Home remodeling- Part 3

I think my posts are out of order, but all well. Anyway..

We painted the boys room shortly after we moved in. Here are a few before pictures. They're really dark and bad looking, but none the less here they are..

The lighter blue "splotch" was the blue we first bought, but didn't like it. So we went with the darker color.

 This is the view of their room from their doorway standing in the hallway.

Once in, to the left is the dormer window which is painted with a really light pretty pastel blue.

Then to the right is the other end of the room with closet.

A few more views of the dormer window...

A view standing in the room looking to the wall with their door into the hallway. There will eventually be a regular size bed put where the crib is. We're thinking of a bunk bed with a full size bottom bed. We also need to change out the light switches, outlets and plates to white. We will be buying furniture and other things like a rug for their room in a few months.

Home remodeling- Part 2

Here are some more views of the room.

This one is kind of dark, sorry.

My cutie looking out the window!

Matthew repainted our fan light. This is what it looked like before. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing up close before he took it down. But you get the idea of what it looked like.

It was an interesting color.

And here it is after!!

I think it looks much better black! It's amazing what $3 can do!! And it looks like we bought a new fan!

A view of the room with the "new" black fan light.

Home remodeling- Part 1

Hello there and Happy 2010!!!! Wow, it's crazy to think we're already to '10! I hope you all did something fun to ring in the new year! We had a little party here at our house with family and a couple friends, lots of yummy snacks and fun games! I feel like I'm still living in last year and I need reality to hit! I feel so behind and have so many things I want to do! I really want to get back into scrapping and making cards again too!! Yes, I said "making cards!!" I have had a craving to make them again! I knew it would come back some time! I know I still have my "Merry Christmas" banner up, I guess I should do something about that. I think I am having a hard time letting go of the fact that Christmas has come and gone already. I feel like we go through so much fuss and stress to have things "just so", and perfect and pretty looking. Only to have it gone in what seems just minutes! Time goes far too fast these days! Does that mean I'm getting older??? My birthday was on December 13th, I guess I didn't mention that before. Yeah, I turned 26. I know I am still so young! And I don't want to feel old or say that I feel old. I should be thankful for my youth! But sometimes I don't feel very young. So anyway, enough rambling on... I think a new year makes me feel like I want everything nice and fresh and new and to start things over or at least start new goals! I have so many goals I want to reach this year! And for now, I thought a newly painted room was a good start! Soo, We've been doing a little "remodeling" in our home. Over the weekend Matthew and I decided to paint our livingroom. So here are the before pictures...

Our whole house is painted the same color, cream walls with white trim. It makes the house look more open and spacious, but I like to personalize it to my liking and make it look more like "us". My favorite thing about this house is all the wonderful white trim we have! It looks great when you had a color up to it!

So this is the other end of the room before painting.

And here are the beginning stages of the painting. Matthew cutting in..

Me trying to cut in.. I am really awful at it! So I leave it to my husband! We both dislike cutting in but he's better at it then I am! I prefer rolling!

First wall finished!

The color is called "Milk Chocolate!". It really does remind me of a milk chocolate shake from McDonald's! Does it make you want chocolate now?

Working our way to the rest of the room...

Finished room in the daylight! We stayed up until 4:00 am finishing it!

This is just the beginning stages of our remodeling the room. We will eventually get a new couch, and some other furniture, a rug and new curtains. We'll also be repainting our trim to freshen it up, it's stained a little yellow, I did wipe it all down, which made it look a lot better, so it's fine for now. But the fireplace bricks and hearth we'll be painting white soon. Those are really stained yellow.

I'm having Mr. Keller redo the built in shelves for me. Mostly just that decorative thingy will be torn out and he'll make something more my style, and the little cupboard doors will be redone, they're really poorly done.

Last 6 calendar pages

Hello Everyone! I trust you had a most blessed and joyous Christmas and holiday weekend!! We had a really great one! Christmas day we stayed home and watched our boys have lots of fun unwrapping their gifts and then playing with them! Later in the day we had my sister, her husband and their kids come over for games. And we ordered Chinese for dinner! Ha! So it was fun eating Chinese and playing games!

