Welcome

Come on over!!!  

I FINALLY have a few pictures of the house to show.  I thought we would start with the obvious, the foyer!!  While we are loving our new house and the extra space there is so much I want to change to make it "our home".

A few updates that will be coming soon is paint.  While brown is a safe color and it is not the worst color, it is just not "us" and is much too dark.  If anyone wants to come join the painting party, just let me know.  I am not looking forward to paining these tall ceilings!

This is what the view is coming in from the front door.  No worries the end table will not stay there!   I am still trying to plan out the decor for this area.  Thinking a small table/sideboard an a little chair?

Plans for the long term include:

1.  Hardwood floors on the main level and up the stairs.  I am thinking of wide planks with a darker finish.  If you know me I do not like carpet. Not the look, not the cleaning, not the worrying of my kids staining it.  I am hoping new floors are in the plans for the next year or so. 

2.  New chandelier in the foyer.  I am in no rush for this, however, I have many favorites at Restoration Hardware, including this beauty.

3.  Remove the popcorn ceilings.  My family thinks I am crazy, but I  have researched this and it doesn't seem to hard,  more messy than anything.  This is a long term plan since if I start it, I will have to complete for the entire house!  

4.  Update the front door.  

5.  I also have ideas to paint the railing black like the pictures below.  I might be too scared to ever take this leap, but I am not ruling it out!

Contemporary Staircase design by Boston Architect LDa Architecture & Interiors

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Traditional Staircase design by Newark Architect Clawson Architects, LLC

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I will post pictures of the kitchen tomorrow!  Off to keep dreaming up plans....

 

Inspiration Room

We are finally all moved into the new home!!!  A lot of organizing, decorating, and settling to be done but here none the less!  While I still haven't managed to get pictures of the entire house, I do have one room to share.
Trying to decorate a whole house at once can be overwhelming so we are taking it room by room.  Since the kitchen is already beautiful and doesn't need much work and the living spaces have what they need to be functional (i.e. couches), we decided to start with our office/library.  Its no secret my husband LOVES to read books so having a space to feel inspired was definitely a high priority.  Due to the layout of the house we dedicated one of the "open rooms" on the main level as an office/library.  
Shortly after we moved in we headed to West Elm for some much needed new bedding as we have been sporting the same bedding for the past 5 years.   While we were there we noticed the wall they had that was covered in wood from pallets.  I have also noticed several other pallet wall projects from other blogs such as here.  Jeff and I fell in love with the look and had a great idea.  I put together this rough mood board for the future look of our office.  We still need to figure out bookshelves for the library piece, but it included much of what we were looking for.  

Office by carl1194 on Polyvore

1.  A fresh clean feel.

2.  Inspiration as provided by the Rhino.  ***For all practical purposes the Rhino is our family mascot.  We bought this awesome papermache rhino head from Anthropologie last winter

3.  A pop of color with fun pillows.

So we got started...

I forgot to take a full before picture, but managed to take one while in the taping process.  Please don't  pay attention to the moving mess or my little photo bomber. 

First we painted the room a light gray color.  I didn't manage to get a picture after the painting, but it definitely lightened the room up a lot.  

Before we dive into the pellet project I want to give you a little story behind the pallet.

Rewind about 1 year ago, our wonderful neighbors at the townhouse happened to have a pallet from a shipment they received.  They didn't know what to do with it and I had great plans of using the pallet for some many of the Pinterst inspired projects.  I quickly took the chance to take this off his hands (as if there was only one pallet left in the world) and then my husband came home...  Needless to say he was less than thrilled about the pallet in our garage.  He jokingly told our neighbor that he could have his pallet back, but I needed wanted it for a project someday.  Last week when we were packing up the house and everything was loaded except for the lonely pallet sat in the garage.  My husband jokingly said "look at all of your projects you made with the pallet".  Bummer, he was right!  The potential for the pallet was there, I just never followed through. I tried to defend, but then just laughed.  Oh well!!!  Then just a few days later the pallet was needed!  We ran back to the house to pick up the pallet and brought it to the new house!
After a good wash to the pallet and proper drying time the rhinos men went to work to salvage good pieces of pallet wood. 

Now the design.  Thanks to amazing friends and lost of rearranging we came up with a "template" we liked.  

After a few calculations the first board was up. 

Final touches inspiration.

Tattoos, art work, and inspiration.

Here is an update on what the room looks like today.  There are many things that need to be brought in an moved around, but it's progress.  

What do you think?  Any ideas for book shelves?  Seating?  

Friday Letters

dear packing, why are you so overwhelming?  I cannot wait for you to be over and all settled into our new home!

dear hair, if you could stop falling out and turning gray that would be great!

dear patience, please visit me soon.  It seems I have lost you many times through this transition period!

dear children, thank you so much for being you and making everything worth it!

dear instagram, I love you so much I often forget a I have a real camera.

dear family photos, it's been awhile!  let's get together, say..... late summer/early fall?  work for you?  me too!  it's a date!

In the meantime, check out these beautiful locks turned into a stylish haircut!

