The good and the bad

Moving is such a funny thing. First, you walk through the house with no intentions of buying. You awkwardly glance at each room quickly since lingering feels strange and you don't want to take it too seriously because you are only looking a little and don't want to be too intense (the house might get freaked out and break up with you if you move too fast or show too much interest). Then, suddenly, you decide that this!is!the!house! and you make an offer. You are so excited. The offer gets accepted and you feel like you won the lottery. They are going to take all of my money! Yay!

And then.

You wait.
And wait.
And wait.

Closing isn't for a few months and by the time you move in, you have all but forgotten what the house actually looks like. Hey, you practically forgot you were moving except for all of that annoying packing that has been going on at the old house. The new house is kind of strange. Each room is like a big surprise, and it isn't always a good surprise. You try to stay optimistic and not think what have I done oh man this was a huge mistake but inevitably those thoughts will creep in. Thankfully, the extra space, storage and bedroom both, with a nice view in the back (a river! a real river! in town!) and so much potential will speak sweet nothings in your ears and all will be well at the end of the day.

Like I said, moving is a funny thing.

Our house is becoming more and more our house and I do like it quite a bit. This blog is not going to be all "my house, it's fabulous, please love it with me" all the time but let's be real. I'm excited and there are a ton of things house related going on in my life all.the.time.

So here is what I am loving about our new house:

• In the morning, when the hubby is up early (because I can never get my act together to be up as early as him even though I'm the early riser of the two of us) he can grind his coffee beans as long as he likes because the kitchen is far enough away that it doesn't wake any of us up. Ditto with the ice maker.
• The carpet in the bedrooms is so soft and heavenly on our feet. The rest of the house? Laminate (that my hubby hates with a passion, but it's new so we deal with it until we have to change it in the distant future) that is easy to clean up and look decent enough for this mama.
• The laundry room is right next to the kitchen.
• So is the mudroom with the deep freeze. For real yo. It's oh so convenient.
• When you look out the main window in the living room, it feels like you are out of town in the country somewhere because all you see is trees and river with some yard. It's quiet and wonderful (even though the street in the front is semi busy and the neighbors aren't far away at all). I may or may not have set up the living room so my spot on the couch has the perfect view. I love it, but haven't had much time to enjoy (thank you, children, who don't let me sit down. I love you stop growing so fast.)
• There is a fireplace that is calling out "help me!" and we cannot even wait to make it our own style. We talk about this fireplace's future more than our kids' future.
• Two stall garage, separate garage door openers. For some reason, I love this. I don't even know why.
• The park is only one block away.
• Grandma and Grandpa are only four (or so) blocks away. (A six minute walk, we timed it.)
• The bedrooms feel awkward with only one kid in them, so it works great to have two per room (which means we have two guest rooms right now... it's great).
• The basement's playroom is screaming "homeschool room!" Don't tell my hubby.
• The office in the basement has room for the girls to have toys/books/movie time in the same room so I can work without worrying what they are doing in the playroom next door.
• We have a huge storage room in the basement that gets to double as a craft space. I cannot even wait to use that space.
• We also have a bomb shelter, great for tornadoes and all other miscellaneous things. I'm sure it'll be used for something magnificent.
• Generally, we don't have to deal with stairs. I grew up in a house with stairs but we didn't use them much outside of bedtime and mornings since it was just bedrooms up there. Our previous house was a bilevel and the stairs drove me crazy. I hated being on a different floor than the kids when I needed to switch the laundry and we had things like cleaning supplies, batteries, storage, etc on both floors meaning duplicates like you wouldn't believe. It was wasteful and frustrating. Now, there is a place (plenty of space, we have an abundance of valuable and usable storage) for everything. One place, not two or three in random corners of the house.

But of course, there are the things we don't love...

