Our first major renovation!

We bought our house almost 5 years ago...I can't believe it has been that long already. Anyways, we were lucky enough to buy a brand new house. It is an awesome house, but it was already built, so we didn't get the opportunity to pick out every little thing about it. Through the years we have done things here and there..like decorating, painting, buying furniture and things like that, but nothing to drastic. But this past week we have started our first major renovation. We are redo-ing the hall bathroom..which is funny because it is one of the first things we painted too. I love the bathroom..it was my idea completely and did pretty much all the work, but it's green and we have now painted the rest of the main parts of our house shades of green and this green in the bathroom is not exactly the same green and the other greens...so I was ready for a change...so we decided...let's go BIG...so we (well, no Vinny did all the work) totally gutted the bathroom. The only bad thing is that Vinny was called to go to work sooner than we thought, so the bathroom is still completely gutted...Pretty Crappy...but whatever...such is our life... I am going to paint and then when Vinny is able he is going to tile the floor (this is the first time he will be doing this so hopefully he is good at it because we really would like to tile the majority of our house because we are sick of carpet!) We bought a new Vanity and fixtures and such. I'm so excited about this...hopefully it will turn out great and be done soon!!! I will definitely keep you updated on this process!
...............BEFORE...............


.............AFTER............and I should have taken another picture because Vinny took the toilet out too!

FINALLY done with Ty's room!

I'm proud to announce that I am finally done with Ty's room....it only took me about a year (I started working on things last summer). It's not exactly want I had envisioned,but oh well, I love it anyways. Thanks again to my parents for the bedding...it is perfect and what I based the entire room on! You two are too good to your grandkids :D There is still one more thing I am looking for, but I haven't been able to find...thinner cursive wooden (well it doesn't have to be wood, just something I can paint brown to match the bedding) letters spelling out baby..so if you ever come across some...please let me know! My dad made the little name thing..he has made one for all the boys..he's tallented!


My dad also made this changing table for us when Tucker was born. It doesn't match the rest of the wood (It matched Tucker's crib) and I didn't have the heart to change the stain on it..I love it too much the way it is. I'm sure you noticed the shoes...I have a small problem...and those are just the size 2s and the smaller size 3s..I have a bunch more..I love shoes!

Car seat canopy!

I think this is the coolest thing ever...well as far car seat accessories go anyways. One of my friends had her little girl a few months back and came to a playdate with her car seat canopy..I had never heard of this before, but it is an amazing idea. I searched online for directions and finally found a step by step blog to make one. It was super simple and was the first project I completed on the sewing machine with no complications! I am really happy how it turned out. These things sell for upward of 25 bucks, most sell for around $40, which is pretty outragous...because I only spent about $10 on the supplies and it was super simple to make! Thanks for the idea Jen...I hope to one day be as skilled as you on these crafty projects!

The car seat canopy. It will keep him covered without having to mess around with a blanket.

I can't wait for Ty to actually be in the seat :D

A close up of the fabric...I actually wanted the same print except with black instead of brown, but they were out of it at the fabric store...oh well still looks nice.

Finally getting to it...

So I know I keep talking about all the "things" I've been doing and now I'm finally getting around to posting some of the pictures.

I just painted the blocks and letters, then glued the letters on the blocks.

These were just blank canvases, that I painted and put some ribbon on.(I am still in the process of painting some other stuff for the walls because my original idea of painting a brown stipe on the wall just did not happen.)

This is just a plain travel wipes case and I decorated it with fabric and ribbon.

A diaper holder.

I didn't sew these from scratch, but I hemmed them all to the length I wanted them. I still need to get some ribbon so I can gather the door curtains in the middle.

This is just some(the rest is in the deep freezer) of the food I have premade and froze so we can have some easy dinners on hand. (Hopefully this will keep us from eating out so much..which is one of our worst habbits) So far I have 10 main dishes and 2 sides done. I am hoping to get a few more done in these next few weeks.

Finished with project #1

I finally finished sewing all of those burp clothes. It was a lot of fun once I got everything figured out...I still kind of suck at sewing in a straight line, but oh well....just don't look too close :P Now I need to go to the fabric store to get something for a new project...I have a few things in mind, but we will see what I actually do!

My first sewing project!

I mentioned a while back I bought a sewing machine and after messing around with it and trying to figure out how this specific machine works, I finally made something.
It's nothing special, just a burb cloth and I sewed the decorative piece on the center. It was really easy and I have a bunch more to make...I just haven't gotten around to it...last time I made one Trey kept asking me questions and stuff and I wasn't focused on the project and I sewed it completely off centered.....so I was mad...but oh well...I'm excited to make some more stuff. I have a ton of ideas, I just need to get myself to the fabric stores....go figure all the Wal-Marts in our area are getting rid of the fabric department..so I have to actually make a seperate trip to one of the craft stores....

The rest of our painting

Here is the rest of the pictures of what we painted. Once you walk through our entrance way the rest of the house (well minus the bedrooms and bathrooms of course)is just one BIG room...it's a huge room with high vaulted ceilings. It was a lot of work to paint, but it actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. The color in the kitchen area and part of the breakfast room is Quiet Veranda. The color on the rest of the walls is Cresta Butte. Then on the back side of the bar is Wild Mushroom. Painting with the Cresta Butte color sucked and we had to do a bunch of coats, but in the end it turned out nice and really brings out the vaulted ceilings! It is nice to have something on the walls besides a creamy white color that was DIRTY because it was the builders paint and was not washable. Now we have clean pretty wall! The only room not painted is Vinny and my room and I think it is going to stay plain...it has vaulted ceilings too and I really don't feel like painting again...well except for when we change the guest room to the baby's room...I want to paint that, but Vinny doesn't...so I guess we will see about what we do it ;)

Our formal dining room.

Part of the living room.

The other side of the living room.

The breakfast room.

The inside of our kitchen...well part of it anyways.

Looking at our kitchen from the outside of it.

The boys cute little kitchen :P

Painting-Entrance Way

We finally painted!! It was so much work...most of which Vinny did himself...I wasn't too much help. The colors weren't exactly what we expected, but it looks perfect and we love it...The entrance way color is "Camel" but it's kind of a yellowish-greenish color. The wooden side table and glass cabinets were already in the entrance way, but we did add the 2 trees and the half metal table with the plant.


Looking in from the front door.


Looking all the way to the left from the front door.


The right side of the entrance way.


The picture collage of the boys..the left side.


Trey decided to take some liberty and painted more than what we wanted painted.

Grapes...who knew???

Last year we dediced to plant grape vines because we wanted something to grow on what used to be a gazebo (only the metal structure is left standing...the fabric only lasted about 3 months). So we planted one on each side and the right one barely grew last year and the left one flourished...but neither produced grapes.

This year the left one is still healthy and huge and the right one is actually growing a bit more than last year....when the leaves started growing back we noticed what looked like little bunches of grapes, but they were so small, I wasn't really sure....today when I was watering them with the boys left over pool water ther were grapes.....a whole bunch of grapes...I'm excited!!!! Don't know what we are going to do with them because all the home grown grapes I have ever had have been really sour....but I'm just excited about the grapes growing!!! I actually never reall thought grapes were actually going to grow...who knew? ;-)


The left grape vine....


Can you see all the grapes??


A close-up

Much needed yardwork

The weather yesterday was BEAUTIFUL!! It was so nice and we really didn't have anything to do, so I decided the front yard needed some sprucing up. The boys and I went to Walmart and bought some flowers to plant in the front yard. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. We also pulled some weeds and cleaned up the front a little. We are spending as much time ejoying being outside before it gets so hot. The boys were great helpers and we had fun!