March 22, 2016

We did it!! We sold our house!! 

Long story short, we wanted to sell to our friends, the Fryes, but they hadn't sold theirs yet and we already had a contract on one in North Carolina, so we kinda needed to lock down the details on ours. We both listed on Friday, March 11, both had lots of showings, both had a showing on Sunday night (the 20th) and both had strong interest from that showing. Our people had their agent call ours on Sunday night to talk timing details and assured us that an offer was coming on Monday. 

Wellllll, Monday came and went and we didn't hear anything. Our agent called theirs on Tuesday morning and it turned out that they hadn't gotten a pre-approval letter first, so they were waiting on their bank before they could submit. While we were waiting, the Fryes got a cash offer on theirs, so we could sign with them afterall! Our offer came in four hours after theirs. Crazy to think that if our people would have had their ducks in a row that we would have likely accepted their offer - then regretted it a day later! God is in the details of our lives for sure!!

January 24, 2016

Ugh! The joys of home-ownership : ( I had just laid down to go to bed when Charlie frantically called up to me that the garage was flooding! The hot water heater had cracked and instead of going into the garage only, it went into the playroom and filled about a third of the room in a matter of minutes. Since we're basically water damage pros at this point, we knew just what to do. Fans to the rescue! We used our steam cleaner and shop vac for over three hours pulling water our of the carpet and dumping the water that was draining out of the water heater. The carpet was pulled up for almost a week so we could make sure it was totally dried before we laid it back down. Home Depot installed a new water heater the next morning and we were back up and running, but it was a total pain!

May 25, 2014

One of the perks of having lots of kids... free labor! And they loved it! : )

May 22, 2014

Good thing it's washable...

March 17, 2014

What a week for art projects! I knew I had to take advantage of Leah's artistic abilities while she was here so we tackled the huge empty wall in my bedroom and the two chairs that I found at Goodwill that were begging to be refinished. They started as brown stained wood chairs with a sea foam green velour cloth - blah! For the playroom, Leah convinced me to go wild and crazy, literally! 

July 18, 2013

Remember this? Well it was finally time to scrub/scrap it off. That was just over three years ago, and Owie's little baby face and tiny feet have morphed into an almost five year old's right before our eyes. Time flies!

April 9, 2013

I'm officially obsessed! I thought that having a garden would be fun but I never thought I would love it this much! The boys and I all  go outside at least twice a day to check on the garden and see what is bigger day after day. I can't believe how quickly things are sprouting up - even from one day to the next. These two pictures are our sugar snap peas (top) and lettuce (bottom). Tiny still, but considering that they were both just seeds only a week ago, I'd say we're doing pretty good!

March 30, 2013

The beginnings of our garden effort! We got 12 huge bags of garden soil, dug out the plot along the back fence and went to the garden store to choose our seeds. We ended up picking multi-colored carrots, orange peppers, cantaloupe, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce, sugar snap peas, wax beans, basil, chives, cilantro and mint. Our peach tree seems to be doing great so far and we added strawberry and raspberry plants too. Hopefully by the end of this summer we'll be rolling in produce!

 We almost scraped the driveway loaded down with all this soil!

March 24, 2013

Our new schoolroom!!

Since we decided to homeschool Kindergarten next year, a school room seemed like a logical addition for our home. The front room had been empty since we moved in anyway, so this was a perfect use for the space. The bookshelves hold all the materials we need, plus each boy has his own box for workbooks, pencil boxes and writing notebooks. There's a chalk board, easy reader books, a morning board (that you can't see) to cover things like the weather, bible memory verses, word families and the pledge of allegiance, posters for long/short vowels and the map of the United States, a word wall, a clock and a picnic table. I added some toys to keep Dylan occupied, but I think we're going to have to add the pack-n-play to the mix because all he wants to do is eat their papers and climb on top of the table. I'm loving it so far and have just purchased our curriculum for next year! The most challenging parts so far are keeping Owen and Eli on task and Garrett and Dylan out of the way enough for them to accomplish their work. Life with four under five is busy!

January 10, 2013

The next phase in the bathroom reno...

January 6, 2013

Here goes our next home update project! We have hated the floor in our bathroom since we moved in but there was never a reason to do anything about it. We started to notice a leak coming from somewhere around the time Dylan was born but never had time to do anything about it. Charlie started pulling up the tiles this weekend and we found some trouble underneath. So we'll be choosing new floor tiles and a few other upgrades in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for pictures!

November 23, 2012

We are on a roll with DIY projects! Our kitchen chairs have been on their last legs (literally) for a long time now. They were unstable, easy to tip over, way too light for fidgety kids and cheap Ikea creations circa 10 years ago. They had to go - and I wanted them gone before Dylan started crawling and pulling up on things. We found a steal of a deal on Craig's list for a farmhouse style table, four chairs and a bench for $75. Charlie got it for $60 because the table top really needed to be refinished and it was listed as 'pretty good condition.'  We've never refinished anything so we weren't sure how it would turn out, but it's awesome! All of the imperfections sanded out and it's good as new. Happy eating, finally!

The damages: scratches, water damage and two pink stains

The same two areas after sanding - all gone!

 Our finished table, chairs and bench!

November 17, 2012

My newest canvas painting! I scammed the idea from a blog I found on Pinterest and they scammed it from a World Market painting that was priced at $129. I paid about $25 for both canvases and all the supplies I needed and love how they turned out! I painted them so they could hang together, but separated them in the dining room.

October 25, 2012

My newest creation! I found a great tutorial online for how to make a striped table runner that's quilted while it's pieced together so I gave it a shot and love how it turned out. And the best part... it's reversible! 

August 5, 2012

Look what we found under our tree in our front yard... Charlie was pretty sure he'd have to go out there with a plastic garbage bag, but then he saw the squirrel blink! That's right, he was just lounging in the mulch, trying to escaping the heat like the rest of us : )

August 1, 2012

The peach tree in our backyard produced the sweetest, best tasting peaches I've eaten in a long time! We probably picked 15 off the tree so far, compared to none last year! Not too shabby in this Texas heat : )

June 23, 2012

Just a few shots of the destruction/construction going on inside the house these days. The drywall work is all getting done now, so while the house was already a mess we decided to give the kitchen a facelift too. My dad and I painted the whole kitchen (you can see the tan on the wall in the first picture) - which was a HUGE improvement over the sage-ish green flat paint... who puts flat paint in a kitchen?! Charlie is redoing the backsplash too, hence the added demolition. Can't wait to see the finished product (and to stop living in all this mess!)

 Part of the playroom...

 This used to be our laundry room...

June 19, 2012

Just in case you were wondering, this is what it looks like when three Mexicans and two three year olds are inside the floor in our house. We had our foundation repaired last week, which meant digging 18 holes (14 outside and 4 inside) that were all over 13 feet deep and hoisting up the whole house at one time, then using piers to prop the house up to where it was lifted. It was crazy! Thankfully this project is finished so the more fun projects (pictures coming) can get started!