My Latest Project

When we moved into this house we pretty much painted every room.  I originally painted over the horrible green paneling in the family room with a blue color and while it was a little dark it was WAY better than the ugly green color.  However, last November we had a water pipe burst underneath the house that caused water to cover the family room and furnace floors.  After getting the pipe fixed and the walls dried we thought everything was fine but in August we discovered some mold.  Our landlord is the sweetest lady and when I called to tell her about it she said to get someone out to replace all four walls.  We hired a wonderful contractor and about 4 days later we had a brand new room.

This is the room before it was textured.  I didn't think to get pictures of the demo, but it was pretty amazing.

 

 New drywall, we even had the ceiling re-done.

 

 The blue you see next to the fireplace was the color of the whole room.

This is my new family room.  It is amazing what new, straight walls and a lighter coat of paint will do.

 

I decided to paint the fireplace a darker color just to add a little something to the room.

 

These are the stairs that go from the family room to the living room.  I decided that since the room was getting a face lift the stairs should too.

 Bye bye carpet!

  

The carpet was just hideous and so hard to remove.  I spend three days pulling up tacks, nails and staples.

New stairs!!

 

It took me about 2 hours per stair to do this pattern.  I think the thing I'm most proud of is I didn't use any tape, this was all done by hand.

I am the kind of person who has these great ideas and starts a project with no realistic view of time and energy, about halfway through I don't think it will all be worth the effort, but it always is in the end. I thank my husband for being ever so patient with the monster that stayed up painting until 2 in the morning for a week straight and was horribly grumpy the next day.

The Tales of John

John, like most kids, does lots of crazy, funny things.  Many of the stories that I have don't have accompanying pictures so I haven't posted them, which I'm told is a darn shame.  Since it is a blog I decided I would start sharing some of the stories, for those that don't have kids yet, or those that have newborns, infants or toddlers let these stories be a lesson to you that kids pick up on the littlest things.

I'll start with today's incidents since they are fresh on my mind.  Today we went to Mt. Zion in Castle Rock for church because John and August's second cousin, Maren, was baptized today.  As we were walking out the door to go to church I remembered to grab John's new SpongeBob coloring book and a handful of crayons.  When we arrived at Mt. Zion we picked a pew and were sitting for all of 30 seconds before John asked to color in SpongeBob.  Happy that I remembered to bring the book I handed John his book and the crayons.  John opened the book and started to pick up a crayon then he turned to me and said "Mom, I don't have all of the crayons."  I then told him that this was all I brought and he had plenty of colors to choose from.  He looked at his page again and then looked at me and said "What am I supposed to do now?"  You see, John is very particular about the colors of SpongeBob, Patrick, Sandy, Squidward and all the other characters.  I don't know any other three year old that cares what color things are. I thought they just all scribbled.  John again made his coloring specifications clear when we were at the restaurant after the baptism and the Pastor of Mt. Zion picked up a crayon to help John color.  Pastor Ziegler picked up a green crayon to color Patrick and John grabbed his hand said "No, not that", handed Pastor the pink crayon and then said "his name is Patrick and he is pink."  While humiliated, I'm actually amused he cares that much.  So, if you ever color with John, you'd better ask what color something is if you don't already know.

Oh, and just because I want to brag... John put together a 24 piece puzzle all on his own yesterday.  I sat next to him the whole time, but never touched a piece.  John has become quite a puzzle kid.

Sleepy John

For the most part John doesn't take a nap anymore, but sometimes he just falls asleep playing or eating.

I'm not even sure how he came to be in this position.

 

He looks cold.  We keep telling him he'd be warmer if he kept his pants on.

He was right in the middle of eating when he fell alseep.

 

Nice outfit, huh?  At least he is wearing shorts.