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What is life like with 5 kids

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God has blessed me to be the mother of 5 amazing kids.  All of them have their own personalities and adventures.  My oldest is almost 12. My youngest is 3 years old.  These guys make our house fun.  Is it stressful? Um yes.  At the end of the day I just sit back and love watching them grow.

Parenting tips I have learned:

  1. Slow down.
    Life is always crazy but it is good to slow down. One year my kids wrote that little question thing they gave me at mothers day. One of the questions was “what does mommy do a lot”  my kids wrote WORK. It broke my heart. I have tried since then to work less and be a mommy first.
  2. Pay attention to the details.
    Kids desire to have their parents attention.  I try had to stop what I am doing at pay attention to what they want to tell me. Am I perfect? Do I remember to do this every time?  Um no, but I try.  It is important to them.
  3. Create an environment of fun and learning.
    During holidays or special events I try to allow my kids to do fun adventure with me. Whether it is building a fort or painting a canvas. We have a lot of fun.
  4. Teach them to put God first.
    As parents we worry if our child will make the right decisions. I have learned that if I teach them to put God and follow Him they will make much better decision.  Will they always make the right one? No, but they will make better ones when they know they can trust Him.
  5. Live life not just survive
    I once watched Wall-e and they made the comment “we don’t want to just survive but thrive.” Don’t get caught up in the routine of life that you don’t live life.  I have tried hard to live life and model that to my kids.  Teach them life can be tough at times. We all have our ups and downs. Just don’t forget to enjoy life.24313072_10214684313003866_6030730493702374495_o

Shiplap is my new favorite thing

Shiplap is my new favorite thing

This is one of my most favorite projects I think i have ever done.  We have a beautiful house that we built this past year with a wonderful company.  I have gone through the house in my head room by room to create custom things and this is one of my first projects I decided to do. So my husband went out of the country and I always come up with some project to keep me busy.  This project turned out so good

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I started out by going to Home depot and got this wood. (15/32 inch plywood). I had the home depot guy cut it down to 6 inch planks.  My ceiling is 18 feet tall and I used about 5 sheets.

Below is the trim I got to finish out the edges.

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Next, is pretty simple.  I measure how long to wood should be and cut all the pieces going up.

Once all that was cut I got my nail gun and nailed them up.  The important thing to shiplap is the SPACE in between the boards. I used NICKLES to be my spacers.  It was pretty simple.

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Yes I was determine to finish this project in 1 night.  My kids were all in bed and homework was done.  I had 3 more boards left and man was this high.

Lesson I learned is paint the boards ahead of time before hanging them this high.  So glad I did that.  Made it alot easier so i didn’t have to get so high to cut in.

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Once I finished the boards It was time to trim and paint.  I tested the paint to how I liked it.  On all the edges I just nailed the trim to frame out the shiplap. Most shiplap is done in white but I wanted something dramatic going up my fireplace.  I used Olymipa “Knights Armor” flat paint. I love this color.

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I really loved how it turned out.  I ended up painting my picture to contrast the white stone fireplace and just kinda got stuff I had around the house to display everything.  The tobacco basket and wreath at the top came from Hobby Lobby.  I custom made the farmhouse sign and everything else I have had for a long time.

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For questions or more information email me at tiffany@tiffanystrong.com