A little girl's dream...

Hey there! I am excited about this post! I have finally finished my daughter's room! (Enough to post it!)  It has been a work in progress, but I'm happy with how it turned out!  Her room is HUGE, and we laugh and say she sleeps in the "playroom."  Her bed is so tiny in a room full of toys!  She also has very tall ceilings!  One of the wonderful things about an old house, and something she won't appreciate until she's older! Here is the view from the hallway.

Her walls are "Cucumber" by Sherwin Williams.  I panicked when my dad put the first brush stroke on the wall because it was SO vibrant!! It looked like a highlighter against her snow white trim!  Thankfully it turned out to be perfect once the whole room was done!

This is one of the parts of the room that is not completely finished, but enough for now.  She just has this hand-me-down dresser that I painted white.  One day she'll have her own furniture.

Close up of the dresser.  I'm waving to ya! :)

Bow holder I made when she was a baby and her dollhouse stuff

This is the view of her bathroom wall.  I showed you her bathroom here.  (It is getting redone for her birthday! Stay tuned!)

The leaf and flower night lights are from Ikea!  Cute cute cute!

Toys galore...

Her smaller toys are stored in these containers that also came from Ikea.  I painted the little canvas' with 3 different flowers native to our beautiful state!  (they just happen to be my favorite 3!)

My dad built this little nightstand in his highschool shop class.  It has been handed down and painted many times! We keep her books stored underneath!

Can you tell we like books?  Here are a few more favorites...

And another book basket...

So that is our sweet girl's room!  She loves to play in there and is happy to show it off to anyone who stops by! Hope you enjoyed the tour! :)

Fun stuff!

Hey friends! I've got some fun things coming up!  My husband recently cleaned out our shed, and we found so much stuff from the early demolition days!  I found a really neat shelving unit that the guys pulled out of the original "concrete room" that is now our bathroom!  I didn't even know they kept it!! I am looking for the perfect spot for it and then I'll show you pictures of making it new!

We also found about a gazillion old doors in the shed!! I am so excited to have them and I've had fun searching other blogs and Pinterest for things to do with them!  I have some great ideas!! I just have to find the time to do it!

We are gearing up for Audrey's 3rd birthday!  I am having trouble believing that she is going to be 3 years old!!! It sounds so much older than 2.  For some reason, 3 seems like a "kid" where 2 is still a baby to me. I better stop talking about it before I start crying... Anyway, we are in birthday preparation mode!  She is having an art party this year, and we are very excited for it! Of course I'll have tons of pictures to share!

I have just a few pictures of some new items in our house that I wanted to share!  Remember when I showed you our kitchen, and mentioned our free bar stools that I wasn't crazy about, and said one day we would replace them? Ben's grandmother got us some new ones for Christmas and we are loving them!

I am SO excited about this next piece!! We have been wanting a hutch of some sort for the long empty wall in our dining room.  I decided to check craigslist with hopes of finding something reasonably priced that I could just redo!  I was thrilled when I found this baby!!!  I sent the hubs out right away to scoop it up before the lady realized she was crazy for selling it as cheaply as she was!  I LOVE it!!!

It's a matte black and already has some distressing.  I had originally planned to sand it and paint it, but I think we have decided to keep it black.  It's a nice accent piece!  Don't worry, I haven't filled it up yet, all that stuff is just thrown in their randomly as I'm trying to figure out how I want to set it up.  What do you think about the doors?  Should we keep them on or take them off and have open shelves on top?  I originally fell in love with hutches like this.

I love the open shelves and the paneling on the back.  I could easily do this to our piece, but I like the doors too!! Opinions?

This last little piece was a Christmas gift from my mom.  It's a cute little corner shelf that I added to our foyer.  I am having fun trying to find little knick knacks around the house to fill it with.  NOT having fun pulling Walker away from it 42 times a day. 

So there are a few little changes around here!  Get excited for the fun things to come!

Decisions Decisions

I need a project. I'm bored of things around here and need something to feel new without dropping a ton of money!  Right now my mind is stuck on this little space in our sunroom. Brace yourself for what you are about to see.  It's a lot to take in.

Maybe now you see why I can't seem to get this space out of my mind.  Because it's a hot mess.  The problem I'm having right now is I have a couple different ideas for this space and can't decide what to do with it.  Maybe you can help!  Here is one of my ideas.

