Last Week of September and a New Goal

A friend of mine is really diligent about documenting their family's adventures every week.  Since time does not seem to be slowing down for me, I also want to make this a renewed goal. Therefore, I can remember these days and weeks that seem to be zooming by at an incredible rate.

This week started off great at church.  I am Primary Chorister so it was the Sunday before the program.  I had the missionaries come into singing time and "catch the singing bug" again this year.  The children sang so well.  When they sing, they got a sticker to put on the missionaries.  As you can see, the missionaries are extremely patient AND the kids loved it!

Bless our missionaries!

 Laila now loves getting her nails painted.  I love painting her nails so it's a win win! ;)  It's become a fun Sunday tradition for us.

On Monday and Tuesdays I babysit for my friend.  So we have two babies (7 and 8 months old) and two 3 year olds and a kindergartener joins us after school.  It's a lot of fun.  Laila and Harrison LOVE having friends over.  I love seeing them play together.  Doesn't it look like I have two set of twins? Haha!  

^The sound of these girls clomping around in my shoes filled the house all morning. 

So, Michael had a work trip Monday-Thursday this week.  I don't sleep well without him and so I procrastinate my bed time.  Monday night was no exception.  I enjoyed some Netflix and texting friends and then decided that I had put it off enough and needed sleep.  I triple checked that all my doors were locked and turned off the lights and headed upstairs.  THANKFULLY, I turned on my phone's flashlight because on my stairs near the top was a SCORPION!!!!  I do NOT do well with those creatures.  I immediately became super panicked and couldn't decide what to do with it.  So I went with the rubber mallet method.  I don't feel like shoes squish them enough.  They are tough to kill.  You need something substantial!  Below is photographic evidence of my endeavor to protect my children!  (In my defense, I was shaking like a leaf.  And I needed to make sure it was completely dead.  SO the scuff marks came from me bringing the mallet up.  Not me missing the scorpion!)

Blah! I hate them!

Laila has been doing preschool with two other boys in our ward on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Another mom and I switch off teaching each week and it is absolutely a blast.  Laila LOVES going to school and learning her letters.   She is getting really good!  She can write her name (ish) and it's absolutely darling!  This week was D and they made some dragons "breathe fire."  I love how you can see the excitement in her eyes.  She brings so much joy to our lives!

This week I had my first date with myself in a LONG time.  (If I have ever had one.)  I went to a book signing of my favorite blogging couple, John and Sherry Petersik.  Their blog (found HERE) has inspired so many projects of ours around our house.  They recently published their second book, Lovable, Livable Home so they were in Tempe to chat and sign books!  I just think they are so talented, witty, and genuine! They also have stopped blogging for now so they could take a step back and have more time for their family- just super great people!  Needless to say, I was pretty starstruck to get to meet them!

Thursday also marked the return of my brave scorpion slayer!  We always love having him home with us.  I feel pretty lucky to have this guy by my side for eternity!

Also of note this week, we had our primary program practice which was super stressful and semi-chaotic and always leaves me feeling like Sunday is going to be a big flop (which it never, ever is!) I'm just left exhausted afterwards.  We also had our traditional ward fiesta.  It's always great to have a reason to get together.  Too bad it's still SO hot outside.

Saturday was clothes switch out day for Harrison.  He's moving on to to the next size up and I can hardly believe it.  Size changing is always bitter sweet.  Fun to see new clothes that fit him.  Sad to put away the small baby clothes.  This hat was no exception.  Look how little it is on him!

We were able to be productive around the house on Saturday and I was able to go to the General Women's meeting, which was very inspiring.  I love that conference is right around the corner!  Today was the primary program.  It was absolutely amazing.  The children brought the Spirit into the meeting right from the very beginning.   I'm grateful to be a part of Primary so that I can listen to their sweet, powerful testimonies every week.  

To top it off, Laila wanted her hair like Elsa today.  So her Mom did her best with what she had.  I do love playing around with Laila's hair.  It's more proof that Laila is quickly leaving the toddler phase and becoming quite the darling little girl.

So there's a glimpse of our life last week.  We are excited for more adventures coming this week!

