Mormon Helping Hands

I loved this video. It's about the hurricane relief and the Mormon Helping Hands, a group of thousands of volunteers who showed up to assist the people in the NYC and NJ area. My brother served his mission in NYC South, so the people of NYC are very special to us. Our previous stake president in Virginia is in the video, as he is currently serving as the mission president in NYC. If you'd like to help out or contribute, you can visit the NYC Facebook or NJ Facebook pages for more info.

With all of the bad news in the media, it's refreshing to have something heartwarming to see. At a time when these people have lost so much, it is so inspiring to see their hopeful faces. As next week is Thanksgiving, may we have gratitude for what we have and remember what is truly important in life.

DIY Bench

Cory and I have been lucky to move into a great townhouse here in Kansas. It's not a very big place, but it's just the right amount of space that we need. We needed a bench to sit down on in our mudroom/entryway in the basement. We didn't want to spend a ton of money, so thankfully Cory is good with the drill.

We used this plan from Ana White to make the bench. Cory made a few adjustments because we wanted to make it a little bit smaller. 

Materials and Tools

• 1 - 2x6 ($4.55)
• 2 - 2x4s ($5.46)
• box of screws ($3.23)
• wood stain ($4.38)
• sandpaper
• drill
• saw

Total project cost: $17 

Cory gettin' the job done.

Pre-stain. Oh so pale. 

We used the Minwax wood stain in classic gray. The longer you let the stain soak into the wood, the darker the stain becomes. Which may seem obvious to most people, but make sure you test the stain on a spare piece of wood before doing your whole project.

The gray piece at the bottom is what the stain looks like without rubbing it off yet. Pretty dark.

 Both pieces after rubbing the excess stain off:

And there she is! Since I didn't really do any of the work, I can't say how easy it was. But it took Cory a couple hours to get it done. And he said it wasn't that hard. So I'll probably ask him to make a coffee table now. 

P.S. This is not our mudroom. Our mudroom is ugly and not cute. But maybe one day the bench will get promoted upstairs.

Welcome to Kansas!

{image via Etsy}

There's nothing like a state that looks like a sheet of paper. Cory and I moved to Kansas at the beginning of September. I know what you're thinking. Kansas is nothing but corn fields and overalls. And everything is flat as a pancake. Not true! We live about 20 minutes outside of Kansas City, MO, and there is so much going on. Here are some of the reasons why we love it so far:

• The amount of trees here (can you say fall?)
• Only having to drive 10 minutes to get to Crate & Barrel, Anthro, J.Crew, Madewell, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Target, TJ Maxx, etc. I could go on.
• The cost of gas right now: $3.19
• Kansas City BBQ (I've never been a huge meat and ribs kind of girl. Well, I'm still not a huge meat and ribs kind of girl. But I do enjoy a nice pulled pork sandwich at one of KC's finest: Oklahoma Joe's)
• Our ward/congregation. Everyone has been so welcoming and friendly! 
• Cory's short commute to work. It takes him 10 minutes to get there. And on a nice day, he can bike there. We're so green I know.
• The paved bike and walking trails near our house. No excuses now.
• The schools are amazing. We live in Blue Valley School District. Blue Valley is the only district in the country with more than 20,000 students to make AYP for the district and each one of its schools for 10 years. That's really, really good. Whatever they're doing, it's working. 

We live in the suburbs, so we don't see a lot of farms around here. But in case you were wondering, this is what you could be doing if you moved to a farm...in Kansas:

Now that I have a little more time on my hands, I figured I would start a little bloggy blog. Nothing like a little love from the midwest!