• The kitchen is awkward. Just... awkward. The "peninsula" consists of upper cabinets that you'd find over a peninsula, maybe between a dining room and kitchen (two sided with four doors total) on the ground with a skinny (freakishly skinny) counter top mounted on top. The oven is on the backside so you can't use the two doors on the kitchen side. The counter is too skinny to use efficiently. So are the cabinets. I had to be very creative with how I used that cabinet space. I want a real island/peninsula and it just makes me mad when I have to use this space... Everything appears to be almost falling off all the time. Plus it's like 50 steps (exaggerating, but it's a lot) from the sink. Like I said, awkward.
• There is one of those pantry closets with the pull out shelves (two sided) so you can use the space way in the back of the deep deep shelving system. It seems great, but when you pull out the movable shelves, it hits the fridge. This means that everything stored behind it are super hard to get to and can only be a certain size or smaller to fit through the narrow opening. Again, awkward.
• This one is for the hubby. For how large (square footage wise) this house is, the garage is quite modest. (I obviously care deeply about this. I mean, come on, we have a shed in the back and a bomb shelter in the basement. How much more space do you need??)
• All of the superficial things need to be updated. Lights, wall color, cabinetry, hardware, you name it, all cheap and outdated. It will take years to get all of it switched and will not be cheap. Thankfully, though, the house was built properly and we don't have structural things to worry about. That helps.
• Our bedroom (the master bedroom) does not have a walk-in closet. Instead, there are two closets with those hideous sliding doors that are always in the way. We all know that the female needs more closet space so now I'm stuck wondering if I should steal some of the hubby's closet space or risk keeping some of my things in the girls' third (yes, third. They have THREE closets...it's absurd) closet that is currently empty. Also, the master bathroom only has a standing shower, and it's not large. Do you know how hard it is to shave in a space like that?! I do love having a master bathroom though. I feel like a grown up.
• The master bedroom is on the street side, not the river side. Instead, the girls get to enjoy the lovely view with the black out curtains that never lets any light, let alone scenery, in to enjoy. Logically, I don't get this one, you builders from the 50's. What were they thinking? My theory is that they were parents and wanted to know for certain when the kids were home and what they were up to out there with their friends. Why else would you want to be right off the driveway and street?
• There is an awkward corner behind the staircase going to the basement in the living room. It is 4'x4' and has a half wall to the stairs while it is open to the living room. How do you use that space? It's so strange. We've debated using it for the kids' toy storage, putting a bookshelf back there (sticks out like a sore thumb though) or just leaving it empty. None of those ideas are any good.
• The river, beautifully brown that it is (cough, not so pretty, cough), is like 30 feet down from our yard. It's not a slope, either, it's a cliff. This means that until we get a fence up, we don't use our lovely back yard. I practically get a hernia every time Josie isn't holding my hand back there. I mean she gets it, the river is dangerous and you need to stay back but I just can't relax a tiny bit when we are back there. The front yard is okay enough to play in though. The driveway curves a little so there is a lot of relatively flat concrete to ride bike on and enough grass for the two little girls that can't run far anyways. It'll do for now. (And I can sit down for at least three seconds without having a heart attack...winning.)

I'm sure there is more, but this is quite a long post for this lady. I have a bunch of pictures taken with a floor plan, too, that I will be posting soon. Stay tuned! (Riveting, isn't it? What, you aren't fascinated with our house like we are??)

What would you do to dress up our curb appeal? It's a little lackluster.

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The difference two weeks can make

High quality, just the way we like it.

A story for you.

Friday, May 31st - My MIL told me about a house near hers that was for sale. She'd been to a garage sale there and thought it was worth mentioning to me (so glad she did!). I looked it up online since it hadn't shown up on my auto-sent emails due to the garage stalls not being the same number (2 instead of 3). Well look at that! A 5 bedroom house in our city that isn't a bilevel. And it's in our price range. And it's on the river. Interesting. I called hubby and had him look at the information. I then called the Realtor to see if we could see it. She told us that there would be an open house on Sunday and we hung up. Later in the evening, my impatience took over and I decided to email her to see it sooner than that.

Saturday, June 1st - At 8:00 AM, we loaded up the girls and went to meet the Realtor at the house. We looked around and were smitten. There were a lot of things to change and update, but it was move-in-ready and had a lot of potential. Neither of us acted too excited, though. We knew that it was a long shot. The house seemed over priced and had some funky things about it.

