Why you should marry a tomboy.

                                                

 So HERE is the reason you should marry a tomboy...you get KICKA gifts from your wife. While everyone else is tryin to fake their smile while they put on their new sweater ....this guy gets to play with his new tools! 
  I got these jacks for Richael about 4 months ago and hid them in the trunk of lucille. It was so hard waiting till Christmas to give them to him. I was so excited!  Richael has been talking about these forEVER now and of course they are 500 dollar gift so he assumed he would never get them.  So much to his suprise....I got him some! ( for a quarter of the price of course...cuz we aient rich).
  Here is a the longer unedited video of Richasl 2012 Christmas gift.

Before and After

 Here is the BEFORE of our hallway...pretty dark and dreary with the bland colors........

 And here is the final FINISHED project.  It brightened the place up sooooo much. 

I did this entire hallway and I am not sure why I was foolish enough to do a hallway with 4 corners on in...but I did.   Now on to the master bedroom!!!

Going Bold

Painted my wall ORANGE...I love orange and I went bold this time....and questioned my decision...but I am LOVING it in the end.  Lots of hard work paid off. (ignore the part that still needs done).

ronnie

Richael: Well, if you go pickout paint colors 2 morro I don't mind picking them out with you. After all, it is probably best since we all know I have great taste and you have terrible taste.

ME: Clearly, YOU have better taste since you ended up with me.  As for me on ther other hand, terrible taste....afterall...I ended up with you.

halloween finishing up

 Thought I outta finish up with a few more Halloween pictures.  Here is the cool nylon mask the dollar store had.  Just have to say that the dollar store has some o the best decor for halloween.

 Here is my other pumpkin.  I was going to do the brain for hospital contest but didn't want to be too gruesome...so I did it for my front porch.

 Thank goodness for Shayla coming over on Halloween so I could split the important responsibility of handing out candy to kids on halloween as well as successfully scare them.  Turns out my coat closet opens up right to the front door.  Whey shayla said the code work "trick or treat" it ment the kids looked old enough that I could jump out and scare them.  And boy were they surprised. 
   There was one kid that I scared when I jumped out behind Shayla....turns out it was Richael.  He was in the neighborhood doing a delivery and stopped by... and I scared him. He threw his candy at me.

Here is a quick little shadow I made for our attic window.  Next year richael wants to put a red light in our attic.  That will be fun.
Anyhow..that is about all for halloween. SO sad it is over.  I was soooo glad I got to hand out candy but I am so sad that I couldnt go trick of treating. 

Halloween Decor

I have a few Halloween decor I got finished this year that I have wanted to get done LONG ago but just now finishing up.

Potion Bottles

Spell Book (didn't turn out quite how I imagines but I am relatively happy with it)

Lastly...we had a pumpkin carving contest at work.  I whipped this little number out..preeetty sure we are taking this one!

2012 Halloween Costume Unveiling

YZMA

 

 

 I was tickeled pink for this costume this year.  It was going to be perfect....but Richael "did not want to be kronk." I have to say my sister Chewy first brought up the idea last year and the wheels started to turn!

 The most important part was the saggy boobs.  HIilarious. I was so proud of how they turned out. I just laughed and laughed and laughed . Giddy beyond belief. lol

He skeltons

Him....  Your lucky

Me...  Why is that?

Him.... Cuz I was going to have all your skeletons posed in suggestive and inappropriate poses when you got home but it wouldn't work cuz I realized their arms dont move.

Me thinking....I don't even want to know what poses required arms. 

funnies

Richael:  I am pretty sure if I had killed you then you would not take me back on the other side.

Me:  I don't know.  Would you have a six pack and a full head of hair? Cuz in that case I might.

Woke up

I kept tossing and turning last night.  Had creepy dreams. I finally woke up after dreaming that some guy broke into the house and was going to rape me .  I woke up and jumped!  I rolled over closer to richael where I felt safer.

Me :  babe I just had a dream someone tried to rape me

Richael just barely awake :  oh so that is how ya feel about what we did last night

Hardy har har. Whitty even in his sleep.  

Coming along

The house is coming along. A little at a time. Next project is curtains. I just barely finished this stencil in the small hallway.  Richael and I picked out the yellow and Richael painted all the yellow while I was at work a few weeks ago.  It is crazy how much brighter and cheerful it is just with the change of paint on the walls. 

