Louisianaisms

We LOVE living in Louisiana. Like, really, truly LOVE it. The people are friendly, the food is amazing, it's warm (soon to be too warm), Rob has a job that he loves, and life is just plain awesome. 

Now that we've lived here for a few months, I'm starting to learn the fun quirks of the locals. The true locals are Cajun and many can speak French, er... Cajun French- which I suppose is a dialect of French with Louisiana flavor. Lucas is getting quite a Cajun accent. He is the only one in our family that can say "blue" "yellow" and "balloon" like the locals. It kills me! Forgive the poor quality of the video. Apparently blogger and my cell phone don't get along. 

We don't live in a county, but in a parish. Yes, I had to Google what  a parish was before moving here.

Everyone calls me and the boys "boo" or "cher" as a term of endearment. My doctor is constantly calling me boo, and I keep waiting for her to break out Bug-a-Boo. It hasn't happened yet, but I will definitely let you know if it does :) 

Everything and seemingly everyone's last name ends in "eaux." Thibodeaux and Gautreaux are very popular last names. And there are signs everywhere that say "Geaux tigers" or "Food to Geaux." I'll bet if it snowed here, it would be called sneaux. 

Crawfish. It's a scared word here, and people go crazy over them. I still haven't understood what the fuss is all about, but locals consume these creepy little creatures like they are going extinct. In fact, they might go extinct in this area soon, haha!

Cajuns are very festive people. Seriously, these people are awesome and will find any reason to throw a good shin dig, er... party. On top of the bigger festivals like Mardi Gras, Festival International de Louisiane, there is also a sugarcane festival, a crawfish festival, a duck festival, a frog festival... the list goes on. If you are very curious about our local festivals, you can see the growing list here. You can even submit your own idea for a festival! 

This was taken a couple of weeks ago at Festival International de Louisiane. We ate some amazing food, listened to good music, and hung out with fun friends. I can definitely get used to summers like this! 

Maybe there is something in the crawfish, but people cannot drive here. Traffic is insane, and most drivers are total idiots. We have seen people smoking, eating, texting, putting makeup on, and "driving" all at the same time. It's truly an art of stupidity. Yesterday I had to switch our car insurance to a Louisiana policy. It now costs us an additional 1,000 per year to drive because people in this state are insane. Ouch. And not to be a preacher, but don't text and drive... Seriously, you can wait until you stop to send a message.

I digress and am now stepping off of my soapbox. Ahem, those are all of the fun Lousianaisms that I can think of for now, but I'm sure the list will grow the longer we live here! I hope everyone has a happy Mother's Day weekend! xoxo Whitney

Kid's Bathroom Makeover

Our house is finally becoming a home! I've been procrastinating sharing the before and after pictures because  I am a little OCD (shocker!) and I wanted everything to be perfect before revealing our baby! The kid's bathroom has actually been "done" for quite some time now, but I have been waiting to hang picture frames and actually go pick up the pictures to put in them, before I was ready to share. 

The former owners took wonderful care of our home, but respectfully- their taste just didn't match ours. They recently had the home repainted in earth tones, but the colors made the house look dead and dingy. 

When picking colors for our house I wanted to not only personalize our house, but to make it come alive. To truly make this our house I thought of places that made our family happy (beach), colors that were cool and peaceful (soft grays, blues), and accents that really made a room pop. 

The kid's bathroom was one of the more challenging rooms to re-do. I needed a gender neutral color that blended with the rest of the house. I was inspired by many websites, but none of those bathrooms would have worked in this space. Mostly because I had to work around a tiger-striped counter top. I try to be respectful when considering someone else's design choices, but this counter top is truly...unique. One day it will go, but on our budget I needed a color that a $30 bucket of paint could fix. 

If you know us, then you know we practically lived at the beach during our time in Alabama. It's a place where we could escape from reality, and enjoy the comfort of the waves and each other. When I saw the color beach glass by Ben Moore I fell in love! I painted the walls in this color, and bought a quart of the same color at a 50% color reduction for the ceiling. 

After splashing some paint on the wall, and adding a few decorative touches, the bathroom became kid and Geenen-friendly :)

Although it's a decent sized bathroom, it's still a small space for such a dark color. 

There was an old medicine cabinet hanging above the toilet. After I removed it, the original paint color (20 years old) and a few lovely holes were revealed. Patching these holes and sanding down the layers of paint where the cabinet used to be was the hardest part.

See? I wasn't kidding, we really do have tiger-striped counter tops!  

Now it's time to say goodbye to the jungle bathroom, and hello Seaside :)

It's amazing how much bigger our space became after lightening it up a bit! I changed the glass lamp shades, and the new white ones add modernity and bright light to the bathroom. 

The kids are notorious for leaving their towels on the floor (in the bathroom, hallway, on the bed, the list never ends). I was having to do so much extra laundry because they were swiping clean towels after every shower since they couldn't find the clean one they grabbed the day before. After going through many ideas on how to solve this problem, I came up with the perfect solution for our family! I found these great hooks at TjMaxx (stop laughing, Jess!) for 8.00 and now all of our kids can be held responsible for putting their towels where they belong :)

Although I got the former cabinet space sanded down quite nicely, it was such an empty space. These crabs on the wall add a nice touch to the Seaside "feel" for the room. 

 ,

Alas, we still have a tiger-print counter top. I try to pretend that it's more of a "sandy" color, but at the end of the day Tony the Tiger remains present in this room! One day I would love to add sinks on top of the counter (on top of a different counter of course!) But for now I am pleased with the way the kid's bathroom turned out, and I hope you are too!