Chateau Shields on Vacation

So...we've kind of been off the blogging grid the past couple of months.  I blame the AZ summer heat- it just kind of makes me want to sit as still as possible and do nothing all day sometimes.  Also, we've been pretty busy this summer working on a project that has been a dream of ours for awhile.  We love house projects so we have been looking to own a rental property for a few years.  Nothing felt just right until we came across the idea of getting a vacation home! With our families in northern Utah, we always stop in Las Vegas or St. George on our drive up or back.  We immediately loved the idea of having a place of our own in St. George that we could stay when we are traveling or even use as a meet in the middle point.  We also loved that we could also use it as a vacation rental to help offset the cost.  Well....this summer the dream became a reality!
We found a BEAUTIFUL new build off of Coral Canyon Golf Course in a development called Coral Ridge.  It has amazing finishes that seem like they were hand chosen by us even though we had nothing to do with any part of the construction and finishes. We fell in love.  That day we were under contract and working to get the financing and everything we needed to close on it as soon as possible.

The "fun" part was that we didn't want to purchase anything until we closed because what if it fell through and we couldn't have super huge purchases and be approved for the loan so it was a waiting game.  We had a few excel sheets that we mapped out a general idea what we wanted, needed and could afford.  Our HGTV loving selves had some fun working through it.  We needed to comfortably furnish the three bedroom, two bath villa, that could accommodate at least 10 guests, blinds, refrigerator, and washer/dryer.  All we had were a few measurements and pictures. so we tried to think of what could work in the space.
We closed on August 19 and then it was game on!  We had about a week to put things together, a weekend to get the house set up so that the next week we could have our first guests over Labor Day! We were collecting things from our home in Phoenix and Craigslist.  We were getting packages from Amazon like crazy and our front room looked like we emptied Walmart of all it's towels, sheets and home goods. (Semi-true since we had to go to a few different locations.)  Thankfully, we had Michael's parents with us to help get everything ready.  What a rush!  It was extremely exhausting and exciting all at the same time.  We were hoping things would come together like we imagined.  Here's our Villa:

 Hallways-  We actually got the frames on Craigslist.  The prints inside weren't our style but the frames were good quality so we found some prints of the beauty around St. George.

^Sigh...Love the tall ceilings, wood like tile and the six panel doors.

^This is the entry and the hallway to the Master.  The painting actually came from Phoenix.  It fits really well in the niche and carries the color scheme we went with for our house. Win win!

Guest Bath- Love the tile in the shower and the granite counter tops!

Bedroom 3-  (AKA Bunk room)  We got two bunk beds for this room.  One bunk was new.  One we found on craigslist.  Both bunks have fulls on bottom and twins on top. (This room can sleep 6!)  We had the Ikea print from when we first got married.  We knew we wanted white bedding so that we could bleach and switch out easily if we need to.  It was fun to be in Home Goods and find the pillows and the blankets with the lime green pop of color.  It's a color I wouldn't normally pick, but LOVE how it turned out.

Bedroom 2-  This is the bedroom set we used when we first got married.  Then it became our guest bedroom set.  Now it is here in St. George. (And our guest room in Phoenix is feeling very bare!)  I love the way it looks in here though.  I bought the lamps from Walmart.  The pillows are from Home Goods and across from the bed there is a huge print of Angel's Landing in Zion's National Park that has similar colors as the ones in the pillows.  I love the natural simplicity of this room.

Master Closet-  Some fun facts about this closet:  It has two entries. One is from the master bath.  One is the laundry room on the other side.  I personally think it is absolutely genius to have the laundry room right next to where all the clothes are kept!  Also,  the first night we got to the Villa, we didn't have any blinds so we decided to sleep in the closet so that we wouldn't feel like everyone could see us and to keep it dark so our kids wouldn't wake us up at dawn!  It worked.  We put a queen mattress, a twin mattress AND a pack n play in there.  It was AWESOME! Moral of the story: It's a decent size closet.

Master Bathroom- Again, love the granite and tile work.  It has dual sinks, super deep soaker tub, and a really pretty walk in shower.

