Saturday, March 30, 2013

More pictures

Josh has been bugging me to take some pictures of his new bedroom so I finally went in there and got them done. It's really hard to get decent pictures in there. The lighting is tricky and I don't have a lens that zooms out far enough. I did what I could.


Here is the before:



And the after:


Before (pardon the paint samples on the wall!): 



After:






Here is his awards wall. It was my first DIY project I did when we moved here! When we redecorated it was the one thing he insisted had to stay!



And here are a couple of other photos of the changes. This is the new coffee table and this is a good photo of what the new carpet looks like:



And a before and after of the dining room! 





Mission accomplished!

Ahhh...I can't even tell you how nice my house feels right now! After two weeks of taking apart furniture, moving it from room to room, painting, scrubbing walls, dusting every inch of everything, cleaning out closets, redecorating rooms, spending a day and a half in one corner of the house while they recarpeted, repairing and replacing broken items, throwing out junk, organizing what was left and putting all the rooms back together, I'm happy to report that we are exhausted and FINISHED! 

We have seriously worked our butts off these past two weeks. Once we started taking all the furniture out to recarpet we realized what a great opportunity it was to just revamp everything. There has been a huge list of things that we've been meaning to do around here for a while and being forced to basically move out and move back in was the push we needed to just get it all done. It was exhausting but now it feels awesome. I love it. Everything feels new and clean and fresh. Everything has been gone through, cleaned out, scrubbed down, washed and organized and now it feels so good to just relax and enjoy a peaceful home again. I love spring and I love the feeling of new beginnings. This time of year always makes me want to start fresh and our house definitely feels like it got a fresh start.

On Monday the kids go back to school and I'm looking forward to being back on a schedule and moving forward with all these projects behind us. This afternoon we had a family discussion about focusing on our book project again so we've all chosen a new book and we're back on track with that. I'm starting a new book this evening. I'm reading If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch. It sounds interesting but I've only read the first two pages of it, so we'll see. Josh is going to finish the Fablehaven series, which Matthew just finished, and Matthew is in book two of the Percy Jackson series. Shawn is still trying to choose a book but there are a stack of possibilities in this house so I'm sure he'll come up with something. 

So things are good. I'm happy and content and my house feels clean and peaceful. My next order of business is to get back on track with my running. I'm seriously off the wagon. But that's a post for another day! 

Friday, March 29, 2013

Look what I found!

I was going through some old photos I had saved in Photobucket and I came across this little gem!
Josh wrote this when he was five and it made me laugh so hard that I scanned it and saved it.


 photo joshtips.jpg



In case you can't read it, here's what it says (with spelling mistakes left as they were).

Tips By Josh White

1. If you're on a sidewalk don't run or you might trip and fall
2. If you have a wiggly tooth wiggle it
3. If you have a cat then be nice to it becuse it'll might scrach
4. If you're playing a game consitntrate
5. If you're on a bridge be carful or you'll might fall
6. Don't talk to strangers
7. don't be naughty
8. If you're reading have peace and quiet
9. Linus thought a pumpkin was real but don't beleve it
10. Don't bother people
11. Do what your parents say
12. Don't make a baseball break through a window
13. Don't be a bully
14. Don't be too silly

I can't believe that funny little boy is about to turn 13! He still makes me laugh every single day. I love that kid.

Friday

Well, it looks like we survived the week! And what a week it has been! I can't believe what a huge project this recarpeting project has turned into! It turned into a whole snowball thing where if you're going to carpet you should probably repaint and if you're going to repaint you need new curtains and if you get new curtains you need new wall decor and if you're going to buy it for one room you might as well buy it for another room and if you're going to do that.....and that's pretty much how our week has gone.

I'm LOVING the updates. We still don't have everything all back together but we've made a lot of great updates in the process and got a lot of projects off our list that have been in the back of our minds for a while.

Last nights project involved the cat. We have a cat named Max, who we love, but occasionally in the past Max would sharpen his claws on the carpet. I know that about Max and in the past we have made a half hearted effort to get him to stop it but that old carpet was just so trashed anyway there wasn't a whole lot he could do to it to make it any worse. But the new carpet has to be cat claw free. It just has to be. So last night we went to the pet store and bought assorted scratching posts and scratching mats and anything we could come up with in our desperate attempt to stop the scratching. Scratching posts are phase one. If that doesn't work we're going to have to attempt Soft Paw claw covers, which look super cute but are a pain and I don't want to go that route.

We tried a scratching post with our old cat many years ago and it was not successful. She never touched that thing once, so I was skeptical. The lady at the pet store said to put catnip on it and we have also tried catnip with our other cat (that cat died a few years ago) and she was never impressed with that either, but I was desperate enough last night to give it all a try with this cat.

We brought the scratching post and scratching pad home and I sat it down where our cat sometimes claws and I sprinkled catnip on it and waited. The cat came over to it, sniffed it for a minute...and then went NUTS! Apparently Max is a huge fan of catnip. He was rubbing all over that thing, he couldn't get enough of it. We finally got bored of watching him freak out over his new toy and left him to enjoy it on his own and much later I looked in that room and he was still sitting on it. He may never move from that spot again.

