Here Comes the Sun!

I remember having a similar post to this last year. Meg and I love Spring and Summer! We love to be outside. She has been asking me for weeks to swim in the pool. I don't know if she saw my neighbors out there laying out or just realizes that it is getting warmer outside....but I have had a hard time convincing her that it is still too cold to swim. Today I had the idea to dig her Water table out of the garage. It is the perfect day. I even filled it with warm water from the kitchen instead of the cold water from the hose, although she really wouldn't have minded if it had been freezing. She loves outdoors and anything with Water. She is getting a little big to climb in the table, but don't try to tell her that!

My friend Angela sent Meg these sun glasses as a baby gift when she was still living in Japan. She still loves them, and her purple leopard sunglasses that her "Bunny" got her. I don't know how they have survived so long. Chad and I break our own sunglasses on a regular basis.
Even after we changed out of her suit to watch Alice in Wonderland she kept the sunglasses on. It must have been relaxing......I had to carry her to her bed for naptime, because she was already out.

On the House Planning/renovating front....no pictures of change to the house yet. It is still in the foundation, electrical, plumbing stage. Nothing pretty to share.

Here is one of my current projects, though. I bought this at a charity thrift store yesterday.

My plan is to turn it into something cool, like this.....

( I can't remember where I first spotted this picture, otherwise I would give the credit. I saved it from one of the decorating blogs that I like to read.)

We shall see how I do on the make-over once I actually get it home. I didn't used to have to think about how to get things home when I had a Tahoe and Chad had a truck. This one could be tricky!

On a totally random note. I came across this picture on http://www.decorista.com/. One of the blogs I like to look at for decorating inspiration. If I were getting married this year, this is the color scheme I would use. Isn't it fun?

AHHH!

I got a call from Chad yesterday saying, "whatever you do, don't go by the new house!"

Here is a link to his blog to see what is going on...
http://thewayitcouldbe.com

foundation repair is a whole new experience for me. I am used to tearing out walls, plumbing, floors etc. This looks a little scary.

P.S. You could not pay me a million dollars to crawl under that house or in one of those holes! I hope those guys get paid well.

Big Girl Room in Progress

I am having so much fun planning out our new house. I love change. I get sick of looking at the same things over again. I also LOVE to clean out and organize. Get rid of what we don't want or need. It never ceases to amaze me how much stuff I binge from our house every time we move. I know that I haven't accumulated a lot of new stuff since the last time. I just become less attached to things after moving it around a few times.

I am excited to be able to plan a big girl room and a baby girl nursery at the same time. I will share more on the nursery as my ideas turn into actual progress. For Meg's room I had kind of a preppy/modern pink, aqua and white thing in mind......then I went to Home Goods, my new favorite place. I have wanted to go to one for a while, and didn't even know there was one right by my house; until I looked on the website. I spotted these throw pillows and lamp and totally changed the course of my plan for Meg. I think it fits her personality better then what I was thinking before anyway. She is more of a bright and colorful, out of the ordinary kind of girl.

So here is the loot. I am aware that the lamp shades don't match. The lamps were on the clearance isle for $20 and I could not pass up the peach glass shape of the base. I can replace the shades for pretty cheap. You will have to wait until we move it to see it all come together.

Since her furniture will all be moving into Baby Sister's room, I have been looking for some sort of dresser.....also, some sort of cute toy storage/organizer (which is still I am still on the hunt for). I decided that instead of just going to the store to find something that we don't have in our budget....since the renovations are taking care of all of that....I would be creative. I went to the Arlington Resale Shop. It is a place right around the corner from my house (one of the places that I take a lot of those things that I mentioned cleaning out of my own house). All of the sale proceeds go to the Arlington Pregnancy Center. I bought this dresser for $60. I had sold a rug on craigslist the same morning and used the cash from that sale, so I like to think it was a free dresser....a trade-in, at least.

Problem #1 was that no one was home and I had to unload it before going back to pick Meg up from Preschool. I won't mention how it got from the back of my car to the garage. I got a good reprimanding from Chad already. Trust me, it was harder on the dresser then it was on me.

Anyway...I went straight to Lowe's to get white paint and some new hardware. Here is what I came up with.

