Monday, August 29, 2011

Finished for Now...

Okay, so a few hours ago I turned in my last school assignment ever! Woot! I just hope I'm not celebrating early, meaning - I hope I pass my classes!

In other news Keith, Avalyn, and I went to the cottage to visit mom and dad this weekend. The kids had a blast, Keith even went tubing for the first time. :D Today Matt woke up early and surprised Keith by taking him to his first "father/son" baseball game. He watched the Beach Bums kick the Thunderbolts butts! He even brought a stuffed baseball home to Avalyn - how sweet was that? While Keith was out I put the finishing (for now) touches on his room. His planet mobile is up under his light, and the planets are on the wall. He was happy to see it done.

Mobile

Planets!

I'm going to stop at Lowes or Home Depot to get some purple paint for the front door. Just imagine this:

Yes, now that I'm done with school I will be having much more fun! ;)

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Visitors!

We had some visitors this morning! They come and go as they please (we see them almost every day, but I'm never fast enough with my camera).

Meet our buddies!

The other guy is behind the flower garden. You can see his antlers up there!

He spotted me!

The other antlers are clearer here...

Avalyn was screaming, "Cows! Cooowww!" The entire time.

They didn't really care at first, but they ended up walking away from it all.

Bye bye deer!

And here are our afternoon visitors: The turkeys!

And our all day visitor: Mrs. Hummingbird... Usually it's Mr. Hummingbird who stops by, but today we got a surprise!

And this evenings visitor: Mr. Frog!

It's been a wild day. Ha! ;)

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Garage Sale Deals!!

So, today Danielle and I went to a few BIG garage sales today. Ended up putting like 70 miles on my car but it was totally worth it. I wish I had taken pictures - I took my camera but left it in the car every time. Bummer.

The first house we went to was an old gray farmhouse that the owner restored. It had the most beautiful wrap around porch I have ever seen! I bought a bunch of frames from her and two little curtain rod knobs for Avalyn's room. Grand total? $7. Oh, and the lady threw in a little toy that Avalyn snatched from a box. She was such a nice lady, and she put so much work into her house! I wish I was that creative. It even had a little guest house!

Next place we went wasn't so great, it was on a busy road and people were driving like maniacs since the Old Engine Show was in town. I thought it was a few weekends ago, but since I don't live in Buckley anymore I'm not keeping up with it! :p There was a pair of really nice end tables there but the guy wanted $50 for them. Sounds like a bad deal, so Danielle passed them up.

The next one we found said "Huge Barn Sale!" and Danielle and I joked that it better have more than one level and if it wasn't huge we were going to cause a ruckus. ;) We pulled into the looooong driveway and behold: Huge Barn Sale! It was phenomenal! I would have bought the barn if I could have! There were two end tables - six bucks each, an antique table for $50 (I think), a bunch of vases and knick-knacks for 25 cents, a beautiful hutch that was waaaay out of my price range, some old glass bottles (circa 1850) and a bunch of antique kitchen items. Danielle bought a few of the wooden antiques for her wall, and I bought a futon bed frame:


It was listed for $20 which I would have totally paid, but I asked the guy what he wanted for it and he said he'd let it go for $10. I said, "SOLD." Yes, in all caps.

That's when I called Matt and asked him if he and Joe could come with the SUV. He asked why and I told him because I bought a futon! Haha poor guy. I told him what I paid for it and when he saw it he was happy. I asked about the $6 end tables but he thought they were too retro. Ah, well, can't win 'em all!

In the end it was an awesome day! Tomorrow morning Danielle and I are heading to Lowes and Micheal's for paint swatches and stencils. We are such dorks about stencils. We both acted like junior high girls when we saw these:





One more week of school and then I get to start on the house. AND spend more time with my kids. It's going to be the best ever! I'm so excited!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Milestone Update

Who doesn't love these updates?

New words:

24. Night Night
25. Grandma (gama) I haven't heard her say it, but mom says she said it so I believe her!
26. Door
27. Out
28. Bottle
29. Cat
30. Block
31. Belly
32. Button

To be fair - block, bottle and ball all sound a lot alike, but she will sign ball when she says it, she will also point or hand me the things she's talking about. So, I'm counting them. :) And sometimes when she points to her (or my) belly button she will say belly and sometimes she says button. I'm sure she'll put it together soon!

July 23 - Went to the cottage with Keith and floated around a bit
July 26 - Teething so I had to unpack her swing!
July 27 - Ate with a spork
July 28 - Went out to dinner with Nana and Papa
July 30 - Can point to her belly button and nose when asked!
August 1 - Aunt Penny, Jake and Andy visited for a week
August 6 - Grandpa and Grandma babysat and Avalyn had corn on the cob for the first time
August 7 - Went to Nana and Papa's for dinner
August 11 - 14 Month Old!! - Stacked five blocks (lengthwise) by herself! She also started stacking Keith's fruit barrels when I was cleaning out the fridge. Haha!
August 13 - Grandpa and Grandma visited and brought Keith home!

