Mood Board for Girls’ Room

Just for fun, here’s a little mood board I put together for the girls’ room. We’re going with pink and very, very girly.

July 4th Celebration

First of all, let me start this off by saying that moving is HARD. Leaving all your friends (even if they are still in the same town), struggling to make new friends, and having your life in general in complete upheaval is taxing. Add to that the difficulties of remodeling a house and a being very cash strapped (two mortgages takes its toll), and you’ve got a recipe for one hot mess. So to give me something to look forward to, I decided that we should throw a 4th of July party. It turned out so well. At first I was disappointed because so many people couldn’t come, so my grand plans felt like they were failing. In the end, however, we had a perfectly sized group and a nice mix of people. The kids even had a friend to play with, which meant that they were over the moon. Since the plan was to hold the party outside, we had to do a TON of yardwork to get the place presentable. It’s funny, because I bet that most people looking at our jungle of a yard would have no idea that so much effort was put into clean up. But it’s very large, and very overgrown, so it’s going to take us a LONG time to get it looking like I want it to. We did make big strides though. I bagged NINE large black yard bags of pine needles. I have no idea how many years it must have been since someone raked up the fallen needles. I think they must have just hoped that they would eventually disappear. The poor plants around that tree have been so smothered by needles that they’re barely growing. Hopefully this will give them a little breathing room. I also decided to tackle a major project before the party. We needed places for people to eat in the shade, so it was time to make over the old table that had been left behind by the previous owner. It was very rough, splintery, dirty, and faded. It definitely needed some love. Here’s a picture from the original house listing. I took pictures of the garden at some point, but I can’t find them anywhere. If I find a better “before” photo, I’ll update with that. I decided that some fresh blue and white were in order. So after six cans of spray paint and much sanding, here are the final results:   Now we have a nice, shady place to dine al fresco! I’m totally in love with it. It turned out exactly like I imagined it would. The red flower pot was meant to hold a cute centerpiece, but that never happened since no one actually ate on the table. July is the start of monsoon season in New Mexico, which means that just about any afternoon is a chance for a shower. And it just so happened that it started to storm—10 minutes before we were going to eat. So everything had to be moved inside very quickly. Fortunately, we had several burly men to handle the tables. Our living room/dining room area was large enough to hold all three tables and one for serving, so we could still fit everyone comfortably. Definitely could never have done that at our old house. We had a delicious dinner. Aaron smoked some brisket and grilled some pork loin, and they both turned out superbly. Well done, my husband. Your father-in-law would have been proud. The side dishes were all great, and there was enough food to feed everyone without having loads of leftovers. It was also rather healthy, so you didn’t feel too guilty indulging in dessert later. The rain and wind stopped just after dinner, so we were able to go out and light some fireworks and play with sparklers. Bridget and Chloe (the other baby) LOVED the fireworks. It was adorable to watch them.   The kids in their red, white, and blue finery.     After fireworks we relocated to the back deck and had dessert. We created a s’mores bar, and I’m so pleased with how it turned out. I would absolutely do this one again. Everyone had a great time putting together different combinations of marshmallows, and the kids were in HEAVEN. I don’t even want to know how many they each had. I’m surprised no one got sick.   This is the box I made to host our s’mores bar. I’m very proud of it. I built it—with power tools!—ALL BY MYSELF. It’s three feet long and about 8 inches wide. I made it out of two 1x6x6 pine boards, some screws, and Dark Walnut stain. Then we just filled it with play sand and stuck three cans of sterno into it. It worked perfectly. I was worried that the wood might singe or burn, but it didn’t happen.   We had a few different kinds of marshmallows (the coconut were a favorite), graham crackers, fudge stripe cookies, Hershey’s chocolate, rollos, strawberries, and bananas. I would have loved to have peanut butter and nutella, but we had a nut allergy, so we skipped on that, but I bet they would have made some delicious s’mores. The Foot Long.   Averi going to town with her skewer.   Why bother with graham crackers when you can eat it straight off the stick? That girl was so sticky by the end of the night. She even had a huge glob of marshmallow right on top of her head. And I’m a bad mother—I sent her to bed without a bath (it was 11:00 at night, after all) and as of noon the next day, she still hasn’t had a bath. I’m going to win an award for this one. Paul’s version of the Double Down. Marshmallows sandwiched between two hunks of chocolate. Overall we had a great night. It was so much fun sharing the holiday with our friends. It also made me much more grateful for our home. The house and I haven’t been on the greatest terms lately, but this made me realized that it could be such a fun place to live. Each day I fall more in love with the back yard and I am starting to realized how truly blessed we are.

