this and that

I figured another random post thrown in between all the pregnancy posts was better than nothing.  Currently my external hard drive that has my photo library on it isn't hooked up to the network so I can't get to any of my pictures from my big camera.  So random seemed like the way to go!

::  First things first, we moved!  It has been a week since the movers showed up to our house and started putting everything in boxes.  The company had estimated two days to pack our house, one day to pack the truck, and a day to deliver and unload.  I felt like that seemed a bit extreme seeing as we don't have THAT much stuff, but I went with it.  Yeah no.  They ended up packing everything on the first day and loading the majority of it on to the truck.  Wednesday morning they came back and finished loading, drove our stuff to the new place, and had everything unloaded by 6:30pm.

At any given time there were 4-6 guys working.  They were incredibly impressive hauling all of our crap around.  But apparently they SUCKED at labeling.  And when you have movers pack you, they do it in the most efficient way possible.  Not the most logical.  We've opened quite a lot of boxes, and still are missing random things.  The first day we spent forever trying to locate all the cushions to one of our couches.  They were in a variety of random boxes.  We're getting settled, but we've still got a LONG way to go.

::  I guess one major important thing before the move... Chris graduated from fellowship.  HELL YES.  He is done.  Done done done.  I mean there is the whole starting a real job thing, but it is going to be a real job with real hours and I don't know.  It just isn't education anymore and that is the best feeling ever.  Congrats Christopher, I am so very very proud of you!

The graduating fellows are so cool they got their names on the menu! Haha.

::  Another thing we tackled this past weekend?  Getting Elsie in a big girl bed!  I wasn't sure when to do it, but it seemed easiest (I guess) to just bite the bullet when we moved.  We talked it up a lot, that when we moved to the new house she would have a big girl bed and it was going to be so awesome and comfortable and on and on.  She was pysched.  Sunday was the first night, and she was a little apprehensive at first.  I think more because of the new house, not the new bed.  But it didn't help.  I had to go back to her room to comfort her, but then she seemed ok when I left the second time.

Until our new neighbors opted to blow up the LOUDEST FIREWORKS EVER what seemed like right out her window.  Naturally she was freaked out.  I ended up laying with her until she fell asleep that first night, but she has been doing great ever since.  She has yet to consider getting out of her bed after we leave the room, and has slept the same amount (including naps!) as she did in the crib.  She waits for us to come get her not matter what.  So far we're two for two on my thinking the worst about the big kid bed transition, and the child proving me absolutely wrong.

::  And a few house pictures before we destroyed its beauty by moving all of our crap in.  ;o)

On a side note, WTH flickr?  I don't want to embed the photos with a border.  How do I get rid of that??  Edited to add a thank you to Erin for passing along this info.  Come on flickr, you seriously thought it looked better with those dumb borders?  Now I get to edit photo code for every picture I post, or I need to find somewhere else to host.  Dumb.

this and that + some nursery progress

::  My blog is annoying me.  The fact that I barely post anything and the fact that I haven't changed the look in FOREVER.  I keep wanting to, and start designing something, and then I hate what I've come up with and give up for a while.  The lack of posting is simply because I can barely sit still long enough to come up with a complete thought.  Restless legs are just no freaking joke and I am starting to lose my mind.  Hence the tidbit like post with crappy iPhone pictures.  You're welcome.

::  In less than a week the movers are coming to start packing up all our stuff.  I'm still in denial.  Partially because I don't want to move out of town and partially because our new house isn't finished yet.  How this renovation is taking so long I have no idea.  I'm 90% sure it will be in a state that we can move into next week, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bitter that it is coming down to the wire.  But uh, yeah.  Moving in a week.  !!!!!!

::  Speaking of the new house, some of the progress!  I am absolutely in LOVE with our master bathroom.  I can't wait until it is finished.  The floors are awesome, the shower is going to be awesome (and huge!).  After spending the majority of this pregnancy attempting to shave in a tiny little shower stall you better believe I'm going to be taking some long showers in that thing as soon as I can.

You just have to pretend that you don't turn around and see this right now...

It will be done.  It will be done.  It will be done.  Maybe if I keep telling myself that it will actually happen.  My mom said all the kitchen appliances were installed today.  That is certainly a bonus!

::  This past weekend we were back in town checking on some things, and spent some time working on the nursery.  I am so excited to get the furniture in here and see the whole room take shape.  My mom had already painted the walls, but with Christopher and my Dad's help we got some stripes on the walls.  We did these stripes in Elsie's current room and I just think they are so pretty.  So the poor guys got stuck helping me with them again.  I'm lucky my dad and my husband love me so much.

