Family Room

After swallowing a hard dose of cold reality, I realized that the chances of painting the family room before this little guy is born were extremely slim.  So, I went ahead and rearranged all the furniture and got the room set up the way I wanted.  It is still kind of rough, there's no decorating done or anything like that but the set up seems to be very workable for us.  We have done school quite a few times and found it to be ideal.  Also, with the kids toys where they are at, the little ones can play quietly with toys right next to us while we do school!

In this picture you can see how it's set up.  The computer desk works so well under the window!  Next to it is the turtle tank in the corner, then the school shelves, then a dresser full of all our games (we like to play games, so we have a lot of them), and finally the toy shelves.  We bought a new tank for Elijah's frogs and put them on top of the game dresser.

Here are the school shelves.  I went through the school stuff somewhat as I put it on but I need to do more sorting and organizing as I can.  All our picture albums, baby books, etc are on the top shelves.  I also put all the art supplies (paper, glue, scissors, playdough, etc.) on these shelves.  Our library books occupy one shelf (2nd shelf from bottom, left side) and our kid books are on the next shelf down.  I'm always amazed at how much school/kid/art stuff there is!

And here are the toy shelves.  I did a major sorting of all the toys when I set up this shelf.  No, these are not all the toys, we still have 7-8 bins of toys in the garage as well as oversized toys that I switch out on a daily basis.  The toys that made it onto these shelves are the ones that are played with consistently on a daily basis.  There's also a box of weapons next to the shelves on the left that you can't see in this picture.

I would still like to work in a bookshelf just for books, but I'm not sure where yet.  Maybe in the corner by the game dresser?  I also want to build some shelves to hang above the toy shelves to put 3D art that the kids make on, and hang up a bulletin board to display all the drawings the kids make.  But for now, I'm very happy with how this worked out!

Saturday

This past Saturday my Mom and Dad came over for the day.  My mom and I went to a Mother's Day Luncheon, while my Dad stayed with Mark and the kids and did some work in our backyard.  It was a very productive day!

Emmaline didn't go to the Luncheon with us, I didn't think she was quite old enough yet.  When she saw my Mom's outfit she went upstairs and changed her clothes though, because she wanted to match Grandma!

Mom and I had a great time at the Luncheon and were so impressed with it, it was a fundraiser for a local charity and everything was great!  While we were gone Dad and Mark put down mulch in the backyard around our lilacs and in the garden, cut out and fitted a table top for our table out back, and installed an umbrella over the table.  It all looks so nice out back!

Picture Wall

After seeing photos of different picture walls, as well as seeing them in other people's homes, I knew I wanted to put one together.  I ordered sepia prints of pictures of all the kids, as well as one of Mark, and bought picture frames at the dollar store.  I also bought several different stick on sayings to try with the pictures to see which one I liked.  After some fiddling, this is what I came up with.

I can't get the pictures to hang straight, one of the "benefits" of getting the frames from the dollar store.  But since these are at the top of the stairs I figure it looks fine, like people have walked by it many times and they are just due to be straightened soon.  I like it!

Project Update

For those of you wondering how our projects are going I thought I would post a quick update.  Any projects in our house take a LONG time to complete and this time around is not different.  Especially since I'm pregnant, things just don't get done.  Sigh...  Anyhow,  here is how our family room is looking right now. 

You might remember that I was planning to paint it and turn it into a school/play room?  Well, that is still the plan, we just haven't made much progress.  We did get rid of our couch (it was so old and worn out we had to pay the trash company $30 to haul it off!), and sold our old entertainment center.  So, it's looking a bit empty furniture wise.  But we more than make up for it with toys! ;-)  We are hoping to do the painting in the next month or so.  Then will come the fun part, rearranging, decorating and settling back in!

As for our other projects, well, they are progressing even slower.  We bought all the wood to redo the railings in our house.  Here it is sitting in our garage. 

As incredible as it seems this small pile is a little over $300 worth of wood!  Ouch!  It all has to be stained, which I shouldn't do, so it has to wait for Mark to have time.  

The hallway upstairs still needs to be painted.  I keep hoping for a day when I will have the energy to tackle it but so far that hasn't happened.  (I know, I know.  I probably shouldn't paint either...) With my track record it might be another few years!

So, that's about it for our projects!

Oops, it's Wednesday!

Wow, would you believe I completely forgot that today is my day to post?!?  I did all my usual things on the computer (e-mail, etc.) and logged off before I realized that I was supposed to post something today!  Ahhhhh!  Thank goodness for my handy dandy camera, full of pictures from my week which helps me remember what in the world happened.  So, on to the real subject of this post...

My wonderful hubby rented a ceiling sprayer this past weekend and fixed the family room ceiling!  Our bathroom floor has been flooded multiple times and each time it has soaked through the floor and dripped down through the family room ceiling.  So, we had an ugly spot where the texture was peeling off.  Fortunately for me, people almost never look at the ceiling, but still it bothered me.  Now that we are in the process of re-doing the family room I thought it was about time to fix that ugly spot.  Being the good sport that he is, my hubby spent his weekend fixing the spot for me.

