Holy June!

It's been quite awhile since I've made a post. I was busy finishing up my senior year and finally have my BFA in Interior Architecture and Design. What is that? It's basically just like architecture only we take existing buildings and re-purpose them. I also know Interior Design so I have a good range of opportunities out there. In July I start Grad School which is exciting but I'm also very nervous. I know I'm going to be extremely busy and that means a lot less time with my daughter. I keep telling myself it's only for one year (yep, that's right) and it will truly pay off in the end (one can only hope)! I've been off since the beginning of May and I've been enjoying my time with the bean who is now 13 months old. She is so much fun but also a wild beast! I'm pooped by the end of the night! I have to enjoy it while I can because, seriously, grad school is going to kick my ass. There is a ton of stuff to update on so I'll probably be making a few posts. I really don't know where to start but here is a picture of Sadie as of a few days ago:

Look at that smile! Don't mind her messy playroom. It's constantly messy. The minute I put something away it comes right back down/out! She loves her babies. Mostly this one that she cannot live without:

This is from memorial day. Her baby came out a little blurry but this is a Disney Princess baby - Sleeping Beauty (Aurora aka "BABY!"). Aurora BABY! just had a bath last night because she was so dirty that our parent's even said she needed a bath.

This is us a few weekends ago. We went to a bridal shower for a relative. I am in the process of growing out my bangs and a few weeks ago I dyed my hair a medium brown. I. hate. it. I'm looking into getting high lights.

Instead of going to my graduation we went to Knoebels Amusement Resort. Josh and I have been going there since we were very young so it was only natural that our daughter goes. She was there twice last year (3 months old) and once this year. This is her helping me play miniature golf (I suck so bad). We look forward to many more Knoebels trips!

Otherwise we've just been enjoying swimming (err Sadie swimming and us watching) in the baby pool. More stuff and less life to come!

Spill the Beans

So I thought it would be *kind of* fun to see what's inside the Bean's diaper bag. Hmmm... not sure if that's really fun for a blog post or not but here we go:

 I use the Vera tote by Vera Bradley. It's in the Barcelona print which is no longer available but if you like it here is another option! I have to say I LOVE it! So much room. The whole inside is lined with little pockets and it's really deep and it also has two outside pockets.

Look at all this crap! Wanna know what a 1 year old and her momma carry around?

1 extra pair of pants and shirt. We occasionally  have accidents. A baby toy that I totally forgot was in there. Extra bib. Sunglasses, sun hat (if it were winter it would be a warmer hat).

Sippy cup with water, cheerios and puff snacks (my girl likes to eat), that yellow case holds forks and spoons, and a toothbrush! 

Hello Kitty sticky placemats for eating in restaurants, first aid kit, boogie wipes, diaper ointment, stack of diapers (size 5), and tushie wipes.

 Mom's stuff: Gum, little snack, keys, wristlet, phone, ipod and old receipts.

Am I forgetting anything? What do you keep in your diaper bag? I think I might do a few random posts like this while I'm off from school for the summer.

It's been awhile

Wow my blogger thingy is all different! I tried making a post yesterday but every time I tried to post a picture it would freeze up. I haven't had time to post much these past few weeks. Life has been crazy. My senior year is wrapping up this week and then next week are finals. Last weekend was our baby girl's 1st birthday party. We had fun! So much fun that I don't have many pictures. The day before the party our rec room got a makeover. It's still not finished. We I am kind of on a spending freeze so projects around here are at their minimum. It's hard having two houses with two mortgages and two sets of utility bills and only one person working. The good news is that someone made an offer on our former home and we accepted! The inspection is this Friday and if all goes well, the closing is scheduled for May 31st! That will be a big help for getting projects done! We need to do major landscaping out there!

Here's the party:

The Birthday girl running around.

The cupcake table. Before all 90 cupcakes PLUS a smoosh cake arrived!

Close up of the bean's timeline. Age a few minutes after birth til her 1st bday picture. Our pictures, from when we were small, are above her's. AWWWWW

Some of her many balloons. None of the latex lasted because we used those stupid clips, rather than tying them.

