Five on Friday - More like Ten!

Hi, y'all! Let's just talk candidly for a minute about how terrible time change is and how whoever invented it should be made to live in an eternal time change state with toddlers and infants. Okay, I feel better. After a solid week of HORRIBLE sleep, I think things are finally leveling out. Hooray for Friday and St. Patty's day! Let's get to my five (or maybe ten) this week.

One.



I found some non-toxic polish and painted Zoey's toenails for the wedding! She was SO happy and so good sitting still while they dried. She's still so cute about them and they look so stinkin' adorable. I really love getting the best of both world's with a boy and a girl.

Two.

This is where I pack in several favorites from my sis-in-law's wedding weekend.



Luke's first road trip to Norman and Ardmore Chick-fil-A stop! Both of our kiddos are champions in the car, we are incredibly lucky!



We planned to bath Zoey, before the wedding, at the hotel. Small problem, no bath tub. So, I built up taking a shower as being a really exciting big girl thing, girded my loins, and took her in with me. She did a GREAT job and was so proud of herself, but I don't think she's looking forward to another one anytime soon. She's a bath girl.



It's like the mini fridge in the hotel was made for exactly my needs - to chill 8 mini bottles of champagne. So cute!



My second favorite wedding hair to date.  I had so much fun with this half up-do!



I had my father-in-law take this picture, because someday I'd be laughing about the moment where Luke screamed for an hour and then spit up all down my dress right before the ceremony. I'm happy to report he was a perfect angel for the rest of the night. 



Kim was GORGEOUS and the wedding was beautiful. I'm looking forward to their yearly vowel renewals (jk, maybe...)! I'm also pretty partial to this gorgeous little flower girl. After an initial moment of asking "what is that?" about five times when the ceremony started (insert embarrassed emoji x 100), she was also a perfect angel. 

The weekend was EXHAUSTING but so worth it to see Kim and Steve so happy and MARRIED! Love those two.

Three.



We arrived home late on Sunday night and I discovered this in my mailbox. My spirit animal, Elizabeth Warren. I plan to wear this and drink out of my Bernie mug for the next 3.75 years (or less?).

Four.



It's time to repaint our siding and we want to punch up the color from beige (yuck) to one of these colors that will hopefully compliment our red brick. Obviously, we are having a tough time deciding. It will mostly show on the back with just a bit of trim on the front of the house. What do y'all think? We need your help!



Five.



Happy St. Patty's day from this cutie! My angel girl looked pretty cute in her green today too, but she wasn't feeling a picture. Maybe next week. 

Chris and I are looking forward to celebrating our SIXTH wedding anniversary a day early with an extravagant movie date to see Beauty and the Beast. The weather also looks great for a visit to the park - finally! Have a wonderful weekend!

Linking up with these fab bloggers - check them out below.

 

See you next week!

2013 - A Year in Review

Source

2013 - What a whirlwind of ups and downs.

2013 started with a low note - We lost Chris's grandpa unexpectedly and traveled to Oklahoma to be with family. We also found out I was pregnant in the spring but it ended in a heartbreaking miscarriage (is there any other kind?) at 6 weeks. At this point I was pretty much done with 2013, but in looking back on the year this morning, I realized how truly amazing the year was and how incredibly blessed we've been this year.

Out of the loss of Chris's grandpa and the pregnancy, came a renewed sense to seize the day, get stuff done and appreciate every moment with our loved ones.

February - I threw a surprise baby shower in a box for my sister. It was so hard not being able to shower her with love in person but we had fun doing it from afar!

March - We celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary and seriously, every year gets better with this amazing guy! Our nephew was born and we celebrated A LOT of family and friend birthdays.

J Hodges Photography

April - I helped to prepare for an amazing friend's baby shower and passed several teacher certification exams. I was also offered a teaching position at my current school.

May - Through the struggle of a miscarriage we still had a fun visit to New Orleans to meet our newest nephew and I passed my Special Education certification exam!

June-July - We channeled our frustration and sadness from the miscarriage and went gangbusters on painting and decorating our house. We made a lot of changes and it looks AMAZING! I also started blogging! 

(Office Makeover, Laundry Makeover, My Favorite Paint)

August - I got ready to begin my first year as a teacher and decorated my classroom. We also enjoyed several family members visiting.

September - We celebrated Chris's 30th birthday and he survived! :) We also celebrated my birthday AND found out I was PREGNANT!!

October - We had our first sonogram and found everything was going smoothly. We, of course, were on pins and needles after this spring.

November - We decorated for Christmas early, had our second dr appt and announced to our family!!

December - We announced to our friends, I completed my first semester of teaching, Chris got some time off and we started some new Christmas traditions of our own. 

Every year has ups and downs but despite our rocky start, 2013 has gone down as a great year in our books. Here's to a 2014 filled with more ups and than downs and a resolution to live in the moment and make every moment count!

Hallway Love

I can't really claim this idea but I'm married to the handsome guy that came up with it and I helped spray paint, so I feel like I contributed. 

We have one small hallway in our house, it leads from the kitchen to the half bath, laundry room and formal dining room. It gets quite a bit of use and is seen by all of our guests, but never gets any love (art, decor, etc). So Chris had the idea to extend the chair rail he was hanging in the formal dining room to the hallway. What a difference it makes! 

