Decorating for summer

Holy Cow! I am so behind in my life and I'm blaming swim team (any other swim mom's out there?).  I still had all my spring decor up and was rationalizing that summer doesn't technically start until June 21st.  But since it's now even a week past that, I thought I'd better figure something out.  Luckily, I scrounged around a found some stuff, so I didn't have to make or buy anything.

 Does this look familiar?  All I did was flip over my "S-P-R-I-N-G" blocks and I left up the pinwheels, b/c I heart pinwheels.

 Here's my mantel.

This is one of my very favorite things.  It's a picture of my grandpa w/ his plane during WWII.  He even signed it "Love, Eddie" in the bottom corner.  How cool is that?  He passed a few years ago and we all miss him, so it's fun to have at least a picture of him smiling at us.

I also have a wood flag that I picked up at JoAnn's in the unfinished wood section year's ago and a wood block that I stenciled "Land of the free, because of the brave". 

Here's a trio of birdhouses that I also bought @ JoAnn's and painted to look patriotic.

Happy Fourth!  They have outlawed fireworks and outdoor grilling around here due to our drought, so please eat a hot dog for me and give and extra "Ooh and Ahh" when watching those "bombs bursting in air."

Linking up here:

Run a Marathon-You Betcha

A few weeks ago my hubby and I traveled to Fargo to cross 2 items off his bucket list:
1. Visit Fargo, ND
2. Run a Marathon
(I only got to cross #1 off my list,  because I was only there for morale support.)

Here's me blogging in the Airport.

Check our my ginormous rental car.  Last time (and just about every other time) Scott was the designated driver and we got a VW Bug.  When it's my turn -I get the Dodge Ram-the universe must have a sense of humor. I am a notoriously bad driver and it's a miracle I didn't wreck this thing.

After picking up my new ride we drove across the street to the Fargodome to check in.  They had a bunch of vendors set up, so after he picked up his stuff we walked around for awhile. Then we headed back to the hotel to rest up for the big race. We spent a lot of time watching really bad reality TV.

The starting line.

Finish!

This was the first time either of us had ever been to a marathon and we were so impressed and would recommend it to anyone and here's why:

1. Fargo: no traffic and nice people

2. The event was well run and organized

3. Super flat-no hills

4. The entire town shows up to cheer on the runners.  They dressed up and held signs.  Our favorites:

"Why 26.2?  Because 26.3 is crazy"

"Pain is temporary...Pride is forever"

 "Worst parade EVER"

 One guy even dressed up like the grim reaper holding a sickle and a sign that read "The end is near" and stood about a mile from the finish. My husbands admits it's silly, but having total strangers cheer you on, really helps and the signs were nice diversions.

5.  Officially, they had a band every mile, but lots of people played unofficial music as well.  Scott's favorite was a really old guy that keeping playing "Charge" on a trumpet. If you have to run for 26.2 miles, you might as well be entertained.

6.  Lots of drink and gel stations.

7. Lots of pacers to help you reach your time goal (Scott only had a "finish" goal and so didn't really take advantage of this-but it's there if you want it).

8.  It was easy for me to go and find him along the route and find a parking spot so I could cheer him on during the race. I found him 4 times.

9. The finish is inside the Fargodome, so spectators aren't dealing with the elements. Also when you run up you get to be on the jumbo tron which is always fun. 

Our only negative is that hotels book up fast, so make reservations way ahead (like yesterday).

I noticed people that lots of the runners looked way older or more out of shape than me, so I've set a goal to run one by the time I'm 40 (I'm 38). I haven't really run since my kid's stopped fitting in my double jogger so it's going to be a project.  I've declared our new family motto to be: "We can do hard things". So this will be mine.

To avoid injury, I'm building up super slow-which totally goes against my personality.  I'm only running 3x/week and started w/ 1 mile each time.  I'm adding a 1/2 mile a week until I'm running 15 miles/ week.   If I can handle that, then I'll start the marathon training. It seems a little silly to go and change into workout clothes, for such short runs, but so far I'm up to 2 miles and not sore at all, so I think it's working.

My husband recommends the book,  Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, By Hall Higdon.  He followed the book and was able to run the entire 26.2 miles with out stopping. I think running is boring and reading about running would be worse, and  I wanted Scott just to make me up some sort of training plan, but he made me read the book too.  The book wasn't actually as boring as I feared and had lots of good advice.

Have you ever run a marathon?  Which one and do you recommend it? I'm looking for one that's organized, flat, and with nice weather.

 

Linking up here.

Mario Cake

My kid had so much fun hosting the blog last week.  A huge thank-you to everyone that left comments.  I like comments, but she LOVES them.

