Happy Baby, Cars, Going Stir-Crazy

I had to give up chocolate for this sweet baby...but it was SO worth it.

(Okay, in reality, I just can't completely give it up. Occasionally, I'll sneak in a bite or two of a cookie with chocolate chips or sip a little hot chocolate, but I've significantly cut down on it.) Anyway, Annelyse has turned into quite the smiley little thing. I love it!

Of course the camera doesn't do her smile justice. I have yet to capture her biggest smiles, but here's a little glimpse.

Spencer loves Ally to pieces. I always find him talking to her in this cute little high pitched baby voice, or showing her his cars, or pushing her "gently" in her swing, or shoving a binkie in her mouth when she starts to cry which makes her gag. (His intentions are good.) =) I love that he's such a great big brother.

Have I ever mentioned that Spencer loves cars and trucks and trains...or anything that has wheels on it?!?! Ha ha! He's still majorly into them...can you tell? This is what my living room looks like during the day...almost every day.
We're slowly starting to figure our little chunky monkey out...and boy, is she particular! At first we just thought she hated sleeping in her pack 'n play. But then we realized she likes to sleep like this...

...on her side, holding a blanket, with a binkie and snuggled with a rolled up blanket.

With all the yucky flus, viruses, and other illnesses going around, our doctor (AKA: my uncle) has advised us to avoid taking Ally out too much. So we are home a LOT. Which means I keep seeing all the things around my house that need to be done. I've been feeling pretty good lately (despite my lack of sleep), and decided it was time to get started on a few things.

We received this mirror over 6 months ago from my great-grandmother when she died. It has just been sitting in our garage waiting and waiting to be hung. Finally we bought the hardware to hang it over the weekend and it got hung tonight. It looks SO good!


Last week I was walking past the kids' hallway and realized the flat paint was disgustingly turning gray from grubby little fingers always touching it, especially by the bathroom. So on Monday Spencer, Ally and I booked it to Home Depot, bought a gallon of white paint and painted the hallway. I even let Spencer help. I handed him a little roller and told him to have at it! He loved it...totally worth the two little drips of paint on the carpet. :) And I loved whitewashing every single one of those little fingerprints!

One LONG Project

Once upon a time our playroom/office had a regular ol' run of the mill bedroom closet. Shortly after moving into our house 4 years ago Kyle and I briefly discussed knocking the closet out to make the room bigger and putting a desk in. Having just moved into the house, I thought this project was well into the future. Kyle, on the other hand, decided one Sunday to immediately get started on the project and take his frustrations out on the inner walls of the closet. I heard the banging that fateful afternoon, came running in to see what was going on, and found huge hammered holes in the closet of our brand new house. A wave of emotions washed over me. I was 1/3 angry, 1/3 annoyed, and 1/3 amused. Thus began the years of labor on that darn closet. (Sorry no pictures of the before...I think I was trying to block it from my memory.)

Fast forward about a year and a half. The closet is still sitting half knocked out.

I'd had it with the mess.

Fortunately I lucked out and have the most amazing in-laws ever who were willing to come all the way from Utah and help us out one weekend. My father-in-law and Kyle finished knocking the closet out, rebuilt the ceiling and side walls, then textured the patched parts, and built a smaller closet we'd bought from IKEA. There is NO way we would have made it that far without them. (I know I have pictures of this weekend, but I can't find them anywhere.)

Life in that room was much happier after that weekend. We stuck a small temporary desk in to hold our computer and we finally had working storage again in the IKEA closet.

Fast forward again to March of this year (when we got our tax rebate). Again it was time to put a little more work into the on-going PROJECT Closet. My handyman of a husband built a desk from scratch...

...then we sanded, caulked, and painted it.

Just a few days ago we put up a little shelf over the desk.
It's all FINALLY starting to come together. After a very long FOUR YEARS.Doesn't it look nice?

I can't decide if I want two shelves or to just leave the one. What do you think?

We still have to replace the carpet and fix the baseboards because the knocked out closet left huge patches of exposed foundation (a project for next year's tax-rebate). But once that's done this room will be FINISHED! I can already hear the angels singing. Hooray!