Sunday through Tuesday - We thought about it and talked about it with family and friends

Wednesday, June 5th - I called our old Realtor from when we had bought our current home and he said we should come in right away if we wanted to make an offer because it's a seller's market. We went in that evening (with the girls, what were we thinking??) and made a super low offer with no negotiations allowed and tried to keep our expectations low. We were expecting a big fat NO.

Friday, June 7th - Our Realtor told us that we did in fact get the big fat NO, but good news! They had lowered the price by 10,000. Interesting. Was this their way of countering our low offer? We decided to make another offer that was above what we had originally thought was our "lowest" and met them more in the middle. They countered, and we accepted! 

The deal was that there were two contingencies. One, our house had to sell before we can close so we can have the new house financed. Two, the house had to pass an inspection. With that information in hand, we knew we needed to get to work on our current house as it was not even close to ready to sell.

We spent the whole weekend and early part of the next week moving half of our stuff out to make the home seem more spacious and comfortable, and hubby worked extra hard on getting the little things done (like trim, yard work, paint touch ups, etc). Hubby's parents helped with all of it (what a huge help they were ohmygoodness) and my sister came down to help babysit the girls so I could focus on the task at hand. Seriously, family can be so great. 

Tuesday, June 11th - our Realtor came over to fill out the disclosure and take pictures. Our house has never looked so good. 

Wednesday, June 12th - We started getting calls from other Realtors looking to set up times to show our house to their clients. A total of 8 showings in the first day - not bad! The girls and I high tailed it out of there to the lake. Do you know how hard it is to keep a house perfectly staged with two kids under two? The answer: impossible. Off we went. 

Wednesday, June 12th at 11:00 PM - Hubby calls to tell me that our house is sold. Excuse me? It hasn't even been listed for 24 hours.



God is so good.
And by the way, this story is true. More details to come!




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Living Room Makeover

We redid our upper level living room! I've alluded to it in other posts, but here are the pictures to give you a taste of how our tastes have matured. I didn't take before pictures (even though I knew I was posting the updated photos...when will I learn?) but I have pictures of the room in general from before. Use your imaginations for the rest.

Ok so the furniture has been moved, the accent wall and window area has been painted, and we've added a new TV. The next three pictures will just give you and idea of what it was like before. I'll try to do better next time I want to show before and after shots. (Promise!)

We made the actual living room space more defined without cutting it off from the dining room. I want it to be open, but not empty. 

I love having the loveseat in front of the window. It doesn't block any of the natural light and I can really see what's going on in the whole space (crucial as the mama in charge around here!). Plus, now when I'm feeding the baby, there will be no way anyone can peek in and see something inappropriate. That's a win.

We moved the bookshelf next to the (no longer used) air conditioner which also really helped define the space. At some point, we'll take that air conditioner out now that we have central air. I'm thinking we'll put a window in there but the hubby is in charge of that. 

The dining room area is much more roomy now that I moved the old TV and stand out of that corner. I have no pictures of this because it was UGLY and I avoided it. Now we have room for all the chairs to be moved, Buckley's food bowl that is hidden in the corner, and access to the china hutch. I don't feel overwhelmed. That's most important.

Someday I would like to replace that ceiling light (and the two matching lights that are in the kitchen) but again, not a huge priority. 

Remember how I accomplished so much this last weekend? One of the things that I feel like I'm always battling is clutter on the china hutch and table. I finally cleaned it off and it's surprisingly stayed that way so far. It looks so much better. 

This is the view from the kitchen peninsula. We spend a lot of our day here, and then on the wall just to the left is where the piano is. Between kid time and piano lesson time, this is MY room. I'm so glad we were able to make it more comfy for our every day use. 

That bookshelf used to be completely overwhelmed with random books. Since those books will eventually be on the built-ins in the lower level living room (when that gets done someday), I decided to box them up and make this shelf as usable as possible. All of those books are piano method books/recital pieces. The top shelf will be filled with more piano music that I will use for my lessons. The bottom three shelves are at Jo's  height so she gets those for toys. It may not translate so well in pictures, but once the toys are on the shelves the whole room feels clean and roomy. It's crazy how that little bit of organization makes a huge difference.

