You've come a long way, baby.

We (ok, I) just celebrated being in our new house for 4 months.  I love it as much today as I did the moment I saw it!

Here it is from a google street view photo. I don't know when this was taken. 

Here it is when they first listed it, it was listed it on the market for quite a while before we bought it. Ironically enough these were taken by a friend of mine!  

 

 And here it is today!  We had the trees trimmed, pulled out the huge, ugly hedges beside the door.  We also changed the light fixtures beside the door, painted the door and changed the hardware and knocker. Also, check out the downstairs windows!  Donovan has been working hard to get them all to open, they were painted shut!

My $1.50 project

Pinterest for the win!  I'm so excited about this project!  It was cheap and adds some much needed color to my psych ward white kitchen! 

Here is the setup we had, honestly the previous owners left it and I've been using it out of pure laziness! 

$1 each from the $.99 only store!

I hot glued the crap out of it.

Voila!!!

Leaf us alone

I'm 99% sure our leaves had never been raked before we moved in. 

Here is before I started raking.  They are literally a foot deep. 

Here is the old paint color.  lazy

Exposing the amazing roots of this old tree.

One of my favorite parts about this house.

We bribed the kids.  

And Ruby supervised.

Bedroom remodel

We moved 4 months and 3 days ago and poor Isabella has been stuck in her boring beige room that whole time.  Today was the day she has been waiting for!  She originally wanted teal.  Teal teal teal.  But I talked her i

nto this light purple color.  I think it's adorable!  Here are a few before pics:

The color under the beige is literally Exorcist puke green.  

Can you believe that is the best we could do with the blinds??  The one on the right is completely broken, the middle goes up sideways.  Lovely!

She actually helped us the entire time!  

Puke green before pic:

Our visit to Donkeyland

Donkeyland is a local donkey rescue where Noah, our sponsored donkey lives.  We visit him as often as we can and I swear he and his sister remember my kids!! 

Please check out www.donkeyland.org for more information! 

Here are some of the highlights:

I love to love ya baby

I love Valentines day!  I've been wanting to decorate for valentines day for about a month now. But I held back and I was going to wait to 30 days before Valentine's Day. But when I got my decorations out today, I just couldn't do it! I had to put it all up, so here it is.   I hope you LOVE it all as much as I do! 

My printing skills

...are lacking!  

I found this adorable chalkboard at Hobby Lobby but my printing skills are embarrassing!  

Me again!

I'm thinking I'll give this blog thing another go, I felt before like I had nothing to talk about but now there are lots of things to talk about!  

So stick around for the madness!  

do you even LOOK at me??

I often will get home after being out with Donovan and find some odd thing on my face or in my hair.  More times than I can count I will get home and find food in my teeth. 

So while cleaning my makeup brushes tonight I decided to do an experiment.  I drew a big mole on my face and waited to see how long it would take Donovan to notice.   I planned on increasing the size every 30 minutes or so and see how long it took for him to notice.  I was going to take a picture each time I increased the size. 

This is the only picture I got to take!  

As soon as I walked into the room Isabella says "eeeeew, you have a huge zit!" and I tried to hush her but then Zach chimed in "I want to see the zit!  Where's the zit?  Can I see your zit?" and by then Donovan heard about it.

So I guess I need to rely on Isabella to tell me about random things on my face from now on. 

Hell

After visiting Disneyland I now know what hell is like. 

Everyone stands too close to me.
Everyone has bad breath.
Everyone stops in the middle of WALKways.

That's what I feel a small part of hell is like.

mincing words

Do you mince your words?

I do.  ALLLLL the time. 

Today's was good, and it was only in my head.  "hmmm, if it's cold enough today I can use the seated heats."  Yep, that's how my brain works.  BACKWARDS!

My never ending wish list

Do you have a HUGE to do list?    I do!

I would like to:
replace all of the baseboards
remodel master bath
remodel the kids bathroom
replace downstairs bath tile
finish the back yard
paint living room walls, we are normally DIYers but the cathedral ceilings scare me to pieces!
paint all of the interior doors
concrete on the front porch
tile front porch
remove planter in front yard
put in mow curb in front yard
remove dead tree in front yard

We are hopefully going to get some concrete soon, so I can check one thing off my list.  Sigh...so much more to do. 

Well hello there!

It's been a long time.  As my friend Nicole loves to tell me!  We had a great weekend, yesterday we went to IKEA.  I love that place!  The only bummer was that Isabella is too tall for the kids play area.  : ( 

We have been doing homework at the kitchen table since Isabella started kindergarten and with all the papers they are given our kitchen table was often a complete mess!  So we decided to take a small area in the playroom and make it into a homework area.  

 Here is the area before.  I left it open because the kids used to sit in front of the bins and play.  Don't look at my messy closet.  That's in the schedule for this week!

 Here is my hardworking hubs putting things together.  He HATES this part!

 Hutch is helping.

 Almost done!  Putting together the bar stools.

 That bin has been sitting on my kitchen counter for 4 years.  I am so excited to have my kitchen counter back!  Now I just have to clean it out.  uggg

The kids are so happy!  They are playing school, they have played games and put together a puzzle. 

Easter love

This Easter was one of the best Easter's ever!  We had a great time as a family, and had a blast with my extended family.  My cousins and I talked make-up and nails, we looked at old pictures and best of all I beat my brother in ping pong.  Awesome.

My favorite part of the day was the church service, it was like a Broadway play.  I was truly amazed.  I also loved that my mom got my kids bibles and they loved them!  Both took them to bed with them! 

Of course I have to talk about something funny that one of the kids said.  Zach was sitting at the kids table and my mom says "Zach, will you come over here so we can say grace?" and Zach replies "I'm gonna stay here but can you bring me some grapes?"  he thought she wanted to give him some grapes!  I love this kid!

pfft

Is what I said last night during dinner.

I ate my dinner and had some left on my plate so I set it on the ground and let the dogs finish it for me. Donovan and the kids and I are chatting and Isabella and Zach can't finish their food so I took a little big off each of their plates to make it easier for them to finish. I put it on my plate. About 5 minutes later I got bored and had a bite off my plate. Than another bite. And lastly, a third. Then I remember that the dogs licked off this plate.

pfft
pfft
pfft
(how I think I sound when I spit)

do you have...

a closet or drawer where you just throw things when you get a phone call where someone says those 3 dreaded words "I'm coming over"?

As of 8:00 this morning I did. Now, at 11:45 I don't! I took everything out and put it in little piles for similar items. I threw a lot away and donated a TON!


I can't believe I am showing this:

This is the living room where I had my piles:

Here is the donate pile:

All done! I finally have a spot for the vacuum and suitcase, they both were hanging out in the hallway before.

In the back is stuff I need but I don't really access, the 2 bins are crafting boxes and our beach towels/sunscreen in the blue bin and my Hello Kitty swim bag.

On the left are little bins that are organized and labeled. Magnets, glitter, ribbon, tools, glues etc. The big bin on the bottom is gift bags that we have gotten at birthday parties that I re-use, all my wrapping paper and the tall bin is birthday ribbons and smaller gift bags. The green box is greeting cards and there is ribbon hanging on the wall with a pair of scissors all ready to go!

Now all I have to do is figure out where all the stuff I took out is going to go and keep it looking just like this!