#15

Mark beat me to Facebook so I'm just going to share here!

Fifteen years ago today, I walked down the aisle and pledged always and forever to the man God intended me to spend the rest of my life with.  My love.  My best friend.  My team mate.

We said no matter what we would stay together.  We were young, indeed.  And yes, very naive (just drive by our first home together...It's amazing we came out of there alive).  I wouldn't trade those young naive years for anything in the world.  We learned so much those first few years.

And each year has brought different challenges.  Different ways that the Lord has brought us closer to Him and to each other.

This year has not been an exception.  We have learned to lean on each other in ways I would never imagine we could or have.  We are learning more and more how to better communicate in hard situations.  And the joyous situations have brought us more joy than I could ever imagine.

We have definitely learned, this year, how precious each and every sweet laughter and deep exhale is.

I could not imagine walking this special needs journey without Mark.

I could not imagine walking these past fifteen years without his caring, compassionate and patient (long suffering comes to mind when we think about my crazy emotional self) love.  He reminds me so much of the Lord's agape love for us.

So, Happy Anniversary to my knight!  I am so blessed to have you!

Warm Fire, Warm Home

I believe I mentioned that we were working on the fireplace changing it out from a decorative electric to a funtional gas.  With hosting this winter, it meant it was an extra slow process.  But it's done!

Dry wall up, fire going.  It was so cozy warm and awesome!

 Working on the stone.  This was lightweight stone facade called Air Stone.  It was easy (don't ask Mark...he was the cutter), to cut and went on with their adhesive glue gloop.  Once we got in to a groove, it got easier and went faster.  I placed, marked and handed off.  Mark cut and sometimes installed or would hand back to me to put the glue on and stick up.

 I really do love it! It makes the room so much more inviting  It wasn't expensive either.  We paid around $75 for the whole facade and had plenty leftover.

June Visitors Part 2

Papa and Grandmere came up to visit Josiah for his birthday.

 Emmie loved her hugs.

I had a project for Papa & Mark...extend our patio in the back with pavers.  They started to work on Friday and found this...

 Not just one.  A whole nest of mice.  Mark was gracious and moved them to the hill to be snake food safety.

Bryant thought he would help.  He's holding the toy box down.  Sunny, the dog, was the supervisor.

 And of course, there were stories to be read!

Kids' Closet

As I was plotting and planning how to get Emmie in to the girls room, eventually, I came to the realization that a crib, bunk beds, vanity and dresser would not fit in their room.  They have the smallest bedroom with the most windows making room arrangement limited.  So, we came up with several options.  We could try and move the dresser in to the walk-in closet and limiting the amount of dresses and toys that could be stored in the room.  We could get rid of the vanity.  But, Zoe and I worked hard to revamp it and it's just too beautiful to get rid of.  

After much pinteresting (I made up a new word!).  I finally decided the time had come to take the hall/seasonal closet and turn it in to a kids' closet.  At first, I was just going to get the girls' clothes in there but then we decided to go ahead and get all seven kids dresser clothes in the same space.

And here's where I'm so grateful that Mark is a engineer.  I tell him what I want...

 And he makes it happen!

He did quite a bit of planning and consulting with our pastor who is a carpenter.  We were very grateful to have his input because these shelves could be hung on by our monkeys and they are not going anywhere!  Each kid has two large white baskets (1.5 bushels) and then two sets of smaller drawers for personables (also called "unmentionables").  Emmie's clothes are still in the sitting room which is now the nursery.  They'll move when she moves.  I have a shelf above Zoe and Ace's clothes that still holds the clothes we are sorting through (as well as the space on the floor).  My shoe storage is now in the boys' walk-in closet and their coats are hanging up in their rooms.

I'm thrilled with the result and the kids absolutely love it.  We're still teaching them to NOT get dressed in the closet but it's a process and they are learning.

How Do Your Children Grow???

I confess, I never marked my children's heights on a door frame until Zoe was 7.  I know.  Bad mom.   I knew the house we were in wasn't going to be a forever home and I kept wondering how in the world we were going to preserve the kids height markings when we moved.  Then we moved.  And I asked Mark to please figure out how to take the height records with us.  So, being the ever so resourceful engineer, he grabbed an old board and marked the heights.  Fast forward to a few months later and I had a plan how to display the heights (thanks to Pinterest).  

We stained a board, Mark transferred the heights over and Presto!

The verse is from 1 Peter 3:18, "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." I used vinyl lettering to get it on there, pretty like.

And now, we have a board that will follow us wherever we go...marking heights and making memories.  Mark and I have a bit of a fear though.  Josiah seems to be passing up his older (more competitive) brother in height.

Thanksgiving 2012: There's a story here...

