Tinkerbell Mylie is 3

Our little Mylie is finally 3 years old. I decided to make things easier on myself and with a little push from Kelly we bought Mylie's birthday cake this year. Mylie didn't seem to mind, infact, she picked out the balloon birthday cake from Costco. The theme for Mylie's birthday this year was Tinkerbell. She LOVES Tinkerbell. We actually had two birthday parties this year. One for friends and one for family.

Here is a picture from the friend's party. The kids are decorating their cupcakes. I have to thank my friend Julie because she noticed we weren't taking any pictures and asked if we wanted pictures taken. I am so bad at taking pictures that I don't even remember to even take my camera out. Thank goodness she made a comment, otherwise I wouldn't have any pictures of Mylie's party. Thanks Julie!

Birthday pinata. When I got this, Hunter asked me why I never bought him one for his birthday. Talk about serious guilt trip. Guess what Hunter and Kora are going to have at their parties this year...yep, a pinata.

Sadly, this is the only picture I was able to take of Mylie in her new boots and her Tinkerbell costume. She was in heaven with her gifts this year. She really loves her boots. Kora and Hunter are both anxiously awaiting theirs when their birthdays come around.

Overall, we had a great day, both celebrations were fun. We can't believe our little baby is 3 years old. She still asks me if she's the baby and my reply, yes! She'll always be our baby.

Newest Improvements

I realize that I have A LOT of blogging to catch up on. We got a new camera for Christmas (so no more dark photos) but this also meant I had to figure it out, download the software to our computer as well as figure out how to download it to my computer. I'm slow, I know but now that I have it mostly figured out I can start blogging again.


My first post back to our blog is about our house. We have made a few minor improvements and I wanted to share. It really is so fun to work on the house. I love that Kelly and I do it with our own hands because it makes it OURS! It also makes it fun to show off. So, any time you want to see our hard work come on over, we would LOVE to show you in person. Of course, a home cooked meal is also in on the offer. We love to have guests just give us a call.


Okay, first off, we have VERY high ceilings. When we painted our walls Kelly had to do all the high work on a ladder. I tend to have a smoother hand when it comes to painting and I was too scared to get up on the ladder to paint where the ceiling and wall met. It wasn't a perfect line, but it worked and if anyone complained about it....well, then they can come over to paint it for us. Needless to say, no one has complained so it has stayed as it was. Kelly was dying to put some crown moulding up to hide the imperfections but our ceilings are also sloped so the normal crown moulding wouldn't work. We had tons of base moulding left so we decided to take 2, put them together, add a smaller decorative moulding to hide the seam and....
I guess it is a little hard to see in the picture, especially with the moulding being white as well as the ceiling. The moulding is actually 8 inches wide.

We also wanted to show a room separation so we added a personal touch in the center. We have claimed the home as a "Kerr" home with a big "K" on the ceiling. I just love vinyl!


Our last improvement is in our living room. We have recently went crazy for Bead Board. I love the look of the stuff. We put some in the kids bathroom and we also put some behind our television. Amazing how one little change can really change the look of the entire room. I LOVE it! I really loved the white walls in this room because the wall behind me where I am taking this picture is a very dark blue. I was afraid by painting this wall yet another color it just wouldn't look good. Once putting the bead board up I noticed that it DID need a bit more contrast. We bought a grey color that is very light so that it gives just enough contrast. It's perfect!

Family Pictures

We have finally taken family pictures. If you haven't already noticed them on the side of our blog...then here they are. We went to a park in Chino Hills. I really wanted our family pictures by the lake but it was a bit muddy and the geese and ducks insisted on being in all the shots. The geese would literally walk right in front of us looking for a handout. Any other time it would be cute...but it did start to freak Mylie out a bit. After the pictures just weren't turning out the way I wanted them we decided to take them on the steps close to the lake. They turned out nice. My Sister-in-law, Kristin took them for us. I took the individual pictures. I hate taking family pictures but I love to have them.