And my dad, wow, he definitely wins bonus points.  After seeing this on pinterest I decided I really wanted to put heart decals in the closet.  Yes in the closet.  That still has doors on it.  My dad didn't really see the reason.  But he helped me measure out all the spacing for the hearts on father's day and I'm incredibly grateful.  I mean closets full of little baby clothes are adorable.  Closets full of baby clothes with little gold hearts all over it?  Exactly.  I purchased my decals from Wall Dressed Up.  Her prices were slightly higher than some I've seen on etsy, but her customer service is top notch and she is local.  She dropped the decals off at my door step just two days after I ordered them.

::  I wish I could sign up for a daily delivery of fresh watermelon.  That is all.

we bought a house!

Ok, well really we were under contract for this house in August.  We didn't actually close until November 8th.  And we don't plan to move until sometime between May-July.

Wait what?  Yeah.

Christopher has signed with a hospital system, so we started browsing the housing market.  We had been following it for a good 6+ months, knowing we most likely would end up there, and hadn't seen anything that I loved for a price I was willing to pay for it.  So we moved towards building, found a builder and a plan we thought we liked, and started meeting with a bank.  While we were waiting for approval on our construction loan, this house popped up on the market.

It was 1200+ square feet more than we could afford to build, and was listed for over $100,000 less than we were going to spend to build.  And while I loved the house we were going to build, I wasn't 100% I love loved it, if that makes any sense.  There were still some things missing from my dream house list, and it was a lot of money.  So since I didn't hate the listing photos and the house looked to have more space than we could have dreamed of, Chris called the listing agent to see if we could look at it.

Honestly I was hoping I'd hate it.  I wanted a new house.  I'm tired of dealing with some of the issues in our not so new house right now.  But I didn't hate it.  I actually really liked it.  Well crap!  I mean who buys a house 9+ months before they actually need it?  Us, apparently.  We went back and saw the house again.  I still liked it.  A lot.  The laundry room is huge and there is space for a playroom and a workout room and the number of closets in the house is just plain insane.  We were referred to a relator who could help us since the listing agent couldn't really be our agent.  There was some back and forth with the sellers, but ultimately we got the house and they agreed to a long closing period.

We decided to buy this house because if we were going to have to put down the money now to build, why not put down the money to buy instead.  We plan to do some renovations, and a whole lot of painting.  I'm so excited to have a house to decorate and renovate again.  And a little stressed too.  But mostly just excited!

Here are some photos of the house right now...

So. Much. SPACE.  Those pictures don't even begin to capture it.  I can't believe I didn't snap any pictures of the mudroom/laundry room area.  It is easily the space that made me really REALLY want the house.  There is going to be a lot of trim painting happening (hopefully by a painter!).  And a complete gut job on the master bath.  I can't wait to get started and have before and after pictures to share.  But it will probably be a while!

We are truly so excited and blessed.

take a tour

You can now take a short tour of our home! See that little link at the top of the page that says 'Our Home'? Well I finally updated that site, so you can now browse a few pics of our house.

I still need to add pictures of the kitchen (it wasn't in the best of shape this morning when I was taking pictures) as well as the outside of the house. However right now our yard is a leaf convention, so there isn't really much to see. Maybe in the springtime...

If you have any questions about paint colors or furniture we have, just ask. I would be happy to share the info. Hope you enjoy the tour!

home warranty = good investment

Let me recap Thursday for you. Our warranty company was supposed to send someone out to fix our dishwasher. 'Oops, we brought the wrong part with us, we will try again tomorrow.' Thank you, I love the pile of dirty dishes that is mounding on the counter. (Ok that is my fault, I'm just too lazy to wash them by hand!) Thursday evening the guy that did the cabinets in my mom's kitchen came and measured and discussed what we could do in there. We are going to compare Home Depot's price to his price. Next I make dinner, we eat, I start cleaning up, Chris is studying, Kyle starts changing a few outlets out for us.

Thankfully Kyle was in and out of the basement on Thursday night, or we might not have known that water was pouring into our basement. The garbage disposal had backed up and asparagus chunks ended up in my shower.

On Friday morning I called the warranty company to check and see if the dishwasher guy could come, and ask them if our plumbing/disposal is covered in the warranty. Thankfully it was, and a guy came out to fix the problem. Turns out one of our pipes was split the entire length, and someone decided glue was a great remedy for that. He unclogged our pipes and replaced the broken one for our service charge of $60, and told us it would have normally cost $600. Thank God for the warranty company!

Also on Friday the pest company came out to treat the rest of the house for termites. Now there about a zillion holes drilled into my porch and patio. Looks like I might be in the market for concrete paint...

Lastly the guy came out to fix the dishwasher. Apparently the motor was in two pieces. I suppose that makes it difficult for the dishwasher to actually work. But the nice man fixed it and now it works wonderfully!