This is the way we...

Clean the Garage.

And this is the way we reorganize the laundry room. After reading that freezers in garages are major energy suckers especially during the summer, we decided to move it to our laundry room. That meant stacking our washer and dryer...one very heavy job! Of course all that work translated to even more work once we realized it was time to just deep clean that room. It was a major job, but Kyle pulled it off. Now...let's see if we'll actually save some money on our electricity bill this summer.

Two major jobs done! Only a million more to go!

The Truth Hurts

Don't come over to my house today, or I just might recruit you for cleaning duty!

Here it is, the messes I get to clean up today:
Laundry Room
Play Room
Living Room (including folding clothes)
Janelle's Room (although she gets to clean this one up, I just have to supervise.)

What an exciting agenda for my morning off while Janelle's at preschool and Spencer's taking a nap. Wish me luck I can get it all done before he wakes up!

How many pillows are on YOUR bed?

Every time I make our bed, I wonder this about people. It's weird, I know, but my mind always wanders to weird things when I'm cleaning.

We have 8 pillows on our bed. I sleep with a body pillow (something I grew attached to since I was pregnant with Janelle) and one regular pillow. Kyle bought me a new body pillow when I was pregnant with Spencer because my other one was getting a little flat. So he took over the old body pillow and also sleeps with two regular-sized pillows. Since we can't have an odd number of pillows on our bed, I just stick an extra one on my side. Plus there are the decorative pillows that match our bedspread for a whopping total of 8.

D*** BIRD

Dear Mr. Dove-

PLEASE fly elsewhere to find a girlfriend. You've been sitting on top of my roof for almost 2 months now cooing straight into my chimney 14 of 24 hours day after day after day after day. At first I didn't mind your echoing love song, I even thought you were an owl with your misleading "Whoo, whooo," but you're just an ordinary dove looking for love on top of my chimney. Though a very tolerant and non-violent person, my sanity is beginning to be challenged. I recently told my husband out of frustration that if you didn't leave I might come home one day with a fatal weapon. Being the bird lover he is he talked me into a less violent solution. So if you don't want to be scared out of your silly mind by a fake Home Depot owl, you might want to consider taking your love interests elsewhere. I know you appreciate our quaint little neighborhood, but the neighbors are starting to complain. A park, VERY FAR AWAY from my chimney would be a lovely home for you. Clearly there aren't any available female doves in this part of the neighborhood or you would have found her by now. Goodbye Mr. Dove, please, PLEASE, fly AWAY!!!

Sincerely,
Your Frustrated Out-of-Her-Mind Neighbor down the Chimney

Here are some pictures from our trip to our roof to find that, ahem, darn bird:

Picture 1: A view from atop of our neighborhood
Picture 2: Me...in a skirt...on top of the roof (not a good idea).
Picture 3: Our lovely skylight my extremely talented father-in-law installed, I'd never seen it this close before!

P.S. Weeknight Favorite Recipes are now posted at E's Recipe Corner

The Art of Vacuuming
(Yes, I am one of those people who artistically vacuums so the lines show up nice and pretty. It's one of my favorite chores.)

Those, my friend, are the lines of some very clean carpet! Crumb, spit-up, slobber, spill, dirt, and grime-free! I think steam vacuums are one of the best things that ever happened in the cleaning industry. It took me 2 long days to clean the carpet in all our rooms, but it was SO worth it! I love spring cleaning!

...I just have to say it better stay clean for at least a week!

Garage Sale Madness!!!!

On Saturday we participated in our HOA's community garage sale. Basically our HOA took care of getting permits for everyone who wanted to have a garage sale and they put up signs at the entrances of our neighborhood. Despite the freezing cold, we had a great turnout! We had quite a few larger items to get rid of but hardly any smaller things, so my sister volunteered to clean out her stuff and brought us over boxes and boxes of clothes and little knick knacks. Even with the freezing wind, we had a great turnout! We pretty much got cleaned out and only had to take 1/3 full truck (mostly with clothes and a few toys) over to Goodwill. Things were CRAZY right at 8:00am when we opened - I have never seen such garage sale madness. We sold our stereo right off the bat and then quickly sold an old laptop and old tv.

