Painting and baby stuff

Today we got most of the rest of the baby stuff we needed. Rory's mom and I hunted down our travel system pattern by going to two different Babies R us stores. Luckily they had it at the second one, AND it was the newer model that the CHP at our childbirth class recommended. So yay!


I also got the matching swing, a high chair thingy, hamper, closet organizer, and some other things. Now all we need is the crib mattress and a few more things. I feel a little more ready for her. Still, don't come early PLEASE baby. We painted most of the house tonight! (and when I say we I mean my family did) I wasn't allowed inside. So I parked my chair outside the sliding glass door and watched. hehe. Also did a run on Lowe's. We're getting our cabinets put in tomorrow. The paint colors look good, although it's hard to judge them at night. I am in LOVE with the color of the baby's room. I will have to remember to take a picture tomorrow. It's super cute. So, more updates tomorrow perhaps. I'm going to bed, or maybe I'll watch an episode of The next Food Network Star. It's what we're hooked on now. There's not much on TV. We're waiting for Monk and Psych to start next month. Until then, we work on the house.

House update

Alright, so we got A LOT done on the house today! Thank goodness cause I was starting to stress a little. The baseboard were finished and caulked. The french doors were put in and framed and insulated. (good work, Jeff, Rory, Dad, and Chris) The electrician came by and did all his work on the kitchen. (Thanks, electrician) My uncle Shawn came by and showed us some samples for the countertops in the kitchen, my dad and I hung the lights (well, I handed him lightbulbs and screws), and other various things like sweeping up all the dust. We celebrated by going to Applebee's with Chris and Cassy and then seeing Get Smart. I know we just saw a movie last night but we figured we'd better see them now, cause in about a month we will not be able to! lol. We enjoyed it, and laughed a lot. Anyways, not too many pics this time. The next steps are to paint the baseboards, trim, and walls, and to hang the kitchen cabinets. Those transformations will be really fun to see! It's already looking a ton better than a week ago. Sooner we finish, sooner we can move in!

Just a reminder of what the living room doors looked like before.

Putting in the french doors. oui oui!

Framing them in.

You can kinda see how the ceilings turned out here after scraping the popcorn off and retexturing them. Best money spent so far in my opinion!

WALL*E

So tonight we took a break after working on the house a bit and went to see WALL*E with Joanna. We loved it! The little robot was adorable! I fell in love with him instantly. The effects were amazing! Very spectacular. The story was very moving and human, considering it's a movie mostly about robots. I don't want to ruin it for anyone so I will just say GO SEE IT! I dare you not to cry a little at the end. Alright, so I'm pregnant so my emotions are close to the surface anyways, but I seriously think I would've shed a few tears even if I wasn't. ;-) The next movie we want to see is Hancock with Will Smith. Anyone else want to see that?

Cute Coasters

A quick crafty post, because I don't have new pics of the house from recent days, tonight or tomorrow I will post on the progress! It really is zipping along. Last night I whipped up these cute quilted fabric coasters during an episode of friends.

They're really easy, I used a square template that measured about 4 3/4 inches on each side (they end up being roughly about 4 inches square) and cut out a piece each of my two fabrics, and a piece of batting.

Then you sew it together with batting on backside of one the fabrics, and the two fabrics right side together.

Of course, leave a space for turning.

Turn right side out and press with iron, sew around the edges, and then in whatever pattern you want-I did a swirly type thing. Way fun and easy. It would make a great gift! These I'm keeping though. :-D

34 weeks

Also, not to get post happy or anything, but here is my 34 week pic. Only 6 weeks to go, and I still love being pregnant! (NOT) haha. My feet and hands swell up now, and I quit wearing my wedding ring a week ago. Sad day! Getting up 4 times a night to use the restroom is super fun too. Rolling over in bed is another story altogether! haha. I just can't wait til she's finally here. :-D

This is my "I'm sick of taking pictures sideways" face

a big beautiful butterfly

Also just wanted to share this beautiful metal butterfly that my brother Jordan made me in his metal/jewelry class at school. Isn't it gorgeous? It's sitting underneath my computer, so I see it...all day every day. haha. jk. No not really.

Destruction continues...

