Camping Fun

Just got back from a 4-day camping trip with Laurin and Lucas. We went to Starved Rock State Park and had tons of fun. Here's how our trip began...

We really wanted to take one vehicle to save money on gas, and since Jason and I have cars, we had to take Laurin's Jeep. Problem was we still didn't have enough room. Jason and Lucas rigged up a "package" made from our tarp and tied it down to the top. Luckily, Laurin's Jeep was made for things like that.

First things first...had to get the tents set up.

Oh Lucas and his clip-on aviator sunglasses...he ended up losing them after the first or second day. Laurin wasn't too upset about it and Lucas of course thinks she did something with them.

We played cards quite a bit since it was so hot in the afternoons...upwards of 90 degrees with no air...

On Friday morning, we went hiking in Starved Rock State Park. The views were amazing.

On Saturday morning, we went to Matthiessen State Park which was just a few miles from Starved Rock. The canyons and waterfalls were definitely the main attraction in this state park.

I thought this rock looked like a monster/devil/demon...look for the eye sockets, nose, and mouth...

Laurin found this popcorn called Jiffy Pop at Walmart that we cooked over the fire. It's a good thing we cooked it when we did because we got rained out on Saturday night.

The park rangers came around and told everyone that a storm with 60 mph winds was coming. We packed up shop pretty fast and ended up sitting in the car for a good 2 hours. To waste time, we went into Oglesby to fill up the car with gas and saw this beautiful view of the sky.

Since we got rained out and couldn't have our nightly s'mores, we ate them for breakfast this morning. Not very nutritious, but we had to have our s'mores! A great way to end the weekend...even though we did get rained on.

Fireplace Facelift

Between all this house remodel business, I had a birthday. Jason and I made a birthday cake...German chocolate. And I even had a candle disguised as a "flame thrower" aka lighter.

I used my birthday money to give the fireplace a little facelift. Unfortunately I don't have any before pictures, but it wasn't anything too spectacular. I really wanted to get some sort of mantel, but I couldn't find anything that I really liked and thought that it might just clutter everything up anyway, so I settled for a picture. Fortunately, we found this picture at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and the vases at Gordman's. It was all exactly what we were looking for. Jason even liked it too!

Remodel Update

Jason and I have been busy again this week. I painted half of the downstairs while he worked on our new banister for the stairs. We just had wrought iron before (painted an attractive color of blue with parts of the black starting to show through) and we're going to put in oak. It's slowly coming along...

Here's a before...

We removed the old banister and also painted the wooden board (called a stringer) on the outside of the stairs. Look back at the previous picture to see what I'm talking about. I've still got to put a couple more coats of paint on the stringer, but you get the idea. I think it looks a lot better now that it blends in with the wall. What do you guys think?

Here are the new end posts. I'm not sure what they're called. Pretty simple and contemporary. I wanted to stay away from anything "country" looking. :)

We haven't attached anything yet because knowing us, we'll end up doing something wrong. That's where Tim comes in. He's coming up to help us put it all together in a week.

Well, that's it for now. Stay tuned for more house updates. I'll be glad when this is all over!

It's been a long week...

My life this week has been immersed in paint. As some of you know, we are going to get new carpet in the whole house sometime this summer. Yikes! So what better time to take on other projects as well?? I've been wanting to paint the walls since we moved in and saw how dingy they looked but neither one of us were very motivated to do it. Well, if we repainted now, there's no need to worry about spills on the current carpet since we're ripping it up. So that's what we did. Jason convinced me that the spare bedroom should get a coat because it had some of the yuckiest walls. I started in there so that I could practice my painting techniques.

Here's a before picture...yellow walls but I had already started to trim in the new color...
...and here's an after. There's probably a lighting difference because the room looks darker in person than in the picture.
So after I finished painting the bedroom, I wasn't all that keen on the color. Like I said, it looks much darker and shinier in person, but I kept going and started painting the upstairs hallway. Got it painted and hated it! When the lights were on the walls looked orange and it was just way too shiny and dark for my liking. Here's the bad part: we bought 5 gallons of paint from Lowe's in this awful color and only used one in the bedroom and half in the hallway. Jason being the supportive husband called Lowe's and asked what our options were since the label on the cans say non-refundable. Someone was definitely on our side because the guy told us we could bring it back and he'd mix a new color. We were shocked, and Jason definitely got the name of this guy. We go into Lowe's the next day and lucky for us, that same guy was working. We returned 3 gallons of non-refundable paint. We were counting our lucky stars. I got a different color that I love so much better.

Here's a before of the hallway (it was just white)...
And here's the after...again, the color is not very representative...
After the hallway, I tackled the upstairs living room. Here's a before...again just white...
And here's an after...same color as the hallway but looks totally different...
This is probably the best representation of the color...
Only one more room to go...the down stairs living room/office. I'm really not looking forward to that. It will have to wait until next week because in a few hours we're off to Olney for Mason's birthday party. Can't wait!