Monday, July 8, 2013

Independence Day 2013

The morning of July 4th we went to The Woodlands 4th of July Parade.  It's the first time we've been.  Aside from being hot (in the sun, we couldn't find a shaded spot which was at least 20 degrees cooler) it was a fun time.  Laila enjoyed it, but even she too wanted to go home towards the end from being hot LOL. 

 Laila and Zoe are ready!
 Waving to the "bicycles" (motorcycles)
 Trying to get some shade with daddy
 July 4th night we did fireworks in our coldesac with all the neighbors.  I had initially put Laila to bed since she was pretty tired but then all the noise started and she wasn't sleeping.  Plus I felt kinda bad if she missed all the cool fireworks, so she stayed up with us. 

Daddy helped her do some sparklers, which she loved!

We could see The Woodlands fireworks show from our house!

 Watching fireworks with our happy girl (gotta have that "night night" though lol)
 Mesmerized!
 
 On another note, we re-arranged our house... again. We do this at least once a year it seems.  Usually its just been the living room.  But with all the new kids' rooms done now, I guess we thought, why not keep going.  We have a formal living room and a formal dining room, which in my opinion are a waste of space.  At least in our house they seem to be.  I have always said I wanted a craft area/room.  D.J.'s office was pretty enclosed and he didn't really like working in it.  So we moved it to the formal living room where he can see out of the front of the house (neighborhood watch) and it feels much more open.  I forgot to take a picture..

And we sold our formal dining room table and moved the couches and stuff from the formal living into there.  Looks like a nice little seating area.

D.J.'s old office is now my craft area and a place to put all the kids toys which were beginning to pile up in our living room.  Laila likes her new playroom too!


My craft hutch... just need a craft table
Toy area. Pinterest inspired wall art area.
I used my Cricut to cut self adhesive vinyl letters to make the "Masterpieces".

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Summer fun!

 
We love when "Mantadanta" aka Aunt Samantha and "Jibby" aka Uncle Benjamin come to visit!
We got to play puzzles, go swimming at the pool, and had a barbecue!
 
 Our friends/neighbors came over to barbecue with us too and Laila and Zoe got to splash in the pool.  They loved it!
Laila and Zoe are only about 6 months apart, they are great friends :)


On Father's Day we got to see Grandpa, Julie, and Uncle Colton for lunch.  He is so sweet to her!
 Laila was proud of her Father's Day gift
He loved it!



Projects update!

Sorry for the long post, but we've been busy lately getting the house done and finishing up projects.  I think we are done! LOL

Kitchen Update:
Complete! And I am pleasantly surprised with how it came out.  When you paint cabinets, you never know! (not that I've ever painted them before, but well, I've heard horror stories).
 
Before
After

The process itself was pretty easy.  I used a liquid de-glosser to wipe down all the cabinets with, which removed the glossy finish.  Great thing about it is no sanding! Next we primed with a tinted color primer.  Finally painted with Behr Espresso paint, two coats. 
We found the hardware we liked at home depot, but being the savvy shopper he is, D.J. found the same ones online for about half the price! 

Laila's room is pretty much all done.  There are a few little things I still want to do, like find a mirror for over her dresser and hang a few things on that same wall, like the dragon flies I repainted.  But overall, my vision came to life and I love her pink pretty room.  Plus I love that she has much more space since the room is bigger.  She really likes it.  Her favorite color is pink so she was pretty excited to see it all done. 

Before
During: The stencil I used was from Cutting Edge Stencils.  This particular design is called Rabat (large).  Its about a 3X3 ft stencil which makes it easy when doing a whole wall.  They provide instructions on how to do it and even have a YouTube video, which I watched at least a dozen times.

She loves it and has slept in her new room just fine, no rolling out or anything!  It is a trundle bed, so when she has sleep overs we'll be ready! Ah, can't wait!
 
We started looking for a bedding set a couple months ago, mostly on Craig's List and woodlandsonline.com.  I found this set on woodlandsonline for a great price.
 
We talked about this being her new room for weeks in advance and now when we say "go put this in your room" or something like that, she knows which one we are talking about.  It took her a day or two to get it all sorted out, but so far so good!


 Still not sure if I want to put something on this wall...
 
 Still looking for a mirror to hang over the dresser
 I made most of these tissue balls for my sisters baby shower, saved them knowing I would be re-doing Laila's room soon and it makes a great filler for the corner.  Laila kept saying "OOH I like it"
I love this little nook.  I originally wanted D.J. to build some shelves there, but when we found her bedding set, we realized this hutch fit, with only centimeters to spare!  Couldn't have been a more perfect fit.  I told him, well you got lucky, now you don't have to build shelves ha ha!  It provides great storage for her puzzles, games, books etc. and she has much more floor space to play.
 
Baby boy's room is about done too! I love love this room!  3 more months until we get to meet him and hug him and kiss him! 
Tree wall decals from Skip Hop  
The striped wall is new (this was Laila's old room), just taped it off using a laser level and painted stripes, took about an hour, pretty easy. I like the look of it and the accent it provides to the rest of the room.
 
