Attempting a Charming Kitchen

Last year I happened upon a fun blog called somewhatsimple.com.  Stephanie is the blog author and she has so many cute, low stress, easy to accomplish ideas.  This is one of them. The October Charming Home Challenge.  Each week a different room in the house is given with the challenge to do three D's - Declutter, Deep clean, and Decorate.  The first week was the kitchen, and now that it's the third week, I'm 

finally getting the kitchen done.  Yeah, I'm a little slow.

First I decluttered and deep cleaned every cupboard and drawer in my kitchen.  That alone was a monumental task.  I have a lot of cupboard space, and those babies needed some decluttering and deep cleaning!! 

 

And I made a few changes.  Probably the  biggest was moving the cereal.  For years the cereal has been in the lower cupboard on the lazy susan.  That's where it made sense because it was low enough for the kids, who were the ones who ate the cereal, to reach it without help.  Now the kids are gone.

 

So the cereal is in another cupboard.  My kids kind of hyperventilated  a little bit when they found out I had moved the cereal.  But, hey, you're the ones who left.  You want the cereal back, move back home where you belong. And bring those cute grandkids with you : )

Then I moved on to decorating.  This was just supposed to be something simple like changing up pictures on the wall, so I did that. 

 

This shelf that everyone who sat at the back of the dining table bumped their heads on and then whined about it?  I moved it .  Can you tell where? 


 I also recovered the dining chairs.  Out with the old, tired, spot covered blue - in with a fresh new coral color with white dandelion print.  A brave splash of color for me, but I love it.

And a new burlap table runner, Pottery Barn inspired, that I made for WAY less than the $50 theirs would have cost. : )   I love the simple updates, and I REALLY love the clean, organized, shelves and drawers.  Thanks for the challenge, Stephanie,  I needed it!!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

 

O.K., so the heading to this post is a little misleading.  We had an incident yesterday with a neighbor who did something incredibly mean and I started to blog about it, but decided it wasn't memory worthy.  And, since I had started the blog, I decided I would rather remember this.  

This is Joseph and his cute sister, Anna.  These are sibling photos : )















Joseph and Anna were home schooled.  And their parents policy is, once they get to high school, they can choose to still be home schooled, or to attend public high school.  Joseph choose high school, Anna chose home school.  

 And since Anna isn't at the high school, they couldn't call her out of class for a siblings photo for the year book.  So we took some while I was taken Joseph's round 2, shorter hair senior pictures

 We had so much fun.  They hammed it up and I just snapped pictures - in full sun on the river bridge.  Morning sun, so it was O.K.

 

 See the photo below?  My idea.  Joseph is texting and Anna is reading a book.  Typical of both of the them, and neither one understands what the other one sees in their chosen "what I do with my spare time" occupation.  Joseph wanted a group of girls nearby so people would KNOW he was texting girls.  I said he could bring them, but they wouldn't be in the picture.  Joseph's girls aren't siblings.  Duh!

 At one point I noticed a couple of tourists waiting to cross the bridge.  I said, "Oh, you can go on across,:  They said, "We're just enjoying the show"  It was pretty entertaining.

 But not nearly as entertaining as when we finished and I turned to the tourist couple and said, "Thanks for waiting."  And they said, "No problem."  And then, as they walked past Joseph and Anna, said, "Congratulations you guys."  We could barely contain our laughter until they were out of earshot, and then it was explosive!  I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks, and I said, "Hey, I think we just took practice engagement pictures!" 

 They were such good sports about it.  And It was a good day.  Joseph and Anna were fun, we got lots more great senior shots of Joseph both at the river and at Corona Arch, and it was so nice to see two siblings who got along so well together.  Someday I hope you guys find someone just like each other.  : )  : 0  ; *

Senior Picture Time

Over the past few years I have had a few seniors ask me to take their senior pictures.  Normally they have been young women in my ward who I work with in my ward Young Women's calling.  This year I thought I would dodge that bundle of nerves bullet because there are no senior girls in our ward Young Women's.  But I work with this crazy kid, and I happened to snap this random and not at all posed, kind of junk yard dog looking picture at a stake service project, and he liked it!!  So I got to take his senior pictures.

I was surprised that he knew just what and where he wanted his pictures done.  Guys usually don't care that much. 

 He wanted some in front of an old building.  We found this one at the BLM office near our house. 

 I love the difference colors and textures in the wood.  Especially as the sun started to come up and lit the side of the building. 

Then I noticed some nice back light coming through this lattice fence at the BLM offices,  so I threw him in front of the fence a took a few. I love the prisms of light coming through the lattices. 

 Then we headed to the mountains, because he wanted some pictures in the aspens.  I kind of love the sun flare in this one.  Not a good senior portrait picture since the sun flares across his face, but I keep coming back to it as one of my favorites.

We got some really pretty back light in these.  Don't you love the halo of light around his head in the last one?  I also used a reflector to bounce light back on his face.  First time for me - and it made SUCH a difference.  I edited almost 50 pictures for him in this shoot.  Now he wants to get a hair cut and take some more formally dressed ones.  And I'm asking myself, "What is he going to do with all these pictures?"