Sterling's room - all the stages

The owner's before us Loved pink with a capital L. I'm not a hater on the color pink but there was so much pink in our house (they must of had multiple girls) that I was on pink overload. Being the only female in my house, pink is quite rare. Maybe I will have a better appreciation for it if I ever have a daughter myself. This room was chosen for Sterling so it needed a major makeover. A big thank you to Mark Miller who barely knew us at the time but came over to help us paint this room so we could get moved in quicker. A true blessing!

Before:

The stages of his room. Green walls. Trees painted. Crib in. Perfect for a one year old.

Owls and bird houses up. Big boy bed. Perfect for a two - three year old.

 

New curtains. Bunk Beds (minus a mattress we need for the bottom). Perfect for an almost four year old.

I raised all the curtains in our house as high as they can go just below the crown molding (IKEA curtains are made really long which is awesome) and it makes such a big difference. It makes the window look much larger when you give it a larger frame. You can see the difference from the brown curtains to down below.

We threw a little baby mattress on the bottom for a little reading nook. We have had our whole family on that mattress reading books together in the evening. It means a lot to Sterling when we are all below together.

Look at all the fun that can be had now! Sterling is loving that he can hang and climb in his own room. I'm pretty sure he thinks we gave him a jungle gym. A great tip for bunk beds is to take a fitted sheet and put it on the top mattress on the bottom side so you don't see the underside of the mattress. I obviously have not used my own tip on this one yet. I'm getting there...

Eventually Justin and I would love four our boys to bunk together. I have some fun ideas/themes to use for the boys once they are roommates. So, in the next year(ish) I'm sure you will see this room again looking totally different. I know you probably think I'm crazy but I always do things on the cheap...promise! :) After the difficulty of transitioning Sterling into a big boy bed we have decided to keep Boone in his crib as LONG as possible. He hasn't tried climbing out yet, phew! I just love the thought of them sharing a room. It will be interesting to see how much they play, talk and switch beds with one another - I remember doing that all with my sister. Sibling memories are the best.

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A baby shower - Kinsleigh Hope

Baby Jenkin's #5 will be here soon! Kinsleigh Hope is due at the end of June and will be incredibly loved by her family! She has no idea how much lovin' she is about to receive, how special! We were able to throw a brunch bird/tree themed baby shower for Kristy that matches her nursery. She received a lot of sweet things and it was another wonderful party with wonderful girls and wonderful food!

This was 'make a baby' out of play doh game. Total fail on my part and I really had high hopes of being creative! :)

I found this little bird at Goodwill for a couple of bucks...couldn't resist buying it for the utensils.

and a quick pic of her nursery...

So sweet! Come on baby girl...I'm ready to meet and hold you!

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Monday's

Monday is my favorite day of the week. It didn't use to be all that great and I used to prefer Friday with Saturday being a runner up but now Monday's include this:

1. The Mr. has the day off of work! He has switched from his M-Th work schedule to a T-F work schedule. Our three day weekend is just a little switched around now but 3 days is 3 days and I love that we spend close to half the week together.
2. MOPS meets on Monday's. I am in my third year at UPPC MOPS and love the time I get to spend with my table of mom's and mentor mom's and look forward to either a great guest speaker or a fun craft with over two hours of childcare....oh and coffee and a lot of food. Saweeet!
&
3. Life group!! This is the highlight of our week.We meet here at our house every Monday night and get to experience community with one another. We love every single person that walks through our door and feel so privileged to have these amazing folks in our house to share a meal with and talk about the Lord. They seriously bless us.

Here is our back deck on a Monday night:

Every Monday I am delighted to see so many chairs that are going to be filled up. I anticipate everyone coming over all day long. At about 3:00 I'm ready for people to arrive but it doesn't start till 6:00 so I have to occupy myself so I don't get too anxious. :)

We just got done studying Philippians for 12 weeks and now we are discussing the Sunday night sermons more in depth for the next 4 weeks and will start another 12 week series in June.

This last Monday night we focused on these verses:
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-47

They were devoted to teaching, to fellowship, they prayed together and took care of each others needs and they shared meals with one another. What a beautiful picture of community. The last verse struck me last Monday night. "And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." That is my prayer for our Life group! If you have yet to experience a community like the verses describe in Acts, know you are welcome in our home on Monday nights!

