The Final Count Is In!

Finally, one month later than I thought it would take to finish cataloging my books, I am finished! (I admitted to Colby I thought it would only take me three days and he laughed at me.) Because I am borderline OCD, not only did I catalog the books but I arranged them in bins alphabetically by author's last name. The grand total is....wait for it...4,058. (Colby estimated that I had 4,000 and he was right.) Now that number does not include the approximately 400 duplicate books that I had in my possession. I know what you all are wondering, and no, I have not read them all but I would estimate that I have read at least 85% of the books in my possession, if not more. The garage is now jokingly referred to as the "library" since that is where most of the books are stored.

Spring Continued...

I know many of you enjoyed the beautiful picture I posted of my first flower of spring. This is what my flower bed looked like this morning. The small black spot in the front in the snow is one of my poor crocuses desperately trying to survive the snow. I have to admit this is one of my least favorite things about living in Salt Lake City, in the spring I have to watch the weather carefully to know how to dress. Last week we were in the 70s and it was warm and this week we are going to be lucky to top the 40s and are expected to get snowed on by three different storms. It has been known to snow in June here.

Scrapbook Expo

For the past couple of years I have attended the Scrapbook USA Expo with several friends to get some great deals and great ideas for scrapbooking. This year we decided to do the "scrap till midnight" event. We all hauled our supplies to the Expo and scrapbooked from 6:00 p.m. until Midnight, after which we all went to a Wal-Mart at 12:15 to get copies of Twilight on DVD.
I would like to be able to report that I was incredibly productive and did an amazing number of pages but in reality I finished two pages but I did have a really good time and ate WAY too much crap. I think we all had fun and are hopefully going to be able to make this a yearly tradition. (Kim, I only have one photo of you from the Expo and I think you are going to be happy that I didn't post it.)

Spring has Sprung....kind of.....

The first flowers of the year have sprung in our yard. This always gives me hope that summer will be here someday. Unfortunately for Colby, this means is I have finally emerged from the cocoon of blankets that is my standard place to be in the house and finally looked around at our house and am fully disgusted. Yep, that's right, Spring Cleaning begins. (It is capitalized because it is such a big event at our house.)

My favorite tool

Okay, usually I don't tout products on my blog but if you don't use these yet you are missing out. As many of you know, about five months after Colby and I got married a candle was left burning while we were at work and it did some pretty extensive smoke damage. This weekend I took the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to my white vanity. Now understand, I have scrubbed the vanity several times since the fire and it looked okay but I have been debating about refinishing it lately because it just hasn't been looking that good. It looks fabulous now and there is no need for me to refinish it. I am going to replace the handles on it, hopefully next weekend, to give it a more updated look but I don't have to repaint the entire thing now (hurray!). If I had thought about it I would have taken a picture of the vanity before and after I cleaned it, but I will do before and after photos with the handles.

Neglected Blog and Family Chaos

So I have been neglecting my blog lately in pursuit of getting my books cataloged. I didn't realize when I started the project that it would take me so long. I figured I would be finished, at longest, in three days...nope....almost three weeks later I just have four bookshelves to go. I have to admit that it has been nice to get them all organized and to realize how many books I really own. (I own more books than most people read in their lifetime.)

I was lucky enough to be able to go and tour the new Draper Temple twice, once at night so I got to see the Temple all lit up and once during the day.
It is absolutely beautiful, inside and out! The second time I went through with Jordanne, Jillian, Aunt Gwen, Uncle Dave, Wendy, Rob, Donnie, Paige, Robbie, Jett and Emery. (Yes, the McArthur clan descended en masse on the Temple and it remains standing.) Later that weekend Lana and Aros came down and we all played Rock Band 2 at Wendy and Rob's.

Paige and Emery did their own make-up (yes, the eighties are back) and posed for a picture. For some reason Jillian didn't want them doing her makeup....
She looked so pretty when they were done with her. The flecks on her face is glitter, they put so much glitter on her she was sneezing it out for a week.
Emery was having a good time playing with Jordanne's hair, as long as it didn't interrupt the game Jordanne was good with that.
Lana's youngest LOVED the music and was dancing like crazy! She kept at it song after song until Lana finally made her stop to go to bed and had to change her jammies because she had sweat through them. If you look in the background you can see Jordanne and Paige singing along.
We had a great time! It had been awhile since I had hung out with my family en masse like that and I have to admit it is something that I miss living so far away from them all.