We are moving around again

It's not often I publish two posts on the same day. But while I was busy posting the first time, I had left Bella to play on her blanket. By the time I got back into the room (8 minutes or so), she had rolled/moved around and somehow manage to get the sofa to recline. Not sure how she accomplished that, and the fact I didn't hear it, even though I was only one room away. Maybe she was playing hide and seek and trying to get under the couch!!

We have almost finished our master bedroom project, I posted pictures today on the renovation blog on our big reveal. We still have Jesse's closet to finish, but I have a feeling that will be a couple more weeks away before that is finalized. Enjoy the pictures!

The Master Bedroom Reveal

We are 90% done with the master bedroom, so I thought it was time to finally get the pictures out there. Remember the bedroom before?Here it is after.
A different angle from before - again these pictures are from our final walk through and the old owners furniture.
Same shot after. The room is a little darker than before. But I personally like my bedroom to be a little darker, it just seems more cozy and personal.
The colors are brown and blue. I already had the bedding, which I am actually wishing to change, but I don't have a really good reason except I "want" something new. And then the curtains that my mom made for us that I still love.
Here is a close up of the sitting room and the new floor mirror I got from Jesse for Valentines Day. I have been wanting a floor mirror forever!Old sitting room.
New sitting room. Still missing artwork and a table to go between the chairs. Also notice the bright blue blanket below the door - to be explained later. And the darker blue blanket is the temporary dog bed. Temporary because the dogs only like to sleep on beds during the winter. In the summer they prefer to be on the tile, or right over the registers.
Old picture showing the bathroom wall.
Redone. Notice our little whoops?
That's right, we hung pictures on a wall, that is most of the time hidden by the bathroom door. Being that we are the type to keep our bathroom door open most of the time. I guess we have to find a new spot to hang those pictures. And notice the bathroom just screaming to be redone. All in good time (except I still can't take a bath, see the leaking post from earlier in the month).
And here is how the sitting room actually looks right now. The sliding door is original to the house and leaks like crazy. Being that it's freezing cold out right now, we have a blanket blocking the draft. We hope to replace the door with French doors and screen in the balcony. Not sure that will actually happen this year or not.
Well I hope you liked the tour of our new master bedroom. It only took 2 months to "almost" complete. That's what happens when your busy trying to take care of a two year old, and you never seem to have enough time on the weekends to get anything done.

There's been a crime

The scene of the crime = Bella's changing table.Casualties = Changing sheets and towels.
And one clean baby.
Crime = While changing a diaper, mom encountered poop. While wiping the perpetrator, a piece of poop flew in the air. Perpetrator catches poop in her hand. Normally perpetrator would not keep things in hand, and drops them. This time perpetrator decides so called poop in hand is funny. Perpetrator laughs as mom is trying to keep poop from spreading everywhere and must keep perpetrators legs in air with one hand, and with the other is trying to clean poop from the perpetrator's hand. Poop ends up everywhere.

A new project

We haven't even had the big reveal of our master bedroom. It's almost done. In fact if I just picked up a few things, I could probably take all the pictures. But we still have Jesse's closet yet to do, and I think we can get it done within the next two weeks, so I am going to wait.

In the meantime, this project is something I can do by myself during the day. And it's tackling the kitchen. All we are going to do right now is paint the walls. And update the vertical blinds to curtains. I already have the paint, curtains and new rod, so I'm itching to get it all done.

Here is the kitchen before, taken during our final walk through. No that cat is not ours, it was the old owners.
And here are the lovely vertical blinds that I decided to dump out on the deck. They will be going in the trash no recycling for them. Notice the lovely orange color in the picture above. Well the old owners had painted them, but only on the one side. So if you were sitting outside you could see the rough edges of the orange on the white backs. Very classy.
How many holes does a person really need to put into one wall?
I hope to get this all painted this week. Taking on a project like this, while we are still working on an old one is just the sort of thing to get me in trouble with the hubby. Well that's only if I don't get this one finished up in a few days that is.