Forget Me Not

Ahh!   My life is in boxes and chaos right now in the midst of moving.  However the other day when we were packing up boxes for the big move on August 1st we found a stack of old greeting cards we have kept over the years.  While many of these cards needed to be tossed out, there were a few good ones reminding us of the days when we first started dating.   We read through the cards and laughed as we forgotten those tiny details that fade with time.  
And then it hit me!
I know everyone say how kids grow up so fast, but it is something that doesn't really hit you until you have kids and one day they are not babies anymore.  Since I am a horrible mother I didn't put together your traditional baby book, for either of the kids. OOPs!  Nor did I create any type of scrapbook.  GASP!!!
There are so many milestones that I thought I would never forget about my babies, but as time passes I find myself trying so hard to recall the little details or stories.  So this is my attempt to start by documenting the things I do not want to forget.  

• B's super big hugs!

• How Lil's first real conversations always included "MmmHmmm".

• I love the way B calls Harley "Boy".

• How Lils sings with me each night the Lily Song before she goes to bed.

• The way B drive the Big Wheel like a mad man during a getaway.

• The way Lils says "Ouch, it stung me!"  from the Bumble Bee Song!  (We need to get this on tape!)

I will try my best to keep up with the little memories in the making and label them as "Forget Me Not".  Maybe one day I will have enough little stories to fill a baby book for each of them!

Friday Letters

Friday Letters

dear fall:  is it strange that I am already looking forward to you, but love the summer heat??  
dear iPhone/siri: sorry we almost lost you to a h2o spill by the toddler.  Yikes, that was a close one!  Time for a new case!
dear blog: thank you for being patient with my irregular posts!  I promise to pay you more attention!
dear town home: you have been good to our family we are going to miss you!  However you are a bear to pack up...
dear workout schedule:  can you write yourself?
dear family:  i love you!
dear convertible with a huge stuffed gorilla in the backseat:   thanks for making us laugh!  :)  *sorry for the bad picture, but I had to share! 

And some more pictures just to share :)

Have a Happy Friday!!!

 

Where Have You Been

Where have you beeeeeenCause I never see you out
Are you hiding from me, yeah?

Somewhere in the crowwwwdd
Ok, that is taking this post's title a little far, eh?
Well I can tell you where I have been/what I have been doing over the weeks, but it may take awhile so grab a cup of coffee and join me.
First off, since my last post it was my little guy's (aka Lloyd's) birthday.  This was the first year he had so much anticipation for his big day.  He was the center of attention for a whole week and he ate it all up.   On his actual birthday we celebrated with the husband's family at a state park in Nebraska.  We stayed in a beautiful big cabin and celebrated with family and a Spiderman cake.

As many of you know the other main activity that have been consuming much of the time over here has been house shopping, refinancing, buying and renting (almost in that order) .  I know I have blogged about our situation with owning a small town home and wanting to get into a bigger house that we have room to grow into.  I think we may be close to solving our puzzle, but there are a few last details to solidify, including a closing date.  To say the least, this has not been as exciting as I would have hoped, but rather VERY stressful.  Maybe I was naive to think it would be a fun experience??  However, once we have the final details I will share the photos and all my plans for turning the house into OUR home :)


We ended this very busy month with a date weekend, a very treasured time!  For those of you who do not know we have date weekends in which we trade kids with my sister so we get the whole weekend to do whatever.  Yes you read it correctly, Friday - Sunday all to ourselves.  Not only do we like date weekends, but our kids get to spend time with their cousins so they love it too.  Here are a few pics:
Kids having fun with their cousins at the beach.

Lil's first braid, courtesy of Auntie Tanya. 

While we went out with some friends to look at tattoos.

But unfortunately had to schedule an appointment since walk-ins couldn't exceed the two hour mark... disappointing!

Other random June events:
First time calling 9-1-1, this is no joke and was super scary!  

Catching up with college friend's while Llyod learns to jump off the diving board solo.  Thanks to a quick lesson from his cousins.  

Hope you all had a great June as well!

It'm back with Five Minute Friday from The Gypsy Mama!  This week's topic is Perspective.

Here are the Ground Rules:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments.

START

Perspective

Have you ever heard the phrase "If you put it in perspective..."?  Of course, we all have.  Lately I think I need to make sure I am putting my worries and stresses into perspective. 

Right now we are still in the process of selling the house.  It has been super stressful since it has become a major puzzle in getting everything to work together.  Every time some new happens or changes we have to go back to the drawing board on next steps.  We are praying we are making all of the right decisions.  I often find myself throwing a pity party complaining about why does it have to be this hard to sell a house.  In this 5 minute writing session I have gotten some perspective on it all.  I am here complaining about how hard it is to get rid of my house while there are thousands of people who don't have a house at all.  And right now there are many others who are trying to figure out how to keep their homes because they can't make their payments.  Wow, that little perspective says it all! 

Don't get me wrong, I think we all need to keep chasing after our goals and dreams, but if you add some perspective maybe the ride wouldn't be as stressful.

STOP