Master Bedroom-  This was the room that made me nervous and we probably could have been smarter when we were planning it out, but it came together as probably my favorite room!  We found the headboard in St. George while we were out looking for a king mattress.  We ended up finding an amazing mattress on clearance somewhere else but we loved the headboard.  So we snatched those up.  This is when the magic happened.  I had brought the two pillows down from Phoenix.  They came from my couch in my living room.  I liked them but didn't want the black in my living room.  The color of the pillow matched the headboard perfectly so then we decided to get these two nightstands from amazon to go with the black.  The throw is from Home Goods.  When we were checking out at Home Goods, I spotted the mirrors that came in a set of three for $10! And there were two so I snatched those up real quick and love how they look with the lights and the lamps (which are from Walmart.)  On the opposite wall there is a TV that we brought from our master in Phoenix.  It is quite the retreat.

Living Room- It's so comfy!  We loved the gray sofa from the moment we saw it.  Then we found the cream sofa that has a pull out bed so that's why we chose two different sofas instead of a sofa/love seat combo.  (That makes a grand total of  at least 12 people that can sleep in the house!) We got the TV and the shelves from Amazon.  I love the shelves.  We used an end table that we've had since we got married.  When Michael was picking up the grey sofa from RC Willey in Vegas, he found the chair and a lamp on clearance.  Love them both.  The shelves are relatively bare in this picture.  And for the most part, they still are minimal.  But we added a few things so they weren't empty.  Most of those decor items came from Home Goods, our house, and D.I.  From the beginning, the carpet in the house was one of my favorite parts.  It's great carpet- soft yet hides dirt well.  Plus, it has a pretty basket weave pattern.

Laundry Room-  Probably one of the best Craigslist finds to date.  LOVE the washer and dryer- so much that I might bring them home to Phoenix with me one of these days.  Just you wait.

 Kitchen/Dining-  We loved the big, open space and the color of the cabinets and granite.  We added a large clock from Etsy, new fridge, table & chairs, and stools.  Not to mention dishware, pots, pans, etc.

Loved the stools we found on Amazon.

This table and chairs are another one of our best craigslist finds.  The leaf is built in and all six chairs came with it for $250! The table itself is still for sale at World Market for much more than that! They are great quality.  Then we got the head chairs off of Amazon to add more seating.  They look linen upholstered but are actually a vinyl that can be wiped down easily.  The table runner, plate and painting came from Home Goods.  Loved how well they defined our color scheme.

Outside- We have a nice patio on the side that has access to the living room and a door to the master.  We used an outdoor furniture set that we had and added new cushions.

The front patio has a great view and a great lawn.  We added some chairs and a grill to make it that much more fun to be outside!

We still have a few things to tweak, but overall, we are really happy with how it all came together.  We've had a few guests already and everything seems to have gone smoothly.  We are feeling so blessed.  We are looking forward to more guests and more spontaneous adventures in St George.  Come visit!

Chateau Shields Gets New Floors

Well, we definitely like projects and have had a lot of fun updating our house, but this project was a whole new level of project for us.  We decided to update all the tile on the main floor of our house.  We had two different types of tile one white-ish tile in the living room area and a pinky orange one in the kitchen/family room area.  Lots of people didn't mind the white-ish tile but it was super porous and had lots of divots in it that collected dirt.  The pinky orange tile was really, really dirty (even if I scrubbed hard!) and chipped in lots of places so we saved up and pulled the trigger on new tile.  We chose a wood looking tile because we like the look of wood but love the easy maintenance of tile.  I have no idea how to clean and maintain wood, especially in the dry desert that I live.  We wanted everything to flow between the rooms instead of having two different types of flooring.  We also needed to account for the fact that we have kids which means lots of spills and crummies and we have a pool which means a lot of dripping as we come inside. So tile was our pick.
We looked at wood looking tile at a few places and all were coming in at $5 or $6/sq foot.  Our house is on the smaller side, but still did not have the budget for that price.  Then we went back to the flooring place where we had purchased our carpet for the upstairs and found that they had some tile that we liked priced at wholesale cost. Hooray! AND miracle of miracles- we needed about 900 sq ft and they had about 1000 sq ft left in their entire warehouse.  I guess you could say we were meant to have this flooring in our house!

