what were they thinking?

Alright.  As promised, the "Homeowners: What were they THINKING?" edition of my trash and treasure.  I do feel like I need to add a disclaimer before I dive in here.  Taste and aesthetics in homes is so subjective.  So if I am making fun of something that is actually in your style, just know that it's my personal opinion that it sucks is undesirable, and that obviously other people out there have bad different tastes, too. 

Well, you have all seen the hot pink room and the lavender family room, so you already know this is a family with interesting tastes.  Let's start with the kitchen.  It's a nice big room with lots of cabinet space, so I can't complain too much.  BUT.  Here is the lighting in the kitchen.

If you have to buy tube lightbulbs, then it doesn't belong in a home.  Period.  Also?  The popcorn ceilings are in every. room. of. the. house.  Vomit.

Here we have the lovely apple pulls on the top kitchen cabinets.

The bottom cabinet pulls are shiny brass.  Just as bad in my opinion.  I will be painting ALL of them.  Speaking of apples, here are the kitchen curtains left behind.

If you'd like them in your very own kitchen, let me know!  They won't be here for long!

And now, the awesome burner covers.

Why yes, that IS a chef rocking a big old mustache while playing the violin for his cat.  These are growing on me.  I think I actually love them because they are ironic.  Or am I just tiredly insane from all the unpacking?  Let me know, because I'm falling in love with them quickly.

We also found some weird use of trim in the kitchen.  I won't even mention the linoleum.

 Isn't it handy how they cut it into a point?  Because you know what's better than stubbing your toe on trim?  Stubbing your toe on POINTY trim!

The flooring choice on a whole is curious.  I had never seen wood patterned linoleum before.

This is in the upstairs hallway.  What is especially curious is that the downstairs has all (real) hardwood floors, and the stairs are also hardwood, so why not extend it to the hall?  Very curious, indeed.

Now onto the chandelier in the dining room!

I personally love a chandelier with a big shiny tarnished brass ball, but then, who DOESN'T???  It's also a great place to take a self portrait.  See me in there taking the picture?  Hello!

Now onto the bathrooms, where wallpaper borders go to die.

Another project for me- take down borders.  Fun!

No borders in the master bathroom, but they did do something very interesting with the tub.

Yes, they apparently took OFF the original faucet, and installed a hand nozzle to a bare pipe that stuck out of the wall.  I am trying very hard not to think too much about why this was done, so please keep all comments to yourself, okey-dokey?  I wasn't able to capture the pure beauty of this before Brian started fixing it, but you get the gist.

And above the shower in our bathroom is this lovely light.

Really, words escape me.

Now, I'm just being picky, I know, cause it really is a lovely house on a whole.  I'll share more flattering home pictures soon, after we take care of some of this hideousness and finish unpacking. 

But for now, say hello to my little friend!

We have lots of these guys hanging around outside, and I think they are so cute!

And of course since my parents are still around, we put them to work with some groundskeeping.  My mom even planted in my porch boxes, see?

Slowly but surely, it's all coming together.



when we were nomads

I'm taking a break from anything to do with our new house, because I am sick sick sick of it.  I'm out of ideas about where anything should go, and I've just kind of hit a wall.  Plus two littles underfoot really put a damper in the unpacking process.  But!  On a more positive note, I finally found my razor!  This is good, because I was becoming a European Yeti.  Sorry for the tmi.

Anyway.  I am so appreciative to our families for housing us while we were being nomadic for near a month.  It could not have been easy.  The kiddos got grumpy, I got grumpy, and we left a trail of dirty clothes wherever we went.  But our parents were great.  They helped with the laundry, made us yummy meals, and entertained our poor discombobulated littles.  And while we were back in my hometown, we visited with friends and visited some of my favorite places from my childhood. 

A big thank you to Kris and Mike for having us over for dinner!  I went to high school with Kris and Mike and now they're married with 4 kids.  How can that be?  There's no way we're old enough to be getting together with our own kiddos.  We had a great time in their lovely home with their equally lovely children.  Their kids whisked Fletcher away to play and I barely saw him the rest of the night, and were just so kind to him.  Good food and good friends, that's what I call a perfect evening. 

We also got to go hang out at one of my favorite places in the world, Chellberg Farm.  It's a homestead that's now part of the state park near my parent's house.  We snuck away with Fletcher while Rowan was napping and had a great time!  Here we go, I took a gazillion pictures.

Brian and Fletcher popping jewel weed.  Fletcher really delighted in the way the seed pods exploded when you poked them.

Fletcher attached burrs to himself.

Found a caterpillar...

Had a 10 minute conversation with Mr. Caterpillar.  He didn't have much to say back, but Fletcher let him know that big things were in his future!

The barn at Chellberg.  The farm used to have animals and used to be a working farm, but sadly, the caretaker retired and they had to get rid of the horses, pigs, chickens and geese.  So sad.

Fletcher didn't find it sad.

Checking out the old wagon.

The husband.  Sorry, ladies, he's TAKEN.

The farm equipment tutorial.

Former farmboy teaches the city boy a thing or two.

Thistle.  One of my favorites.

Beginnings of Fall!  My favorite season.

The boy and his mama.  That would be me.

At the Bailly homestead cemetery.  The Bailly homestead is near to the farm.  (Machabees: obviously a Catholic family) 

Running back through the woods!

The boy.  Sorry ladies, he's taken.  He's also MINE!

Ok, next post I'll be back in the present.

unpacking. it's rough.