So I think the carpet scratching problem has been solved. I'm hoping that he spends a lot of time sharpening his claws to his hearts content on his scratching post and scratching mat and leaves the floor alone. We'll see.

We also went to Target last night to buy lamps. Josh's new room needed a new lamp and our bedroom needed a new lamp. Two more items of my list of things to update. Nice.

Shawn is home today and our goal is to have everyone sleeping in their own rooms tonight. Our room is completely done, Josh's room is mostly done but Matthew and Clarissa's room are still a pile of furniture parts. By tonight their rooms should hopefully be back in working order.

Tomorrow our plan is to put the den back together and clean the parts of the house that didn't get recarpeted but are a huge mess because we have focused on the carpet all week and by Sunday I hope to be relaxing in a sparkling clean house that is project free. That sounds awesome.

And on a different topic, there are only three days left to vote for Josh in the video contest! Please please pleeeease go vote for him! :)

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433



Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Exhausted

The next time we decided to recarpet I think we're just going to move. It feels like we moved anyway!

We're making some headway on the house projects but not as fast as I had hoped. I need Shawn's help to put the furniture back together and every night after work we keep ending up at Lowes for supplies, at the furniture store picking out end tables or Bed Bath and Beyond picking out curtains. We start on a room and then say "you know what we really ought to do..." and then we're off to the store.

Tonight it was curtains. We took two trips to Bed Bath and Beyond and ended up with really pretty curtains for the dining room. We also went to Lowes for touch up paint to touch up a few spots in the bedrooms before we put the furniture back.

This might be the biggest pain in the neck project ever, but I'm loving all the changes and updates and cleaning and touch ups we've been able to do. Having to move all the furniture out of all the rooms has inspired us to do all the little projects that we've been meaning to do now that the rooms are empty. So it's slow going but as we put stuff back everything feels clean and new. It's amazing what new paint and carpet and curtains can do for a room!

Shawn is off work on Friday so our plan is to finish getting everything put back together and get everyone's bedrooms back in order then. By Sunday I'm hoping that the house is all back to normal and we can enjoy Easter and not have to think about any more projects!! I'm all projected out.

Also, there is only a few days left to vote for Josh in the video competition! I know that everyone on my blog and on Facebook and on every message board I post on is sick and tired of hearing about voting. I know I'm a broken record! I swear after Sunday you'll never have to hear about it again, lol. This contest has been a pretty big deal to Josh. Being up against high school students he really didn't think he had a chance, so I've been working hard to help him out. Winning would be huge for him. So if you could mosey on over and vote for him, it would make him super happy!

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

So if you're super sick of blog posts about carpet and contest voting, good news! Both of those things will be over by Sunday and next week I'll come up with something new and exciting to talk about. Or maybe it will be something else boring. You'll have to stick around to see. :)

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Photos!

They came this morning and finished the master bedroom and now all the carpet is officially done. YAY! It has been a long couple of days! My house is still a complete disaster but we're putting it back together one room at a time. None of the bedrooms have been put back together, but the dining room and living room are looking pretty good.

So we have an old coffee table and end tables in the formal living room. We bought them when we built our first house. That makes them 12 years old. Twelve years ago they were really pretty. Now? Not so much. They have sunbleached really bad over the years so they're really not the same color they used to be. They don't match the living room furniture at all anymore and they look really terrible.

I have known that for a while and it's been on the back of my mind to replace them but it wasn't a huge priority and I've just never gotten around to it. But last night we put the living room furniture back in the room with the new carpet and now that the room looks nice and new the ugly coffee table is sticking out like a sore thumb. I seriously put it in there, took one look at it and we went to the furniture store and bought new tables, lol. We had to order them and they won't be here until tomorrow though. I wanted to take photos to show the new carpet but the old tables are still in there, so you're just going to have to ignore them and pretend that they're not ugly. I'll take new pictures when the new tables get here.

So here are some photos. I hate taking house photos because it's really tricky to get far enough back to get the whole room. I didn't do a great job. Just pretend. I'll probably take some better ones when everything is done. The dining room isn't decorated yet and I need to buy new curtains. Our master bedroom is also empty except for one sad chair, lol.

So again, just pretend. I tried. :)










Also, VOTE FOR JOSH!! http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

Monday, March 25, 2013

Day one complete!

The carpet looks great!! I worried so much about the color I chose and it was all worry for nothing. It looks really great and matches our house nicely. They got everything done except the master bedroom, so they're going to come back first thing in the morning and finish it. The new carpet feels so soft and nice. I just really didn't realize how bad that old carpet was. I had kind of gotten used to looking at it, I guess. But the new stuff feels great and looks nice and it feels like a brand new house!

Now we have the big job of moving everything back. We've been trying to clean and organize as we've gone along and a few of the rooms have been bigger projects than we thought they would be. There is some stuff, especially from the den, that still needs to be gone through because I don't want to move anything back in that doesn't need to be there. It's feeling good to purge some unwanted junk and deep clean everything.

Josh is really anxious to get his room back together because we're finally going to put the new bedding on and hang up all the decor we bought for his new teenage room. We're going to work on that tomorrow.