It looks so much better!  Now I have to figure out when to paint the ceiling, yuck!

Rearranging some things...

We moved our TV from the family room to the living room.  This was quite the process and included buying a new TV stand and running speaker wire under the living room floor (in the crawl space).  It took Mark almost a whole day to get everything set up!

So far having the TV in the living room has worked out really well!  I like having the kids right by me when they watch movies and being able to monitor better what is being watched.  It also worked really well for our Friday night movie night, it was soooo much easier to just bring things from the kitchen into the living room instead of downstairs!

The next big project is the hallway upstairs.  I painted the ceiling this past week, now I need to get the walls done...  

We are in the middle of so many projects right now that the house is a bit of a mess but I know it will get better eventually so I just try to remind myself of that!

Awana Grand Prix

Elijah and Emmaline had so much fun building their grand prix cars for Awana!  They spent a bit of time on the internet with Mark looking at ideas and picking what they wanted to do.  Emmaline settled on a Strawberry Shortcake car and Elijah picked Mater (from the movie Cars).  Mark cut out the cars, then Emmaline and Elijah did all the painting themselves!  I was so proud of them!  The Grand Prix was last week, Elijah didn't win anything which he was pretty disappointed about but Emmaline won an award for "Most Colorful Car"!  Ha! 

The actual Grand Prix was a fiasco, I thought it was crazy last year but this year was really bad.  We actually came home and talked about our options for someplace different to go for Awana next year (It was BAD).  I guess we will see how the rest of the year goes, but we have not been very pleased with things this year and the Grand Prix is the proverbial straw that broke the camels back!  Pray for us to have wisdom in this decision!

Boys Dresser

I'm in fixing up mode!  I have big plans for everything that I'm going to fix, paint, or otherwise change this year (including painting furniture, kitchen cabinets, walls furniture, replacing flooring and furniture and generally rearranging and organizing the whole house!).  We'll see how much I actually can get done!

My first project this year was to paint the boys dresser black.  Elijah asked me to paint it black for him almost 2 years ago and somehow I never got around to it, partly because of finances and partly for lack of time.  So, 2 weeks ago I broke down and bought a gallon of black paint and some polyurethane.  Here's how it looked post painting.  Not too bad, just a little worn from use. 

I removed the drawers hardware, sanded down the whole dresser, moved it to the family room and started painting! 

We didn't get through the process without any mishaps though.  Micah stepped right in my container of paint!  What a mess!  Good thing I put down drop cloths!

After painting I put on 2 coats of poly, then let it dry for 5 days before reassembling in the boys room.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out, although I'm not sure if I should paint the handles silver.  Any opinions?

A bad day for flying...

On Sunday we went out to Mark's parents house to celebrate his Mom's birthday.  Because the weather forecast called for perfect RC airplane flying weather Mark decided to bring all his airplanes.  The first plane he took up was his bi-plane, shown here when he first got it last year. 

After flying it for a bit he decided to do some fancy moves.  Bad idea.  The tail of this airplane has never been very stable, we bought it already built and it wasn't straight.  Mark took the biplane into a loop but when he went to pull out it went into a spin. Then it went into a nose dive straight into the ground, where it literally exploded into a million tiny slivers of wood.  Here is all that is left of the plane.

After such a poor start, I thought Mark would be done flying but he wanted to keep going.  Next he tried to fly his piper cub (the yellow one).  I should explain that Mark's parents drive way is pretty short as far as runways go, and there is a fence at the end of it.  Anyhow, he started the piper taking off only to find that the plane didn't respond to any of the controls.  He cut the engine and tried to land it but it didn't have enough airspeed, flipped over, and landed on it's wing, ripping the wing struts from the plane, tearing a hole in the wing covering and denting the front engine cover.  But at least this one is fixable.  I didn't get any pictures of this crash, I was in shock that he had crashed again.

Next up he flew the T-Craft (the little blue and white one).  This one flew perfectly, with no problems at all.  So, Mark decided to take his Extra up (this is the black one, that I gave him for Christmas) for it's maiden flight.  Mark started the take off roll, lifted off the ground, and... the engine died!  Because of the fence at the end of the runway Mark tried to turn the plane to the side.  The wing was ripped in half and the landing gear ripped off as well.  I didn't get a picture of this either.  It was simply to painful to see all that time and effort ruined in such a short time.  It is fixable, the fuselage is fine, but Mark has to rebuild the entire wing from scratch.

So, at the end of the day, Mark had 3 planes less than when he started.  What a rotten day for flying!

Another one bites the dust!

So, anyone who knows Mark knows that he attracts bad drivers like a magnet.  And, true to form, this week Mark was in another accident.  :-(   The front of the bug is sooo smashed, it looks so awful.  Fortunately Mark wasn't hurt.    We are trying to figure out how to pay for another car, because the other driver didn't stop.  We have uninsured motorist coverage but that will not cover another car.   