Since this was the first Thanksgiving in the new home, we opted to stay at our house and host Thanksgiving.  Our first choice was to have soldiers from the local fort over but that never got fully coordinated so we opted to have our soldier friends over.  The F family moved here this summer and began attending our church.  They planned to stay here for Thanksgiving rather than visit family.  So L and I struck a deal.  I would cook the meal, she would bring the pies.  The pies were awesome and we all enjoyed our traditional Southern Thanksgiving!

All was bright and cheerful until C suggested that I toast the marshamllows on top of the sweet potato casserole not just melt them.  I cranked the oven up to broil and continued chatting with L right beside the stove.  About 5 minutes later I yelled, "The CASSEROLE!"

Flames!  Ya'll.  There were flames coming from my new oven.

Luckily they were just the marshmallows on fire. I flew open the oven and started searching for my phone to get a picture.  Mark sprinkled water on it and promptly closed the oven door and shut the oven off.  Party pooper.  I was willing to sacrifice a kitchen fire to give ya'll a good picture.  Oh well.

I snagged this picture after the fire was extinguished.

Then Mark scraped the marshmallows off and we tried again.  I plopped myself in front of the oven this time.

Ta da!  Beautifully toasted marshmallows atop yummy homemade sweet potato casserole.

Then after we stuffed ourselves full of turkey and all the fixings we Farkled.

No really.  We did.

Farkle is just a great game to play with friends when you want to sit around and chat.  It's even better when you win.  No, I mean STOMP the competition.  But, I'm not going to brag or anything.

Shortly after the Farkle we ate again.  This time pies.  Pecan, pumpkin (without sugar...oops) and a not-so-normal-which-means-amazingly-delicious fruitcake.  Then food comas began and pictures were not taken.

Tour Da House...Entryway

I'm back...Lest you think I have done nothing in my blogging absence, here's my "to do" list at the beginning of the month:

I added blogging to the end.  While we're not quite completely done with it, we are very close.

Since we're almost through with Autumn, I thought I would show our front door decor.

 For my birthday, my parents brought me two gorgeous rustic bird houses.  I may move one to the back at some point but for now they are on the stoop.  The bench is an old piano bench that I painted cream color and I made up the pillows really quickly.

 This was pinterest inspired: 

Source: lookiewhatidid.blogspot.com via Abbie on Pinterest

I was too impatient to find a basket holder or figure out how to do a wooden letter, so a metal flower holder and vinyl letter were my compromise.  I love it because I can change out the flowers with each season like this:

I think it's simply beautiful!  I'll take the peppermints and presents off after Chirstmas for my winter decor.

Here's the stoop all decorated for Christmas!

Sadly, the plants in the tricycle are dead.  Raise your hand if you're surprised.  Anyone?  Yeah, me neither.

Tour Da House...Mudroom

I'm slowly catching up to what we're organizing.  This week I'm showcasing our mudroom.  One of the things on my list that was what I considered a "luxury" was a mudroom.  A place to drop our things and was out of the way.  Well, imagine my delight when we looked at this house and saw a nook right beside the garage door!  From the moment the contract was signed I started plotting what I was going to do with the space.  And I've done it.

But first, we had to get our ducks in a row.  I decided this space would be our big paint project for the month.  And picking out colors is now starting to drive me bonkers a bit!  But I did it.

Here's the befores:

 The bench was a coffee table and something else I can't remember.  I used an old crib mattress that was falling apart to provide cushion and then we added baskets underneath for storage.  At our old house it was the shoe cubby and worked great (when the kids put their shoes up).  We purchased the cheaper cubby type shelves from Lowe's for shoe storage at our new house.  I had thought about putting in baskets but then remembered that the kids typically may pull the baskets out and put the shoes in but then they would forget to put the baskets up.  I don't want more stuff to step around.

This is the message center.  It holds our jurisdiction list, chore list and buddy responsiblities (I'll share more on those later if ya'll want...just let me know).  We also have a place for prayer cards for missionaries.  And there are hooks for keys, dog leashes etc.  Hopefully, by next year I'll have something more like this:

Source: onecreativehousewife.com via Abbie on Pinterest

And all my organized friends just drooled. Me too. I hear ya.

Anyway, back to the mudroom.  Here are the afters:

 Crimson and gray!  Roll Tide!  I had my eye on some pretty Alabama fabric for the bench but when we got to the store it was $10 a yard.  I quickly realized that spending $20 on recovering a bench was not worth it and this fabric at under $4 would work just fine (it was 60% off).  I'm thrilled with how it all came together.  It helps that I took the fabric and matched it to the paint!  This is coming out of the half bath.

Walking in from the kitchen, great room, garage.

 My beautiful bench.  That sucker is over ten years old.  We got it from Big Lots when we first moved to this area.

 Got our Bama pics up!

Zoe's First

So, awhile back I mentioned that my parents have mad skillz when it comes to finding awesome furniture at great prices.  Awesome in that it is old and used and needs some updating and that is fine with me.  That kind of awesome.

