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.

kitchen progress

I know I haven't even shared the rest of the house with you, but I'm so flipping excited about the kitchen that I cannot wait any longer!

Here's the before...ugh.

The kitchen started off as 12x12 room that had 3 door ways and one wall of cabinets. That door opening (on left of below pic) used to go through to the living room but we opened up the other door way leading in to it so we could have more room for cabinets and appliances.

 

It was two rooms just a short while ago. The door way pictured below is the same spot the above picture was taken from. Matt and I did most of the demo. We did have lots of help from our friend Matt too. This closet was the only closet in the entire house. We did use this room as our bedroom when we first moved in but it was soon turned into our office since it's in the front of the house.

 Here's the view from the other side of the room above. That chimney there with the brick has had to stay as it's not a fireplace chimney but it does have vents for other needed things (ie the furnace) running through it. I was a little disappointed about that but we did get our hopes up when we saw the brick. But my hopes were dashed when the previous owners put plaster directly on the other sides of it. And that stuff was not coming off with out ruining the brick.

There is the bigger opening into the living room. It's covered up to keep the dust and dirt out of the new side. You also get an awesome view of nasty wallpaper too! We ended up taking the plaster and lath off of all the walls and totally redrywalling the whole space.

And what a difference that makes! We widened the other entry too. And installed new tile, thanks again to our friend Matt and his wife Jenn!

I am so thankful for willing friends and a clean kitchen! 

I will have more updates and details soon! 

who do you love

I helped the boys out with their valentines this week. They were a little more excited about them this year than they have been before. Maybe it's because we used their favorite candy?

the owl will be for another blog post :)

 Airheads make me sick. No really, I think they are gross. But when I found this little download, I was excited! I knew they would love them! Plus they were cheap {woohoo}, well, the cost of the candy anyway.

I just printed them out on cardstock and cut them up.

In the download directions, she used double stick tape but I didn't have any. We just used gift tape (left over from Christmas). Rolled it up oldschool and stuck them together.

 
 They liked them so much, they didn't even care if they had the same valentines!

Happy Valentines Day!

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!