7 months!

Hey all!  Man life has just been chugging along at full speed around here!  And while we've been doing plenty of projects, I just haven't felt inspired to write.  Nor have I had the time!  But, I love having something to look back on.  A kind of catalog of the progress of our lives.  Especially since it's all moving by too fast!  I mean, kids are back in school already, it's September, and I think there's only something like 16 Saturdays until Christmas!!  Anyone else hyperventilating a little?!  Can I also just say though that fall is my absolute FAVORITE time of the year!  The anticipation of the holidays, the crafts, the food, everything!  Love!  And this year I'm not super pregnant and stressing over the purchasing of a home.  Or packing and moving.  So I'm going to dig in and really squeeze out every ounce of awesome that this time of year has to offer :)

But first things first!  Smu (aka smiley Smu, aka p unit, aka Persephone) is seven months old!  Holy bananas batman!!

I am absolutely loving this age!  She is so energetic and sweet.  She's rolling ev.er.y.where.  Like under the couch, under the bed, into the kitchen.  She's a trip!  And she's so fast too.  I walk out of the room for two minutes, and she's mad because she's rolled her hiney under the couch.

She's still not sleeping in her crib.  Which is 100% my fault.  But I tried it one day, and the whole thing was miserable.  And then we've spent the past three weeks going through teething and a cold, so I didn't force the issue.  Besides, I love waking up to her cute face in the morning!  Especially since dano is off to work so early every day :)

Speaking of teething, this little monkey has her first two chompers!  I haven't managed to get a picture, but her two front bottom teeth are in.  And I've gotta say, she's been really good about the whole thing.  No drool, not very whiny, still mostly her happy little self!

Her baby stage is passing so quickly, and I'm just trying to stop and enjoy it as much as possible.  She's pushing up on her hands and knees now, so crawling is just around the corner!  As she grows, Gage is getting braver with her too.  She adores him, and loves to watch and play with him.  But she also picks up and chews on anything that crosses her path.  And Gage is not a fan of that.  I'm constantly telling him not to take toys from the baby.  It also drives me bonkers when she's happily playing, and he'll go across the room and take something from her because it's his.  Thank goodness she's still too little to care, and just grabs something else to chomp on.  But I'm dreading the time when he takes something and she shrieks.  Maybe he'll be into sharing by then?

Persephone is so expressive and fun!  I spend whole afternoons tickling her, and shrieking back and forth with her.  She babbles like crazy!  And she's just started saying 'ma ma ma'.  So I'm basically convinced mama is her first word :)

Peabody is 21 lbs of healthy, chubby goodness!  I love every roll and dimple :). Slow down baby, don't grow too fast!  Speaking of growing too fast, can I stop and shed a tear for the fact that Gage is going to be three in less than a month?!  Three!!  Well, I'm off to find a tissue. And some ice cream.  And go kiss my babies for the tenth time today.  Hope you have a great week!

Laundry Room Reveal!

Hey guys!  Guess what? We finished the laundry room!!  Like six weeks ago 😳 it's been an awesome change, and I'm sooo glad we updated this space!! 

Part of the reason it took me awhile to get this post up is the fact that this room gets used.  Like a lot.  Most days I do at least one load of laundry.  Plus, we come into the house this way about 90% of the time.  So it can get a little cray with all the piles of laundry and whatnot :). I wanted to take pictures of a tidy room for you guys!

So onto the details!  The cabinets are the ones we reused from the man cave.  They provide more than enough storage, and keep all our cleaning products and irons hidden!

The little shelf between them was originally purchased for P's room.  We ended up liking the look of just one shelf in her space, so this guy got a little trim and was put up here!  I use that basket to hold dirty clothes that I don't feel like taking upstairs, just to bring back down here.  If I change the kiddos out of their jammies downstairs in the morning, I have a spot for said jammies :)

The picture is an oldie from ikea, and I've had the candle holders forever too.  Just some little things to pretty up the space!

I picked up the geometric blue rug at Homegoods, and I love it!  It's pretty and sturdy, and really ties everything together!  There are even hooks hiding behind the door to hold the diaper bag :)

Compared to the ugly wire shelves, fleshy pink walls and plethora of holes and bolts, this space is a breath of fresh air!  I love all the light blue and white, it helps me actually enjoy using our laundry room!  Now if I could just teach the washer and dryer to sort, fold and put away the clothes, that would be magical :D

What projects have you finished lately?  Have a great weekend!

5 months!