Hi friends.  Remember me?  Ok, just checking.  We are here in warm and sunny South Carolina, and oh boy have we been busy.  We got down here late last Wednesday evening.  We left the littles with the grandparents.  The delivery trucks arrived Friday, but first, we had to paint.  We have more painting to do, but there were two rooms that desperately needed paint: the lavendar family room and the hot pink bedroom. 

Now, I'm not trying to offend anyone if you have chosen these colors for your house, but they are hideous.  Ooops, I probably just offended you, sorry.   The lavendar isn't that bad, but it just doesn't jive with our taste and color preferences.  The master bedroom is also lavendar, but we're saving that for later on.  Anyway, we worked our taping and painting magic in about half the day last Thursday.  We were fast!  I highly recommend paint with primer added, I think it saved us a lot of time.

Thank you, Dexter, for the tutorial on unrolling plastic drop cloth.  We were ready to murder, er, paint!  There are sneak previews of the painted rooms towards the bottom of this post, so hold tight.  Like I said, the trucks arrived Friday morning!  Yes, our junk needed two big trucks.  I have no idea how this happened, but I swear our stuff got busy and multiplied in those trucks.

The movers took ALL DAY on Friday just to unpack the trucks, so they weren't able to help unpack boxes until MONDAY.  Brian and I spent all weekend trying to get the important stuff unpacked, like the kiddo's rooms and the kitchen.  Or if you're Brian, the garage.  I didn't ask questions, I just let him do his thing.  The unpacking of tools came in handy, so who am I to judge?  So they left us with a house looking like this:

{sneak preview alert on the family room color!  I know, it's a boring color, but we're renting and were instructed to keep it neutral}

 That's the dining room.

That would be the kitchen.

And the breakfast nook.  Or whatever it's called.

It's all coming together.  We've gotten almost all the boxes unpacked, but we're still organizing everything.  Also, stay tuned for a post titled "The Home Owners:  What were they THINKING???"  It'll be a good one, promise.

The movers came back Monday and helped unpack and put together furniture.  Here's the former hot pink room, now Rowan's room.  It's a light peachy tan that looks darker in this picture than in real life.  Brian gives it the thumbs up!

We JUST got the kid's rooms finished before they showed up yesterday.  The grandmothers flew down with our littles, and they all had a great time on the plane!  It was Rowan's first plane ride, and the first that Fletcher will remember.  The grandmas reported that they were perfect.  Thank God, because they would have been AWFUL for us.  It's just the way it goes it seems.

Be patient, I'll have more soon, but things are a leeetle hectic!

i heart faces: touch of sun

Touch of sun with Thomas.  And our Fletcher was the happiest boy in the world this day!  Check out more touch of sun photos as i heart faces.

and now finally, vegas, part 3

Oh my, I have been dragging this out.  Sorry about that.  I feel like it's been eons since I actually went on this trip, and here I am still blathering on about it.  Well, if you're sick of it all, feel free to skip this post.  But I will try and keep it short and sweet.  On our last full day in Vegas, we did a lot of the same pool time and drinking that you have become accustomed to hearing about.  And we went to the strip again, this time to see a show!  Here's us gettin' ready to go. 

This picture above has 3 gorgeous girls, but it shows why I don't like my camera's flash.  They weren't this shiny in person.  Shiny happy people, I guess.

And now this picture demonstrates my awesome composition skills with the exit sign in the background.  Just awesome.

So the run-down of the evening went like this:  We went to the Bellagio to eat and watch the fountain show.  At the same time, which was great.  Here are the highlights of that fountainy goodness.

It was really fun.  And they played songs along with it, which I thought was even better.  After this we went to see the Cirque du Soleil show, The Beatles Love.  It was the BEST thing I've ever seen on stage.  And I've been to a LOT of live stage shows.  We all sang along, laughed, and maybe even cried.  I highly recommend it, especially if you're a Beatles fan.  It was truly amazing, and we were on the edge of our seats the whole time.  It didn't hurt that they gave us mammoth drinks at the bar that we took into the show. 

You can see our giant (empty) cups in Karen's hand here.

She was pretty excited.  Until her luck ran out.

This $.25 was what she had to show for the $100 bill she put into the slot.  But don't worry, she later won about $70 back, so it wasn't as bad as you might think.

Besides, there were much worse things that happened that night.  The night went somewhat downhill after the amazing show.  We had an unfortunate incident involving ants, and then Tara lost a beautiful (real) diamond bracelet.  We searched for at least an hour and a half, checked with all the lost and founds at the casinos, and retraced our steps.  No dice.  And then there was the cab ride back to the hotel.  We found the one driver in Vegas that didn't actually know where he was going.  He was still in his first week on the job.  And I was the lucky one sitting in front with him.  The ride to our hotel was a little harrowing, but we made it ok.  We got back into our hotel just in time to see this view:

Well, some of us weren't looking.

Jo and Tara had about one hour of sleep before they had to get up and get the shuttle for the airport.  Karen and I really got some extra zzzz with a whopping 3 hours.  But I was glad we stayed up late and had all that extra time with each other.  We've been friends since around kindergarten.  We've been through everything together, and now are all far apart.  Jo is in Colorado, Tara is in Oklahoma (for now), Karen is in Arizona, and now I'm going from Illinois to South Carolina.  It's hard to be that far apart from your best friends.  And the last time we had all been in the same state together was 3 years ago for Karen's wedding.  I hope one day we can all be a little closer.  But in the meantime, we'll just try to sneak in these girl's weekend when we can. 

p.s.  Tara, Jo, and Karen, I love you all.  Thank you for the awesome weekend, it was just what I needed.  You girls are the other loves of my life and I am so super blessed to have each of you as my friend.  Miss you already, xoxo.