To keep or not to keep. That is ALWAYS the question!

So often, I make something for the boutique, and then I either love it so much that I want to keep it. Or I think it may not be good enough so I'm afraid to sell it.

But this one falls in the "I love it so much" category. I would have a perfect place for it in my house. I love the distressed, slightly scruffy feel to it. Maybe it's just me.

What would YOU do?

15 years for a moment

There are things in life that are unbelievable. Like this.


 (This time the cake is supposed to look like that. It's a gluten free pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. It pretty much stands on it's own. No decor needed. It's THAT good!)

My oldest child is 15. At least it's only unbelievable and not scary. Next year will be scary:)

She really hates having her picture taken lately, even though she is sooo beautiful!



I don't know if there is ever enough room to blog about my children. I could talk about them all day.

I hope all mothers feel that way.

Kate turned 15 on Friday and I realized that we only have 3 more years with her. 3, maybe 4 summers til she heads off to college or a mission or whatever she decides to do.

Do you know how fast that is? It was really poor planning, ok there was zero planning involved, to have 5 of the 6 kids have birthdays so close together. It leaves me in this stupor over my children getting older. It leaves me wanting more babies so that I won't be alone. And then Halloween and Christmas show up and the effort to figure out costumes and Christmas presents brings me back to reality.

But for now, I'm in disbelief. How can my daughter be as old as me? Cuz didn't you all know that I'm perpetually stuck at 15? Inside at least.

I love this girl. Our whole family adores her. She is sweet, giving, kind, hilarious, witty and she hardly ever rolls her eyes.

She has high standards for herself and I'm amazed quite consistently at how devoted she is to what she believes.

Plus, she likes action movies. (We went to see the Bourne Legacy for her birthday) Seriously, beautiful, smart AND likes action movies? Some lucky guy out there better be getting himself ready to be good enough for her.



Happy Birthday Kate. You are a big girl now, but remember, you will ALWAYS be my baby.

Leavenworth...or in Kate's words, "The trip where I wanted to rip the camera away from mom."

You wanna buy a pape' mister?



Can I join your circus?




Why do you take pictures of us with the Men's bathroom sign in the background?



No words for how amazingly annoyed she was at me. Even though the picture turned out beautiful.



Why hellooooo gorgeous!



Blue steel. Lucky me:)

Days like this...

Yeah, we all have days like this:



Days where sleeping on the couch sounds much better than cleaning, tidying, doing homework, going outside or pretty much anything.

I probably need to have fewer of these days. But I have no plans to eliminate them completely because I LOVE those days. They rejuvenate me for a while longer. And I refuse to feel guilty. So there.