MaLM - Organize

Make a List Monday -- What to Organize
There are MANY things that I would like to organize, starting with my life, ha ha!

Let's see.

1. My life
2. my bedroom
3. my closet
4. my laundry room
5. my paperwork
6. my pantry
7. my garage
8. my storage room
9. my scrap/craft/exercise room

Okay, I could keep on going. . .

But let me just say that no matter how organized my pantry is, it will never look like this.

And it's a shame, too, because it is beautiful! But for one thing, I would never stencil all that on the walls. For another thing, my pantry shelves are all REALLY deep, so it won't ever look this good.

But if you want to see more of this beauty, check it out at House of Smith's.

Lake House Anyone?

Would anyone else like a beautiful lake house with beautiful cedar siding? If you could choose, where would you put your house? By a mountain, by a lake or ocean, in the desert or on the plains, or does it not matter as long as you are in the big city (or near it)? Just wondering.

Welcome Baby

Welcome Summer! 9 lbs. 8 oz.



Sweet as can be.

Birthday Week, 3???

Will there be a third?

A big old spot of blue sun

Go Cougars!!! #9 now!

Snow, snow go away.

Don't come back until November! I'm ready for this. . .

A house of fun, a house of partitude

15,000 square feet of St. George house, or maybe we should call it a resort.


Pretty kitchen, I really like the light cabinets and gigantic island.


Mud room complete with drinking fountain, I really need one of those.


Master bathroom, bigger than my family room and kitchen combined.


Look out the upstairs windown and what? Oh, the backyard. Yes, let's look at that closer.

Same view, one floor down.

Walk out the master bedroom and find this. You can't see it clearly, but there is a water slide on the rock as well as several fountains.

Walk a little to the left and enter the hottub room.

Follow the lighted tunnel through the rock to this lovely grotto, a nice place to catch an outdoor movie.

Looking back at the house we can see the pergola and kitchen, fountains and more.


Let's walk down to the basement shall we? Oooh, a basketball court with slightly wider screen on the wall than the theater upstairs.

A little to the left, the climbing wall.

And beyond that, the putting green.


The racketball court, looking from the weight room.


I obviously didn't include everything in this house, like the 6 bedrooms, theater room, family room, dining room, casita, and pool house. I just showed the more outstanding elements.

Hope you enjoyed it!

Nie Nie

If you haven't heard about Stephanie Nielson, an unfailing optimist and blogger, and her husband's scary crash, read about it here. Today there are Internet auctions all over to raise money for their medical care. There are so many great places to give. Two great places to start are Design Mom and A Room Somewhere.

And if you don't have money to give, prayers are even better.

Oprah's beachfront home

Oooh la la.

I'm in love!

I think I found the blog that I knew and loved in the pre-existence--The Inspired Room.

It is FULL of beautiful and very inspiring rooms, indoor and out. I am in love with it. I might marry it. I will certainly consider a proposal, if it came my way.

Scary dreams

I had a doozy last night. Ponder it here.

When a penny was worth something

There once lived a girl with her 5 brothers and sisters. She had a sweet and happy growing up. She lived in a small town with barely 5 stop signs, two churches, two gas stations, one elementary school, three other girls her age, lots of sheep, cows, horses, fields, lots of happy relatives, and one small pharmacy.

The pharmacy shared its space with a cute little soda shop with an old fashioned counter and stools. And to the side there was a counter full of jars of penny candy, Swedish fish, sour patch kids, sour fruits, red and purple berries, and 5 cent suckers.

Sometimes the girl's mother would give her and her siblings a quarter each. They would walk up to the store, two whole hot blocks away. They would labor over the precise spending of those 25 pennies. Maybe 3 sour grapes, 5 Swedish fish, 2 sour apples, 5 red berries, one sucker, 3 sour patch kids and 2 pink sour candies, were they grapefruit? And after each pink mouth would voice its own choices, each would leave with a little brown bag full of happiness.

They'd generally cross the street to the tabernacle and sit in the shade of the towering pioneer pines and cottonwoods. And they'd eat those little morsels one by one, the order--a carefully studied routine, the last candy of great importance.

Many years later that girl saw a bag of sour patch kids in the big city store. She bought them and shared them with her sons. And she remembered.

A late night rain storm

Last night, as I was happily blogging away (reading others that is) I heard rain drops falling on my roof. They got louder and louder. We were actually having a summer thunder shower. It has been months since the last good pounding of rain on my dry and crispy grass. How lovely, how exciting. Matt was stashed away reading Harry Potter, but I was up and I was going to watch the rain come down.

A warm summer rain, a cool breeze, a comfy chair (at least a semi-clean white plastic yard chair), how romantic. So I shut down my computer and headed for the door. I stepped outside and it was perfect. I saw a flash from an undiscovered lightening just as I arrived at the party. My porch was dry and my chair was waiting.

As I walked toward it, I saw something. Something black. Something hairy and rodent like was sticking to my wall! There was a bat taking in the summer storm right where I wanted to be. Maaaaannn! How not romantic! I slowly backed away. I stood by the door contemplating my bravery and strength. I grew up in Idaho, I was not afraid of bats. But neither do I like them! And this lonely bat, which if it ever shows up again will fear for its life, was single handedly ruining my nice rain watching.

I was strong, I was brave. I watched the storm for 30 seconds max. Then I retreated to the relative bugless state of comfort in my home, my nice dry, cleanish, full of dirty birthday dishes and torn wrapping paper, happy home. I listened to the lulling sound of the rain as I laid in bed beside Matt and Harry (and perhaps Ron and Hermione, although I never felt them kicking me and taking all the covers).



As you can see, he's still there. If he doesn't fly away tonight, SOMETHING will have to be done!

Make-a-list Monday, otherwise known as MALM, isn't that from Ikea?

At least that's what I know it as. Now you do too. Today's list hearkens from an earlier era, last week. I was thinking how it was a bummer that only kids get to learn new things all the time. Learn to swim, play the piano, soccer, video games, read, sing, violin, art, gymnastics, dance, and on and on. Why does it have to stop when you have a ring and 4 kids? So I am making a list of everything I want to learn before I die, or at least before I forget how to keep saliva in my own mouth and recognize my husband. So, here goes.

Things I want to learn

1. Play the guitar
2. Play the ukulele
3. Sing (vocal lessons)
4. yoga (downward facing dog and all)
5. How to sail
6. How to take personal and beautiful photographs
7. French, or maybe Italian, or German, Espanol anyone?
8. How to keep food on the table, sand in the sandbox, and excrement in the toilet
9. How to re-upholster furniture
10. HTML
11. How to make the perfect beach, this will definitely take A LOT of research
12. Oil paint, watercolor
13. Master Gardener
14. be hostess of the year
15. Be a city councilwoman
16. How get answers to prayers and be the answer to prayers
17. All about our nations great founders and beginnings
18. ?????????????????????????????

P.S. Today I am NOT going to forget to not do something. The reason I haven't added this part to my blog is because I haven't done even one thing every day like all summer. So what haven't I been doing? Work. Ha, I've been playing like all summer! So today I am not going to leave up my nursery decorations one day more. Yes, they are cute, but really, they are just tissue paper! Let them go.....

Sailing through Europe

Oh I wish I were! Don't you wish you had a dad with a sail boat who took you sailing through Europe for weeks? I think I just set a goal for Matt and I. Kids, get ready. In another 15 years or so, we'll be off.

Check out these pictures and the blog.