We're pooped!

Sorry for the tardiness of these pics, but what a day! The carpet finally made it, and the guys were here from 11:30 until 5:15 installing it in all 3 bedrooms and the hallway. It didn't leave much turnaround time for Jason and I to haul all the bedroom stuff back upstairs and all the family room stuff upstairs. I had class tonight for an hour and a half too! Anyways, we're tired, but there's still a lot more work to be done.

Here's where we slept last night due to the lack of carpet in our bedroom...it worked...

Well, you all probably saw that our desk was completely filling the downstairs bathroom from a previous post, and without my knowledge or consent, the carpet dudes put all the doors from the bedrooms including closet doors in our upstairs bathroom. Since they weren't able to lay the carpet yesterday, it made using the bathroom and taking a shower rather difficult...

So here's what you've been waiting for...or maybe what I've been waiting for...new carpet! Pictures really don't do it justice though.

Yuck! This disgusting floor is in the family room...be glad when it gets carpet!

Umm...yeah, Jason and I moved all this furniture by ourselves up a half-flight of stairs...not fun...we're pooped!

What a bummer...

Well, no carpet today... :( It was supposed to be here last week, so I called them on Friday, and they said it would be here Monday morning. Called this morning around 9:30 and still no carpet. The truck carrying it broke down around Chicago, so they said it would be on another truck tomorrow morning...we'll see if that happens. The carpet layers still came and put down the carpet pad so at least we don't have to look at the yucky subfloor. On another note, one of the guys was cleaning up the staples and old pad on the steps and I nonchalantly asked if he knew how to fix squeaky stairs, so he fixed them for us!

We're making progress!

Jason's parents came up this weekend, and we put them to work! Jason and his dad got to work on the handrail, while his mom and I ripped up carpet in the three bedrooms and basement. I will be so glad when I have my house back!

So here's a before, if you've forgotten what it looked like...

...and here's the finished product!

There's still more where this came from...

Here's our desk...in the bathroom...

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!

Happy Anniversary!

It's been three years already...hard to believe. Happy anniversary!

First time Jason was at my house...a couple weeks after we started dating back in 2002...don't we look young??

Woohoo...The swing is back!

...better than ever!

Jason and I had a surprise visit over the Memorial Day weekend. We knew that my parents were coming, but they brought along four extra passengers. :) We gladly accepted them and had a great weekend. One of the highlights on Sunday was installing a new rope swing. We were so sad that the old one broke, so Dad, Dustin, and Jason fixed us up with a new one.

They had to cut down a few tree limbs first, and Mason thought he needed to help. Check out Grandma's Cookie Jar for more great pictures from the weekend.

I think I might have mentioned this before...

I HATE BARKING DOGS!! Ok...it's bad enough when I have to listen to it at home from the neighbors dogs, but now there's a barking dog in a subdivision across the street from school. Now that it's getting warm outside, I have to keep the windows open. For the last two days, that dog has barked non-stop. How annoying?!? To make things worse...this morning there was a freakin' bird chirping right outside my window. Alright...I'm done with my rant. Thanks for reading. Hope everyone had a great day. :)

We can't be swingers anymore...

...no not that kind of swingers. ;)

Jason fell on his ass tonight...hard...and we both laughed hysterically for at least a minute. For those of you who don't know...that rope used to be hanging from a tree in our backyard. I watched in slow-mo as he crashed to the ground. Luckily he wasn't up too high, and luckily I wasn't the one on the swing.

New Template

What do you think of the new template? I thought it was time for a change. Jason and I also rearranged all the crap on our kitchen counters. Looks totally different but I like it and will get used to it. Have a great week!

Thumbs

Okay, so if you know me well enough, you know that my thumbs are bit a weird...short and stubby. Also if you know my thumbs, you'd know that I have a terrible time finding gloves that actually fit my thumbs correctly. Usually, I have about a 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch remaining in the end of each thumb hole of every pair of gloves I own. Today must have been my lucky day. I bought a pair of gardening gloves, and when I got home, I tried them on. Guess what?!?! Thumbs fit!! Woohoo! No extra room at the end! I was super excited. :)

Sad face :(

I have to go back to work tomorrow :( ...10 days just wasn't long enough

Jason has taught me well

Laurin and I went to Peoria today to pick up a few things, and luckily we both had coupons that we obviously had to put to good use. So we went in to Lowe's because I wanted one more ceiling fan to replace the gold one in the kitchen. Laurin had a $10 off of $50 coupon, and she said I could have it. Unfortunately the fan was only $49.97. I knew that the silly people at the registers wouldn't give it to us because we've tried it before. Laurin suggested that we look for a pack of gum or something like that. Well, I didn't want to have to spend 2 or 3 bucks in order to get $10 off because that just seemes like a waste. I was like surely they sell individual nuts, bolts, or screws around here...and what do you know...they do! We found something for 33 cents, but I knew we could do better. I then spotted some nuts for like 6 cents, but that was the contractor price, so we kept looking. Ends up that lock washers are only 16 cents a piece (in case you need to know)...so I bought a single lock washer and spent over $50 (barely) and was able to use the coupon. Hooray! Jason was so proud. :)

It's egg-cellent!

Since we won't be around for Easter weekend, we decided to get together with Laurin and Lucas last night to color some Easter eggs. Fun times!

The one on the left is Jason's handiwork...can you tell what it's supposed to be??