When last they came to visit, they dropped off a beautiful old vanity that needed a bit of updating.  I decided that Zoe was just the age to learn how to refurbish an old piece of furniture.  We scoured Google and pinterest and found the same vanity updated and she said she wanted hers to look like that.  So, we set to work.  Her design required staining too.  I believe that it's been at least 10 years since I've stained furniture so this was a good refresher course for me.  I think I only had to call my mom once to make sure we did it right.

This is the determined/concentrated look.

 Staining!  I forgot how much I enjoyed staining.  Polyurethening is another story.  I'm always worried I'll have too many bubbles and it'll look horrible!

We had an audience that day.  Can I just say that I love having a garage to work in?

Here's our inspiration:

Source: comfylittleplace.blogspot.com via Abbie on Pinterest

Beautiful! And shabby chiced too! We didn't go shabby chic but we did the dark stain on top:

The girls' love it.  I wanted to go for another bright pink but was vetoed by everyone I said it too.  So, classic white with stained tops it is.  We've still got to find a chair so I'm on the look out for something with character (ha.ha.).

Didn't Zoe do a wonderful job?!

Tour Da House...Kids' Rooms

 I know.  I'm behind again.  So sad.  I'm still working hard.  As evidenced by this room.  The girls' room.  I gave Zoe control over it when we unpacked.  But she soon realized that she needed a bit of help (okay, I told her she needed a bit of help).  I took a Saturday in October and we spent two hours in this room.  Two hours in one room...just organizing and rearranging.

We made it through though.

 Ceili Rain has the bottom bunk.  The girls' bed was a Craigslist find.  Mark and a friend from church headed out the night we closed on the house and picked up the bed.  They took it to the new house in a down pour very similar to our move in day.  On the way home, they saw a guy on a bike.  He was trying to peddle home in the down pour.  They had room in the van for the guy and his bike because the seats were all out.  So, upon the suggestion of the friend, they picked him up.  Mark and our friend said that this guy would not stop talking the whole trip.  Apparently, his "motivation was in the tank" and he "used to be a cabby in Philadelphia" or somewhere like that.

And that has nothing to do with the girls' room.  I just thought I'd share.

Ceili Rain stuffs things around her bed.  I have since scooted her bed to one side and will be getting a bookshelf for the other soon. 

I know.  I know.  She did her best with what she had.

This is a before of the closet.  The girls love American Girl dolls so having a walk-in closet was wonderful!  They now have a place for the girls to "live."  And these girls typically live in a style of luxury.

 One of the "sold me" parts of the house was the walk-in closets in two of the bedrooms. 

This is the organized after picture.  Ceili Rain was showing me where the girls were sleeping.  We arranged it so they could get to each of the dolls.  I moved the bookshelf in to the closet so they have more space for something I'll show tomorrow.

I'm keeping their bed linens in this small hang up place.

I repainted their dresser before we moved.  When we first purchased the dresser it was painted red.  I repainted it with a castle on the front drawers but I knew Zoe was getting too old for that and the white flat paint that we used as a base was getting dingy.  So, we found a bright pink, funky fabric, and pink spray paint.  I dipped the fabric in fabric softener and smushed it on the drawers.  The ends got frazzled and still are, so I hot glued ribbon around the edges.  It won't stay but we can swap it out easily when the girls get tired of the fabric.

 I can see the floor!  And two adorable and beautiful little girls.

Jumping for joy!  Just had to throw this in there.

Boys walk-in closet.  We mainly hang up church clothes in both rooms but having the walk-ins allows them to have play space and, we'll have plenty of room to hang up "real" clothes when they get older.  Josiah enjoys helping give tours.  Okay, he enjoys photobombing.

Ties, colonial costumes, and backpacks.  That's what we store in the boys' closet!

See.  Tour photobomber.  We have four boys in one room.  Malachi has a separate room that will eventually double as a guest bedroom.  For now, it's all his until everyone comes in to play with his toys.  His bedroom does not have a walk-in closet, is not finished, and really only contains his crib.  Hence, I didn't see a need to post the pictures right away.  I'll do that later.

I purchased over the door shoe organizers for the boys' and girls' rooms.  This gives the girls plenty of space for their dolls and it keeps the boys' shoes organized.  We only keep Sunday shoes in their rooms since the rest are in the mud room so that gives extra storage for whatevers.  The girls keep their few Barbie dolls in them and I'm not sure what else.  The boys' still haven't figured out what to do with theirs.  But Bryant was very upset this past Sunday when he couldn't find his shoes (that were in the organizer).

You can head over to A Bowl Full of Lemons to see some better more organized kids' spaces.  We are continually working to stay organized and clean and right now, my goal is to have a place for everything.  Making it look cute will come when I win the lottery that I don't play later.