Paint is quite easily one of my FAVORITE things because it is so cheap and can just changeup things anytime I feel like it. And recently I have felt very bold. Go with colors other people would never dare to put together. But I love it, it adds challenge

I just knew I had to have orange in the hallway but I needed texture I couldn't just do flat orange.  And as it turns out we had this leftover green paint leftover so I just used it.  I could see it working nicely in my mind and because my mind did not want to go to the paint store and get another color.  I mixed up a bunch of oranges/corals to get the color I wanted.  I am loving it.  ( however I was NOT loving it when I was doing that measely little stencil. Stencils are not forgiving.).

Beauties

I used to have a binder full of all the things that I love and now I am transfering them to my pinterest account and getting rido the binder.  Here are a few of the houses that I saved over the years.  The bottome one is my favorite. So old yet new looking.  Obviously I don't know how to rotate the picture quite yet. 

More Richael Handywork

This was before we moved into the place but you can see how ugly our fireplace used to be.

And thanks to Richaels handywork it now looks like THIS!! Its still not completely done...we still have a couple minor touchups we want to do. But doesn't it look SO much better!

And here is the little story behind it..... (how I got nearly everything for free).

My friend Cindy was remodeling her home. I mentioned how much I LOVED her crown molding and she told me they were getting rid of it!  I asked if I could have it and she said SURE. 

A week later I get a call from Cindy telling me that she forgot to tell the construction guys to save the molding for me and that it was all in the dumpster outside her house if I wanted to go get it.

Of course it was pitch dark outside when she called me so I strapped on my headlamp and went dumpster diving that night and pulled all the scraps out and loaded them in my car. lol.  It hung a good 3 feet outside my trunk.

Course this was LONG before we even had a house and so we stored it in our itty bitty basement home for 7 months. And as it turns out..it was a good thing I hoarded that stuff for so long..we got a headboard and a fireplace mantel out of it!

Yahoo for rich friends who remodel their homes and handyman husbands!

Chewy Weds

My MUCH TOO YOUNG sister got married this weekend but I don't want to let out my true thoughts on the matter.  Look how YOUNG she is.  I just pretend its a prom picture when I look at it to make myself feel better.  I am still in denial that I let her do this at such a young age. 
  As for Lehi., he has had many-a-threats if he ever treats her wrong.  And to those threats I add my own.  If you treat her bad I will kill you...and then with my respiratory skills  I will revive you..only to kill you again. Nobody messes with my chewy. And so help me if you move her hundreds of miles away from me like all my other brother -in -laws did with my sisters.  Much love RONNIE

Regularday

ME:  ahhh...is that muscle I feel?

Richael: NO, thats just me moving my fat around.

little ditty

Forgot to write this little ditty down...so funny.  When Richael was gone day after day after day and working on restoring the piano for me for a surprise this conversation occured between the two of us.

RIchael: I am working on a surprise for you and when you findout what it is you are going to be SOOOOO happy. That is the reason I have been gone so much..is because I am working on your surprise.



Me: Really? Are you impregnating a surrogate mother for me? That is sooo awesome I can't wait! Your the best babe.    lol.

Car converstaion

HIM: "That seatbelt makes your boobs look huge."


ME: "Gee thanks, I will try to make a point to wear it more often."

Love the husband

I was absolutely FLOORED when we were moving into our house and Richael surprised me with this gem.  An antique player piano!! I NEVER in million years woulda ever thought I would EVER own one of my own!! It was such a surprise and so sweet of the boy. He always surprises me when I least expect it. 

The coolest part is that he did all the restoration on it.  It was just an old beatup piano to begin with . It is dated back to around 1910 and it actually was in the original salt city theatre from what I hear. I should take pictures of the inside..so antique and detailed.  I love that I will be able to tell my kids that their Dad fixed it up for me and did all the restoration.  A family hierloom it will be.

The funny part is that I had NO idea what he was doing. All he did was tell me that he was "working on something" and then disappear day after day after day for hours and hours and it was a good month or so long that he was doing it.  If I didn't know he was working on something I woulda  thought for sure he was having an affair, with as much time as he was gone.  The good thing is that he always came home smelling like sweat and covered in dirt and dust so it reassured me that no woman in the right mind was messing around with him. lol .

If people would have just told me that I would get amazing surprises like this if I got married I woulda done it a LONG time ago. Instead they gotta beat around the bush and talk about how fullfilling and loving it is and yadda yadda yadda. jokes. I Love the husband.

Scripture read on a tired RONNIE

Richael and I were reading scriptures last night...here is a passage I read out loud on my sleepy brain

"For in the days of our sorrow did your mother beat you".  (it was supposed to say bear you). lol

oh to be creative

Blessings

We've been saving for the house for a while now. We were very excited to have the low interest rates as well.  We felt luck to be able to get a 3.75% loan but just yesterday we were able to lock in at 3.50%. I was soooo happy that we were able to get that rate.  So much better than we even planned and we felt soooo extremely blessed.  Our goal was to have our house payments about the same as our rent payments give or take.  So lucky are we because with the new interest rate our house payment will be even less than our rent payments ! So blessed and I am not even sure why sometimes.