As much as I was irritated that it didn't get fixed before we moved in, I am happy to report that in the process of fixing the dishwasher we learned that our kitchen also has hardwood floors! They are hidden under two layers of sticky vinyl, so who knows what shape they are in. It would be just our luck that there is termite damage under there as well. I am using all my will power to resist the urge to try and peel off all the vinyl right now!

I want a million dollar kitchen...

... on a thousand dollar budget. Ok well not quite that extreme, but I have definitely learned that I will probably not be getting exactly what I want in my kitchen. (I just have to keep repeating, this is not our forever house, this is not our forever house) After our Home Depot meeting yesterday this is what I have to think about.

The current kitchen has cabinets and appliances on two walls. One wall has the stove (and the microwave when we get on and install it) and one upper and one lower cabinet, while the other wall has the fridge, dishwasher, sink, and a couple of upper and lower cabinets.

When we redo the kitchen I would love to basically move all of the appliances around, putting the fridge and a pantry on the wall where the stove currently is, move the stove and microwave to the wall where the fridge currently is (and leave the dishwasher on that wall), and then add lower cabinets and move the sink to the walls where there is nothing right now. Obviously moving that stuff around increases the cost of the kitchen remodel, but I think it will also increase the functionality of the kitchen by so much.

We looked at a few styles of Thomasville cabinets. As I've previously mentioned I would like white cabinets (which also increases the price, boo). The first image shows the cabinets that I orginally picked out as the ones I like (however we would order it with the slab drawers, not the five piece drawers), but are too pricey no matter how we do the kitchen.


This second style could come into the kitchen if we did not move any of the appliances around and stuck with only the two walls of cabinets. It has a little extra detail on the recessed portion of the door, but it has the full overlay and slab drawers like I want.


This last option shows what we might end up with, in reality no matter which kitchen layout we choose. Yes they are a recessed panel like I want, but they don't have a full overlay and actually have more detail on the doors than I was hoping for. However I do still think they would look nice, and would look more modern if I wasn't seeing all of the furniture style legs.


The good news is that we found out from the 21st through the 27th the granite that I want (but thought I couldn't have in my kitchen because granite was going to be too pricey) is on sale for 20% off. And the kitchen designer told us we could purchase some without knowing exactly what our kitchen layout will be, and as long as no one has come out to the house we can return it if we decide not to proceed with the kitchen. Sweet!

slightly better floor pictures

These pictures show off the floor color a little bit better. They are probably slightly out of focus because for some reason the auto focus isn't functioning on my camera, and manual focus is not my friend, but the color will be way better than the ones I took on my phone.






I am in love with my newly stained floors, I can't wait until they are completely done!

a floor preview

Chris and I ran by the house today in the hopes to take a sneak peek at our floors. They look awesome!! They don't have any of the sealer on yet, and they weren't quite finished with all of the floors, but they look so good. I'm so excited, I love the color we picked. Here are a couple of horrible pictures I took on my phone.

our TINY master bath

While looking for houses one of my must haves was two bathrooms. Technically this house met that criteria, it does have two baths, but the master bath is TINY!! The vanity can only be 24 inches wide. The shower door doesn't open all the way because it hits the toilet, and the shower head is going to be spraying Chris straight in the face.

We are hoping with a few changes that this small bathroom will start to feel a little bit bigger, or if nothing else just a little bit nicer.

Most likely we will take the door off the shower and exchange it for a curtain so that even if I gain five pounds I'll still fit through the little crack you have to shimmy through to get in the shower. The walls are going to be a light green. I would love to close off that awkward window like thing that lets light into the hall bath (I wonder how hard that would be...). And I think a new vanity would do wonders!


I would love either of these vanities from Pottery Barn, but unfortunately they are both larger than 24 inches wide, and oh yes, about $1500 each. That is more than I wanted to spend on the total bathroom makeover!!



If anyone has any ideas where I can find a vanity like either of these, but smaller, and most definitely cheaper, let me know!

open ALL the drawers...

So I believe I forgot to mention what we discovered about our kitchen. As I mentioned this weekend my dad took all of the pieces out of the fridge and scrubbed everything. Well, when we were putting everything back in on Monday, we realized that to open the bottom vegetable drawer in the fridge, you would have to first open the back door to the house so you could then open the fridge all the way in order to open the drawer. Sounds functional doesn't it? Yep...

We knew that eventually we were going to try and remodel the kitchen a little bit, because even though it (ok we thought it) was functional, everything is rather dated and could just use some TLC. But after the latest fridge discovery, combined with the fact that most fridges we want to buy simply will not fit in the space, we are pursuing redoing the kitchen sooner than planned.

