Paws and paint

EJ's new favorite: the puppy.

She watches her any chance she gets and giggles if J is any closer than a couple of feet. I left her sitting on the floor yesterday for a minute, walked back into the room and she had done a belly flop and was stretching out as far as she could, trying to reach her paws. She reached and played with them for a long time...until her play toy got annoyed and moved. :)

In other news, fiiiinally have some color on this door!

The bottom color was the winner, so yesterday evening, up it went.

Second coat today, all of the new hardware back up...almost there. How is this "let's touch up the front door" project taking so long? Ha. Story of our lives. Very pleased with the color - just picture the woodwork white here, the walls griege, hardwoods on the floor, etc.

Happy long weekend!

The office begins

Look out, we're at it again. The office is officially our next remodeling victim. (Insert evil laugh here)

Yesterday, the room looked like this:

Complete disaster. Unpacked boxes of paperwork from the move and craft supplies strewn about courtesy of miss A - the room stressed us out because of its lack of organization alone.

Yuck.

As of a couple minutes ago, here is our blank slate:

The desk and chair will stay so that N has a place to plop down when he works from home. We'll just drop cloth them when necessary.

(The wallpaper "no turning back now" first tear: complete.)

We chose this as our next project because it's kind of a low-hanging fruit in regards to cost and difficulty. It involves a TON of painting, but not much else.

Our to do list:

- paint baseboards and door frame

- paint built in bookshelves and cabinets

- paint window and plantation shutters 

- hire electrician to add overhead light fixture

- replace pulls and hinges on the cabinets and shutters 

- replace light switches and outlets, guts and plates 

- remove wallpaper, paint walls

- furnish and decorate! 

That list seems short. Ha. I won't mention all of the sanding and deglossing and patching and priming steps we have ahead of us. :)

We will be keeping the carpet intact until we someday replace all the flooring on the main floor (prob sometime next century), and the beautiful paneling on the ceiling will remain.

Terrible photo, but it's so pretty, and it will be highlighted even more when the rest of the room is lightened up.

We're already throwing ideas around about new desks and storage options and paint colors and light fixtures. This is gonna be fun. ;)

Front door makeover is almost done. Photos by the end of the week, I hope.

Quick pic...sister time on mama'a bed. A reached over to grab EJ's hand, EJ moved and tried to eat it instead. ;)

Chaulkit, mama?

Girlfriend's sweet tooth is a force to be reckoned with. We celebrated Monday morning (why not?) with strawberries and melted choc chips for dipping.

She practically bathed in it.

While cleaning her up in the bathroom after we ate, she saw a spot of chocolate on the towel I was using, grabbed it, and licked it. #chocoholic

Have a great week! After two weeks away from work, daddy returned to C-town today. Miss him already. :( Xoxo.

Big girl

Sittin up and aggressively stuffing things into her mouth. Punkin's getting big!

Gymnastics

First day of tiny tots gymnastics. With daddy still on vacay, I stood in the waiting area with EJ and laughed nonstop for the first ten minutes. It was like watching him herd a very enthusiastic cat. That ran with her hands in the air. While squealing.

I wasn't able to take too many pics, but here are a few.

The trampoline, her fav part.

And working on a backward roll.

"Nessticks again?" she said on the way home. ;)

Our first full day back at home was spent doing housework and catching up on sleep. Today, front door makeover progress and dinner with friends. More photos later!

Oh em gee

I was going to post about our weekend but then two minutes ago, this happened:

Chicken fried rice, straight from the carton. And she's inhaling it.

Two year-old eaters are so confusing. ;)

Tripod!

Back step

Okay, third time's the charm for this post. I typed it out twice this afternoon on my phone, but both uploads are stuck in cyberspace or something. Hopefully this works. :)

Our back step is looking a little cleaner and brighter!

New light fixtures (Lowe's), new paint (spray, cobalt blue) for the thermometer that the previous owners left us, flowers (late in the season, so they still leave quite a bit to be desired), and new stripey mats (Target).

Here is the Before:

The gold fixtures were pitted and rusty, the thermometer was also rusty, and I'm pretty sure that welcome mat was also left by the previous owners. The whole thing was begging for color.

We had planned to replace the fixtures sometime soon, as we had stopped using one of them because of a short. While at Lowe's a couple weeks ago I snapped a photo of the light fixtures I wanted. When I showed the photo to N he hopped up, grabbed his keys, and drove off to pick them up. Such service! He said he had a whim of "Let's actually start taking care of these updates instead of continuing to just talk about them." I didn't complain. :)

An hour later they were not only home but up on the house. Three cheers for "easy" electrical work with fixture boxes that are only 30 years old. 80 year-old never-ever-ever-standard fixture boxes, whaaa?

A little more color. A little cleaner. Done and done.

We still have marathons of work ahead of us with this house, but that doesn't mean baby step projects don't feel great to accomplish.

It's Friday! BBQ with friends tomorrow afternoon/evening. Other than that, calendar is empty. Xoxo.