living room

We've been working on the living and dining rooms for a while now, replacing windows in both rooms and completely re-doing the dining room. The living room is finally done. We replaced the windows, put up new window trim and painted it, touched up the walls, and added curtains and a rug. The room is so much nicer and more homey now. At some point we'll replace the enormous couch with better fitting furniture, but that won't be for a while. For now it's done!

scenes from friday

6:30 am with sweet Henry Boy.

Chilly!

Perfect morning for fall smells.

Coloring.

Making a to-do list.

Target time. Diapers, wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, leggings for Celia. You know, really fun stuff to have to drop $100 on.

I had a store credit at Children's Orchard. Got some clothes for Pita and found a marble run set. They don't make 'em like they used to, though.

Hiding in a fort, pretending he hasn't just pooped.

Rearranged the family room during nap time. I can't wait to get this room finished and painted! It needs to be lightened up and to get some color. I really like the new arrangement, though.

Pumpkin spice coffee. Toast with homemade pumpkin cream cheese.

Now to go figure out what we're having for dinner tonight, before Henry wakes up from nap.

monday miscellany: home improvements, mall time, fall scents, a little naked turtle riding

1) I love this view. They are the best little critters.

2) Henry and Celia have gotten really into playing with their blankets this week. They carry them all around, and play and pretend all sorts of things with them. They're also playing with their pillow racers a lot now. We got them last Christmas, and at the time they were a little young for them but I just knew they would grow into them and love playing on them. I imagined them riding all around the house on them, pretending they were in cars and going places- and that's exactly what they're doing now. It's adorable. They are always riding around, pretending something with them.

3) The garden is winding down but we still have beans, tomatoes, and zucchini coming. We found this enormous zucchini the other day.

4) It was nice to have a long weekend, but unfortunately the weather was terrible. Downpours, cloudy, and very humid. We had three days stuck inside. On Saturday we went to the mall to go in the kids' play area. It's the perfect size for Celia and Henry, and there's a Starbucks right next to it. Smart, Starbucks, real smart. So Chris and I get fancy coffee drinks and watch the kids play. They have a great time. On Saturday, we also had lunch at the mall and walked around. I brought some food, but Celia wanted "pizza with cow cheese". We got her some and she ate it, but you can see what she generally thinks about cow cheese in the picture below. Ha! Then the boys went to Sears while Celia and I rode the carousel and went to smell the new fall candles at Bath and Body Works. Fun! We smelled them all and had a great time. Celia loves nice smells just like I do. The candles were on sale for half off, so we picked a couple. We're already planning to go back and smell the Christmas candles when they come out :). Meanwhile, Chris and Henry went to Sears and ended up finding a sale on a new vacuum cleaner. You probably don't remember how Chris set our old vacuum on fire last winter, but I do... It hasn't been quite the same since. The new vacuum is good.

On the carousel. 

Cow cheese! Haha.

Yummy fall candles.

5) We have several exciting house projects going on or just finished. First of all, we had the house painted! Well, half the house. The other half will be done after we finish window replacements. It looks so nice.

Before:

After:

I'm really happy with the door color I picked. We also plan to replace the doorknob and add a deadbolt.

6) These are not exciting pictures, unless you're me and you've seen how gross my laundry area used to be. We got a new washer, moved the cat litter out of the laundry room, added a cute clothes sorter, painted the shelf above the washer and dryer, and sanded the rusty dryer top and painted it. Looks brand new.

Ideally, someday I will paint the laundry area walls a fun color too.

7) Another home improvement- new garage doors that went on last week. These pictures look really boring, unless you're someone who has had extremely heavy garage doors that only opened manually.

I push the button. The door opens. Magic!

8) Not much else going on, really. Except, you know, this incredibly adorable naked turtle riding.

monday miscellany

1) We had a good weekend. Great day on Saturday. We tried a new place for picking peaches and apples and it was really nice. There were goats to feed, a playground for the kids, and a wagon ride to the orchard. The kids loved it. Sunday was my birthday. We didn't do anything special, but went out for lunch and I got a couple new pairs of jeans. I also went out by myself for a while in the afternoon.

