Becky Beck- November - Scrapbooks

My project for November was to complete my kids scrapbooks for the year.

Every Christmas my kids get 3 gifts similar to the gifts of the Magi--something fun, something needful, and something meaningful.

The scrapbooks are the meaningful gift.

I make each of the kids a digital scrapbook and although they are never surprised when they open them, they love this gift and look through their entire book as soon as they open it.

This was the first goal this year I did not complete within the month.  I was working on them right up until almost midnight the night of Dec 10th (the 10th is my day to post, does anyone even post on their day anymore? :) haha.  I finished what I needed to for my kids AND did 2 additional scrapbooks.

One of the extras is for my Grandpa Moon with pictures of all the fun projects that were completed this past summer on his ranch.  

Here are a few pictures...

My December project is well on its way.

It was originally going to be doing the 12 days of Christmas for a family but then I got put over the Angel Tree in our ward and we are helping several families so I switched to that and am involving my kids.

October - Weather Stripping - Becky Beck

This is the most boring project of all time.

We've lived in this house for 9 years and for 9 years the door to our garage has needed new weather stripping.  There has always been a draft coming in from around the door and who knows how much energy has escaped over the years.

I spent 5 bucks at Lowes and took 5 minutes to put the weather stripping in place.

No more drafts.

No more energy escaping.

The End.

Becky Beck - August - Find and take my own family names to the temple

I had all kinds of projects going on this month!  But the one I really wanted to 

accomplish was to find my own family names to take to the temple.

My friends the Meldrums have a niece/granddaughter who is great at family history work so she was nice to help get me started.  I spent some time with her and then some time on my own and ended up finding 2 women on my Grandpa Sollie's side to do all their temple work for and a few men on my mom's side that need to be sealed to their parents.  I've done the baptisms and initiatory work for the women and should finish up the rest of the ordinances next month.

We took my daughter Kloe along and did the baptisms and confirmations in the Logan temple.

Packing up my daughter and taking her to college was another fun project.

Go AGGIES!

And then clearing out her room and turning it into a playroom was another one...

We've always had so many kids in the house we've never had a designated room just for toys.

IT. IS. FABULOUS!

Emmy bunks in with her sister Kloe when she comes home to visit :).

Becky Beck - July - Neighborhood Party

My July project changed from whatever it was supposed to be (I can't remember) to heading up our big Summer Neighborhood Picnic.  Our poor Bishop couldn't get anyone to be in charge of it.  I felt bad for him and volunteered--knowing I could make it my July project made it a little less painful.  I have never, ever done anything like this before.  I can't stand making cutesy decoration stuff and I can't even figure out how to make enough food to feed the 8 of us who are at home--I usually end up making too much.  So to plan for between 200-250 was overwhelming.

Table decorations/functional fork holders.

I may not be a decorator but I am a pretty good planner and delegator and those skills served me well.

My daughter found this idea for centerpieces (we attached balloons to the jars) on Pinterest and I found a recipe for Kool-Aid popcorn online.

I kept the menu simple

Pulled pork sandwiches (they were AWESOME!  we had several people in the neighborhood smoke the pork)

Hot dogs for the kids

Baked Beans

Pasta Salad

Watermelon

Chips

And for dessert dutch oven cobblers with ice cream and chocolate chip cookies and ice cream for the kids.

Picked up these on clearance at the Walmart.

(That's my daughter Emmy helping out)

Several of the guys that were supposed to set up didn't show so my husband and son were troopers and helped out all afternoon.  I explained to the guy in charge of set up that people are flaky (and I say that with love) and he should have called them all to remind them the day before.

My awesome kitchen crew.

My girls play the violin with another group of kids so they played all kinds of fun fiddle and country songs!  One of the favorites was Devil Went Down to Georgia.

We have one neighbor who has this fun train she always lets us use and another neighbor who has a bouncy house.

My neighbor Marsha is an artist and she did incredible face painting...

This was a big project for sure.

I started working on things the 3rd week in June and the party was on July 26th.

I enlisted many of my neighbors to help and they were awesome!  A few took care of the invitations, one took care of the sign up sheets and kept track of all the money and who was bringing what.  Another was in charge of assigning people to make the dutch oven desserts.  Another took care of the advertising.

My busiest day was the day of the party.  I got to work around noon getting things ready and didn't stop until around 9:00pm.  Overall I'm happy with the results.  We had about 225 people attend.  We really tried to include all of our neighbors with personal invites.  I live in an fantastic neighborhood and I wanted the people who don't attend our ward to feel welcome.  We had neighbors of many different faiths come so I was really happy about that.  And, we didn't run out of food!  We probably could have served another 150 people, no problem.