And then this terrible picture. Sorry. But I wanted to show the corner by the stairs. It used to house the bookshelf from the last picture, but now has the stand that the old huge TV was on in the dining room area. It's shorter, obviously, so it doesn't obstruct the view to the stairs as much, and we now have a place for my purse and the diaper bag. It is so nice to have a spot for those instead of draping them on chairs, railings, floor space, etc. Again, having a place for everything makes this girl happy!

So there you have it. Our upper level. Someday I'd love to take better pictures and get better angles, just to remember it better, but who has time or talents for that? Not me. 

What do you think of the paint job that my hubby did in 5 hours one Sunday evening? And the new furniture layout?

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Master bedroom Makeover. The beginning.

It's no secret that our master bedroom leaves much to be desired. It's a small room with a small walk-in closet and we share the bathroom with the rest of the upper level of our house. Neither of us mind sharing the bathroom although we both admit we'd love to have a master bathroom, but the closet and room size really fit the word "quaint" a little too well.

When we got our king-size bed, hubby planned on building a bed frame that would match our taste more. It was and is important to us because so many pieces of furniture in our house were given to us or found super cheap so they don't necessarily fit our tastes but definitely work for function-ability. We'd love to incorporate more of our style and thought that him making a one-of-a-kind bed frame would really help. This seems like a great dream, right? Because of course, as life goes, he has had no time to even remotely start this project. His business has been doing great and he's left with little to no time and a to-do list that keeps growing. Our bed frame project is close to the bottom of that list, so we figured we needed something in the meantime. It's been over a year since we got the bed, after all. It's time.

So hubby picked up a cheap metal frame from Menards and put it together last night (after Josie went to bed right across the hall. We're smart like that). We also took the opportunity to rearrange our room a little completely and see if there was a better way to cram fit in all of our very necessary furniture. Why didn't I take before pictures?? I never remember to do that. 

Previously, the bedroom layout was similar to this.

See? Crowded, awkward, wasted space (although not much since there just isn't that much space). We have always had our bed right there, it's just gotten bigger. It didn't look so crowded when we had a tiny little full-size bed, but come on. King-size is worth the floor space take over.

Here is what it looks like now.

Yes, we still have some homeless items (see the hallway? and the closet dresser? Full of "stuff" that needs homes). But did you see how much more room there is right when you walk in? It's wonderful! I'm thinking we'll put the bassinet in front of the dresser with the mirror. We don't use that dresser as much as the other one, so it won't be a big deal if some of the drawers are blocked off temporarily. I won't have much room to get into bed, but there will be just enough to slip by, and baby girl will be close enough that I shouldn't have to completely get up out of bed to grab her. We'll see... hopefully I'll remember to post pictures of that too.

Mostly I just want to remember this "before" picture because I want to dress it up a bunch more and make it more personal. This room has always been plain Jane since hardly anyone sees it and I have never felt any inspiration for it. What do you put on the big side walls?? I can imagine putting pictures on either side of the windows, but those side walls are huge and bare (except for our engagement pictures which will be moved).

Feel free to share your thoughts if you have any inspiration from the poorly taken photos above. 

Work in progress... always in progress and never finished!


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Organize that kitchen!

Just like everyone else, I've got the urge to organize. And it is bad. So I will show you how hard I've been working on my kitchen. I don't have good before pictures but I am so excited about the after pictures that I will proudly show them off.

Here's my one before picture. Well, really it isn't "before" because I took them all out of the cabinet and put them on the table. This is all of my tupperware that is getting the boot. I plan on replacing all of it with glass containers to avoid all the junk that plastic gives off like BPA and other chemicals. I'm finally jumping on this bandwagon...

I like being environmentally friendly and recycling and all of that, but I get so sick of the hype of it all that sometimes I just throw in the towel. If you remember, I was a vegetarian for about two months before I got pregnant with Josie. I did this because of everything I was hearing about the meat industry and what was happening to the animals and even more so because I found that my body did just fine without meat. I was no longer ignorant (sometimes that's not a good thing). But pregnancy won in the end, and my cravings and general appetite required it. 

