Wedding Dress Stress Yet We Are Blessed

For the past two days, we have done more dress shopping than I have done in 20 years. 

When princess 1 got married, we found a dress at the very first shot on the clearance rack that she loved. It was less than $100, and we were able to get it altered and buy all the accessories for less than $200.

I have looked at more wedding dresses in the last two days than I’ve seen in my entire life probably. We have tried on dresses at a rental place, looked on classified ads for used dresses, and today I was in 8 different dress shops, plus four yesterday.

Princess three had to work during the days, and then we would shop at night together with Princess Two. I went shopping during the day for her and she got out of meetings early. 

She went to several stores in another city before we met up. About dinner time, she had had enough. She tried on so many different dresses and she loved some of the dresses that certain shops had, but they didn’t have them in her size. The covid problem has manufacturing out three months or more on ordering one in her size. She doesn’t have time to get them altered, so it was very frustrating for her. 

After a little drive and a break, I found a little shop accidentally while looking for a different shop. I called her to come as I found the exact dress  I found it 1/2 before closing. Princess three arrived ten minutes before closing. We found lots of dresses that fit her in her size and we loved four or five of them!

The worker kept the store open for a full hour over closing time to let us try on all the dresses. The first dress that I picked out for her, I thought she would love, the woman and her daughter that came in behind us waited for us to finish for the hour, and her daughter tried on that first dress that we loved and ended up most likely buying it for her wedding as we picked three other dresses as finalists. Princess Three really loved and looked beautiful in them all. She will make a decision probably tomorrow.

I’m glad that we were able to find some dresses that she likes looked beautiful in! I told her not to worry about the price because she is worth it! I am blessed to have such beautiful daughters and this is something important to her. They each have things that are important to them, I try to be supportive about the things that matter to them and this matters to her! I want her to feel beautiful in her photos and on her big day!

God is good, and I’m sure that He’ll take care of the finances as He always has  I know He cares about her and wants her to feel beautiful too!

We are truly blessed! Have a blessed day!

Total Lunar Eclipse - Kind Of Cool Event

I don't watch the news. I don't read the newspaper. I don't listen to the radio. The only news I get, I see on passing online homepages, or I get local emails from the main newspaper in the state. 

I don't often open the emails from newspaper, but if there is a big headline, I will open the email. Yesterday, I saw that there was going to be an eclipse. 

I let my girls know to look for it if they wanted to get up in the night. If you read my blog, you will know I don't sleep well for the most part. So, I figured if I was awake around the time for the eclilpse, I would go out and see if I could see it.

I don't often use my Lumix Camera anymore as my phone is so much easier to use. I at first tried to take some photos using my phone and couldn't get anything on it as it was so dark. 

I pulled out my Lumix Panasonic camera I bought a few years back, and love that it has some preset options for photos. I don't know how to use it as it is so complex, but with the preset options, I was able to take some great photos. 

The super lens's made the moon large enough to see some good detail. I went out and took the "Cheshire cat" moon sliver pictures. I then set the alarm for another 15 minutes and went out and took the full eclipse pictures. You can see how there is a slight halo from the right on those photos and within just a minute or two, I couldn't get enough light to take anymore photos. 

The moon dropped so low on the horizon that I couldn't see it coming out of the eclipse as the sky lightened but it was another heavenly manifestation that I was very grateful I have eyes to see! 

I got emails from my family all over and they all got up and said they couldn't see it due to cloud cover, so I am feeling very blessed to have been able to have the sky clear enough to get to see the event and also be able to take some fun pictures. 

I thought in some ways, the pictures looked somewhat like a baby in the womb photos. Just a passing thought. 

It was a cool event. I have seen many eclipses in my life, but this by far was the closest and best photos I have been able to take. 

Have a blessed day!

Road Trip Photo Shoot 2 - Hiking

During our fun road trip, we were able to stop at several different places. We stopped at a this fun rock formation and decided to take a look and take some pictures while exploring. 

