My little brother just got into BYU. This is super exciting for him because he wasn’t expecting to ever get in, and not only does he get to learn at one of the best institutions around, he also gets to play on their rugby team. (If you have never seen a rugby game you need to make a point to. It’s awesome.)

However, because he learned of his acceptance so close to the start of the semester he is in need of a place to stay. So he is coming to live with me. Let me repeat: a smelly teenage boy is coming to live at my house. Eek! I’m excited to get to know the kid better, but also don’t want to be taken advantage of. So I’ve written up the following contract. Do you think I should add anything? Am I being too harsh on the boy?

Housing Contract for Daniel

1. Daniel must realize what a PRIVILEGE it is to be living with the us. By living with them you are saving over $1200 (and really it is a lot more because you have your own bedroom and bathroom, and that type of situation would cost A LOT more not to mention utilities.) You should try to find ways to make it up to us while living with us.
2. Your bedroom is to remain clean at all times. This means:
   1. No clothes on the floor
   2. No smelliness
   3. You must make your bed 5 out of 7 times a week (Wow, I’m nice!)
   4. It must look good enough to have the door open at all times without exposing us to anything gross/foul/embarrassing/disturbing (this doesn’t mean your door has to be open at all times, it just means that if it happens to be open it complies with everything mentioned above.)
3. The bathroom you use is to be kept clean with nothing left on the counters daily and all towels hung up. It also must be cleaned once a week. I will check it every Thursday. If I find that it hasn’t been cleaned, I will clean it and you must pay me $50. I will stick to this because it sounds like a good way for me to make money. When you clean the bathroom you must:
   1. Vacuum the floor
   2. Wash the counter and sinks
   3. Clean the toilet (inside and out)
   4. Clean the tub
   5. Wash the mirror
4. No farting. Ever.
5. No burping.
6. You are in charge of your own food. We may allow you to eat our food every now and then, but WE will invite you. You are not to invite yourself to any of our food. We will provide you cupboard space and fridge space. You may use our dishes and utensils and condiments.
7. You are never to leave any dirty dishes for us to clean. If you do then I will charge $1 for every dish I have to wash and $5 for pots/pans I have to clean .
8. You cannot borrow our cars. Don’t even ask. Seriously.
9. You are to mow the lawn when it starts looking shabby. (Usually this will be twice a week.)
10. No girls allowed in your room.
11. Please give us a courtesy call if you plan on bringing people over. It is just a nice thing to do.
12. You can’t make fun of the way Seth and I live (especially our blow up mattresses in front of the TV).
13. No blasting music from your room. You can play music, I just don’t want to hear it all over the house.
14. I may assign you household chores now and then. It will mainly be things that you personally help make dirty. Examples: vacuum the floor/stairs, clean kitchen floors, wash kitchen counters, take out the trash etc.
15. You need to try to use computers on campus at all times. Seth and I already fight over the use of our computer so adding a whole other person who needs to do homework into the mix is not a good idea. If you use our computer too much I will let you know in not very nice ways, like singing really loudly near you.

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When I was browsing through Amy Butler’s website yesterday, I found some free patterns. There are beautiful quilts, scarfs, and pillows. But the thing that caught my eye are the fabric silhouettes . I’ve been looking for a cheap placeholder for my walls until I can afford something amazing (therefore expensive) and this just might be it. Now I just need to find some inexpensive frames…I need to go to some yard sales!

Images from Amy Butler’s website.

Tags: DIY, Interior Design Ideas, Uncategorized by Tricia
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So, now that my kitchen is almost livable (we are going to try to put the faucet in tonight!), I’ve started to think, what next? My house doesn’t seem homey yet, so I need to make it feel comfortable…by getting things on the walls, and buying a few decor items, etc. But before I do that I know I need a color scheme. The best way I have found to do this is to choose some fabrics and then use the colors in them to coordinate the things I buy. I have my main color on the walls, so I need to pick some fabrics that go with them.

After doing a little browsing on the trusty ol’ web I’ve found the perfect fabric collection for me! It is called August Fields and is by Amy Butler . I am now in love with her. It is a little bit retro but so nice.

There are four different color pallets with this collection, but I love the first two. I think I’ll order some fabrics from one of these two. So I have a beautiful blue/green color on the walls and I’ll be picking accents in green, red or orange. I’m excited!

Images from AmyButlerDesign.com .

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Today is a good day because…

1. My faucet arrived! We are going to hook it up, and if it works we are going to party!
2. I am starting a "Four Weeks to Fabulous" regimen today. What does that en tale, you ask? I’m actually going to start working out (jogging/running this week, P90X next week) and eating healthy (goodbye fast food). The reason why? I’m going to Puerto Rico in four weeks. I need a hot, beach bod.
3. I get to go pick fresh-from-the-garden beans from the family garden in Highland.
4. My sister in law is having an awesome giveaway on her blog Vanilla Joy that starts today. If you go there you have the chance to win a Cricut! (And a ton of other things!) You also have the chance to read about kids face painting , family fun , discipline for children and creative date ideas . (She dabbles in a bunch of other things too, such as obaji skin care and take surveys for money .)

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Do you remember the table I wrote about in this post? Well I’m going to look at it tomorrow. I’m hoping I love it and that I will come home with it!