I thought this picture of Spencer was adorable - he really enjoyed hanging out in the garage and watching all the people stopping by. Spencer was a big hit, he could get anyone to smile! We strategically placed his pack n' play by the baby clothes - and we pretty much got rid of almost all of them! This was the first garage sale we'd ever done, but here are some things I learned:

1. Overprice the good stuff, because no matter how fair of a price it is, people are going to try and bargain with you.

2. Carry the money you make with you instead of keeping it in a box. That way you can walk around and mingle or answer people's questions without worrying about money getting stolen. Also, don't accept checks - it's just too risky.

3. Have everything set up 1/2 an hour before the garage sale starts, because that's when people start coming, and that first hour is a MADHOUSE!

4. Have someone to help you watch your kids, or they are going to have to watch the Disney Channel for 4 hours straight. (Thanks Erin and Emily for coming to the rescue!!!!)

5. Take old books to Half Price Books (or another kind of book resale shop), you get LOTS more money for them than at a garage sale.

6. If you sale a large item such as furniture and the person has to come back to pick it up, tell them they have to pick it up by a certain hour - otherwise you could be waiting around all day (we learned this from personal experience).

Maybe in 5 more years when we've collected as much junk as we had in our first 5 years of marriage we'll do it again!

Washing Machine Story (Unabridged)

About 8 days ago I found this little rubber piece underneath our couch while I was vacuuming. I couldn't figure out what in the world it went to until I saw my washing machine the next day (which is a front loader so the door is in the front instead of on top). So apparently Spencer had taken a bite right out of the seal sometime when I wasn't looking and the washing machine door was open. To this day I can't figure out when that was because it's never open unless I'm putting clothes in it. Plus this was before I even knew his top teeth were coming in - which still haven't broken through his gums yet. But I guess he had a good enough bite to actually bite through the rubber. (Never underestimate the sharpness of baby teeth!) I actually did a few loads of clothes before I realized the washer was actually leaking because of that little bite. So we called a repairman who told us the part was easily replaced because people often leave pens in their pant pockets that end up in the wash damaging the rubber seal. However he said he'd never seen a bite taken out of one! Anyway, we are STILL waiting for the part to come in after being told they were out of them and had to order one. My mom has graciously let me do a few loads of clothes at her house, however the laundry continues to slowly pile up. Ugh.

Playroom Mania

So I finally gave in and converted our office into a playroom. As sad as I was to see the more adult friendly room go, I have to say, the playroom has been a much better use of space. Janelle plays in it ALL the time. The toys usually stay in the playroom and her room is not a constant wreck all the time. We kept our old computer in there as the "kid" computer. Janelle has really been into playing her "Dora" and "My Little Pony" computer games that she got for Christmas. The computer also has a DVD player so on some days she watches a movie in there for quiet time.
Amazingly our playroom has stayed fairly clean and organized! Janelle and I had a big talk about keeping it nice in there so that she would want to play in it. It definitely helps that all toys have their own places whereas in Janelle's room we would just stuff them all in her closet. I still have to put up some curtains and kid pictures, but here's a few pictures.

For those of you who did not believe me about the gi-nourmity of Janelle's pony castle...here it is closed....










...and here it is opened!!! Fortunately there's plenty of room for Pony's, Barbies, AND princesses. One size fits all!

New Kitchen Walls

Before...
(I know this picture is black and white, but you kind of get the idea of our white kitchen. I forgot to take a before picture before we started painting, and I had this one from a few months ago). Before we painted it was that nasty flat paint that they use in every new house. After living here 2 years, it had little fingerprints all over it, so it was definately time for some new paint!

...After
Here it is - our new red kitchen, complete with a new light (which replaced the yucky gold one). I took the picture at night, so it looks kind of dark, but it's a MAJOR improvement! I still haven't finished the detailing up near the ceiling, but I'll get around to it. At least the big part is done...primer + 3 coats later!