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a table for two

Justin and I have had this sweet little table our whole marriage. It used to be our only table in our home. It suited us nicely. Now it's our boys table. They eat most of their meals here together passing food, giggling and making faces to each other. I love it. We decided to give it a little makeover. Of course I gave it a makeover...what don't I makeover? I guess when you live a life of "attic living" and take any hand me down furniture from anyone to fill your home, most things need a little re-vamping!

So I of course painted it white. I just love white paint and always have some on hand. I always recall a conversation I once had with our neighbor girl when I think of white paint. I was outside painting a dresser white and she said "why did you choose that color?" I told her that I liked how light and airy it was. She straight up told me "it is boring and you should have probably gone with pink." I found myself defensive and starting to debate the little one on color choices. I soon stopped myself remembering that she was 3. Haha. What three year old girl wouldn't choose pink!?

After it was all dry I free handed our wedding date and the word 'love'. I grabbed some sand paper from the garage and roughed up the whole table and then added two coats of polyeurothane (similar to polycrylic but it has a yellow tint to it and seems a little more durable to scratches from dinnerware and squirrely boys).

I love that I still have our first table almost 7 years later. I hope to continue adding special dates on and around the table. I can already see it being passed on to a daughter in-law that would think it was pretty special...okay I'm getting ahead of myself!

Happy Crafting!

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the best job in town

Being a mom. It definitely has it's ups and downs like most jobs do but with my job, well I get to train up little warriors that by the end of the day give me hugs and kisses, snuggle and call me "mommy." I feel so loved and blessed by my family and am very grateful that the Lord has entrusted me with two great little boys that will someday be men. At times I fear that I will mess up or miss something in my parenting but I remember that God is love and if all I do is give them love then I show them God. Easier said than done. God's grace is so abundant and I need every ounce of it. I have a really really great job. To watch them grow and explore together every single day is quite the blessing that I wouldn't trade for the world. And seriously to have the greatest man at my side to train these little boys up with is ridiculously awesome. My cup is running over!

My boys really blessed me on mother's day. Sterling knew something special was happening because he sung me happy birthday once or twice :) This is how the day went...

Woke up to a LARGE pancake with smiley faced bacon and coffee :)

"back off of my bacon!"

Daddy said it was mom's day and they needed to give me a little space. So they sat five feet from me and read books. Love it.

We went to the beach for a couple of hours

Then I went to lunch with my Grammy, mom and my sister to get our grub on and celebrate together.

My sister and I! Glad we get to mother together!

Then I came home to flowers...I love tulips! Thank you boys! Sterling was really excited about giving them to me.

We then trekked on to church and snapped a quick picture afterwards at home. You like how I'm straining in this pic? They are 70 lbs together...thank God for hips to plop them on! :)

AND THEN they surprised me with these! What in the world? You would of thought these were requested, right? Not at all. This was all Justin and the boys on their own! They went to Nordstrom's and scanned all the rain boots while I was away in Boise. Our backyard often requires rain boots because of all the mud. Now we all have a pair! We have had such great weather and will be for awhile but I can't wait for the first rain to give them a try :)

I hope all of you mom's out there had a blessed Mother's day. I recently read THIS article at Rage Against The Minivan and it just knocked my socks off. You should give it a read if you have the time. Us mom's have a really tough job and we tend to make it even tougher on each other by criticizing one another's parenting styles. Really all of these mommy's wars we wage are pointless and we should really focus on the kids that don't experience love and have parent's. I love how the picture at the bottom of the article says it all "let's stop quibbling about what competent mother's are choosing for their kids, and step it up for the kids that don't have one." The article really got me thinking on Mother's day and it has challenged both Justin and I to not even discuss the things parents do that are different than are parenting style and focus and pray for the kids that don't get to experience family. Perspective perspective perspective. It get's me every time!

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for the love of coffee filters

15 glue sticks + 600 coffee filters + white spray paint + leftover burlap scrap for a ribbon= a $5.00 and three hour lamp makeover. I bought this lamp at least five years ago at Goodwill in Salem, OR for a few dollars and it desperately needed a makeover. This took a lot of folding, a lot of gluing accompanied by many applications of burn cream and Phineas and Ferb band aids on almost all of my fingertips but totally worth it. It's a little frilly for the living room but I'm okay with that :) How fun to put this in a little girls room someday!

