Worst Blogger Ever

Seriously, y’all, it’s official. I’m a terrible blogger. Granted it’s not like I have a huge following and I do it more for me than others, but I think that’s part of the reason why I get so disappointed in myself when I fail to post. I enjoy writing. I want to do it more and better. For some reason, I’m awful at making it a priority. I let life get in the way.

But for starters, I need to get this off my chest. Part of why I avoid blogging sometimes is because once I enter blogland, it’s so easy to get caught up in the I need that trap. The what I have isn’t good enough trap. The more more more even if I don’t have the money and I’m happy the way it is trap. It’s not good. Period. I need to get a handle of that in myself, especially because of our financial situation currently. And if not blogging for a bit is the way to do it, that’s what’s gonna happen. Yes, it’s disappointing. Yes, I’m trying to do better. I need to be content. So I’m working on that.

And while I’m giving y’all my excuses, I do have a few pretty legit ones besides my green monster syndrome…

Like this little princess’s first surgery:

To the right, our before picture, and on the left my baby girl ready for surgery and then sleeping in my arms afterwards.

She was such a trooper and I’m so proud of her. Another surgery is in her future, and that is most definitely scary, but I’m so thankful we did make it past the first hurdle. God is good.

And can we just settle on Miss Adaleigh possibly being the cutest eight month old alive? This is from the night before her surgery:

Adorable.

We also had a weekend where Corey was in Florida and I had to man the kids alone. Corey’s grandpa passed away and he went to the funeral. It was definitely a challenge being apart in some ways, but easier than I expected in others. I found it easy to check of my to-do list knowing that a) no one else was there to do it so the quicker I just did it the better and b) if I got it all done before he got back we could have quality family time! Anyway, I’m so glad he’s back now!

What else?

We celebrated an absolutely beautiful Mother’s Day:

I love these two so!

And this weekend we have Mr. Tatum’s dance recital:

My boy in his “Bob the Builder” tap dance costume.

I’m so excited for it! He woke up sick today, but seems to be improving, so hopefully that continues! :)

Oh! And we have actually done a tiny bit of home work… The front door is painted:

Maybe not the best picture, but I love it!

We also put in a different door knob, which may not be super noticeable, but I love it. I really wanted something more fitting to the home’s original character and we found the perfect fit on an old beat up door left in our garage from the previous owners. Here’s a side by side before and after, although I didn’t have the exact same angle on the two photos:

Before and After

The color is the bottom one of the paint samples of the before photo, called Half Moon Bay. I’m pretty sure it’s a Dutch Boy paint color, but we got it in Pittsburgh Grand Distinction paint. I’m really pleased with how it turned out and am hoping to get more done in our screened in porch area, too.

And in case you’re wondering, I am planning on a one year post… Or, on this case, a one year one month post. We shall see if that happens! :)

Finally Back To It

It’s funny how life just gets so stinking busy. I feel like every post since Adaleigh was born has been me apologizing about not posting in forever, catching up, and making empty promises to try to write more. Eek.

In all honesty, not much has happened on the home project side of things since my last post. I know I need to reveal the dining room paint job, I could talk about the awesome Mario Brothers four year old birthday party we had for Tate, and we have just started getting back into the swing of things as far as house projects go. If I’m laying it all out there, the past few months have been survival mode. Not only was it a crazy winter with enough snow to drive anyone a bit insane, we’ve had a lot of other not so pleasant stuff going on, too. I don’t want to turn this post into a big whine fest, so here’s the short of it: Corey was offered a job at his old company, but then they had to hold off due to a quality spill, Adaleigh has had multiple tests and now will need surgery in May, and there’s been other minor hiccups on the road that I won’t go into, but haven’t been fun.

BUT life goes on. And things ARE good, even if they could be better.

So… First off, it’s been almost a year since we moved into what we hope will be our forever home. I hope to make a post looking over the past year, the changes we’ve made, and the plans we have soon, but can I just say WOW what a year it has been! I’m really excited to really look back and see where we were, where we are, and where we are going.