I realize Hunter and Kora aren't smiling that great in this picture but Mylie is smiling and the biggest one for me, was that Kelly had a great smile in this picture. Sadly, that's a rare find so although my oldest 2 kids weren't smiling, they still looked good. I love Kelly's smile, wish he would do it more in pictures.

Hunter's 6 year picture. I hate pointing this out but my little 6 year old is actually wearing a size 4T shirt in this picture. He's so little. I love it because he's perfect regardless but I do hope he grows some day.

Kora's 4 year picture. I actually love this picture of her. To me it shows her spunkier, 'I can do anything' side of her. To me, this picture shows her truest nature.

Mylie's 2 and 3/4 year picture. I already took Mylie and Kora to get their pictures taken professionally this year. In case you were wondering, I didn't take Hunter because he takes them as school now. There is something about a school picture that's just not cute. I just love that they wait till the end of the day, after they spilled their lunch on their shirt and their hair is a mess to take a picture. Mylie's picture turned out cute but she has a cheesy fake smile. I think by the time I took it she was done taking pictures. I was just glad to get this one.

What is it about taking pictures of my kids backs that I think is so adorable? I don't know but I love these shots. The fact that they are holding hands is a nice touch too. Who cares if I had to threaten lives to get them to do it. Just Kidding, my kids love to be nice to each other in public. Now, how to get them to be nice to each other at home...

Christmastime means Christmas Cookies!

Christmas just isn't Christmas without making a batch of cut-out cookies. The kids love this because they LOVE helping. I tried something different this year with my cut-out cookies. I tried it one other time before and it worked out great. Instead of rolling the dough in flour I rolled it in powdered sugar instead. The texture or flavor of the cookie doesn't change and then there is no white flour mess on the cookie after you bake. I did find that the last batch of cookies didn't make it because I rolled it out too thin. Apparently, when you use sugar instead of flour and you roll it out too thin the cookie will be oversaturated with sugar and get tough. So, easy solution for next time...don't roll it too thin!

The kids helped me mix the dough and helped me roll it out and of course cut. The recipe made a lot of cookies so it was nice that Mylie was taking a nap while her brother and sister were helping me. By the time they had lost interest Mylie had woken up and helped me cut out the rest of the cookies. Once it was time to frost, everyone was interested in helping out with that...and of course taking a finger scoop for themselves every now and then. What's the fun of making cookies if you don't get to sample along the way?

Christmas Tree

By looking at the picture on the right you would guess that I have never taken a picture with this camera before in my life. That's not the case but unfortunately, this is the best picture I was able to take while we were tree hunting. I was trying to get the night settings working and I guess our camera doesn't take night pictures without a tripod. So, ignore the blurry picture and enjoy the experience!

This year we got our Christmas tree at a Christmas tree farm. This farm is right by our house. If we do go again next year we might consider going during the day, but we were too anxious to wait until the weekend. The kids enjoyed looking for trees but were a little freaked out by the darkness. When you arrive at the farm they give you flashlights and you go out hunting. After looking at nearly all of the trees we finally found a good one. You pull a tag off, pay for it and give it to the cutters so they can cut it down for you. While you wait for your tree to be cut they had a metal trash bin with a nice warm fire in it. It was a fun experience. The tree lasted a bit longer than if we had bought it at a pre-cut lot but the experience was so much better....and the smell lasted so much longer.

In the next picture the kids are helping me decorate the tree. They did a GREAT job decorating the bottom half of the tree. I just had to just take a few and put them near the top to even it all out. What a fun time. Nothing better than Christmas and starting new traditions in our new home. Loving it!

