Back to School Pinterest Brought to Life

I am officially addicted to finding ideas on Pinterest...I always make the boys' teachers a little back to school gift. Well, this year we went for everyone...gym teacher, secretaries, etc. So easy and fun to make! Just scissors, ribbon, and paperclips. I put them on cardstock, inked the edges a bit, and stamped it 'welcome back'.

Keepsake box and burp cloths. Bought a plain wooden box and covered it in western paper and mod podge. used chipboard letters of his initials and some cute western premade wooden pieces at hobby lobby(67cents each) to cover the other squares. Made some monogrammed burp cloths to go with it. Adorable poem I found online about the keepsake box. Just google: baby keepsake box poem. Printed it, and placed it inside.

Not sure why my pic is not loading fully, but this was a teacher appreciation week gift that we made for all of the boys teachers. TerraCotta pot with a mint herb plant and cute stakes. Having boys is easy, but with girl it would be super fun to add some blingy touches. :) Paint the pot, make some stakes out of cricut or scrappy paper??

Made this banner from pre-cut pennants at hobby lobby. Mod podged some cutie paper to them and made some fabric rosettes. Chipboard letters that I painted and glittered to match. Baby Evan is ADORABLE!! and they used this at her shower.

I am new to pinterest and loving all of the wonderful ideas that I am finding there. I have discovered that in order to share an idea of your own, you need to blog about it first :) So, I am blogging away. School is about to begin again, and I will disappear from the world of fun and adventure the computer for a while.

I.Love.My.Life. Just in case anyone was wondering!! We recently bought Lane a horse for his birthday and are boarding it in Collinsville at a beautiful farm. We are having some amazing family time caring for the horse and learning to ride, etc. together. Lane named her Layla. Tate made a competitive soccer club this summer and is in serious dedicated training mode. Running every other day and 'met pukie' at his first practice. It is 110+ degrees, so that is not helping! Wyatt is a nut! He is so much fun and I am going to dearly miss watching him sleep in the mornings and playing with him all day when school starts back.

Pantry Painting...

after a summer of heat and pinterest, i decided to chalkboard the inside of my pantry door. the boys love it!! super fun and i look forward to many inspiring quotes and motivation coming their way! :)

playing blog catch up...


for all you single ladies out there :) or anyone who can appreciate an almost two year old dancing to the chipmunks!

posing after the dance party

wyatt's single ladies dance off...lane laughing so hard at him you can barely hear the song. these boys keep us rolling!! they are such good boys...all boy...but such good ones.

tater in front of the Rockies stadium...can't wait for baseball season to start for this boy!

my sweet new nephew hudson.6 weeks early and still weighed 5lb6oz 19in...must be a farley boy

my handsome men at our favorite denver mall, park meadows

ok, so i haven't posted since dec. pretty sad, but we have been a bit busy. we traveled to denver over christmas break to meet our new nephew hudson. he was 6 weeks early but is healthy and doing great! can't wait to see him again! we enjoyed our time away and it made me miss seeing those mountains every day.

little dub enjoying his first time to really get out and play in the OK snow.

upon our return, we had some more snow here and another ice dam on our roof. it has been 3 years since the last one and the roof endured the big ice storm of '07 and everything. the insurance literally said it is amazing that it happened again. the conditions and temperatures have to be just right for it to happen. the ice melts from the bottom first and the weight of the snow sends all of that water snaking under your shingles and into the tiniest corner to get in. ahhhh!!! we had just had some french doors and a passage door to the kitchen put on our office and made tate his own room...fun! lane was loving his new room. wyatt was about to graduate to his big boy bed. now, we are awaiting the contents of our garage to be removed to a storage container in our driveway for a week or so while they completely redo the garage ceiling, replace the pad and restretch and clean the carpets, repaint the laundry room, hall, and both little boys rooms. i am praising the Lord for insurance, helpful contractors, and patient children.

i feel so blessed with so many things in such a harsh economy, but teacher morale is a little low right now at my school. if you happen to be reading this...thank a teacher. yes, we get summers off, etc. etc. etc. :) but the current budget cuts are weighing heavily on everyone's minds at school. it is hard to stay positive. that is my goal. we are not in control. pray for good decisions to be made by administration. pray for peace in the minds of some teachers who are new. this is the most real this has ever been.