Also, do you remember how our faucet wouldn’t work ? Well, we found out that the faucet was faulty. So we took it back to IKEA and got a new one. Once it was set up I promptly decided I hated it. It was just too flimsy and shaky. It seems that a lot of things from IKEA are that way. So we bought this faucet online:

I’m hoping it will do the trick. The estimated arrival date is sometime between this Friday and next Tuesday. If it does come on Friday I may have a functioning kitchen by this time next week! And here is a short tip: we found this faucet at HomeDepot.com for $230(ish). It was about $50 more than what we paid for the IKEA faucet, but I decided it would probably be worth it to get something that would last. At the last moment I Googled the faucet’s name to see if I could find it cheaper somewhere else. And Amazon.com was the winner! We bought it for just a few dollars more than the IKEA faucet. So, I learned that good things can happen if you do just a bit of shopping around on the internet before buying.

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I have a tree in my yard that is producing little seed pods that I thought would make a beautiful wreath. So I took an hour out of my day today and made one. And, dang I’m good! It is good lookin’! It was super easy to make and looks great on my front door, so I want to share how to make one. There are probably a lot of things around your yard that would make a great wreath. (I can’t wait to make one in the fall when the leaves on my trees change colors.)

First, gather your supplies. All you really need is a grapevine wreath (mine is a 10″), some floral wire, and scissors. (Side note: grapevine wreaths happen to be 40 percent off this week at Roberts. They are usually about $2 for a 10″, so you can get it for just over a buck right now. Floral wire is about $1.60.)

Second, cut off enough bunches of seeds, leaves, or flowers to make your wreath. My hand shears made this super easy.

Next, gather enough seeds to make a thick bundle and secure the stems together with floral wire. I gathered three to four branches of seeds for each bundle. Once you have enough bundles to go all the way around the wreath, start securing them to the grape vines with the floral wire. The trick is to make sure that the top of each bundle hides the stems of the one before it.

Once I got this far I realized that the stems are pretty flimsy, so I wound a long piece of floral wire around the entire wreath to make sure the seeds didn’t flop over when I hung it up. I also sprayed it with some floral spray to help it keep its color for a few days longer that it would without it.

Ta da! After a short trip to Roberts to buy a $.99 wreath door hanger and some pink ribbon, my new wreath is proudly displayed on my front door. My husband keeps asking me about where I got the idea for it. He can’t believe I came up with it myself.

(P.S. Don’t you think this would make a great centerpiece if you lay it down and put a candle in the middle?)

Tags: DIY, Uncategorized by Tricia
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Now that my kitchen is nearly complete, I feel comfortable actually purchasing things to put in it. And number one on the list is, of course, my kitchen table. And I finally found exactly what I want. It is a good price, the perfect look, has two leaves for all the parties I’m going to have, and comes with a long bench. The problem? The guy who listed it on KSL.com won’t call me back. What is the opposite of luck? Because that is what I have. Mr. Jerry from Heber please return my phone calls!

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I think a lot of people know that a good trick to saving money when they want to remodel their kitchen or bathrooms is to keep the cabinets and either paint or stain them. Well, I just wanted to show you proof that this is true.

In my old condo we wanted to redo our guest bathroom because it looked gross. Seriously it was bad. People would come out with their nose wrinkled, and I just knew they were thinking their body was probably infected with some horrible fungus just by stepping in there. However, we didn’t have a big budget. After finding a beautiful black-framed mirror for cheap ($17.77 in the clearance section at Furniture Warehouse on Redwood Road!) we decided to paint the water-warped cabinets to match. We had tried to stain the cabinets a few months earlier, but it just brought out the flaws even more. I was very pleased with the outcome of our paint job.

Here are my tips if you decide to paint your cabinets:

• Make sure to take the hinges off the doors and frames when painting. Nothing says tacky more than half painted hardware.
• Sand and wash each piece so there isn’t any gunk and so the paint will stick.
• Prime your cabinets and doors. Don’t skip this step just to save money. It always helps the finished product look better and stay nicer longer.
• Choose either semi- or high-gloss paint. Why? Because your cabinets are going to be around water and food. These finishes clean up real nice and won’t stain. (PS I hate flat paint in all it’s forms. I painted a front room with it once…big mistake.)
• If you want to do this to your kitchen but are a bit nervous, try it in your bathroom first, just to make sure you like the outcome. A lot of houses have the same type of cabinets in the bathrooms, so once you paint or stain them you will know exactlywhat to do differently if you don’t like it. I’m so glad we did this in our condo. We were going to stain all our kitchen cabinets, but once we saw the outcome on the cabinets in the bathroom we knew it would have been an ugly mess in the kitchen.

Enjoy the before and after pictures!

Here are a few things I would have done to this room if I had stayed in this condo a bit longer: bought some sweet handles for the cabinet doors, replaced the faucet, and actually have bought a toilet paper holder. Those seem to work well in bathrooms for some reason.

Tags: Advice, DIY, Home Decorating in Utah--Tips!, Interior Design Ideas, Uncategorized by Tricia
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My husband and I have done a lot of painting in our day. I don’t mind it so much; it’s the taping I can’t stand. I really wish I could say we were one of those couples that works as a great team when we are in tedious situations, but it would be a big lie. After hours of taping we start getting really snappy and mean to each other. (The last time we painted I’m sure I called Seth a lame-o and jerk face a few times. Gasp!) So when Seth saw the Smart Masker Pro at a home show he grabbed it. It is supposed to make taping around windows, doors, and trim a breeze.

So we whipped it out this weekend when we painted our kitchen and…it worked! When we pulled the tape away there were still some leaks we had to touch up, but no more than usual. The taping was done so fast–I would guesstimate it took about a quarter of the usual time. I totally recommend it!

Kitchen pictures coming soon…I still have the handyman down there working on a few things.

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It’s official. We are having someone come over first thing Monday morning to fix all of our problems.

I am so happy.

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