Hello and happy Wednesday!  So, before another month passes and I miss someone's five month post, I figured I needed to pop in with an update :)

 This little girl is getting big too fast :).  She is so sweet, and smiley 90% of the time.  She wasn't too sure she wanted her picture taken though when I started her little photo shoot.

But she warmed up pretty quickly!  Her hair is getting so long, it actually flops in her eyes if I don't pin it back.  I'm not going to get it cut yet though, it's just too cute!  Plus this gives me an excuse to add to her bow stash, so there's that :)

Her new trick this month is rolling over.  And over.  And over!  She'll roll across the room if there's nothing in her way.  I caught her trying to pull her knees up under her yesterday and was like nooooooo!  Calm down little one, no crawling just yet :)

Fun facts:

Weight- 23lbs

Eating- just nursing for now.  But she's showing interest in our food!

Nicknames- countless!  Smiley Smu, Peabody, p-nut, miss mommy, the list goes on :)

Sleeping- still in our bed.  And she won't nap as long in the swing :-/ gotta get on this crib thing!

Clothes- size 12mos.  She's growing so fast that I'm constantly shopping for her.  Poor me ;P

Loves- peekaboo, grinning in the mirror, getting her diaper changed and whenever daddy smiles at her

Random- she plays with her hair when she's nursing and sleepy.  Oh and she likes to whack me while she nurses.  I call it 'the baby haymaker'.  Dano thinks it's hilarious :)

She's getting more interested in toys.  We have a little spinning gear thing, and she could sit and hit the button over and over.  Oh and she loves Gage's hot wheel cars.  Specifically chewing on them :). He doesn't mind.  Yet.

Her favorite activity though is getting in the bathtub with big brother.  He loves to make her laugh, and she giggles so hard when he splashes and jumps around!  Holding her upright is tricky though, slippery little wiggle :). She'll be sitting up on her own before long!

Ugh those cheeks!!  I sit around and smooch them all.day.long!  We juuuust finished her nursery, so the next adventure is to get her to actually sleep in her crib.  Fingers crossed it goes well!  Oh and of course, I'll be back with a post on her space soon :)

Paint all the things!

Hello friendlies!  How have you been?  Life's been busy.  Nothing crazy or exciting, but I feel like time is flying!  So I know I promised you a post on the playroom floor decision, and then life happened, and now it's been a month.  So let's get on that!

When it came to demoing the playroom, we knew the floor had to go.  Not only was it part horrible parquet, and part carpet squares, but the area under the raised seating was bare subfloor.  Originally we wanted to just have it carpeted.  But we got a quote on carpet and found out it was going to cost almost $500!  Eek!  We still want to get carpet one day. But knowing that this was going to primarily serve as a playroom, we wanted everything in here to be mess friendly.  And freaking out about every crumb or container of playdough that makes it's way in there doesn't work for my piece of mind.  So, for now, we decided to work with what we've got.  And what we've got is a concrete subfloor!  After searching the interwebz, we decided that painting the floor was the way to go.  Cheap, easy and low maintenance?  I'll take it!

Now for the process.  First, the floor needed to be cleaned.  All of the old carpet glue and overspray had to be scraped up.  We just doused the glue in lacquer thinner, let it sit with a trash bag on it, and after 10 min, it scraped right up!

There were also a few cracks and divots that needed to be filled in.  We just used wall filler, pressed it into the cracks, let it dry and sanded it down.

Then came paint!  We just got some bright white concrete paint from lowes.  I think it was about $24 for a gallon.  The cool thing about this stuff is you can have it tinted to match any color, so the possibilities are endless!

This is after the first coat.  It's crazy how quick and easy this was!  After spending over a month on the walls, we banged this out in a day!  

So easy a toddler can do it :)

Here it is after three coats!  A beautiful bright white.  And we still have a ton of paint left!

For added durability, we decided to add a protective topcoat.  I'd read that it makes the floors easier to clean.  Plus, it gives it a nice glossy sheen!

And you know I was dying to fill this space up and make it pretty :).  We brought the mattress in from the garage for seating.  I want to get a daybed eventually, so this can double as a guest room.  The bench under the window we've had for years, it's from ikea.  As are the curtains :). Eventually, we want to do built ins on either side of the window, with a window seat in between.

More ikea love!  These expedition bookshelves are awesome.  We used this as a tv console at our old house, but we have built ins in this living room!  So the book shelf is great storage now.  When we do the built ins in here, this will move up to either the office or P's room.  

