A classified tour of my home

No, I don't live in a top secret location. By classified, I mean the 'the classifieds.' My favorite place to shop. Every time I am in the market for something, I check the classifieds first. And sometimes it's just all about waiting and eventually I will get it off the classifieds. Right now I wanting a parachute-an old one like the kind you played with in elementary school. I just want one.

The ksl.com classifieds are awesome, it's a much better user interface (programming term-my hubby would be so proud) than Craigslist, but I have bought a few things off Craigslists.

So here's a few of the things I've bought. If I remember how much I paid I will mention it, but I don't remember the prices on most things.

The Couch. $200. It's from Pier 1

The kitchen table. And the French doors. (It wasn't a standard size opening, but yes I found them on the classifieds. Wahoo!)

The Fridge and Pendant lights.

I don't remember how much the fridge was, but I do know it is the most expensive thing I've purchased off the classifieds. And the pendant lights were $20 for both.

All the pendant lights I wanted were like $100 each. I am way too cheap for that. So I got the pendant lights until I can find some for a great deal at NPS or something.

The oven and cooktop.

I originally purchased a double oven electric range, but then decided I wanted an electric oven and a gas cooktop. So I sold the range I bought, made a little bit of money off it and then bought an electric oven and gas cooktop. When we went to put in the gas cooktop it was too deep to fit above the oven. So back to the classifieds, I sold the one I bought and then bought the one I now have for $50.

The Dishwasher $50

And the kitchen sink.

It was brand new. It's deep and it has these grates in the bottom of them. At first I thought I wouldn't use them, but I love them. The faucet isn't from the classifieds, it's from eBay. I love that thing!

But wait, there's more.

The dresser $50 and the cute Pottery Barn bedding on the boys beds.

I refinished the dresser and put on new handles. I love the modern look of it. Clean and simple.

My bed.

Not the mattress. The bed frame. I thought about buying a mattress off the classifieds, but the idea made me a little nervous, so we ordered one off Overstock.

There's more of course, like my camera. I have sold things on the classifieds, but I mostly buy things. We need to finish a bedroom and a bathroom in our basement, so there's plenty more to come. I know, I know- I am completely obsessed with finding great deals.

Making life easier

A couple of years ago I remember reading a blog post where the person mentioned that they learned that you can broil things in the oven. Hmm, that's weird, I thought. I've been doing that since I was seven. Maybe she grew up with a gas oven. Anyway, it got me thinking about all the things, tricks and gadgets and such, that other people know about that I am oblivious to that would make my life easier.

Here's just a few kitchen gadgets that make my life easier.

1.

**An apple slicer**

Most of you have probably use one of these, but Chad had never seen one until we were married. Now he owns his own and keeps it at work.

2.

I love these plastic bottles. I own a bunch. Right now I have five of them in my fridge full of homemade snow cone syrup. I need to use the syrup up and get those bottles out of the fridge until next summer.

I love these bottles because I can use them to do creative cooking by making fancy designs on plates or making shaped pancakes. So fun.

But a more practical use for them is I put sour cream in them. By doing that we use a lot less sour cream then if we were to use a spoon to dollop it on top of our food. (And of course I am not just about things being practical- you can also make fancy designs on top of the food! Like spiderwebs in tomato soup, etc...)

3.

I love my kitchen scissors. Kitchen Aid brand kitchen scissors to be exact. I own two of them because one of them is always in the sink or the dishwasher. I can't think of all the things I use them for right now, but I did use a pair of them this morning to cut my kids rolled up crepes into bit size pieces. Oh, and of course we almost always use them to cut up chicken.

4.

Can you tell what this thing is?

It's a velcro cord keeper. I am easily annoyed by untamed cords. Mostly because I keep all my small kitchen appliances on a lazy susan and if there is a rogue cord, it cause problems. I use to just use rubber bands to keep the cords in check, but they would always break. Then one day I found these things at NPS and I was a happy girl. I have also been able to find them at Home Depot and I've seen them at Lowe's.

5.