Stay tuned..............

PVC Play Gym

Bella hasn't been feeling the greatest the past couple of days. Luckily she has been in good spirits, but I believe her stomach has been a little upset.

But on a better note, Bella has started to pay more attention to some of her toys. She loves banging things. Her grasp isn't very good, so she can't hold on to things for long. But she is really enjoying hitting things, both when she is in her chair, or laying on her back. Jesse and I are going to build her a play cube out of PVC pipe, that we can attach toys to. This way she can be on the ground and she can either swing at them, or she can pull them down to her. But they will continue to stay in her view. Currently if she has a toy and she drops it, she doesn't really care to find it again. But if it's on elastic and goes right back up in her view, she will play with it again (or so we hope). Now we just need to make time this weekend to make the cube project

This is actually for a parrot, but it sort of gets the point across.

And this one was made for a baby, but we are going to do something bigger for Bella.

Rec Room

This is the extra room on our first floor. It's actually quite large, and when we bought the house our plan was to eventually turn this into another bedroom and bathroom for Bella. That is still our same plan, but we really aren't planning on doing that for quite a few more years. Mainly when Bella is just too big we can't manage to carry her upstairs for bedtime.The old owners left their pool table, which gets used occasionally. We will be moving downstairs once that space gets renovated. Finishing the basement is a tricky one. It's something we would like to have done, but we have so many other things in front of it, I don't see it happening for years.
We have our old rear projection TV in here, which is only really used for Wii Fit, and other Wii games when we have people over.
Our main use of this space is the computer desk. And the main reason for this post is to tell you that I spent 7 hours on my Sunday to do one years worth of paperwork. Oh and I also finished up our taxes. Glad to have all the paperwork put away. But I would like to get more organization into the space. But being I don't see this as a permanent place for the computer, I have a hard time justifying doing anything to organize it. Not to mention I would eventually like to get a new computer desk, but that's just wishing at this point.
The real owners of this room are Colby and Elle. Their dog bed sits in the corner, and they love to run around the pool table and chase each other. So yes I guess you could say that this big rec room belongs to the dogs!

Accident at school

Bella,

When I showed up in your preschool room to pick you up....this is what you had on.It means you had some type of accident. The report was that pee had leaked out the back of your diaper during gym time. Bella I apologize I didn't have better back up clothes for you. The shirt is too small and doesn't even cover your tummy. Let alone it in no way matches the pants that I had there for you. I will do better the next time so that you don't have to wear this around everyone at school.
I also apologize for showing this picture. But you wonder why pee always leaks out the back of your diaper. You have the longest "crease" I have ever seen. I will although take this picture down after a couple of days. I don't want you to someday find this post and feel embarrassed.

Your always loving,

Mom

The Switch

This was breakfast this morning and we are using our new two communication switch. Basically I get to program in two different sayings, and depending on which button Bella pushes will give her the ability to make a choice. So using the two pictures I had taken earlier, Bella's choices for breakfast were "Food please" or "Drink please". She tends to use her right hand more, so she picked food more constantly. I had to help guide her hand to choose the drink. But she did hit it a couple times on her own.
Hopefully with lots of practice she can learn that she has the ability to choose. Only problem is that it's between two choices that we give her. But a choice between two objects is still better than nothing.

You'll also notice that she really followed me with the camera, which is great for her head control to be able to turn in all directions. We still can't get a smile out of her though. Something about that darn yellow light that comes out of our camera.

Oh and check out the wild child hair. We hadn't combed it yet this morning when the pictures were taken. I'm thinking it's really get near the time to give it a little trim.

Earring Display

I finished my 3 earring frames. I really like how they turned out. I used old 5x7 pictures frames, painted them white. I then wrapped some coordinating fabric around the back of the frame and cut some netting to fit where the glass used to be. Lastly I stapled ribbon to hang them from.Here is the finished jewelry wall of my closet.