I wanted to take pictures this afternoon but at the moment my camera is in my bedroom behind a wall of furniture. I'll get it unburied tonight and take photos tomorrow. I can't wait to share all the changes!

(Don't forget to vote for Josh!!)

He's in second place!

Josh's film competition voting is halfway done and they posted a leaderboard today. He's in second place!! I'm super excited and I really think we can win this. Please please please keep voting! Pass it along to your friends!

Also, after a long and noisy morning at our house, the carpet is looking awesome! They still have a lot to do but it's coming along!

It's carpet day!!

The crew showed up at 8:30 to get to work. They think the can actually get the whole project done in one day except that all the furniture is piled in two of the rooms. So we might attempt to shift furniture from one room to another as they finish some of the rooms so that they can do it all today. It's not a big deal if we don't because they are scheduled to come back tomorrow but it might kind of be nice to have it all done today and Shawn is home today to help. We'll see how the day progresses.

I'll post pictures when I can!

Oh, and vote for Josh!

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Did you vote for Josh today?

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

That's really all I've got today. New carpet tomorrow! Yay! Photos to follow as soon as we get the furniture moved back.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Saturday

I don't really having anything interesting to post today, I mostly just wanted to remind you to vote for Josh!

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433


So since I don't have anything else to say today, it's secret confession time. This week on Glee the theme was guilty pleasure songs. Glee is my guilty pleasure show, so the theme was appropriate. I also have several cheesy guilty pleasure songs and they sang one of my very very favorite ones, so I'll share it here, because who doesn't love cheesy '80's power ballads? It's my deep dark secret that I kind of love them. :) You can't be in your late 30's and not love a good power ballad!

So, here you go, my guilty pleasure song, courtesy of Glee. Listen to it and then go vote for Josh. :)



Friday, March 22, 2013

Girls night!

First of all, vote for Josh! :)
http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

So last night I had a much needed night out with the girls. My house is in total chaos right now with the furniture moving and redecorating so when I got the opportunity to have a girls night at a friends house I was thrilled! I needed out of the chaos for a few hours!

We wore our pajamas and met for a movie after the kids were in bed. The best part was that it was a Korean movie and for the first time ever, I wasn't the one who chose it! When I first started getting into Korean movies and dramas I couldn't talk anyone into watching them with me. I don't know if people were intimidated by the subtitles or thought that foreign movies sounded boring or what, but it took me a while to convince anyone to sit down and watch one with me!

Then I finally got my friends to watch all 20 hours of Spring Waltz with me a few years ago (the best Korean drama EVER) and I got them hooked. This time it was one of them who suggested the Korean movie. Yay! It was one I hadn't heard of before, called Finding Mr. Destiny. It was basically about a girl who was searching for her first love and the guy who was helping her search. I love Korean movies and I have such a soft spot for movies and stories about fate and first loves and that pretty much describes most Korean movies. It was really sweet and cute and I love the ending. I needed a night out with friends and I needed a sweet and sappy Korean love story, so it was a good night.

But today I'm back to reality and we're continuing on with the house projects. I'm both really looking forward to next week and dreading it at the same time. I can't wait to get the carpet in and get this project done, but I'm dreading the mess and the chaos that goes with it. Having a house full of misplaced furniture, a crew of carpet guys going in and out of my house all day and all three of the kids home on spring break is going to be a bit of a chaotic scene. Let's all pray that I'm still sane when this whole thing is done, OK?

Oh, and P.S., Go vote for Josh! :)

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Chaos

This is what part of my bedroom looks like today. That's most of Josh and Matthew's rooms shoved into our bedroom. Their dressers are still in their rooms so that they can find clothes to wear. Clarissa's room hasn't been moved yet. Fortunately our master bedroom is huge and can accommodate multiple bedrooms worth of furniture being crammed in there because otherwise everything would have to go down the stairs and that would really suck. They're going carpet the kids bedrooms and part of the main floor on the first day and then we'll move everything back across the hall, including the master bedroom furniture, and then they'll come back and recarpet our bedroom and the rest of the main floor the second day. Now that the furniture has been moved out of the boys rooms we can wash walls, clean baseboards and clean out their closets so that everything is nice and neat and feels like new when the furniture goes back in. 

This better be the greatest carpet ever because I'm not recarpeting my house again for a looooong time.  



Also, vote for Josh! :) 
http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

New nail case!

First of all, did you vote for Josh today?! :)

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

Second, I know that some of you liked my nail posts so I thought I'd update you on something. Part of our whole remodeling project has been doing some reorganizing. When I originally started buying nail polish I bought a cute craft bag to put them in. That worked great for a while. It has pockets where I could store files and q-tips and all my little nail art supplies.

Then I started buying more nail polish and more nail polish and it no longer fit in the bag. It never failed that whatever color I needed was the bottom of the bag and I had to dump the whole thing out and sift through it to find what I was looking for. No bueno.

So as we've been cleaning and organizing in preparation for new carpet (I'm adamant than when we move everything out, nothing is going back in that doesn't need to be there!) I've been looking for a nail polish storage solution that wouldn't require me to dump bottles of nail polish on the floor on a regular basis.

