Paint & Extra Sneak Peak Cranbaby Photos

Whenever I used to eat breakfast I'd sit at the table and look out (and up) our kitchen window.  Unfortunately that meant I was staring at peeling paint on our front soffits and fascia.  So, in late August I decided it was time to scrape, sand, prime and paint the soffits and cedar siding.  The paint on the siding out front wasn't too bad, but it was in rough shape in the back.  Of course, I found one soffit that wasn't worth painting and had to be replaced.  Believe it or not: a pastor and a pregnant lady were able to replace this soffit standing on parallel extension ladders.  (For the record: I do not recommend letting pastors work on your home. Or pregnant women for that matter.)

Scraped soffit.

Scraped and sanded siding.

Luckily for me our house had cedar siding, so I got to use oil-based primer.  I just love the smell of mineral spirits in the morning.  (And so does Alissa.)  At this point in the project the neighborhood consensus was that our house had leprosy or some other contagious disease of Leviticus 14.  Thankfully we didn't have to have the house torn down and the stones taken "outside the city to an unclean place."  But I digress.

The finished product!  (I know.  Same color.  Disappointing.  What can we say?  We like blue! However, if you look closely you'll notice the front door is now burgundy.)  The kids at church were a little bummed our house ended up the same color it started, but they'll get over it.  Our next-door neighbors were a true godsend; they helped me do the final step (painting) in one full day, which was wonderful, because it's too cold to do much exterior painting here now.

This is something much more interesting.  Baby 2.0.  (Alissa got another ultrasound no charge because the hospital forgot to measure something they were supposed to.)  In the above picture you can see the baby yawning.  Nostrils on left.  Chin on right.  Open mouth in the middle.

Another excellent example of the Millage toes.  Thanks, Mom!

Profile.

We thank God for this little one and can't wait to meet him in January / February!

 

 

22 Month Update (Finally!) & Bathroom Update

Levi is such an active 22 month old. He has a vocabulary that is topping 200 words now. He chatters all the time and loves to make jokes and giggle. Favorite words: Funny, Walk, Milkshake, Pop pop, "Oh Yeah", Water Tower, Dirty, and Train. He has become very independent lately and likes to walk all the way to McDonalds and back. (6-7 blocks from our house).

Our newest mode of transportation. Levi seems to like it and I can bike to the store with Levi and bring back 4 gallons of milk in one trip.

Levi loves the fresh local summer foods available.

Levi LOVES watching, touching, playing with, and talking about "Nee-nahs" (Firetrucks).

Here is our basement bathroom/laundry room redo. We had a carpeted bathroom (YUCK) and we decided to choose a new flooring. The project got WAY bigger way faster than expected but as you can see, it got so much nicer!

Once the carpet was gone Jan & Alan helped us scrape the old glue and other grody things away. We love how it turned out. There are still a few things we aren't sure about (like painting the shutter , etc.) We put a new light in, laid vinyl tile, put up wall bead boards, base boards, painted, restuck old wallpaper, and sanded and painted the cupboard. Thanks, Andrew, Jan and Alan!!!!

Living Room Curtain Reveal & Recipes

For some reason, curtains make me feel like a house is really lived in. We couldn't really do anything to the apartment we lived in previously so when we finally bought a house, I wanted to settle in and get my curtains up. Well, 2+ years later, they are finally up. I told Jan I would post a photo of our living room as soon as we got the curtain rod up. We got it up last night but then I had a hard time finding a photo of our old "curtain thingie" that was up when we moved in. You can kind of see it in this November 2010 holiday photo:

We were able to reuse some of the holes from the original mounting. I had to tie them back a little awkwardly as Levi decided to attack the cat with the curtains and I foresee ruined curtains. Also, ignore the crooked pictures. I didn't stage the room well before taking the photo... Here is after:

I also wanted to include a few recipes I tried lately that Andrew really liked: (click to enlarge)

New table

I thought this was kind of artsy and I liked the comparison of Levi's hand to my own.
Andrew has been working hard on remaking this old singer sewing table in to a side table. It turned out beautifully!

These are onion flowers from my garden. Who knew they were so pretty or that they would last so long in a vase?

The Kitchen Reveal

This post has been a LONG time coming! This kitchen took many steps. Here is the wallpaper that was driving me crazy!

The first hurdle was getting rid of this chandelier lamp hanging in the breakfast nook.
I had an eye on this particular one from Pier 1 but couldn't get it. Then I found it last year in California on clearance for $27! I really like how it turned out.

We still had the busy wallpaper problem AND border!

Just a few weeks after Levi was born, Jan and Alan came to visit. Jan asked me what she could do to help. I said, "Feel like pulling off wall paper?" (I think it was a late nesting instinct :)
So I put Levi in a sling and away I went. Andrew had a huge paper to write, but he took some time to help with this step.
This was a huge endeavor (and people always say this is the easy way to fix up a house!). The layers of paint underneath the wallpaper were bubbling. We ended up scraping and using a heat gun to take some of the old paint off. A month or 2 ago we finally painted the walls. Then this weekend I decided it was time to install the new kitchen faucet. As you can see, the old one was both rusting and growing things...

Thank you, Andrew, for working hard on this! I love the new one!

Last, hang a few pictures and tada:

Bathroom #1 Redo

Here is the small bathroom off the kitchen. Believe it or not, prior to this photo, there were 2 borders up in this bathroom! The ceiling one as shown above, and the same thing about eye level if you were sitting on the toilet. This bathroom bugged me and the borders were peeling. We stripped the wallpaper. (Andrew did most of the real hard work in this room!) We do not recommend those wall paper "scorers", they just rip up your drywall.
Then we puttied and sanded. Primed. Painted. Sanded again. Painted again. (Thank you, mom, for the help with painting!)
We replaced the light fixture. I spray painted the rim of the mirror, the towel bar, the toilet paper roll thingy, and replaced the light switch cover.

We replaced a huge board of hooks with this small one and a small Bible verse picture.
And here are the finishing touches. (Not sure the plant is staying but I left it after Jan put it in there :)