DISHWASHER!!!!

I have a dishwasher!!!!!!!

It's not new, but it works and I love it. :)

My cousin got a new one and gave me hers and it's been installed for 3 days and that's how many times I've used it. LOVE it.

I'm hoping this is the beginning of me falling in love with our house again. Our house is in an AWESOME neighborhood, we have AWESOME neighbors, we have some really cool things about our house. But lately I've wanted to leave for more bedrooms and more storage and a nicer kitchen. I think this is the beginning of things to come.

Yay for appliances!!!

Fall Cleaning/Fixing up

Nick and I have been talking for awhile about our house... We love it. Absolutely LOVE the neighborhood and the neighbors but we're always thinking about moving. It's always on the back burner. However, we haven't done anything about this. Our house is full of half finished projects and a lot to do to get on the market. The one thing going for us is that our house hasn't lost value. It's actually increased according to Zillow and all the other websites telling you the "market value" of houses. So we just need to start working on things.

So we have.

We went and looked at a house yesterday in the same neighborhood that we used to live in. I loved the house. LOVED it. And it made me really sad that there's practically nothing we can do about it right now. I could picture us living there. I could picture all the space we'd have and it's a price we could afford. If we didn't have our house. So now, here's our plan.

We've (I've) made a list of things we have to do to get our house on the market. A lot of it is really easy things. Touch up paint. Organize. Clean stuff out. That kind of thing. Some of it is bigger. Fix the deck. Replace the upstairs toilet. Patch a few walls. But it's all doable.


So we're doing it. We're picking out a few things to do each week and then if the right house comes along, we'll be ready. Not stuck dreaming about what could have been. I've already starting selling some of the toys our kids have outgrown (that's a win-win. Stuff goes out and I make some money!). And the house we saw, is still on the market right now (the last two we've wanted to look at - sold before we could even get in to see them!) and they aren't moving until October so there is some wiggle room. Maybe we'll get lucky and be ready by then and it will still be on the market.

A girl can dream right?!

Time to clean up and fix it up!

One extreme to the other

So here's the deal. I'm not that neat. I don't like things DIRTY but I can handle clutter (while Nick on the other hand can NOT handle clutter). Nick's been on me for awhile (how many years have we been married now?) to turn that around and really work on that. Easier said than done. But now I think he fixed me too well.

I spent a few days last week going nuts and cleaning around the house.

Here are some pics of the work I did:

BEFORE picture of the basement. YIKES!

AFTER of the new "Play Area" for the kids.

View over to the "adult area" of the basement.

Another view. Yay! Floor space!

BEFORE picture of my cluttered kitchen eating area.

AFTER. Yay!

Living room.

Dining Room.

Dominick and Annabelle's room (Yes, those are labels on the dressers. Dom likes to pick out his own clothes and this makes it easier for him).

View of Annabelle's crib and bookshelf.

View of floor space basically (we moved the toy rack thingy downstairs).

Dom and Annabelle's crib together. They sleep side by side now basically. 

Anyway, all those pictures were showing you the work I did and how now I'm crazy. The whole basement has to be picked up before we can go to bed. All dishes have to be done and all clutter off the countertops before bed. If Nick leaves something out, I'm quick to glare at him and then pick it up. The floor gets swept every day and the basement vacuumed every other day. I'm crazy. I'm not saying this will last forever, but I'm not sure which is worst. Someone who doesn't care about clutter, or something who is crazy and won't let you leave anything out...Poor Nick. 

Be careful what you wish for!!

~ ~ ChAnGeS ~ ~

So many things are changing around our house!! And I Love it!!

First, I PASSED BOARDS!!! I'm now officially a licensed RN and can't wait to start working as an RN. Unfortunately they canceled June orientation at the hospital so I have to wait until July, but hey, I passed and I have a job, so I can't complain too much.

Second, Nick has a new job!! He moved to a new company and we are both thrilled about it! He's going to be running a big job and he's really nervous but I think, no I know! he's going to be fantastic.

Third, we are cleaning up our house!! We always go back and forth on whether or not we want to stay in the city or move back to the county. I figure we should just pretend that we are going to move so we get our house nice and fixed up and if we want to move we will be ready and if we don't, well our house will be nice and fixed up! So we are starting with some landscaping in the back. We will eventually get to the front but are starting with the back. It looks great already and we're just starting!

We dug up all the old grass weeds in one section of the back and relaid some sod. Then we dug up all the old plants in the flower bed and I'm planting new flowers and some hosta plants. I love it already. Next we'll dig up the rest of the weeds and resod the rest of the backyard. We are fixing up the parking pad too. Right now it's just the old parking pad but Nick's running pipe to add lights outside and make it a nice outdoor space. After that we'll finally redo the deck and be DONE with the back!!

