fit together like a puzzle.

Since I had 30-40 extra strips, I asked the girls if they wanted to use them to make some spooky houses. It was fun to see how differently Kara and Kiersten did their pictures. Kiersten made a house with lots of windows, and then glued the patterned paper in all the windows. Kara cut out the little potion bottles, witch hats, candies, etc from the scrapbook paper, and used those to decorate her house.

There are still a lot of strips left, so I'll have to think of some more projects later.

Evie was so glad to get to participate, and I didn't help her with it at all. She did all her own gluing and sticking the pieces on, and she couldn't be more proud of her picture.

sick day

Kara woke up with a stomach ache, fever, and diarrhea this morning, so I decided to keep her home from school. She was all dressed and ready to go, so she was a little bummed to stay home. If not for the fever, I probably would have just sent her. But she just happened to have a dr. appt scheduled today with our new pediatrician to get into their system and get a flu shot. So I just kept the appointment at 4:30, and was surprised they still gave her the flu shot. She seems to be feeling fine, but is kinda trying to milk being sick. that is, until I mention something she can't have or do, being sick, and then she suddenly feels better.

I decided with all the girls home, it'd be a good day to put out some halloween decorations.

The girls were able to do quite a bit of it this year, so it went quicker than I expected.

All Evie cared about was laying claim to the trick or treat buckets. She would start screaming if anyone else so much as touched any of them.

I put up all the outside decorations myself, since it was a little chilly. When I went to download the pictures I took, I found that Kara and Kiersten had been taking some pictures of their own while I was out there.

My guess is Kiersten told her to make a funny face, but she was more interested in watching Batman Forever.

This is my favorite of the ones they took. Kiersten looks so proud, thinking she was so sneaky, all the while leaving incriminating photographic evidence of their little caper.

livingroom laps and Kara's note

On Saturday, Kara and Kiersten decided to run laps around the livingroom. We were very impressed with Kiersten. She kept lapping Kara, and was running in a bigger loop. Kara wanted to run 1 mile, so Ben figured out how many laps she would need to complete to make a mile. She ended up running 1 1/4 mile, though she did walk several laps, probably almost half. 

kiersten was a little running machine! she ran every single lap, and Ben figured she'd run at least 1 3/4 miles. She barely got winded, and like I said, she kept lapping Kara. She ran 344 laps, if I'm remembering right. and Kara ran around 270-ish. After the first 103, Kiersten took a break, and it actually took Kara a full 7 minutes to catch up to 103. I'm not sure if Kara is out of shape for a 6 year old, or if Kiersten just has amazing stamina for a 4 year old.

This morning I was making my bed, and found 2 envelopes under the bed. I pulled out the first one and found this sweet note from Kara.

It's hard to read, but says, "I love you mom. You are the greatest parent a kid kood ever have. I love you, love Kara." I was just smiling and reading, what a sweetie. I figured the 2nd note must be for Ben, but opened it to see, and it was actually a continuation of the first...

"Just this once, Please send me a non healthy snack. love Kara." Then as you can see, a picture of her at school enjoying some marshmallows. I couldn't stop laughing! the little stinker. Buttering me up, and then asking for marshmallows! She always complains that she is the only kid at school who brings healthy food for snack time. According to her, all the other kids get cookies and cupcakes. It's not like I'm sending her in with tofu or something, just fruit, carrot sticks, raisins, or other things that she actually does like. I think just in comparison to some kids having candy or hostess cakes, she gets jealous. There have even been at least 2 occasions I know of that she lied to her teacher that she forgot her snack, so she could have something from the classroom stash instead, and at least once that she put her snack back into the fridge before she left for school. We've explained to her over and over that we want her to be healthy, and that sugary snacks are an occasional treat, not something we want her to have every day at school. But she still complains. She went to a birthday party on saturday, and I had 2 little girls separately come up to me and tell me that Kara's the only kids in class who has to eat healthy snacks. Wonder who put them up to that? ha. But now I do feel a little softened after her note. So maybe tomorrow will be a cookie day, and then back to normal the rest of the week.