We have carpet!

Our kids have been real troopers through this whole process. Here’s a snapshot of the chaos we’ve been living in. A reminder of what the dingy, stained, cat-pee carpet looked (looks, in some cases, unfortunately) like.   During… View of the loft. This is a pretty good representation of the color of the carpet. Master bedroom   The stairs after. These stairs actually gave us a lot of trouble. They were carpeted on the first day (carpeting was a two-day process), and that evening we noticed a huge lump when you walked from the upstairs landing onto the first step. I had them take that carpet up the next day so we could check out what was going on. Turned out that the step was not even remotely level with the landing (there was a 3/8” difference). The tread was also bowed, so it exaggerated that unevenness even more. I spent ages (and many sanding pads) sanding down the step edge to be more even with the landing. The contractor also applied some floor patch to the stair to level things out. By the end of the day there was no noticeable difference. Thank goodness! It would have driven me crazy every time I walked on it. Stairs going down. Paul’s room. Notice the baseboards? We’ve got the bottom half done downstairs. Still need to do the top half, but we did manage to get the critical pieces installed in time for carpet installation, but not without some chaotic moments. Another room’s been painted! Bridget’s room is Robin’s Nest by BM. The girls’ room and the playroom are still to do (and closets and bathrooms and the whole main floor…but that’s another phase). The blue doesn’t look good next to the orange wood (what does?), but you’ll get a glimpse of what it will look like with white trim if you check out the baseboard. Aaron’s not convinced on this room, but I think it will look adorable once I get everything set up in here. And get that awful trim painted.     Paul loves it. Perfect for doing tricks on. Honestly, we’re not 100% sold on the color. I was so paranoid of picking something that had a yellow undertone (so hard to work with) that I went a bit far in the other direction and got too much red. It’s great in some lights and not as fine in others. But I’m reserving judgment until we get our furnishings in. It’s a lot of carpet to take in without anything to break it up. So we’ll see. Lowe’s told us we have a 90-day return policy with no questions asked, so we’ll use it if we’re not crazy about the carpet. I do LOVE the feel of it, though. It’s so soft and plush underfoot. Next step: moving! We’re in the process of packing up and will be moving out on Saturday. Wish us luck!

Progress on the house

We don’t have an internet connection yet in the new house, so I’m afraid blog posts will be sporadic at best. But here’s what we’ve been up to so far: April 1: Our sleeping arrangements. It’s even more chaotic now that all four kids are back in the house. Thank goodness for those built-ins. They’re now housing the clothing of six people. Door being primed. When we took apart the bifold doors for all the closets, there were 37 doors to paint. Kill me now! View into the girls’ rooms. More doors. And more doors…and there were plenty more I didn’t take pictures of. Baseboards installed in the hall.   This house has the worst drywall problems. The seams are visible everywhere, and “Jeff” didn’t know what he was doing on the seams he tried to patch. Here’s Aaron giving you a visual of how large the repair was that we had to do in the master bedroom. Wall color is Sherwin Williams Analytical Gray. Painting trim and installing baseboard in the master bedroom. Looking into the master bedroom from the loft. Upstairs is all painted!! The view from our balcony. It’s even more incredible at night. I’ll have to get pictures sometime. Looking down onto the backyard. You can see both ponds in this picture. View of one of the side yards. I think that’s an abandoned doghouse…? Lovely grass, no? You can see how we’re nestled right in the foothills. April 12:   Drywall repaired and baseboards completed in master bedroom. All coats of paint on trim finished. I love taking off the masking paper! It’s like Christmas. My setup for spray painting the door hardware (with one light coat of paint on). We can’t afford to replace the hardware for 37 doors, but the brass can’t stay either. So it’s all being painted an oil-rubbed bronze. The finished product looks really good. Hopefully it will last a while. I’ve tried this before on my desk hardware, and they don’t have a single scratch on them, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. All doors painted and ready to be reassembled. Paul’s room is totally painted except for the closet. Closets are going to have to wait until later. I LOVE how this color turned out. It changes according to the light, so sometimes it’s a dark gray and others it’s a steely blue. It’s Deep Silver (I think!) by Benjamin Moore. We’ve tried out a couple of colors for Katie and Averi’s room. I decided on that very light pink. It’s Wild Aster by BM. The girls are thrilled that I caved in to their pink request. Their room is so light-filled that the pink is very unobtrusive. Another view of the girls’ room. Prepping to paint Bridget’s room. Starting with a blank slate is fun! Looking into Paul’s room. Not even the bathrooms have doors on them at the moment. My privacy-loving husband is finding this to be difficult, but they’ll be up again soon enough.