I plan on redoing the front too, which won't be near as much work. Just digging up some old grass and planting some new flowers. Then our landscaping will be beautiful!!

Ahhh I'm so happy right now with everything we've been doing and I can't wait to do more! It's amazing how much time I have when I don't have to do homework or study!!

Coming Soon!

When I have a second (no promises on when that will be but I'm hoping tonight or tomorrow) I have a lot of updating to do! :)

Gretchen Suzanne was born on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 1:45 am. She was 8 lbs 2 oz and 20" long. I was able to successfully VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) and we are thrilled. I want to write about my birth experience, Gretchen's stay in the NICU (don't worry, she's fine and home with the family where she belongs!), Dom and Annabelle's reactions, construction on the wall, our adjustments at home, her 1 week appointment, everything!

But for now, I have to go and clean to get the room ready for the wall (construction is starting whether I'm ready or not and I'd rather be ready!).

Here's a quick pic to hold you over until I can fully update.

The LIST revisited

I made a list! Well a preliminary list...

Here's my list between the rest of today and tomorrow...

- Organize mail (we have mail ALL OVER THIS HOUSE)
- Fold laundry in basement - DONE
- Put away toys in basement - DONE
- Bring laundry up (too heavy...I'll see if I'm motivated later)
- Organize socks in bedroom (No joke....there's a lot of socks on our floor, it might take me an hour)
 

 Told you there were a lot of socks....

- Put laundry away (my least favorite part about doing laundry)
- Look at Annabelle's clothes (18 month go into storage, time to pull out the 24 month/2T clothes for this big girl!)
- Clean Annabelle's room (disaster area)
- Clean master bath (disaster area #2)
- clean master bedroom (disaster area #3)
- Put away table in living room
- move back sofa table
- load up old queen bed to move to mom and dad's on Sunday (totally can't do this alone, obviously)
- clean kitchen and do dishes
- clean first floor bathroom (not a disaster but still needs to be done)

Once those things are done, I can focus on actually getting out the baby stuff and organizing the nursery (that will hopefully begin construction this weekend. I'll try to take before and after pictures).

Let's do this!!! Back to the grind. Will be back tomorrow blog world!

Pregnancy Ticker

I'm procrastinating before getting ready for work and while looking at the tickers on the right side of my blog I noticed it said that I only have about 45 days to go until baby #3 gets here...

Well holy cow.

I'm NOT ready for that at all. I have so many things to do before this baby can come! SO many things!!!

As most of you know, I'm a list maker so it looks like I'll have to get in gear and make a list and get ready for this baby! I started working on cleaning out my bedroom today (we're adding a wall in our room to make it two separate rooms and one will be the new nursery) but then I got tired and took a 2 1/2 hour nap...oops!

SO here's my plan. I'll make a list tonight and get cracking tomorrow. I have all day tomorrow. I only have a 9:40 doc appointment and a little studying to do. I can do it!!!

45 days AT THE MOST. If this baby comes when Annabelle did, then I only have 24 more days. EEK!

Here we go...

Our House

is a very very very fine house!

Haha, anyway! Our first floor is almost complete! And I'm THRILLED! Nick has taken two weeks of vacation and we are busy getting everything ready for baptism. We basically only have tomorrow to finish getting things ready.

Friday we are going with Nick's sister Kate and her kids to Six Flags. It's the kids school trip and we decided to tag along. We have season passes and haven't been to Six Flags in forever. I actually haven't been on a ride in over 2 years since I was pregnant last summer, so I'm really excited! We have both kids going to daycare so it's a fun Mommy and Daddy day for us!

Then Saturday, we have our best friend's Jim and Leslie's couple's shower to go to. I'm a bridesmaid so I want to get there early and help get things set up. It's pretty far away and we have to have a sitter so we'll probably leave pretty early for that.

Then Sunday is Annabelle's baptism and everything has to be done and ready!

So we're working like busy little bees!

Today we had a funeral to go to in the morning and then we ran a few errands, so we didn't get started until late. THEN we had the tornadoes and golf ball sized hail come and we took a break to hide out in the basement. But we still got some stuff done. The built in bookcases are stained and poly-ed. Some pictures are hung. Some areas of the house are clean...some.

But we can do more tomorrow!

I'm taking random pictures so I'll post those soon...along with all the other pictures I keep promising you!!! They're coming. Soon. I swear...

