welcome home - back entryway

i thought it was about time to invite you over ;)
come on in. this is where we enter the house by way of the back porch.
we hardly ever use the front door. i think the ups man is the only one who does.

this is one of the three rooms we didn't really change the structure of. it did get "new" windows. we used the old windows from the side of the house that got added on to. and we moved the old front door to the back.

the doorway over there to the right heads into our office. the yellow door leads to a pantry...hahaha just kidding! it still leads to our cruddy side of the basement. the black cabinet is ikea. i got that idea here.

the boys hang their bookbags and coats and the ever-important pool bag here. i love these hooks. (home depot)

 

the state map is from hobby lobby along with the little red bins. there's one for each boy to put his shoes in. 

the little abc plaque, we found in the wall of the kitchen when we ripped it down to the studs. the little wooden family, i painted at my niece's birthday party.  mushrooms are pier 1.

 

the letter holder is for homework folders and papers that have to go back to school. and the white frame has small clothes pins that can hold pictures. -i just haven't gotten that far yet...

the welcome sign is from joss & main. rugs are target -where else?- the cute rugs that is. the brown rug is just a necessity when you have boys. the little yellow table to the right, i built. and the basket holds all our baseball gloves and balls.

so there you have it! the first stop on my little home tour. i really love this little room. it's so nice to have a spot to keep all the shoes and coats instead of dragging them clear through the house.

it's time....

time....so precious but yet I waste so much of it.

It's time to dust off the old blog, I think. I have to admit, it's hard for me to want to keep up with it. But when I hear my friends are starting new blogs (hi, Evie!), and friends are telling me they miss mine, I get an itch to start again.

But then the itch goes away with a quick pic on instagram or a post on facebook.

I've been busy with the house though. We started at the end of the summer with this:

Then there was a lot of this:

And today it looks like this:

But don't judge me yet on the outside! There is a ton of stuff to do and garbage to pick up. But it's been really cold or really rainy. Except for that pic today...guess I could go out there. I will post more about the outside when we get to work on it this spring.

There will be more pics to come of the inside soon!

another house update

Some of you have been asking....how's the house? well, the house is fine. It's me that will end up with an(other) ulcer by the time it's all done. I can't seem to make a flipping decision on what I want! Which is really ridiculous! 

First, they cant put the sconces in the bathroom where I want, something about the cold air return on the furnace being in the way. 

Then I have contractors in my "old" house while I'm not there. Still mad about that one. I mean really mad. 

The stairs need widened a little because we have to add more insulation to the outside walls there. 

It has rained every week since we dug the hole. We even survived the hurricane (well, the remnants of one) that came through. The hillside to the basement is so muddy, you can't get in the house that way. 

that plywood is where the contractors enter the house.

Oh, and now my house is full of mice. We have caught 5 in the last three days. This makes me sad and mad all in one.

BUT that sounds like a lot of complaining!

I am thankful we have a house to live in right now. At least we didn't have to move out while they work. 

I'm so excited to have a new bathroom and bedroom for myself. And that the boys get to sleep across the hall from me. 

It is fun to pick out what I want, even if I cant decide. I read this post from the Nester today that put it in perspective for me. If you haven't read the Nester, I really like her and her style.

The roof is on and the windows are in! I love the look of the steel roof. Some have said that the roof might be loud. Well, I have now heard it rain on it and I cannot hear it in the old part at all. Still can in the new but there is no insulation or anything in the new part yet.

 

mud slide

fixing the steps.

I'll be back with more of what I'm picking out. Matt says to not buy anything until we can move it in. Which is a good thing! We have no where to store it!

house progress

We are getting there! If you ask Matt though, we are a long ways off. I like to stay positive!


Wall are up and the sheeting is on them. You can actually see what it's going to look like.

They did deliver the trusses today. But not until after lunch. So they didn't get started on them today. I blame Christopher Columbus and his holiday....but whatever.





I took some inside pics but they are kinda hard to see because that actual walls aren't up, just the studs. I drew on them too so you can see:) and here's a pic of the floor plan.




All the dark lines are the new parts. Heres a pic from just coming up the steps...




If you take a left up there, you are in the hall...




Then you can check out my bathroom and my walk in shower! I'm so excited about my bathroom, I can't hardly stand it!





Here's the basement. I love that we will be able to use it and it has a huge ceiling. With the walk out, it should feel pretty spacious.





Hopefully, next week, I'll have more to show you! I gotta get shopping:)

exciting news

For the longest time, I have wanted a new house. Maybe not necessarily a new house but a bigger one. It's not that my house is junky, (well it's just old) we were out of space! 

We sleep in a 8x12 foot room. 

The boys sleep in the attic. 

We have one closet, just one, in the entire house. 

And it's in the room we use as an office. 

But Matt decided this was the year to do something about it, so we went from this... 

...to this! 

I told Matt that I wasn't telling anyone about any of it until there was concrete in the hole. I was so scared that it really wouldn't happen that I need something as solid as concrete to be sure that I was actually getting a bigger house!

Of course, we have had a drought all summer until we dug the hole. We have had rain every week since. Check out all the water in that bottom hole.

Plans have been drawn...and erased...and argued over...and redrawn. We both are pretty happy with what we have now. We picked out our doors and windows last Saturday. Going with a craftsman/cottage-y look. I'm super excited to show you our progress as we go along! 

