Princess Camp and Other Lovelies

Last week was my first Princess Camp in our new place.  It was adorable and seriously so much fun.  I think my calling in life might be as the Purple Queen, the director of all things Princess Camp.  There were 6 princesses, but some didn't like having their picture taken. Here is a photo dump chronicling our fun week. 

Highlights:

One of the princesses spoke in a British accent the whole time.  When I told the princesses it was time to go inside to our next project she put her wrist against her forehead and was like "Must we go inside Purple Queen?"

We made cupcakes to decorate one of the days.  My older girls (like 5 and 6) were a little apprehensive about cracking the eggs.  Out of nowhere the youngest girl, barely 3 slam dunks her egg into the mixing bowl.  Okay then.

The fact that all the girls loved Erik.  He was home from work one of the days and the girls kept asking me when Prince Erik was going to come play.  When he finally came to visit the British accent girl told him she was going to marry him.  Adorable.

Watching the princesses dance.  Those girls have moves.

On the day of our Pinkalicious Party one of the girls walked in, looked around, sighed, and said "Princess Camp is beautiful".  

So that's what I've been up to.  Next month I'll have cheerleading camp and maybe another princess camp, so be sure and let me know if you're interested. We had a wonderful visit with my brother Alex and his fiance (!) Emily.  I'm contemplating re-doing my closet.  I want to do that thing where you paint it a matte color and then stencil the same color in high-gloss over it, and I am definitely accepting color suggestions.  Come see me, or if you live here lets go out to lunch.  My life has become a little dull without the sparkle of Princess Camp.

Projects

We moved into our new house a month and a half ago.  It's awesome and we are loving it.  My mom flew up and helped us get moved, and we had such great support from the ward, the whole thing went really smoothly.  We're finally all settled in and we're busy making little tweaks to make it feel more like our home and less like someone else's house.

I have a lot of free time this summer.  Headstart ended for the year and so did cheerleading.  The piano recital was last Thursday, and only about 10 of my students are taking summer lessons.  Pretty much the only things I have going on in my life are 9 credits worth of classes, a few piano lessons a week, and taking care of Erik and the house.  In some ways it's really nice, but honestly I'm just not wired for that much free time and I'm going a little bit crazy.  I'm in this strange position where I have a lot more time to blog, and even less than usual to blog about.  Look forward to posts entitled "What I ate for Breakfast"  and "Musings on why the Former Owners of our Home Thought it was Okay to Paint Over Screws Instead of Removing Them from the Wall"  and "Erik vs. the Sprinkler System: the Saga Continues".  I'll be a lot busier in July and August, but this month is looking pretty mellow.  The timing is okay though, because it's given me a lot of time to work on projects.

My first project was the craft room.  I figured this would be a good place to start because its easily hidden if I messed up.  My old craft room was a craft room/guest room and was white and aqua.  My new craft room had light blue and dark blue stripes all over.  I chose a purple color for the walls, but that meant I had to repaint all my aqua furniture.  Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I got the picture frame clock idea from pinterest, which worked out well because it takes up a lot of empty wall space.  Just today I painted the top of the table with chalkboard paint after I accidentally demolished the old canvas top with a x-acto knife.

Before

After.  I feel the need to point out that the paint is actually a really pretty lavender, not brown as the picture might indicate

Erik has been busy working on projects too.  I relented and gave him the go-ahead on the home theater, and I'm really proud of him for how it turned out.  It's pretty cool and adds something fun to our house.  Erik self identifies as "un-handy" but he and his friend Travis did a pretty dang good job building the screen.

See, I helped.  For about 10 minutes before Dance Moms started and I was otherwise occupied.

My family visited this weekend and it was awesome.  I was definitely sad to see them go.  It was so fun to have the house full of people and to spend time with my brother and sister.  In keeping with family tradition, we woke up on Saturday and did yard work.

Whenever my Dad wears the purple sweatshirt it means yardwork.  Just the sight of my dad in that sweatshirt made my little brother cry one summer.

My dad also installed chair rail and wall frames in my music room.  This was a pretty lengthy project that he started in Idaho.  I emailed him the measurements and he made all the cuts, then when he got here we painted and installed the frames.

Before

Still before, but with our stuff in it

In progress

 Yard work and home improvement, some vacation, huh? I also randomly acquired this little beauty from a moving ward member (thanks Jen!), and it was nice to have my dad there to help transport and arrange it.

Final product.  This picture does not capture the loveliness of it all.  It is way classier than Erik and I actually are.

Come visit us.  We'll watch a movie on Erik's home theater and you can help me figure out how to play my organ.

Cruise

One thing that is awesome about working at Headstart is that I have a week-long Spring Break.  Several months ago, before we were planning on buying a house, Erik and I planned to go on a cruise.  After a long night of flying, we were so excited to get to the Florida sunshine!
Here are some of the highlights of our trip:

• The sunshine.  Erik was smarter than me and wore sunscreen everyday.  We've been home almost two weeks and I'm still peeling, but it was well worth it.  I loved laying on the deck reading my kindle and playing on the beach.

Look at that hunk on the beach

• Ummm....the food.  One night Erik ate 4 lobster tails.  I had multiple desserts every night.  Food was everywhere and delicious and someone else cooked and cleaned up after.  amazing.
• We did a lot of fun stuff on the cruise ship.  We went to shows and watched karaoke and even went to a towel-animal folding class.  We can make elephants, manta-rays, and dogs, but got in over our heads when it came to frogs.  