The event wasn't so much of hiking as exploring. There are hundreds of dead end little slots with weather and wind worn formations. It is such a small area that it isn't a part or anything but they have made a campground around the formations which is a great idea so that people can enjoy exploring in the area. 

You can see a small bit of the formations from the highway, but the area is quite hidden for the most part and there isn't much traffic to the campground so it gives you a chance to explore without lots of company.

Hopefully you will enjoy the photos as much as we do. I have one more spot we stopped and did a bit of hiking to see some pictographs and petroglyphs. I will share those photos tomorrow. 

Have a blessed day!

Road Trip Photo Shoot One - Pokemon

I took some fun photos of the girls while we were walking around at a few of our destinations. 

I wanted to share some of the photos with you as they are beautiful!

I am fighting a migraine tonight so hope that I can just share these photos and feel better tomorrow. 

Not sure why I have been fighting so many headaches the past few weeks but it hasn't been good. 

I also wanted to share with you that the girls were playing Pokemon in the car during our road trip. 

They were all on their phones and since Covid, I think some of the spots on our trip had "gyms" that had Pokemon that have been in them for a long time. 

I don't know much about the game, but the girls were excited about that fact. It was funny that on the deserted roads they would follow the game to find Pokemon. 

I laughed at how excited the girls were to play the game together.  If you are into Pokemon, I would suggest that you take a road trip to places that have been closed due to Covid for a time! ha ha

Have a Blessed Day!

Photo Shoot of Princess Five

I have had a super long day but will share with you that Princess Five wanted to get some updated pictures done before she leaves to college.


The other day, she had gotten ready for church and looked beautiful so we decided to take a few photos in the yard. I have been struggling with my camera recently as today, the flash overheated and so I have been frustrated with the settings, but I was still able to get some cute photos of her. 

She and I liked different photos, but they are all beautiful. I am so blessed to have such beautiful daughters! 

A Bit of Western In My Blood - Grandchildren Photo Shoot

I spent the weekend with my Daughters family, and in turn, that means I got to spent a heavenly few days with my grandchildren~! 

If you know anything about me, you know that I LOVE my family and I take LOTS of photos. I have a few stuffed rocking horses at my house, and have two I want to sell. I took two of them to visit the family and take some photos. I grabbed some cowboy hats, bandanas, some cap guns, and some other photograph props and hauled it all to my daughters so I could take some cute photos and videos. 

True disclosure on this, my two youngest grandchildren are sick with a horrible cold so they didn't feel all that great and I also didn't feel all that great the first day after a long drive on snowy roads and some not so great food that I reacted with.

They kids weren't dressed for the photo shoot, but I figured if I didn't get it when I could, it wouldn't happen. I know my daughter doesn't like me to leave lots of toys at her home, so I have to take boxes of things with me to entertain the kids, so the horses couldn't stay, I need them gone out of my house as well, so it was really now, or never.The kids were tired as it was at night, and they were frustrated at me only having two horses as I couldn't fit a third in the car, so taking turns was rough. We also had some issues as my daughter doesn't like guns, so it became an issue as the three year old couldn't get the concept of not shooting at people, so he kept getting upset if I threatened to take away the gun.

I tried about ten times to get a good video as the youngest was adorable on the little horse, but in every video there was arguing, snapping, tantrums, names, crying, or just so much cap guns, squeals of delight, or screams of joy, that I couldn't use a one without editing the video. Since I still don't know how to edit on my new phone, and I was out of town, you are just going to have to enjoy the pictures as I have no way to upload a usable video. 

Let me just say that the baby was adorable rocking and bouncing himself up and down on the small horse, and the larger horse has cute sound effects like a riding horse. 

One of the horses I have at home actually neighs and his head moves. I am going to keep the two that make noise and have saddles and stirrups on them, and get rid of the two that just rock and are smaller. 

