Emma's Due Date is Here!

It's December 4th, our long awaited due date for Emma. Is she here? Nope. Just like her older brother, I think she's cozy and we are probably going to have to force her out. I feel blessed to have made it to 40 weeks. But I do have to say, going on 10+ months pregnant is not so pleasant. Think swollen feet, clothes not fitting, and getting up every 2 hours at night. In an attempt to get her moving, I decided to wash and vacuum my car yesterday, followed by a nice long walk. Nothing. 

Since I don't have sweet newborn photos to share, I will give you a glimpse into the nursery! Enjoy! 

The Move Upstairs

Our upstairs consists of the playroom, the office, and a bathroom. After a full weekend of moving and redecorating, the playroom and office have been combined. The old office is now Davis' new room! 

I held off moving Davis upstairs as long as I possibly could. Stairs make me really nervous and trapping kids with locks and gates make me really nervous too. While I didn't want him to be coming down the stairs in a sleepy state in the middle of the night, I also didn't want to trap him up there in case there was an emergency. So we leave the stairway light on and we still listen for him on the monitor. 

Maybe you recall my post about non-consistent sleep habits a while back? Well (knock on wood) our problems have been solved! Upstairs, Davis sleeps through the night about 90% of the time. Occasionally he comes downstairs because of a bad dream, but for the most part he sleeps from 7:30/8pm till 6:30/7am. He absolutely LOVES his new room, mainly because of the beanbag chair! 

Please ignore the massive armoire in front of the window.
It was too heavy to move that weekend by ourselves. 

House Updates

As you recall, we moved into a house that took us back to the wonderful seventies. Forrest and I weren't around in that decade, but we imagine this house would have been a great setting for That 70s Show! After a little bit of wallpaper removal, some new tiles, and a whole lotta paint...drumroll...here are some of the pictures after all the work:

Taking you back to 1977

Three times a charm! 

Take 1: Forrest was the first one to see our new house before buying it. He didn't think it was right for us, so we casually moved on and kept looking. 

Take 2: One night we decided to take a walk and peek in the windows. I really liked the open floor plan, but it looked like a major project that we both weren't in the mood to take on. 

Take 3: Leave it to my parents, who came in town the next day and said it was a house we couldn't pass up! With a little talk about paint, carpet, tiles, fixtures, and appliances we started dreaming. 

Here are some before pictures for you to enjoy! 

Kitchen

Kitchen

Den

Dinning Room

Wetbar

Skylight Lattice

Entry Way

Master Bath

Upstairs Playroom

Upstairs Bedroom

Upstairs Bathroom

New Floors and a Sign!

We are well on our way to selling this house! Our new floors are in (why didn't we do them sooner?) and we actually have a 'For Sale' sign in our front yard. Nobody warned me about all the work that goes into selling a house. This makes buying a house look super easy!!!!! Most of the work is due to the fact that we live in an old home (circa 1941). Old doors, old windows, rotted wood, chipping paint, cracked tile floors -- all these things needed to be repaired before we put it on the market. That's just half the work. The other half is keeping this house clean with a 2 year old and a dog. I vacuum daily and wipe tiny little hand prints off the door daily. Just hoping it pays off in the end! We shall see so stay tuned to the saga of selling our house! Here are a couple pics to re-cap the floors:

Before

Lovely linoleum we found after ripping out tile

Goodbye old tile!

Hello new tile!

New Tile

The new tile appears a little brighter/whiter because of the dust and grout. We had to spend a couple days scrubbing it off = fun! But well worth it because our floors aren't slippery anymore, the tiles don't rock, and there are no cracks!

Last Minute...how we roll...

We have been talking about putting our house on the market for MONTHS. It's been a tough decision. It's one of those things we know we will eventually need to do, but also one of those things that we don't need to do RIGHT THIS MINUTE. So of course we procrastinate. And procrastinate.

Our reason for moving is space. Our cozy 2 bedroom 1 bath isn't practical, especially as Davis gets older and needs more space. Sharing a bathroom hasn't been ideal. Our tiny bathroom serves as the guest bath, the master bath, and the kid bath. Knowing that when it goes on the market, it could sell in days is scary. Knowing it could take more than a year to sell is also scary.

Like I said, all the 'talking' about putting our house on the market has been happening for months. And in those months, we have made small little updates and changes. Fix some rotting wood here, replace some broken blinds there, and de-clutter closets. We decided to leave the big projects alone and just sell the house 'as is.' That last decision was changed last week, the week we decided to put the house officially on the market. Since these are big projects I'm talking about, we didn't get our house on the market as planned, but our goal is to have it on the market in two weeks. In these two weeks (you recall we've had months to do this) we will have fixed the doorbell (that's never worked), two broken windows (that have been cracked since we moved in), and remodeled the floors.

The floors! Oh the floors! These floors have been driving me insane since we moved in over three years ago. My biggest issue with them is that when wet, they are extremely slippery. Our floors are often wet from a messy Duke drinking water. My next issue are the lose pieces of tile. Apparently the flooring underneath the tile didn't do well keeping the moisture out and the grout has completely disappeared over the years. The tiles rock back and forth and some even stick up unevenly. Not fun barefoot. And the last issue I have are the cracks in a majority of the tiles. It's just plain ugly.

We've dealt with the issues over the years...luckily the tile is only in the kitchen and one living room. Now that we are finally replacing the tile in order to help sell the house, I really wish we had done it sooner. But that's us, we like to wait to the last minute. If something is optional, we usually don't opt to do it.

The biggest decision this past week was between tile vs. laminate vs. carpet. Once we decided on tile, the issue was picking something that matched. I love decorating a shelf. A shelf you can move photos and change the placing of books, tile is permanent. The decision is a little more stressful.

Here are the before pictures of these two rooms.

Room Make-Over Part 2 and Done!

It was a slow process, seeing as the last time I posted about redecorating our entry room was back in May! This is part 2 and I've decided I'm done! There are a couple things that this room still needs and would be nice to have, but seeing that we will probably be putting our house on the market soon, no need to spend more money for the final touches.

Room Make-Over

When you walk through our front door, you enter one huge room. Let me do a little bit of explaining when I say "huge." I basically mean, the largest room in our house, which isn't saying a lot since we live in a tiny 2 bedroom 1 bath. This first room has been a puzzle for me since we first moved in. We've re-arranged it in so many ways! This room has many possibilities, but needs to fulfill our needs. It needs to be a second living space, a dinning room, a study, and a playroom. Wow, that's a lot of pressure on one room.

Here's a glimpse of the room...

1. When you walk in the door, this is the first wall you see. The candle sticks, lamp, and side table are all antiques. I still need to find a good shade for the lamp.

2. I found this small love seat at Ballard Designs. I love antiques and if I can't find an actual one, this store usually has the new look alike! The wingback chair on the left was $25 from an Estate Sale.

3. We need tons of playroom space for this kiddo! He can play the piano with one foot in the toy bucket!

4. Our dinning room table is at the far side of the room. This was obviously decorated for Davis' first birthday, but it usually has a centerpiece on it and my computer at one end. This is where I work all day.

After 2 and a half years of living here, I think I've finally figured out what to do with this room! Here are some fabrics I found...so stay tuned and see what you think...