So last night I was at Walmart looking at storage containers and I came across a perfect solution! Here it is:




They're stackable storage containers. They come in a set of two, so I bought two sets and have four containers, although only three are shown here. They all lock together with hooks on the side and they are exactly the height of a standard bottle of nail polish! I had a couple of weird bottles that were a tiny bit too tall, but only a couple. OPI and Essie and all the standard brands fit perfectly.

You can fit over 75 bottles in each case! I managed to get my whole stash into two containers. I put the reds and pinks in one and the blues and greens in the other and in the top case I put my nail art supplies, files, etc.

The whole thing locks together, doesn't take up much space and perfectly organizes everything without me ever having to dump it all out again! YAY!

I will say that the containers are not super heavy duty and durable. That much nail polish is heavy and I'm not sure if I would carry all three layers with that much weight around by the handle. I did carry it last night for a few seconds and it didn't come apart or anything but it made me slightly nervous that it would. I rarely need to carry it around though, as it never really goes very far, so that's not a big deal to me. I could always pick it up from the bottom if I needed to transport it. What's great is that if I do want to paint my nails in another room or something I can choose the color I want, put it in the top compartment with all my files and assorted supplies and then just unsnap and carry the top compartment to wherever I want to go. It's going to be so handy!!

So there you go! A perfect way to organize a gigantic stash of nail polish!

And now go vote for Josh. :)

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Update

First of all, did you vote for Josh today? :)

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

Thank you to all my wonderful readers who have voted! Just a reminder that you can vote once a day. Josh is super excited!

Second, my house is a MESS right now! Trying to get everything ready to get recarpeted is a pain. It feels like we're moving. They painted the dining room yesterday and it looks amazing but I'm going to wait to show photos until we get the furniture back in there. At the moment all the dining room furniture is in the living room and there are chandelier pieces all over the dining room floor. We're putting new lighting in the dining room and Shawn is finishing it up tonight. The light that is in there is brass and glass and very 90's. Bleh. The new light is like a brushed nickel and frosted glass and it's really pretty. We've never installed lighting before so pray that we don't burn the house down, which Shawn says is impossible but I'm sure is going to happen when we do the wiring wrong. :)

So everything is in a bit of an upheaval right now and it's only going to get worse before it gets better, but I'm really excited to get it all done. It might feel like we're moving out right now, which sucks, but it's going to feel awesome when we move everything back in next week and it feels like everything is new. I'm looking forward to that!

Monday, March 18, 2013

It's time to vote!!

The voting has started for Josh's video contest! It goes for the next two weeks and you can vote once a day. If you could pretty please vote for Josh's video it would make me super happy! :) This link should take you there but if it doesn't, it's the Financialize a Film contest through Zions Bank.s Facebook page and his is the video from Idaho called Saving for Spring Break.

The voting is done through Facebook and as far as I can tell you can't do it on a mobile device. When I try to bring it up on my laptop it redirects to something else. So if you can't get it to come up, switch to a regular computer. Here is the link.

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/310004/voteable_entries/65550433

Thank you!

(Also, the paint is done and it is AMAZING! Photos to follow later.)


The painters are here!

They showed up at 10am and got right to work. I thought it was going to be a lot harder to cover over that red but the green is covering it up nicely. I'm trying to stay out of their way but I keep peeking, lol. So far I love it!  It's going to feel totally different in there with that red gone. I'm super excited to see it all finished! I'll take photos when it's done!

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Phase one complete!

After a busy day Josh's room is all painted! I absolutely love the color. I LOVE it. We just keep going back in there and looking at it because we love it so much.

I hesitate to share photos because it's currently a MESS! Josh decided that he didn't want to hang things up and put the room back together yet. We're getting ready to move all the furniture out to recarpet so it seems silly to clean it all up, put everything together and then take it all apart again. He wants to wait until the carpet is in next week and then put everything back and decorate and enjoy it all complete. Also, I think he likes the idea of getting to sleep somewhere else for a week just for the novelty of it, lol. We'll see if that gets old in a couple of days.

So at the moment his furniture is in the middle of the room with a bunch of stuff piled on it. It looks terrible and I cringed even taking pictures of it. I promise, it's going to look awesome in a week!

So just look at the paint and ignore the mess. Everything is going to be a mess this week until the carpet is installed. I'll take more photos once the room is put back together. It will look much nicer then!







I just remembered that I hate painting.

Josh's room is almost done and it looks AWESOME! After all the agonizing we did over the color, it looks absolutely beautiful. It's not too light, not too dark, not too green, not too brown. It's perfect.

But it did quickly remind me how much I hate to paint! Shawn, Josh and I were all working on it but it quickly became hot and crowded in there and we got a little grumpy, lol. We're close to finishing though, I just took a little break and we just have some trim and touch ups left to do.

Part of me wants to hang everything up and put the furniture back and new bedding on this weekend and see it all complete but everything has to go back out again next week for the new carpet so we haven't decided yet if we will finish it up today or leave it torn up and find another place for him to sleep for a week until the new carpet is in and then put it all together.

I'll share pictures either way. I'm excited to share how it looks all complete!

Big news!