It finally happened!!

As I am sure you already heard from fbook...we got the house!! yahoo!! Super excited. Here are a few pictures from the posting so you can see the inside/yard. So we really are blessed to get this house and it is really cool how things have fallen into place for us and how all the times that things seemed to go wrong on our house hunt turned out to be in our favor in the end.

For example.  We went through three agents and couldn't find one so we just decided to do the work ourselves out of frustration.  That made the selling agent really want to work with us and get our offer in because he makes a better profit.

We called on just the right day.  There was already an offer the bank had accepted but the guy who made the offer couldn't get the financing so the house was on the market again. We called on the house the next day and made our offer the same so that we could avoid going through the entire process again and pretty much just pickup where the last guy left off. This made our short sale about a month long process rather than 4-6 months.

Getting finanacing was a pain and we had to completely start over at square one when we didn't find a house withing the first few months. But we acutally ended up using anther finance company and ended up getting a better rate because of it!

(Please note this kitchen has a dishwasher...big improvement from my last one!)

From Jan to April we practiced living off just my paycheck and putting ALL of Richaels into savings.  This helped us budget out better and we were able to save more for our downpayment and afford a nicer home. And wouldn't you know that Richael is currently out of work but we are not even worried because we planned for hard times and we know that we can live off my income for now because we have been doing it for months.  

 The house has an unfinshed basement so we only have what we need now and it leaves room for us to grow.  Currently 2bed 2bath but can grow into a 4bed  3 bath. And lucky for us, Richael has done remodeling and sheetrock before. So we should be able to finish our basement at a fraction of the price.

Our goal was to have our house payment  about the same as our current rent payment and we were able to do that with this house.  Such a blessing .

CONVERSATION

We were about to say our night prayers on Monday night this was the conversation

Richael: Your turn to pray. And this time can you do it with the same amount of faith that I put into my prayers?

Ronnie: What is that supposed to mean?

Richael: Well on Sunday night I prayed that the bank would get back to us and on Monday and that is exactly what happened. That is called faith.

Ronnie: Oh BLAH!

And of course the most exciting part of it all is that I MIGHT be able to get a garden in in time and I most CERTAINLY WILL get my hammock up.

Textured wall paper

My sister called and wanted me to buy a house so we could split the cost on wallpaper. I thanked her for the kind rudeness of her reminder of my lack of home. Then I was totally offended that she would think I would EVER consider wallpaper. Then she told me about 20 min worth of why this wallpaper was worth it. I probably listened for half the time and then said...ah NO THANKS.

But today I googled it and WOW! She had told me it was painted to look like the real thing...but she did not mention it was TEXTURED. I am a TEXTURE FREAK!!! So ya..its TEXTURED wallpaper to mimick beadboard or whatever. Good ol martha stewart collection. Anyhow just had to share. (not sure if above pic is marthas work but the below is)

The combination of the possibilities and the affordability are KILLING ME!! If only I could have a place to do this for myself.

A whole lotta nothing

Feel like I should blog. Not that I have much to say but here is a little update on my whole lotta nothing. Long story short...put offer on house. Agent tells us that price is already pre approved so it should move throught very quickly... "by next week" and then a week goes by. "By next week" another week goes by. "In a couple of days" another week goes by. And here we stand ...still in our little rat cave. Our current place is not that bad at all, but since we have seen what we could have and we have tasted the sweet we tend to think of it as bitter. I am chompin at the bit to have a yard, to plant a garden, to plant flowers, to put up my hammock. (I know the story gets sadder and sadder). Have I mentioned how much I want a dishwasher or to have actual sunlight penetrate my windows instead of looking out to see asphalt driveway above me? But on a good note...Richael has finished another semester of school! Yahoo! Only 4 more years to go. I know that seems long but in the grand scheme of things it is a beautiful thing! We are really hoping that by next summer he can have an intership in his field. I am just realizing that as I type this information the heading that this is all typed under is entitled "A Whole lotta nothing." and i just want to emphasize that that does not pertain to Richael and his current schooling status. Poor Richaels school status just happened to follow my recent rambling post.

Our new little addition

Been saving my allowance money for 9 months now. Finally my day came....a new dyson vacuum!! Not to mentiong I got a brand new on off KSL and talked the guys down..so I got a rocking deal. So happy for our new little addition..the dyson.

