Everyday Live Happy

I love phone wallpaper. The picture that comes up on your phone's lock screen and background on your home screens. I change my quite regularly. And while I love pictures and literally have more than a thousand pictures on my phone, I don't use those for my wallpaper. I could, I just don't. Instead I Google wallpaper. Not just any wallpaper either. Summer wallpaper. Winter wallpaper. Valentines wallpaper. Halloween wallpaper. You get the idea. I change my wallpaper for every season and holiday. When you Google summer wallpaper it brings up hundreds of pictures. You find the picture that you like, save it and then go to settings and pick that picture for your wallpaper. Easy! The hardest part for me is choosing which picture to use. I have a certain style that I can't even really explain. I know what I like. Sometimes it's a crafty looking wallpaper. Sometimes it has a quote. Sometimes it's scenery that I like. Like I said, it's hard to explain my style. But I...

I love Christmas. The trees (yes I said trees.) The lights. The feel in the air and in our home. However, unlike stores that have Christmas out before Halloween, I don't decorate until Thanksgiving dinner is over. Thanksgiving is an often over looked holiday. I don't have many decorations for it other than a few pumpkins that go with my Halloween decor as well. But I love that we have a holiday that is all about gratitude. I am a truly blessed person. I have so many things that I am grateful for. The food is great of course, but more importantly is that we get together with family. We eat, talk, laugh and enjoy being together. We watch movies, play games and eat more pie. It's a great holiday - especially when it isn't my year to cook! I hope that before we pull out all of our Christmas decorations that we take time on Thanksgiving to reflect on what we are truly thankful for. Here is a list of a few of the things that I am thankful for (in no particular order....) M...

Halloween means dressing up. We take this seriously at our house. In fact the main reason I bought a sewing machine was so I could make costumes for this girl. (For some reason my 14 year old son doesn't want me to make him costumes...) This year she was a mummy obviously. But we did a little bit different take on it.  First I tea dyed her long sleeved shirt, leggings and a cream colored sheet, so they would have an old look to them. You can't really tell from the picture but they aren't the white color that they appear to be.  Then I cut the sheet into strips and randomly sewed them onto her shirt. Focusing more on her torso. There is also some ribbon and gold tulle mixed into the wraps. I did add a few more wraps around the arm after she put it on so that some of the strips wrapped around her hands. Those strips I just safety pinned on. The skirt is made from the sheet with lace sewed on the bottom. Then strips of fabric hang down with gold tulle sewe...

We have a tradition at our house that we love. We have done it off and on for many years, but we have done it every year for the past 10 years. We make a Halloween house. Think gingerbread house for Halloween. We make it out of graham crackers so we can make the tallest, spookiest looking house. We have got together with friends many of the years, but not this year. Kids, schedules, work and holidays don't make it easy to have a day that works for many people. So my daughter and I put together our house for this year. Like I said graham crackers and hot glue until you get something that you like. We have made these for years so we kind of have an idea of what to do to so it turns out according to our idea. Most years our houses are pretty similar, but never exactly the same. Since it's a Halloween house you want it to look run down and haunted. So perfect lines and perfectly broken crackers are not needed. In fact the more mismatched it looks the better. Then com...

My cute husband indulges my love of decorating for holidays. He never complains and often helps me get things done. Luckily for him he likes Halloween. His birthday is at the first part of October and he always asks for a different kind of cake. This year though my daughter and I decided that he was going to get a Halloween themed cake. We even picked out a monster looking one that we wanted to try. Then my husband decided that he wanted to have a cake that we refer to as Brownie Delight. It is yummy layers of yumminess! But it has to be made in a regular cake pan. So our monster idea was out. But I was still determined to add a little Halloween to it. We decided to make a graveyard on top, but weren't exactly sure what we were going to do when we started to make the cake. The entire recipe is at the bottom of this post but here's how it goes together. I forgot to take a picture of the first layer. It is just a brownie layer. In fact the recipe calls for your favorit...

My daughter is really into the Mexican holiday that celebrates the day of the dead. Actually it's more that she likes the decor and makeup of the holiday. She was wanting to make a Halloween decoration that incorporated that. Luckily we found this cool black, glitter skull for her to use as her base. She also got some bright colored puffy paint to use for painting. She liked the colors and really wanted something with a tip so that she had control over the design. She got right to work. It took her a couple of hours to finish it, but she was really pleased when she was done. In some places that paint ran some, but she just waited until it dried and then she touched it up. It made the paint kind of thick in some places, but it is still really great anyway! Here are a few more angles.  Even though this doesn't really match with the Halloween decor that we already have, it will still have a prominent place. My daughter is only 11 and is always...

