New Home Tour: Part 3 or ~A Surprise~

This is the last of the home tour. I'll probably show before/after pictures as we do some updating on the house. Right now we don't have any work planned, but we know what our projects are for the future.

Below is Chloe's room. I decided to go with a blue since her room at our other house was pink. I needed to change it up a bit. She seems to like it. I knew I wanted polka dots, but I wasn't really sure how to accomplish the task. I've never used a stencil, but I was pretty sure it would be messy and smudge everywhere. After checking out the InterWeb, I came across this YouTube video on Polka Dot Wall Painting. It was a perfect solution. It was so easy and fast! Chloe loves it and she tries to lick the wall the dots on the wall...she seems to think it's ice cream.

As you can see, I only did one and a half walls with the dots. I didn't want the whole room to be so busy.

This is the laundry room. It's directly across from Chloe's room. I'll eventually paint and put some organizational shelving and such in here.

Now, don't judge. I was going to clean this room for pictures, but then I decided to just be honest. This is the second guest room. It's not decorated. I use it to sort and fold my laundry. I haven't bothered decorating it, because it's going to be a baby room in a few short months! That's right...

We are having baby G2 in June of 2013. We are about 14 weeks right now...starting the second trimester.

Chloe turns 3 in May and this baby will make his/her appearance shortly after her celebration. We are so excited!

Chloe is very adamant that she wants a brother. Mark is sure it's another girl. I have no idea nor do I care. I really don't. I would love to have son and think I would be sad to never have a boy. But, Chloe's so much fun that another girl would be a wonderful addition...plus I have a lot of girl clothes. We'll know more in January! 

New Home Tour: Part 2

This is probably my favorite part of our home. After living in a box for the last five years (don't get me wrong...our first home was great), this open floor plan is just what we needed. I love that I can be in the kitchen and still be a part of the family room activities.

This part of our house is hidden in the back after you walk through the formal area. In our other house, you walked in the front door and were immediately standing in our family room. It can be a little awkward when you don't really know the person ringing the doorbell.

The only two drawbacks to an open kitchen?

1. The dishwasher is loud. If you want to talk, you have to wait until bedtime to run it.
2. The kitchen must be kept clean at all times...everybody can see the mess when your kitchen isn't hidden behind a wall.

I'm not complaining about either drawback. It doesn't bother me at all. I'm just pointing out the cons.

Below is the kitchen. When we moved in the entire house was white. I don't mean a shade of white. I mean the base color white that they use to mix another color...as white as white can get. Blinding white. So we toned everything down by painting the walls a sandy beige and the kitchen 'Chocolate Milk.' We also had the counter tops replaced. They were white Formica...we had that in the other house and so we decided we wanted to upgrade to quartz.

The view from the family room.

View from the hallway entrance. The door you see in the picture leads to the master suite.

Just another angle of the hallway entrance. I know there are a ridiculous amount of pictures of the kitchen...it's my favorite part of this house.

This is the family room. I haven't put up mini blinds yet. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle this situation. I love the natural light that flows in and this our backyard, so I'm tempted to leave it so I can have the light. It's not like we sit around naked watching television...

View of the family room fireplace.

Art niche which I'm clearly not using for 'art.'

This is the breakfast nook. It's huge for a 'nook' so now you see why we really have no use for the formal dining area. Don't mind the ugly linoleum. I'll put tile in someday, but I've discovered that linoleum is really easy to clean which comes in very handy with a messy toddler and mealtime.

View of the hallway that leads to the spare bedrooms and laundry room...which is next up on the home tour.

New Home Tour: Part 1

This is long overdue. But, I'm happy to start the tour of our new home. Below is our formal living/dining combo room. You can see the tree set up in the front window. When you turn to your right as you come in the front door, there is a double door to our office (pictures included in post).

Below is the formal dining portion of the combo room. For the immediate future it will function as a play area. We don't really have use for a formal dining area and we really could use the play room for Chloe. You can see Chloe walking through the entry way into our open kitchen/living area. You can also see that there are quite a few toys in there...

These are the double doors to the right of the front door that lead to our office area/man cave.

Office. Mark picked the desk off Craigslist. I painted the room Antique Pewter. I just love the color!

Please excuse the lack of curtains. When we moved in there were no mini blinds, so we spend quite a bit putting those up for privacy. Someday I'll get around to putting up curtains and window toppers to add warmth and personality. I honestly don't have a sense of urgency about it. We plan to be in the house for a very long time.

 

That's all for now. I'll show our living room, kitchen and breakfast nooks next. I just need to do a little de-cluttering and that's difficult while Chloe is awake.

Halloween Picture

I guess before Thanksgiving gets here, I should share this picture of miss C dressed up for Halloween. She was a bumblebee. Of course, she insisted that it was actually a princess bee costume. Anything with a skirt is a princess. So adorable.

We had a block party this year for Halloween. Chloe got a lot of candy, but only went to one door to say "Trick or Trick." The funny part was that I was planning on making her a pirate for Halloween so I had been working on getter her to say "Trick arrrrrrh Treat" in a pirate voice. Well, that's exactly what she did. So I actually had a little princess pirate bee. ha

Favorite Reads for the Kiddos: My First Counting Book

I'm pretty lazy lately. I need to start blogging more. But for now, this is it.