If you have a miter saw or miter box, it's quite easy to do. Chris carefully measured everything out, made 45 degree angle cuts to the chair rail. We saved time by spray painting the chair rail after it was cut and before he hung it. (It's much easier to spray paint chair rail before it's attached to the wall than paint it after it's attached to the wall.) He then used a little construction glue, a level, and a nail gun to hang it. After hanging it, he calked the gaps with some paintable calk and touched up with our hallway paint color, Edgecomb Gray (see our paint colors here). It looks AMAZING and took just a couple hours!

I can't wait to share our formal dining room update too - coming soon!

Kitchen Love

In under a year of owning our house, we've managed to paint 10 out of 13 rooms, 2 hallways and 1 two story foyer. We did all this while maintaining our full time jobs and working solely on the weekends!

This Saturday, we started and finished the 10th room, our kitchen. It was a buttery yellow, pleasant but not eye catching. Oh and you could totally see the 90's-tastic wallpaper through the paint...

We took the advice of our local Ben Moore guys and did not remove the wallpaper. We were told (and they were correct) that likely it was the original wallpaper and the contractors had probably adhered it directly to the drywall. If we had tried to remove it, it would've taken down half the drywall with it.

To paint over the wallpaper, we would've started with an oil based primer but the existing paint acted as like a primer, sealing the wallpaper down. No need to prime in our case, yay!

We removed the bubbles and seams from the wallpaper as best we could. To do this we sanded the seams, cut open bubbled areas, and caulked (lots of caulk jokes). It doesn't look perfect but it's better.

After prepping the walls, we taped all the trim and painted. The tiny detail roller was our friend with all the trim and above cabinet painting. I think it took us about 7 hours from start to finish and 2 trips to Lowe's.

Paint color: Benjamin Moore Sherwood Green 

For all our paint colors, see my post here.

Don't you think it makes the woodwork, trim, and back-splash pop? It flows much better with our house too. We love it!!

Office Makeover

This office post has been 11 months in the making! 

The office was our catch-all as we painted and completed little projects in every other room in the house. It held our ladder, paint cans, paint supplies, drills, hammers, etc. It made sense to use it this way, but it became sad to have guests in our house for the first time and as they entered have to explain our construction zone.

It was definitely all worth it though and I think we made the biggest transformation yet in this room.

Things we added/changed:

*Paint Color
*Entry Casing
*Chair rail
*Curtains/Curtain Rods
*Decor
*New Desk

*There are no photos of the chair rail being installed because that is a pain in the you know what to install. I did not feel like taking photos of that project. Many thanks to Chris for persevering and getting the chair rail finished and looking amazing! 

I'm working on a few more art pieces for the area where the lamp is located...expect a post about those soon. :)

Laundry Room Makeover

Just stopping by today to share my quick laundry room makeover.

As you can see, it was a dark, dusty place to do laundry. 

It's a decent sized room but we didn't have a need for a 2nd fridge or freezer so the space across from the washer and dryer was wasted space. This got me thinking about what I could do to better utilize this space and that's when I decided to give the room a little makeover.

Here is what I used in my makeover:
*Benjamin Moore "Stem Green" Paint Tester - FREE!*
*Ikea Expedit - $39.99
*Ikea curtain panel (left over from our bedroom curtains) - FREE!
*Curtain Rod left over from old apartment - FREE!
*Shower Curtain Rod - $12
*Framed Laundry Printable - $7 (see my Affordable Wall Decor post)

*(We originally bought the Stem Green as an option for the game room but ended up going with another green color. I liked the color so much I knew I wanted to use it somewhere in the house. The tester is real paint and comes in eggshell so after testing out your wall color, you can actually use the testers for small areas. Yay, Benjamin Moore!)

Here is my new laundry room:

I now have a folding table (Ikea Expedit), a place to hang clothes and a little decor!

A few things I'd love to do to the laundry room later on:

*Tile the floor in that gorgeous dark faux wood tile you can see in the top right pic.
*Add the Stain Guide Printable
*Paint the cabinets white
*Change the light fixture from a dome to a chandelier ;)

Still plenty to do but it's definitely a brighter, happier, more efficiently used space now.

My Favorite Paint

After buying a house with walls painted almost entirely in terrible gold/brown paint, Chris and I have tested out quite a few paint types and colors. I can say with complete confidence that Benjamin Moore paint is my absolute favorite brand. I tell anyone that will listen about this paint, how our entire house is painted in it and they should use it too. 

Using Benjamin Moore paint also allows us to buy local instead of from a big box store. The employees are awesome too!

Here are a few of my favorite colors and where we have used them:

Living Room, Bedroom, Dining Room and Game Room (One Wall) - Can you tell I'm obsessed with this color?

Hallways and Foyer

All Three Bathrooms


Office

Laundry Room

Game Room

Soon to be Kitchen...

Most of these are from the historical color line but we went a little wild on the colors for our game room and laundry room.

We buy the Ultra Spec 500 paint - it's paint and primer in one and low fume. Amazing coverage, no paint smell and very forgiving on streaks and texture.

One tip: always pony up the extra cash and buy the tester first. You never know what it will actually look like on your wall until you paint a big swatch. We've saved ourselves from painting some pretty atrocious colors on our walls this way.