House Updates

So as you know, we've been working on our first floor for just over two months. Today, the painting got done. And I LOVE it. It's a little out there. Nick and I like some crazy things, but I'm really liking it.

The first thing we did was have our painter add a texture to all the walls and ceiling. We had replaced some plaster with drywall and needed texture to make it look uniform and to match the overall feeling of the house. We love what he did.

Here's a few pictures of it before any paint went on the walls:





He did that on Monday. Then today he came back to paint. We did two walls "Midas Touch" or a yellow-y gold color, then all the other walls "Dante's Ridge" or a bluish/grey color and finally we painted the ceiling "Wishbone", a brownish color. It seems like that wouldn't all go, but I think it does. In the mini-hall we have, we did the blue on the walls and the yellow on the ceiling to keep it lighter in there since there are no windows.

Here are the quick pictures I've taken of the colors on a few of the walls:

In the corner of the living room, showing where all three colors meet. The yellow wall will have our china cabinet against it.

The hall area, showing the yellow ceiling with the blue walls.

The area by the fireplace showing the blue walls with the brown ceiling and our white crown molding.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and have all the furniture back in place so Nick doesn't have to do anything. We'll see if I can recruit some help to get that done!

So, without furniture or any other pictures, what do you think?? Yay, or Neigh? :)

Weekend Progress!

We did SO MUCH this weekend! I feel calmer and better already!

The first thing that Dom and I did on Saturday was go to Big Brother school! I'll put that in another post though because it deserves it's own. :)

We started off Saturday at home by cleaning out the storage rooms. That wasn't even on our list of things to do! But we realized we can't move stuff out of Dom's new room if there isn't any place to put it. So Nick went off to Home Depot or Lowe's or somewhere and bought a TON of storage shelves. We set up the back storage room like a warehouse. It has rows and rows of shelves and we cleaned a TON of stuff out. If we hadn't used it in awhile, we threw it out.

The storage room in the back of the basement now has all kinds of stuff organized. From paint, to tools, to sleeping bags, to wrapping paper, to kitchen electronics, to who knows what else! It looks great.


It's hard to tell by this little picture from my phone, but it's organized and looking great. :)

After tackling this room, we organized the storage room under the stairs. We decided to make this storage room ALL BABY/KIDS stuff. So we will know where everything is. It's a much smaller room and works really well for this. We have extra diapers and wipes on the shelving, we have Dom's tool bench, we have the baby clothes and activity mats and extra toys all stored in this little room. This will make it easier to rotate toys with Dom too. We've been having all his toys out all the time and we need to stop that. He doesn't need all 500 something toys out at once. We can rotate them and keep them interesting all the time. We're starting with this now. :)




So all this looks really nice, right? Check out the picture of what the basement looked like WHILE doing this project:



Yeah...I was slightly freaking out...

But we got everything in the basement back to working order!

After all this work, we decided to go to the Home Show downtown. For those of you who don't know, the Home and Garden Show is at the Ed Jones Dome and America Center and has booths of things for your house. Such as electrical safety information from Kay Bee Electric! :) My mom was working at the Kay Bee Booth so we decided to check out some booths and visit my mom. There were a lot of cool things. One thing that I really want to do is get a closet organizer company to come to our house and give me advice/estimates on how to redo our closet. Our closet is huge but isn't very functional.

Anyway, not the point.

So we went to the home show. We saw our friend Chris there and visited with him for a bit, then we went to find the Kay Bee booth. Unfortunately for us (with a 2 year old) the booth was right next to a balloon garden (where it's a walk through garden made of balloon animals..very cool but Dom wanted ALL the balloons) and next to a Ferris Wheel. Fun for us...

Dom wanted everything. He thought the Home and Garden show was amazing. Mom and Nick decided to take Dom on the Ferris Wheel and while I was terrified for him, Dom loved it. He was a little nervous the first time around they said, but once Nick started saying, "Whee!", Dom fell in love.



Not the best picture from my phone again, but there they are!

After the Home Show we went home and crashed.

Sunday was STILL productive! We moved everything out of Dom's big boy room that we hadn't done the day before, and we moved the crib downstairs. We decided to get Dom used to the room first, before making him go into a big boy bed. So we moved the crib into his new room. Then we started working on A's room. We have the pack n play set up in her room, just for now, and we have all the 0-3 month clothes that we have in her dresser. FYI, this child will be wearing mainly blue, green and yellow...that's all the clothes we have except about 4 pink onesies! :) But that's ok. I'm sure she'll look great in blue. ;-)

I packed my hospital bag, got the diaper bag all packed up, and got Dommie's big brother present ready. We're having a present for him at the hospital so he gets something too and it's not just all about the baby. He's getting two new shirts (including on that says "BIG BRO"), a new Lego set, his Brother/Sister book, and a new puzzle. Hopefully these will all be pretty cool gifts and he'll enjoy them. I got out all the baby bottles and organized them. I'll start sterilizing them Wednesday and get them all ready for storage and use. I'm going to breastfeed but since I'll be going to school once a week still, I'll need to get pumping right away. Hopefully this doesn't confuse her too much and she still nurses for me. It will only be one bottle a week, so keep your fingers crossed this works out!