I love, love, love this knife. I use it every. Single. Day. I was going to write a Favorite Things Friday post about it, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Chad gave me this knife a couple of years ago for Mother's Day. It's a J.A. Henckels Santoku knife. J.A. Henckels makes this knife out of different kinds of steel. This particular version of the knife is made out of more expensive steel and it has an awesome soft handle. And of course Chad had to buy the knife made out of the more expensive steel because the steel is manufactured in Solingen, Germany. Chad live in that particular city when he served his mission. Cool, huh? I am glad he had an excuse to go for the more expensive steel because this knife is AWESOME!

My sister has one of these knifes too and she is afraid to use it because it's so sharp.

6.

And the last little gadget that makes my life easier that most of you haven't heard of. Or you have seen it, but don't own one. It's a must have too. Everytime somebody sees me using it they ask me about it. It's an Ulu knife. I first heard of these things when I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Alaska. It's an Iniut knife. I randomly used one when I was growing up and after I got married (Chad gave me one for a gift. Hmm, apparently Chad likes to give me sharp things.)

Because of kids, it's another thing I use every. Single. Day. It makes cutting up food for kids soooooooooooooooooooooo easy. I wouldn't want to live without it. And my current one is starting to fall apart because it has a wooden handle and I stick it in the dishwasher, even thought I shouldn't. It's lasted eight years, not too shabby. And I just picked up a brand new one, still in the package, and the Goodwill in Seattle. Awesome souvenir!

So, what have you got that will make my life easier??

Root beer

Last weekend over Memorial Day weekend we had a barbecue with Chad's family Sunday night and then my family Monday night. Our contribution to the gatherings was homemade rootbeer. I haven't had it for a long time and it was delicious.

And of course it was a lot of fun!





We don't drink a lot of soda at our house. But we drink it sometimes and our drink of choice is root beer. (At least the little boys and my drink of choice.) Root beer is a must with pizza.

And not just any root beer with do. I hate Barq's. Not just because it has caffeine, you can get it in caffeine free, it just tastes too much like cola to me. My favorites are-

3. A&W
2. Mug
1. Howie's



Have you heard of Howie's? Mmmmmm, it's good. It's a Utah product and I am pretty certain you can only get it here. It reminds me of some Saturday mornings growing up. My parents would wake us up early to do yardwork and then after a trip to the landfill we would stop at Carmack's and have their delicious spudnut rolls and root beer in frosted mugs for breakfast. Awesome breakfast, huh? We didn't do it often, but I loved it.

I recently read a newspaper article that said rootbeer is making a comeback and it just got me thinking about how much I love it. It's one of my favorite things and I decided to be a dork and write a post about it.

Little things

A new neighborhood friend of mine came over the other day to see my house. She is in the process of remodeling hers, so she was very interested in mine. She asked me what my favorite parts of my house are. Although making all the decisions and spending the money drove my up the wall, I feel sooooo lucky that we were able to remodel the house. Most of my favorite things about the house aren't things that we did, they are things the house already had, we just made them look a little better.

So, here's my favorite things about my house.

I love this beam on the ceiling in between the dining room and the front room.  Silly I know, but it adds architectural detail to the house.

We tore down the wall in between the dining room and the living room and I requested we make the separation on the ceiling between the dining room and the kitchen look the same as the other beam.  My dad helped us figure out how to do it and suggested we put fluorescent lights up and inside the kitchen side of the beam.  I was opposed to any type of fluorescent light in the kitchen but I'm glad my dad conviced me on this one.  I like the extra light.

I love the doors that are original to the house.  They've been pained pink, yellow, aqua, and white.

 In the boys room I had sheet metal cut to fit inside the panels and glued them up on the inside of the door.  (Look at those cute magnetic christmas trees with numbered ornaments to countdown to Christmas.  My sister gave them to the boys.)

I love the hinges on the doors.

The hinges had been painted over a couple of times.  I liked them because of the little ball on the top and the bottom.  To replace them would have been at least $12.00 each, so I stripped them and painted them to match the doorknobs we bought.  Yes, a little crazy but I am pleased with the results.

We haven't gotten to finishing this yet, but when we do it will look like the picture on the right

A cool way to use the under the sink space, so I don't have to have my blow dryer and hair straightener out on the counter.