It is finally October! It is one of my favorite times of the year. It is finally fall. The leaves are changing color. It is sweater and boots season. And most importantly, it is time to celebrate Halloween! I LOVE Halloween! I'm not exactly sure when this obsession started. As a kid I loved dressing up and going trick or treating and carving jack-o-lanterns. Now I try to decide for months what I'm going to be for Halloween and what costume I'm going to make for my daughter. We have it narrowed down to a couple of options. I have all of my decorations (and there are many!) up by the end of September. We go to the pumpkin patch near our home complete with a hay wagon ride around a field of pumpkins. We have a get together with friends to decorate Halloween houses. (Think gingerbread house except with graham cracker house creations and decorated to look like a haunted house! It is great!) Of course with the invention of Pinterest my daughter and I have already come up with...

My daughter in law Ashley is expecting her and my son's first child - and our first grandchild. We are pretty excited and of course they are too! They have lots to do though and only a couple of weeks to get it all done. Luckily my cute sister in law, Becca, through her a baby shower. Once they had the shower they would know which items they still needed to get. What to buy? Kind of hard because I'd already given her my standard baby gift. Goodnight moon and a blanket or pajamas. I'd given her that months ago. I knew that I wanted to make a gift for them. I had a neighbor that had made her expectant daughter some adorable burp cloths. That's a funny thing to say "adorable burp cloths." But they really are. She used fat quarters and terry cloth. I was able to find really fun fat quarters. They were printed with the cutest boy patterns that I've ever seen. Animals and monsters. The theme of the shower was safari so of course the animals were perfect. Monst...

I love to bake. I get it from my mom who also loves to bake and let me help her when I was a little girl. One of my favorite things to make is homemade chocolate chip cookies. Now these can be tricky. There are lots of different recipes, but I truly think that I have the best one. I have made these cookies since my oldest kids were just little ones and my youngest two weren't even born yet. In other words I have made these cookies literally hundreds of times. Truth be told we love cookies at out house so that number could really be thousands of times! Not many things beat a cookie fresh from the oven. Still warm with gooey chocolate chips to enjoy. Yum-my! This is a recipe that I do not mess with at all. The only things that I will do differently is what I add in place of the chocolate chips. I have added peanut butter chips, Reese's Pieces', Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (cut into smaller pieces) as well as other chips. Walk down the baking aisle at the store and see ...

I'm a lucky person. I'm lucky because I love my job! I am an instructional assistant (IA) at an elementary school near my home. As an IA I get to go to three different class rooms everyday. I help them with their workshop time when they split the kids up into small groups. I get to teach in a kindergarten class, a first grade class and a second grade class. For my first and second grade classes I help with their reading workshops. In each I teach a mini lesson to four small groups. So I teach the same thing in each class four different times. In kindergarten I do the same four lessons, but I might do their math lesson with them or work with rhyming or another skill not just reading. (I do teach a lot of reading lessons to the kindergartners though too.) I love what I do and I am beyond impressed with the teachers that I get to work with in their classrooms everyday. That's what brings me to my thoughts today. I work with a kindergartner teacher who I know by experience is...

Yesterday I took my oldest daughter to school. She isn't going far and I appreciate that. She is going to a university that is about an hour and a half from our home. She's had her schedule lined up for a while now and her housing worked out too. She is going to be a junior this year so she knows what she's doing, however this is her first year at this school. So I went with her. We packed up our car with the things that she would need and headed out of town. She had originally thought that she would be attending a different school in the fall. Then in May she changed her mind. The school that she's going to offered her a half tuition scholarship and it's known for its education program. She wants to teach elementary school. So it was the perfect fit. But she knows no one there. She luckily found an apartment to rent but doesn't know anything about any of her roommates. Yesterday we found the apartment that luckily was a nice place. (Since she never went to see ...

School is just around the corner - actually it starts in 2 days for us - and with that comes a question. What's for lunch? I don't know what your kids like, but at our house we have one that eats school lunch everyday and one that only eats it occasionally. And at my job I only get a 1/2 hour lunch break. That's not enough time to grab something from somewhere and still have time to eat it. That means making a home lunch most days for both my daughter and me. Luckily she can make her own lunch, but that still leaves the question of what to eat. Honestly you can only eat so many sandwiches and there aren't always a lot of options. What to do. So I did what I usually do when I have a question, I went to Pinterest. Again. I spent quite a bit of time on Pinterest today looking at home lunch ideas. There are TONS of them! Literally so many ideas. It can get overwhelming looking at so many different ideas. Because they can't just post one idea, you have to go to their b...

We officially have one week of summer left. Next Thursday will be our first day of school! How has summer come and gone so fast? Our school is starting early this year than it ever has before. Supposedly its because we are getting longer breaks during the school year. Not sure how I feel about that.... Today I spent time filling out all of the paper work and reviewing schedules for my kids. One good thing is that our school district has gone to online forms. That means I fill the form out once and it covers all of my kids. And technically I didn't even have to fill out our Family Data form. I just had to update anything that needed to be changed. It was a much quicker process than most years. I hope this means that the only things that I have to sign on the first day of school is syllabus notes from teachers. I am happy to be getting back to a normal schedule. But after a summer of staying up late and sleeping in, it's going to be a bit of a rude awakening! That's why s...

