White

As I said before, I love me some chalk paint. I started with the Graphite and the dresser, and have moved on to Old White. Poor Elin's room is totally bare. It's definitely a work in progress. Maybe by the time she is in kindergarten I will have it done just in time to switch it up again. Sheesh. So anyhoo, she won the baby lottery and gets the privelage of using my 80s fantabulous white and gold furniture. NICE!!
Riiiight. We needed an upgrade. A VERY inexpensive upgrade (as I see Chad's eyes rolling and the hyperventilating beginning at the thought of more home purchases, hehe). $35 paint is not too bad! Here is what I ended up with after ONE COAT of paint:

Don't judge the photo quality LOL. My request for Christmas this year is a new camera!! PLEASE SANTA!!! FOR THE LOVE!!

They turned out great. The dresser and mirror are Old White. I sprayed the handles a semi-gloss white and I love the slight difference it makes. I swear to take better photos when this crap is done. Seriously. I had a GOLD, yes gold, scroll for her wall as well. I knew I was going to paint it, but was planning on spray paint. The brush and chalk paint made an awesome antique/distressed effect. It was great! Again, totally covered in one application. I went ahead and painted the little art table we have in the toy room as well. It is (was) bright red and I have this thing against primary colors. I know. It's weird. But red and I are just not friends. So the table is white and I am planning on doing the chairs in Provence blue. I am pumped because this is SO EASY. Makes anyone look like a pro!! Can't wait for the next project!! Hehe, I probably just gave Chad a heart attack with that sentence :)

We Had a Party

Our little buddy turned 5 this weekend. It is crazy to even think about. He is growing up so fast!! Since we clearly didn't have enough stress by moving in this past week, we thought we would make it sooo much calmer by having a party at the house on Saturday. GREAT THINKING. It was nuts and so much fun. We had great friends over and the kids had a blast. Aidan was pumped for his big day. Aidan being Aidan with dad: Elin doing what she does best before the party...tending to the babies...
Where did those curls come from??? I hope they stay!

Mom and the birthday boy!

This pretty much sums up our family:

That was our attempt to get a picture of us all together. Poor Chad (he is in there, I swear!)
Birthday Boy and his Batman cake

Opening the big gift of the night...

What else do you buy your little boy when you now reside in "the country?!"

A firearm of course (OH LORD help me)

Little Uncle Ted...The "ladies," Riley and Elin were BFFs all night with the babies

Mom, Dad, Elizabeth and Me...

No countrified party could be complete without some outdoor injury!! Elizabeth was the lucky receiver of the "rough rider" award and earned herself some major outdoor street cred...

It's a great story that I am sure she would love to share with you. Lesson learned? Do not wear polo dresses and Sperry's to an party at our house :)

The party was a blast and we were all completely pooped when it was over.

Sunday was recover and RE-clean the house we just finished organizing. Elin and Aidan had fun outside in the evening. It cooled off to the 70s and was GORGEOUS at sunset. Elin in her buggy:

Aidan

Isn't our grass lovely? Oh wait. There is none. Nothing like a bunch of dirt and two kids that like to be outside. Pray for me.
Chad and his dad did some MAJOR work outside this weekend on the land. They trimmed up all the overgrown trees and it looks like a whole new place!

The other project I insisted on? Getting that bronze fan out of Elin's room. My design OCD was giving me the shakes. It was sticking out like a giant sore thumb. BUT since this is the Midwest and it is HOT here, we needed to keep a fan. I found a lovely white one and Luke and Chad kindly installed it for me!

I also got Elin's dresser and mirror up into her room after a quick treatment with some Annie Sloan goodness. Her room is officially...NOT EMPTY. Unfortunately she is the next project on the list so it will get there!!

I am hoping to get some good photos of what we have in the house this week once we get a few little nit-picky things taken care of :)

After A Week

So we have been "in the country" for almost a whole week now. Let's review the things that we learned:
1. It is VERY quiet. The quiet is awesome. Until you are trying to pull boxes out of the back of your car, and it is apparently feeding time for the neighboring cows. Guess what? Cows get excited and noisy when it's time to eat. So dead silence and peacefulness at 7 in the morning + excited cows = one minor heart attack for moi.

2. I heart TV. We just got TV service on Wednesday. Those were the longest 5 days ever. It's sad. I know. I admit it and accept the fact that I love my TV like one of my children.

