The DOOR OF DEATH: A tribute to my husband

 So, This is a picture of my latest hair brained idea come to fruition.  (I wish I had a "before" picture!!!!)  I thought, "Hmmm...  I need a coat rack. Why not make one out of an old door?"  (Not an original an idea as I thought.  Apparently its all over the place.) Seemed simple, and it should have been.  I found an old  door for $5.  All I was hoping to do was prime it, spray paint it, drill and screw the hooks in and it would be finished in a few hours, like my other projects.  But my $5 door turned into a six week process of misery because it had 5 layers of chippy gooey weird paint  that would have been impossible to use bonding primer.  I also did not take into account my miserable state of pregnancy (About 8 months along).  Now enters my sweet husband. 

All I asked him to do was move the door to the backyard so I could get started on sanding or something.  I left it there and it mocked me from the grass for over a month as I thought of ways to avoid the now not-so-easy daunting door of death.   Devin nicknamed it the Gate of Hell. 

I went out one night with some friends while Dev stayed home with the kids.  I came home to a bunch of bags from Lowe's filled with Paint stripper, drill attachments for sanding, special gloves, etc. etc. that he had bought.  The next Saturday he took it upon himself to strip the five layers of paint for me.  It was so bad that it took more than a week to get everything off to a position where I could re-paint it.  Some nights I went to bed early only to find that he had stayed up all hours of the night sanding down the gooey sludge for me.  I have to reiterate that I never even really asked him to help in the first place and he usually just leaves me to do my crafty things on my own because, well, they are MY crafty things after all.  :)

So, today the Gate of Hell was finally finished after I bought a little storage bench at target, re-lined the padding with fun fabric, added some bows I made, and threw together a wreath thingy.  I owe it all to him, because I literally couldn't have done it without him. 

I guess what I am really trying to say is that this door represents a lot more to me than just a coat rack.  It says that he loves me...  He REALLY loves me.  :)  That's all I see when I look at it.

Thanks babe.  You really are the most perfect man for me, and I love you. 

My first big furniture project

My parents are remodeling, so they are getting rid of a lot of their old furniture. This was my Grandma's hutch when my mom was little. Even though I have no place to put it yet, I'm super excited to place it when I get my own kitchen/dining room or whatever. I decided to do white paint and black glaze to bring out the cool yellow bottle windows. I repainted the hardware with black spray paint. I lined the background with foam board and fabric so I can change it depending on my mood.. ha ha! I'm questioning the heavy black design and might change it to a lighter red and white or a blue and white pattern. We'll see. It is super easy and cheap to switch out.

Getting Crafty

My friend has an amazing quilting blog, and making custom trick or treat bags was one of her more recent projects. I made these this week for the kiddos. It was really fun and remotely easy.

You can't really see it in the pic, but the spider wrote Tyson's name in his web.

Conference Weekend Fall 2011

The whole Utah Hemmert clan sojourned up to Midway for general conference weekend. We stayed in a camp trailer at our cabin, Dan and Nat stayed in the cabin with our parents, and Matt and Julie and Jaime and Jared stayed in a Chalet at the Zermatt. It got chaotic at times, but after looking at the pics, we did a lot of stuff and atleast the kids had a lot of fun!! ha ha!




The colors were amazing up there!


After a disappointing dinner at Cafe Galleria (they didn' make us pay, thank heavens), we had a Halloween party during priesthood session. "Someone" stole the cookies and the kids were sent on a scavenger hunt to find them again. Super fun.






Baby Jess


Yummy peanut butter fingers with pretzel bones inside! Thanx Julie!!




My brother Dan organized soap boat races in the little river behind the chalet.





There is some serious engineering going on here...




The finish line!! We think Anson won... We lost a couple of boats to the waterfall, and Tyson's leaf sail flipped the boat... He was pretty upset.



That night we had dutch oven stew and pear-cranberry upside down cake. Then the boys had fun on the rope swing.

Easter

Easter egg hunt Saturday morning. Holly loved hunting for Easter eggs. When her basket was full, she sat down in the middle of the field and downed all of the contents in .52 seconds. It was amazing.



Sporting their new Easter bonnets...




On Sunday, the Easter bunny left a little egg on our front porch after church. He lost our Easter baskets and he sent us on a scavenger hunt! ;) Tyson had a blast reading the clues while Holly ran in circles around the trees.

He found one egg at the top of the slide.


The giant munchkin attacks the kitty.



Playing peekaboo

Grandma and Grandpa's Easter treats.

MBA GRAD

Finally tall enough!