I think we are almost ready for this baby girl! If we get nothing else done, we have a place for her to sleep and clean clothes for her to wear. Oh and diapers to put her in. So I think we are getting there.

Just a few more weeks to go! :) I can't wait!

One more month...

Today is February 24th...one month exactly until my c-section. 4 short weeks until I have two children. Holy cow...

One more month.

I am so unprepared. It's kind of ridiculous. I mean we aren't entirely new to this, so we have things at home to help us with a new baby, but for the most part I feel lost.

I want my house perfect before this baby comes. PERFECT. And I know that there's no chance of that. I need to make a list. A list of things I need to do/have done before the baby comes and just work on it. One day at a time. No stressing.

At least the floors are done...I think. I'm pretty sure they are, at least. We still need to paint the walls and baseboards and put up the baseboards but the floors are done. We can start THINKING about putting furniture back.

One more month.

Once we can put furniture back, I think I'll settle down a little. I seriously have a small panic attack every time I'm on the main floor. You should see our kitchen. I should take a picture. In our kitchen we have our desk, a bookcase, china cabinet and hutch, dining room table, kitchen table and like 8 chairs. You can't hardly move in there. It's a chore to "make" dinner, which honestly consists of making a frozen pizza right now since I have no room to do anything.

We have all the china from the china cabinet and hutch on the floor in Dominick's big boy room. There is a wine rack on the poor kid's bed. Don't worry he's not sleeping in there yet... :)

One more month.

Here's what I want to have done before the baby comes. If I just make a list, we'll be fine. We can do it! We will do it!!

• Paint the living room/dining room walls
• Paint the baseboards
• Put up the baseboards
• Move all the furniture back in to the living/dining room
• Pack my hospital bag
• Pull out all the 0-3 month clothes and wash them
• Start to transition Dom downstairs
• Pack the hospital diaper bag
• Get the car seat installed (or like have Nick do it since he's now installed and uninstalled a car seat like 5,000 times)
• Finish the main floor bathroom closet
• Go to Time for Dinner and get one more round of dinners before the baby comes
• Re-decorate the nursery for Annabelle (not doing much, just a few little things to make it her room)
• Get a few things for Dommie when he comes to visit at the hospital so it's an easier transition
• Pull out the pack n play's and set one up on each floor
• Finish buying things we don't have and still need (i.e. swing, etc.)
• Set up diaper stations (for both kiddos) on each floor so after the baby comes and I am recovering from surgery, I'm not having to do stairs every time I need to change a diaper
• I'm sure there's more, I just can't think of anything else right now....
  

That's not so bad, right?? I can handle all this, right??

Of course I can handle it...I still have ONE WHOLE MONTH! :)

More house changes

We are doing too much and I can't stand it!!

We are still finishing the floors. They are almost done. Roger was finishing sanding today and doing the stain today. Then tomorrow he's going to polyurethane the floors. I don't know how many coats of that it takes but after the poly is done, we are done...

with the floors.

Then we are going to paint the first floor...yay...

Then Roger is going to do new baseboards around and then we are really done. I know when it's all done it will look fantastic and I will love it. But right now, I'm just ready to do baby stuff. We haven't moved Dom downstairs because all the dining room stuff is in that room. We haven't touched the nursery because Dom is still in it. And our baby is coming in about 5 weeks, ready or not!

So I'll be very thankful when it's done. I guess we have just a few more weeks and our first floor will be almost perfect. I can hold on a few more weeks.

In the meantime, any suggestions on paint colors?? Our living room/dining room are an L shaped room connected. Our dining room furniture is oak wood and our living room furniture is black and tan. Right now the two walls that are just in the dining room are dark red and the other walls are tan. I like them fine and we've done some decorating around them. For instance, our dining room chairs are a red/gold design to match the room and furniture and we love them. So I'm not sure we'll actually change anything but it will be nice to have fresh paint on the walls. But if you have any color suggestions, I'll take 'em!

Not so ready

So I was emailing my friend Leslie today and she asked if the nursery was almost ready....