A table in the middle of our living room! We put all of her presents going up the stairs to keep them out of the way.

Good thing for our extra long Ikea dining room table. That's my mother in law filling out the Bean's time capsule.

 That's all the pictures I have of the party for now. I'm going to run down and take pictures of the bar as it is right now...:

 The "ugly" bar in all it's glory. One of these day's Josh is going to go down there and it will be painted. I don't have a hatred for wood...just ugly wood. We are looking into a bar top for it and stools! All that booze is my grandpa's vintage collection. It's older than me (31 wonderful years)!

 New flooring, paint job. We're in the market for good sticky things to hang his artwork. Don't recommend command strips because I'm here to tell you they don't work all that well.

 We really need new lighting. I'm thinking something a little less...Americana. Recessed light's would be wonderous!

 Josh and his dart board. He's always down there playing with that thing.

Our current stock in the fridge. Left over soda and water from the party. Really gross iced tea that I will dump out when I'm done blogging. Beer and Seagram's 7 baby!

Obviously I need to stock up on wine. I am planning a trip to the Fingerlakes May 12-13th with my girl friends. God - you know you're old when you start calling your lady friends your girl friends. It's my graduation dates but hey, send that diploma in the mail, I've got better things to do! I'll go to my graduation when I finish Grad school. Don't worry.


I did a little more to the mudroom that will never be finished. Don't mind my laundry back there!

There's that ugly golden wood again. I smell paint and umm something other than that sissy push tin front.

Josh painted the entire basement too. And you thought party prepping was all about hanging decorations? It all used to be chipped green:

 I contributed by fixing the mess on the stairs to the second floor:

I had to scrape all that old dried glue off, fill a ton of staple holes, paint, and viola! We really need to get a stair rail there don't we?

The only other thing we did was add some art work in the LR. It's from Turddemon on ebay. We love it:

Here's our "I hope to get this done over summer if all goes well" list:
-Landscape the crap out of our yard
-Paint upstairs and get it cleaned up
-Put up stair rail to 2nd floor
-Stain old desk for the Bean's room
-Finish rec. room
-Wash my car - no seriously it's going on 2 years!
-Fix front concrete steps
-Build shed


Until then...

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!

Last year today at 5:07 am my beautiful daughter made her way into this world. The best moment of my life was when they put my little girl into my arms. Happy Birthday, little bean who is now a big ham! I LOVE you!

Her 1st Birthday party- it was on Sunday. It was a success and I'm kind of glad it's over. This weekend we are taking her somewhere fun. We just don't know where yet. 

Making it work

I've been working on a few projects to get the house looking pretty for the baby's B-day party. The first order of business was to finish painting the front door. Shut the front door! I painted it awhile ago and then it got really cold or else I just didn't have the time with the baby. I finally made some time on Wednesday (while waiting for Roto Rooter man to come fix a clog that was leaking into our basement utility sink. Stinky). Here it is done-enough. Meaning if I get more time I'm going to paint the yellowing window parts white. This is it from a few months back:

This is it done (valspar exterior paint in Jazz club):

I Can't show you it from the outside yet because it's not ready out there.

I made art work for the baby's room. I took my inspiration from a print I saw on etsy but I put my own twist on it. Here is the inspiration pic:

Pastel Forest Only $17 if you want to purchase one! Love it!

Here's what I did for the Beans room:

I just used silver wrapping paper for the back ground and light pink scrapbook paper for the trees that I just free handed. It turned out pretty ok. The pics aren't the greatest. Still learning how to use a fancy Pentax camera. We also hung her mirror and other goodies:

I'm going to be adding an old family desk in front of the mirror some day. I have to get it hauled here from my mom's house and then refinish it. I'm also on the hunt for a long dresser.