Our home when we moved in.

And here’s some snapshots of what’s been going on since we’ve thawed out and are starting to get back in the groove of things…

1.) We still have some more to do, but Sunday we worked on cleaning out the flower beds around our house and getting the outside back in shape. Here’s where it’s at now (hubs is outside working as I write! Yay!):

Is it sad that this is an improvement?! No leaves or weeds, but desperately in need of mulch and color… And hopefully nothing I will quickly kill.

This area looks the best of our flower bed areas so far… Although the weeds keep growing back like crazy despite me adding Round Up Sunday…

Also, while I’m thinking of it, the deer have destroyed many of our shrubs and plants… Anyway to save them or are they lost causes?

2.) Since money is still tighter than it was, we are focusing on little mood lifting projects for now. For example, I’m really excited to clean up and repaint our screened in porch and add a little bit of color to the area through pillows, cushions, and hopefully a new front door color (and maybe replace the hideous screen door currently there?!):

As you can see, the door and porch really need some TLC. I think it has a bright future ahead though! :) Anyone have an opinion on the door color?

3.) I also desperately need to get my act together and get some personal pictures/decor hung around the place. I have a few ideas, but nothing is set in stone yet, except for in the kitchen. I’ve had the photos printed for a few months now, and once I finish getting the frames painted, and everything hung up, our kitchen makeover will be closer to its complete-for-now stage (as in, it’ll be at this point until we save some mega money got a total remodel or win the lottery!):

Cheap Wal-Mart Picture Frames + Blue or Green Spray Paint = Beautiful Frames Perfect for Kitchen Decor!

That’s all that’s currently brewing. :) No promises, but hopefully I’ll be back with updates soon, MAYBE even before my one year post!

Oops! :)

First off, some of y’all may have gotten an email of an update on this blog that was accidentally posted here instead of at the Our Forever Home Life blog that I created to share the more emotional, messy side of life… So I apologize for that! I’m trying to focus mainly on the home decor/renovation side of things here now while adding just a sprinkle of everyday life. I’m letting my writer side get the best of me on the other site! :)

Secondly, the mistake was probably a good thing because it made me realize once again I’ve failed to update things in a timely manner here. Blah. One of these days I will get on top of it all! Our dining room is fully painted though, in spite of the craziness that’s been going on in our lives that you may have peeked at in that accidental post! :) Of course, I haven’t taken updated photos yet, so that’s going on my to-do list (along with straightening up the dining room for said pictures!) and I will do my best to make it a priority! :) Otherwise, part of the lack of updates has been because not much has been going on really. We’ve been snowed in a ton, which considering the state of our finances is probably a good thing! :) (and I just realized I really need to chill with the smiley faces… Sorry!)

And thirdly, I also want to take a second to ask for prayers and happy thoughts for my baby girl. Adaleigh had repeat UTI’s in December/January, so she had a renal ultrasound that revealed kidney abnormalities. We meet with a pediatric eurologist in a week to see what exactly that means and what our options are. Of course, we are hoping for if not good, at the very least reassuring news!

Thank you all! :) And I truly will try to update soon!

And I will leave you with this photo of my beautiful princess!

Snowed In!

This is what it looks like outside of my house right now. It’s beautiful, but freezing! We are under a level three snow advisory, which means we aren’t allowed to be on the roads since we aren’t emergency vehicles. The windchill is well below zero, but we are nice and warm inside. I’m really enjoying time with my little family!

AND we are getting some things done too! :) Hubby decided to start painting our dining room, and the first coat is done now. Here is a sneak peek- I’m so excited to share it all once it’s done!:

I love it so far!

Our other projects have been much smaller, like Mr. Tatum taking our last Christmas tree down:

And I caught up on laundry, but I won’t share all that loveliness with y’all! :)

We will see what happens tomorrow as far as if we will still be snowed in. For now, we are enjoying it while we can!

