Life Lately

Life lately...has been a little craaaazy. 

I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into with this remodel. It will be worth it, but wowzers! I have never felt so frazzled in my life. I know, I know. It is absolutely ridiculous of me to complain about this. We have a house that is way more than we need or deserve and I'm whining about a little mess. But can I just say it? It's a big mess. However, my dad is coming this weekend to assist RJ in putting up the drywall and once that's up things will really start to get going. Then I feel like I could really clean (again) without such a risk of things getting so messy and 

plaster-y/sawdust-y within the next 10 minutes. And then my children can actually play in more than just our living room. Yee-haw!

The latest progress in the re-do was RJ taking up all 6 layers of flooring that were on top of the wood floors. If there had only been one layer, this could have been pretty simple, but there were lots and lots of staples so it took quite a bit of time. Have I mentioned how stellar my husband is?!

I couldn't believe the condition of the wood floors. Obviously they would need refinishing, but they are in really good shape...except for the edges so we'll still be replacing it. 

I've also been crafting like a mad lady. A friend is doing a craft show for us this weekend so I made 3 skirts and a bazillion flowers over the last few days. Can't wait to hear how it turns out! I also have a possible wedding opportunity doing the boutonnieres and possibly the bouquets as well for a wedding in Nebraska. It'd kind of be my dream job. I've kind of got my fingers crossed. And I painted a bathroom mural.

And I also made a little Hello Kitty skirt for a cute little gal from church AND taught my first ever private art lesson. Phew! It's been crazy/fun.

One project that I am super excited about it from this gal.

I ordered her Apron Knot dress pattern from her Etsy store. My first ever time following a pattern:

I could not believe how easy it was! There were step-by-step instructions with pictures to boot. It was so fun! I have some major visions of making all of Harper's clothes.

So the other day when Little Lizard announced on her FB page that she was looking for testers for a new corset top pattern I jumped at the chance. And I got it! I get to make a little top for my little Harper.

Here's the juicy fabric:

It's a reversible tank top with a corset in the back, so the top 2 prints are for the tank top portion and the strip is for the ruffly trim. I'm hoping I can find a cute ruffly pants pattern to make a whole outfit. Can't wait!

And that's life lately. Lots of fun as a family and lots of projects. I still need to do Harper's 2 yr post and share some amazing photos of her. *Soon!*

Hope you all enjoy your week!

A little much

So we may have bitten off a tiny more than we can chew with our kitchen project, but we're excited about how it will end up. In the meantime, we have quite the mess.

(so yeah, not gonna have time for my fun fashion re-do posts for a loooong time. What was I thinking?)

RJ started tearing down the plaster wall on Thurs and had it mostly down when my mom and dad came to help on Friday. Plaster dust =  disaster. It got INSIDE of my cupboards which gave me the joyous job of hand  washing every single dish I own. Still have some left to do. I guess they wanted to make sure I really earn my dishwasher, huh? 

The boys got a lot done though! Next step is getting up some dry wall and then onto the floors. 

Here's a before picture.

And here's the after. It's hard to really get a good picture with the fridge there (it's won't stay there) but this is my most favorite part of the room. They gutted the little space between the living room and kitchen and took down the part of the wall above the doorway making it seem HUGE! 

 You can also see the chimney there, which we were hoping to leave the brick exposed, but it was covered in plaster so my dad trimmed it up with wood and then we'll drywall around it. I'm also excited about this because now I can have some exposed shelving on the chimney. Wa Hoo!

Here's another before shot of the wall that is no longer here:

And an after shot, looking in from the dining room:

We'll be putting a long island to cover up that whole space with lots of COUNTERTOPS! Our stove will go in island and our fridge will go where the stove is.  The doorway to get from the kitchen to the dining room will be to the left of the chimney. 

We still have so much to do, but what RJ and dad got done this weekend was for sure the hardest/messiest part.  We have the living room taped off with plastic in the doorways so it didn't get dusty, so the next few days I'm going to clean, clean, clean, so we can take down the plastic down and live a semi normal life in here. 

Hopefully we can be completely done in 2 or 3 months??

Here's a picture of the floors. There are 4 layers of linoleum and 2 sub floors ON TOP of the wood floor. That's 6 layers of flooring, folks. The plan is to get new wood floors in the kitchen and dining room, but we're pretty curious to see what the original wood floors in the kitchen will look like.

Isn't that retro orange floor brilliant? We could also see parts of the wall showing that it had been painted bright orange to match. Psychedelic!

Thanks for all your help, mom and dad! You're the best.

Finally on Sunday afternoon we were ready for some fun. We ended up having Harper's birthday party at Caribou since our house was too messy. (her actual birthday is on Wednesday) You can rent their little meeting room by purchasing a $25 gift card, which we ended up using to get everyone's drinks. Isn't that a slick deal?

Here's Harper with her uncle Aaron during "Happy Birthday".

The girl and her cake.

All the Bloom cousins and one more on the way in May.

We all headed over to the Iowa Energy game afterwards too. It was a crazy busy weekend, but lots of fun too.

Hope you all have a great Monday and enjoy the warmth!