Is it just me or would this not be the perfect space for a little breakfast nook?  I haven't really shared our "dining room" before, because we don't exactly have one.  When we took walls down in the beginning of the kitchen remodel we just kind of combined our dining room with the kitchen.  My parents got us a fabulous HUGE dining room table for Christmas right before we moved in this house, and it's just perfect.  (I'll show you a picture of it soon!)  It's just really BIG.  It's perfect for a big family dinner, but not really a cozy spot to sit and have your coffee.  I know I have my wicker furniture in the sunroom for that, but it's lacking a good table and isn't really what I'm picturing for a little breakfast spot.  So.....I'm thinking of building (read this as "getting my dad to build") some window seats all the way around the 3 walls.  Of course they would open up for extra storage.  Then I'd just HAVE to buy a cute little round table for the space.  Or should I go square?  I am NO designer people!

Idea number 2 came from a new blog I recently discovered. Have you visited The Pleated Poppy?  She did a house tour of a friend's house, and shared this picture.

She calls this space "Grand Central Station."  It's the spot we all have in our house, where everything seems to end up.  Mail, bills, loose paperwork, extra keys, batteries, notes, and the place you toss your purse when you walk in the door.  Right now we just have a little spot on our counter and a junk drawer as our "grand central station."  I really love this idea!!  I have been itching to bring some more color into our kitchen, and I think it would be really fun to paint a little desk or secretary a bright cheery color!  I also love the window as the picture frame!  So for this idea to work in our space, we would have to find new places for my daughter's art table and the bench I love so much.  The bench could probably go in our hallway, but the art table has me drawing a blank.  She sits here a lot while I'm cooking or doing dishes, and it has really been nice to keep the art mess in the kitchen like this.  Any suggestions?  If only we had a playroom.  Sigh.  One day.

Option number 3 would be just to clear out all the JUNK and leave the space as it is. This doesn't sound nearly as fun. :)  So what are your thoughts?  Do you have another idea?  Please share! 

Have a great day!!

Organizing the Day to Day

If you read my resolutions or goals for the new year, you'll remember one of them was to keep a cleaner house.  Since I'm pretty sure this is a common resolution, I thought I would share a few of my ideas on how to stay on top of things better this year.  I'm an organized person by nature, but my husband will be the first to let you know that having things organized is different from having them clean.  Take our study for example.  If you were to walk in there any given day, you would come RUNNING back out with your hands covering your eyes.  But, if you asked me to find you something-anything-I could probably walk right to it and hand it to you.  I've finally realized that just because I understand the confusion that is this house, it does not count as having a clean house.  I understand that having all these kids in my house makes it a bit harder, and I don't need it to be spotless.  I would just like things to remain "company ready."  We are at a slight disadvantage because our upstairs in not yet in use.  All our rooms are downstairs which means all the toys are downstairs.

I have also realized a pattern with my cleaning.  Or non-cleaning I suppose.  It starts with the breakfast mess.  It seems so easy to just deal with the few dishes we have from breakfast.  However, you throw in a couple extra kids who are screaming for a nap or need their diapers changed and suddenly I don't have the time to deal with breakfast messes.  So then when lunch comes and the same thing happens again, the mess is doubled.  By dinner it has tripled.  And then comes baths and bedtime and then I. AM. EXHAUSTED. :)  Had enough of my complaining?  Ok, I'll stop.  I came up with a system of how to keep up with things a little easier so that I don't have to devote an entire day to cleaning my destroyed house.  And because I love lists and I need things to be cute, here is what I came up with.

These are the things I MUST accomplish each day.  I posted it on my fridge so I can be reminded constantly.  If I do these things daily, then my house shouldn't get too out of hand.  Each day of the week, I have a different chore to do.  Mondays are bathrooms, Tuesdays is dusting, Wednesday is vacuuming, Thursday is mopping, and Friday is laundry.  Hopefully this will work for me.  I may end up switching things around.  We'll see.  Do you like our nativity scene magnets? Haha

While we're on the topic of organization, this is my household binder where I keep all our papers ad what not.  I have tabs for day to day events, food, budget, projects, Bible study, and others.  I realized one day how many papers I had randomly scattered around the house.  It makes more sense to keep them all in one place so I don't end up spending 15 minutes searching for my grocery list.

This is my beloved life planner from Erin Condren. I use this for everything and I love it.

It is full of bright colorful pages and inspirational quotes.  Just what I need! :)

This is my weekly planner that also came from Erin.  I write my meal plan and other daily events on this.  I love how big it is!

So, how do you stay organized?  What are your favorite products or organizational tips?!

Dream House

I grew up in a white house with black shutters.  Maybe that is why this house immediately felt like home to me. I think I even told my husband when we were dating that one day I wanted to live in a white house with black shutters.  That was my "dream house" I guess you could say.  Even as a little girl, I loved houses like this.  I guess now would be an appropriate time to admit that I am jealous of my daughter.  My almost 3 year old daughter.  My dad has been saying for a while that he wanted to build her a playhouse.  We decided Christmas would be the perfect time, and he got busy.  I told him many times that he didn't need to stress about it being perfect, because she would be excited with anything.