3. Aidan is officially at his new school. No more crunchy granola hoity toity school. We are sad to leave his friends, but most of them are going to kindergarten now anyways so it's okay. Aidan is loving his new place. He loves that it is right across the street from the fire station. Also, he got stung by a bee on his first day. Awesome. He thought it was pretty amazing though. He has country street cred now.

4. My children do not need another toy for the next 10 years. I am saying that because I watched (yes watched) Chad carry up about 20+ boxes to the toy room. Mind you they were liquor boxes so they were small, but seriously. Yes, we moved with liquor boxes. Classy folks. Aidan had the whiskey, Elin had vodka, you know, it's all about organization. I kid I kid, but really, we did use liquor boxes--that's what you get when your hubby works in gas stations all day.

5. I don't really have a #5, but my OCD won't let me just have 4 for my list. So instead I will share what I did last night! We have a dining set we got a while back that I love, except for the countrified plaid seats (that obviously my hubby LOVES and would DIE if anything happened to them!!??!!). I understand we are rednecks now. I get it. But I couldn't stand to look at the plaidness any longer. One trip to Hobby Lobby solved it! These were the chairs before:

These are the chairs when I finished:
The stripes aren't as rainbow-y as they appear in the picture. They are muted tones of teal, sage, red-orange and gold. They look great. Don't mind the rug...it is going on Craigslist along with a bunch of other home crap.
This weekend our little buddy turns 5. We are having friends out to the house for a little party for him. Lots of fun coming for next week!
Have a great weekend!

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

I am in love. A while back I ordered some Annie Sloan Chalk Paint after I bought a dresser off of Craigslist for $50. It was an amazing buy. Solid wood, dovetail drawers, ginormous beautiful mirror. Not a bad buy for $50! I knew I didn't want it to stay the way I bought it so I did some research and decided that Annie Sloan was the way to go! So this is what I started with: I bought the paint in Graphite. It is a black with bluish undertones. It looks like the lead of your pencil roughly. They don't lie when they say no priming necessary. This dresser had a polyurethane coating and I was nervous. NO ISSUE AT ALL. One good coat of paint was all it took (I didn't even use a quarter of the can--and at $35 a quart that is a good thing!). I left the hardware because I have a thing for brass. I am pretty excited with how the dresser turned out:

The picture makes it look a bit bluer than it actually is. The lighting and my camera phone didn't do any justice :) The paint was awesome. I am addicted! No fumes. I painted in my basement no issue (besides Chad's slight heart attack when he saw paint inside). SO EASY.

So for less than $100 I got a snappy new piece of furniture!

Proof, ahem

Like I showed Chad, I will share with you...I clearly did a lot of manual labor this weekend. Not only can I barely walk, I have physical proof! Proof I tell you! Exhibit A:That would be the 2 separate cuts from 2 separate incidents. That was my box holding hand while working the box cutter :)

Exhibit B:

That is not a weird tan. If you have seen me lately you know I don't have any sort of tan, weird or not. What you see in the middle of my arm is a BRUISE. Yes, I know my friends. A bruise. From hauling large pieces of furniture up 3 flights of stairs. I am hardcore. Also, I have no idea what my theory was for hauling in a manner that places a piece of furniture on my forearm?? I don't know what my angle there was. But nevertheless, it was intense. If you ever doubted my hardiness, you may put your fears to rest.

Baby Steps

We moved all weekend. I was off yesterday STILL "moving." We have pretty much unpacked all boxes that have homes currently. We still have the office stuff and pictures, etc to hang. Hopefully we are at least in working order for this weekend since a certain little person is turning 5!! So for today, I will leave you with the massive project I tackled this weekend (well one of them!)...the master closet. These are crappy cell phone pictures taken prior to "clothing organization." I am a crazy freak about my closet and things are color/style coordinated. At this point, I just had to get everything hanging and off the floor!!! Also important, Chad DOES have 3 full shoe shelves...in case he tries to tell you otherwise :)

We also got the sparkly chandy up! Chad had no idea that you have to hang each little "ball" one by one. He was pleased, let me tell you. Haha. And by "we got the chandy up" I mean Jamey came over and commanded the project. I merely hung balls (tee hee). The toy room is full. It looks like Toys R Us's back room. Aidan's room is 95% done. We have some hanging to do tonight. We need furniture for the guest room...all that is in there is a bed. An adorable bed, but just a bed. We got Elin her dresser upstairs last night. She now has my old dresser from when I was growing up. This is what it looked like (except there is not a missing handle there, all handles accounted for):

It looks brand new and all white. I will get a picture and show the difference a little paint made! Not a bad transformation for $3.25.

