Torture

We didn't make it in the new house by Christmas. I was hoping to have a New Year's bash there... but that's not happening either. Dang. Without going into details of who and what are holding us up, let's just say we're working on it. The race is on- which will finish first, interior or exterior? It's going to be a close one. I'll keep you posted.

Cabinets!!!
I love my cabinets. I don't know what I like more, the rounded island with wood bent around the arc or the clean white lines... I just love them.



Here's the master bathroom- I'm really excited about this. Our toothbrushes will have their very own tilt drawer! My blowdryer will have it's very own spot! The hairspray, medicine, curling irons, etc. will all have a place... heaven.

This is the fireplace, it was just done yesterday. There will be a mantle in that empty spot.

We're getting there. The 'to-do' list seems to never end, but it's getting there. Today the carpet is coming, by the end of the week we're getting countertops, the exterior is coming along (I'll have to post a couple pictures of it, it's cool!), and we're still really hoping to be in by Christmas. I'll keep you posted!

Progress

Tile!

Paint!

Floors!

Guess what's coming tomorrow.... !!!!!

Chubby Cheeks

Normal.

Not Normal.

Poor little Teah had some dental work done yesterday and her little cheeks poofed right out. She's been a trooper, though. Her pride is a little hurt, she prays for her cheeks to not be poofy anymore, but she's eating, sleeping and playing like normal.

Rock ROCKS!

The exterior rock is done! For those who know rock, we chose a Harristone mix of Chief Joseph and Uintah in the Cape Cod color. The rest of the exterior will be covered in a deep maroon/red board and batten except for the gables (the triangles above the front door) which will be light tan shakes. Interested to see that? Me too. We're excited!

Sheet rock ROCKS, too. Our house feels more like a house with the walls up.

Above is the kitchen: picture a sink under the middle window on the left (kitchen sink view in above picture... ladder will be removed), the gorgeous white cabinets along the sink wall, all along the back wall and continuing on the wall on the right in a desk area. In the middle of the kitchen will be the island in a dark walnut stained wood. The cooktop will be in the middle of that island facing the camera, and we'll have about 6 barstools on the other side of the island in a half circle facing the cooktop. The kitchen area will be painted in a light blue while the rest of the house will be "packing nut" (a shade of tan).

Here we have the girls' room. On the top is their bedroom-- the little cubby holes on the left are some built in 'night stands' where we'll put a shelf for their stuff. Beds will come off the wall on either side of the 'night stands', the room will be a sky blue and the ceiling white. The other picture here is taken standing in the girl's closet. It's the thing that's raised on the right. We'll figure out shelving of some sort in there, as well as along that back wall and on the left. On the bottom of the back wall we'll have a mini cabinet door covering the little opening... opening to what? Why, a fun little secret play room, of course! (it's the little room pictured here with the sloping ceilings.) Once we got the trusses on we saw there was a cool little room here, but the only was to access it was through a little crawl space (if we cut any other opening, the house might have fallen down). So we decided to make it a fun little space for the girls!

The rest of the house just looks like walls. While I love it and everything, it didn't make such great photography/blog material, so I'll get those in when there's more to show. Thanks for checking in on us!

I don't have a full length mirror... obviously

I used to wonder why LeRoy would shake his head at me when I would come home from work (reffing High School volleyball). So I had Teah take a picture to see just how bad it really was... oooooh my! If anyone needs a scary Halloween costume, give me a call and it's all yours!

A little preview

Watch out this Halloween, Hannah's in town!

made anything cute lately?

Once in a great while I get a burst of creativity and once in a greater while something kind of cool comes out of it. These are my two latest that I think turned out ok.


What to do with all those adorable drawings and priceless art work from my 3-4 year old? I'd been trying to think of something, then I found this Einstein quote, and it all came together. I scanned in Teah's artwork with the quote and had them printed on 12 x 12 canvas squares. My favorite is the one on the right, when Teah saw it, she said, "That's you, mommy, when you were mad. You look like a boy, huh?"

I can't take 100% credit for this idea, I found some really cute pillows online that I didn't want to pay for, and thought I could make them. So this is my attempt. (No, I'm not that great on the sewing machine- for the lettering, I used "Unique Stitch, Sewing with a tube"- so easy!) and I put a cute fabric on the back of the pillows, making them, in my opinion, cuter than the internet ones!



