TBT: House Edition - Mr.'s Office

Here we are another Thursday and another look into our renovation. If you missed it here is the back/front of our house and the back/front yard. Now you guys get to finally see the inside of our house! Let me tell you, it took about 20+ gallons of primer to just get the walls ready for the paint, which then took another 2 coats, so basically we painted every wall 4 times. So here we go our first room, Mr.'s office, he hates it when we call it a man cave, but who are we kidding, it's a man cave.

This room was green when we moved in, and had a bunch of cables coming from every which way.

You can't really tell, but it was really mint green.

This is the first room we primed, because it had the least amount of work that needed to be done. My dad really pitched in an helped to prime and paint the room. In case you were wondering, we painted it with Dunn Edwards Riverbed.

My dad did really good at painting the flat walls, but didn't have so much luck with cutting into the ceiling and the corners. That's where I come in.

Look it's all done! Yep I did the "cutting in" in every.single.room. If I never cut in again, it would be too soon! After looking at the house, you can that I started in this room, the cutting in on this ceiling was a little crooked compared to the rest. It was a good room to practice in.

For the baseboards, we ended up replacing every baseboard in the house, which of course meant that I had to prime and paint all of those too! The guy we worked with, cut all of the baseboards for each room and then let us paint them and then he installed them, saved me a lot of time on my hands and knees having to paint already installed baseboards, then all we had to do was fill the nail holes, sand and paint over those small spots.

We also had new windows installed, which had to be framed, since the windows were a little crooked, this way it sort of hid that fact. Of course those also had to be painted, we spoke with the window guy and he let us do the same thing, we painted then he installed, which meant we painted all of the window frames in one weekend.

Here I am, I've already filled and sanded, now I'm just touch up painting over the holes.

My brother is in medical sales and he got us a bunch of scrubs to use while painting, it was nice that they were loose, and comfy, I understand why everyone wants to wear them all the time.

The last touch before the carpet, re-installing the electrical covers.

When we bought our house, Mr. wanted a nice bathtub and a BIG TV. Fast forward 5 months, and we finally got cable! Since we were only living in one room, we thought it was pointless to get cable or internet (which we ended up sometimes "borrowing" from our neighbors who's internet wasn't on lockdown), so we had no choice but to paint and fix our house when we got home from work.

Mr. got his big TV! We have no furniture in there, but we have one really big TV!

We decided to go with shutters in some of the rooms. Mr. sent this to me at work when they went in, I was so excited, we had the tv boxes in front of this window for so long so that our across the street neighbor didn't have to watch us watch tv.

We did end up getting some furniture, some from a furniture auction, which is for another post, but we got a great deal on and then some from my aunt and uncle who moved. So here's the finished room, I actually took these pictures last night.

I attempted to hide the stuff that was on top of the table below the table, but I clearly failed, since you can still see all the kids toys down there, opps! We do try to keep this space mostly kid free.

That's Mr.'s office area back there, did I tell you guys he writes music? That's his "studio" back there, he has all the equipment that he needs to write the songs, record and edit back there.

Yes this is a massive couch and I've had girls night out and we've fit 11 girls on this couch all watching Magic Mike, I'll let that sink in (this was taken after some people left).

So that's Mr.'s Office, next week, I'll show you our stairs. You'll definitely want to come back for that.

Facebook Ban

I don't usually talk religion, but today I'm making an exception. Today is Ash Wednesday. I was reading an article titled The Ash Wednesday Diet. I started reading it and realized I kept nodding my head in agreement, I think that it sums up what I should be doing for the next 40 days. Thinking, repenting and leading by example.

There are 10 steps for his "diet", but these are the ones that resonant what I want to accomplish during this season of Lent.

1. Focus on loving God and all his greatness, instead of celebrities, action figures, “real” housewives or even world leaders that think they know best.

2. Be careful of wolves in sheep’s clothing, like politicians, promising you something but taking your liberties away.

3. Set up standards of morality at home. Enough with the casual cursing. Teach kids some etiquette and manners, and use yourself as an example.

4. Spend time with your family, telling stories, and listening to those around you. Because someday you will wish you had.

6. Remember that violence begets violence. Young people are overwhelmed with graphic simulations of violence in video games and on the Internet. Cut it out of your life.

7. Be with the person you want, and respect your commitment.

10. Finally, stop thinking about how other people see you – but rather, think about how you see yourself. Love yourself for who you are – not for what a commercial or a magazine cover tells you you should be.


I especially like number 10, just be me. Be confident in who I am and what I want to be rather then being someone that I think other people want me to be.

Jesus was in the desert for 40 days of temptation, right now for me, social media - mostly Facebook, has been consuming too much of my time. I feel that I can be more productive and reflect more about who I am and concentrate more on my family and being a good wife, mother and friend.

And no post would be complete without some pictures. Love family selfies, apparently we like holding our kids upside down.

Rain Rain Go Away, Okay Not Really

Friday was my day off, so my weekend started off on Thursday with a Mom's Night Out at my house. I'm always nervous hosting something, thinking, no one is going to come, but it turned out successful and everyone had fun. I hosted a Tutu Making Party, using my tutuorial (get it?). Anyway, everyone couldn't believe how easy it was and were shocked that people charge so much for something so simple!

Friday it rained ALL day, I can't remember a worse storm where it rained buckets on and off all day long. We went to the mall :) But just as we were leaving the house, it started pouring and since I parked outside and not in the garage, we had to wait for the rain to pass, so I took pictures of the kids while we waited.

I love her pants! They're from Nana and Ampa (my parents) from Janie and Jack

The rain finally stopped and we headed to the mall, where I didn't have a camera and couldn't take a picture, wish I had a phone with a good camera! 4.5 more months!