I keep finding cuter and cuter horses for my western room in my home where I hung my dad's black-bear. It is the first place the kids go when they arrive at my house. I love having a fun home for the grandchildren. 

My grand-daughter told me she was going to be the "bad" cowboy for a few minutes and she just acted mean and you can see by her face in the picture, she is a good little actress, you can see it in her eyes. ha ha The kids had fun, but none of them liked the bandana and by the end, they had all taken them off. They liked the hats, and the guns were a favorite. The baby would pick it up, climb on the horse, ride and then throw it through the air off the horse, get off the horse, pick it up and start all over again. It was so cute. 

I have pictures of my grandfather on his horses. I have a post where I show how I made a cute collage out of some of them. I have pictures of my mother on horses as a baby, photos of me on horses, my girls on horses, and now these cute western photos. 

I am truly blessed!

David Archuleta Was HERE - Funny Story

I shared yesterday that I had a wedding. There were activities on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I took Princess Four and Two with me to visit a Temple for our church near my nieces home after traveling to her city.



When we pulled up to the temple, a car pulled out right as close as we could be to the temple and as we pull in, David Archuleta was six feet from our car. A girl was fanning on him and another saw him and walked over timidly as the other girl left. Princess Four says, “Is that David Archuleta?” Princess Two and I say, “Yes, it is!” and we all started laughing as he looks at us in the car like he wants to duck and run before anyone else corners him and then sees us all staring at him and he and smiled a bashful smile like, "Yes, I am cornered and yes, I can see you know who I am, and yes, I want to get away from the girl." 

We burst out laughing because it was really easy to see what he was thinking, and we get out of the car and you can hear him trying to be polite to the girl and we don't dare take out our phones to take a picture. We smile and walk towards the temple and he seemed relieved.  We didn't try and sneak one but we giggled all the way into the temple. He was cute with all the emotions in that few seconds of eye contact. 

Many years ago, I passed him in the hall of a different temple we were visiting, and he looked familiar but I couldn't place him. It was just he and I in the hall, and I smiled and said "hello" and he had a funny look on his face which could have been, "She has no clue why I look familiar or one of a hundred other similar thoughts. As soon as I turned the corner, I met up with my girls and they said, "These people just told us David Archuleta just left! 

I laughed at myself that day and laughed together with my girls this time. I took the girls to see him in a concert with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at Christmas many years ago. We stood in a cold line to get a few CD's signed by him. He was so cute with Princess Five and I was sad I hadn't gone back to get my camera in the car as I only got a few bad pictures on an old flip phone at the time, but I did post a blog about it so here is a link to that post. 

After the visit to the temple, I asked the girls if they wanted a picture in the spot where "David" was standing, and they both thought that was HILARIOUSE! We ended up taking a bunch of funny shots as Princess Four pretended to be her and Princess Two pretended to be David Archuleta and we hear he is short but haven't stood next to him so she just bent down to get into character. ha ha. 

The other pictures are showing how sad they were he wasn't there for our pictures. It was a funny situation as we really would have enjoyed talking to him, but wanted to respect his privacy. I just looked up his facebook page and I guess he is leaving next week for a tour so it was fun we got to see him before he leaves! 

Enjoy our rendition of "David Archuleta Was Here" and have a Blessed Day! 

Sharing How to Make Personal Family Paper Dolls on Video

Many years ago, I made some personalized home made personalized paper dolls for my girls. 

I posted about them back in 2010 when I first made them. I'll put links below to how I made them. 

Here is part 1. 
Here is part 2. 
Here is part 3. 
Here is part 4.

 

Back then, I wasn't able to do videos as the internet was so slow. Even now it takes me hours for a few minute video so I took this video on my phone hoping I would be able to upload it faster and my new camera continues to be blurry during videos so hopefully the video off the camera will be good enough to get the point across. 

My girls played with these and their older sister joked about not having one for her so I cut out her face from another picture of her and glued it on one of their pictures. It isn't the best but you can get the idea. 

