Snow Snow Snow

We haven't had as much snow as our family but we did have a little bit of damage to our home. We just got our internet and phone services back yesterday. But... look at this photo of my cousin in Massachusetts and her precious boys: Ben and Joe. Look at all that snow!

Bathroom Before and Middle...

We don't have the bathroom refinished or anything like that but we took down the curtains and shower curtain/wall and this is what it looks like now. The kids love their own bathroom (or I should say that mommy likes her own bathroom.)

Boy Room Sweet Boy Room

Sam's room! We just got the train table yesterday for $10 at a thrift store. Nate decorated the room.

Playing with Woody from Toy Stor.
The other side of his room.

Ellen's room is my favorite layout. I love the double doors.

You can see our room through her door.

Room Sweet Room

Here is a photo of the kitchen sink... what I wanted to show here is that we added door pulls. It was a big project to do (hassle for Nate) but I don't know how the previous owner lived without them for over 45 years. This is the original kitchen cabinets and they are so heavy to pull open and get all grime-y without knobs.

This is the dining room. I wanted to rip out the chandelier when we bought the house but now that we are in it, it doesn't bother me as much. Isn't that funny how you end up wanting a new faucet over a chandelier?? The mirror is from the thrift store and I need to spray paint the frame still.
This is the main wall when you walk into our living room. These are those photos that I referred to about 6 months ago. I did something under it that is very trendy in the blog world - vinyl letters. The trees are from my dad's office before they moved to a new space. The chairs on the right are from a yard sale that I went to with my friend Jen. They are old theatre seats.

This is the biggest blessing of our new home: Grace gets her own room! You can see here that she loves it, keeps it spotless and everything has a place. She is very proud to show it off. The rug is my most recent find from a thrift store - $29! The desk is from my dad's office. The "Wallies" are from our family friends, the Postemas and the bunks are from my childhood lifelong friend Jenni.

This is the other side of Grace's room.

Home Sweet Home

I love Before-and-After photos but I never seem to take good "Before" photos. So this is an attempt to show you all what we have done with our house. Honestly, our house was in awesome condition when we moved in so I didn't take too many photos of things that were ugly that had to be fixed.

Here is a photo of our bookshelves in our family rooms during our house inspection.

This is a photo of them now - see, we haven't even done much! I know many of you want to see the house photos so I will post them anyways in the midst of our real-life-messes. I am looking to do something with these shelves but I don't like clutter, books lying around, and don't like to start costly collections.

Any suggestions?
This is the "After" of Rita's room. Her room is the only room in the house that we painted. I just wanted a new color on the wall. We picked Benjamin Moore's Pottery Barn Kids Collection and ended up with this light purple color. You can never go wrong with those colors at Ben. Moore. This room also serves as our guest room when guest come. And then Rita bunks with Grace like the old days.

This is the other side of Rita's room. We just got shades. Rita was sick in this photo with strep.

Here is a photo of our "new-to-us" piano. My parents bought this when I used to take piano lessons and we had a piano mover bring it over to our house. It is really great and I hope that I can teach the kids how to play. They want to take turns with mommy doing "piano lessons."

shopping with grandma

When Grandma and Grandpa visited, we went shopping with the girls.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell (Volume 19)