Flattery

Richael. " I love you"

Me. "you don't love me; you love my body."

Richael "not true. I love you for you money making abilities too. "

Such a flatterer he is.

Chewy

March Madness is on. The McDonald Girls will be doing their yearly repenting after the whole thing is over. That is right...we succomb to the worldly ways and there will be gambling. And to celebrate the event...Chewy made this AWESOME Picture of us all together. I simply can't get enough of it. lol.

So I Lied

So I lied..I Said I was cutting back on crafts... I Said I don't have room...I Said I needed to focus on other things......but that was before I saw THIS!!!!

So cute and perfect and easypeasy! I can hardly wait! Here is the link

http://www.honeybearlane.com/2012/02/basketweave-quilt-pattern.html

Shout out to the man

I gotta say...I love having a handyman around. Our washer decided to flop a couple weeks back. We
suspected the worst after visiting some online tutorials. But lucky for me Richael was able to tear into that thing like a lion does his carcass (see picture below).  He was able to save us some good moola and it was so nice to have that extra hundred dollars in the bank rather than forking it into a washer.


Here is the picture I took.  The best part is that the entire time he was convinced that I was taking it of his butt crack and it kept me entertained through the next few hours. I would just walk in and make the sound of my phone take a picture and watch him flip out and call me a jerk.  Sure was fun.

Music alert

I am ashamed that I have taken so long to blog about one of my VERY FAVORITE country artists...RANDY HOUSER. Both of his albums are amazing!! He has this lowdowncountrytwang that I just can not get enough of. And more important than anything in a good album is his variety and his ability to change from a slow to a fast song to a totally different genre. I just love this guys cds. He is supposed to have another out sometime this summer and both Richael and I are giddy for it. ANyhow one of my favorites is "boots on." First time I heard it on the radio 3 years ago I just Had to know who this amazing singer was. So here he is RANDY HOUSER.

Headboard Remix

So I quickly decided that I didn't like the way I painted my new headboard...so I repainted it...again. ANd I like it MUCH better now. Walla! So much better.

CONVERSATION

I love the things that Richael and I say.   I need to write more o them down.  Here is a funny from tonight.

RONNIE: Do you want some soybeans or are you scared they will make you less of a man. (he read that they have estrogen and lower testosterone last week).

Richael: No thanks, and  I am already less of man being married to you.

Ronnie:Whatever, you are MORE of man because of me.

Richael: Not so

Ronnie: Babe, without me you are just a thirty year old virgin.

Richael: Thirty year old virgins are way under rated.


 

more headboard inspiration

I debated if I really wanted to post these headboards on my post because it makes mine look less cool...but I just LOVED THEM.

Fireplace Mantel gone headboard

So my bball friend Cindy was remodeling her home.  She had some beautiful crown molding she was throwing out and she said I could have it.  I decided I wanted to make a headboard out of it.  But then she called and said that I could have the fireplace mantel too!  Well as it turns out the fireplace mantel was the perfect size for a queen bed....so we used it instead. I thought I was the first to do it...but after I googled it I found out I was NOT the first. But It is our own design. I didn't see any others like it.

And viola!! With some help form the husband we got ourselves a free new headboard!! Yahoo!! I am sure I will eventually change the white color to a cream but given the size of our house I wasn't conducive to paint the whole darn thingl

And while I was at it I finished distressing Richaels dresser that I bought him off KSL before we got hitched. thought I would throw that pic in too. 

A Classic that should never be lost.

                                  Some pictures don't need captions.  Ronnie and Chewy.

McDonald Fam Christmas 11 part du'

This is what happens when ya leave Ronnie home to babysit your kid.  I was so proud of this.

Pretty sure that Richael got a little jealous of all the attention I gave brooklynns mohawk so he made his own.

Family is family...and we share underwear when we are in need. Here is Chewy in Kris's high fashion granny pants.  I said...ya its so big you could tuck your sweater in it...and so we did. 

 This is Kris broken finger. Nearly peed my pants laughing every time I saw it.

And here is Dads broken toe.  It can pretty much move around like a pull'n peel twizzler candy.

Here is Chewy in her ugly sweater and the matching ugly Christmas socks I got her for Christmas.  Complete with the eighties ponytail and side laugh. We should have tucked her jeans in.

I put Brooklynn in this oversized oldmans shirt.  Bobo hated it because it makes brooklynn look like a man.

I also gave Brooklynn this African updo. 

So long story short Christmas was fun but the funnest part was reliving my childhood  and playing dressup with dolls.  Except Brooklynn was the doll.