So far we have finished most of the demo on the house! It has gone quicker than we thought, mainly because all of the help we've been getting! It's awesome. Yesterday we got the carpet all pulled up, the kitchen and family room cleared of staples (the floor had been stapled down with HUNDREDS of stupid little staples. They were really annoying to pull up, or so I heard), also the sliding door between the sunroom and living room got pulled out (we're replacing them with probably some french doors), tack strips got pulled up, baseboard got ripped out, had the electrician by to see what needed to be done, new locks got put in, and we ordered our cabinets for the kitchen as well! Quite a busy day. Thanks to all who helped, it was greatly appreciated! We're hoping to get started on painting this week sometime, and have some paint samples to try on the walls. Also hoping to get the kitchen cabinets in by the end of the week possibly, we'll see about that. The good thing is, is when we get our carpets and baseboards in, we can start moving! (first thing I'm setting up is the nursery, for obvious reasons) I don't want to get ahead of myself though. hehe. Anyways, here are some more updates in the form of pictures. Cause you know I LOVE pictures.

Jarom flexing his muscles after ripping out the doors.

Hallway free of carpet.

Smelly mold is gone!

Jordan the stapler remover extraordinaire!

The destruction begins...

Yesterday was the first big demo day for the house! It was fun to...watch. haha. I kinda felt useless most of the time. I put up our new mailbox, but that was about it. :-D Anyways, the main goal was to get the kitchen torn out. Rory and I left to get some supplies, 30 minutes later we came back and the kitchen was GONE! My dad and brothers are like human wrecking balls! lol. My dad's guys also got all the popcorn ceiling scraped. Whew it's going quick! Amazing though. We had my whole family there last night, all the kids and parents, a friend, and three of my dad's workers. Crowded house! Anyways, the destruction continues tonight and tomorrow, and then we'll start to put the house back together a bit. Here are some pics of the mess!

What the kitchen looked like when we bought the house...

What it looked like when we left for supplies...

What they did while we were gone last night...

What we came back to... (er, I guess we kinda HAVE to redo the kitchen now, huh?)

Scraping off wallpaper is fun! Thanks guys!

Joanna pulled a piece off in the shape of a unicorn. No, really! Awesome eh?

I heart buttons

I got this idea while browsing some craft blogs, and got an itch to try it out. It's really easy and fun, just get some simple frames, felt, buttons, and thread. (I used embroidery thread) Sew on some cute buttons and bam! you have some cute decor for your home...I'm putting these in the laundry room at the new house.

Happy Birthday Rory!

He's 28 today. Getting to be an old fart! haha. just kidding hun. This post is being done in orange, in honor of Rory's favorite color. We're not really celebrating tonight cause he has Scouts. (what a diligent guy!) We will probably celebrate by tearing down more stuff in the house! Which is probably what he would have liked anyways. lol.

Happy Birthday Rory!

Finally, the house is officially OURS!

So after another delay yesterday, (which will from here on be referred to as the day from hades) we finally got our "keys" and officially have the title for the house in our name! We are now homeowners. Oh what did we get ourselves into? hehe. We are now going to start doing work to the house to make it, er, livable. It's a bit shabby right now! A little bit from our list:

*replace wood flooring
*replace carpet
*paint every surface we can get our hands on
*dozens more little projects
*oh, and just gutting and redoing the WHOLE kitchen

Yes, and we are doing this with only about 6 weeks to go before the baby is due. Are we crazy? you ask. Heck yes, we say! We definitely didn't plan it this way but everything with this house fell into place, so we know it was the right thing for us. Even if the timing stunk. Hey-at least I don't have to help paint! hahaa. Anyways, here is a very mini tour of parts of the house. I don't want to show all the pictures until it's a little better looking, otherwise you might think us very weird.

Our awesome backyard. It used to have weeds up to your waist actually. That is a playhouse, and all four of those sheds are in our yard as well. Anyone want to buy an almost new shed?

Stained glass windows you say? Nope, hot glued bits of glass. Yes, that will be GONE.

This lovely room is my craft room. Notice the ghetto paint job and lovely carpeting. Oh, and the broken weird door. Just a taste of the fine decor.

Of course, as soon as the house was "ours" Rory started tearing down walls! (don't worry, this wall is supposed to come down)

Rory and my dad going to town. They had a blast!

Congrats Jobo!

My little sister is graduated from High School! Wow, I feel a bit old. That means it's been six years since I graduated. I know it's not THAT old, but funny anyways. Sorry Jo, but your graduation took FOREVER. We got there at 5:30 and finally left at about 8:30. wow. At least the weather cooperated. Too much in fact, it was kinda cold! There was a fire over the mountains too, so that's why the sky looks so weird in the photos. The smoke helped shade us though. By the time we got there, there were NO seats, but luckily this nice lady saw my belly and offered us some seats. Thank you belly! I love this thing! lol. Here are some pics so you can see how the sky looked, and see my awesome sis Joanna.

