Merry Christmas From The Carlile's!!

I got my Christmas cards out yesterday!  Yippeee!!! Here it is! Gotta love Costco:)

I love getting Christmas cards every year and for the past few years I have gotten ours out too.  Checking the mail is so much fun throughout December getting everyone's cards! So if ya sent us one this year.  Let me give ya a big smooch  MMmmmwwwwwuuuuaaaaa! Getting mail is my favorite!

We are just about ready for Christmas.  I've only got a thing or two left to do:) 

 Happiness and love to you and yours!

Xoxo

Maranda

It's Official...

All unnecessary walls are now down in the Carlile home. Yaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!  Wall number 1 click here.  

All pics on the left are before pics and then the ones on the right are taken from the same point, but now the wall is gone:)

Wall number two:

The hallway in the basement...Is now a hallway in the basement that leads to the family room. 

Left pic: A before shot.  There was a wall separating the family room from the far side of the house.

 Middle and Right pic: in the process of taking it down pics.  I will post the finished product once we paint and spruce the area up.

  Now there are two entrances to this room.  One from the kitchen and now one from the hallway. 

Haven't quite gotten as far as repainting or doing new baseboards, because we are still deciding on whether or not we want to spend time and money on doing new flooring now...I am thinking we keep the tile that is there for now, put baseboards on, do the molding on the ceiling, paint it and then once we move upstairs, we tackle new flooring in the basement?  I just don't feel like living in a construction zone right now.

Wall number 3

This pic is a view of the wall smack dab in the middle of the window. Sorry about the lighting on this one. Oh and did you notice the curtain rod up there at the top?  Whoever built that wall, built it around the curtains, so they  were still in place and without damage, even after the wall came down...hahahaha...but they are now down and on their way to the trash.

So funny how some people build stuff.  The wall was also built right on top of the existing carpet.  When Dave pulled it down, it was the same carpet throughout the room.

This is looking in from the entry way.  We took the french doors out and knocked the wall out.  Now we just need to pull up the padding and Dave can get busy with his mad home remodeling skillz.

I've entered the DIY Ultimate Kitchen and bath giveaway like everyday!  I hope I win, I hope I win, I hope I win!!! Then we could afford to get this baby done and overwith in no time:)  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Since we haven't finished remodeling these areas, I am going to wait to post our progress.  We have been busy!:)  Well, mostly Dave has been, but I'm not counting myself out.  I've done some dirty work  helping unload a heap of stuff at the dump.  Let me just say I nearly threw up when I opened the car door, and I had my bouts of dry heaving throughout the experience.  Glad I don't work there...Delivering babies and dealing with the occasional bowel movement might stink everynow and again, but it is no where near the stink at the dump.  Hahahaha...TMI

Say What?

Picture from here.

Picture from here.

Picture from here.

Hahaha...I had to post this to The Blog.  I am seriously loving this website!  It has given Dave and I tons of ideas for the remodel + I love all the cutesy stuff on there I can make for my sissy girl + all the cool kid craft ideas+decor ideas!  This site is just pure genious!

  I love that I can get on there in the wee hours of the night to see how creative people are! There are tons of do it yourself (DIY's) projects, and I actually think I could makes some pretty cool stuff!  Yay for creative people!

Pomegranate Juice...Sort Of

That right there is about 10 seeded pomegranates...give or take a few

My idea of juicing since I don't have a pomegranate press yet.  I couldn't fit all of the seeds in on one blend, so i did two.

Looks more like a smoothie to me:)

It was kind of like one because of the texture.  But the seeds took away the "smoothe" aspect of a smoothie. It was still rather tasty.  This juice is THE best juice from a fruit I've ever tried so far!  I had never had any before.  Now I am noticing at the grocery store, they do sale pomegranate juice for like an arm and a leg, and you only get like two cups!  But I can understand why the cost is so high now that I have slaved away at seeding the darn things.  I'll bet I spent a good two hours seeding those pomegranates and I only yielded about two quarts of juice, but boy...I'll tell you what, that juice was worth it!!  Now I just really need a pomegranate press:)

Pomegranates Anyone?

We had ourselves a Fall Harvest of Pomegranates!!

  So, after I took this picture, I realized I still had another box full outside!  Can you even believe this!?  My kids are loving it!  Their clothes?  Not so much. We have lots of stained shirts because of these bad boys.  I'm going to have to designate clothing to such eatery;)

The blue tote is all of the fruit that was cracked.  I am going to make juice with those tomorrow.  The rest I will be sharing and I am going to attempt Pomegranate Jam.  My kids hate store bought jam and I've heard Pomegranate Jelly is pretty good. So hopefully I can figure it out.

Yay for the pomegranate tree!

Remodeling The Family Room

Here are some before pics of the family room in stages:

Some of these are poor quality pics taken with my phone.  Dave started demolition before we moved in and I didn't take a true before pic.  So I wasn't thinking when I stopped by to see his progress and forgot our good camera.

Just imagine the room before the wall was taken out with stinky, ugly brown carpet, oh and don't forget all the rabbit poo on the floor.  Eeek!

Dave started with ripping all of the carpet and baseboards out.  Then he took down this wall that divided the large family room.

Had to take a pic of Dave triumphing over the wall:)  Teehee...

In the pic below, you see he has started with the crown molding and baseboards.  He also wired the place for a smokin hot surround sound for the time when we can buy our smokin hot flat screen ;) 

It's not done yet, but almost:)  We Dave still has to install the lighting, do some touch ups, install the speakers for the surround sound, make a flat screen purchase(*cough* *cough* just kidding), and figure out a way to fit my pretty armoir downstairs:(  I was so sad when it wouldn't fit.  So as you can see, we have improvised with a kids dresser for a TV stand.