Beauty

This weather!

It's 

Beautiful!!

We've spent lots of time outside. A picnic at a park over daddy's lunch break. New side walk chalk. More playing outside (while I'm typing this on our computer). Henry is way too big for his trike this year. Harper is too big for her trike this year, but not quite ready for Henry's. Looks like some "new"(hello garage sale season!) bikes are in our future.

I love Spring!

Not much to write about these days, but I've got lots of fashion DIYS coming up next week. My goal is to do one a day. I'm going through my closet trying to spruce things up, cutting up some old shirts, and making some new ones. I may even attempt to bring back the denim jumper!

 So stay tuned!

In the meantime, enjoy this beautiful weather. 

And pray that our house doesn't collapse when we TAKE DOWN A WALL this weekend. Yikes! The thought makes me start breaking out in hives.

National Craft Month

I was supposed to head up to see my friend Alisa today.

But naturally, my girl who gets sick with something or other every 2 weeks, started a fever yesterday. The poor little babe! And poor me. But that's just part of being a mom, eh?

Here she is before the fever started. Eating her breakfast and browsing the American Girl catalog.

Anyways, I was so excited to give Alisa this gift for all THREE of her boys, and since I can't hand them over in person I can't wait any longer....I've got to show them instead!

The baby's name is a secret so I hid the initial in case there are any good guessers out there. 

They're a musical and funky family so I made some musical and funky shirts.  SO fun. I am pretty much obsessed with appliqueing right now. Quite fitting since it is National Craft Month!

I hope you like them, Alisa! And you'll see them in about 3-5 business days. :) 

Hope y'all have a lovely Thursday!!

Wednesday

Wednesday again, huh?

We took Harper's pacifier away a couple of weeks ago and it went really well, except she is no longer a good sleeper-inner. I'm tempted to sneak in and give her the pacy at 5 am so she'll sleep in til 8 like she did back in the glory days.

We started a new Bible Study at Church: Beth Moore's Believing God.

And I am really excited. 

If you go to the same church as me and didn't come yesterday, you might want to reconsider. :) 

The whole time I kind of felt this scream of, "YES, this is for you". It comes at such a perfect time for me. I am the first to admit that I am horrible at making the commitment and having the discipline for daily time in the word. Horrible. Always have been. But am feeling a desire and excitement to really dig to get to know and fall more in love with Christ, that feels fresh and new. I'm sure I'll fail along the way. There may very well be days where I don't do my lesson, don't make time to read God's word, or spend time in prayer, but I am excited to really get going. Turn faith from a "noun into an action".  With the timing of the study starting on Fat Tuesday and the timing of Beth Moore mentioning someone gave up tv for the 9 weeks of the study (just as an example) it encouraged me to give something up as well...so wish me luck. :) I wanted to pick something that would affect me enough that it would make me stop frequently in my  day to turn my focus on Chris, but not something that would make me crabby and unpleasant to be around for the next 9 week. And it's nice to know that if/when I fail, or if/when I don't, that I won't lose/gain favor with God. He knows I mess up all the time, but His grace and love never change. Holla!!!
So anyways, that's that.

I have a couple of fun projects to share with you, but they'll have to wait for another day. I'm sure you'll all be waiting on the edge of your seats, right??

I haven't had my hairs cut since AUGUST. I was able to get my mullet into a pony tail yesterday and it made me want longish hair again. Thoughts?

Did you see the size of the snow flakes last night?

Harper turns 2 in 2 weeks. She wore an outfit yesterday that I had bought before she was born. When I bought it, it looked so big. So when she actually was able to finally fit in it? Yeah, I'm sad that my baby is growing up.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!!

kitchen

This old house of ours is about to receive a sparkly new kitchen and I've been dreaming about the possibilities. There are so many directions we could go...I went back and forth for a bit thinking we should do dark cabinets to match the woodwork on the rest of our house, but fell back on what I love.

white kitchens:

I already kind of have a white kitchen, but want to go more white white.

And I know. We just "did" our kitchen last spring, but it was a very cheap makeover, the countertop paint has held up pretty horribly, we thought we were going to try and sell the house this fall, and now we decided we're staying put and want to do something to really open up our house and make it more functional.

I'm probably the most excited about new countertops and MORE countertops. I really can't work much on my countertops because there really isn't that much countertop space. 

I'm probably secondly most excited about a dishwasher. When we first decided to do this makeover, I said I didn't really want to sacrifice valuable cupboard space to put in a dishwasher, and I'm so used to hand washing every single dish.......

but yes, I've come to my senses. 

I CAN:T WAIT TO HAVE A DISHWASHER.

So if you feel like helping us tear down a 100 year old wall (hey, there might be a treasure hidden inside that plaster!), ripping up some old floor and probably about 8 layers of linoleum, feel free to volunteer your time. We'll take all the help we can get!

Just leave a comment and I'll draw names to see who gets to help us first!!

(kidding)

(sort of)

In the meantime, help me design it! I don't know what I'm doing and I can guarantee you this will be the last time we re-do this kitchen.

Have a happy weekend everyone!