I want my kitchen to look something like this:

(Photo from Rate My Space)

Well actually what I would like to take from this photo are the white cabinets that go to the ceiling, the hardware, and the stainless steel appliances. Oh and green walls. I have already the green paint for the kitchen.

I think I would choose a lighter colored counter top, there are some at Home Depot that I really like. Also I would like to have a glass tile back splash, either subway tiles or mosaic tiles. I'm not quite sure what color yet.

This weekend I have a meeting with the kitchen designer at Home Depot to see what they can come up with, and then sometime soon I will be getting together the guy that designed my mom's kitchen. Hopefully one of them will be able to help me create a wonderful kitchen on a modest budget!

Well today was interesting... actually I'll start with yesterday. So a hole we patched in the master bedroom took a thousand years to dry, so we didn't get as much done as we had hoped. Then my dad and I started on the main portion of the house. First we planned to spray the ceiling with a paint sprayer, so we took down all the light fixtures. When we took down the fixture in the dining room my dad bumped a wire and it shocked him, even though the switch was off. After that the garage door and stopped working. Really? The garage door is connected to the dining room light? We flipped switches in the basement but it never started working... hopefully the electrician will call me back.

Today I got to the house around 8am, and patched some holes in the dining room before finishing the last wall in the master bedroom. That spackle didn't dry until 7pm!! Apparently I didn't do it right according to my dad. I needed to slowly build the layers. Oh well...

A guy from the wood floor company that is starting our refinishing job tomorrow came to the house today to look at the damaged floor and give us an estimate to repair it. He walked in and said 'oh you've got some termite damage there.' What? Termite damage? According to the man from the pest company that did our termite inspection said this house had never been treated for termites and there were no signs of any. So now we are dealing with that, having the pest company come back out to confirm whether or not it is termites, and check for any live termites. I don't know what I'll do if we have a termite problem.

Overall this four day work weekend has gone well. We painted every room with wood flooring including the ceiling, cleaned the fridge, cleaned the gutters and some other random odd jobs. Not too bad.

Here is a picture that shows what I believe is a termite hole through the wood. I was sad before when we found the damaged wood, and now I'm really upset that it is termite damage. Oh man...

The master bedroom all painted!

And the living room. (I sneezed right before I took these pics and apparently dust went everywhere)

And my dad trying to help speed up the drying process for the spackle so we could paint the last little bit of the dining room.

My parents were an amazing help this weekend. I'm pretty sure I'd have maybe two rooms painted if I hadn't received so much help from them and Meaghan and Kyle.

Tomorrow the wood floors are going to be sanded. Next on my to do list? Paint the bathrooms!

homeowners day two!

Wow. Another very exhausting day. But very productive! We finished patching cracks and holes, painted the rest of the ceilings in the bathrooms and bedrooms, completely painted the guest bedroom and third bedroom, put the first coat of paint on the master bedroom, cleaned the gutters, mowed the lawn, and cleaned the fridge. Not bad for one day.

Oh I also got to call the plumber and have him come fix our toilet today. We actually noticed a problem yesterday but he couldn't get out to the house until today. There was water dripping in our basement and the tank wouldn't fill in the hall bath toilet. I don't know what he fixed, but it works which is all that matters to me. Talk about jumping into the ups and downs of home ownership!

Here is the hubby fixing cracks bright and early in the morning before he had to start studying.

Meaghan managed to go gray while painting the closet :). That will teach her to let her head touch wet paint!

My dad is definitely a trooper for his work today. Not only did he clean all of the poo smelling junk out of the gutters, but he tackled the nasty nasty fridge. All after he mowed the lawn. Probably the best dad ever. Just try and top him!

Here is the guest bedroom completely painted. So far it is my favorite. I can't wait to see it after the floors are redone. We are planning to go with a dark stain so I think the walls and trim will really pop.

Kyle also took on several projects today, painting all of the ceilings, and doing the roller painting in pretty much every room. His ability to reach the ceilings without a ladder was definitely helpful!

We managed to sucker my mom into climbing on the ladder inside the closet. :)

Here is the third bedroom, painted a light gray. I plan to use brightly colored accents in this room, so I thought the gray would be a nice neutral. Eventually I want to stencil a pattern in a darker grey on one of the walls. I got my inspiration from here and here.

And the master bedroom. This is the room where I am most unsure about the color. It is looking more yellow than I wanted it too, (it looks even more yellow in the photos than it does in person!) but I think when we get our furniture in the house I will like it. It wanted a light neutral, something that was slightly tan... hopefully this will work out!

Still more work to do! This evening Chris and I went and purchased all new door knobs. Those definitely add up quickly, but I am excited to install them tomorrow, we are replacing some brass/gold door knobs with satin nickel. Much better!