I thought I was rather creative figuring out how to make these. I learned much from making them and would make them larger now knowing what I know but it was still fun to do with the girls. If you were super talented, you could just manipulate the pictures to whatever size you needed them to be but I did it old school. 

It was fun and the girls liked getting changed into the different costumes and getting to do a photo shoot in all sorts of fun costumes. If you were patient, you could just take pictures of your child every day over the holiday season in their different clothes and costumes, coat etc and place them in the same spot on the wall and take it from the same place and over time, you would have the different outfits and hairdos and dress-up pictures and you could just surprise them with the paper dolls. They wouldn't even need to know what you were doing. 

You could even draw a picture of them on white poster paper and have them stand in the same exact pose each day against the wall to make sure they were in the exact pose. 

Just some ideas for mom's out there with kids. You could even use them as a way for the child to pick out outfits for the next day if they had issues with that. You could just take a picture and print it the size of some already made store bought paper dolls or just glue a picture of your child's face onto a paper doll. You can do this idea as simple or as difficult as you want. 

I also made kitchen magnets by cutting out cute sayings or pillows, signs etc out of magazines and putting them on the magnetic sheets. I would send them in my Christmas Cards. Just another cute idea from back then. 

I just wanted to share this idea as it was such a fun one for my girls. Have a Blessed Day! 

Wearing The Kimono For her Homecoming - Princess Four's Adorable Outfit

Princess Four was only home for 2 full days before heading off to work. One of which was crazy with everyone coming from around the state for her homecoming. 

She came home this Saturday to go through some things but we had another family event Sunday so basically, she was home for a few hours and I trimmed her hair and cut off some long pants to make capris for her to wear to work as she and Princess Five have been working long hours at their summer job hosting youth groups during their busiest two weeks.  

She has so many bins of clothes, household items and school stuff to go through that I think she is overwhelmed by it and not having any time at home has not made it easy for her to find things she needs. 

Thankfully, Princess Five had the apartment set up already from her moving from college, but soon, we will pack up her stuff as she has put her papers in to go on a mission for our church for 18 months and is waiting for a letter telling her where she will serve.

So, Princess Four needs to get to her stuff and sort through it. I want to have a yard sale and get all the stuff no one wants OUT of the house. I have stuff stacked up in every room and garage at this point with all my mom's estate stuff, four of the girls living in somewhat student housing and me having not gotten much off the "get done" list in the house as I have so much to get done on the outside of the house. 

This weekend, even helping family with a farewell for my nephew that is heading to serve as a missionary in chili next week, I dug a tall fence post out, cemented in a new one and hammered in the fence section. I started in on one of the two medium posts that needs replacing but didn't have time to get much done on it other than pulling away the fence section and starting to dig it out. 

I will have to get to that this week and hopefully finish that but I still have so much to do in the yard that finishing the stuff inside isn't moving at all. 

Princess Four asked me today where all the pictures of her in her Kimono were.... Um, last week was a bad week for me. ;-) I was sick and had no energy to post so I am grateful that I was feeling better enough by weeks end to start posting again and to get a new fence post in.

So, with all the crazy, I am sorry to Princess Four that I didn't get her big week posted. I am going to share some of my favorite pictures of her in her Kimono that we took last weekend. It was SO sweet of her friend to give it to her and she looks so beautiful in it. We are not sure how to fold it back up so it doesn't get ruined but Princess Four assures me that there are videos somewhere showing how to fold it back up so we will have to get to that next weekend as we didn't have time to get to it this weekend. 

It was so fun having her around even just for the 24 hours I got to enjoy her this weekend. Princess Five just kept saying, "And I get to live with that!!!" Bragging that she gets to enjoy the sunshine and humor that Princess Four brings to the home. 

I hope you enjoy these pictures of Princess Four in her Beautiful Kimono..... Have a BLESSED Day!