A teacher affects eternity:he can never tell where his influence stops. - Henry Adams

when you're five...there are not many things more fun than building whatever you want with a giant tub of legos :)

i am blessed! i love my busy, crazy, livin' the minivan dream kind of life...thank you sweet Jesus for saving me, for providing, for caring, for loving, for protecting.

blessings all around...
my dad, step-mom, 2 of their awesome children, and one of their friends came to town. my boys played and played and just knew they were in the presence of greatness. uncle jake is a college baseball player and tate could not leave to go meet up with them at my brother's until granny ran over his ball glove that he left at her house the day before. she was sweet to do it and later that night at home, i found a note he had written to himself about meeting uncle jake and maybe asking him to sign something. i will be keeping that sweet note. it was a great visit!!! my sis took some wonderful pictures of the whole lot of us, but there are a few here.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=910265&l=a749d145dd&id=1137661532


as a family, minus wyatt due to no strollers aloud, we completed the YMCA hog jog. i must say that amidst all my -itis's i felt better that day than i had in a long time. it was a true blessing and at every turn, there were these great little groups of encouragers. we ran ahead of a group and they were yelling...'go farley's' i seriously almost cried. for one fleeting moment, i felt like rocky balboa or something. a must keep tradition!!

our next adventure for the weekend led us to a little town in NE OK who's name i won't mention for a gig that shane had gotten roped into. i don't normally feel like 'betty better than anyone' but i was a little scared there. i felt like shane needed some chicken wire up like on the blues brother's movie. luckily, my sister and her husband went with us and it served as great back up unless things got crazy but more importantly, we had some great laughs!! we may just laugh about that for years to come to keep from crying :) they were a very receptive crowd though...a few chords in to any hank jr. song and the whole place was howling!!! awesome!

we have recently also adopted 'Tony' our new elf on the shelf. if you have small children, these little guys are precious!! since shane works in international shipping, Tony arrived from the north pole with daddy one night when he came home from work.

if you don't already have it...might i recommend Jacob's Gift by Max Lucado. *tear* i love reading that to the boys this time of year!!!

life is good! thank you sweet savior for all of the things i count as blessings that i know i don't deserve...there is none like You!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

an all about Lane weekend...

when you are in the middle of three boys, you sometimes just have to go with the flow. you are not the boss and you are not the baby. this weekend, our little lane was everything! he was happy, excited, silly, fun, an athlete, a good friend, a superstar to say the least. we left baby with granny and headed to 'the city' for the Turkey Shootout soccer tournament with the cutest bunch of 5 year olds around. they ate at Toby Keith's, they rode the bricktown canal, they had ice cream, snow cones, kettle corn, swam at the hotel, jumped on the beds...i could go on all night. lane scored 6 goals and played some killer defense. his team went on to win the tournament! 6 and under champs!!! they have basically dominated the regular season aside from one team who they really had some good competition with and ended up losing one game by one. we came to the tournament not knowing how they would hold up in a different town and knowing we have a pretty young team...all but one are 5. they won every game and the scores sound more like football scores. in the last game they needed 17 points to beat the points total of another team from another bracket that was their same age. they scored 22 points. go Pride!! that other team had allowed 17 goals all tournament and we only allowed 9, so i think it is fair to say that they ROCK!!!!! :) yes, i am a PROUD soccer mom! our friends from 'the city' came to watch him and he was feeling very special to have guests, not to mention another amazing highlight...some of the team wanted to ride in our van, which is the right team color and offers movies! oh, to be 5 :) i thank God for my lane (and all my other boys who i get to share this wonderful life with)

awesome new warm-ups and a back-up black uni and socks in case we clash with the other team! thanks to a gracious donor parent!!

our coaches are amazing and love these boys! we also got a new popup bench...they all have their own backpacks. i've said it before - we look like little david beckhams. blue mohawks and all! :) Go Pride!