This is the end cabinet in my kitchen.  See my cell phone?  It's charging and it's not out on the counter.  I sometimes drive Chad crazy with my obsession to hide cords, but he thinks this cabinet is pretty nice too.

Or course I love my fireplace and mantle.  We have yet to have a fire in it, but soon we will.

I love the big windows.  In my aunt's basement we only had windows on the west side, so no morning sun.  I love and need the sun in the morning, so I love the windows at our house now.

I love the play area for the kids.  I was so excited when we looked and the house and knew we could do this.  The boys don't play in it much, so I need to figure out what toys to put in it.

And this is one of Jack's favorite parts of the house.  Jack thinks these pull out cabinets (one on each side of the oven) are ladders to get on the counter. He gets mad when I put things in them.

Sleeping

Hands down my absolute favorite thing to do is sleep. I love, love, love it. I can never get enough. Maybe it has something to do with these little guys- Okay, that's not fair. It's not all their fault. Anybody who reads my blog knows that I am somewhat of an insomniac. Many nights I can't sleep. Some nights after I wake up and can't fall back to sleep, I move out to the couch.
It takes me forever to fall asleep, unless of course I sit down in the middle of the day or I lay on the floor and play with the boys. Some nights I just watch Chad fall asleep in almost seconds and I'm so jealous. I just can't do it, never have been able to.
I think I need more sleep that most people. I don't know. My sister is the same way. She loves sleeping too. And her husband often makes comments about how it must run in the family because my sister and I feel exactly the same way about sleeping. We just can't get enough.

My boys are not the best sleepers, but Jack is way better than Ben. Lately Jack has been experimenting with giving up naps. It's just too hard for him to fall asleep if Ben is making any kind of noise. And getting a four year old to be quiet for 10 minutes is next to impossible. I let him watch a show but then Jack can hear the television. I'm pretty sure Jack still needs a nap, but if he takes a nap (even if it's in the early afternoon) he usually ends up staying up until midnight. Ben was just like this too.
So somedays I try to get Jack to take a nap and it just won't happen. And then sometimes this happens-

Last night Jack fell asleep like this-

Lot's of pictures of Jack sleeping, so here's one of Ben. I love the following picture it was taken when Ben was three months old. It's one of my favorite pictures of him. It is framed and hanging in his room.

Tonight Ben fell asleep like this-
I promise, it wasn't staged. When I checked on him to see if he was asleep the picture of him when he was a baby popped in my mind, so of course I had to take a picture of him sleeping.

www.crazy8.com

I'm very fortunate that I don't have to buy many clothes for the boys because my sister gives us hand-me-downs. I still need to buy a few clothes for the boys and sometimes I just want to. I especially like to give the boys something fun for Christmas and their birthday. And they are young enough that they are excited about clothes.

Ben was born at the beginning of spring and Jack was born near the beginning of fall. Because they were born and different seasons I had to buy a few more clothes for Jack. I bought him this awesome monster shirt.

He loves it! Whenever I put it on him he lifts up his arm like the monster and growls. So cute!

One day while blog hopping I found out about this store- Crazy 8. They have very fun boy clothes. (I'm sure the girl clothes are cute too, I'm just not in the market for girl clothes.) The store owned by the same company that owns Gymboree, but the clothes are a lot more affordable, especially when they are on sale.

I've only ordered from them twice, but I thought it was kind of fun that I never really saw anybody else wearing the clothes I bought for the boys. However, I still think it's kind of nice that they are opening a store in Layton Hills Mall. I don't know how often I'll go. $5 shipping on every order is still cheaper than the cost of gas to go up there. Not to mention not having to drag the boys to the store too. (That's priceless!) If you sign up for their e-mail, you get a coupon code that gives you $10 off your first order over $30.

Another thing I like about this store is that they sell their jeans in slim,regular, and husky and they have the adjustable waist band. Ben needs the slims and we still need to adjust them down. Some of their jeans also have a slide closure on the waist. Ben was so excited about this last year because he was able to slide the pants closed himself, sometimes with snaps he had a hard time.

Does it sound a little like I am being paid to review this store? When I find out about something good, I just like to pass it on to others.

Look at this cute outfit, I want to get at least the jacket for Jack, but I gotta wait until it goes on sale.