What about you? Are you snowed in? Enjoying it? :)

Happy New Year! :)

I hope you are all having a great first day of 2014! I know I am loving the relaxing day with my babies and hubs AND playing in the snow that’s falling like crazy here! :)

So fun!

I’m hoping we will get to some new and exciting home stuff SOON, but in the meantime, I wanted to point out that to start the new year I also started a new blog to talk more about the life side of things going on in our forever home. There’s a link to it up on top, or you can click here! A big part of it will be my New Year’s resolutions and how I do with those! Do y’all have any resolutions you’d like to share?

Oh, Christmas

Holy cow, guys. Christmas is over. When in the world did that happen!? I had all these plans of showing y’all pictures of my decorated house and all. Oops. To be honest, apart from our trees and the stockings I hung up two days before Christmas, I didn’t decorate our house much. Life just is busy and since I knew we weren’t having any Christmases here this year! I was less motivated to decorate. Plus having a baby and almost four year old makes things a little hectic too. Yep, excuses.

But anyway…

I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas.

My little family. LOVE.

Don’t we clean up nice? I have a whole bunch of pictures I absolutely adore from our pre-Christmas photo shoot. I’ll share a few more at the end of this post.

Let me just say though that we, or in particular our cute little three month old, did not look so hot for Christmas. In fact, we spent Christmas evening in the ER after Adaleigh’s fever spiked to 104! Thankfully they were able to figure out what was wrong fairly quickly. After some antibiotics, I’m happy to report little miss is more or less back to her normal wonderful self! :) And it was still a good Christmas in spite of having a sick baby. As Tate gets older it’s so fun to see his reaction to all the Christmas fun!

And with that I’m going to leave you with some cute little pictures and the promise that come the new year I will share some more posts and projects! :)

Green Galore

Surprise! I’m back and it hasn’t been months since I last wrote! Go me! :)

So, as the title states, this post is all about GREEN. Ready? Go!

–Green light! Addie’s heart appointment was last Wednesday and we received wonderful news to be thankful for just in time for Thanksgiving- the whole in her heart appears to be closed! Talk about a huge relief! The heart murmur is still there, but is innocent. Thank God! We now have the green light to not worry and move on with life… Although we will have a check up appointment in a year just to be sure.

Our healthy little cutie after her appointment!

–Green carpet! Y’all may remember our lovely green carpeted living room…

The living room the day we moved in. I’m fairly certain I failed at taking any other pictures of this room in its lived in state of the past six months plus because I absolutely hated it. I apologize.

Well, I’m sure I’ve mentioned that our plans for hardwood are on hold for the time being since flooring our entire downstairs isn’t exactly going to be cheap. I was mega struggling with what to do in this room because of the hideous carpet color. It just completely does not match my style. Literally for the last six months our furniture sat where it had since my hubby plopped it in place when we moved in. That was it. I didn’t hang pictures. I didn’t decorate. Nothing. It was a sad, sad room. So sad that I felt no need to document the awfulness with before pictures. Obviously that was a mistake on my part because y’all won’t understand quite how much of a transformation has already happened. Dang. So here’s a couple of pictures that I took throughout the summer/fall of various things that may help you understand how depressing our living room was:

To the left of my family playing is the big black slipcovered chair, art and decor that I hadn’t hung, and a side table I was at a loss for what to do with. To the right sits an empty desk that I didn’t know where I wanted to put it, so it just sat where it was! And yes, that’s an exercise ball shoved under it! :)

Behind the pink chair I reupholstered you can see our dirty couch!

This may just be an excuse to share more pictures of my baby, BUT to the right you can kind of see our cheap, ugly Wal-Mart TV stand.

Hopefully you at least got the gist.

But anyway, one day I just kind of snapped and decided something had to be done. Enter hours on Pinterest and the Internet trying to come up with ideas of how to work with the hideous green carpet. Yes, hours. I was having a very hard time coming up with any sort of inspiration UNTIL…

THIS PICTURE.

