A Baby Story

 On August 19th we welcomed our daughter, Stella Olivia, into the world! 

My last belly picture ever! Ready to head into the OR to meet our little girl :)

At 07.40 Dr. King welcomed Stella into the world. She was our biggest baby at 9.6 lbs and 22 inches (4.35 kg and 56 cm). I was so fortunate to have such an amazing doctor throughout my pregnancy!

Daddy's little girl. Seriously, she has him wrapped around her tiny finger already. 

The worst part about a c-section is having to wait a couple minutes after she is born to see her, and then to have her taken away again after meeting her. Regardless, these first moments are priceless. 

Moments like this made me easily forget the 9 months of hell she put me through!

Max bonded instantly with his little sister. Lucas wasn't sure what to think, and was quite adamant about never kissing her. 

My little squish day 2

I truly feel bad for her future boyfriends

MiMi and Stella 

Opa & Stella 

Lucas started school on Stella's birthday. We were so thankful to have MiMi and Opa here to help with the boys!

Going home on day 3!

Lucas finally warmed up to his little sister on the 4th day. 

1 week after she was born I celebrated my 27th birthday, and 6 days after that Rob and I celebrated 6 years of marriage! 

She is simply perfect in every possible way

Seriously, girl can get whatever she wants from her daddy. He is not going to be able to say no to that precious face! 

The Master Bedroom

The master bedroom was the first big room that I tackled in the house. Beside the tray ceiling, it was also the "easiest" room that we did. (Nothing about renovating this house is truly "easy" when one is pregnant!). As with all of the rooms in our house, we wanted to find a color that would create a peaceful environment. I've mentioned before that the beach is our favorite place to be, so we went with calming blue hues throughout the room. 

Before the walls were gray, with a dark gray ceiling. There were dark green plaid velvet things covering the transoms (the windows above the doors and windows) which had to be removed ASAP. Transoms are meant to provide extra light to a room, not to be covered by dusty material!

I had to do two coats on every wall in the house, but I was most nervous when I put the first coat on in the MBR. Against the already grey walls, my color (Ship's Sail by Clark and Kensington) was looking rather whiteish-grey instead of soft blue. I panicked a little bit, but eventually I trusted my instinct that it would become more blue once it had a second coat and all of the gray was gone. Thankfully I was right! It turned out to be the perfect color. 

We decided to go with a darker color on the first level of the ceiling. As a general rule of thumb, you want to have light colors on your ceilings as this will make your room appear bigger. However, since we have a tray ceiling and lots of natural light in the MBR, I thought we could get away with a darker color on the first level of the ceiling. I think the dark blue truly compliments the soft blue on the walls, and creates a nice effect in the bedroom. 

The finished product! The crisp, white duvet finishes the seaside look that I was going for. 

I am still undecided if I will hang something on these walls. The doors are usually open which makes it look less bare (the right door is the bathroom, and the left door goes into the hallway to give you reference). I don't want to clutter the space, so we will see if anything will ever be on those walls.

Either way, I am very pleased how our space turned out. Eventually I would like to replace the ceiling fan with something more modern, but it's possible that I will have to get a job before I start replacing things like that :)

Hello, Seaside: Master Bathroom Makeover

The master bath was the last room that we did. We had our housewarming a couple of weeks ago and I was determined to have it finished before then, so one Saturday morning I grabbed a roll of tape and a roller and got busy. Rob walked in a little bit later and said I was insane, but then sweetly picked up another roller and started helping :) 

I'm so thankful the last bit of brown is gone and I feel like the house is truly "ours" now!

AFTER!!

The counter top will probably be replaced at one point. I'd love to do glass tiles to match the new shower (whenever that happens). 

Eventually we are going to expand the shower into the closet (on the left hand side- the toilet is to the right of the shower to give you reference).

Along with the sink faucets, I did the bathtub as well. I still have to do the silver part you see in the picture, and the stopper in the bathtub and sinks, but that's for a day when I'm not 9 months pregnant!

I love our white cabinets! Along with the paint, it really brightened up this space. Did I mention I spray painted the knobs too? It's possible that I went a little crazy with the spray paint. But I promise you, if you use the Oil Rubbed Bronze spray, you will search through your house to find things you can spray too!

A Story About a Sad and Neglected Cabinet Door

In February and March I was busy working on several projects, and was really finding my niche at "upcycling" old scraps into new pieces for our home. 

Many of you may remember my growth chart project. It started off as scrap piece of wood that I paid $1.00 for, and turned into a great way to track our little family's growth!

I started by filling up the holes with wood putty in hopes that it would even out the plank.

Then I sanded it down and gave it a nice smooth finish. I also asked Rob to saw it down to size for me (6 feet). 

Then I stained it a rich walnut color and added the blocks and numbers, yet it was looking too "clean." I was going for a distressed look, but I have never distressed anything before so I was pretty nervous! They say you never learn unless you try, and I was amazed at how simple it was to distress this piece!

Now let's talk about my sad and neglected cabinet door. My friend, Casey, had made an awesome after-school schedule for her kids on her chalkboard. I loved the idea, and wanted to replicate it... but I didn't have a chalkboard. While I was at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, this little gem spoke to me. I'm sure Rob thinks I'm schizophrenic by now because I keep telling him that all of this "junk" speaks to me, haha! But I was willing to sacrifice another two dollars to see just what this door could do for me.

This was one of those projects that I started right before we bought a house. Then we decided to take on a whole home renovation, and this little dude got pushed to the side. But this week was its glory week and it is looking mighty fine since I bought him a couple of months ago!

  

After removing the hardware and giving it a good sanding, I painted a couple layers of chalkboard paint on it. It still looked very "unfinished" so I went digging through our garage. Thankfully, our moving company thought our art was worthy enough to be crated in custom-made wooden crates, so we had a bunch of scrap wood left over that we had been using for firewood. (For the record, all of our "art" is from TJmaxx, Ross, or IKEA- I don't think I paid over $50 for any of it!) I salvaged 4 pieces and Rob and I made a frame for my poor cabinet. Then it sat in our garage for 3 months....

After giving it some fresh paint this week, gluing the frame to the cabinet, and adding an old drawer pull for the chalk... we have an awesome new addition to our kitchen! 

  

The kid's chore charts will go up there after we get back from our vacation, and I can't wait to put their after school schedule on the board. (Only because that means they will be back in school and not driving me crazy everyday! haha!) 

I'll be on a little DIY hiatus for a couple of weeks, but I'm sure I will have warm & sunny pictures to share with you when I come back!