View from the soon to be hallway.

By the way we lucked out with this carpet.  Dave comes across all sorts of things at his work.  Most everything just goes to the dump, unless someone wants to take whatever was left.  Every now and again, Dave will come home with miscellaneous shelving, and just way random stuff if we need it or if he knows he can use it at a job.  Anyhow, at one foreclosure he found this unused carpet.  It even had the plastic still on it!  When Dave found out for sure they couldn't use it for the houses they fix up, he got to keep it! It is a kind of berber.  Not exactly the color or style of what I would have chosen, but it was free!  We just had to pay to have it installed.  We felt pretty blessed to come across it.  

View from the basement entrance.

Eventually, we will replace the doors with a more modern style.  But Dave is going to wait and order all of the doors at the same time.

So yay!!  It's livable and it is a fresh and guaranteed clean room for visitors!!

Life Is:

cRaZy!!!!!  I don't ever even have a few minutes to spare for my blogging to ever stay current.  Between school, scouts, swimming, Lila starting a once a week "preschool" (its more like a two hour play date without mom so I can try and get some kidless things done around here), me working, and endless projects around the house, I am just lucky if the kids get a decent meal these days.

I am at the boys school waiting for an assembly to start, so I have a spare min to write a few of my thoughts. Yay for the internet on a phone;)

My husband is Da bomb! He finished the family room, well made it useable at least. There are some touch ups to do and speaker installations, but then it will be completely done YAY!!!! I will get some before and after pics up in the next week or two.

Lots Goo.g on this weekend, so until I have a spare min at home or a slow night at work, the blog will be slow to publish

Xoxo,

Maranda

Lizard Catching is our Fortay!

My Enemy's Cradle

My Enemy's Cradle by Sara Young

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


LOVED the way this book ended!!! I am a sucker for WWII books and learning about what went on. A sucker for stories of survival. And of course, a sucker for romance and happy endings:) The unfolding romance in this story was just the icing on the cake! A must read!



A little note about this book for me:



I am embarrassed to say how ignorant I am to some things that have gone on in human history...I learned about something I didn't know happened during WWII. This story shows a bit of what was of the Lebensborn Organization(Wellspring or Fountain of Life). It was an organization set up by the Nazi's in attempts to "breed" the "Master Race." It is just shocking to read about these sort of things. In places like the Lebensborn Organization(or the one portrayed in the book), pregnant women were gathered like animals to be fed and properly fattened to supply endless blonde haired blue eyed children to the Nazi Regime. The babies would be taken from their mothers and put up for adoption to Nazi families. And sometimes, the babies were never adopted or not adopted for months. And for months those babies sat in nurseries unloved and untouched other than the every four hour feeding and diaper changes required. The worst part...learning that when the child was born, if it had a flaw like a cleft lip it was murdered and the woman who gave birth to the child was told the baby was a stillborn. It was sad to learn that babies were taken from their mothers at birth and adopted out to Nazi families against their will. There were so many more things just wrong about all that went on during this time in history...So much to reflect on and so many questions of how and why...



This book was so good and had such a sweet ending. I loved how it tells the story of a German soldier and his disdain for what the Nazi Regime was doing. There are probably so many untold stories where German citizens had no other choice but to do as the Nazi's demanded ie, giving up their land, businesses, son's, etc... I love how this book tells of a story like this. The untold stories of mother's and the loss of their babies(I don't love that this happened, just love that the story is being told to the world). I don't recall learning it in history class? Maybe I am ignorant, but I just didn't know this actually occurred.





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It's Finally Ours!!

After three months of waiting to close.  We finally did last week!!  We are super excited to fix it up and make it our own!  Now we have plenty of room for all of our visitors, so come down often...pretty please;)

My Baby's Baptism

Choose The Right

Our Parents came all the way down to show their support(My Mom couldn't make it, but she wanted to be here)

Leisa and two of her kids came to show their support.  Leisa is our babysitter.  She helps me with the kids for four hours after the nights I work so I can get a little sleep.  She is so great and the kids absolutely love her!

Bishop Wilson and Spence and Spence with two of the members of the Primary Presidency: Sister Morby and Sister Wilson

Our cute boy on his way into the church with his daddy

Dave calling to make sure I was coming.  The morning was a bit hectic to say the least.  I had gotten up early to cut up all of the fruit and while I was getting Drew finished with dressing we misplaced his tie, then Lila got into my fingernail polish, Drew burned his finger on the iron...it was just hectic, but we made it and we were so happy!  I was there right at ten am(when it started) so I only got a few pics:(  But I think I got some of the most important ones.

Thanks to Mom I have one of Spence in his whites with my dad.  I'm sad I don't have one with him in his whites with them or with his siblings.

A family shot(minus Sissy) after the baptism.

The boys walking back to our place for the grub.

All the cousins

Spence with Uncle Ryan's family

Me and the kids.  I attempted to get a full family shot, but Dave already changed out of his church clothes and...eh...I didn't force another pic on him.

The good eats

A few gifts:  Attitude: The greatest discovery of this generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.

Several books on baptism, a CTR Pin and ring, along with a start to a mission fund!!

We are so so thankful to our family who made it down to support Spencer in his choice to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  We are so proud of him and we are so thankful to our family for the love and support each of them shows us whether in presence or over the phone or through blogs, emails, facebook.  When you stay in touch it keeps us connected and we feel loved by you.