House Dreams

This weekend, on the spur of the moment, I began repainting the trim in the girls' bedroom.  We are getting new carpet in the next couple of weeks, when we will also transitioning in their new furniture, and I want everything to feel fresh and bright to go with their new room.  The trim and molding in our bedrooms are off-white, which has bothered me for awhile, so I decided to just begin tackling it. 

Jeremy and I hate painting, and we are really not very good at it.  So my motto for this project is that it's better to be done and imperfect than never started at all.  I still have to do the baseboards when we move out the furniture, but it already looks SO much better in there. 

Of course, all these projects have me energized and inspired to keep going and tackle more of our house plans.  We have a lot of big dreams about things to get done around here this year...unfortunately, we may not have the cash flow to go with it!  (The eternal problem, right?)

Some of the things on our to-do list, with varying levels of plausibility:

• Finish painting the trim in the bedrooms and bathrooms so it will all be bright white. 
• Paint the living room and hallway (light gray, I think).
• Paint the girls' bathroom (maybe a yellow of some sort?).
• Have new carpet put down in the bedrooms.  (They're being measured tomorrow!)
• Lay hardwood in the kitchen, to match the living room and hallway.
• Tile the two bathrooms, including our shower.  (This one will likely wait awhile...)
• Check into getting the kitchen cabinets painted.
• New countertops.  (Jeremy and I are both beyond ready for this, but we are deciding whether to hold out for granite or another solid surface.  If we go that route, it won't be happening this year.)  (Suggestions or opinions??)
• Hang shelves and hooks to create a mud-room-type area in the laundry room.
• Paint the bathroom cabinets white.
• Begin to replace artwork, etc. in the living room.  I have wound up with a random collection of things that don't really reflect my taste, and I want to begin to fix that.  Now to figure out exactly what my taste might be...
• Finally get a gallery wall together, to display some of the fantastic pictures that have been gathering dust for years now.
• Hang curtains in the bedrooms.  The blinds-only look has gone on far too long. 
• Fix our backyard to make it more functional for our purposes.  (Possibly replace the deck, but that might have to wait.)  I definitely want more seating back there.

I am sure there are more, but I think that's quite enough to keep us busy for awhile.  

Do you have any house projects going on right now?  Do you think your space accurately reflects your taste?  Can you help me figure out how to get there???

A Big-Girl Bedroom

I think it was right after the girls' birthday last year that we converted their cribs into toddler beds.  The transition was surprisingly easy, with no midnight wanderings or play sessions like I had feared.

The girls do get up occasionally, but they come straight to our bedroom and around to my side of the bed.  It is a bit unnerving to wake up to a small person staring you in the face, whispering your name...but sometimes it's awfully cute, too (like when A says she just wanted to "come say that I love you"!).  In the last couple of months, they have even started going back to bed on their own, without my having to get up--definitely a nice progression.

This year's birthday will see another transition...A & M are getting big-girl beds!  I placed the order and paid for them today, and they will be delivered as soon as we get new carpet installed.  After much thought and searching, I chose this bed:

I am really looking forward to rearranging and doing a minor redecoration of the girls' bedroom.  I am currently scouring Craigslist for an old dresser I can clean up and paint to match the beds.  I'm not sure how much room will be available with the beds and dresser, so I'm planning to possibly install some rain-gutter bookshelves along one section of wall.

Source: mamanotes.com via Deanna on Pinterest

I want to personalize the girls' beds in some way as well.  My idea right now is to make a fabric bunting to drape across the headboard, possibly with the girls' monograms in the middle.  And I am thinking about doing different bedding, to keep it from being too matchy-matchy.  Mackenzie loves purple and Addison favors pink, so I am sure they will request that those colors be worked in somehow.  Some bedding choices I have my eye on:

Pink for Addison

Purple for Mackenzie

A little of both...

Or maybe just white and ruffled?

I hope to have their new room all done by their birthday...in less than a month!  Any input on the bedding?  (Their room is painted a very light pink, by the way, and it's not changing right now.)  

Have you transitioned to regular beds yet?  Seen any super-cute kid bedroom ideas lately?

Lazy Days

As a mom who works outside the home full time during the week, I feel like our evenings are a rush of playtime, dinner, baths, and as much quality snuggling/reading/rocking time as we can fit in the hours between 4:30 and 8:30. 

Largely because of the rush-rush-rush of our weeknights, I find myself enjoying lazy weekends at home more and more.  I used to feel we had to plan something special for the weekend--you know, fun family activities to make our quality time together even more exciting.  I am sure that as the weather warms up and the spring sunshine begs us to take advantage, we will begin to fill the weekends with plans and activities again.

For now, though, we are all enjoying the peace and contentment of quiet days at home.  My favorite weekends are the ones when we have absolutely nothing on the agenda, when we are free to come and go as we please...or to spend the entire day in pajamas, playing with baby dolls, drinking coffee (both the real and pretend kinds), running races down the hall, coloring, cutting, gluing, and snuggling up to watch a movie on the couch.