Eating corn on the cob for the first time!

14 Months Old!

"Where's Avalyn's nose?" Haha!

"Where's Avalyn's bellybutton?"




Monday, August 15, 2011

Room Change Up!

All right, so I was not happy with Keith's room arrangement so this weekend I changed it up! Here's what it looks like now!

I don't like blocking the window even a little bit (bad chi you know) but I have no choice, at least this is less blocked than before!

Desk/homework area - school season is upon us!

Dresser/basket of sports stuff

The bookshelf in the closet - so Avalyn doesn't sneak in and rip apart his books!

In this picture you can see where Keith's bookshelf was before - and why it was moved. ;)

This is the base of Keith's "new" lamp. It belonged to Matt as a kid so it needs a good cleaning and a new shade, but otherwise it's great!

Clearly the walls aren't finished, thankfully the painting part is done though! I have stick on planets that we need to put up, so that will make it better. Also, above his dresser I plan on putting up a photo collage of sorts. Keith loves pictures, so we're going to go to a few garage sales and look for frames to spray paint red (like his curtains) and put his beloved pictures in them.

I plan on doing something similar in Avalyn's room above her bed (where there is a giant blank wall). Though I might paint the frames multiple colors like her bedset. Hmm... we'll see.

This weekend I also moved the crib out of Avalyn's room and back into our room. Avalyn will sleep on her own for about five hours before she wakes up wanting milk. She actually asks for it now, it's so adorable! However, she would get out of her bed at night and lately would bump her head on the crib - so it's out of there! I would also bring her into our room for the remainder of the night where she sleeps with me. Matt and I have a queen size bed so it's not exactly ideal for co-sleeping and I admit, I missed having the crib there to roll her into at night so I could stretch out. So it's back! Yey!

Anyway, this meant that Avalyn's room needed a little re-arranging to fill the crib void.

Avalyn's room, view from the door.

View from the bed.

Her cow planters on the window. :D

View from the closet. Look I finally switched the kids' light fixtures! When we bought the place, that pink chandelier was in Keith's room - he thought Avalyn might like it more. She does, she likes to look at it and say, "oooooo!" Also, notice the blank wall? It screams "fill me with something!!" So I'll fill it with pictures, and I'm also going to build shadow boxes to put some of her collectibles in. Like the Precious Moments figurines from Papa.


The kids rooms are close to being finished, but I really need to get started on the rest of the house. I want to tackle our room first though. I can't look at the vine stenciled boarder anymore, it's just not my taste... neither is the emerald green carpet but that's going to have to wait. Next time Matt is out of town, Danielle said she would come up and help me paint. I want to go with a harbor blue again. It looks so nice against my bed! I'm also going to see if I can spray paint the ceiling fan an iron-y color to match my headboard/footboard/mirror. Ceiling fans are expensive, so hopefully that's an option!

Here's our room now. Isn't is lovely? Avalyn loves the cows there, they make her happy. When she transitions into her room full time, they will, too!

The crib in sidecar mode. That's still the same crib as we've been using (mine from when I was a baby) I just took one side off and strapped it to the bed with leather belts. I used her crib bumpers in between her mattress and rail, and two foam wedges between our mattress and hers. She's very, very safe!

My sleeping angel.

Eventually the house will be done and my blog posts will no longer be about that, but for now I'm a new homeowner enjoying every second of being able to do whatever I want! :D Ah, freedom! It smells like paint and sawdust. Can you dig it?

Monday, August 8, 2011

Avalyn's Room!

Okay, I posted pictures of Keith's room in progress, so I'll post some of Avalyn's room, too.

To start we had blue walls with clouds with glow in the dark stars in the clouds, and pink carpet. Originally I wanted to bring back her pink and green walls (like before) but I don't know how well the pink lemonade color would go with the cranberry (ugh) floor. So I'm keeping the wall as is for now.

Also, in Avalyn's room is her crib - the crib she won't sleep in unless one side is off and it's pushed against my bed like co-sleeper crib. So right now it's just taking up space since she doesn't use it. Also note, she climbed out of it in June so there's another reason why it's not in use. Yikes!

It did come in handy this past week when Penny and the boys came up - even though poor Andy got stuck in the bars a couple times. Poor guy!

Wow, that was a fun tangent! Back to business... When I decided to keep the colors as they are I also decided that I'd have to find curtains and bed linens to bring everything together. Enter back to school sales. I snatched up this set at Walmart for $34. Yey! I also found matching curtains. Woot!

Now all I need to do is switch Avalyn and Keith's light fixtures. Seriously, that still hasn't happened yet!

Before

After(ish)