So Pretty, But Worth It??

From NovDecFavorites

Look at this cute, Christmasy house! So fun to look at and makes me feel all holly and jolly except when I remember what you don't see in this picture. You don't see Neil* hanging over the edge and me standing down below looking up helplessly, but very concerned. We spent an ENTIRE Saturday getting these dang things up. Actually, I didn't do a darn thing, but throw up an occasional extension cord and worry endlessly that Neil* would fall and break his neck. And the part where I threw up extension cords wasn't even that helpful, because sometimes it would take me (no kidding) about 8 tries to actually get the cords up on the roof. That part was quite comical and even got comments from a couple people driving by. I have a TERRIBLE arm. I would be laughing so hard about my horrible aim that my throws would just get worse and worse. We're lucky I didn't break a window, actually.

For those of you who don't know, I am terrified of heights. Or rather, terrified of falling - which requires you to be at a certain height. Even if I am not the one up high, I obsess and worry. My neck was sore by the time this project was done because I could not stop looking up. As if I could will Neil* with my eyeballs to defy gravity should anything happen.

There are a few imperfections to our decor due to many of the lights not working. Neil* got about a third of the way done with the lights when several just stopped working. We had to buy a bunch more, and start again. However, those new ones were wound up much tighter than our old ones and hung differently. Then there was a section on the right that just would turn off and then on when it felt like it. By the end of the night - it was dark when we finished - we just called it good. I think it turned out pretty cute - imperfections and all. By the end of the day, I was thinking that it might have been a pretty good deal to pay someone to put them up. I was so stressed out.

We'll probably forget by next year, though, and do it all again.

Last Weekend: The Great, The BAD and The Ugly

I wish so much I had pictures to document the first part of our weekend.

We had a wonderful day on Friday. We got to spend the whole afternoon and whole night with Kim, Allie, Luke and Kate. Friday morning, Kim called to see if we could help surprise Allie (one of Sarah's bestest friends) for her birthday. Unfortunately, her plan with the cousins fell through when they got sick. Kim's plans were hanging in the balance. She needed help, she needed some party animals to come surprise Allie. Well, we like to do service for others, so we decided to help out! (o: Wasn't that nice of us?

It worked out perfect because we had no plans and I wanted to do something fun with the girls. Bingo! Win-win situation. The girls were so excited. We hid at Kim's house and surprised Allie when she came home from school. Her reaction was so cute it made me tear up. She got a huge grin and hugged Sarah so tight for the longest time. Sarah was laughing and thought it was so funny how long Allie was hugging her. The reason why I got a little teary is because these two girls are such good friends and we recently found out that Kim and her family are moving to Texas. )o: Sarah and Allie are really sad about it and I am REALLY sad about it too. Kim is one of my most bestest friends. Anyway, let's get back to the fun and happy part...

After Allie got over the shock of her surprise she got another surprise - we were all going swimming together! Wahoo! We had such a blast!! Sarah and Allie were little fish and went off on their own most of the time - by the end they were doing somersaults and all kinds of tricks in the water. It reminded me of me and my cousin Megan when we were little - practicing our synchronized swimming routines for the Olympics. (o:

Natalie was very nervous at first - we haven't gone swimming for a while. By the time we left, not only did she go down the waterslide with me (something she has been scared of for a long time) but then she went down about a hundred times with Luke by herself! I was so excited! Those two just went up and down and up and down for about a half hour straight. Kim and I each got a couple turns too - we couldn't let the kids have all the fun. And Angela, even went down - another big triumph. She laughed nervously the whole way down and had a huge grin when we hit the water. She exclaimed, "I didn't cry! I laughing!" I immediately asked, "Do you want to go again?" I got a VERY curt, "NO!"

By the time we were done, we were all wrinkly and waterlogged. But the party STILL wasn't over. It was pizza time! We had a fabulous pizza and movie party at Kim's house until about midnight! The food was awesome (especially Kim's cream puffs - to die for!!), the movie was great (Bedtime Stories - I was very pleasantly surprised - Adam Sandler cracks me up.), but most of all the company was soooo great. I could hang out with Kim all day and all night. Oh wait, I guess I did. What a fun day! The only two sad things about the day were that 1. I left my memory card home and didn't get any pictures and 2. Bill* and Kim's husband both had a horrible day at work. We felt very bad for our poor slaving husbands while we had all the fun.

