Welcome Home Wednesday

Stephanie, over at Remembering Chaos, does a Welcome Home Wednesday post every week on her blog. She posts home updates from around her house and I just loved the idea of doing this. So I thought I'd join in the fun and post about a project we did this past weekend at our house. 

When we bought our house last September, the previous owners had recently painted the outside of the house a pale yellow to get it ready to sell. They must have gotten a great deal on the paint because not only did they paint the outside that color, but they painted the whole inside that color as well. (You can see what the house looked like when we bought it here.) I love a bright, fun yellow. In fact, I'm using yellow in our kitchen/dining/living room but this yellow was not a bright, fun yellow. Instead it was kind of a sad yellow and we couldn't wait to get rid of it on the inside and the outside.

Before we moved in, we painted the inside walls, but hadn't gotten a chance to do the outside. So this past weekend, we started on this very time-consuming, yet necessary project. I got the idea for a color here. They used Anonymous by Sherwin Williams and used their Duration outdoor paint. I love the way it looked with their brick house so I thought it would look great on our house too. So we went for it and got started Saturday morning. By the end of Saturday we had pretty much finished painting the front of the house.We had originally planned on just painting the iron beams to match, but later decided to just go for it and replace them with white square beams instead. This was always what we wanted to do, but thought we'd just paint them for the time being. After we realized painting them was just too hard, we decided to have my dad replace them and I'm so glad we did. The house looks 100% better now!

Sunday after church, my dad started on the beams and Jake and I got started on painting the back of the house. We got nearly half-way done painting the back and my dad got 2 posts in by Sunday evening. Monday morning, my dad finished the posts and that's where we are at this point. We still need to touch up a few spots on the front, finish the back and also paint the sides. Thankfully, the sides are mostly brick, just a little bit of siding up top. Here's what the back and sides of the house look like, so you can see what we have to paint.

There are several other outdoor projects we want to do which include replacing the front doors with something like these and removing the screen doors, adding some furniture to the front porch, adding railing to the front porch in between the beams like this, adding a new mailbox and sprucing up the landscaping all around. We also want to replace the old garage door with one like this, replace the upper deck and replace the fence with a white, 6 foot vinyl fence. Of course, these will happen over time, but we're excited to have gotten started on making the outside of our house look so much better and we can't wait until it's all finished. I'll keep you all posted on our updates as we have several in the works inside and out. It's a huge work in progress and we're really trying to enjoy every minute of turning this house into the home we want it to be.

Five on Friday

 

Happy Friday!

Today I'm linking up with Christina, April and Natasha for Five on Friday!

Jackson is playing Tee-Ball again this Spring and he's having a lot of fun. So far we've just had practices, but he has his first game on the 23rd of this month! He practices every Tuesday night and he's doing really well.  

 Jackson is also playing Soccer this Spring. It's his first season of soccer. They just have practices and games all together on Saturday mornings. The first game was on the Saturday we were in Costa Rica so we had to miss it. My dad took him and said he did pretty good during the practice, but didn't really go after the ball during the game. So he may need a little more practice with soccer, but I'm glad he's at least getting a feel for it and enjoys it. We will get to go to his game tomorrow, so I'm excited to see him play!

We have Avery's 2nd birthday party coming up next weekend! We are having it at the park near our house and as of right now, the weather is supposed to be really nice so I'm excited!! It's a Peppa Pig theme because Avery LOVES Peppa Pig. It's by far her favorite show! I can't believe she's going to be 2 already!

I've got Avery signed up for a 6-Week Gym Explorers class for Tuesday mornings in May and part of June. I'm excited to see how she does. It should be a lot of fun for her to get out of the house and possibly make some new little friends!! I'll be taking her to her first class and then my mom will have to take her after that since I'll be working, but hopefully she loves it and maybe we can find a few other fun things for her to do this summer.

Jake and I had a wonderful time in Coast Rica last week. I hope to blog about our trip at some point soon. As always, I took a ton of pictures, so I'm still going through them. I'll leave you with one of my favorites. A picture I took while we were in the rainforest of a momma hummingbird sitting on her nest. I just love hummingbirds. They remind me of my Grammy who adored them. She would have loved to have seen this momma sitting on her nest.

A Walk in the Park

This past Sunday, I took the kids for a little walk down to the park around the corner from our house. I love having a park within walking distance to our house. It was a huge selling point when we were looking at houses last Summer. Around the park, there is a walking trail, which makes this park even more fun. So I decided to take the kids around the walking trail to check it out before heading to the playground. 

We've played at the playground numerous times, but hadn't had a chance to check out the trail. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. It's not real long, but just long enough. It's all paved and there are 3 or 4 little walking bridges that go over a little creek. I believe this may be the same little creek that runs directly behind our house. 

The kids and I had a lot of fun outside exploring our new neighborhood. I'm looking forward to more exploring this Spring and Summer. 

Bye Bye Binkie #2

When we said goodbye to Jackson's binkie, I wrote this post all about it, so I thought I'd do the same when we said goodbye to Avery's binkie. 

Jackson was about 2 1/2 when we got rid of his binkie. Avery isn't quite yet 2 (she'll be 2 at the end of this month), but it was just time. She only really took it at night and in the car, and when she did have it throughout the day it ended up either getting eaten by our dog Hunter or she would lose it. We were going through at least 1 pack a week and I was getting tired of buying them. 

So this past Friday when we got home from our trip to Costa Rica, we were down to 0 binkies. My mom had made it through the whole week with 2, but that Friday Hunter had eaten one and Avery had lost the other. So we decided to see how things went without it. That night she did great actually. She didn't cry for it at all. 

The second night was a little tougher but still very manageable. I normally would read her some books, we'd say her prayers and I'd give her her binkie and blankie and she'd go right in her crib with no fussing at all. This night, the second night without the binkie, we went through the bed-time routine and she went right in her crib, but shortly after me leaving her room, she started crying and I ended up going back in to rock her to sleep. I've now had to do that for ever night since. Hopefully once she's used to not having it, things will go back to normal.

As for car-rides and through-out the day, she periodically asks for it, but we say Hunter ate them all and she knows that to be true because she would often find the binkies chewed up after Hunter would get a hold of them. She looks at us and says awe, bad Hunter and she's usually okay after that. Hopefully she doesn't hold a grudge against Hunter for eating all her binkies. ;-)

So it's been almost a whole week since she's had her binkie and so far, it hasn't been too bad. The worst has been night-time but even that isn't all that bad. Just a little transitional period and then things should hopefully go back to normal.

Project Life 2016: Week 13

My project life page for week 13 of 2016.

For this page I used the Just Breathe full kit freebie from Anita Designs and Loreta Labarca Designs.

Project Life 2016: Week 12

My Project Life post for week 12 of 2016.

I used the Bloom Mini Kit Freebie from Shawna Clingerman

61-91 of 365

It's crazy that a quarter of this year is already behind us!

March was a busy, but fun month for us! I tried harder to take more pictures with my dslr camera and I'm so glad I did. I'm hoping to take even more with it next month. The weather has been pretty good for the most part so we spent a lot of fun time outside in the yard, at the neighbors and at the park! We had our first dinner with friends at our new house and we celebrated St. Patrick's Day!!

We also celebrated Easter with family and at church, saw many of our flowers and trees bloom, got new stools for the kitchen and new rugs for the living room, dining room and Avery's room. My dad has been working hard on the basement bathroom which is coming along quite nicely and Jake and I prepared for our trip to Costa Rica! March 2016 was a great month!!