The Girls Room and 34+ weeks!

The countdown is on!  I leave for WA in 3 days to have this little girl!  No I won't be having her in 3 days, but I do need to travel down there before 36 weeks.  So I will probably be there around 6 weeks, maybe less if she decides to come early.  I have been nesting just a little.  Shampooing the floors of my car (a little out of character for me), picking invasive weeds out of my yard by hand... you know.  I have finally got the girls room done.  We added a crib and an extra dresser.  The room is a little tight, but that's why we have a playroom downstairs.  It's not like Estelle plays in here a lot.

 No name banner for this little one yet, mainly because she doesn't have a name.  But when she does have one, her banner will go just above Estelle's I think.

 I bought an old beat up dresser with hopes to sand and paint it, and make it just beautiful... it was a huge pain in the butt.  We tried to strip it.  I tried first with a stripping agent that was not supposed to be harmful to breathe in.  Well, it didn't work.  Then Reese did it with a more heavy duty one, ehhhhh it kinda worked.  Then we sanded it and scrapped it and sanded and scrapped it.  Finally we got the paint on and it turned out pretty well.

 I ordered the knobs from Hobby Lobby.  I ordered 9, I needed 10.  Pregnant brain.  So I had some green ones in Estelle's room already.  I just used those on the two end drawers, adds to the whimsy I guess. So this will serve as Estelle's new dresser.

 And last but not least, my 34 week belly.  I am super uncomfortable some days.  Other days I feel pretty good. She is super low and it hurts when she moves.  I am not looking forward to taking 3 different flights with the kids to get to WA.  Hopefully that will be a day I'm feeling pretty well (fingers crossed).

Home Improvement Project

The previous owner of our house was a glass artist.  So she had made a backsplash for the kitchen that was removable and she took it with her.  So it left us with no backsplash which was fine, but I always thought the kitchen would look a lot more finished with something there.  So in January we went to the local home improvement store.  We picked out some mosaic tiles and ordered them, they said it would take about 3 weeks.  Well It is now April and the backsplash is finally complete.  No, not because Reese and I are procrastinators.  Because the company that the home improvement store ordered the tile from, "lost the order."  So we went to pick that up when it finally did come in in March.  But they were the wrong tiles... So we ordered them again. And finally last weekend we got them and put them up the same day!  Such is life in Kodiak.  Don't even ask me about the couch I ordered on March 1st.  Another "lost" order, which has delayed that too.  Thank the Lord we didn't buy a fixer upper!

BEFORE

 Well, I do love the new backsplash.  It was a super easy project (says the person who didn't do all the work), and it didn't cost too much.  Click on the picture to make it bigger and see it a little closer :)

AFTER

Master Bedroom and Bath

I am finally getting around to posting the pictures of our bedroom and bathroom, my favorite room in the house.  I have never had such a large master bedroom. That was one of the draws for me in buying this house, and the jet tub, which I hardly ever use (booo).  The first picture makes every thing have a bit of a green tint to it.  But the next pictures are more true to color.

The chair in this room was once in Case's room, then in Estelle's and now in ours.  I love that chair, and it sits in one of the sunniest spots in the house.  When the sun is out... it usually shines in the window so I can soak up some vitamin D while I read.  When the sun isn't out, I use a light box, yeah for real...

I picked up a couple of windows from Reese's parents shop before we moved up here.  LOVE!!  And the canvas, it's from Walmart.  It's a faux canvas and for that one I think it's a 16x24 is was $29.99.  That's what I call a deal.

 I have never had such a large bathroom.  I better enjoy it before we move back to base housing in a couple years!  There is a walk in closet off to the left of the bathtub too.

Christmas is in the air

Well the Christmas events are in full swing around here!  It's been a busy one! A few weeks ago we went to a bell choir concert.  It was beautiful!  The Russian Orthodox Church has a real presence here and they had a choir at the concert too.  The most wonderful piece was "O Holy Night" sung by one of the churches friars.  It was so beautiful and really reminded me of the REAL reason we celebrate this season.   Reese's small command here puts together a kids Christmas party and an adult Christmas party.  Last weekend we had the kids one and tonight is the adult party.  Me and a couple others ladies are in charge of planning these parties, it's fun but time consuming!  We got mini gingerbread houses for all the kids to decorate, they were a hit!

 Estelly and Emmy.  Emmy always calls her Estelly so many of us now call her that :)

 We've had our decorations up at home since before Thanksgiving.  We are leaving town so I wanted to get things up a little early.  Our tree is huge.  I was a little annoyed when Reese brought it home, but it's grown on me.

I always have so much fun with this little table.  I love to decorate it for every season.  That was a garage sale find in Sumas, WA, when Lane was just a little guy.