She's in there somewhere!

This was supposed to be a nice pic of my dad and Joanna. Thanks Jarom! (also the sky looks nasty, huh?)

Some of the fam cheesing it up!

Frustrated

So we got a call today from our agent saying that closing on our house is going to be delayed until Monday because of some little holdup with the bank. Grrrr. This really throws a wrench in our plans, but oh well. Gotta roll with the punches. Although I feel like punching back right now! We were planning on working on the house this Saturday, so that's wasted time basically. We're frustrated! We are planning on working weeknights, but I'm still freaking out cause we only have limited Saturdays before my due date. 8 to be exact, although this one doesn't count now. So, 7, and we have to move as well on top of all the work! agh! This pregnant woman is stressing out. I should practice my breathing techniques. harhar.

You gotta love Goodwill!

So after work today I didn't feel like going straight home, so I decided to check out our local Goodwill. I like getting frames there for cheap, and canvases, and purses. I was poking around, and found this canvas:

I had seen it on Target's website and kinda wanted it bad for our new living room, but it was going for around $70 so I couldn't quite swallow that. I had found some similar material at my Joanns fabric, and was going to stretch that over a canvas. Anyways! It was brand new, still in the packaging, for $10!!! Yeah! I was so psyched, I grabbed it and walked down the aisle with a little grin on my face. I got a few more things for the house, some cute cups and a thingy I'm going to use for a napkin holder, but that was the big find! Anywho, just had to share my awesome find!

Another reason I love blogs...

I got a message on my etsy site today from this lady who runs a sort of product review, here-is-some-cool-stuff-for-moms site. She had found my store and wrote some really nice things about it! Here's the link if anyone is interested.

House update: We're supposed to get the keys for the house tomorrow or Friday!

Baby update: She's getting big! and kicks a lot. Sometimes I think she's trying to escape through my sides or belly button somehow. I just want to shout down there,"Nice try! You still have awhile!" But she really wouldn't know what I was talking about. We had our second childbirth class yesterday, and we watched the dreaded movies. They weren't too bad, although were taped in like the 80's or something. Then we had to put a clothespin on our finger to simulate a contraction. (to practice our breathing) If I had known labor would be like a clothespin pinching me, man, bring on the babies! haha. yeah right. Rory was like "put it somewhere where it'll hurt really bad, like your ear!" haha. Thanks hun.

P.S. The ear didn't hurt.

Signing our lives away....

That's what we did this morning! Signed our lives away...took less time than I thought it would. haha. We were done signing all of the closing and loan documents within a half hour, went and got our cashier's check, and were done within an hour. The agent said she had never had first time home buyers who didn't ask any questions. We told her we had been well informed along the way. I mean, who goes into the last meeting with questions!? We just wanted to sign and get it over with so we could get our keys! We are supposed to get them on Thursday! Friday is my sister's graduation, but Saturday we are planning on being down at the house, working away already! Time is a wastin'! Less than 2 months until the baby's due. I told Rory I am going to make him finish her room first so I can set it up...I've been DYING to do that! lol. Anyways, we are super excited and can't wait to move into our very own first house! The agent said it herself when she said,"Wow you have a lot going on for you!" (after she saw my big ol belly) Too true, too true. It's so exciting though! We will keep you all posted, and of course, do some fun before and afters of the house. Should be good! :-D

Baby Shower!

Yesterday was my baby shower, and it was so much fun! We had awesome food, decorations, and games, thanks to my mother-in-law, mom, and friend Cassy. I sadly didn't get any pics of the food, which is probably good, cause drooling is not good for computer keyboards, I know that much. lol. We got tons of cute clothes and toys and fun useful things, it's crazy to think I'll finally be using all of this stuff I've been stockpiling soon! Anyways, it was great, and really fun to see some people I haven't seen in awhile!

Ignore the crazed look on my face, that's how I get when there are presents to be opened!

Some beautiful blankets my Grandma made me, she crocheted all around the edges!

One of the many cute outfits Cassy got me!

Rory even got a present! A tool belt filled with useful baby items...and gloves and goggles for especially dirty jobs!