We are getting there! After this week these posts should be a lot more interesting...well hopefully you find them more interesting LOL

Still Moving!

Whew. Chad and I worked our rears off yesterday from 7am until 9pm. It was a LONG day and we still aren't all the way done! We are back at it today and hope to be all done by the weekend. I am sure I shocked Chad in my awesome physcial abilities yesterday. I assisted in hauling the washer and dryer, a hundred mattresses and box springs (well only 4 of each but my lord it felt like hundreds! Especially when carrying them upstairs!), and countless other pieces of furniture. It is all coming together and we are so excited. In order to maximize our moving time yesterday (you have to remember we live in the country now, so it took 20 minutes to go to our storage unit), we took some lessons from the Lone Ranger we saw the other week cruising in town and loaded our truck up!!! There goes the Ranger with a king mattress, a tv stand, a recliner, and some other furniture hidden in there. It was a sight. That wasn't even the most extravagant load! Now you can see why it took twice as long driving back from storage as it did getting there!
So wish me luck today as my poor aching body takes on Part II of Moving. Have a great weekend!

MOVING DAY

It's moving day at my house! See you tomorrow!

Today's Style Lesson

I am sure you have read this already, but if not, I thought I would share. So apparently Abercrombie and Fitch has offered to PAY Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino to stop wearing their clothes. No joke. What? You don't think this is good for your brand... This is the quote from A & F:
"We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and my be distressing too many of our fans. We have therefore offered a substantial payment to Michael 'The Situation' Sorrentino and the producers of MTV's The Jersey Shore to have the character wear an alternate brand. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast and are urgently waiting a response."

So clearly walking around looking like a total jackass every day doesn't really do much for one's style. Lesson learned.
Is it bad that I secretly love A & F a little for this? Especially since I am well above the age of their target audience. That, or it shows that I truly am getting old.

DONE

It's official. Our house is DONE. The cleaning people are there today and so are the inspectors. Tomorrow the paint guys will be back for final touch ups and we are in! We ran over yesterday afternoon to check out the carpet. We were lucky enough to order carpet during a huge sale and got the most amazing, softest, cushiest (if that is a word) carpet you will ever know for A HECK OF A DEAL! So let's look! Standing in our closet: Master bedroom (yes, I am not good at taking pictures of empty rooms)
The living room with the NEW fireplace. They restoned it and re-did the bottom and it looks AMAZING. I have no idea why the guy didn't do it that way before. The previous stone job looks like Aidan built it.

Standing in Aidan's room looking towards the dormer nook:

Standing near the dormer in his room looking towards the door and bathroom:

Aidan's entry to the bathroom:

Elin's Room from the dormer:

We are still debating on her ceiling fan. I did not want any fan in there. Chad loves a ceiling fan. He wanted them all to match, but now he realizes that we may need a white fan in there. We are going to wait to see what it all looks like with all of her furnitue and such in the room before we make that call. It's an easy change!
Looking towards her entry to the bathroom (Aidan and Elin have a Jack and Jill bath)

My favorite room in the house, the kitchen! A shot of our finished backsplash tile:

The other side of the kitchen:

A blurry version:

We should be moving stuff in Thursday so YAY!!!!!

I have pictures of the office, dining room and guestroom, but they are empty so rather boring to look at. I will post once we actually do something with those rooms.

Monday Fantasy

This week is going to be busy busy with the final stuff on the house so I thought I would post some fluff to keep it interesting! I recently learned of the interesting homes that are available for our pets, and behold! Look what we can give our children!!If only I could be a PoshTots shopper more often! I pray Elin never has a love for Cinderella that makes me resort to this: It is truly gorgeous, but for $47,000 it damn well should be! Yes. $47,000.
Cinderella not your thing? How about a toddler bed for your little guy??

How fun!! Too bad they would out grow your $15,900 investment in a couple years! If Aidan had that, he would be hauling that thing off to college with him!
What about a sweet carriage??


Only $19,995 for that steal!

But really, the point of this post? The icing on the cake and the ridiculousness that I absolutely LOVE. I will start saving pennies now. Behold, the fantast coach:



And by fantasy, I mean fantasy. Never going to happen. Unless I win the powerball I guess.

Look at the detail and styling:

And must I win the powerball to purchase this lovely dream?? Because it runs $75,000. I will leave you with that bit of knowledge for the day!