TBT: House Edition - Stairs

That's right, I'm doing a whole post about our stairs, mostly cause they're pretty much the focal point in our house. When we bought our house Mr. wanted this:

and I wanted new stairs. This post is going to be picture heavy, so get ready!

This is them when we bought them, a small child could definitely fit through the bars, talk about scary!

See the bedroom up there on the right? Yea it was purple...and yes those walls really are that green, and oh there's brown right there too, and some blue and red too, can't forget those colors. What were they thinking?!

Anyway back to our stair reno. I knew I wanted to get iron balusters and wood handrail. One of the companies we worked with had an interactive website where we could design the order of balusters. We looked through a TON of pictures online to try and figure out what we wanted. I finally picked it out and they were a little hesitant with my design, but I told them that's what I wanted, and it turned out perfect!

It was shocking to come home from work that first day and not see any railing.

That's Brian, he's the best woodworker EVER, we also hired him to do the baseboards and other projects around the house.

It's crazy, since our stairs are curved, he had to mold the railing to our stairs, how crazy is that? I wish I had taken a picture of the railing up close, but it's 6 boards glued together and then shaped to our stairs and clamped down, I think he had it clamped down for 3 days.

No railing, crazy

Brian is making our wall-stringer

It was weird walking up the stairs with no hand rail, look at all of those boxes over there...

This was where Brian worked, in our garage, you can see the banister had been molded and is hanging from the garage. Speaking of which, we're fairly certain at one point they were grown marijuana, no joke, there must have been 50 hooks hanging from the ceiling.

They ended up wrapping the beam along with the stationary poles with wood too, it was such  good idea and I'm so glad that they did it!

Starting to look soooo good!

Next comes staining! We had them match our dining room table color, which they did perfectly! Wow it looks so good! I can't wait to see the rest!

See those french doors down there? That's basically the only room we used for 5 months

We also hired the guys to stain our front door and our bathroom cabinets the same color.

Then they put in the balusters or some call them spindles

See how great that beam looks that they wrapped? Else it would just be the white wood beam that was there to begin with, the simple things in life right?

What's missing? Oh right, carpet! It took us a while to pick carpet, but we ended up going with a short haired carpet, mostly because we thought that would look the best on the stairs. We also put that same carpet in our bedroom and the hallway. We put long haired carpet in the kids room and the "man cave"

See the stained front door?

And that's it my friends

We went with a patterned short haired carpet

If you have any questions, just let me know!  Hope you enjoyed this TBT: House Edition. If you missed any click here.

Linking up with Nicole

My Virgin Lips

Sometimes I can't believe where I live. This was the view on our drive to dinner on Saturday. It was that clear and it was warm and perfect.

I think this might be my new favorite outfit, it was super comfortable, the flowy top and the skirt with pockets, need I say more?

Top - Loft, Skirt - Nordstroms (no longer available), shoes - Jessica Simpson (really old), necklace - groupdealz (I honestly have no idea who I bought it from, just that I got it from groupdealz).

How awkward is my arms just dangling there? I told Mr. to get a close up of waist up...oh well, good thing I'm not a fashion blogger

These shoes, they're Jessica Simpson and I pined for them for over a year. That's right, over a year. I saw them in the store and immediately wanted them. Eagerly tried them on and LOVED them, then I saw there as a blemish, and I didn't want my new favorite shoes to start with a blemish so I walked away. Then I couldn't find them, I looked high and low for another pair. A year later, I finally found them, and they were mine! What's not to love about polka dot shoes? Mr. really needs to step up his picture taking game, this angle is awful!

So let's talk about lipstick. I've always been a lipgloss type of gal. But I wanted to try something new, I got the NYX Matte Lisptick in Perfect Red. Let me tell you, this lipstick has some staying power. I put it on before we left the house, ate a 2 hour dinner and it was still there! Just hanging out on my lips after eating a ginormous dinner, I just had water, but no straw, and the lipstick didn't get anywhere on the rim of the glass. I would highly suggest it! So for me first time with lipstick, I think it was a huge success!

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

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Fox kids want to wish you all a Happy St. Patrick's Day!

If you don't know me, I like to dress my kids up for holidays. Mostly when they are celebrating their first holiday, I know like I don't already have enough things to do.

Here was Baby Fox's phoot shoot when he was almost 3 months old.

Does that shirt look familiar? I bought it, and only after I bought it did I realized that it was a girl shirt, it has pleats on the shoulder...yea boy clothes don't do that, oops.

Linking up with Faith, Sarah and Heather 
Also linking up with Carly and Molly

Songs that Say Goodbye

Stephanie from Twentieth Street posted this and I thought it would be fun to participate. Plus we're going to the zoo today, so I figured you'd want something fun to read I didn't have anything planned. Especially since you're probably at work wasting time because it's a Friday, so here ya go.

P.S. Wish Mr. a Happy Birthday, it's tomorrow!

 

 * * * * * * * * * *

1. Put your iPod on shuffle.

2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.

3. Write the next song's title down as your answer, no matter how silly it sounds.

So, here we go (with my own commentary in parenthesis, obviously)!

