Playing Catch Up

So, hello, welcome back, its been a while.  I'm going to make a better effort to keep this blog up to date now that summer is over and the kids are in school one day a week.  I hope all my friends and family who read this are all doing well.

First things first.  Everyone here is healthy and happy and growing like crazy.  What more could we ask for right??!  I'll have a kid update soon.  They are all so stinking cute right now I can't even handle it.

Second, the basement project is sort of done now.  The big stuff anyway.  I was holding off writing a blog because there are little decor things that I'm not quite done with, but I suppose that just makes for more blog posts down the road.  This house is forever in transformation so I'm just going to get on with it.

So here we are: The main view from the stairs.  It's like a breath of fresh air.  At least when I can't smell the kids shoes in the new mudroom which is now behind me on the other side of the stairs here.

There is nothing about this that I miss.

And everything about this, I LOVE.

My new mudroom built from useless garage space. A photo of this room is too hard to capture, but you get the idea.

 Next would be the TV and fireplace area.  This corner is still weird for a TV, we've gone from having the furniture on and angle, then flush to the wall with the TV on an angle, and now back again.  I hate furniture on an angle, but it seems to work best that way.  One day maybe we'll mount it on the wall with one of those arm things, but its got to be a big one because now we can turn the TV out the back door and watch games from the back patio.  Pretty nice right?

The prints on the wall are Star Wars prints I purchased for John on Etsy.  They are pretty cool, even though I've never seen all 3 movies all the way through.  And I still need a fireplace screen...

 This is the same view really just out to the patio.  Its really nice when we can let the fall breezes blow though this door on a Saturday.

And my favorite transformation: The kitchenette.  We kept it simple, but moving the refrigerator and putting in some proper cabinets makes it a much more usable space that lacks spider dens and 7+ year old dried up cat foot nuggets.  I want to put some industrial looking open shelving over the sink and maybe some of my own art between the sconces, but it works for now.

The buffet wall works great for parties!

The bath was also a pretty big change but my photos are terrible.  The lighting is pretty bad in here, even if it is new.  Nothing really super special about it, but it fits with the 1960's feel of the house and it is neutral.

I cannot find a mirror for this weird skinny wall.  Any suggestions??!

The other side of the bath is the laundry, now with cabinets that are actually uniform in size and a folding counter.  My laundry chute drops into the far left cabinet and you would never even know it was there.

We painted the unfinished cabinets and my polyurethane coating turned the center panels yellow.  I will be correcting this somehow, someday...for a later post.

We decided to remove the storage closet under the stairs (seen on the right in the above photo of the old kitchen).  It was an odd shape and you could never get to the stuff in the way back.  Mainly it stored my extra dishes and vases and random kid stuff.  Since the dishes and vases were going into the new kitchenette cabinets, and the kid stuff into a garage sale, we decided to make the space an office.  Our desk and printer cabinet fit just perfectly.  This also prevents us from becoming hoarders because we have no place to store anything other than the attic.

Don't mind the mess on the desk, but really, we LIVE here. This is what it looks like most of the time.

So speaking of what this room looks like most of the time... It is mainly a kids' space after all, and we do not pick it up every day.  So as much as I'd like everyone to think that this is how I live,

this is actually how I LIVE.  And it's pretty great.

This photo is really a pretty tame toy explosion.  Good thing Santa is coming soon, we're running low on toys...

Hiatus

So its been 3 months since my last post.  I have plenty to be inspired about, so maybe its just the winter blahs, but this blog has just been this little after thought in the back of my mind.  And much like cleaning the bathrooms I think, "Oh I'll just do it later." (Did I just compare my blog to cleaning bathrooms? Has this turned into work???)

Look at my big guys!  22 months on the 25th!

Now that the boys are approaching the age that Lillian was when they were born, I am thinking I have to get some pics posted so family and friends that want to know can see how they are doing.  They are great.  They are more than great.

They really are sometimes lost without each other.

The boys are talking (finally!).  They are amazingly smart (just like their sister - to me, of course).  They love to point at the moon and say "mooooooooon".  And more importantly, they've learned how to say "mine".  I think they learned that one from someone exactly 23 months older than they.  The boys also know their numbers, most of their letters, about 8 shapes and they can say a lot of the words to indicate to us that they know these things - at least John and I can understand them.  I don't remember when Lillian started picking up on this stuff, but I think they are doing it because of their older sister.  They are working on colors, throwing and catching balls, climbing ladders (and furniture), walking up stairs, jumping and they run (especially away from me ) all the time.  They have very different personalities. 

Stinkified

Sam is quite laid back, but when upset, you need to leave the room because he is loud and incessant.  He is extremely ornery (you can tell by looking at him) but also very sweet and cuddly.  Sam is a believer in all things belonging to the world.  Meaning: what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine until I decide to make it yours.  Really he is quite generous most of the time.  He has the best smile in the world.

This charming Will.

Will is very sensitive.  He is extremely sweet, but wirey, fast and spunky.  He is very smart and charismatic and you can see the gears turning behind his eyes.  He fights his battles with tears instead of force.  He has the best laugh in the world.

Ready for dance class!

 Lillian is just about done with 2 day a week Preschool and we are enrolled for Pre-K in the fall.  I cannot believe it.  One more year and my little girl might be going to Kindergarten!  We aren't sure yet since all our kids are summer babies, we have to either decide to send them very young or very old for their class.  Lilli is also in dance class and absolutely loves it.  She seems to have a bit more of a performance bone in her than I did at her age.  She will twirl and prance around for just about anybody.  She loves to play dress up, color, and especially paint.  I keep trying to snag some of her paintings to put up somewhere in the house, but somehow all of the really good ones get smeared with a glue stick or cut up into tiny little shreds.  She also asks me continually to play with my jewelry or my sewing box.  She is about as girly as they come.  However, she was killing her brothers tonight at the basketball goal...

Her favorite thing about the snow.

John and I are approaching our 5 year anniversary, which is completely flabbergasting that 5 years can fly as fast as the last have.  Our wedding and honeymoon seem like a dream because our life is so completely and utterly different from that time.  Our thought 5 years ago was that we would celebrate someplace amazing, like Ireland or Italy.  Huh.  I think the closest we might get is a nice dinner at Carmen's!  Maybe in another 5... The kids will be almost 9 and 7, much more manageable for family or a babysitter.  I do hope in the next couple of months that we will manage to get a picture taken together when dressed up.  I go through pictures for this blog and there are absolutely none of me or me with my husband.  I know we don't get out much, but this just doesn't seem right...

The big think going on in the house is the basement remodel, but I don't have much of an update there.  We knew it would take a while, but we did not anticipate going 6 weeks (or maybe more) without a single thing happening.  Its a long story, but we weren't exactly smiling about it.  About a month ago things started happening and all is well now. We have dry wall going up this week.  I will take some pics at that point to show a little transformation.  We have our tile and carpet on order, cabinets and lighting on the way and some paint colors to pick out.  I think things should start to take shape here pretty quickly.  I hope to have the space finished for the boys' 2nd birthday, Lillian's 4th birthday and John has a VERY LARGE birthday this year.  You can bet we're having a big shin-dig to celebrate that one!  Hopefully you will hear from me before then!