New Kitchen

Isn't the above picture the most beautiful kitchen you have ever seen? No? Yeah, we didn't care for it either. It's what came with our house so we were willing to deal with it for as long as we needed to. We went to Lowe's and got a quote for brand new cabinets and Corian counter tops....about $12,000. They called later that night and told us that they could do it for a little over $9,000. We knew it was going to be expensive so we were willing to wait 5....10 years until we could afford a new kitchen. We had accepted that, since we didn't have that kind of money to put into a kitchen at this time. We went to a friends house and I was in love with their kitchen. When I told them how much I loved their kitchen they told me that they had done it themselves. 2 weeks later Kelly and I were buying supplies and refaced our cabinets to look like new. Below is how each cabinet door now looks. We painted them white, added bead board in the center and put thin molding around the bead board to hold the board down and hide the seams. It took us about two FULL days to reface all of our cabinets. I LOVE it and am so proud to say that Kelly and I did it with our own two hands for the wonderful cost of about $300.
Since we were updating our kitchen we thought we should update our pantry door as well. Here is the before picture. Plain and ugly.
Here is our new decorative door. We pulled off the old molding and added a new decorative moulding. We plan to eventually change out all of the doors in our house to look exactly like this one. This is more of a very long far off project. We have such a long "to do" list when it comes to our home. Unfortunately, all it takes is money.

Here is our before sink. Notice the disgusting tile. I don't know who would put tile counter tops into their new kitchen. The grout is gross and uncleanable. Bleach doesn't even stand a chance against grout. This is actually a good picture of this sink. You can't see the stained porcelain or the black ring around the top of the sink. Even after I re-caulked the sink the black came up through the new caulk. Definitely gross.

Okay, here it is, our new sink and counter top. The sink actually came with the counter tops. I can't even tell you what kind of material it is. It's not porcelain. It's a Matte finish but I absolutely love it. I especially love my new faucet head. Kora asked me if she could take baths in our new sink. I told her it is certainly big enough.
Okay....drum roll please....Our new kitchen!

The countertops are granite. It isn't your standard granite. They actually put this over our existing tile countertop. There was no demo and it was done in about 4 hours. When we went to the L.A. County fair this year we saw a booth for this new counter top. What it is, is mashed granite and epoxy. The top looks just like a granite countertop where the bottom looks like it has all been glued together. It's stronger and cleaner than real granite because there are no natural cracks and crevices for bacteria to hide. I am in love with my new kitchen and more in love with my awesome, handy husband. I have to thank him for our kitchen as well as all the work he did so we could complete it. He really is amazing.

Halloween 2010

This year was all about the store bought costumes. Hunter really wanted to be Iron Man this year. At first we told him "No" because we didn't want him wearing a mask. On his Birthday he got the entire costume...suit, helmet, blaster arm and battery center. So, we decided to give in and let him be Iron Man.

Kora wanted to be Princess Aurora and on her birthday she got her entire costume. I thought I only had to make Mylie's costume but the closer Halloween got I just wasn't feeling it this year. I drove to the Disney Store to buy a Tinkerbell costume to find that I had missed the big sale by 2 days. The costume with wings was now $65....or I could have bought a wingless Tinkerbell costume for $40. I just wasn't feeling that either. For some reason the Alice in Wonderland costumes were a steal so Mylie was the cutest Alice in Wonderland that ever existed.

Funny thing about the above picture. Hunter really wanted to do the peace sign like Tony Stark in the Iron Man movie. After the girls saw Hunter holding up a "2" Kora held up a "3" and Mylie held up a "4".

This year we went trick or treating in our neighborhood with my Jeremy, Kristin and Luke. Here are the kids in all of their costumes. Mylie had just woken up from a nap so we hadn't fixed her hair yet. The other 3 were ready to go get some candy. It was fun going in our own neighborhood. There were quite a few kids out as well. Looking forward to new traditions in our new home.



After seeing my Sister-in-Law's Halloween post last year and seeing that they painted pumpkins instead of carved them I wondered why I NEVER thought of that. All these years I would buy one pumpkin for each child, they would help me clean out the pumpkins until they got bored and then I would have to carve them. They LOVED painting their own pumpkins. So fun.

Hunter decided to put faces all around the pumpkin. His was the only one that resembled a pumpkin face but they had a good time painting.

This is actually Kora's first coat of about 20. Her pumpkin ended up turning a nice brown color by the end. She LOVES to paint and color. She's our artist.

Our family right before leaving for trick or treating. You have got to love California weather when your kids are wearing shear sleeveless costumes and they aren't cold. We had a fun Halloween....now, on to Christmas...yay!