We started looking at flooring in the Fall and decided to get it finished before it was too hot outside and before our Japan trip.  Then we did the crazy thing and said let's rip it all up and get started on it so that we can have Laila's birthday and Harrison's baby blessing with new floors!  It was a great idea but incredibly stressful since everything ended up taking longer than expected and the floor wasn't even finished by that date.  More on that later.
Michael got bids from a few people that could lay the tile and we ended up choosing someone who had lots of experience and we decided to lower the cost by removing the old tile ourselves.  Michael worked his tail off to get the tile up and out of the house so we could make sure the floors were even.  But he had to go on a business trip so he worked endlessly for about 24 hrs just to finish.  It was the loudest, dustiest, tiring day!  I finally had to have Michael stop at 10 PM because you could hear the demo all around our circle outside.  It was so loud.  To top it off, we did this right before my roommates came to visit which you can read about HERE. Before Michael hurried off to the airport he brought in some basic furniture so we could have somewhere to be and I tried to clean as much of the dust as I could before they got here.  It was definitely a construction zone! I'm still so grateful my friends still willingly came and helped me with my two kids while Michael was away!
The next three weeks, we basically lived upstairs or on the concrete floor with a couch and a table.  Our garage was full of our furniture and our patio was full of our appliances and kitchen table for outdoor dining! It was pretty intense.

^Before....

^Small example of the enormous amount of dust!

^Living upstairs!

^Trooper number 1 loved her "Stair couch" Cozy, right?

^Meanwhile this trooper turned 6 weeks old!

^Nice kitchen/patio/storage/ work space

^Sure you can paint on the floor...

^My hard working husband getting our appliances plugged back in

^Laila helping her dad cut and paint new baseboards to replace the ones we ripped out.

^ Cleaning carpets and having some people come in and clean the windows and all the main floor felt SOOOO good after weeks of construction and dust!

^....After!

We are used to projects that last maybe a couple of days but this one had us in construction for weeks and it was happening in our main living areas.  It was exhausting.  Because it was so tiring, I definitely appreciate my new floors that much more!  I think it was worth it. (Even if I hated the new tile -which I don't- I would have to live with it because I do not want to repeat that process any time soon.)

Tokyo!

Before our long journey home, we stayed a few days in Tokyo.  I love Japan because it is super clean, family friendly and easy to get around!  We took the "limousine bus" from the airport to a hotel near ours and then took a taxi from there to the hotel we were staying at which was super nice!  They upgraded us to a corner suite and the view was phenomenal!  We walked around the city that night and enjoyed our yummy tradition at Hard Rock Cafe.  We saw Tokyo tower and the buddhist temple that was on the movie, Wolverine.  It is a beautiful city!

^Laila's peace sign.

^The view from our hotel!

The next day, we were picked up nice and early and taken to the bus depot to board our charter bus that was taking us out to Mount Fuji!  It was a few hours away but what a beautiful destination! We stopped at the visitor's center and even got to see some of the last cherry blossoms!  Then we drove up to what they call Station 5.  It was about halfway up.  Nice little break from the bus ride.  Then we ate lunch at a cute little hotel cafe.  After lunch, we went to a lake and took a ferry to a huge gondola ride.  I have to say our kids were incredible troopers but Harrison did not like being on the gondola.  I think he was hungry and it was squishy.  We also asked Laila multiple times BEFORE we got on the gondola if she needed to go to the bathroom.  She said no, no, no.  However, as soon as we get to the top of the mountain where there are no bathrooms, she needed to go.  I was nursing Harrison in a corner and so Michael took her around the building to go in a field.  It was a classy moment. ;)  We then met up with our tour group again to hussle over to the station where we were going to take a bullet train back into Tokyo.  Let me tell you, those are incredible trains! They go about 200-300 kilometers an hour!  They are right on schedule, clean and you barely feel like you are moving.  So cool!  After a few train rides, we got back to our hotel and enjoyed room service that night as we put the kids to bed and enjoyed the view.

^We found some of the last blooming Japanese Cherry Blossoms!

^Laila loved that every restaurant had darling kid sets of dishes

Wednesday morning, we got out for a few more sites before we needed to get to the airport.  We rode on their completely reliable subway and searched everywhere trying to find a certain restaurant and we failed.  But we saw some amazing things! It was a wonderful trip and I am really glad our two little ones joined us.

^We already miss all their mother's lounges.  Such a great place!