Play corner!

One of the projects that I have had in my brain to do before Ethan's 2nd birthday (which is on MONDAY!) has been to finish part of our basement into a play area. I wanted a craft area, a magnet area, and we majorly needed toy storage. After shopping around we bought some stuff at Ikea (which Ethan calls Ikea's house) and here is the just-about-finished product.

The magnet board (a large drip pan on the right) still needs to be attached to the wall, and I have some magnetic photo ropes to display artwork that still need to be hung on the wall above it. I love that the stools (red ones next to his craft table) have storage in them for play doh, crayons, etc. and I'm amazed at how many toys that dresser really does hold.

It is so much easier to hang out downstairs now that there are not toys piled up in every corner! We love it so far, and it was miraculously finished in time to call it a birthday project for Ethan. I also bought some trains, and that craft table can double as a trains/cars table too.

Christmas morning

I caught Ethan on video when he came down on Christmas morning. I love that he whispers "ohh. big truck" when he sees his car for the first time.

We had a lovely Christmas, filled with family, presents, amazing food, and creating memories. We are having a restful week so far, as well. Steve has had several days off, so when we weren't sick with the flu he's gotten some great house projects accomplished as well. Our garage door quit on us, so he installed a new one. Amazingly wonderfully quiet!! I am amazed at how loud the old one was now that the new one is up. Plus, we now have a pincode entry - luxurious :) And then he has replaced several of our bathroom ceiling fans which are now also wonderfully more quiet than the previous ones were.

beautiful fall days

Now this post reminds me of this post.

This fall weather has reminded me a lot of our first few weeks in this house. It's now been a year since we've been in our house!!

before and after pics

Two sets of before pics... you can guess where both of these are going with after pics soon to come.

Before:

Before:

Ethan and I are heading out this afternoon and I'll post after pics soon :)

shower post!

I am so excited that our shower is coming along quite nicely!! The base and the sides are in place, and they are so nice. We just need to make sure the pipes are clear of junk before we put the shower heads on (the water softener broke and our faucets keep getting clogged with junk now).

The final thing to do is to clean off the old shower door and put it back on. Speaking of which, does anyone have a good idea for cleaning off hard water deposits that are really bad? I mean really bad... we have tried lime away, soft scrub, lemon juice, vinegar, toothpaste, pinesol, anything I'm missing?? And by "tried" I mean we have scrubbed for minutes straight, and also soaked spots overnight and they look the same. Where do you buy industrial strength cleaners? Hopefully we'll find something, but I'm starting to think that we might end up buying a new glass door. Either way, it is nearing the end!

nursery project

I've had my eye on this project forever it seems. I finally bought it and put it on the wall. Ethan seems to enjoy them, too!

more house projects

Before:
dirty, scratched up floor boards

After:
smooth, clean, beautiful :)

A good project to do before our little guy becomes mobile. Keeping us from stepping on the boards was work enough, keeping a toddler off would be an impossible task.

projects

Our soon-to-be amazing shower in our master bathroom. I am so ready to be able to get ready in my own bathroom again and not have to walk down the hall. And it will be amazing, Steve's got big plans. Stay tuned (in a few weeks) for the final pictures.

the nursery

Ethan's nursery turned out great! Here is a before video...


And here are some after pics. The paint is really more blue than the pics look, they're pretty pale for some reason (at least on my computer they look much lighter and purple-er).

Obviously we haven't put the room back together, and I've got some things that I want to purchase for his room but have been holding off until we painted. So just a few more things to do and it'll be a little boy's room! So if anyone knows where to get cute room darkening curtains, I'd love to hear. :)

bye bye

While daddy is upstairs prepping the walls to paint, Ethan is waving bye bye at everything he sees :)

bye-bye

Ethan waved bye-bye to daddy today for the first time. He did the thing where he waves (opens and closes his hand) to himself and stared at his hand amazed at what he was doing :) It was pretty funny.

We took a fun trip to the hardware store yesterday to pick up a gallon of paint for his room! Stay tuned for pictures to come very soon...

house projects

I didn't get a before shot, but over the weekend Steve spent some time trimming the overgrown madness that was the front of our house. Here's the after shots.

Many of the other projects are not really worthy of pictures, no one probably cares about dry wall replacement in our garage and replacing locks on our doors :) We are slowly plugging away at them. I guess eventually I will get to decorating and picture hanging. I am still working on draperies for Ethan's room, he has vertical blinds in the window but I do want to get something that will provide some extra room darkening. I'm trying some out and deciding what will work best.

hi from our new home!

Shot this video on Saturday while we were moving in. And another video, just for fun. And Steve's working from our new house today, so back to normal life :)

I hurt my back somehow during move-in day, but things seem to be getting better so I'm extremely thankful that it wasn't anything serious. I am trying to take it easy so that it doesn't get worse again, but it's so hard with all of the boxes that I want to get put away!

some of the latest pics and updates

So we close on our house this week! Here are a few pictures that I snapped during our inspection last week. The things in the pictures are the sellers things, they haven't moved out yet, and we haven't moved in yet. I will for sure take some more pics, especially of the outside of the house, when we move in. We're anxious to get in and get working on the to-do list that we have building up in our heads :) We certainly feel blessed!

Master bedroom and bathroom: (the master has lights above the crown molding, you can sort of see it in the picture)


The E man checking out his new room. Actually, this might turn out to be Steve's office, we'll see.
The two rooms on either side of the entry way:


The front entry way:
Straight through the entry way, looking through the living room:

Another view of the living room, from the kitchen:My new kitchen:

And a few of Ethan, just because:
In my hoodie that Aunt Laura knit for me!



First time trying Cheerios. He sure was intrigued but didn't know what to do with them :)

look what I can say :)

We have a closing date! Sept 30th, at 9:30am. I called to start all of our utilities and such, so everything is falling into place to move. Yay.

Ethan and House

Ethan's 6 month checkup was today and he weighed in at 20lbs 10oz, and measured 28.5in long. He's soon going to outgrow his infant carseat, so if anyone absolutely loves theirs let me know because I'm in the market to buy a new one.

Things are looking good for the house that we're buying. Our inspection will be next week, hopefully early in the week and then we should be all set. We're still on track to close by the end of the month. Yay.

house update

Things are looking good for our house! We may be closing this very month! Details to come soon :)

house update

So we have a signed purchase agreement. The next step on our house purchase is through! This is a positive sign. Still more waiting to do, but I'm very hopeful and am liking this house more and more as time goes by :) I really hope that we are able to purchase it!!

a new thing every day

A new baby was added to our family yesterday!! Saige Mae Thomasma (Steve's sister and brother in law's first) weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 1oz. I got to see her briefly yesterday evening right before bed. Ethan came with, but he slept the entire trip :) I absolutely cannot wait to see her again and hold and cuddle with her.

And Ethan made a new discovery over the weekend:
He has feet! And he loves to grab them. On Sunday he was trying to put them in his mouth, and he kept tickling himself and giggling. It was pretty adorable.

We keep getting updated on the house that we put an offer on, and we're still waiting and hoping. It's not a done deal, but it's getting closer. We're positive about it.

possible house for us!

Today, Steve and I might just be placing an offer on a house! Yay! If things progress positively, we'll be posting details for sure :) We're cautiously excited!