My princess bed!!!

                                       Have I told you how wonderful my sweet man is??

I didn't think so, ha ha!!  Well let me tell you just how wonderful he is!  When I moved to Utah 5 years ago, my sweet man had already been here for 2 years working and living in the house we now call " our own little cottage".  Well we had furnished it with furniture we had found at yard sales!  You know me always looking for those hidden treasures to give a new life and a home!!  Many of the pieces were darker but he loved them and this was his home in Utah where he worked and I was only going to be here on visits!!  That was the original plan!  We already had our dream home in Montana that  we would  live in forever and our kids and grand kids could come and visit and there was room for all!! And life was perfect, so I thought,  Well that plan needed to be changed because what we hadn't planned for was my sweet man falling in love with this amazing valley! With me kicking and screaming we sold our dream home and I moved to his beloved little Heber Valley! All our furniture went into storage since it wouldn't fit in our little cottage, ( 5,000 sq ft. to1,500 sq. ft.).  The furniture in the cottage was dark and  of course I'm allergic to dark!  Over the past 5 years I have slowly lightened up the house and my sweet man has just loved each change! We hope someday to add on and I know it will happen but in the meantime we lighten and change things up with paint!(remember the cupboards?)

                                                              
                                                             Here's today's projects;

Our nightstands,

and headboard! I've been dieing to do these and my sweet man is in Nevada so what better time!

Surprise!

Our little granddaughters call it our princess bed!!  And my sweet man just smiles, oh yes he is wonderful! And yes life is perfect now, sharing this lovely valley with the man I love, what more could I ask for!

Love, Laughter and Smiles,

Fran

Finally! My beautiful cupboards!

Well as you can see the pictures of my finished cupboards took a little longer than I had hoped but here they are!!!  I love how they turned out all old and worn!

 I loved painting with Annie Sloans chalk paint@  And I love how it just brightened up the whole space.   Even my sweet husband enjoys the brightness when he's eating his big bowl of oatmeal at 4am before he leaves for work!

The day I took these pictures was a beautiful sunny winters day!  I love this beautiful valley we live in!  One day I'll post  more pictures!!

As you can see I had started decorating for Christmas so maybe tomorrow I can post pictures of our little cottage in it's Christmas dress! I love Christmas time so much that I don"t usually take it down till the last week in January, and I have been known to be as late as the week of Valentines!!!

When we lived in our beautiful white house in Montana we had a Christmas tree in every room and the one in the dance studio/family room was a beautiful artificial white tree that stayed up all year and was decorated for each holiday!  When I was a little girl I vowed when I had a home of my own I would leave the tree up all year long!  Well for the four years we lived in that home the white tree stayed up fully decorated!!  I also had a hammock that hung in one of the large bay windows in that same room!  It was heaven  to take a nap in the hammock on a sunny cold winters day!   Someday It will happen again, when our cottage has a little face lift!!

Until then I am so grateful for this little cottage we call Home!

Love, Laughter and Smiles,

Fran

MY UGLY CUPBOARDS!

     Ok lets try this again!  I have got to be the worst blogger!  This is my 3rd attempt to post about my cupboards, I somehow keep erasing it or not being able to upload  my pictures!  Well, clear back around Thanksgiving I started redoing my cupboards!  I hated the wood!  I know to someone else they would love them but it just wasn't ME!

 
     So as soon as the house was officially ours I headed to my friendly Annie Sloan store and bought my brushes, paint (Pure White), and furniture wax!  Next I started wiping down all the cupboards with white vinegar my cleaner of choice!  I love using vinegar because it leaves everything clean and sparkly,  the scent is gone in a few minutes and NO chemicals!! Than a painting I went!!  It didn't take that long but we squeezed in a trip to Vegas for the NFR (National Finals Rodeo)  with some of our kids!!  Before we left I noticed the shelves in the laundry room/butlers pantry looked like they were pulling away from the wall!! I could see coming home to a heap of broken dishes so I pulled everything off the shelves and decided we would deal with it when we came home!!
     Well that turned into a project and a half!!!  But first I worked on  my cupboards!!!  It never fails when you think you have it all planned out LIFE happens!  I really only wanted to finish the cupboards and do the laundry/butlers pantry after the first of the year!  Oh well I always say "God doesn't give you anymore than you can handle"!  I have decided that my life will always have challenges and surprises some welcomed some not and they help me be a stronger person and teach me patience so until tomorrow...
                                                       Love, Laughter and Smiles,
                                                                  Fran
    

Our Christmas Cottage

I love Christmas time!!!  I love the lights,  the smells, the music (although I love listening to Christmas music all year long, just ask my kids!),  the hustle and bustle, the Christmas programs and living in an area of the world where it"s the norm to have snow this time of year!  I love decorating our house and the yard, the more lights the better!  I normally start decorating the day after Thanksgiving but this year it was later because of  getting ready for our trip to NFR (National Finals Rodeo) in Las Vegas!   But  today I'm finally done!

I love our vintage silversets I've collected from yard sales and thrift stores along with the beautiful punch bowl I received for Mothers's Day one year from our daughter, Chastity!

I have collected Nativity sets for many years and love displaying them.  Since we have moved to our little cottage I have no room to display all of them or our little village so I have started a little Nativity village!  The grandkids love looking at it all lit up!

Our Christmas tree has to be very small too!  But a couple of years ago I found this one that I loved and it has worked out great!

It fits perfect in our window and living room.

I don't know how this twinkle thing happened but thought it was fun!  I guess it's called a Google+ Auto Awesome?  I am still trying to figure out all this modern technology stuff!!!

I'm inlove with birds and birdnests (go figure, Roots and Wings!!)  so they are everywhere in the house all

 year long but these are some I use at Christmas:

I was so excited this past fall when we were cleaning out the garage and we came across some boxes we had never unpacked when we moved (there are lots of those still in storage ) and there were some ornaments we have had since our older kids were little, one being our baby Jesus!

When our kids did a good deed they could put a peice of straw in the little basket to make a cozy soft bed for Jesus! Some years His bed was cozier than others, but it was one of our traditions I know the kids still remember and loved! 

 It has always been important to me to have traditions that our kids could look forward to each year.  We never had alot of money to spend on lots of gifts which I was always grateful for because I wanted our focus to always be on why we celebrate Christmas, the birth of our Saviour !

We tried to teach our kids to serve others by picking a family each year and doing the 12 days of Christmas for them!

Now our kids are all grown and have families of their own,  and are making traditions of their own!

And maybe just maybe they are even doing some of the traditions they learned in their childhood!

We continue to do many of our same traditions and as our family grows we have started new traditions to include our whole family not  just at Christmas but throughout the year! 

Family has always been very important to us and the older we get we realize how precious our time is with each member of our family and cherish that time!

May we each take time in our busy preperations for Christmas to cherish our loved ones and remember how  our lives have been blessed because of the  birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ!

Love, Laughter and Smiles,

Fran