I know my dad well, so I don't know why I was so surprised when I saw what HE had in mind.  It's nicer than our HOUSE.  Audrey was SO good about not peeking.  He built it in his garage and worked for weeks.  Anytime we were over there and the garage door opened, Audrey would throw her hands over her eyes and dramatically exclaim "no want ruin my uprise!" (surprise.)  And oh what a wonderful uprise it was!

Here's my girl with my mom seeing her play house for the first time on Christmas day.

It took some serious figuring to get the playhouse from my parents' house to ours, so you can imagine the excitement around here last Saturday when she looked out the window and saw this...

Welcome to THE playhouse of all playhouses.

 
By the way, her front door was an old door from our house.  We had several doors that we removed while renovating, and we've just been saving them in the shed until we had a use for them.  My dad cut one down and now she has a little piece of history in HER house.

Complete with her own rocking chair for some front porch rockin'.

Oh what a lucky little girl.  I'm jealous.

Fresh Starts

Hello and Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had as wonderful a Christmas as we did!  We were blessed beyond belief with lots of family time, a beautiful Christmas Eve church service, and of course way too many gifts!  Looks like Santa didn't forget where we live after all!


So now that the big hurrah is over, I'm left with a house that looks like it's been hit by a tornado.  Everywhere I turn, there are more bags, boxes, and just stuff.  I love to decorate for Christmas, but boy do I loathe UNDECORATING Christmas!  It's not quite as fun to put it all away!  I know that Christmas technically lasts for 12 days after the day of Christmas, but I am just incapable of keeping all the decorations out that long!!  Every year I am just hanging out and then I'm suddenly overcome with this desire to get our tree OUT.  Immediately.  So while I'm in the process of putting away Christmas, I've been thinking a lot about the new year ahead of us.
It may seem silly to some, but I have always loved starting a new year!  The natural planner in me just gets giddy making lists of my goals, plans, and hopes for the new year.  To be honest, 2011 was the most difficult and traumatic year of my entire life.  We were blessed in many ways, and adding Walker to our family was the greatest blessing of all.  However, the fear of losing my child took a hold of me in May, and has pretty much had me around the neck for the rest of the year.  I still get sick to my stomach every time he has a cardiologist appointment.  I still stand over him while he sleeps and count his breaths.  I still check to see if I can feel his pulses in his feet when he is nursing.  I wonder when this fear will go away.  It's definitely not as intense as it was over the first few days we learned of his condition, but it's not completely gone, either.  I really wonder if it will ever be completely gone.  I am so thankful he is here with us to start a fresh new year!  I am happy to say my children are both finally healthy and thriving!  So, as usual, last night I made my lists of "resolutions" for the new year.  Some of them are big things, and some are silly small things that probably only matter to me.

1.  Read the Bible daily and focus more on God.  I am attempting to follow along with WMHK's Bible Reading Guide, to see if I can read through the Bible in a year!

2. Try to be more patient.

3.  Of course the cliche resolution....lose weight and get in shape!  I have about 13-15 more pounds I would like to have gone by bathing suit season.  For us South Carolinians, that is around May.  I have made it my goal to lose the 15lbs by May 1.  That means I have to lose around a pound a week. Totally doable.  Just gotta hit the treadmill!  (after I finish this cookie...)

4.  Keep a cleaner house.  With trying to keep up with my 2 kids and the 2 I babysit, my house has taken a back burner!  I am working on giving it a good cleaning as I put away Christmas stuff, and then hopefully I can get back to just maintaining it.

5.  Cook more, eat out less.  I want to try lots of new recipes!

6.  Save money.  I have finished reading Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, and I am ready to get this ball rolling!  I'll be jumping back on the coupon train and really tackling our finances!

7.  Grow my blog.  I'm going to try to post more regularly and give this blog more focus!  I've had so much fun with it so far!

8.  Catch up on my scrapbooking.  I am so behind it's not even funny.

9. Get both children to sleep in their own bed.  This should be interesting.  It's no secret we share our bed with the kiddos.  Audrey has terrible nightmares and has made it very hard to get any sleep if she's not snuggled up against one of us.  Walker is not a sleeper either.  We shall see...

10.  Drink 8 glasses of water a day.  I've struggled with this for a while!

So that's what I have come up with!  I'm a dork, so I'm excited about it! Haha!! What are YOUR new year's resolutions???


Seeing her swingset...