I am all about trying new things and finding what works best. I try so hard to balance what is good for this beautfiul earth that God gave us and what works for us because if I tried to be the "greenest girl in the world" I'd be completely overwhelmed living in a hole in the ground; I'm sure of it.

Baby steps.

So here is my cabinet that had been packed full with tupperware that was worn out and obviously in need of replacement. I purchased some Pyrex bowls (a set of nine bowls with lids) and another set of three that were smaller but still matched). These glass containers take up about the same amount of space, but I don't have (or probably need) as many of them. I'm sure I'll add to my collection eventually but they are expensive (and way longer lasting of course) so it will be a work in progress.

Aren't they pretty?

 The next thing I'd been wanting to do was use the space on the inside of the cabinets. I keep seeing this brilliant idea of putting hooks up and using that space for more than just a door. Who'd have thought? So I found some cheap hooks at Target and put them up in two different cabinets. Voila!

This added a lot of room to one of our very few drawers that was poring out and getting jammed shut all the time. Pictures of that exciting update will come soon.

Then I moved on to the canned foods cabinet. If I had a before picture, you would have seen cans filling the bottom two shelves and pasta along with other random things that don't have homes filling the top shelf. I went through my canned foods and set aside everything that was expired (much to the dismay of my husband who insists that canned food cannot go bad). It left me with half of the cans left. That is so gross. But it also shows me that we don't use canned foods all that much. Why are we storing all of it then? So out it went, and it will not be replaced (until we use some more of the current-not-expired cans). 

I also added this little shelf that matches a shelf we have to separate our plates and bowls (completely made my week when I got it the first time and of course didn't fail me this time). These things work miracles. So lovely to go up vertically instead of just wasting all of that space!

I rearranged our lazy susan (Susan? Since it's a name, should it be capitalized?) which also had a lot of wasted vertical space and filled in the bottom shelf. I haven't perfected good ole Susan yet so that will have to have follow up pictures later. 

I mentioned before that hubby had added roll out shelves to the pots and pans disaster corner. Here they are:

It makes my heart go pitter patter. No joke. I actually grin like a fool when I get to take something out or put something away. I'm sure it will wear off, but I'm determined to enjoy it while it lasts.

More updates later (because you know there is more. I don't ever do something just a little bit!).

Nursery view

I finally took some pictures of Josie's room. Ignore the random clutter and focus on all the cutesy things please!

View from the door. I made the curtains and the crib sheet when I was pregnant. We had an old fashioned rocking chair in there but it was so impractical. We just traded this chair (which reclines and turns) from the living room and haven't regretted that choice at all.

To the right of the door, I did not clean up the changing table at all so you could see what it looks like on an average day. I painted the letters and Mike put up the tree decal. We got the crib and the changing table (Pottery Barn) from a cousin who had just finished using it with her son. We were so excited to get them because they were way nicer than what we could afford right now!

Crib (in desperate need of some bumpers with that roly poly baby:

The horse was made for Mike by his mom. I realize his "saddle" does not match the room at all, but that is where I keep the sling since I use it often enough to keep it out.

I'm going to have to do something different with the shelf since those tea cups are way too small and the rest is completely random but for now they work til I find what I want (could take until Josie is 18... lets hope not).

The two bags by the garbage are for the dirty diapers. I do have to admit that this looks a lot messier from this angle, which is never where you would stand. Thank God for that! The more popular angle is looking from the top down which means the clutter is hidden from view...

My favorite corner. It's so cozy and holds all of her books, which someday she will be so excited to read!

These were given to her by Aunt Elizabeth. They match so perfectly, I couldn't believe it!

Isn't that MP3 player just lovely? But it is truly a life saver when J isn't quite as sleepy at bedtime. I think that the giraffe needs to be put away... not too pretty although fun to play with (when she's older and actually knows how to use her hands).

I found these bins at Target for $3 each. So nice to be able to use all that space up there and the junk is hidden from view for the most part.

All that left side is sadly too summery now. I'll have to go through and see what we are missing and put those away until the next child. I think the closet will look a little bare after that. Guess we'll have to go shopping!