So that portion was the GREAT part of our weekend. The bad part has to do with that last sentence - the horrible day at work. Actually, by the time Bill* got home from work it was the next day around 11:00 a.m. If my calculations are correct, that is 28 hours straight at work. Oh and did I mention that he was only coming home for a two hour break? That's right. Oh and did I also mention that during his two hour break, Bill* mowed the lawn and then discovered that some little creature ripped off the metal screen over one of our crawlspace vents so he spent the next half hour crawling around in the dirty and hot crawl space to see if we had a raccoon nest down there? Luckily, he didn't find anything and we sealed off the opening with some bricks. But isn't that a great way to spend a break after working 28 hours in a row? After all that fun, Bill* headed back to work for 4 more hours. Poor guy. (He also got to go in Sunday for 6 hours. Yippee. The fun never ends!)

While he was gone, I decided to take on the yard by myself. It was our annual neighborhood barkdust weekend. The HOA orders several truckloads of barkdust for everyone to use in the front yards. Unfortunately, the closest pile to our house was gone - so I had to go on a block and a half trek with the kids back and forth 7 times! My cute neighbor came up with a creative way to transport the barkdust that was much easier than a wheelbarrow. I wish I got a picture of it. He had a cart that I just had to push with two humongous buckets/bins on top. I was so grateful he let me use it.

I worked my butt off (well, it's still there, but I burned a lot of calories off of it) - the entire time Bill* was gone. I wanted to surprise him. I weeded, pruned, planted a couple new bushes, pulled out bulbs of some flowers I HATE and laid out barkdust everywhere in the front yard. I wish I got a before picture, but the pics below show the after. I was sooo exhausted, thirsty, hungry, sore and a little sunburned by the time I was done. The girls were so good almost the whole time and Sarah helped me a lot. We were very excited to see Bill* come home and all got a Slurpee and a well deserved dinner at Pasta Pronto.

We ended the evening with a roller blade around the neighborhood. Our evening was so nice, it almost made up for all the hard work during the day. Our weekend was pretty extreme - we worked hard and played hard.

Our weather last weekend was GLORIOUS!! I can't wait for summer! Actually, if it could just stay exactly as it is now that would be fantastic - not too hot, not too cold.

We get comments from everyone on our beautiful Wisteria in the entryway. It is beautiful this time of year and smells sooo good. It makes me happy.


Our Rhodies are in full bloom and looking beautiful.


Do you like my shaping? Isn't it lovely. (o: And notice the beautiful barkdust.

Our yard AFTER my loooong day of yardwork.

Picture Choirs of Angels Singing

Hallelujah! The bathtub faucet is in!!

Without going into too much detail about all the tub faucet stress...

humming and hawing about whether to pay the plumber a million dollars (almost) or try to install the thing ourselves.

Installing a faucet? .... "elementary" you say...

not even close - try Ivy League.

Try 21 solders to create a copper pipe contraption that will get all the pipes and water going to all the right places - including 4 solders inside the small hole squished next to the toilet that the plumber would have taken out. (And consequently, would have to rebuild because it is so old.

$$ Ka-Ching!)

At that moment, I wondered if we should have just paid the million dollars and called it good. Open flames make me a bit nervous.

But all is well, and the tub looks beautiful - minus the hole we need to patch up. Phew!

I realized that I never did an "after" picture of the girls' princess bathroom. I love how it turned out.

Making More Holes in the Walls

I've had a million frames hanging around the house for quite some time now from Costco and from the awesome frame sale I found back in February, was it? (75% off - I am still on a "good deal" high from that shopping spree.) Anyway, we have many walls that I've had 'plans' for, for a long time. Well, I am so happy to say that those walls are no longer bare and I am very happy with the results. I smile whenever I walk by our "galleries". The one above is in our entryway. The one below is in the upstairs hallway and the Language Art was designed by my talented aunt Amy. I LOVE finally having my girls' blessing dress on display! This was the vision I had about 9 years ago when my mother-in-law made this beautiful blessing gown for Sarah.