HAHAHA

No. The nursery is not ready. In fact Dominick is still in the nursery and not anywhere near his big boy room. That's our fault right now.

If you know us at all, you know we can't sit still around our house. We love where we live and we love the idea of our house, but our actual house? Not so much. So we've been making changes. A lot of changes in the last few years.

Right before Dominick was born, we added the fourth bedroom upstairs. We added a wall, ran new lighting and made sure he had enough heat in the winter and cool in the summer and made the nursery right next to our room.

Then, after Dom was born and right before his baptism, we redid the basement. We rebuild the entertainment center, re-carpeted most of the basement, re painted everything, and added ceramic tile by the laundry room and bathroom.

For Dom's first birthday, we needed a bigger kitchen for the big birthday party...so what do you do when your kitchen isn't big enough?? You knock down a wall of course! So we knocked down the (load bearing) wall between the kitchen and our guest bedroom and made a big kitchen (which is normally my favorite room in the whole house now, FYI).

For Dom's second birthday, we redid the first floor bathroom. It had been gross and now it's beautiful.

So in theory, we had until Annabelle's baptism to do anything new to the house. But we couldn't wait. We are currently refinishing all of our first floor hardwood floors. We wouldn't have started this project except that when we redid the bathroom, Nick pulled up the tile outside the bathroom and discovered beautiful hardwood floors underneath. They just needed to be sanded. Hence the beginning of this project. So far, the living room and dining room are completely sanded and getting stained today and this week. Then after we get back, we'll move the furniture from the entry foyer to the finished dining room/living room and do that last little section. Then we'll have perfect hardwood floors!

Anyway, I got off track. Since we are redoing the hardwood floors, we have the stuff that was in the living room/dining room either in the entry foyer or in Dom's big boy room. The main stuff in Dom's big boy room is all of our china from the china cabinet, so Dom's not really allowed in there right now. Since Dom's not allowed in his new room, he's still in the old room. So the old room is NOT ready for a baby.

It's weird. I keep thinking about how much time we have, and thinking that we have an eternity. We have time to get the room ready. We have time to move Dom downstairs. I have time to pack my bag. I have time to get all my work stuff done before I leave for 8 weeks.

Time, time, time. I have plenty! Right?

WRONG. This baby will come, whether I'm ready or not, in about 6 to 6-1/2 weeks. Um, that's not very far away at all.

So I guess after this vacation, we better get our sh!t together and start preparing for this baby girl!

6 weeks. Holy cow.

Bathroom!!!

So we are almost done!

I wish I had pictures of the bathroom before we started anything...but like most of our projects, as soon as Nick decides to do something, he's already tearing down walls before I can get in there for a picture.

But picture our old bathroom. A typical "city" bathroom. It had the peach tile that was painted white. So it was chipping everywhere. Everything was that tile. The walls, the window sill, the shower walls, everything. The floor was basic white tile. The shower was painted white tile and chipping as bad as the other parts of the walls. The tub was disgusting. The sink was a tiny pedestal sink. I hated it. I absolutely hated it. It was gross and the paint on the tile was peeling and showing the ugly color underneath EVERYWHERE. The tub was so gross (our fault because we only used it to clean paint brushes, etc.) that I wouldn't dare shower in there, or subject anyone else to showering in there. And we found out the bathroom vent didn't vent anywhere...it pulled the air from the bathroom and vented into the walls. So randomly different areas of our house would smell and we didn't know why...Now we knew. So it needed to go.

So here's our transformation. I have to say, I LOVE OUR NEW BATHROOM. We used to avoid the main floor bathroom. Like we'd make the trip to go upstairs or downstairs to go. Not anymore. I've even caught myself going upstairs from the basement to use the main floor.

Where the shower goes

The ceiling

The window

Where the toilet and sink go

The window and sink/toilet area, with drywall!

The floor

The ceiling, with a new access panel to get to our jetted tub
upstairs in case we ever have a problem

The shower area, with our new tub

Our new vanity, toilet and floor!

(And our cat)

The marble casing around the shower (love it!)

Our ceiling (complete with LED can lights, our access panel and a vent
that ACTUALLY VENTS OUTSIDE

Our new vanity (and you can see some of our floor tile here, that
Nick laid himself!)

Our new "super" toilet. This thing has a "power flush" and can
flush a whole bucket of golf balls in one flush...don't try it though.

So if you can't tell....I LOVE OUR NEW BATHROOM!!! It's still not 100% done. We already bought the new window, it's just not in yet, so that window will be replaced. We also haven't even touched the bathroom closet. So we have to finish that.

But it's functional!! And we love it!! Now I just need to find a shower curtain I like...