Project Restoration Reveal Part 1

I realized the other day that we have been living in our house for almost five months now and I never showed any "finished" pictures. So here are a few of the living room, dining room, and kitchen....

dining room before

dining room after

living room/kitchen before

kitchen before

farmhouse sink...sigh...I love this thing. Perfect for washing babies in.

living room after

living room after (sign is made by my sister)

living room/hall after

So this is part of the redo. I will try to upload pictures of the kids bedrooms sometime in the next five months! (smile). And I do have a picture frame for Anne....I just haven't found it yet! :)

Someone also turned ONE over the weekend....one. My baby is growing up!!! And I think she kinda likes lemon cupcakes! :)

our sunshiny lemony girl!

She is growing so fast and it seems hard to believe that the patter of little hands and knees on the floor, and the pinching of my arm while she's nursing are coming to an end. Time is just slipping by and all I can do is slow down and try to take it in....

a few things I am thankful for....the gifts that never end....

* watching the sunset as a family

*kids pointing out the stars as they pop out in the night sky

*going around and naming what we are thankful for

*warm sundried clothes

*napping children

*keeping up with the laundry

*girls going running with their mom (grin)

*lemon cupcakes

*Turkey Hill Raspberry Tea & Peach Tea (yes! even in Arizona)

*ballet recital

*baler in the morning

*roses in ironstone pitcher

*kiss goodnight

*catching up on office work

....and the list goes on......

Update on the House

Hey there....it's been a while since I've mentioned the house remodel. We are mostly done painting, the kitchen has been installed (minus appliances), and the tile is being laid as we speak. (or as I write!) The countertop company was out today to make a template and hopefully in two weeks the countertop will be in the kitchen. Here are some pictures....

Girls room. We will probably be adding white beadboard to the bottom half of the wall. 

Double closets for the girls! :)

Landon's room

Landon's bathroom.

Living room. The flooring is tile that looks like hardwood.

The color is mahogany. The glare here makes it kind of hard to see, but it matches pretty close to the doors and windows.

Kitchen! Love my farmhouse sink!

Cooktop goes here.

Pantry and micro/oven combo

Overlooking into living room

Fridge

So this is what we have. Because the tile was being laid in front of our master bedroom/bath, I don't have pictures of that yet. The end room, which will be my laundry is the holding room for everything else, so that will be the last room we do. But it's coming together. We are doing tile in the kitchen, living, dining, hall and the kids bathrooms. Our doors will hopefully be coming in next week. I am hoping to be able to move by the end of the month, but that will depend on my husband. They will start harvesting in earnest here before too long and he will be less available. All in due time. But it actually feels as though we might get to actually LIVE in the space.

The night I fell....

This past weekend we saw cooler temps during the day and evening. Saturday night we decided to have our first campfire of the fall season.....

Daddy and his boy

Larissa continuing the tradition of telling stories

Alaina & Charlotte with their buddy, Clark

love watching a fire at night

He's mesmerized by the flames

Alaina's turn

This November will be ten years. Time has just flown by!

Singing for us

Mmmmm! Marshmallows and the girl without her front teeth!

We love fall!

Our roasters

Love this boy like crazy...and sometimes he drives me crazy!

Landon started to get tired so I put him to bed. Anne was sleeping in the crib in his room, so I picked her up after I put him down. I wanted to feed her one last time before I went to bed and wanted her up for a little bit. I got her bundled up to go outside. I walked outside and down the sidewalk. There was no moon and the night sky was cloudy (do you see where this is going?). I missed the step at the end of the walk. Yup. I totally biffed it. I fell down, twisted my right ankle bad, banged my left knee up, but somehow, through the grace of God, kept baby Anne Noelle up so she didn't hit her head or get hurt. She did cry but I think the whole fall scared her.
I lay there for a second, wondering what just happened. Then I had to call for help because I was afraid to walk with Anne. Luckily the girls came running over and helped me up and our friend, Clark, took the baby for me. I hobbled over to the fire and sat down. My ankle hurt but didn't feel too bad. I got some pictures of Anne at the fire....