Valentines Day

We had a very slow Valentines Day on Sunday. Jesse and I went out to celebrate with friends Saturday night, and were paying for it on Sunday. We mainly spent the day vegged out in front of the television, I know bad parents. But a funny thing occurred. Jesse was flipping between the Olympics, Nascar, news, etc. At one point Bella had just finished eating and was still in her chair. We noticed she was fascinated with the TV. Apparently Bella is a Nascar fan. Must be the brightly colored cars as they quickly go around in loops, but it completely held her attention. According to Bella, Baby Einstein is out..........Nascar is in!! I hang my head in shame.

Sometimes people rub you the wrong way

Bella and I went on an errand this afternoon. As we entered the parking lot I noticed it was pretty full. We have had a handicap sticker for Bella for about 6 months now. We only use it when she is with us. I would have to say that it's one of the "perks" that comes with Bella.

So I spied the only free handicap spot and turned into that lane. I noticed that another car was waiting to make a left turn into that lane and they also had a handicap sticker.

Now I know I probably should have let that person have the spot, they could have been some really old lady who could hardly walk. But I took it. It's cold outside and I didn't have Bella all bundled up (she hates that), I wanted a closer spot so that she wouldn't have to be so cold as we went into the store.

The lady in the other handicap car, glared at me as she waited in her car behind mine. I'm not sure if she thought I was going to pull out of the spot? I parked the car and hung up the handicap sticker and got out.

The lady quickly pulled into another spot (only 3 spaces down) and hurriedly runs over to me and says "Do you have a wheelchair sticker?"

To which I replied "My daughter is 2 1/2 years old and can't even hold up her head yet. I would love to carry her into the store and use a cart, but instead I have to put her in her stroller and awkwardly carry around all my items in my hand, because she can't sit in the front of a cart. What do you think? And while your at it....what type of handicap do you have that allows you to quickly walk over here before I have even gotten the stroller out of the back of my vehicle?

Okay so that's a lie, I didn't say any of that. I just said I have a handicap daughter and she replied that she was just tired of people stealing her spot that didn't have a sticker.

But if I could go back in time I might just decide to tell her off!

Jewelry Display

I am still putting the finishing touches on my closet. I needed something to store some of my jewelry. I found an idea about making a frame for your necklaces and earrings. I finally finished the first frame for some of my necklaces.

I took an old frame that wasn't being used and bought some 1/4" thick scrap board from Lowe's for $1.

I then painted the frame white and painted the scrap board with the wall colors from our master bedroom. I actually just used a cut out piece of paper to paint this design from wallpaper I found online. I bought little cup hooks that I painted blue and screwed into the board. Then I hung the frame on the wall of my closet.

Lastly I hung some of my necklaces on the hooks.
This is only about half of my necklaces, so I am going to have to find another frame, one that is hopefully a little longer in length.

Fairy Tale Land

Bella's preschool class took a field trip to Crown Center to see the Fairy Tale Land display. They had lots of little buildings for the kids to climb through and see their favorite stories and characters come to life.

First we saw Pinocchio, he seems a little scary to me. But you could pull his strings and watch his arms and legs move about.
Then we visited Little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother's house, but found a wolf in grandmother's clothes.
Next we went to see the Princess and the Pea.
Bella decided she wanted to see if she could feel the pea......or perhaps just take a nap.
Then we went to the Three Bears cottage.
Bella found mama's chair to be "just right".
Lastly we rode Cinderella's magic pumpkin stagecoach.

And out of all the exhibits, Bella favorite was Jack and the Beanstalk. Inside there was a picture of a giant and when you pressed the red button a deep voice said "Fee Fi Fo Fum". And she loved it and kept wanting more. Who would of thought.
It was a great exhibit, and a very tired Bella went to sleep immediately after getting in the car seat.
And she lived Happily Ever After!!