The New House

Better late than never- but here are a few pictures of our new house. This will be the mini-tour, and I'll try to give updates as we get projects and rooms finished. Obviously, this is the front of the house, and we are loving the huge lot that it sits on. Jackson has a ton of room to roam, and Todd has a ton of yard to mow!
I've never been a big fan of split-level houses, but I loved the open floor-plan of the main floor of this house. This is the living room, and it opens up into the dining room and kitchen area which is really nice. We haven't really painted any of the main rooms in the house yet. Most of them are tolerable for a while, but I sort of like to live in the house for a while before making big changes.

And this is the dining room/kitchen area. Jackson likes to go out on the deck and blow bubbles and sometimes we have lunch out there when it's nice out.

This is Jackson's room. We did paint his room before we moved in because it was like a cave it was so dark. It was a dark pumpkin orange, and the previous owners had painted the ceiling the same color, so it was really dark. Some wonderful friends and my sister-in-law, Ally, came and helped paint the night we took posession of the house so we got that knocked out before we moved in, thankfully. It still has a long way to go, but it's so much brighter now and Jackson really likes all the floor space, and I love having most of his toys in his room instead of in the living room.

Downstairs, there are two more bedrooms, another bathroom and the "rec room", which is also where my sewing area is. I like that the basement of this house is really bright since most of it is above ground and it's a walk-out basement.

That wraps up the mini-tour for now. As I said, I will try to update pictures as we get things finished. We still have lots of work to do, and a short five week window before the Deuce shows up to get as much done as we can. Wish us luck!

Experimenting...

We've been on the house hunt lately- can't remember if I ever made the announcement, but we sold our house! Yay! But in about 60 days or less we will be homeless. Boo! Needless to say, we are feeling that it is crunch time on finding a house but we're just having a bit of trouble finding the one that's just right. I figured I needed a project to take my mind off of the stress of not knowing where we will live, so I decided that I wanted to make a quilt. And of course, you can't just start with a small baby quilt or anything...that would be too easy. I want to make a twin size quilt for when Jackson transitions to a big boy bed when we move and before the Deuce comes. I've been collecting fabric and trying to figure out what I want it to look like, but I haven't quite gotten that narrowed down yet. Today I decided I should maybe practice and see if I even have a clue what I'm doing, so I went through my scraps and cut some squares and pieced a little block together.

I purposely did it in a random pattern so there really isn't any rhyme or reason to it, but maybe some day it will become part of something fun. How did I do Mom? I showed it to Todd and in a horrified voice he said, "That's not for Jackson is it???" and then he said, "You do know we're having another boy, don't you?" Always has to be a smart alec.

My First Show!

As I mentioned in the last couple of posts, over the last couple of weeks I've been feverishly sewing trying to get ready to do my first craft show. I sort of cringe when I say that because I really don't like the word "craft" and when I mix it with the word "show" I sort of cringe a little more because it conjurs up images of all sorts of campy, homely items that I wouldn't be caught dead buying...such as embroidered toilet paper. Really. There was someone at this craft show selling toilet paper and paper towel roles that had sayings and pictures embroidered on them. I don't get it. But I digress...So, I thought I would try my hand at actually making some money with the sewing abilities that my lovely mom passed on to me and it sort of worked! I was really happy with my sales for the day...it was definitely more than I thought it would be. And the best part was hearing people's positive comments about my fabric choices and how cute everything was, so that really made me feel good. I mostly made baby items like burp cloth sets, appliqued onesies, taggie blankets, and tote bags, but there were a few other things too, but I won't bore you with too many details. This is a picture Lindsay took of my little booth. I totally have to give a shout out to my sister-in-law Ally for all of her help with this. She came to help me set up the night before and brought me the three big doors that you see in the back and various other display help. She also is an awesome graphic designer and she designed a logo for me for my business cards and tags. Thanks, Ally! You're the best!

Sorry the pictures aren't the best and you really can't see a lot of detail, but I'll just keep you in suspense until...the Grand Opening of my Etsy shop! I decided that things went well enough that I will go ahead and open a shop on the Etsy website and see how that goes. It's a lot of work getting that all set up, but I'll let you know when it opens! In the meantime, if you don't know what Etsy is, check it out. It's AWESOME!

It seems all I do lately on this blog is apologize for the lack of posts...sad, really. So I decided this time, I'm not apologizing. I'll just make excuses:
1. Still don't have a camera yet (but Lindsay is coming to visit tomorrow and she's helping me pick one out)
2. I've been sewing like CRAZY lately (I'm doing my first craft show on Saturday...Yikes!)
3. I've had other things that I've had to focus on lately (you know, besides my husband, child,
dog, house, etc...)
These are just a few of the reasons for the lack of blogging. I really should add one more just to be honest:
4. I've been spending too much time reading other blogs to take the time to do my own.