If someone says, "Is this okay?" You say:

Dear Mr. President

What would best describe your personality?

Don't Look Away (does that mean I'm vain?)

What do you like in a guy or girl?

My Humps

How do you feel today?

Big Girls Don't Cry

What is your life's purpose?

A Place in This World

What is your motto?

Everything

What do your friends think of you?

Songs of Love

What's your name?

For the Longest Time

What do you think about very often?

I want to Talk about me (I think my iPod is telling me I'm vain, that's two)

What is 2 + 2?

Having a Blast

What do you think of your best friend?

Our Song

What do you think of the person you like?

So Sick of Love Songs (haha, so not true!)

What is your life story?

Starlight

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Three Mississippi

What do you think when you see the person you like?

I Who Have Nothing (haha, dramatic much)

What do your parents think of you?

Fearless

What will you dance to at your wedding?

Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely (not a good wedding song)

What will they play at your funeral?

Only Girl

What is your hobby/interest?

The Sharpest Lives

What is your biggest secret?

The Nearness of You

What do you think of your friends?

Hope (awwwww)

What's the worst thing that could happen?

A Thousand Years

How will you die?

Follow Through

What is the one thing you regret?

If I should Fall Behind

What makes you laugh?

See You Again

What makes you cry?

Clumsy (yes this is true, I often run into furniture and cry)

Will you ever get married?

All-American Girl (I would say that's a yes)

What scares you the most?

In My Heart (guess it's meant to be a secret)

If you could go back in time, what would you change?

It's Not Over

What hurts right now?

Great Escape

What will you post this as?

Songs that Say Goodbye (love this song, go look it up if you haven't heard it, it's by Schuyler Fisk)

 

 And now I have to back track so that I can listen to all of those songs I just skipped past.

 

TBT: House Edition - Spare Bedrooms

Well they were spare bedrooms, and then they became Baby and Mini Fox's bedrooms. I didn't take pictures of their rooms, maybe I'll do that over the weekend. I always decide what to write about after the kids are in bed, so I can't take pictures.

Guess what color their rooms were? One was blue and the other was this really ugly brown and tan.

Baby Fox's room

He gets fancy double doors to his room, which sort of stinks because that's one less wall to put stuff up against, more cables coming out of the wall.

It's hard to tell you about the texture to this wall. It was sort of velvety? But it was just paint?

The other wall, the paint was peeling? We started trying to peel the pain ourselves, but after a few days of doing it ourselves, we gave up and hired someone to do it. They actually ended up putting something on the walls to seal it all in, so we just painted over everything in the end.

It's all primed and ready for paint!

And just like magic, it's painted, new baseboards, windows and carpet. So much better right? Can I tell you after not being able to use the upstairs for 5 months, it was so awesome to be able to walk up there barefoot. We got this really long carpet in the kids bedrooms.

Now onto Mini Fox's bedroom, which used to be my scrapbooking/sewing room, what we give up for our kids.

Yep this room was really that blue.

We had this room prepped too, because again the paint was peeling, strange right?

All primed and ready to go

Magic again, painted, baseboards, new windows and carpet.

Next week, I'll show you the kids bedrooms and how we decorated them.

In case you missed it go here for the other TBT house edition

Winter That Forgot to Come

Sorry if you live back East, but out West, we're having a major drought, it has rained here twice in the past 3 months. I don't think the flowers got the memo that it was supposed to be winter and they are supposed to be hibernating.

Jeans - Jolt (most comfortable jeans you'll ever put on, it feel like I'm wearing pajama pants), Top - Loft, Blazer - H&M (old), Necklace - Stella and Dot, bracelet - Francesca's Collection (old), Shoes - DSW (Old)

Mr. bought the flower bulbs from Costco, we were instructed to plant them in September and in the Spring they would bloom.

Baby Fox wanted to wear a shirt like Daddy, we don't normally do gardening in polo shirts. He couldn't wait for them to bloom and asked about them frequently after we planted them.

Then one day in January, Baby Fox says, they're growing! And low and behold these guys popped out of the ground a few days later, say what? I think you're 4 months too early! So now we get to enjoy the pretty flowers for a little longer, they look amazing don't they?

All the flowers are blooming on our vines too.

 

These guys, we'll I'm not sure how they got there or how they grow, because this doesn't get water, at all and it's rained twice this year...go figure.

We must have good soil, did I tell you that time when we moved into our house and we got a whole bunch of tomato plants that randomly popped up. We never once watered them, and we got so many tomatoes we didn't know what to do with them all. We somehow got both regular tomatoes and cherry tomatoes (those were growing under the cement fountain the previous owners tried to build), wish I had a picture.

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

Caterpillars

Here's an easy kid craft that you can do for a 15 minute project with your kids.

What you'll need:
Egg carton
Paint - we chose green, but really it can be any color
pipe cleaner - we chose brown
construction paper, or moving eyes

Instructions:

Step 1: Cut
Cut egg carton top off, and then cut the "cups" in half like this:

Step 2: Paint

This is where your kid comes into play, have him paint the carton

Step 3: Add face

Add a face and antenna and you're done

Simple and easy afternoon caterpillar kid craft.