This book is a family tradition of sorts. My parents read this to me when I was little. In fact, my mom still has this book memorized from when my brother and I were children.

I was giving my copy from childhood, but it was so worn out that I bought a new one for Chloe. It is now almost as worn out as my 30 year old copy. But the book served it's purpose well. Chloe learned how to count by reading the book over and over and over and...

It's a cheap book. You can find it as low as $.75 on the Internet. And it's one book that I will make sure my children have for their kids' book collection some day.

Picture was borrowed from Amazon. 

Sweet Berry Farm 2012

In keeping with our family tradition, we visited Sweet Berry Farm a few weekends ago. I'm pretty sure I rave about it every year. It's a fantastic place and if you live in Central Texas you must make a trip out there.

Now that Chloe is getting older, we are able to stay longer and participate in more activities. This year we tried to take a horse ride. However, Chloe was a little skeptical of the situation so we had our tickets refunded. She did cry about not getting to ride the horse once we arrived back at our house. Maybe next year?

We didn't let the missed horse ride ruin our fun...we fed goats, painted a pumpkin, had an adventure in the corn maze and rolled in the grass. This is one of my favorite days of the year for our family.

So happy she found a "baby pumpkin"

Enjoy this little video clip of Chloe feeding the goats! I honestly thought she would be more hesitant to feed them. This girl always surprises me.

Links to the past Sweet Berry Farm trips:

2011

2010

The Big Move

 

Mark taking apart Chloe's bed for the move.

 

A glimpse at our old living room before we loaded the boxes on the truck.

 

Our cold, empty home the morning of the move.

 

The shiny, new home before we got the keys.

 

Almost our entire home is in that truck!

 

Making silly faces during our first dinner at the new place.

 

Mark and I pretending to be mad at each other while we are painting the new house.

 

Part of the new kitchen. That's our brand new stove! Now we just have to get a microwave above it.

 

Shorty sharing ice cream with Chloe.

 

Mark changing out that ceiling fan. No brass in this house.

 

Pop helping to paint the kitchen. It was stark white. So white it was blinding.

 

 

 

So far we have painted almost every room, changed out the light fixtures in every room but two bedrooms, hung blinds and added a new stove. We are having counter tops installed in a few weeks and I'm going to paint our bedroom in the next few weekends.

 

I really hope to share more details about the new house, but we are super busy getting things done.

Mommy and Daddy needed a Vacation

Two weeks ago, Mark and I were on our way to board a boat. A big boat. We took a Carnival cruise out of Galveston. We had it planned for months. We payed for the trip in full well before we put our house on the market.

As luck would have it (and I'm not complaining), our closing date was set for two days (2 DAYS) after we disembarked the ship. It wasn't as awful as we anticipated. We did lots of planning and preparing in the weeks leading up to our vacation. We also had family and friends who provided so much support during those two days.

But before I move on to talking about our new pad, I want to share our trip. We left on a Thursday sailed to Cozumel, Mexico and returned on Monday. It was four nights of relaxation and it was just what the doctor ordered for all the stress that a move entails.

There aren't many pictures because:

1. my point and shoot camera stinks
2. there wasn't really anything to photograph. we were at sea for two days with nothing in sight.

We did see a waterspout while we were sunbathing the first day. I wish I had my camera while we were out that afternoon. It was so beautiful to watch from a distance. Other than that, there wasn't much excitement which was exactly the way we wanted it. We had enough excitement going on at home.

In case you are wondering, Chloe had a mini-vacation of her own while we were gone. She staying with Shorty and Pop in Houston. In fact, she stayed with them for two extra days while we finished with closing and moving. It was sure hard for this momma to leave her behind after we returned from our cruise. More than a few tears were shed, but it was the right thing for Chloe. She got some extra loving and attention from her grandparents.



leaving Galveston. isn't it gorgeous! ha.

in Mexico at a little cantina we stumbled across.

A hood roof ornament in Mexico

 As you've probably figured out, we are officially in our new home. We closed on our old house at 9:30 the Wednesday after we returned. Then we immediately drove to another title company to close on our new home at 10:30. I had the keys to the new home by 1:30 on Wednesday.

Something I never anticipated was how much more complicated a move is when you are selling AND buying a house. This is the first time we've had to make such coordinated move. Last time, we had a few weeks to move out of our apartment and into the home we purchased after our wedding. This time, in order to avoid living at a friend's house or in a hotel for a few days, we had to be very strategic about closing dates and times. Thankfully, our real estate agent was amazing and coordinated everything perfectly. We literally loaded up the moving van on Tuesday night (with the help of some awesome friends), slept on the floor of our bedroom with two pillows and one blanket, woke up and went to signing, and then unloaded the van at the new house on Wednesday. Whew, I get tired just thinking about those two days. It was a lot. It was totally worth it!

I'll post pictures of the new house soon.

Rainy Day Remix

Chloe and I took a break today. We took a break from our two-week-long, indoor packing party. She needed to go outside and play. The funny part is: we chose a rainy day to take that outdoor break. A bit backwards, no?

We've missed the rain around here. Also, it cooled things off a bit. It's too stinkin' hot around here to play outside at noon. So after lunch, we went outside to destroy the puddles.

 

Then we came inside for a bath to clean up that dirty, but oh-so-cute, face. She's a mess (literally and figuratively).