My brother and sister-in-law made this cute board for us a couple Christmas' ago. I just moved it into the bathroom when I saw on a friends' blog that she made something similar to store her girls' hair bows. Our bathroom was being taken over by headbands, barrettes and bows. Now they are all organized. (Thanks for the inspiration Janessa!) I got most of the bows you see on here from "Oh So Girly" - a fun blog with homemade girly bows and clips for sale. You can click on the title above to see some of Bridgette's adorable bows. I personally love the pinwheel barrettes, especially the black and white one. She has really good prices compared to some other sites I looked at, FYI.

New Shower Door

BEFORE - BLAH
AFTER - GOODBYE GOLD!
And you can't really tell in the picture, but the glass of our old shower door had tons of hard water stains that I wasn't sad to see go.

I like the handle.

And there you have it. Now if we can just get our bath faucet all taken care of! Someday our master bath will be finished.

Bathroom Updates - I Know You're Dying to Know

This gold stuff has become the bane of our existence. Not so easy to get rid of as you might think!

We finally got around to working on the girls bathroom. We got it all prepped the Saturday night of spring break and were ready to paint when we opened up the can of paint. It was WAY too light. My feeling is that if we were going to paint the girls' bathroom girly colors, I wanted it to show and the color we brought home from Home Depot was almost white. So we put off painting until I could get more tint added on Monday.

This is our new shower faucet/head/shelf in brushed nickel. MUCH better than the gold, but after cutting a huge hole in the closet wall, buying the faucet/shower combo (NOT cheap anyway) and add to that the cost of having a plumber come cut into pipes and Sauter the new plumbing that went with the fixtures, well we could have stayed in a nice beach house for 3 nights for the picture you see above. But what would YOU rather have. Family memories to last a lifetime or a brushed nickel handle to turn on your shower water? Am I right or am I right? Here's hoping that our bathtub faucet isn't a 5 day stay at the beach. Ugh! Oh and I didn't mention the custom shower door we're having made because there was no way for regular people to buy the shower door materials and replace it yourself. We have to change the whole thing to replace that gold trim above. Well, the hard water stains on the glass were bugging me anyway. What the heck - throw it all out...

Here's the girls' bathroom "after" painting. When would anyone choose to paint a bathroom pink, you ask? When you have three little princesses to pretty up in that bathroom. (o: I'll take another after with our new pretty cabinet installed above the toilet and the new chrome faucet. Ahhh, at least one bathroom is finished.

You want to know something funny about the pink bathroom? Icabod*, the one person in the house who might not be a big fan of the pink bathroom actually doesn't even notice. It's perfect. He is color blind and the bathroom looks white to him! I'll have to remember that for future reference! Pink shirts, pink ties, pink office... he he he.

Has This Ever Happened to You?

Have you ever had something in your house that you've been dying to change since the day you bought it? Something that bugged you on the walk through, but that you could change later? Well, it has been exactly three years since we moved into our house and we have been checking off a lot of things that we've wanted to change in these last few years. A little here and there. This week we decided to finally tackle one that has bugged me for a long time. Namely, all the gaudy gold faucets in our master bath with the silly "crystal" looking knobs. Blah. We also had a very ugly and very cheap looking light over our bathtub and a 'so-not-my-style' light fixture over our sinks. We've also needed to paint our bathroom ceiling and walls.

This week we decided to take one of Bill's* four days off and paint our bathroom and the girls' bathroom. And we decided to finally change out all those ugly faucets and sink light fixture. (We recently replaced the cheap light and added a nice chandelier over the master bath.) As you will notice below, we it ended up taking us more than one day - it's been two and we don't see an end in sight just yet. We haven't even gotten around to painting the girls' bathroom except for the ceiling.

These first three pictures are our LOVELY gold faucets and trim in the bathroom.

The "befores".

This is our "before paint" picture. The "after" is a little bit below.

This is our old light fixture that will be going up on Craig's List for $15 or $20. Any takers?