I can definitely see the benefit of having a committee to work with.  I didn't have one but I would should I ever do something like this again.

Becky Beck - June - Ramp up my blog

This month's goal was to improve the look and layout of my family blog.

I blog for a lot of reasons.  The biggest being our own little daily family history.  I have visions of my grandkids being able to some day read about their parents as kids and look at all the fun pictures of when they were younger.  My blog has also evolved into a missionary tool and it's a very fun hobby of mine.  I've been wanting to improve the look of it for over a year, as well as start advertising for a few of my favorite companies since I often get asked where I buy things I mention on the blog.

This is what my blog layout has looked like for the past couple of years.

I've never liked it.

In doing more research if I were to start over I would use wordpress rather than blogger but I've been with blogger since 2008 so for now I'm staying put.

One of my goals was to find a simple layout because I want more emphasis on my pictures than the design of the blog.

I bought a layout from THIS company.

It cost me $15. and I'm really happy with it.

Eventually I may higher a custom designer but for now I'm happy with the simplicity of this one.

You can go HERE to see my new blog layout and background.

I also figured out how to join Amazon's (one of my FAVORITE places to shop) affiliate program and added a few advertisements to the blog.

In order to make my pictures the focus I needed a better camera.  I use the camera on my iPhone and the quality is pretty poor.  My sister is an awesome photographer and she had an old camera she used before buying the Cannon mother of all cameras, so I bought her old camera.

She gave me everything you see here for $125.

I was SO excited.

Now I am just waiting for the husband to finish reading the instruction manual so he can teach me how to use it (I have NO patience for instructional manuals).

Becky Beck - May - Organize Baby Kevin Cards & Letters into a Book

Like many of you I haven't stuck to my original projects, however, every project I have done would not have gotten done had I not been participating in Projects Connect 2014 so I feel fine about all my changes.

Our 8th child, Kevin David Jr, was born on May 10th of 2012.

We found out at 20 weeks he had Trisomy 13, a rare genetic disorder, and were told the chance of him being born alive was slim and if he was he would only live a short time. 

Our little guy was a fighter and was born alive at 37 weeks.  He lived about an hour and 15 minutes, long enough for us to meet him, hear him cry, and give him a name and a blessing.  I treasured every minute of his life and every moment of the pregnancy. 

The outpouring of love and support we received throughout the pregnancy and after his birth was incredible.  We were blessed to feel the love of the Lord both from the Lord himself and through many who reached out to us.  

I had two folders full of cards, letters, and other little gifts that I kept meaning to organize into a book so the kids could read through it just like they have the scrapbook of pictures I made each of them of Baby Kevin's birthday and graveside service.

I kept telling myself it was no big deal, I could just put it all together any time.  But as I began putting this book together I realized I had subconsciously been avoiding it on purpose.

A flood of memories came back as I read the cards and letters.  One of my friends even wrote a beautiful hymn for Baby Kevin.  

I looked at the ultrasound we had 2 weeks before finding out he had Trisomy 13.  One of the pictures showed his hand and I swore, when I first saw it, it looked like there were 6 fingers.  Well, I later found out I was right.  One of the markers for Trisomy 13 is extra fingers and toes.

Through a few tears and taking a couple of breaks I did it.

The book is complete and I'm grateful for this blog that helped me to do it.

My husband made a beautiful video for me and gave it to me on Baby Kevin's 2nd birthday.

I've posted it on My Family Blog if you'd like to see it--it's on the right sidebar.

Or you can go HERE.

Becky Beck - April - Clean out my "office"

Update on my last months project:  The finished neighborhood cookbooks arrived this past week.  They turned out great!  Thanks again to my friend Joyce for helping me with this project!

My April project was to clean out my "office" which is really a closet.  With so many children, every room in our house is occupied.  I figure by the time we're down to 3 kids at home we may have an extra room we can use for a office.  

BEFORE...

I do all the book keeping for our business so this is where I keep everything.

I cleared off one shelf at a time and got rid of everything that didn't belong.

My girls were great helpers and thought the shredder was the greatest toy ever!

AFTER...

For May I am finally putting together a book of all the notes and cards we received 2 years ago when we lost our baby boy, Kevin Jr.  It's long over due.  Today we celebrate his 2nd birthday.  I'll post pictures of this special day next month along with the project.