Courtesy of Virginia at LiveLoveDIY.
http://www.livelovediy.com/2013/09/how-to-make-pillows-with-glue-and.html

I know, I know… There is no green carpet in the photo. BUT there is a green pillow. Light bulb! I could use pillows that matched the green carpet. Instead of fighting the ugly green all over my floor, I could embrace it! And I thought the pillows in Virginia’s post would be a perfect start.

Unfortunately, the floral patterned pillow was one she made. That eliminated getting an exact replica, but I found one from Target that is a similar concept. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m anxious to try it out. Unfortunately, Target’s website isn’t cooperating with me, but I will try to get a link to the pillow up soon.

I did, however, invest in a few of the World Market velvet pillows. I bought a green one like in Virginia’s picture, as well as a teal and blue surf one. And let’s get one thing clear: I. Love. These. Pillows. If my husband were employed, I would be getting in trouble for buying literally every color World Market offers in bulk. They are comfy AND only $10. You’re welcome. :)

I also spent a little money on a more long-term living room investment- two gorgeous slipper chairs. We were a little hesitant to buy them considering where we stand with Corey being laid off and all, but ultimately chose to go for it because a)they were on sale for $130 AND buy one get one half off, b)both Corey and I liked them and that literally never happens, and c)we plan on using them even after we get the hardwood floors and truly renovate the living room. And let me just say I’m a big fan of these too. Here’s a sort of sneak peek of them in our living room:

Love them.

I also moved some furniture around, washed my couch cushions so we don’t look like we love dirt, and took down the ugly flower curtains that had been taunting me since we moved in. We still have some work to do with decorating and all, but I absolutely love the changes we have so far and feel 100% more at home in my own living room! :)

Yay for a clean couch, new pillows, art, and no ugly floral curtains! :)

The new TV “stand”. We may mount the TV to the wall…not sure yet. And of course we will probably better hide the wires eventually. Oh, and yes that’s the OSU-Michigan game. This Ohio girl was born and raised a Buckeye, and even if I’m not that big of a fan of college football, it’s an unwritten rule that I must watch this game! :)

Like I said, we still have a decent amount of work ahead of us, but we are making progress and I love it so far! :)

–Green trees! Yep, it’s that time of year again! Yesterday my little family went and picked out our real tree, and we have plans of decorating it tonight.

LOVE my little family. And please excuse the baby weight I haven’t lost yet lol…someday!

Today I set up our little fake one in the living room.

Excuse the blurry picture. I still love my little tree! :)

I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

And there you have it. Today has been brought to you by the color green! :) Hope you enjoyed!

The New Normal

First off, I have been an awful blogger. I can’t believe it’s been more or less two months since I’ve written. It’s crossed my mind many times to log on and write a bit, but inevitably I get busy and forget about it. So even if you haven’t missed me, I’ve missed writing! :)

Of course, if I’m entirely honest, part of why I haven’t written is because I feel like I haven’t had much to write about. Sure, life is crazy and plenty is going on, but none of that has really been on the home project front. And, to be even more honest, I had little to no interest in doing any house related projects. I’ve been in pure adjusting to our new normal mode.

So what exactly does our new normal look like?

Well, in terms of pictures, this little sweetie obviously plays a pretty darn big part:

Can I just say we are insanely blessed? Adaleigh is a wonderful baby, has an adorable personality, and is beautiful yet to boot! She has fit into our little family perfectly.

Which speaking of, her big brother absolutely adores her. He is a huge helper and so good with his sister! He has been amazing with all of it. There have been a few moments that he hungers for a bit more attention, but he’s so understanding when we tell him to wait a bit, and we’ve tried really hard to still set aside special time for just him, too. Funny enough, every time we’ve left Addie with grandma and grandpa so Tate gets us to himself, he talks about how much he misses his sissy and wants her back! :) Like I said, we are so blessed!