We always love going to other places and seeing what is there. I've been to New York and seen the sights there. I've been to California and spent time on the beach and at theme parks. I've been to many other states and visited the sights there. Something that I'm not very good at is exploring my own backyard. There are many places in Utah that I've never been to or that I haven't been to since I was a kid. That means my own children have never been to these places either. Not okay! There are people from all over the world to coma and see all the parks in Utah. So I've been trying to do more seeing whats in my backyard. This week we went to a place that isn't a national park. No one will come to see it from other countries, but it is somewhere that we had yet to explore. About 2 years ago a small community next to our small community built a fun playground and splash pad. Now my daughter thought that she was too old to go to a playground on her own, but...

Clutter. It really should be a four letter word. It can take a house that really is clean and make it look a mess. Clutter really is a dirty word! When there is clutter laying around it looks like you never clean your house. It makes it look like you're a slob. It does not show you in a good light. So why is it that I always have clutter laying around? Why is it that I can't seem to get rid of it? There are a few answers to those questions. First an actual legitimate answer is that we moved a few months ago and I still have boxes that need to be unpacked. Then I realize that I moved 8 months ago. Can that be right?! In 8 months I should have taken time to finish unpacking. Another answer is that I have a hard time throwing things away. The real answer though is probably that I have more stuff than places to put it. I have a quote that rattles around in my brain quite often - especially if I'm cleaning.   "Do not keep anything that you do not know to be useful or b...

Summer always seems like it goes by way too fast. Maybe it's because we enjoy having lazy days without school. Maybe it's because we enjoy the warm weather. Maybe it's because we try to pack in as much fun as possible. I'm not sure which one it is, but I'm pretty sure that it is a combination of all of them. We love staying up late talking and watching movies.and then sleeping in. We love being outside in the warm sun. We love trying to fulfill each days fun "schedule." It seems like time is always flying by. I'm not sure who said that my kids could grow up so fast. It seems like every time I blink another year goes by. I heard recently that we only have 18 summers with each of our children. That scares me! I did not agree to only 18 summers. That is not enough. That makes me want to cram even more into our summers than I already do. It can start to drive me crazy! That is not what I or my family want. I'm working on enjoying the moment and letti...

I don't know why it's so hard to keep closets organized. I try to put like colors together or type of shirts together or some other way. For instance, in my daughter's closet I try to keep her play clothes separate from her school clothes and dresses. I always have a plan, but then my husband or kids will help with laundry. They will put things anywhere in the closet. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it. I think that I would rather have them do laundry than put things in the "right" spot. But it does get a little tricky though because things sometimes get "lost" in the back of the closet. Today we went through my daughters closet. This year I am determined to not buy more than what I need to. So we organized and got rid of old, damaged or too small clothes. A section for play clothes. Okay clothes that I would rather she didn't wear for school. Because they are a little worn looking. A section for school clothes. A section for sweaters and jack...

A few years ago I got a recipe that has become one of my family's favorite treats. It is a recipe for peanut butter cups. The first time I made it, it was amazing! They taste exactly like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups! What's even better is that it only has a few ingredients, it's no bake and it's really fast. You simply make it on the stove top and then put it in the fridge. It only takes about 15 minutes from start to finish. It does take a little time to set up though. After about an hour in the refrigerator it is ready to eat! Here's how you make these yummy treats. You start with one cup (2 sticks) of margarine or butter. I use margarine. Put in in a saucepan and then add 1 cup of peanut butter. I use creamy, but I'm sure that it would work with chunky too. Stirring often, melt the margarine and peanut butter together. It will become really smooth. Once it's all melted remove the pan from the heat. The peanut butter in Reese's Pea...

My daughter disappeared into her room today. Awhile later I peeked into see what she was up to. She hadn't made her bed or picked up her clothes, but she had been busy. She was making an owl. A stuffed animal. For her birthday she got a big stack of felt. I think that she was more excited about that gift than any others that she received! Since I didn't see what she was up to until she was at this point I don't have step by step pictures, but I'll do my best to explain what she did. She hand drew a pattern for her owl. It's basically like a circle or a squashy oval. She adds the ears where the circle would curve. She just goes straight up and then comes back down. You can't make them too small since you need room to sew around them. Then she makes a straight line from one ear to the other for the top. You can curve it a little if you want. She also makes the bottom of the pattern more of a straight line too. After she cut out her pattern for the owl body,...

My daughter has been begging me to try a treat that she had at day camp last month. She had told me all about these mini banana cream pies. There was no recipe but she explained it pretty well. She told me that we needed to buy a sugar cookie mix and some banana pudding. Okay that's easy enough. Right? Well today we decided to find out. My daughter was pretty specific about what needed to be done, so I stepped back and let her go for it. We used the Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix in the large pouch. She made the cookies following the directions for cut out cookies. After the dough was made, we needed to put it in a mini muffin tin of course. It took a minute to figure out which scoop gave us the right amount of dough in the cup. We didn't want so much that they didn't keep their shape, but we also didn't want any part of the cookie too thin. The amount we used was a little bit more than our small scoop. She gently pushed the cookie dough into the grea...