So as mentioned, Lindsay, Eva, and Shepherd are making the drive to Iowa tomorrow. Pray for travelling safety and sanity for Lindsay! She is coming to help me finish getting ready for the craft show and I'm so super excited I think I might not be able to sleep tonight. I will hopefully have some pictures of everything to show you after her visit!

Before and After

Before vacation, you may remember that I alluded to our house changing colors. I've finally gotten around to taking some pictures of the mostly finished project and it looks a TON better, don't you think? Remember, these first two pictures were taken after we pressure washed the house so that's why it looks so torn up.
And now our charming cottage is a fun blue color called "ironstone"! We have some trim still to finish up and we need to touch up the blue in a bunch of places, but it just feels so much cozier and prettier to me! Lots of work, but we had some help from in-laws and friends so that made it go a little faster. Thanks guys! We also still need to get a new light fixture and new mailbox and house numbers, but I have to find just the right ones first.

We're still alive...

barely! Actually things aren't that bad, just busy. We are in the midst of some home improvement projects that keep ballooning, so we'll be glad when they are done. We've been enjoying the little glimpses of spring that keep coming our way. I say "little glimpses" because that is really what we get. Last week we had three days in a row of 65-70 degree weather, then the next day it snowed. Tulip Festival is in about two weeks and the poor tulips don't quite know what to do with themselves. Most of them are just starting to pop out of the ground or are about 10 inches high-we haven't seen any color yet. Hopefully we'll have some warmer weather so that we actually have tulips for the Tulip Festival.
Jackson is loving being outside when it's nice and gives a squeal of delight when we go anywhere near the park. There is always a bit of a fit when it's time to come inside, but then when he realizes it's bathtime, the smile is back. We've begun to realize that we need to be more careful about what we say around him as he now repeats things that we say, especially anything said with emphasis. Kinda funny, but also scary! I seriously haven't taken any pictures since my last blog post. What kind of mother am I??? I'll do better in the next couple weeks, I promise. Sorry YaYa!

Bathroom Pics

So here's the new and improved bathroom. I guess it's not really new, since all we did was repaint and get a new shower curtain and a few other cosmetic fixes, but it's definitely improved. I guess if you've never been to our house, you won't be able to tell how much better it looks. Sorry I didn't take any "Before" pictures. This is just a little up-close detail because the flash on the picture above kinda washed everything out, but the shower curtain is all different greens and brown paisley and the walls are a chocolate-y brown color, actually called Maple Sugar.
And this obviously doesn't have anything to do with the bathroom, but it was so super-cute I had to share. After lunch yesterday, I was cleaning up in the kitchen and Jackson was playing in the living room. When I came out when I was done, this is what I saw. Jackson has learned how to turn the TV on, so he must have turned it on and then gotten up on the couch and covered himself up. And surprisingly he wasn't tormenting Scarlet so they had a little bonding time. Sweet babies.

Neglect

Sorry I've been so neglectful in my blogging lately. We've had projects that have been keeping me busy elsewhere. One of which is almost finished, hurray! We have one bathroom in our tiny little house (aside from the "throne", for those of you who have been to our house) that is pretty functional, but not so much pretty. I painted it when we first moved in and it helped, but I never really liked the color that I painted it. So, finally, two years later, we got around to repainting it. There were a bunch of other things that had to get fixed first before we could start though: had to put a new window in because the other one was rotted because the fan didn't vent properly, had to vent the fan, had to re-texture the ceiling and walls in a few places where paint peeled down to the dry wall, install a new shower head that broke during painting...You know how it goes. A project that you think is going to take one day and about $50 turns into 3 weeks and lots more money. But it looks like we are really almost done. It's all painted, so now I just have to put the fixtures back on and then clean it up and put the new shower curtain on and we'll be sitting pretty. Once it's all done, I'll try to post a picture for you to see the finished product. I'll leave you with this parting shot of Jackson. This is the wagon we got him for Christmas and he likes to stand on the seat and flash me while I work at the computer. Nice.

Something funny!

These are hilarious and oh so true about my gift-giving this year. I think each one actually applies to one gift or another. To my family, don't be surprised if you see one in person this year on your gift. To see them up close to read them, click on the picture and it should enlarge it for you. The picture and tags are from Angry Chicken and there is a link to a downloadable PDF, so if you want to print some of your own off, go here. Enjoy!

A little bit crafty...

Well, 50% of my goal has been accomplished. I may not be skinny, but I was crafty yesterday! Out of necessity, I made one of those plastic bag dispenser thingies. Our pantry closet was being taken over by plastic bags so it gave me an excuse to play with some of the fun fabric I got recently. It was super easy and it really only took me about 2 hours total. I'm sure I could have done it faster too, but I still have sewing issues sometimes. I need to do it more so that I remember all of the ins and outs of my machine. Seriously, I practically have to read the manual every time I want to change the bobbin thread. But I muddled my way through and was quite pleased with the way it turned out. If you want to make one, check out the Sew, Mama, Sew! Blog and their projects for the month of December. This is just a close up of the pretty fabrics. Our kitchen is painted a green that's pretty close to the lighter green so I thought this would look nice, even though it's mostly going to be hidden in the closet. Sad.