Weekends with these cutie-pies?  Yes, please!

Even on our lazy weekends, the library is a must-do at least one or two Saturday mornings every month.  I love that my girls love the library!

With Paw Paw (my dad) on his birthday last week)

What do your weekends look like?  Do you prefer to have lots on the agenda, or are you happiest hanging out at home?

This bookcase may have changed my life

Last Saturday, while Addison & Mackenzie spent the day with Jeremy's parents, I took the opportunity to move a bookcase from the kitchen to the living room, in hopes of corralling the toy explosion. 

 

Five days later, I am just about ready to declare that this shelf has changed my life. 

Before we started using the bookcase, there was a large plastic bin in the corner for loose toys, and the books were stacked haphazardly underneath an end table.  I felt like none of the toys in the bin were ever really played with, the books always ended up all over the place, and the little odd-n-end toys were driving me up the wall.

With the shelf in place, there is plenty of room for the books we keep in the living room and the smaller toys fit perfectly into the four smaller bins on the lower shelves.  One bin is solely for blocks, while the others are slightly more catch-all spots.  Since the girls play in the living room most of the time (at least until I get the spare room/playroom set up the way I want it), most of their dolls and stuffed animals are in here also.  Those are now in the large plastic bin for easy access, along with a few throw blankets and pillows. 

So far, it's working well.  The girls have designated spots to put toys away, making clean-up easier for them to do and easier for me to enforce.  And on the occasions that I do it myself (because yes, there are many times I just don't have the patience to guide them through the process), it's so much easier to just toss the toys in bins than to try and find a place for everything.  A & M can get the toys they want on their own, and they are playing with stuff they had otherwise forgotten.  They can see their books more clearly, and it makes my book-loving heart swell to see them reaching for them just as often as most of their toys.

This small change has made it easier to keep the living room more organized and less cluttered, and that makes me one very happy mama.

Now I just have to find a piece of furniture to fill the hole left by the bookcase in the kitchen...but that could actually be fun.  I have big dreams of a refurbished dresser or buffet to store my china in.  We'll see how it turns out!

Yard Sale, Etc.

I am having a yard sale this upcoming weekend.  It will be the first I have had since the girls were born, so I am unloading a massive amount of baby clothing and equipment.  Yes, I'm a little sad to be pricing and tagging all the little remnants of my girls' infant days, but I am also looking forward to neater closets and a bit of extra cash.

Everyone knows people love to buy clothing for new babies, and who can resist TWO tiny little GIRLS??  As a result, we have boxes upon boxes of baby clothes, including quite a few never-worn pieces.  I have priced and boxed at least ten large boxes already.  Just last night, I finally got around to the nicer dresses and outfits hanging in the girls' closet...and there was a lot more than I had realized.

After removing all of that (and more!), their closet now looks practically bare.  Time to start rebuilding!  : )

We didn't go into the whole yard sale idea with a specific financial goal in mind, but we have been tossing around the idea of a wooden swing set for the backyard.  They're so expensive though...it's hard to think about spending that much money on something we can find for free at the park just a couple of miles away.  I do like the idea of just walking out the backdoor to spend a fall evening watching the girls enjoy something like this:

 

Image credit

It would be nice to make enough money to pay for most of the cost of a swing set, should we decide to get one.  If not, I suppose we could put the extra funds toward our beach trip in late September.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the beach trip?

That's because we just decided last week that we were going to take one.  Vacation on a month's notice is about as spontaneous as my husband gets, so we are pushing his limits with this one.  We were discussing some friends who are getting a good deal on a condo at the beach later in September and after perusing some of the available deals, we decided it sounded like a good idea.

After the not-entirely-successful beach trip last May, Jeremy and I publicly announced that we were not taking the girls to the beach again until they were at least four or five. In fact, my dad reminded me of that very fact when I told him we were going next month!  I am desperately hoping this trip goes better than the last one...and I have reason to believe it might...

(1)  The girls are almost a year and a half older than they were in May 2010.  They weren't even walking alone at that point, and so were still very dependent on us for everything.  At this stage, they will understand a bit about where we are going and can enjoy a few more fun activities than the last time.

(2)  Unlike last May, my girls actually understand the purpose of sand and water now:  it's supposed to be fun.  They love the sand, and we have really been talking it up this week.

And the biggest reason I have high hopes for the success of this trip:
(3)  There will be grandparents!  My mom hates the beach, but Jeremy's parents jumped at the offer to accompany us.  It will be awesome to have two extra sets of adult hands along to help out.


Of course, I have adjusted my expectations for the trip as well.  Jeremy and I already had our relaxing, restful trip this year, so this one is much more for the girls' enjoyment than for our benefit.  If they have a good time, we all get a decent amount of sleep, and I get to eat a meal at both Sea N Suds and The Original Oyster House, I will call it a success!


Have you been on vacation with your kids lately?  Any advice??