Now see where our quest for new faucets for the shower and tub has taken us . . . Ahhh the adventures in home improvements . . .

When we went to change our faucet to the tub with our lovely brushed nickel faucet and handles, we discovered that they would not fit right. After looking at 4 home improvement/plumbing supply stores, we discovered that we will have to replace some of the hardware below the tile and do some "custom" plumbing. The type of faucets we have just can't be found/aren't made anymore. So this is our lovely mess and it is only the beginning. The dollar signs are going up and up on this "little" project.

We ran into the same problem with our shower knob and faucet. So we had to cut into the wall of our closet so we can change the hardware behind the shower. The girls keep asking why daddy is making holes everywhere!

The good news is that our sink faucets don't need any special attention. They went in without a hitch and they look sooooo much better! I love them! Also notice the runner at the bottom of the mirror. It used to be gold too. Now it is nice and silver. We also found out the mirror was just screwed right into sheetrock - no anchors or anything! Yikes! The mirror was so heavy when we took it down, we could not believe it was held up with three screws in sheetrock. It is now mounted to studs on a lovely silver runner. Ahhh, much better!

This shows our freshly painted ceiling, recently installed chandelier and new paint on the walls. "Toast" - just a very light tan color. It looks so nice covering up the old yucky flat paint. Nice and clean. The blue spots are tape marking where I need to touch up the paint.

This is our new light fixture above the sinks. It matches the chandelier light and looks much more sleek than the 80's style light from before. And no gold!! (o: I'll include more updates when we finish the shower and tub. We're still not sure just how we're going to change the gold trim on the shower. After talking to several people at home improvement stores, we discovered that we may have to get something custom made or change out the whole shower! Geesh. Maybe I'll just have to live with that gold, but I hope not.

Springtime Chores

We have 4 fruit trees in our backyard. This year they seem to have grown a LOT! Mac* did a lot of pruning and this is the mess we ended up with. Ugh.

Meet Mr. Chipper. This is what we got to help us out, but even so, it was still a BIG job. And I swear Mac* nearly got his hand chopped off 13 times. Plus he got whipped about 37 times. I definitely had the easy end of the job, bringing sticks. Except for the times I stood up and ran into a tree branch or the time I rammed my arm into a tree branch. Yeah, this was great fun. Not to mention the noise.
Ahhh, now this is much better. This is how we spent our Friday the 13th. Fortunately, the rest of the day was just dandy.

Home Improvements

Two weekends ago, Frank* and I painted our room - we love the new color (it was white before) and now can't wait to add some fun stuff to the walls.
Above is a corner of our house that has been driving me crazy for a long time. This is actually what the girls dress ups looked like when they were "cleaned up". Usually they are spread out all over this corner and throughout the room. I absolutely love having little girls and I love that dressing up is such a big part of their existence right now. So I wanted to make it even more fun for them . . .
After a trip to Ross and with the help of Ned*, this is the much improved corner. Now the girls can find their princess shoes and jewelry. Ahhh, I am making order in my house one corner at a time. I have a LOOOONG way to go, but this makes me feel so much better!! The girls enjoy it too and like the mirror and knowing where to find stuff.
Lest you think that my house is always clean and organized, I took this picture on the way out of the girls' room. And this is no where near as messy as it often is. I'll try to take more "real" shots to put in here because a lot of people have the false impression that I am so on top of things. HA! I just get so excited when something IS in order that I have to take a picture of it! (o:

A House of Order

This is how I wish my whole house looked. This closet (I wish I had a before pic) has haunted me forever - it was a black hole. I now know exactly what is inside this closet and often leave the doors open because I like to look at it. (o: Unfortunately, some FHE/church visual aids I was hoping to find were NOT in the black hole. Maybe they actually were sucked into another dimension before I got the closet clean. I am baffled.

Sooo, my kitchen desk and cabinets above may be an eyesore (my next project), dishes may be overflowing from the sink and I might be way behind on laundry - but I have a clean office closet. Let's hope it lasts for more than a few weeks... Thanks to Shannan for taking the girls during the afternoon that I tackled this project.