So you all know that Josh is into filmmaking, right? It's kind of his thing. A few weeks ago he and a  friend saw thing about a film making competition for Zions bank. They had to make a 60 second commercial basically about saving money. His friend was getting ready to go on vacation to Hawaii for spring break so they made a little video about saving money to take a vacation. Josh filmed it and his friend edited it (the end of it was even hastily edited in Hawaii by his friend on his vacation so that they could get it submitted in time) and today he found out that it has been selected as a finalist!

This is a huge deal to Josh. He's SO excited! Public voting starts Monday and normally I would not do this, but Monday I will be putting up a link to vote for him. I reserve the right to be a little obnoxious about it for two weeks while voting is going on and then I will shut up, I swear. :) He entered another video competition a few months ago that didn't make the finals and he was so disappointed, so seeing his excitement this morning when he found out he made the finals in this one was pretty awesome.

Ok, so with that said, now we're off to start the painting project. We've got a busy day ahead of us!

Friday, March 15, 2013

Update

The painters are coming Monday to paint the dining room Creekside Green and tomorrow we are painting Josh's room with Valspar Shitake. It's a nice green/brown. Not too dark, not too light. I'm happy now that the colors have been chosen and I can stop driving myself crazy about it.

Also, Josh came home from school today and said that he got a packet to apply for the Junior Honor Society. Not only did he get a packet to apply, he's ridiculously excited about applying! It's a pretty detailed application process that includes staying after school to write an essay but I think his chances of getting in are good. I'm so proud of him and I love how much he loves academics. If he gets accepted into the honor society, that will become his advisory (like homeroom) class next year, so he'd have that along with honors English and honors science. He likes being in classes with other kids who take school as seriously as he does, so that's kind of a big deal for him. The overachievers are his people, lol. I love that kid.

OK, so there is my update for today. Paint colors have been picked and the painting and furniture moving starts tomorrow. Wish me luck! :)

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Paint, paint and more paint

So now that I'm done obsessing over carpet (OK, I'm still obsessing a little bit) I decided it was time to move on to paint and make a final decision about the dining room and Josh's room. I decided that I kind of hate the original colors we were thinking about for Josh's room.

We had a pow wow in his room last night to discuss it and we decided that we needed to start over looking for paint colors.  We don't want anything too dark or muddy brown so that his room feels like a cave or so crazy green that the paint is all you see when you walk into his room. Crisp and clean would be a lot nicer. I'm trying really hard to let him choose because I want this to be his project and something that feels like him, but he is a 12 year old boy and he has never picked out paint before and even when you're a 37 year old mom picking out paint is HARD! So I'm trying to guide him a bit while still letting him make the final decision.

So we talked about lighter, softer colors and looked at more swatches and then I went to Lowes this morning and got little sample cans of five different green/khaki/browns. Then I came home and painted each color onto a piece of white cardboard and they are currently drying. When he comes home we're going to hold them up and move them around and see what jumps out at us. I really hope that one of those samples will work because this whole paint choosing thing is kind of driving me crazy.

Also, one of the samples I bought was the Creekside Green color that is in that sample dining room in my previous blog post. I think that color is beautiful. I painted it on cardboard and looked at it in my dining room and I think I love it. I think that is going to be my new dining room color!

We're planning on painting Josh's room ourselves this weekend but I'm trying to coordinate with a painter to get the dining room painted. Painting over that dark red is going to be a pain, half of that room is vaulted, which is also a pain, and I just want to make sure that it's done right. I can paint a wall just fine, but I want this one to look fantastic and I'll feel better leaving it to the professionals. We have a paint company that we have been using for years (B&K Painting if you're in Boise) and they're fantastic. They painted our entire house before we moved in and I've had them back several times for other projects. They're the ones that painted the dining room red in the first place, and while I'm super tired of the color, the paint job looks great!

So I called them yesterday and I'm waiting to hear back to see if they can come before the carpet is installed. I'm hoping not to have to move the furniture twice.

So that's where we're at. Hopefully by this afternoon we will have picked a paint color and I can cross that off my list. We're crazy busy around here this week but I'm excited to get all these projects done!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

It's official

The carpet sample came today (finally!) and the carpet has officially been ordered. I'm super nervous but I think I made a good choice. I hope! I'm mostly nervous because the new carpet is a lot darker then the old carpet. I want it darker because I think with kids it's more practical, I'm just super nervous because it's a big change and change is scary! Especially really expensive change that can't be reversed and I have to look at every day.

I need to stop second guessing myself and just go with it. Anything is better than the ratty old carpet that is currently in this house, right? It's time for a change, I'm excited to give the house a new look and it's too late to change my mind now, so I guess we're doing it! Eeek!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

green inspiration

I just found this picture when I was searching for green dining rooms. This is Benjamin Moore Creekside Green. Should it be my new dining room color? I kind of love it.




Photo overload!

Someone commented that I should post photos of the redecorating projects so I can get some feedback and I think that's a good idea so here you go!

First of all, here is a photo of what our formal living room currently looks like so that you can get a good look at the current carpet. This picture is actually a few years old. The furniture and decor look exactly the same. The carpet looks worse. But as you can see, it's just a very, boring, light greyish color. Nothing interesting, but not terrible. I think it's kind of boring and if you saw it today you would agree that it's definitely showing wear. It's getting ugly.