And we stayed home all weekend. It was nice relaxing family time. We played with the boys, and played some games and watched some new movies we got. Maybe I'll share a few pictures from our holiday sometime.

But for now, I thought I would share with you the last six pages of the calendar I made for my MIL.

July through December-

Snow 12-19-09

Gasp!!! Two posts in one night! Am I back??? Maybe, no promises. Not that I was gone, but you know, just so busy. I'm sure after the holidays things will settle down for me. But then, I will be working on doing things in my house, like painting, decorating, buying furniture and so forth! It will be fun!! I have some plans for my bathrooms. I'll most likely post pictures of before and after shots of my work on them!

Soo anyway....

On Friday the 18th a big snow storm came through. leaving us a land of white! It was beautiful!

The next day we went out and had some fun in it! There was anywhere from 6-12 inches. We heard they got about 2 feet where we use to live!

Building our snowman.

So the next things on my list of things to get are: Snow boots, snow pants and a sled. Poor Isaac just had shoes and they kept getting stuck in the snow and coming off! We still have all of the snow, it's all frozen and not so bright and fresh looking anymore, you know how snow looks after it's been around for a few days. Maybe we'll get a fresh coat for Christmas to make it look all pretty again! I'm loving it! It's making it feel like Christmas, and makes it warm and cozy feeling in the house!

Calendar-first 6 pages

Have you been saying "Jessica, come out come out wherever you are???". Okay, so maybe I haven't been missed that much. Sometimes I don't think anyone notices my absences that much.
Anyway, I have been busy with Christmas cookie baking and preparing packages to send out to family. Plus taking care of my boys. They've had a bad cough for over a week now. The kind where they cough so much, that they choke and turn blue!! Scares me half to death! I've been praying over them a lot.

So can you believe it's almost Christmas?? I am almost ready, but not. Still have some last minute shopping to do. I think we will do that tomorrow. My Christmas cards I designed and ordered came today. So I can finally send my cards out! Better late than never, huh?? I am really pushing it on time this year! And as much as I said I wasn't going to do that and let it happen, it did! Arrrggg! Anyway, life goes on. I got a few sent out today. But the bulk of them will go out tomorrow. So some will get there late. So anyway... Since I've been in hiding, and haven't created much, or anything that I can share right now. I thought I would share the first 6 pages of the calendar I designed and ordered for my mom-in-law. She got it the other day and loved it! So now I can show it!

Here is January-June

My hubby^ when he was a cute little boy!

Peek

I posted this page a few posts back saying it was for a gift I was doing. I am making a calendar for my mom-in-law. I will have it printed through a company called photoworks. It has been quite a challenge for me to get back in my groove, but I think I finally found it again!! YAY!! I go through these times where I can't create anything that looks decent. Finally I am coming up with some stuff I'm starting to kind of like. Anyway, that first page I had showed, well, I redid it. And since I don't want to show the whole gift before it's given I thought I would just show a few "peeks" of some of the pages. (My sis-in-law is doing one as well, and I was inspired to share some sneaky peeks of my project, b/c I wasn't going to).

My new "baby"

Okay, not really... But I can be a little excited can't I?? Well, because my hubby and I got our Christmas (and my birthday) present today!!! Yes, it's the newest Canon rebel, the T1i!

Because we were having issues with our other rebel, and we've been wanting to upgrade for a year or so now. So yes, we splurged. Isn't that screen HUGE?!?! Our old one had a teeny tiny 1 1/2" screen.

Isn't it beautiful?!?! Can I say my camera is beautiful? I think so! What's great is that, this shoots HD video! So we thought instead of investing hundreds of dollars into a decent video camera, we'd just go with this for now and have the best of both worlds (if that's even the right term!). Our video camera hasn't been working properly for a while now, and we only had a little point and shoot sony that we used for taking videos. And it really doesn't take good ones at all, especially in poor lighting. Anyway we played with the camera some tonight!! We really like it!!! I want to educate myself more on basic photography and try and get decent pictures of my boys and people and such. Our old camera is still a great camera, but we were just ready to move on and upgrade, and decided to get the new one instead of investing the money to fix the one we have. So we're most likely going to sell our other one.

And these are my REAL babies...

Who I live for and love with a passion.

{Picture was taken with our old canon rebel XT}