Of course, life hasn’t been ALL rainbows and butterflies! Sleep deprivation is not fun, although Adaleigh has started sleeping through the night most nights. I definitely went through a baby blues period where my loving husband kept me from going crazy and dealt with my crying for no reason and over-emotionalness. And there’s been a couple of bigger things too…

1) Adaleigh’s heart. Before anyone gets too worried, she is okay. When she was born her pediatrician detected that she has a heart murmur. I’ve had a heart murmur my whole life, so we weren’t hugely worried. We were told that our pediatrician would check it again at one month and if it was still noticeable we would be referred to a pediatric cardiologist. Well, at her one month appointment the heart murmur was still audible so we went to the pediatric cardiologist. After an EKG and listening to her heart, he believes she has a small muscular ventricle septal defect- in simple words, a small hole in her heart. I’ll be honest, it was scary hearing this. Really scary. However, we’ve been told countless times now that this is actually fairly common in newborns and that it often will close on its own. We have been praying that will be the case with Addie. Our follow up appointment is next week, so we should get more answers then as they are also doing an echocardiogram.

2) Corey was laid off from his job last week. If you’re a regular to reading my blog, you know this has been something that was a possibility for some time. So, while it, for lack of a better word, sucks, we at least were not entirely blindsided. We will have to make adjustments, but I’m certain we will get through it. Prayers and happy thoughts would be appreciated though! :)

Still, despite the not so good, life is good. We are plugging away and loving our babies! And I’m finally starting to feel the itch to get back to the home projects! Y’all will have to stay tuned to see what I decide to take on, and how creative I can get with less money at my disposal! I’m actually looking forward to it in a weird way! :)

She’s Here!

I apologize that it has taken me so long to post this! Life with two kids is wonderful, but a little crazy! :) We are getting more adjusted everyday and absolutely love our little princess! We are so blessed!

So without further to-do, meet Adaleigh Tzipora born September 20, 2013 at 7:40AM weighing 8 pounds 1/2 ounce and measuring 18 inches long:

I will share more soon! :)

ONE DAY: Let’s Get Real

This is happening. Tomorrow I am having a baby. Wow. Ready or not, here she comes!

Honestly though, it still doesn’t feel real. I remember feeling the same way with Tate. Heck, even to this day there are times that I look at him and think “You are my child?! That’s crazy!” It’s just such a weird concept, but amazing at the same time! :) And in the end, whether it feels real or not we will be bringing a newborn home before we know it! :)

So much of Tate’s first few days are a blur, so I feel like in some ways this is a new experience. There are definitely things I do remember about Tate’s birth… The things that I hated! :) Here’s what I hope DOESN’T happen tomorrow:

1) Party in the delivery room! I don’t think I’ve shared this completely before, but I apologize if I have. Our experience with Tate’s actual birth was absolutely crazy. Part of it was because a nurse accidentally walked out of the L&D area with one of the baby monitoring bracelets in her pocket, setting the area into lock down mode. Any of our family who was in the L&D area was stuck there, and anyone out was out. Still, we probably could have stood up for ourselves a little more and told people to step out for a bit. I was wheeled back into our room after my c-section and greeted by both Corey and my extended families. It was very awkward. Our plan this time is to not be pushovers and have a little bit of alone time with our little girl first, then bring Tate back to meet her, and THEN have extended family visit as they’d like. Even then I’m hoping things don’t get as crazy as it was with Tate. Everyone and their brother visited us, and while it was nice to be thought of and all, it was also exhausting!

My little baby burrito!

2) Jaundice. I know this is entirely out of my control, but much of our hospital stay with Tate was spent with him under the light and it broke my heart! I really hope we don’t have the same experience this time!

Our poor, sweet little jaundiced boy!

3) Painful recovery. I’m a little terrified of this part. Ultimately it is what it is, but man was that pain awful! My goal is to try to get up and get moving a little bit sooner than I did last time, since they say that the sooner you try to get going, the better. We shall see! :)

No one warned me I would still be poofy and look pregnant when I left the hospital, so at least I know this time! :) This is our first family photo- look how young and naive Corey and I look!

Even though there’s obviously hopes I have for this birth, I will be happy as long as little baby bee is healthy! In the end I’ll end up with my precious newborn, and really that’s all that matters!