All in all, she wasn't that impressed! I think the flames kind of overstimulated her. She was ready to go in after a few minutes. Nate carried her in for me, still in disbelief at how I missed the end step. It's only been there for the last five years! :) He was in the house getting a cup of coffee when I had my mishap and missed the whole thing.
After I got Anne down the bed, took a shower and sat down, I noticed my ankle starting to swell and throb in pain. I could move my toes and could rotate my ankle, so I was thinking it was probably just a bad sprain.
So that's where I am today. I am still hobbling a little. My ankle is still swollen some, and the skin is starting to bruise. I have been trying to keep it up (haha...like with five kids and homeschooling that happens) and I have been rubbing arnica on it. I never realized how often people step on my feet until I got hurt. I am hoping it will be better soon, because we could be painting  next week. Yes, I said PAINTING!!!! Can you tell I am excited? It's finally feeling "for real". We might actually be moving into this thing! I have not forgotten about my "project restoration", it was just slow going. But the drywall guy should finish this week. I already have my paint! :)
And this is totally for my mom....here are the colors. The lighting is probably not the best, but it's the best I could do...

Martha Stewart China Green Marble, this will be in our south room, which is my laundry/office/TV room. There will be expose brick on the other three walls.

MS Cayenne: hallway and girls bathroom

MS Buckwheat Flour: this is kitchen/dining/living

MS Arrowroot & MS Salt Glaze: darker color is our bedroom, lighter color our bathroom

MS Thistle Blue: Landon's room

MS Plum Pudding: girls room

After much going back and forth we decided to go with white trim and doors. We are wood people, but honestly, we didn't want to do the extra work of staining and polying. Especially because mistakes are much more noticeable.  Our ceiling color is Behr's Antique White. All my colors are from Home Depot. Martha Stewart has this awesome symbol system, where you pick a color you like and then find colors with the same symbol and those colors go together! That was one thing I always struggled with; picking colors that go together. This made is SO much easier.
Hopefully I will have actual rooms to show soon!

Birthdays, Houses & Babies

It's been a while since I have been on here. Life has been moving pretty fast lately. There haven't been too many weeks where we didn't have anything going on. April is a busy month for us because we have two birthdays. Charlotte is the beginning and Larissa is at the end. Nate's birthday is the first of May. So there's lots of celebrating going on here in the spring! Here is some pictures of the birthday girls.....

We don't do birthday parties every year, where they invite friends over. Charlotte turned five, so she got to have a birthday party, and the next one will be when they turn ten. Which, in Larissa's case, will be in two more years! So we celebrated her birthday with Grandpa and Grandma.

The house is coming along. We had some great help a couple weekends ago, and got the shingles off the roof. The addition is done, and the guys have been working on the carport, back porch roof and front porch roof. They are pretty much done with that as well. Hopefully we'll get to order the steel soon for the roof!

Here is our front porch! I can't wait to put a rocking chair out here and rock our little baby!

This is our addition. This will be our bedroom, bathroom & closet.

Back porch. It now goes all the way over to the carport, so we will have a nice covered area back here. 

Carport. We are looking forward to having a semi protected area to park our vehicles. 

As you can tell, it was ballet night when we stopped for pictures! I am nearing 39 weeks now. Hopefully not too much longer. I have been having contractions and when I went for my checkup this week, my midwife checked position of baby, and baby has dropped down and is "engaged", meaning her head has dropped down into the birth canal and can't be moved out. So that is good! I feel a lot of pressure and can feel her shoulders pushing down on my bones. It's getting harder to get up off the sofa or a chair! :) I am praying that baby comes soon. This is the closest my ultrasound due date and my calendar due have ever been. Two days apart, so I am hoping this means I won't be going too much over.

Nate has been busy with cutting hay, baling hay, and basically, all matters of hay! I have been trying to be diligent in getting as much school in as possible before baby comes. I should also be freezing meals and doing some extra cleaning, but until I get lunch over and cleaned up, I am worn out.

But we are all ready for baby. I have my pool, my birthing kit, and all her clothes are washed and hanging in Landon's closet for her. We are looking forward to meeting Anne Noelle. Hopefully sooner then later!