All the furniture is the same as what we used when Laila was a baby/toddler.  The crib is convertible.

His name is going to be Dane Jeffrey!  Jeffrey is my dad's name.  This will be his first boy!  I have 2 sisters, and myself and Suzanne have both had girls.  My step-sister has three girls, so needless to say he was pretty surprised, so was I!  He even got some tears in his eyes when I told him his middle name would be Jeffrey.  I wouldn't want it any other way, I love and respect my dad so so so much!
 
A little story behind Dane... when we were searching the Internet for names we came across a lot of "D" names we liked.  D.J. mentioned how cool it would be for them to have the same initials.  So it worked out perfect!


I bought these letters at Hobby Lobby (I want to say they were about $1.50).  I originally bought letters for the name Dylan, but we changed our minds after about a week so I went back and exchanged the "Y" and the "L".  I primed and painted them.  I bought some canvas, painted those red and hot glued the letters on.  I also bought the little wooden balls, painted them red and they cover the nails.  I did the same in Laila's room. 

 The owls are from Skip Hop.  The little D.J. sign is a drawing that hung in D.J.'s room as a baby.  I thought it was a neat thing to have in there, with some of D.J.'s model cars.
 
I actually want to get one of those pre-made shelves to hang and will probably put that little sign and other keepsakes up there.
 The pennant flag idea I got from Pinterest.  I have endless amounts of scrapbook paper, so I just found a bunch of colors to match the room, cut triangles, and stung together.
 I love this glider and spend countless hours in it when Laila was a baby. 
 The little shelf I was talking about would probably go to the right of the bed.  I had one there when this was Laila's room and it came in handy to hang a diaper holder, towels, etc...
 Dane's sign all done.  We can write in his stats after he is born.


Big sister Laila painted this for Dane when we went to the pottery painting place to make a Father's Day gift for D.J.  It says Love Laila on the back.  I thought it would be a cute keepsake.
 

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

26 week update and more

I blame it on pregnancy brain, but I remembered all night to bring my camera card with me today and I still forgot this morning.  But, I did manage to take a few quick pictures of my 26 week belly this morning.

I've felt great lately, alot more energy, sleeping well.  I started taking an iron supplement and that seems to be helping.  Baby boy seems to be pretty strong and kicks pretty hard sometimes.  He is still much lower than Laila was, but I feel him reaching from one side to the other.  I don't think I will ever get over the awe of feeling a baby kick and how they move and roll around and seem to be all over the place at once.  Sometimes I try to guess which little body part I am feeling poking out, probably a foot most likely. 
 
My weekly pregnancy update says he is around 1&2/3 pounds (almost 2 pounds!) and 14 inches which is the size of a scallion....? best example they could give? Anyway...


 My sister and her husband were here last weekend (more on that later) and they took our guest bedroom set, which I loved and was barely used, in fact they were probably one of the only ones who slept on it.  So I'm glad it is going to good use! But Laila's new "big girl" furniture was moved into her new room and I finally got to start decorating.  Right now I'm stenciling an accent wall (inspired by a few rooms I saw on Pinterest).  I ordered the stencil from Cutting Edge Designs.  As of last night this is how it looks...


I'm pretty happy with how it is turning out.  I'm hoping we are done by this weekend so we can get the rest of the house back in order.  Its been a fairly easy process so far, just takes time it you want it to look good. 

I also re-did/re purposed some dragon flies that were hanging in Laila's nursery/current room, which is blue and pink.  I bought these at Hobby Lobby and they are wooden, so I figured they would be easy to paint.
 Before
 After
Her new room bedding has pinks, black, yellow, white mostly.
 
A friend of mine gave me a beautiful painted canvas with Laila's name and a place to put all her birth information on it when she was born.  We could hang it on the door at the hospital (write with permanent marker with her stats) and then its been hanging in her room ever since.  It was painted to match her bedding.  I love it!  I also had one made for my sister with her first baby.  So with #2 approaching, and feeling all crafty, I decided to try to make one for baby boy myself. 
 
His bedding came with stick on wall decals, enough to make 2 whole trees worth, which I definitely wouldn't be using all of them, so that is what I used on the canvas for the owl, branch, and leaves.  The background I painted to match the colors in the room.  I'll add his name on top. 
 
In other happenings........
We got a new front loader washer recently and we all stood there and watched, mesmerized by it.  Laila was watching her "night nights" aka blankets get washed.
 



 Laila loves the swing her daddy built, she is a bit of a dare devil and wants to copy
 everything he does... hence the puffy cheek look.
 
She has such long legs and seems to be so tall lately.  Sometimes after we get home we'll snuggle, its my favorite favorite favorite.  Especially when she says "snuggle a me mommy!"  How could I resist!
 

Monday, June 17, 2013

A case of the missing SD card

I have alot to write about, lots of fun over the weekend, lots accomplished.  But alas I sit down to write and attach pictures and where is my camera card? Its at home, sitting in my tablet. Booo!  So tomorrow, I'll be ready, with fun pics and some updates on completed projects!