We heart camping...but not smoke

So, yesterday we went up to have dinner with part of my family up at Mt. Madonna, our local state park. It stayed light for pretty long, and it was really nice...til the sun went down. Everyone was there except Joanna, Janae, and Justin of course. We had Rory's favorite camping meal, pigs-in-a-blanket-cooked-on-a-stick. (Yes that is the proper name.) Then we sat around talking politics, global warming and made up some silly stories. It was really fun, but Rory and I REEKED of smoke when we got home last night. hehe. Ally smelled our clothes for awhile, she was very curious. Here are some pics, because, posts are sometimes boring without pics.

Joshie wasn't really falling...

I liked this candid my mom took of us. I don't have many pics of the belly in action. (mine, again)

Chilling by the fire.

Another softie

This one was from my own pattern. It's kinda wonky and didn't exactly turn out how I wanted. I think her arms and legs are too long for her narrow body. :-D Oh well. It was fun and killed a few hours anyways. Also I finished up season 7 of Friends. So win win at least! Anyways, here's a pic. Try not to laugh too hard!


This is Kiki. She is a pain in the butt. I also don't know what that pocket is for yet. She is not a kangaroo though!

Starting to freak out...

So all of a sudden I realized that I have less than 9 weeks or so til this baby comes. BAM! (that was not Emeril or a bus, just reality) I guess it felt like this pregnancy would last forever, cause it went so slow at first, and I've waited so long for a baby. We don't have a nursery, or anything set up yet for her. Oh, and the small fact that I have to give BIRTH soon!? ahhh! We are starting our birthing classes tonight. I'm sure that will totally calm my nerves. ha! yeah right. All I can say, is if they start playing a video, I am looking at the ceiling. I KNOW what happens...that doesn't mean I want to see it up close and personal. Plus I've gotten to that point where it's not that much fun anymore...well, it's fun...ok, no it's not. I'm tired of rolling out of bed three times a night to go to the bathroom, and sleeping on my side, and being called "preggo", and I miss my waist, and the ability to bend over. And my feet, I miss them too. I miss eating raw cookie dough and turkey avocado sandwiches from Togo's. I miss taking hot baths. But...it's all worth it. I can't wait to meet our baby girl and finally be a mama! So take my complaining with a grain of salt. I really am psyched to be pregnant. Mostly for the end result at this point. :-D

Crazy week

So I had this long ol blog post typed up, but I lost it. Sad huh? So here's the watered down version of last week. We had our cousins from Utah out here still, so we were down in Gilroy trying to hang out as much as possible! Wednesday I went down for a girly day, and me, Joanna, Aunt Laura, and Courtenay shopped til we dropped. Almost literally for me. Then Joanna and I went to Panera Bread for some yummy dinner, and met up later to watch She's The Man. Joanna and I can almost quote the whole movie...we've seen it about 7 times. hehe.

This is from Sunday, but it's funny!

Thursday all the kids came up to play Rock Band! Our cat Ally was a little freaked out by all the commotion and people, but she got better as the night went on. We played some awesome songs, and some not so awesome songs...and then they took off.

Friday we went to Joanna, Jordan, and Janae's last concert of the year, Pops Concert. They have a theme every year, and this year's was Prepositions. (??) They didn't know why either. They sang lots of fun songs and even did some dances. Pretty awesome. After the concert, we went on an ice cream run and then watched SNL skits until the wee hours of the morning. Gotta love SNL.

Sing sing sing!

Saturday we went down for the day to spend the last day with Courtenay... :-( The other cousins had left that morning, but she was taking the bus down to Disneyland Sunday to meet up with her family. (Lucky!) We had some yummy BBQ at Famous Dave's and then split off to do some girly and boy shopping. The boys shopped for rims for Jarom's car, and the girls went to Claire's and Bath & Body Works. I got a cute mushroom tote, teal clutch, two necklaces and earrings for like $8 at Claire's! Then we got some Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner, which was an adventure in itself. After dinner, the whole family played some fun games and then the older kids watched 50 First Dates. It was a super fun week, and we were glad they could stay as long as they did. It was so much fun getting to know Courtenay! (she married our cousin John) Courtenay, hope you have fun in Disneyland and ate all your pizza. Otherwise, you FAileD! haha.

Pizza time.

During all of this, Rory and I managed to sign away most of our life, and lifted the contingencies on the house. The bank said they want to close by this friday, but a lot still needs to happen to make that date. It would be awesome though. Cross your fingers!