I realize how awkward this angle is, but I wanted you to see the rest of the wall decals. We had these left over and didn't want to just not use them since they weren't all that cheap. I like how it brings back the theme of outdoorsy/leaves and blue birds.

There you go! We like it... I still would like to put a colored mirror above the crib but I haven't been able to find anything I really like.

Who's house is that, anyway?

We did some serious work this weekend people. Cleaning, organizing, finishing projects. It was beautiful.
See, I tend to be a bit of a nagger when it comes to the loose ends around here. I'm not proud of it, but a lot of the products we have left to do are a bit out of my hands. Literally... Mike doesn't want me to even touch them. That being said, he was absolutely amazing this weekend getting little things done that have been piling up. He's so busy with work that I could never have asked or expected this from him... so here are some pictures of our progress. :)

Living room upstairs. Originally I had wanted to move the piano to the otherside of the room but that also meant that we had to find a new place for the huge desk that currently occupies the space. The reason for this is because of how crowded it was. I wish I had a previous picture that I could use to show you how awful it was before. I never wanted to be there! But Mike just moved a couple of things around and tada!! Much more open and Sarah-style.

Dining room

Dining room/huge desk that doesn't need to be taken apart and moved (right now)!

Upstairs bathroom. I have been wanting to keep everything white and more spa-like and I finally have collected enough hand and body towels that we can keep it looking like this on a regular basis. It's so nice when it is clean like this!

 Our bedroom. We finally cleaned up the piles of clothes that didn't have homes and now I like being in this room too! But wait - there's more!

Our closet is even clean!!! Truly prevents the headache I develop every morning as I stare in here all groggy and sleepy. I also went through and took out all my post-pregnancy-only clothes so I don't have to sadly look at what I can't wear for the next 5-7 months. Plus that opened up a ton of room for all the new clothes my family loaded me up with! Thank you family for taking care of me :).

 Guest bedroom upstairs. This room is soon to be converted into the baby room but for now it is still the guest bedroom. Not much has changed, but it's significantly cleaner than it was before! Can't wait to start the transformation...

Living room downstairs. New tv (looks so small from the stairs! but is actually a 50 in). Clean, neat, without a bunch of clutter. We could use a bit more in this room but I am not rushing it... I know how easy it is to go overboard and end up with too much! Mostly just notice how wonderfully clean it is.

 See those track lights? Those are one of the projects that Mike did today! We got them at Lowe's and they turned out way better than I was even hoping for. I didn't realize how dark the basement was until he turned those on. Plus they make that painting look amazing.

 Track lights from the bathroom looking up.

 I just have to show you how organized I am for Christmas next year. I took the time to carefully put everything away in order of the room things belong to. That way when I put decorations up (with a little one occupying my time) I won't have a chaotic mess like I had this year! I also set this closet up so that all my gift wrapping, Christmas and otherwise, is easily accessible. I have tons of bows, wrapping paper, and tissue paper and now it is all in one spot. It looks messy, but it is a super organized mess and makes me happy just looking at it!

Bathroom downstairs. Picture hung? Check! Towel rack up? Check! Room looking finished? CHECK!

 Oh, and did I mention that Mike got me flowers for my birthday and they are still going strong? Looked nice in here so there they sit!

What is that big piece of wood that is blocking this picture?

Ahh it is the shelf that Mike put up for storage in the laundry room! Again, wish I had a picture to properly show you the mess this room was before. He also plans on putting in a sink and more shelves above all of that on the otherside. This room is so functionable that I can hardly stand it. Dare I say that laundry is not such a chore in here??

Oh mini fridge, how we meet again. This fridge was for Mike's dorm room but it serves a wonderful purpose in the lower level. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to be able to walk in there and grab a bottled water instead of going all the way upstairs everytime my glass gets empty. Add the future sink to that and I may never come upstairs again!

As I told a colleague at work - "do you know how much water it takes to make a baby?!"

Well that is it for now! I am so much happier with the way things are set up - baby room doesn't seem so overwhelming anymore. Well... we'll see if I still think that after I start looking for all the things we need online. Yes, I am a huge online shopper. But lets just remember how much there is out there!! I might need a pep talk or two in the near future!