Before I start showing you photos of what I'm planning, let me just say that it's really hard to show accurate photos because the color might look different on your screen than it does on mine or in person. Things like carpet and paint color are really hard to gauge accurately on a computer screen. I'll do my best to show it anyway, but keep that in mind.

Ok, so here is the carpet board that I've been looking at obsessively for the past month and I made a beatiful arrow to direct your attention to the one I'm interested in. :) You can see the difference in color from the current carpet and the new carpet. The new carpet is definitely darker. The walls in most of the house are a taupey greyish brown color so I wanted carpet that had more greyish tones to it than the orangey gold tones that I kept seeing in most of the carpet samples I looked at. The carpet I'm interested in is basically a brown, but it's a bit on the greyish side. Not so gold. It's taupey.



The vinyl sample next to it is the vinyl that will go in the kids bathroom.

Here is a photo I found online of the carpet:

and here is a photo I found online of the vinyl:

Again, those pictures may or may not accurately reflect the color. It's pretty close on my monitor but I don't know if it's accurate on yours. The vinyl has more blues and greys in it in person than it looks like in this photo. The counters in the kids bathroom are blue, so in person it actually looks really nice. 

So the carpet is going to be a fairly drastic change. It's definitely going to be darker, but I want it to be darker. The carpet that is currently in there is too light for anyone raising children. Every single spot shows like a neon sign. I purposely looked for something a little darker with a twist of a second color in it because I think it will wear better and not show spots as easily. It's also a fairly low pile carpet because I wanted something that wasn't going to mat down and show traffic patterns so quickly. That is especially important to me on the stairs. 

Ok, so that's the story of the carpet. Now on to Josh's bedroom. 

Taking photos of bedrooms is tricky because it's hard to get the whole room in the shot. I wish I had a fisheye lens for my camera, but I don't. So the photos I did get aren't great and don't really show the whole room. His room is actually pretty big, but it's rectangular. Much longer than it is wide, so it's hard to capture in the photo without a specific type of lens. Also, his room is currently in the middle of renovation, so it looks terrible. He has already taken down most of the things off his wall in preparation for painting and everything is kind of in a state of transition. Also, we have painted some green spots on the wall to test out the paint colors we're considering. So you're going to have to ignore all of that. I know it looks terrible right now. Also, the cat. Whatever.

His walls are currently a light blue. When my kids were little I LOVED that color. Now I'm super tired of it.




His old bedding is ugly and old. Here is the new bedding he has chosen (the photo is from the Pottery Barn website):



I love it, he did a great job picking it.

He wants the walls to be green. You can see that we have experimented with a few greens. I think he wants to go with the big one next to the window. That color is Valspar Mossy Bench. Here is a swatch I found online, but I think the actual color is a little more on the brown side than the swatch shows. Although the color painted next to it on his wall is super olivey yellow/green, which makes the other color look more brown than it actually is. It might look more green without that SUPER green color next to it.


Then we're decorating with vintage film decor and we found some AWESOME things. We bought two movie posters and framed them, one of them is the Back To The Future poster you can see in one of those photos and the other one is this Star Wars poster:


They look really cool framed and I'm excited to hang them after we paint. We also found some really cool metal vintage movie decor at Hobby Lobby. I didn't take photos of what we bought but it looks similar to this sort of thing, but not necessarily exactly: 


We bought several odds and ends and they're going to look really great when the room is done! I'm really excited to get that project finished. It's going to be fun, I just have to find a time to get to it in the next couple of weeks! I'll take photos when it's done. 

Ok, so on to the dining room. So we have this formal dining room in our house that we NEVER eat in. Ever. I think two meals have been eaten in that room in the past 8 years. The kids do homework in there and that big cabinet that is supposed to be filled with fancy dishes and linens actually has art supplies in it. Lots of crayons and construction paper. I'm not fancy, lol. 







So, as you can see, it's red and brown. I sort of hate it. I kind of got talked into painting it red when we moved here because red was the thing. Eh. It's never really been so much my thing. It's fine, I guess. Formal dining rooms are supposed to be fancy. Again, I'm not fancy. So I've never really known what to do with that room exactly. It's always been kind of a work in progress. As you can see, one side of it is decorated and the other side really isn't. I don't go in there much and mostly I just ignore that room. I have always intended to do something with it, especially because it's near the front of the house and people see it often, but I'm not an amazing decorator and it mostly just sits there and wonders what it's purpose is, lol.

So with that said, I think I'm going to paint it green. It connects to the formal living room, which you saw in the first photo, and the furniture in there is green, so in my uncreative brain, I think the walls should be green to tie it together, right? I don't know, I just made that up.

I was at a friends house today and she just repainted her kitchen with an amazing green color. It's Kelly Moore Wood Moss. It looks absolutely gorgeous in her kitchen and I think that I might just be a copycat and use that color. I tried to find a paint swatch of it, and I'll share what I found, but I don't think the swatch is accurate. Not on my monitor, anyway. It's green with a bit of grey in it. The paint swatch on my monitor looks quite grey. It's not, it's green, and it's beautiful in person!