I tried something new this year with these stockings and snowflakes.  Last January we were in the process of moving and while I was in WA I hit up all the Christmas clearance items.  I got lots of fun stuff!

I got the little vintage santa handkerchief at a thrift store.  

And of course we decorated the gingerbread house a few days ago.  I've started a little tradition of bringing a gingerbread house and all the fixin's to a couple friends every Christmas.  The gingerbread recipe I have makes 3 gingerbread houses so I just assemble two more and give them away.  It's been fun!  Hope you all are enjoying your Christmas season as well!!

Wall Decor Etc.

I took these pictures a long time ago and I am finally posting them....story of my life.  The stairway was a huge blank wall just waiting to be filled.  So I got to work on Pinterest and found a really cute wall display!  I loved the colors it used turquoise, black and khaki.  So I kind of went with this for inspiration and came up with this:

The wall is white, but I didn't want to tackle painting that two story wall, nope, no thank you.  I made a coffee filter wreath and other than that I used all frames and stuff that I had on hand.

 This canvas is at the bottom of the stairs.  It's just a canvas and I painted it with chevrons.  I used a square and painters tape.  I then glued a picture frame straight to the canvas.  I love the way it turned out.

 This is the playroom.  We have a 4th bedroom/office and a bathroom right next to the front door.  So we turned that bedroom into a playroom which I love!

 This is the downstairs bathroom.  It originally had carpet in it... yuck.  So when we lifted the carpet up this linoleum was under it.  Not the prettiest, but more functional than carpet!  So there is another peak into our home.  I will get around to posting pictures of the bedrooms... once they are clean enough!  Although I started attending MOPS here in town and the theme this year is "A Beautiful Mess." I guess I could post pictures of our beautiful mess, or not.

Living Room (before and after)

Finally I am getting around to showing more pictures of the house!  The picture below is the house before the previous owner moved out.  

This is the living room before we had our stuff moved in...

 And here is the after picture.  I have painted the entire house!  I think there is only one wall that I have not painted!

 Here is where the living room meets the kitchen and the closet is our computer desk/scrapbooking/sewing area :)  It used to hold the washer and dryer but we moved those into the garage.

 This is the hallway from the living room into the dining room/entry way.

Here are the before/after pictures of the other rooms I have shared (kitchen and dining room) but I forgot to put them on those posts.

Dining Room

 Here are the Dining Room pictures.  The walls look kind of white in the pictures, but they are actually a khaki/gray color.  I painted much of the downstairs this color, a nice neutral color.  The above picture is taken when standing at the front door and looking toward the left.

This one is taken standing at the front door looking straight ahead toward the living room.

 This is taken while standing in the doorway to to the kitchen.  The room on the left side of the picture is the playroom, which is just the 4th bedroom.  It is so nice to finally have an extra room for toys!

 It was Lane's spring break this last week.  We went swimming and Reese and Lane went skiing and snowboarding a lot.  We have also been going sledding.  We got Lane a snowboard last week and he is doing really awesome.

And of course Lane has been climbing trees in the backyard.  We had a really nice week, lots of sunny weather and some snow.  Beautiful!

Kitchen

I've had kind of a yucky last few days.  On Thursday of last week I got a call from the cardiologist in Anchorage to set up an appointment.  Turns out they wanted me to do the consultation and the defibrillator implantation the next day, to save me an extra trip over there.  To make a long story short, due to childcare and insurance reasons I can't do that.  So I am in the process of rescheduling everything.  The whole situation makes me depressed.  I am frustrated in many ways.  Having the actual appointment to get the defibrillator makes it very scary and real for me.  I realize that it could be worse, but either way, it is an adjustment, a lifestyle change.  So I just need a little time to adjust :)  So in an effort to feel "normal" I am posting pictures of our kitchen!  I really love this house.  I have had lots of fun decorating and pulling things together. 

 I really like the bar part of the counter.  The kids eat breakfast and snacks here.  Lane does his homework there etc.

 I am excited about the paint color we painted.  It is a True Value color called Samuel.  And of course my new refrigerator is something to be excited about too!

 The white door on the left goes out to the garage, the closet in the middle used to hold the washer and dryer but we moved those to the garage and we put the computer desk and all my craft stuff in there.

 I ripped down the Winnie the Pooh valance almost as soon as we moved in (I wonder why?).  I just made this valance last week.  Reese's brother Jordan was here when we moved in and watched me rip the old valance down.  He said he'd wondered how long it would take for me to do that.  He knows me all too well!

Before we moved I scored two (new) old windows from Reese's dads shop.  I backed the panes with the left over fabric from the valance and made it into a menu board.  Just write on it with dry erase markers and it comes right off.  Stay tuned for more pictures of the house!