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12.23.2016

Merry Christmas

Cora is loving all of the Christmas decorations everywhere, so we made sure we unpacked our Christmas boxes as soon as possible.  We've had our tree up for a couple weeks and we're loving the little bit of decoration in a house that still kind of feels like someone else's.  We'll be celebrating the holiday by enjoying our family's marathon of events followed by a week off of work.  I can't wait for all of the family time, baby cuddles, food, relaxation, and probably a couple of projects.




Merry Christmas friends!!!

12.22.2016

Cora's Room : Progress

I mentioned earlier I'd share some pictures when we finished up Cora's room, but I think it may be a little while before I get to the projects I have in mind.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share the progress.  Here is the before picture:
I originally wanted to do a mint wall, but we quickly realized we needed to paint the trim. We bounced a couple fun color combinations like yellow and turquoise before I remembered Elsie's sunroom.  I sent Ben a picture of the white walls with the light blue trim and told him to pick something similar to that and included some other color swatches that I like... and he knocked it out of the park.  I'm kind of a control freak so letting him pick the color was scary, but it was the perfect color and exactly what I was imagining.  Ben also painted almost the entire room (I helped with some trim on one of the doors) and he did an awesome job.

We moved the gradient dresser upstairs and added another coat of white paint on the dresser with some help from Cora. We also painted her toy box over Thanksgiving weekend. She told me "I love it when I'm painting!"



I came home from work one day and found Ben painting this shelf to match her trim.  I never would have thought to use that shelf in there (it was left by the old owner), but it's the perfect fit.  We added in the bookcase underneath and hung up the castle painting Jazz made for Cora.  Cora picked the other painted canvas out of our stash and decided next to the bookshelf at her eye level was the perfect spot for it.
We also hung up the poms from Cora's baby shower and some paintings that Cora and I worked on together.

Cora was out of the house for most of Friday and Saturday one weekend, so I did a bunch of the unpacking and set up all her books and toys.  When she got home, she was so excited to see all of her stuff.  She called it beautiful and loves going into her room to hang out and play.  There is still a lot of stuff that we'd like to add, but it's nice to have a room that we can hang out in that feels semi-finished.



12.14.2016

Toy Box Makeover


We've been working on a lot of stuff since we moved into our new house, so I have lots to share in the coming weeks.  On Thanksgiving, I wanted a small project that I could work on with Cora, so I figured we would do something for her room. Before she woke up I grabbed her toy box from the garage (where we stored all our stuff while we slowly unpack) and sanded it down.  She 'helped' me prime then we took some inspiration from our cardboard house and got to painting. 

We started with some of our darker colors (blacks, gray, dark blue) and we each took a side to put a layer all over the whole thing.  Ben even got in on the action.  When we finished with this layer we just thought "what have we done?!" because it looks like a complete mess.  There is always that point in the project where I completely hate what we've done... and this was that point.  We stepped away to enjoy the rest of our Thanksgiving and have an amazing family dinner.


The following morning, I snuck upstairs with Ida while Cora was sleeping.  I put a layer or two of some whites and blues all over the box to even it out.  It's hard to get a good picture because of the coloring, but it really turned out pretty cute and a fun/funky piece.



Cora loved the surprise of waking up and seeing it all finished and we both love the reminder of a piece we worked on together.  We moved it around her room and found the perfect spot at the end of her bed so it's near her other toys and she can use it to climb in her bed.  Since we incorporated the same blue we used on her trim, it coordinates well with her room without being matchy-matchy.

I joined Thrift Diving's 30 day room makeover challenge with Cora's room.  You can see Cora's room pictures and the other makeovers here.  I'm still working on a couple other projects for her room for it to really be finished (as finished as a room can be), but I'll share those as I work on them and get pictures.