• We didn't have cell service or internet.  While I missed my blogs and my hulu, it felt nice just to have all that undistracted time with Erik.
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• The Bahamas are amazing.  There was one incident where I was pretty sure we were going to get mugged in a taxi, but other than that the stops were so much fun.  The weather was beautiful, the beaches were great, and we had a great time exploring. 



Erik took this picture.  Isn't it awesome?

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Real life is a bit of an adjustment after a cruise.  I keep waiting for someone to make my bed while I'm gone, or maybe offer me 8 different entrees for dinner.  On an unrelated note, we move into our new house a week from tomorrow, so start planning your trip to come see us!

An Interview with Myself

After months of non-eventful blogging, we finally have some news.  We bought a house!  We are so excited.  In order to answer some of the questions my mother has been asking me some frequently asked questions, I thought I would share this interview I am giving to myself from the comfort of my bed as we speak.

SK:  So Shanna, tell us what prompted your decision to start looking into purchasing a home

SK:  Thank you for asking.  I have a longstanding hobby of looking at things on Craigslist that I have no intention of buying, mostly just out of curiosity of what those things would cost.  A few months ago, I looked at houses.  I stumbled on a house that I loved.  I showed it to Erik, just to show him the style I like.  He plugged the home into a mortgage calculator because he wanted me to see how far out of range the house was for us.  The mortgage payment came out to be less than our monthly rent.  We about died.  After looking at that particular house, we realized it wasn't the one for us, but we were officially in the house-hunting game.

SK:  About how many houses did you look at before making your decision?

SK:  Well I scoured the internet every day for two months.  So if we are counting the number of homes that I did "virtual tours" of, then the number is probably between 70 and 100.  If we are only looking at the number of houses we made appointments and went and saw, then 11.  The house we ended up buying was actually the first one we visited.  I was distracted by the Craigslist house, and blew it off.  When we revisited it 10 houses later, I couldn't believe all the things I missed the first time.  

SK:  What did you think of the buying process?  Of making an offer?  Securing financing?

SK:  I loved looking at the homes, and at the beginning I was in charge of finding an agent, setting up appointments, etc.  I really liked our agent, Ryan.  I HATED the offer process.  I was very concerned about offending the current owners, and not compromising enough.  My car-salesman-turned-manager husband did not share these concerns.  In hindsight, I am glad because Erik was awesome and saved us a ton of money.  However it was very stressful and nerve wracking and gave me hives.

Securing financing is the most boring thing ever.  I mostly deferred to Erik on this one, though signing all the papers gave me a great opportunity to practice signing our last name, which I have yet to get the hang of despite approaching 2 years of marriage and 6 months of doodling it in the margins of my notes before that. 

SK: Tell us about your new home.

SK:  We love it.  It is 4 bed/4 bath spread over a finished basement and two floors.  I am excited about the wood floors and the granite counter tops, and also that I will have a designated "music room" for piano and harp lessons.  Erik is excited because the previous owners, who built the house, designed it with minimal home maintenance in  mind so there's lots of little perks like a porch that never has to be restained and sprinklers that don't have to be winterized.

SK:  Sounds great.  When do you move in?

SK:  This is still a little vague.  Sometime between April 6th and April 16th.  Our lease is up on our rental in the middle of April, so this is perfect timing.  My mom is coming to help with the move and I am sooooooooo excited.

SK:  What changes do you foresee making to the home?

SK:  Well.  This is where Erik and I differ.  Ever since the purchase I have been all over home blogs.  I am very interested in beadboard wallpaper (backsplash, counter base), wainscoting,  painting (especially the kids' rooms because they are painted stripey right now), molding (I will need my Dad to come visit for that one), etc.  The color schemes I like have been deemed "old ladyish" by Erik, so this is yet to be determined.  Erik is interested in replicating the home theater that the previous owner have up, but this is lower on my priority list.  Stay tuned for updates where we practice all our marriage compromising skills.   

SK:  Do you happen to have some pictures that you would like to share?

SK:  Why yes I do!  These are some of the pictures taken off the listing website.  I am very excited to get in there and makes the decor a little less masculine.

 Those two are basement photos.  At the bottom of the stairs is the home theater room, which is separated by a half wall from a little built-in office area and wetbar.

 Girls bedroom.  This will be a nursery, because we really do intend to have children eventually.

 I am in need of decorating ideas for the master bedroom.  As you can see, it's kind of two rooms, and I really don't know what to do with it.  Any input would be super. 

 This is the future music room.  See the pretty floors?

 This is the home of my future craft room. 

One of the best parts about this is we will have plenty of room for visitors.  Come see us and help me with a project!

Breakfast

This weekend Erik and I are s this charity fundraiser ran by a former NFL player where a bunch of football players come into town and play basketball against the high school team, go skiing, have an auction, and a bunch of other fun stuff.  Erik and I are hosting two twin linemen.  They look like this:  They are large men.

This morning we went to an event breakfast.  I love breakfast.  I took a little of all the different things that looked good.  Erik and I went and sat down at a table with four linemen.  Mid-meal I look around and realize I am sitting at a table surrounded by professional football players and I have the most food on my plate. 

Erik is so lucky. I am a catch and a half.