Dollhouse Progress

For those of you wondering whats going on with my dollhouse, the answer is "not much".  I have picked out some wallpaper for the living room (Roosevelt Rose in Pink) and have it setting up against the walls but I can't install it until I get my lamps either bought or built depending on the spot. 

Currently I have everything set up with what I have even though it's not how I want the finished room to be.  I'm going for a shabby chic look, and am slowly getting there.  I built the coffee table and painted it and also painted the bookcase in the corner.  I still need to make the firebox for the fireplace.  And I can't decide on what finish to do on the floor!  So many decisions to make...

I decorated it for the 4th of July last night (a little early) and think it looks so cute!

  Will keep you posted when I get more done!  :-)

Bathroom Remodel

We spent this last weekend working on our bathroom...what a lot of work!  We have lived in our house for 3 years and the floor under the toilet has been slowly sinking the whole time due to water damage, so we decided it was time to do something about it!  Here is the bathroom before the remodel.  You can't really see it but the back of the toilet is sitting against the wall, not at all where it should be.

 And here is the bathroom floor with all the flooring removed.  Gee, I think it might be molding!  Yuck!!!

 Mark removed all the sub floor and replaced it.  He also anchored up the floor joists with 2x4's to help the floor to remain level.  This is our only bathroom, so Mark worked as fast as he possibly could to get the floor done.  We had all the kids use the bathroom before we took out the toilet and we managed to  get it back in again before anyone needed it again!  Yay!  It took Mark about 6 hours for this part of the remodel, we were up till 1 a.m. on Friday night getting this done.

 We bought a new medicine cabinet and light from the local Habitat for Humanity store.  They sell used items from homes at a deep discount, our new light and cabinet only cost us $29!  Our old medicine cabinet was mounted on the wall, which I never liked.  So, Mark cut out an opening for our new cabinet.  It was very convenient because the new cabinet was the exact size as the old one, and the people before us had not removed the cabinet when they painted.  (Actually they didn't remove anything when they painted so there were all kinds of weird yellow spots on the walls where ever something had been mounted.)  All Mark had to do was cut out where the different colored paint was!

Dollhouse Exterior

I have made some progress on the outside of the dollhouse, it is starting to look pretty good!  Lots more to go

but it's finally starting to look like a real house!!!

So... maybe it will be done on the outside by Christmas?  :-) Ha!!!

Mini's!

In the past couple of weeks I have been able to make a few things for my dollhouse and I've really enjoyed it!  Here is the living room.  I made the couch from kitchen sponges.  I'm not sure I like how it turned out but it's a good place holder for now.  I also made the coffee table from scrap wood leftover from Mark's airplane.  I am pleased with how it turned out but again, I'm not sure if I'll keep it in this room or not.  I made the board game and box from patterns I printed off the internet, the board is not quite done but still looks cute.  I made the jug from a pattern I found on the internet as well, it is made of paper.  The flowers are made from tissue paper and are tiny, I will be making more to make the jug full of flowers.  I put up the pink on the walls for now but it is a bit much for the look I'm wanting in this room.  The flooring is a piece of scrapbook paper set down till I get what I want.  Dollhouse stuff is expensive!

A picture with my fingers to show how small it is...

Dollhouse Bedframe

I have spent the last week working on making a twin size bedframe for my dollhouse.  The dollhouse itself is no where near ready for furniture or decorating but I couldn't resist trying my hand at making something.  I used some scrap wood leftover from Mark's airplanes, cut down to the right sizes.  Then I sanded all the similar pieces to match.  Mark built me a right angled jig which I used to make sure all the corners were perfect.  I am really pleased with how it came out, it looks so realistic!

First Model Car!

Mark and Elijah spent the afternoon Sunday building a wooden model car kit that Mark had picked up for a $1 on clearance.  We, of course, didn't tell Elijah where we got it or how much it cost, only that Daddy had bought it just for the two of them to do together and he was thrilled!  Elijah was so proud of himself for being old enough to work on a model with Daddy.  :-)

Jewelry

For Christmas Elijah gave Emmaline some beads to make jewelry so on Sunday Emmaline and I spent some time making her a bracelet and necklace.  She used the beads from Elijah as well as some of my beads from my jewelry making.

Extra 300S

For Christmas I got Mark an Extra 300S model airplane kit. He has been working on it faithfully and is making great progress! Here is how much he has done so far:

dollhouse update

Here is what I've accomplished on my dollhouse so far.  The shell of the house is together.  I don't have the roof glued on yet, I'm just checking if for size in the picture and marking the eves so I can paint them.  Slowly but surely I'm checking things off my huge to do list and the house is starting to look great!

New Projects...

For Christmas Mark gave me a dollhouse and I gave him a model airplane kit!  So, we have been spending our evenings together working on our individual projects.