12.12.2016

Ten on Ten



 1 sunrise viewing / morning sisters cuddling / 3 Santa high fiving






























4
bouncy house partying / 5 balance beaming / 6 sicky baby napping




7 baby gazing / 8 piggy back riding / 9 toy playing / 10 sister snoozing

11.23.2016

Cucumber Bacon Bites

+ cucumbers (I use 2 english cucumbers for a get together)
+ a pack of bacon
+ 8 oz of cream cheese (one brick)
+ 8 oz of sour cream
+ 1/2 Tablespoon of celery salt
+ 1/2 Tablespoon of minced onions
+ 1/2 Tablespoon of dillweed
+ plastic bag
1. Mix cream cheese, sour cream, celery salt, minced onions, and dillweed and let sit in fridge
2. Cook bacon and let cool
3. Cut cucumbers in 1/2 inch slices
3. Using a spoon, scoop a little bit of the cucumber out for the 'dip' to sit in
4. Put the dip mixture in a plastic bag to pipe into mini cucumber bowls
5. Break up bacon slices and place on the cucumber bites
6. Enjoy!
These are pretty much my go-to appetizer, so easy and delicious! I've also made this with grape tomatoes and that was a huge hit.  Let me know if you make these and what you think.

11.09.2016

New Home : Before

Soooo... WE MOVED! After four years of being in our one bedroom, we're finally making the plunge into homeownership.  We've been toying with the idea for quite a while, but once we found out about Baby #2 we knew we had to do something about getting more living space.  I haven't had a chance to take many pictures of our own (you know, having a newborn and moving keeps you kind of busy) and I'll eventually share some more plans and maybe mood boards, but here are some pictures from the listing and quick blurbs about the space and some changes we want to make:




Doesn't need a ton of immediate attention, but there are a couple immediate concerns and some quick projects that will bring up the overall enjoyment.  We need to put screens on the front porch and fix a couple rotting areas on the garage.  We're also hoping to get the awnings off pretty quick because neither one of us really likes them.  One of those funny things where we were afraid to say that we didn't like them in case the other one did, but once it was voiced we both were in complete agreement.  Also, just a quick note, the backyard is not that large. It's next to a lot that is owned by the high school and has a driveway on it, so it will basically never be developed and we get the added bonus of a little extra yard to run around in.  Moving on... When you enter you have the dining room to your left and your living room straight ahead.

Probably the only things we'll really do with this is paint and replace lighting.  With the kitchen we'll probably do a little bit of painting (cabinets, maybe the tile), but hold off on really putting a lot of work into it until we can afford to rework it.


The living room and main floor bathroom are pretty basic... so we'll have to inject that with some personality, but overall nothing that needs to be done immediately.


Upstairs you enter the 'master' bedroom/bath to your right.  We were going to put off painting this room, but after an additional walk through we realized the previous paint job wasn't that great so we'll have to redo it.


This 'walk in closet' is connected to both the rooms upstairs.  We're still trying to decide how to configure all of this.  Do we want to make this a walk-in closet/nursery?  Playroom/room for Cora? walk-in closet/office?  We'll just have to wait and see how we use some of our other spaces.
You can enter this room from the stairs or the 'walk in closet'.  It's much larger in person (which is the case for most of these rooms).  Eventually this will be the the girls shared room, but we're not 100% sure how we're going to use it until then.  Cora will have her own room, but we're still undecided about whether it should be the blue room or the 'closet'.  She likes to stay pretty close to us and we want to do whatever we can to make this the easiest transition for her (especially since we just added a baby to the family), but overall she seems excited to have her own place for her toys where she can invite people over and entertain.
So that's it!  We have sooo much that we want to do with this house and it has been really fun staying up late going through our secret Pinterest board of ideas (you can see my public Pinterest Home board here where a lot of the pins are the same as our private one).  It's interesting how similar some of our ideas are and how completely opposite other ideas are.  Basically we're on the same page for a lot of our ideas for our exterior and the overall use of the house, but then there are some ideas that one of us loves and the other hates and vice versa.  Sometimes I think it'd be easier to share a home with someone that didn't have an opinion about it all, but I think it will be really fun to work on all of these projects together and making this a place of our own.  

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