I tried really hard to cut all of our stored belongings out of the background of this picture.

I am pretty proud of the finished product.

Next up on the house.....light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, paint colors, etc. I got my assignments from Chad today and I am ready to get started.

Our New Old Home....

Here we go....

Move #10 is in the works.

Only, this time we plan to stay for a while. We are so excited to be buying the beautiful home of a relative of mine, in a really cool old area of Fort Worth. It is the neighborhood my dad grew up in, actually. We have always loved the area and can't wait to live there. It came about at the perfect time. Right when we were needing to get settled into a new place before Baby Missildine #2's arrival this summer.

First things first, though. This house has had the same owner since the mid 60's. It needs some work, but it has some beautiful old charactar and really great features. I decided to blog about the process as we work on making it our own. I love reading about renovations and I hope someone else out there enjoys the process, as well.

So here is the Before....
You saw the front elevation at the beginning of the post. I love the trees and the wide street. The houses all around this one have already been fixed up, which adds to the appeal.

Here is the living room. This is where you come in front door.

(Notice the little peeper watching for her daddy to come inside and run around with her.)

This is the view as you actually walk in the front door. The arch takes you into the dining room. I LOVE the dark wood trim and the arch itself. My lens isn't broken, the foundation is definately the first order of business. That is to be expected of a house this old, but it's a little like walking through the crazy house at Disneyland.

Another view into the dining

This is a cool breakfast area/butler's pantry area that is between the Dining Room and Kitchen. I think we may turn this into a built in desk/office area.
Door into the Kitchen.

This is one side of the Kitchen. Beautiful Water heater!
Other Kitchen wall. The picture doesn't show it very well, but it has really cool old White Subway Tile backsplash that we hope to salvage. We are trying to figure out how to reconfigure the kitchen and add the necessities (more cabinets, dishwasher, microwave, oven etc). This will be one of the biggest projects. I can't imagine how people used to cook in a kitchen with this little counter space and NO dishwasher.

This is the front bedroom. It has a door off of the Living Room.

Another view of the same room.

Hall Bath. I love the old tile and hardware, but it will need some fixing up. At least it isn't peach or something worse, like in other old houses I have seen. I like the blue/green.

I especially love the black and white tile on the floor.

Middle bedroom.

The other view of the middle bedroom.

This is the back bedroom. It is the smallest of the three. Can you believe how many big beautiful windows are in this house. I love all of the natural light.

This is another big project. It is a little bath off of the back bedroom. Obviously has had a plumbing leak of some kind.

I like the arched shower with white subway tile. I am hoping we can save this.

Meg hopes we don't move any furniture in. She likes to slide across the wood floors and hid in all of the closets.

So here is goes. In the (almost) eight years we have been married, we have built new homes and renovated a few old ones. Everytime, we knew we were doing it to sell. I am so excited to make this house OUR home. We probably won't stay forever, but we are planning this house for us...not for the masses. I can't wait to get started. I love to see things change and improve. I just hope we can get finished and moved before I am too pregnant to enjoy the process. I wouldn't mind missing out on the moving part, but I will want everything in it's place and looking perfect before baby arrives. I hope you enjoy the process with me.

Easter Pics

We had a good Easter weekend. Easter is a lot different now that Chad is on staff at a church. (so is Christmas....) I was sad to miss being with family. Especially since all of my family was together this year, minus the Missildines. On the other hand, it was a great weekend with tons of new people, visitors and families at church. Although we celebrate Christ's Death and Resurrection all year, we pray that God did a powerful work in the hearts of those who came for the first time.

On to the Meg pics....I decided on Saturday night to try and make Easter cookies with Meg. Thankfully, and surprisingly, I had all of the ingredients we needed. She LOVED mixing the food coloring into the icing. I was only going to make 3 colors, but she kept asking to make more, so we ended up with 6 colors.


These were my feeble attempts at Easter dress pictures before Church. I kept asking her to put her bear down, but between the legs was the best I could get.

Daddy leaves too early on Sundays to do the Easter Egg hunt, so we waited until after naptime. She woke up from her nap saying, "we're gonna go hunt easters"