Love these bright, fun curtains!  They were the color inspiration for this room :). I pulled the light teal blue color from the curtains for the walls, and plan to use the bright green and navy as accents in the room.

So there's the playroom for now!  It needs baseboards, lighting, a rug, some furniture.  Plus, I have some ideas for the walls and of course the built ins need to happen.  But for now, we finally have a functional, huge space for the kiddos to play in!  And no more plaster dust flying though the house!! Yay!

Hope you are having a fantastic week!

4 months

I blinked, and my sweet little baby girl is now four months old!  This month has been such a fun one with her.  She has really gone from 'infant' to 'baby' this month.  She's much more aware of her surroundings, and is developing a sweet little personality.

Persephone is really easy going, which I've been especially appreciative while Gage works through some toddlerness :)  She is an incredibly smiley girl, and those dimples are always on display!  

Once we finished the playroom, we brought out the jumper for P.  At first she wasn't quite sure what to think, but now she is a huge fan!  She'll bounce and chew on her fist, watching her brother spin in the living room.  

We've also been getting in a lot of tummy time, and someone is thisclose to rolling over!  She gets about 3/4 of the way there and stops, normally because she can now see the tv or grab her toy :). P definitely seems to prefer being on her tummy to her back, and will arch and complain if left on her back too long.

Naps are still happening in the swing, and bed time she's still with us.  I was trying to transition her AND potty train with Gage, but decided one thing at a time.  There's only so much chaos I can take :). Gage is doing well with the potty, so hopefully Persephone will be making the change here in the next week or so!

P has gotten much better about the car seat, and travels really well now!  She even naps and hangs out happily in her seat when we go shopping.  She loves the shower and bath tub, and I can't wait to introduce her to a pool!  

Oh, and my absolute favorite, she's giggling now!!  Not quite a belly laugh, but she'll 'huh huh huh' with a big smile on her face.  I get the most laughter when I raspberry her belly, chew on her toes or wipe her butt during a diaper change :)

I love her oh so very much!  I'm trying to soak up all her sweet baby-ness while it lasts.  I know all too well how quickly they grow :)

Biting off a serious mouthful: playroom update

You guys!  How the heck are you?  Hope all the mommas out there had a lovely Mother's Day :) It's been a minute, and we've gotten a TON accomplished around the house.  I'm actually typing this while sitting in the finished playroom :). So, there's lots to update you on! 

But why the delay?  Well, this playroom project was far more than we ever imagined it would be.  It's still not 100% finished!  It took for.ev.er, and I think throwing all our time and energy into it burnt us out a bit.  This was not an instant gratification thing.  In the future, I think we'll do bits and pieces of different projects and jump around a little more, just so we don't burn out.  Also, we've been potty learning with Gage, and just came off of a week of terrible twoness that you wouldn't BELIEVE!!

I've sat down to try and write this post maybe 5 times, but just couldn't do it.  I was that burnt out lol! And I just didn't feel like I could do justice to the time and effort we put in.  But after letting it be for a while, I can say it was well worth the effort.  It's a completely transformed space, and a room that is actually functional for us!  But let's get down to the nitty gritty :)

Before we could even get to those walls, there was a bit of demo that needed to happen.  The bar area and raised seating had to be torn down.

And then the flooring had to be pulled up.

How do you like my cutie little helper?!  He really enjoyed tearing things apart :) only with supervision by daddy of course!

Once we moved furniture and wood out, we were finally left with a blank-ish slate

You can see in the two above photos that we were left with tons of holes, several different paint colors, chair rail and some damage from the structures in the room.  So this was when the nightmare started.  I think I pulled 50 nails out of the walls, all different shapes and sizes.  And the caulking on the chair rail was pretty mean.  It did a fantastic job of ripping drywall paper off the walls :( Meaning we had even more areas that had to be patched.  We debated leaving the chair rail, but it was only on 1.5 of the walls, so we decided to do away with it rather than patch in new pieces.

Now, keep in mind we are by no means professionals, and there may be a much more scientific means of repairing walls.  We were actually concerned at this point that they'd never look right, and we'd have to put up all new dry wall.  But we pushed through, figuring we could always take it down if it was that bad.

The first part of the process?  Filler!  Get a tub, and start slapping it in those holes.

Everything that wasn't smooth got a coat (sometimes two) which we had to let dry.  We patched holes and rough spots over the course of ten days.  Yea, it was that bad.  And here I thought the whole thing would be finished in 2 weeks!  The DIY gods are laughing at me, I tell ya!