This house is bringing out my "decorator" side, and I have some fun purchasing and creating ideas that I'm sure I'll be posting about. So consider yourself warned- if you're not into home design, avoid my blog for the next several... months? years? who knows. It could take a while to clear all these bottled up HGTV, design blogging, design magazine ideas.

still under construction

Well here it is, my... okay, okay, OUR house. Though it seems like the house has looked like this FOREVER, it is coming along. Want a tour?

This is the floorplan. As you can see, we flipped the house so everything mirrors what it shows in the plans.

Once in the front door, this room is to the left. At first it will be an office and once we get a piano and living room furniture, they'll take over this room.

This is the laundry room. I'm standing in the mudroom to take a picture of it. The garage entrance is to my right.

Below we have the family room and kitchen (yes, we are getting the white cabinets with the dark island!!!!)

Here are the stairs going up to the bonus room and the entrance to the master bedroom. And there's LeRoy walking out of the master bathroom into the master bedroom. This is before he got sick and started throwing up out the window. That was a bad weekend for the poor guy.

Here's the bonus room over the garage- a.k.a. Teah and Havi's room.

This is the deck. LeRoy's plumbing a misting system around it. :)

The garage floor is suspended concrete, and this is what it looks like underneath.

Eventually this will probably be two rooms- a theatre and a workout room.

Under the third car garage we're making that into a sort of built in shed to store lawn mowers, etc., as shown below. This will have double doors on it.

The best part of this post (for me) is that these pictures are already outdated! The roof is almost complete and we have our windows in. Electrical on the interior and rock on the exterior are what's in the near future here. I don't know if anyone will even read past the floorplan on this post, but it's really exciting for me, LeRoy and the girls. We can't wait to live here!!!!

my girls

My friend Lisa took some AMAZING pictures of the girls the other day at Pineview. I am still in awe. No one has to tell me they're cute girls, I know tHaT, but DANG! Look at these pictures!!!

These ones are straight out of the camera. Lisa's going to play around with them on Photoshop, I'm excited to see what she does with them!

Havi

Teah

Ouch!

This is what should have headlined today's front page of the Standard Examiner sports section:

WILDCATS YOUNG AND OLD(ER)

Saturday night the Wildcat volleyball team of Weber State University started their 2008 season with an exhibition opener against what could have been their toughest opponent of the year. :) Coach Al Given's squad of fresh talent lost the first game to the older talent, but came back to take the match 3-1. This may be the only game all year where Givens could be heard telling the opposing team "Nice swing!" or "Great hustle!" or "Good up!" while calling them by name in the middle of a rally. After all, it would be hard for a coach not to applaud the efforts of his former players, even if they are the opposing team. This Alumni team will, sadly, only play this one game all season, but it was an exciting event nonetheless. The Alumni may be old school, but they can still block, dig, swing and play!

photo courtesy of April's blog, thanks April!

My knee never used to hurt like this. Did I really have bruises all over my body like this? Can a couple years really make this big of a difference with how my body feels? I mean really. It was only one match. Four games. We used to do TRIPLE days for crying out loud! Oh well, it was a great night. I got to play with some of my favorite friends, there was a fun crowd, officials, even an announcer. It was just like being back in the glory days...

...but then I came home and heard a little voice say "Mommy, will you lay by me?". So I laid next to my beautiful four year old. She rolled over to put her cute little arm around me and whispered in my ear, "Mommy, I still love you even when you smell gross". This is the life.

Caterpillars make the best pets!

For Havi's Birthday last month, Kelsy gave her this butterfly kit, and it was the coolest thing! The caterpillars came in the mail in a container and the instructions were basically: don't touch, don't open, don't feed, just watch. My kind of pet! Once they went into their chrysalid we transfered them into this net and watched them turn into butterflies, then let them go. The girls both loved them, Havi told the 'pilars' good night every night, and as you can see in the video, she liked to talk to the butterflies. It was such a cool gift, thanks Kelsy!

I heart LeRoy

Married 8 years!!!
years 1-4: college roommates, such fun times!
years 4-8: learning how to be parents
years 8+: can't wait to see what life brings!

photo by Teah