The basement floor goes in this week, as well as the contractors starting the end of this week too!

A Christmas tour

I wanted this post to be a vlog, but do you know how hard it is to get even the littlest things done while your kids are on Christmas vacation?!

I thought I would take you on a little Christmas tour of my house. Well, actually, it's just my living room, because I really don't have that many decorations. It's not that I don't want a ton, it's just I have no where to store them when it's not Christmas. And Matt is a bit bah humbug on any seasonal decorations.

The new thing this year is the ball ornament wreath I made. If you're on Pinterest, you've seen it. It's out of an old wire hanger (that I had to get from Michelle, because I had no hangers!). I bought some no shatter balls at Target and strung them on. You can see the wire a little bit, so if I did another one I would buy a pack of smaller ornaments too and add them here and there. I also thought about hot gluing the little ones in it too, but I have never bought any smaller ones.

The trick here is to hang it on a mirror so it looks really big!

And the tree...

There aren't very many ornaments on it. Just the one the boys made this year. We're trying to build up our handmade supply:) 

This is the only Santa I have in the house. I don't really like Santa. He never got me what I wanted as a kid and this year I'm going to have an extremely disappointed 7 year old that's not going to get what he asked for. Slone even got a letter from Santa at school, basically (in a 7 year old's mind) promising him a ds. Thanks a lot.

But this Santa was painted by sweet Ruth from our church. I got it at a white elephant exchange a couple of years ago.

And here's our "mantle". My littleputz houses sit on it with a few additions like the tractor Slone just got for his birthday (but cant play with. Don't get me started.) The houses were my Grandma Morey's. They have "Japan" stamped on the bottom of them. Mom says she always had them on top of her tv. But I don't remember that. They were always in Texas during Christmas when I was little.





A cute little snowman with a candy cane.





And just a snowflake that I have hanging in a frame.

With all the hustle and bustle, I hope you have a Merry Christmas!

gardening

This isn't a garden perfectly manicured with no weeds, bugs, or worms. This is my little garden, right in my back yard.



Dad came over and helped me build it. Actually, I think he did most of it then. I saw the idea for a raised bed in a magazine. I thought it would work better than just a regular garden that would be way to easy for someone (cough*Matt*cough) to run over with the lawn mower. Don't think he woundn't. He mowed down a beautiful forsythia bush because "it took too much time to mow around." uh huh.



I've been harvesting tomatoes and green peppers for three years now. The boys seem to like checking it out. They really like to pick everything for me, except the weeds. To be honest, I'm not very good at that either. But it's a dirty job.



That was just this morning, before the dew was gone. It was a whopping 58 degrees while I was out there! Kinda chilly!



But oh the tomatoes look delish! They usually make their way into a bacon and tomato sandwich. I'm going to have to make salsa or some spaghetti sauce though. I have way to many for just sandwiches. Maybe you'd like to come over for one? :)

I finished my quilt!

I got it done! I'm really excited about it too!



These were the blocks I had the flickr group make...remember?



I used a black with tiny white pin dots for the binding. I machine stitched it on. I am not patient enough to hand stitch it. It would have never been finished if I had tried!





I'm going to use it for picnics and park outings. Bo is especially excited to have a picnic on it. He's been asking non-stop since I got it done:)



I backed it with a twin sized sheet from Target...where else:)?



Happy picnicking:)

a closet redo

I cleaned out the closet in my office. It was packed full of trucking papers, mops crafts that I never put away, photography stuff, and bunches of craft books. It was so bad the bulky sliding doors that were on it wouldn't lay flat, they were literally bulging at the seams. I should have taken a "before" picture. But it would've been so embarrassing to show you. So you only get the afters:)

The boys really needed a place to do their "homework". The table and chairs were sitting out in the office. They really can't keep their stuff together, so it was always a big mess. I thought putting it in the closet and be able to hide it, might make the office seem cleaner.



The top shelf are all of my craft and sewing reference books. The shelf is sagging. Tell me, have you ever seen a shelf of books not sag eventually? I had the other white shelves in the closet, not hanging up. So I put them up in there. The filing cabinets hold all the trucking stuff I need, so do the scrapbooking shelves on top of them.



The boys got the calendar for Christmas and it was taped to my wall before. Now they have a place for all their Lego, Nat Geo, and Zoobook magazines. Their stencils, coloring books and drawing books are in the wooden organizer on the desk. That lamp I already had too. It just accidentally and happily fit perfectly in that spot.



I saw on Meg's Whatever blog, that she keeps her kids crayons and markers in one of those cool glass jars. I have one but I was worried about Bo and the glass lid. Can you imagine? {shudder} I don't want to. But I did have a large plastic jar of cheese balls from Sam's. I washed it out and now we have lots of room for our art supplies!



Slone took it upon himself to do a little of his own decorating. He got all of these cards from VBS. Both the boys loved VBS. The pandas were a big hit.



This is the office supply shelf. These are Mommie's, not for kids, hence the flower pot of sharpies. The w is from Target (surprise:), maybe 4 years ago.



A little work in progress. 



I did go to Target and bought this shower curtain to hide everything. The doors limited the space. The curtain was the only thing I bought new for the project! So quite a transformation for a little elbow grease and $20.