Jayde's Room

After finding out we were having another baby we knew we would have to transition Jayde to a big-girl-bed. We did it a few months before having Colt and it went very well. Tyson's parents had a bedroom set that his mom used growing up which his sister then used. They remodeled her room and it was given to Jayde. I love that it is white, and has a canopy bed. It all goes very well in her room, and she loves it.

Here are pictures of her 'new' room:

Little table & chairs were given to her by her Oma & Opa for Christmas last year. She loves having tea parties on it.

 These are the rain gutter bookshelves I made from vinyl rain gutters at Lowes. They were very easy to make: figure out the lengths you want, cut them with a hacksaw, sand the edges and glue on the corner & end-caps. Screw into the wall on your studs and voila .. you have rain gutter bookshelves. Jayde loves them!

Colt's Room

Colt's room has been almost complete for awhile now and I LOVE how it turned out! I wanted a Dr. Seuss theme and Tyson wanted sports so I combined the two. I love the feeling when I have a bunch of ideas in my head and they all come together and turn out exactly how I pictured.

Tyson's dad and I did the board & batten on the walls. I picked out the paint colors and got help painting from Darryl, my uncle Kyle, and Tyson. 

I think one of my favorite things is this baseball with his hand print. I was shocked I was able to do that in one try! It's a good thing he is a deep sleeper.

The bedding was Pottery Barn clearance and Teri made the adorable Dr. Seuss throw blanket for his crib. And of course we have a Utah rug.

Those are $24 white Ikea curtains that I painted red stripes onto (the day before Colt was born).

The picture frame I got at $3 from a garage sale and turned it into a magnetic chalkboard.

The Dr. Seuss panel was also made by Teri - we saw it in a quilt shop and thought it would go perfectly in his room.

I saw this quote on Etsy and made my own version of it. I love how it looks in the white frames right above his crib.

I took off his closet door like I did in Jayde's room because it makes the room larger and I can put his chair where it would swing out. 

This bare wall is going to have his name up top (I'm at least done with the letters), and then I want a collage of about 8 different types of frames that I'm going to paint white and put pictures of him in.... and that is the last thing I have left before it's 100% complete!

My Pitiful Pantry

I always thought my pantry was fairly organized, but through the years of living here it became more and more disheveled. I didn't own any good containers for things so nothing looked very streamlined. One day of being fed-up with not being able to find anything, and having chip bags fall on me while trying to reach for other things - I decided that I was going to completely organize it.

I searched for containers I loved that weren't at an outrageous price and found almost all of them at Walmart. It took a few trips to gather up all the containers I needed and after a few weeks of living with my new organized pantry I can honestly say I am in love with it! I love all of the containers I bought, and it is making life much easier in the kitchen. I spent about $200, but it was WELL worth it. The pictures will do it justice, and what is amazing is I didn't even have to get rid of any of our food either.

PANTRY BEFORE:

PANTRY AFTER: 

projects, projects, projects...

Lately I've been super busy with projects to try and get done before the baby comes. Here are a few of the ones I've finished. I love how everything is turning out, but even more - I love the fact that I can cross them off my list!

 I found some cute fabric online at fabric.com and made faux roman shades using this tutorial for our kitchen windows. It took me forever to take end result pictures of this (hence the Halloween decor in the 'before' and the St Patty's Day decor in the 'after' pic haha)

 Baby squishy now has a car seat cover which is a necessity!

 Used some fabric scraps and ric rac to make some boy burp cloths. Now he won't be spitting up on any pink frilly ones.

 I bought this ugly frame at a garage sale for $2 over a year ago, knowing I wanted to make it into a magnetic chalk board. I cleaned it, rolled on the magnetic paint, sprayed on the chalkboard paint, sprayed it red, and then glazed it. It's going to go in the baby's room. 

Oh, and I think we decided on the name Colton (Colt for short)!

 Our neighbor let us (meaning me & my father-in-law) borrow his miter saw and nail gun. Darryl installed the the wainscoting as well as painted the wall/ceiling. Now all that was left was for me to calk, spackle, re-paint the white section, paint the other walls yellow, paint stripes on Colton's curtains, and decorate!

 Darryl also helped me install these metal planter boxes I bought over a year ago. They were just sitting in our garage because Tyson didn't want to drill holes into our house. It took about a year to get him to agree ;) so here they are with fresh flowers I picked out. I LOVE how they turned out. Literally every day when I look at them - they make me smile!