Today I made a rug for out front porch. It was inspired from something I saw on Pinterest.  I bought a 9'x12' canvas drop cloth at Harbor Freight for $15 (I'm going to be making curtains for the mud room too so I needed the extra). Here are the tools I used:

Simple! Yard stick, tape measure, red marking pencil, scissors, painters tape and the drop cloth. First I cut my rug to size (6'x4'). Next I laid it out on my hardwood floors and started taping off the stripes. I used my yard stick and the floor boards to help me get an accurate measurement. See here:

See how the tape lines up with the floor boards. It's not totally perfect but I'm surprised at how good it actually came out! The little pieces of blue tape are for me to know which stripes I'm going to be painting blue. Derr.

 

Here it is all taped up:

Then I took it outside and used the exterior paint that I used on the front door (Since it's going to be at the front door):

Don't mind the pole shadow

 

And here she is after she's all dried up and tape is removed:

It took awhile to do with all the measuring, taping and painting but I love how it came out. I almost looks screen printed. It's perfectly imperfect and way cheaper than buying one!

Next on my list is to make drop cloth curtains inspired by Roeshel @ Diyshowoff:

Diyshowoff

 Her sense of design is amazing and she is such a sweetheart. Please check out her blog. It is inspirational.

I also want to paint a flower planter urn that we have lying around somewhere. I would love to make it bright yellow but the husband wasn't too keen on that so we shall see what else I come up with.

What's up?

Wow this took way too long to post. Sorry. We have been working on a few projects here and there. I feel like there is so much we want to get done before the Birthday party (Sadie's 1st in case you forgot) and not enough hours in our day. I'm waiting for my camera to upload the pics I took for this blog but it seems to be reimporting EVERYTHING on the camera. Like stuff I've already imported is importing again. I hate this computer tech stuff. Waiting... Waiting... Waiting... 769 imports later...

I love this. I'm thinking about tackling it at some point.

I re-arranged the playroom so it went from this (when we came to look at the house for the first time):

To this (all fixed and set up):

To it's new re arranging (we still need the tv stand or even a new wall mounted tv):

I started to get the art/craft room set up. The walls still need to be painted. The ugly mint green is from the previous owners. There are drips of that ugly paint all over the trim too. I'll deal with that when I get there.
Before:

God I can't wait to paint that!
In the process:

I know, it looks like shit right now. Don't worry it will be kind of fabulous when I can get to it!  

The family room before (as stated in the past the 2008 stamp on the pictures is incorrect. It was in 2011/2012):

 Josh getting ready for the floors:

And here it is as of today:

 The great outdoors. Don't judge. This is what we got when we bought it (remember it was a foreclosure). We have a lovely "pond" or "hole" in our back yard from where an above ground pool once stood. My step dad brought fill today so that hole is going to be all filled in. Just have to wait for the grass to grow. Waiting... The ugly shed is going to be demolished and scrapped for cash. Josh plans on building a new one, a nice one, a sturdy one! There are some pics of our deck and porch too:     

That's all the updating for now. I've been trying to make a "to do" list for things that need to get done before the party. Maybe I'll just jot it down here. Let's go room by room. No, let's start outside:
-Put final coat of paint on front door
-Hang house numbers
-Spray paint outdoor fixtures (if they look bad we'll just buy new ones)
-Do as much landscaping as possible (We can't plant anything yet but we can hack down old dead bushes)
-Fill in "hole" (almost there)
-Clean off deck furniture
-Paint deck
-Chop down brush behind and on side of fence

Now on to the indoors:
-Scrape and repaint stairs
-Stick up stair railings
-Clean/organize 2nd floor (this includes art room/guest room and storage area)
-Get TV stand for playroom (or just get the poor kid a new wall mounted TV)
-Paint closet door in main bath
-Touch up all paint including but not limited to trim
-Hang Sadie's mirror above dresser
-Finish and hang all artwork in BRs    
-Hang door on mudroom and paint     
 I'm not even sure if that's everything but it's a good start. We have exactly  21 days. Who wants to baby sit? Write art history papers? Draft detail drawings? Work for Josh? Help us with our list? Anybody? Somebody? Please...