Once that was dry, everything had to be sanded.  Since this is a decent sized room (12'x13'), and there was SO MUCH sanding to do, Dano suggested we use the electric sander.  This was both awesome and awful at the same time.  I think we would have spent a solid month just sanding if we did it by hand, so the time saving factor was huge!  But the dust.  Oh man, the dust.  Ev.er.y.where!! We shut the door, and went to town.  And it looked like we had dusted the house with cocaine!  And every time someone walked from the playroom to another part of the house, they tracked white footprints!  Just when I think I've wiped every surface, I find it lingering somewhere else.  Enter more cackling from the DIY gods.

Since we have the distinct pleasure of having textured walls (sarcasm, anyone?) we knew all these smooth surfaces would need to have some sort of texture put back on them, so they'd blend into the rest of the wall.  We watched some tutorials, and debated different methods, but couldn't pick a direction.  Then, while perusing Lowes one day, we came across this:

The DIY gods threw us a bone!  This stuff was the bomb dot com!  It comes in several different textures, and it's just like using spray paint!

Spray it on your smoothed areas, feathering out into your already textured wall, let it dry and boom!  You are ready to prime!

A coat of primer (a couple areas with darker paint got two coats) and two coats of Sherwin Williams Rainwashed left us with this:

Like a breath of fresh air!  It's light and pretty, and really opens up the space :). The walls aren't perfect.  But they are 95% better than what we started with! and we were able to repair them very inexpensively.  Sometimes it was hard to see the finish line, but I'm so glad we reached it!  

Oh and that picture gives you a sneak peek of the floors, which I'm super excited about!  Can't wait to share with you!

3 months!

This past Saturday, P hit the three month mark.  Has it really been three months already?!  Wow.  This little cutie is getting too big.  I feel like, since having Persephone, life has been on warp speed!  Weeks pass in the blink of an eye.  I wake up on Mondays like 'wow, is it really Monday again?  Already?!'.  I mean, it's going to be Easter this weekend!!

But before this moment speeds away too, let me give you a quick update on our little girl!  I feel like she has started to morph from newborn to baby this month, and it's been so.much.fun.  She's giving us lots more smiles now!  

She loves to watch her brother bounce around the room.  I can't wait until she starts giggling :). She is also quite the little talker!  We had a whole 5 minute conversation the other day.  It was very reminiscent of Dory trying to speak whale, and I loved every second of it :)

Physically, she is growing out of control!  Like we are in 9 month clothes now.  9 month!! Her hair is getting longer, and those roots are pretty blonde.  Speaking of hair, I've started putting bows in it and I can't.handle.the.CUTENESS! 

 She can hold her head up for quite a long time when resting on her tummy.  But, she doesn't stay happy on her tummy for long.  She'd much rather be laying on her back, grinning at the ceiling fan.  Is it wrong that I'm a little jealous of an inanimate object?  The smiles she wastes on that fan, it's really not fair :). 

She's still sleeping with us at night, and napping in the swing or on the go during the day.  We are trying to work on more of a sleep routine now, since we've been having some issues at night.  The habit she's developed this month that I'm not a huge fan of?  Screaming for at least an hour before bed almost every night.  Talk about a rough way to end the day!  Everything that I've read says it's pretty common, and can be caused by the fact that she's not getting enough sleep during the day.  So, we are working on more scheduled naps.  Starting with trying to get her nursery into sleep ready mode!

Wait, you didn't know the nursery STILL wasn't finished?!  Yea.  It's been hovering at about 80% for the last month.  But since she's been sleeping with us, we weren't in a huge hurry.  This coming from the girl who almost had a panic attack at 7 months pregnant with Gage when the nursery wasn't complete.  Somebody has definitely mellowed out ;P  We've been busy putting some final touches on the nursery this weekend (like a mattress and bedding).  Can't wait to show you the final product!

She's become more of a fan of her car seat this month.  She loves to bat at the toys strung across the front of it.  Just yesterday I caught her trying to pull the lion into her mouth :). And she's been drooling and chewing on her fist a lot.  Wonder if teeth are on the way already?  Oh, speaking of her mouth, baby girl has become a spitter, just like her brother was!  There are burp cloths all over the house now, and I constantly smell like sour milk :). 

That's our Persephone!  She's amazing, adorable and I just wanna squishthosecheeksallday!!