I bought this ugly bench as a set for $35 at DI. Cleaned, vacuumed, painted, and found a cute pillow for it. The other two pieces I sold for $20 so the bench only ended up costing me $15 + $40 for the pillow and about $25 for the paint/primer in one. I also love how this turned out.

I love that Jayde is such a trooper when I'm getting things done. I hand her one of her fake paintbrushes and she 'paints' right alongside me. It is so cute to see her reach for the tools and mimic what I'm doing. She has some wooden puzzles and one is a tool theme and she loves hammering with her puzzle piece like it's real. So cute!

the painting/parade of homes weekend

Last month I FINALLY finished up my family room painting with the help of Tyson's dad - THANKS A MILLION DARRYL! I love how it looks, and was getting tired of the blah tan walls. I'll have to post a picture of the after with curtains up etc.

 Wearing my mask since I'm preggo - even though the dr's said paint nowadays doesn't hurt the baby while pregnant.

 

Oh, and while we painted Jayde was entertained by Tyson's mom - THANKS TERI!! We couldn't have done it with her running a-muck like the crazy toddler she is.

We then went to a bunch of Parade of Homes with Tyson's family. Since Ty was still studying for the AZ Bar he wasn't able to come, but we had a blast! Jayde and Hayley (her cousin) did amazing and we had a very fun -filled weekend. I just love doing the Parade of Homes and look forward to it every year.

This year was a little bit of a downer home-wise with not really much that really WOWed me, but there's always next year.

Jayde loving on Hayley. She looves babies!

Home.

March 18, 2010

I didn't really know what to expect when going to our home closing, I mean there's really no way to prepare yourself for the occasion.... except maybe some hand stretches to get them ready to sign the mountains of paperwork passed to you. It would have probably been a stressful occasion if I wasn't married to an attorney who knows what those mortgage people are talking about when they break down each form. Plus knowing we were getting an awesome deal on a home that we LOVED made it a lot easier to keep those signatures rolling.

I was getting more and more excited each page we would sign because it was going to soon be ours, and we were officially 'closing' the deal.

I was shocked that Tyson wasn't freaking out a little when seeing all of those numbers... I was planning on seeing him sweat a little like he did when he had to put a deposit on my wedding ring before we were engaged which is a whole other hilarious story in itself. I think we were just both ready to own our first home together. He jokes that we already have a small 'house' of debt from law school loans anyway, so what's another small fortune right? It's just too bad the student loans aren't even close to the awesome interest rate we were able to get!

We feel very fortunate to have the ability to buy such an amazing home. It's still unreal that we were paying more in rent for our thousand square foot apartment in DC, than we are paying for our mortgage on our new home. We've loved St. George so far and are excited to be here on a more permanent basis (especially when we drive to Salt Lake and it's snowing like crazy).

Owning our first home makes me excited to:
-play in our new grass
-paint our walls the accent colors I want
-throw away all the old beat up boxes we saved up from past moves
-set up our baby's nursery
-grill on our patio
-play music as loud as I want
-park in our very own garage
-spend our Pottery Barn $ we got when married without worrying if something we buy will break when we move
-grow a garden
-have my own laundry room
-plant a cherry blossom tree to remind us of our adventures in DC
-not have to use an elevator to throw away our trash
-cook s'mores in our backyard fire pit
-get drapes without the husband having any excuse not to
-buy a real Christmas tree... no more fakers
-have people visit and actually have a room to sleep in
-mostly I'm excited to start raising a family and making more fun memories with my wonderful husband

...here in our new home.

in the 'still building' stages

We've been so busy moving into the house and getting all the glitches worked out that I still need to catch up on the whole home building process, so here's a few more updates. I'm excited to show the finished product because we've loved it!

our home is coming along

So the house is moving SO fast that I thought instead of updating every single day with home posts, I'd hold off until a lot of it is done. It's amazing what you can do in such a short period of time when you have all of the workers and inspectors on-hand. We're REALLY excited for our home to be finished so we can move in and get it all ready for the baby to come.

They are saying our expected closing date is around March 14th. Crazy!!

Oh, and be prepared for LOTS of pictures (sorry!), I think if you click on it you can see them zoomed-in.