Kind of nice to get rid of the 70's look and to enlarge a lampshade that was once too small for the size of the lamp base. I am lovin' the new look. Also I am thinking of painting that side table white and distressing it eventually. Fun project! Happy Crafting, friends!

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book review

"Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.

Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us.

Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle." -http://heavenisforreal.net/

I just finished this book and LOVED it. This book really hit home for me as Colton is one month shy of being 4 as he retells his experience in Heaven and Sterling is one month shy of being 4 right now (who also went through surgery), so hearing the details of heaven from a child this age is shocking. By the time I was finished I found myself with more hope and excitement to one day experience God's greatness, the colors and beauty of heaven, the family members and friends that are missed and His indescribable love for His children. I believe this book will give you a new eternal perspective on your every day life and a new glimpse of heaven. I think it's a must read!

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Boone's room - all the changes

I often forget how awful the colors were in our home before we purchased. There was definitely some little girls that lived here and loved pink! I love that paint is such a dramatic makeover and one of the most inexpensive makeovers. I still can't believe we used about 50 gallons for this house...and counting :) Here is Boone's room (originally a guest bedroom before he came along) from August 2009 to May 2012.

It went from HOT PINK....

To BLUE STRIPES and lots of GREEN...

To a little more SIMPLIFIED room with a little more WHITE and a little less green. Just switching out his dark curtains and taking away the busy bumper made the room much more peaceful. I am loving the change. Look at that curly headed little baby in his crib. He loves his bed!

And his birdie mobile is still going strong. We have lost 2 birds over the past 18 months...not too bad for a little boy that can bat at it. He loves his birds!

I made this bird mobile before he was born and it was a free project using leftover scrap fabric and branches from the yard. I recently made one of these mobiles for my friend Kristy who is having a baby girl (and baby #5...amazing) and she saw that it sold on Etsy for $168! Who pays that much for a mobile?! Maybe I need to go into that business! 

I hope you all have a blessed Mother's Day weekend! If you live on the West coast we are having amazing weather this weekend...we are heading to the beach in about 30 minutes! Woohoo for the sunshine and weather that is above 65 degrees! :)



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no girls allowed

Look at this rugged little play house that my husband whipped up this winter! This is all scrap wood that we had laying around the house and leftover window and roofing from a family members project. I am awaiting summer so I can let this little beauty dry out and give it a coat of paint and decorate. I am thinking a set of antlers off the front with maybe some flannel curtains and a cute sign somewhere on it.

Question is: what color should I paint it OR should I stain it?? Also, any good ideas for a sign?  I was thinking something rustic with their names on it. Or maybe it needs a sign like this....

...minus the skinny dipping :)

Any and all suggestions are appreciated!

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Pillow Talk

{this post is from last year leading up to Christmas but I am going to start transferring some of my crafting posts from my personal blog over to the olive grove...so many of you have already seen this post. And sorry the pictures are so bad...it is when my camera was going down hill fast!}


I wanted to get a little crafty this year (2011) with some of my Christmas gifts. We drew names for Christmas and we ended up with lots of ladies to buy for (meaning I had the perfect excuse to get crafty.). I stood in line for about an hour and a half two months ago at JoAnn Fabrics to buy 7 yards of burlap on sale along with a mass amount of tulle to make tutus for my niece Paige (I will have to show you a picture of the red one I made for her - so cute). It was way too long of a wait but it was worth it in the long run. By the way, did you know that burlap comes in many colors? I always thought of it as just the brown potato sack color but it comes in creams, greens and red at JoAnn's. Fun Fun. I had a craft night with my mom a few weeks ago and we busted out these five pillows together. Her sewing skills are greatly appreciated! I use a yard of burlap or so per pillow and stenciled with fabric paint. Pretty self explanatory.

This pillow was for my mother in-law. Jim and Andrea Officer, established in 1975

This one was for my sister in-law. Justin and Lisa, established in 2009

This was for my cousin Meg. Jeremy and Meg, established in 2003.

This one was for my other cousin Hailey. Tim and Hailey, established in 1998.

...and this last one was just for fun! It was inspired by Pinterest with some altering by me.

Here are all the beauties lined up. It feels so good to craft! I love that each pillow is different. When I craft these I just start stenciling with nothing planned or measured out. I love using leftover scraps and stenciling without measuring out the spaces between (it takes way less time...unless you mess up that is!) I hope all you ladies out there enjoy your monogrammed anniversary pillows! Love you all!

Happy crafting!

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