2) We have so many things going on with the house right now. Crown molding is done in the dining room- just have to finish painting, whenever Chris finds time for that. But in the meantime we've been distracted by a leaking kitchen faucet, leaking hot water heater, broken down washing machine, and a growing concern about hard water ruining our appliances. We're going to look into a water treatment system asap. Oh, and we're having half the house painted and new garage doors put in this week. Crazy.

3) Of course since I don't have a working washer, Celia wet the bed last night! Everything including her quilt got wet. She never wets the bed. I think it's only happened one other time. So that was the last straw for the laundry. No way I could make it another three or four days until the new washer arrives. We went to visit Chris's parents for the day today so I could get laundry done.

4) These little people. I want to snuggle them and eat them up all day long.

5) Celia is getting excited to start school. I could tell she was feeling nervous about it at first, but we've been talking about it and she has started saying she's excited. We'll go to a couple orientation events before school starts, and that will help too. She is in the pre-kindergarten class this year (don't even get me started about having to send her to kindergarten next year- I don't wanna do it!) and gets to take swimming and tennis, dance classes, art, yoga, and some other fun stuff.

6) I wish we had discovered it earlier in the summer, but we tried a great new park that has a nice playground, big sand area, and a splash pad. I took Celia one afternoon and she loved it!

7) A couple other fun things: I'm taking this week (mostly) off from work because the kids have no daycare. So we are home until the Wednesday after Labor Day. A nice long break! Trying to decide what we'll do for fun tomorrow. But I also want to make sure we're home most of the day because my new iPad is being delivered! It is a birthday gift from my mommy. I can't wait to start getting used to it and try some new apps. It is crazy, though, how inefficiently this iPad has been shipped to me. I ordered it online, assuming it would be shipped from somewhere in the US and would be quick to get. It shipped from China! It took a few days to even leave China, then stopped in Korea, then Alaska, then Kentucky, and New Hampshire, and tomorrow it will be delivered here. Crazy. I may also be a bit crazy for obsessively tracking my packages. It's fascinating to see where things go. I think it's so interesting that something I'll touch tomorrow has been in all of those places before it got to me.

8) Speaking of places and tracking packages, I am a map nerd. I like looking at maps for fun. I often just pick a part of the country or the world and look at maps. Especially if I read a news story about another place, I like to look at it on a map and see what's around it to get more context. Nerdy nerdy fun fun.

snuggling, playing, raining and renovating

I used to be in the habit of blogging about everyday stuff almost daily. Somehow I've been busier now and when I have the time, I don't usually feel like writing. But looking back at my blog and reading those old day-to-day posts is something I really like. It's nice to remember all those little things, and to remember and see the pictures of everything. Sometimes I'll go into the archives and look at what we were doing one year ago, or two years ago on the same date. All this to say, (and I'm sure I'll be eating my words when I don't post again for two weeks or something) I want to get back in the habit of writing regularly.

Now that Celia's out of school, we're home on Tuesday mornings. This morning I knew we were going out later in the day so we had a very slow morning. We played, I gave the kids breakfast and cleaned up, we played more. They played upstairs while I put away some laundry (I did four loads today- clothes, towels and sheets). Henry was in a very snuggly mood for a while, and wanted me to carry him around. He kept hugging me. Then of course Celia wanted in, so we did a lot of sitting together and hugging. I didn't complain. We went outside and played, and ended up going for a walk down the road to the brook. Henry wanted to walk between Celia and me and hold both of our hands. It was adorable.

Blurry picture, but one I want to remember. He is such a sweet and delicious, snuggly little guy.

Henry's cheesy picture smile.

His hair is really growing now, and it's going to be curly! He gets little curls in back.

They were playing with baby wipes. Cleaning various things around the house. And each other's bellies.