I'm not 100% sold on that color though, so I'm open to suggestions! I'm open to suggestions on everything, actually, although the carpet and vinyl are pretty much a done deal at this point.

And there you have it! All my redecorating plans. I'm open to comments. Let me have it!

Another carpet update

Whew, I'm busy today! I've been all over town this morning working on this remodeling project.

OK. So here is the latest. We're still waiting on the big carpet sample to get here so I can make my final decision on carpet (I'm crossing my fingers that it comes today) but I have looked at the small sample enough now that I'm pretty confident that I'm happy with it and I doubt I'm going to change my mind. The small sample is just a few inches big, it's on one of those sample boards with a bunch of other colors. What I'm trying to get is one of those carpet rectangles, you know, like the standard size carpet samples you see in carpet stores. This particular carpet is new though and no one has the big samples yet, just the board with the little samples of the whole collection. The manufacturer called me on Friday to tell me they were sending it straight to my house and I expect it any time now. I can tell from the small sample that I like it, I'm just too nervous about making a very expensive and permanent change to the majority of my house without seeing something bigger first to make absolutely sure. I don't want to be surprised when they install it! I'm pretty confident that I like it though. The order is ready to be placed, they're just waiting on me for the final go-ahead.


Another change that we're making in the process is to the upstairs kids bathroom. That bathroom is a two part bathroom. There is a room with two long sinks and then a door to a seperate room where the bathtub and toilet are. The part with the sinks is currently carpeted and the part with the bathtub has vinyl. I like the look of it that way, but the carpeted sink area just isn't working for us. I hate having carpet where the kids brush their teeth and use water. I'm always scrubbing toothpaste out of the carpet and it just gets gross in there. I don't really want to recarpet that area and scrub toothpaste out of the new carpet. So we're taking the carpet out and putting new vinyl down in both parts of the bathroom. I think I'm going to miss the look of carpet in there a little, but this is going to be a lot more practical and easier to keep clean.

So this morning I was at the carpet store picking out vinyl. There are a zillion different vinyl choices. Yikes. But I think I found one that will work I'm trying not to second guess it too much.

And then yesterday while I was pondering all these changes, I had another crazy idea. I want to repaint the formal dining room. We have a big formal dining room that is currently painted red and brown. Red dining rooms were the thing back when I chose that color seven years ago, but now I'm super bored with it and now is the perfect time to change it. So this morning I was at Lowes picking up some paint samples. I think I'm going to go with a sagey green. It will really lighten it up in there and I think it will look nice. So picking the perfect green is my project of the day.

Decisions decisions!

Baring any unforeseen circumstances (PLEASE let there be no unforeseen circumstances) we are scheduled to have the recarpeting done on March 25-26, which is the Monday after next. I need to get Josh's room and the dining room painted before then and we have to get all the furniture moved and all of that, which is going to be a big project.

So we're going to be busy for the next couple of weeks! I'm dreading the mess but I am so excited to get this all done! It's going to feel like a whole new house when we're finished!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Year of the books update

So the year of the books has gotten off to kind of a mediocre start. We went strong at the beginning and then I just didn't realize how busy we were going to be for a little while. Both of the boys had some really big school projects that they were working on in the evenings for a while and then for the past month we've all taken turns getting sick and that has thrown us off a bit. My personal reading has practically come to a standstill and I feel really bad about that.

But you know who is taking the year of the books and running with it? Matthew! The little bit at we did start reading every night at the beginning of the year really jumpstarted him. He has always liked to read but the idea of counting pages and making kind of a game out of it really sparked something in him and he's been a reading machine ever since the first of the year. He got 11 books for Christmas and read them all in the first few weeks of January. Then at the end of January and into February he finished off the last two books of the Harry Potter series. Then he got to work on the Fable Haven series and he's currently almost at the end of book three. He's plowing through books so fast that I'm scrambling to come up with something to give him when he finishes each series to keep him going. That kid rocks! Seeing him with his nose constantly in a book makes me happy and reminds me of me as a kid. He's being a great example to the rest of the family, who aren't doing nearly as well as he is.

Shawn is currently reading a gigantic 1,000 page novel though, and he hasn't read for pleasure in a while, so that's another person the year of the books has affected. He's pretty busy and doesn't always have time to read but I have caught him reading in bed until the wee hours of the morning recently. He has mentioned recently how nice it feels to be reading for pleasure again.

Josh and are are supposed to be reading a book together but we're the ones who are struggling. After he finished The Hiding Place and we enjoyed our WWII discussions so much we decided to read a book series about WWII together. We both started on book one for a few days and then got sick and busy and abandoned the plan. We're not giving up though. I'm going to get us back on track.

For me it's been frustrating that I'm having such a hard time making the time to read because I LOVE to read. It's actually really weird to me that I'm having to force myself to plan some reading time into my day because in the past I've had to force myself to plan some day into my reading time. I usually have no problem losing myself in a book. It just seems like lately I'm busy and easily distracted and every time I sit down to get started I remember 20 other things I was going to do and I put the book down and never get back to it.