When we got home it wasn't raining so we jumped in some puddles, which was hard to find, apparently our backyard drains really well, this was the only puddle we found at the park.

Pure joy

After nap time, Ampa came over and Baby Fox and my dad spent a while outside watching worms inch across the pathway. Baby Fox was slightly scared of them but was totally interested in them and wanted to be carried across the path.

After we put the kids to bed we stayed up super late to watch the end of Breaking Bad, so good! I highly suggest it. Now we can catch up on all of our shows that we've neglected the past month. Like Black List! If you haven't seen that, you have to watch it, so good!

Saturday we went to a birthday party to celebrate a 1st birthday

There was a huge thunder and lightening storm, we tried to get Baby Fox to see the lightening but he kept looking down or away the moment lightening would strike. But we certainly tried.

Me and the kids, love this picture!

Sunday was low key, Mini Fox got a bath - yep that's a Fox towel, it even has a little tail :)

Baby Fox and I did some errands and met up with Ampa for lunch (love having him close by, we can just call and say hey meet us for lunch) We went to In and Out, yum!

Sunday night was low key. Mr. went up to get Mini Fox up from a nap, mind you it's now 7pm, and he's taking forever to come back downstairs. When he finally does she's in a different outfit. He said, we'll I had to change her diaper and since she was mostly undressed I decided to play dress up doll. This was her outfit.

We had a great weekend, and I got a "free" car wash because it rained so hard, so the rain can stay as long as it wants, we need it!

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather

TBT: House Edition - Front/Back Yard

Last week I showed you the outside of our house.

This week we'll keep with that theme and I'll show you the front/back yard, it's s doozy.

Since our house was a short sale the yard had been neglected for over a year, so things were a bit over grown.

Let's start with the front yard:

You could barely get to the front door. The only reason the grass is semi short was that our neighbor across the street just got tired of looking at over grown grass and would cut it every once in a while.

Yep you could barely get to the front door without being attacked by the plants

The front door was this lovely burnt orange/brown color

 

We took most of it out, as you can see, doesn't it look so much prettier? 

Now onto the back yard, that's where it got REALLY messy!

Let's look at the palm tree in the center, do see those little berries on the ground, they're not that little and they are SUPER annoying!

Here's a close up in case you wanted to see the sheer volume of those things.

Here's a close up of the back part of the picture above.

Here's the middle left of the yard. See those two palm trees on the right of the picture?

That planter - yep it's actually a planter, is show below, the fountain is in it.

 A picture of the back part of the yard, I'm standing in those berries, looking parallel to the house.

This is the left side of the pool area, there was barely enough room to walk on that side with how overgrown the plants were.

 

A close up of that area

The second thing we did after hiring the painters for the outside, was hiring a place that would clean this up. In case you didn't notice there are approximately 427 palm trees of all different varieties, and we took most of them out. We did keep those two palm tree in the fountain planter (not sure why, we would later regret this decision, mostly be because apparently that tree grows berries too, but just didn't have them when we moved in).

And here is the after pictures:

So much better right? We did keep 3 palm trees out of the 20 that were there (yes there really were 20)

Now onto the side yards:

Mostly we just cleaned it up and of course got rid of most of the plants

This is standing at the pool area looking forward

This is standing at the gate to the front yard looking back, now that it's all cleaned up it looks nice, look how nice those rose bushes look (this picture as actually taken about 3 years after we moved in, so we didn't even know the rose bushes were still alive)

 Other side yard

Look at that ivy, totally out of control, growing on the ground!

All cleaned up and looking pretty.

So there you have it, our yard space. We ended up completely remodeling our back yard about 3 years later, but that's for a different post.

So what do you want to see next?

Cute Fox

Nope not talking about my kids, but the fox on my sweater. I love pairing a sweater with a skirt, I get the warmth of the sweater, and the coolness of the skirt. Perfect for those office days when they (the building people) can't quite get the climate under control.

Sweater - Old Navy (old), Skirt - Loft (old), Tights - Target, Shoes - DSW, Necklace - Francesca's Collection

I really need to wear some make-up, look at those bags under my eyes! Yikes! Anyone have a good under eye concealer they can suggest?

I wasn't going to post this picture, but had to post my little cute Baby Fox photobomber in the background, do you see him? He's drinking a yogurt, in case you wanted to know, which you probably didn't.

And here's some random thoughts for the day (in bullets, cause I like bullet points):

 

• Yesterday when I got home from work Baby Fox wanted to paint...wait for it...without pants, I think he didn't want to get paint on his new shorts, but who knows why.

•  I got my order from Loft yesterday, this is what was in my package:

 

1 / 2 / 3 / 4/ 5

          What do all of these shirts have in common? Yeah they're all black and white, but I really did

           love every single one, so I'm keeping them, and I guess I'll have to add some color with 
           jewelry and pants, oops! I guess I'm out of the market for black and white things for a while, 

           or until my next shopping adventure.

          note: 2 ($17.99) ,4 ($7.72), and 5 ($5.92) are all on clearance!

•  I just discovered this girl, and am obsessed with her make-up tutorials. Like I went home and tried out her techniques after the kids went to bed. So I'm gathering the supplies and want to try and maybe wear a little make-up each day (especially after seeing my picture above). We'll see how that goes, waking up at 4:30am, not sure if I want to stick something semi sharp next to my eyes. We'll see. Go watch some of her tutorials, she has great ones for "monolids" like me (You know doesn't have a crease in their eyelid).

Linking up with Because Shanna Said So, Get Your Pretty On, The Pleated Poppy and Tucker Up