After our walk, we played in the driveway for a while longer and went in for lunch. We had salad, leftover pizza, and the kids had fruit too. Then I cleaned up the kitchen again (I feel like all I do is clean up the kitchen) while Celia made a "bookstore". Henry was her assistant: A baby who also helped out at the bookstore.

I had to attend a staff meeting for work this afternoon, so we got ready and I dropped them off at daycare for a few hours. I went home and changed, and then headed toward the office. I always get a fancy coffee drink before I go to staff meeting. Staff meetings are kind of like vacations for me. Ha! When we were done, everyone's phones were going off with alerts about flash flooding. And then we heard the rain. Crazy, crazy rain. I have seen hard rainstorms, but this was the craziest rain I've ever seen. Usually when it rains hard you get that red doppler area. This was the pink and purple doppler and it was wild. So we were all stuck inside, waiting for the rain to let up so we could leave the building. And I remembered that China was outside at home, poor guy. It took a while for him to come when I got home and started calling for him. He was soaked. I had to dry him off with a towel.

I picked up Celia and Henry and we went home and got dinner ready. Chris was home making a model of the crown molding we're putting in the dining room. This room is turning into quite a project.

So far we have removed wallpaper, cleaned off the wallpaper paste, painted, and decided on molding and trim. This picture is a pretty good one of the new wall colors.

We have one base board in place. Chris is working on the rest. We are really interested in keeping to a traditional Georgian Colonial style with the renovations we do to the house. Neither of us was very excited about using the same old crown molding you see in every house these days. We wanted something more unique, and also something that fit the style of the house. So we decided to use dentil molding. The crown molding Chris is putting together actually has four separate pieces. It's going to be a lot of work, but we agree that if we're going to bother re-doing a room, we want to do it right. We want it to be the way we want it, and not take the easy route if it isn't what we really want. Here is the model Chris made for the crown:

It looks so good! As much work as it takes, and as time consuming as it is (and it is really not easy to get anything done when you have little kids!), I think it's really neat that we're doing all these things ourselves. We're both learning a lot and Chris is really getting a trial by fire in carpentry. Plus, I'm a big believer in doing things yourself because you have much more pride in and take more care with things when you've done them yourself. The dining room is only the beginning. This house is really going to be ours (and is going to be amazing!) by the time we're done with it.

Now I need to get myself to bed.

weekend projects

We've been having a great long weekend here. Celia left around midday on Saturday to spend a couple days with Chris's parents, so it's been a quiet weekend and we've had the opportunity to get a lot done around the house. We're working on the dining room right now. The new windows are finished and trimmed, we have the trim removed from the floor and ceiling, and I'm working on scrubbing the wallpaper glue from the walls so we can paint. I can't wait for it all to be done! When we're finished the room will have new windows, curtains, paint, and trim.

Celia's room, all clean and empty. I took the railing off her bed last week, so now she has a regular bed.

We're also finally getting the curtains up in our bedroom! Sneak peak...

I got brave and bought hair dye. I have a lot of white in my hair these days and I've been putting off doing anything to it, but I really don't want white hair when I'm only in my 30s. Unfortunately I used it and still have some white, so I'm not sure it's worth it. Not sure if I'll do it again when the dye wears off.

We've also gone out to get Henry new shoes, I've done some cleaning and did a couple workouts, Chris played golf, and I did grocery shopping. I miss Celia when she's gone, but boy is life easy with just one child instead of two! On Sunday it was just Henry and me while Chris played golf. Henry and I played, he had a nap, and I potted herbs, pulled weeds in the yard, and made dinner for later. Unfortunately the weather was cold and windy, and we didn't play outside at all. We made a trip to Trader Joe's to get a few things we were out of, and then went home and waited for Chris to get back from golf.

Lately he has to have his blankets for naps. At night we don't do blankets, but for naps he insists. Blue one under him, green one on top. 

Ready to nurse after his nap.

He was busy saying hi to the pineapples, and I couldn't get him to look at me.

Today we are just getting more work done with the curtains and dining room, and waiting for Celia to come home!