Happy Valentines Day

Bella and I made Valentine's for her class on Saturday.  Bella had a little bit of a cold/flu thing going on late last week, so our usual ring around the eyes from coughing was in full affect in these pictures.

 I helped Bella to draw on all her valentines.

 Here is how they turned out.

Here is a close up of the label.

I like to think I am creative, but I actually got the idea from this blog http://iammommahearmeroar.blogspot.com/2011/01/valentines-from-rex.html.  I have been too busy to be creative at this point.

I have to share the valentine I picked out for Bella.  It's a little monkey that sings and dances.  It's one of those  things that actually makes you smile every time you play it.  I found it at Target, when I was killing time waiting for a prescription.  One of those frivolous purchases but the good thing is, it makes Bella smile too.

Enjoy the first video posted of Bella (sadly taken with our camera, so not the greatest quality).

The Winter Blues

It's been cold and snowy around here.  Bella was pretty much out of school all last week.  Which isn't good for her or us.  I really do think she enjoys school and misses it when she is home.  Mom and Dad are just not as fun as the teachers and students and all the different activities they get to do.

 We are really hoping for no more school days, at least not for a little while.  I can't wait for the spring warm up, not much seems to get done around here in the winter.  Although we have pretty much finished up our entryway project, you can go to the home blog to see more pictures.

We are going to be entering desperation mode here shortly with all we want to get done before the new baby arrives.  I don't know about you, but getting a basement finished, and two bathrooms remodeled, not to mention finishing the new nursery seems like a lot to get done in 5 months.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say only two of those projects will actually get done (and we know the nursery has to be one of them).  But it sure would be nice to get it all done, so once the baby is here we can relax and enjoy family life (well I don't know that a lot of relaxing will happen, but we can hopefully enjoy family life).

Stairs

I believe it's finally time to show off our entryway project.

 In the course of 5 months we tiled, painted, installed hardwood treads, new risers, stained and installed new newel posts and handrail, plus new iron balusters.  We also put up board and batten along the hallway, which included a lot of caulking by Jesse.  Lastly we installed the new carpet runner and miscellaneous trim.

Here is where we started when we bought the house.

Here we are now.

A look down the stairs, before any work was done.

Midway through.

Our finished project.