Our nightly reading hour was really fun at first but we struggled to stick with it when the boys got so busy with school and then we got sick. Sometimes it just feels like there aren't enough hours in the evening to get everything done. I'm trying to come up with a better schedule that will work for us.

I knew when I started this project that there would probably be some successes and failures though. I learned from our year of adventure last year that sometimes plans don't always work out like you think they're going to. So I'm OK with there being some ebb and flow to the process. The point was to get everyone more excited about reading for pleasure and it's been a gigantic success for Matthew and even for Shawn. Josh and I are going to recommit to getting back on track. I think Josh is struggling a bit to find a genre that really excites him. He does like to read and he's a good reader, he just needs to find a series or a genre that he's really passionate about. I'm working on finding different types of books for him to try. As he's getting older his tastes are changing and I'm struggling to move from the younger kids series to helping him find some more mature books to read. We're working on it. I'm confident that we will find something that resparks that passion for reading. I think maybe I'm dealing with the same thing right now. I've been reading a little of everything lately but I need to find something I'm really excited about to remind me how much I love to get lost in a book.

So there is the update in our project. Some successes, some failures, but there is still a lot of year left and we have a lot of adventure left to experience!

Friday, March 8, 2013

Carpet update #2

Carpet company #2 officially rocks. In fact, they almost rock too much and here is why.

I mentioned that we've all been sick. People have been puking and coughing and sneezing and whining over here for over a week now, and now that the rest of them are getting over it, I'm sick.

So I don't know about the rest of you, but around here when the whole family is sick and then I get sick, the house sort of falls apart. I am embarrassed to admit that my house is looks like a hurricane blew through and at the moment I don't feel well enough to do a whole lot about it. I didn't even get dressed today.

So with that in mind, there I was at 3pm laying on the couch in my pajamas in a Benadryl induced haze, clutching a box of tissues and coughing up a lung when my phone rang. It was the super nice lady from carpet company #2 letting me know that she's totally on the ball and sending a guy over in 10 minutes to measure my house for carpet.

I LOVE this new carpet lady. She's getting stuff done. She knows we've been waiting on this for a month now and she's not making us wait any longer. She's totally on it.

But there I was, in my pajamas, with my house looking like a bomb went off, on the phone going "uhhh...you want to come over now? Like today? Uh....well...I've kind of been sick and my house isn't really perfect at the moment..."

She assured me that the measuring guy wouldn't care. She said that if it made me feel better, the other day they were cleaning up some sort of damage in someone's home and replacing the flooring and that house had poop all over the floor. Ok, well, at least we're doing better than that over here. There might be laundry and toys scattered all over my living room and dishes piled in my sink but I promise there is no poop on the premises.

So in my Benadryl induced haze I got dressed and started shoving things in closets (hey brainiac, the closets are carpeted and need to be measured) and making beds and gathering up laundry and trying to at least regain some sort of semblance of order in my house.

It was far from perfect but the guy came over and measured my floors and if he judged my messy house at least he didn't say anything. He should have seen it 10 minutes before he arrived, lol.

So there is the story of how the new carpet lady is getting it done. I appreciate her speediness. I wish it had happened on a day that my house didn't look like a war zone. But at least there wasn't poop on the floor. At least there's that.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Carpet update

After waiting for a month to get a carpet sample ordered from company number one with no success, I talked to company number two yesterday about them ordering a sample. I just got a phone call from the actual carpet manufacturer today letting me know that they're sending the sample straight to my house and it's shipping out today.

Thank you company number two for getting it done.

Also, Josh isn't throwing up anymore and my sore throat is gone although it has turned into a head cold.

We might just survive all of this after all. :)

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Sick and tired

Ugh, it's been a long couple of weeks around here. A few weeks ago Matthew and I got sick and it took forever to get over it. Then we finally got over it and Matthew got sick again. Then Clarissa got sick. Then Josh got sick. Fevers, sore throats, throwing up, the whole nine yards. So kids have been home from school off and on for the past week or so and everyone has been grouchy and miserable. Matthew and Clarissa are finally feeling better but Josh is having a hard time getting over it. He's still throwing up, he didn't eat for a couple of days and he's been really miserable. This morning I sat with him and got him to nibble saltines and sip water and this afternoon he seems a bit better but this has been a long and miserable couple of weeks for everyone.

And now that everyone else is hopefully on the mend, my throat hurts. I'm trying really hard to ignore and I'm hoping and praying that I don't start puking. Ugh.

In the middle of that I've been stressing out over some major dental work I need to have done that was supposed to be this week and had to be rescheduled and we're still dealing with the re-carpeting and redecorating project, which is stressing me out.

We started out working with one company and we found a sample that we think we like but it's a really small sample, just a couple of inches big, and I need a bigger piece to make absolutely sure that I like it before I carpet my whole house with it. So the woman at the store said she'd order us a bigger sample and it would take a week to come in. That was a month ago and there were some issues and it didn't happen.

So after a month of waiting for the sample that never came we're starting over. Today I finally contacted another company that we have gotten flooring through before and I told them the name of the sample we had seen at the other place and she looked it up and said that it seems like it will work great but she only has a small sample so she'll have to order us in a bigger one. It will take about a week.

*sigh*

I'm tired and my throat hurts. :(