Crafty Ideas

So this is really fun! I totally am addicted to reading crafty blogs and I love finding tutorials for fun projects to try so when I saw this I was very excited. Sew, Mama, Sew! is a really neat fabric store and on their blog, they are putting up tutorials all month long of fun things to make for gift giving this Christmas. I have no idea if I'll actually get around to making any of them, but it's fun to think about at least! Check it out!

A whole lotta tomatos

My friend, Michele, gave me a big bag of home-grown tomatos that someone had given her. So two afternoons this week were used making spagetti sauce and salsa for the freezer. It was very fun, but a lot of work. I'm glad that I did it during Jackson's naptime because it was a very messy job and he would have loved playing in the tomato juice that was all over the floor and running down the cupboards. But we'll have some yummy homemade salsa and tomoto sauce in the winter so it will be quite worth it, I think. Otherwise, things on the homefront are relatively the same, although I have renamed Jackson "Baby Destructo" because he has turned into a little bit of a terror lately. I'm sure it's all part of the exploration stage, blah blah blah...but he's driving me crazy a bit! His favorite thing lately is to grab anything within reach on a table and pull it onto the floor. Not because he wants to play with it, but because he wants to hear the sound it's going to make when it hits the floor. Today I kept him busy for about 10 minutes, which is pretty good these days, by letting him throw all of his dirty clothes that I'd just put into the laundry basket OUT of the laundry basket. I think it satisfied his craving for destructiveness for about 5 minutes and then it was on to the next mess. He has also begun testing me when I tell him "No". The nice, sweet flicking that we started out with is no longer effective. Oh, original sin, you are not my friend! Lest you think all I do is complain about my sweet child though, I will tell you that he is walking a ton more and he really is so funny. I got him laughing so hard the other day that he hiccuped and farted at the same time...maybe that's only something a mother thinks is funny, but I couldn't stop laughing. And I really do see him growing and changing so much. It's hard to believe that he will be one this month!

Little bits of this and that

So my package from Amazon arrived yesterday! Oh, how I love packages...I ordered these two books: "The Skinny- How to fit into your little black dress forever" and "Bend-the-Rules Sewing". Both came highly recommended. Every Thursday, I weigh in and report via e-mail to a group of girls, one of whom is my sister. We are all trying to lose baby weight as we've all had babies in the last couple of months. It's nice to have the accountability and fun to e-mail back and forth. I haven't reported in yet today, but I did lose 1 pound this week! A couple of the girls are reading "The Skinny" and really like it so I'm excited to read it. As for the sewing book, I've been wanting to find some fun projects to do lately when I have a little time during nap times, so this will hopefully give me some fun, easy ideas. The author, Amy Karol, has a blog called Angry Chicken that I like to read sometimes about all sorts of crafty things. So check back in a couple months and hopefully I'll be skinny and crafty! These are some of my latest attempts at craftiness. I saw a tutorial about making refrigerator magnets out of paper and those glass marbles that you use for decorating with candles or whatever so I've been making some of those for gifts for people. They are super easy and pretty cute. Sorry the picture is sort of blurry, but you get the idea.
And this was only the beginning of the mess that I had to clean up after lunch yesterday. Sometimes I seriously think it would just be easier to put him in the bathtub after each meal. He was eating lasagna and apparently he liked it so much, he thought his whole face and head would like to try it. Jackson is a bundle of energy these days and he is saying his first word, "Hi!". Todd and I would argue about whether he would say "mama" or "dada" first, but he picked a nice neutral word so everyone's happy. He likes to say hi to everyone-the dog, the mailman, random people driving by...he's very friendly!

Summer projects

One of the projects on my list can finally be crossed off. We finished painting the kitchen cabinets, or at least are 95% done. A moth flew into two of the doors before they were still dry so they have to be repainted. Stupid moth. But I really like the way it looks. The kitchen is tiny and the dark cabinets really closed it in, so the white brightens it up and makes it feel not so claustrophobic. There are still some things I don't like about the cabinets, like the the little decorative wood ruffle above the sink, but we've decided that we aren't going to put a ton of time, effort, and money into this house because it really is only a starter house since it just has two bedrooms. Fine for us now, but when another baby comes along, could be a little crowded. But I do love our little house and it definitely feels like home. As for the rest of the things on the list of summer projects, we'll see what happens. It took us a lot longer to get this done than we thought, so maybe we'll just quit while we are ahead!