My multi-talented fellow trophy wife, Kiersten made the coolest "cake" for her son's Mario themed B-day. She used 143 mini-cupcakes to make this Nintendo masterpiece.  I am normally not a big fan of cupcake cakes and think most of them are a big frosting mess that belong on Cake Wrecks.  But this one is awesome-it's clean and simple and who doesn't love mini-cupcakes !  It makes me me want to bake up some batches of min-cupcakes and create my own piece of bake good art.

 It's like a Lite Brite you can eat.

How fun would it be to whip up some red, white, and blue ones and make a flag?

Linking up here.

Note: Attempting to give credit where credit's due-the original idea might have come from here . 

Day Four: Mothers Day Gifts

I know Mother's Day was a long time ago but I told my mom a long time ago I would post them. So what does a trophy daughter give her trophy mother? You're about to find out.

I couldn't find them but I gave her a card and two bookmarks (homemade of course!). I guess she never looked at it because a few weeks ago I was looking for something and I thought it might be on her night stand. While looking I found the card and bookmarks I had given her a few weeks previous. I didn't find what I was looking for but I left the card and bookmarks on top. That night she thanked me for the wonderful card she was so surprised to find. I should have said your welcome but I told her it was from Mother's Day.

The second thing I gave her was a wreath. She has been very into wreath creating this year so I decided to make  her one!

I didn't really do anything fancy with this one. I just used twine to tie three of them together and then attached paper rosettes with a hot glue gun. To make the paper rosettes I folded a long strip of paper and then used thread to tie the edge to keep it in that shape! Easy Peasy!

Day Three: Cute Gift Tags

Last night I went to a birthday party and was too lazy (or saving my energy for the swim meet that night, which does sound better) to make a card or find and then write in a card. So I made a label. It's pretty darn cute too! It's also extremely self explanatory as  all my posts are...

 Step 1:Make tag shapes. I used a punch I got at a garage sale. The cricut also works wonderfully but it takes longer. And I was saving my energy.

 Step 2: Stamp stamps on to tags.

 Step 3: If available use chalks to shade in the stamp.

 Step 4: Punch hole into top.

Check out my post tommorow!
 -Trophy Daughter

Linking up here.

Note from Trophy Wife:  She completely rocked the swim meet and came home w/ several blue ribbons so she made good use of all that saved up energy!

Overcoming Opposition-YW Manual 3 #23

We tell the girls all the time that they are daughters of a Heavenly King and therefore princesses.  My very favorite princess story of all time is Fanny's Dream by Caralyn Buehner.  The artwork is amazing and I can't read it with out crying.  It's the story of of Fanny who isn't beautiful but is "sturdy".  She dreams of a life of fancy balls, but instead weds a farmer that isn't handsome or rich but at least is cheerful and pleasant.  When her Fairy Godmother finally shows up several years late, Fanny realizes that while her life has it's challenges, she wouldn't trade it for all the fancy balls in the world.  I'm sure you could get a copy at your local library if you didn't want to buy one, but it is a great way to start the lesson.

I love the talk by Elder Paul V. Johnson given in the April 2011 conference (found here) and will use it for this lesson.

I also loved Ezra T Benson's "12 Keys for Overcoming Sorrow, Disappointment, and Depression"  from the lesson manual (here) and we will discuss each of them as a class.

It is important to mention that there are some serious issues that we can not and should not face by ourselves and for these situations it is very important to involve  parent's, church leaders, and possibly professionals.

I made the following handout that uses both the 12 Keys and quotes from Elder Johnson's talk.

 Here's one that will print out 4 to a page


I just printed it our on white paper and mounted it on pretty cardstock.
Here's some more of my YW ideas HERE. 
Also my very favorite young woman in the entire world is hosting my blog this week, so if you're looking for some great projects for your YW please check her's out.

Day Two: Button Necklace

 The Trophy Daughter is back again for day two! This one is also very self explanatory but for the sake of posting I'll tell you how to do it!
1.) Find cute buttons(Should be the traditional kind with four or two boutton holes) and twine
2.) Sting a button on through two holes (even if there's only two holes)  and tie a double knot in the back.

3.) Repeat step two as long as you feel like.

4.) Tie it off and add bow if desired.

 I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Wow, I really don't have any idea how to end this so... bye? Read my next post? No ending?

By the way, while I'm writing this the ever so wonderful trophy mother is making a super cute necklace for my friends birthday even though I'm supposed to do it but I couldn't figure it out. That was a really bad run on sentence. Anyways, Thanks mom!

Linking up here