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. 

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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!  

Spring Soccer

I don't have any house pictures to share with you quite yet, but that doesn't mean we've been slacking! This week we have been busy taking care of some detail work (painting baseboards, cleaning very dirty windows, etc.), making shelving for the closets, painting (of course!), and so much more. I am waiting to take care of a few more details before I share pictures, but I promise they are coming soon. 

While I cannot satisfy your curiosity with house pictures, I can share Max's spring soccer pictures with you. I am always proud of my kids, but Max truly shined this year on the field. After some mental coaching from mom and dad, the game finally "clicked" in his head. He played very strategically, and quickly became one of the star players on the team and in his age division. 

His hard work and strategy paid off when he scored his first goal during the second game! He continued to score throughout the season, and received many compliments on his game.  One parent even said he should play for The Netherlands national team one day! He didn't even know Max was Dutch... too funny :) 

Without further ado, here is our rising star and perhaps the next van der Vaart or Robben!

Movin' on up

This past weekend we moved into our house! We truly couldn't have done it without the help from MiMi and Opa who drove 7 hours from Alabama, Matt & Jess who put down the floor in the boy's room, and Ryan who donated his truck, trailer, and free labor. So a HUGE WARM AND FUZZY THANK YOU to all of you that helped make last weekend possible!! 

After two days of non-stop packing, moving, cleaning, and unpacking, we took MiMi and Opa out to brunch at the Blue Dog Cafe. It was hands down the best brunch we've ever had. Then we headed out to St. Martin Parish for our first-ever swamp tour. I've never seen an episode of Gator Boys, but I'm sure we could have been on one! We had a very knowledgeable guide on board, and another passenger who claimed to know the weight of every alligator in the swamp. Every few minutes we'd hear, "yuuuup, that right ther be one them seee'vn-hundrd pound gaaators." Between the Cajun, Dutch, and just plain country accents on board, it was quite a multi-cultural experience to say the least! 

The swamp is so beautiful, and the pictures I took do it no justice!

 

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I am working on getting the house a bit more organized, so more before and after pictures to come!!

Kriss Kross Will Make You Jump, Jump!

Spending everyday from dawn til dusk working is making us a little crazy. (Yes, crazier than we already were). Tonight, Rob and I were painting the hallway together and I was jumping to reach a spot on the wall. I know, perhaps not the best idea given my poor back, but I'm sure it was a funny sight. Anyway, Rob started singing Jump, Jump, and well... let's just say I feel embarrassed for our children! 

For those of you who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, here is the music video. This song is from 1992, the year our house was built, so it must be a sign. (Of what I am not sure!) 

On a more sane note, I did finish painting the walls in the boy's room yesterday. The board and batten looks amazing, and I am so happy we went for it! 

I managed to find a mini picture of this room before we bought the house. It's not great, but it can give you an idea of the transformation it has undergone! 

Tomorrow brings more paint, tape, and nail-hole filling! Hopefully we will be done with the majority of the painting by next week!! We can't wait to move in! 

Out with the old, in with the new!

It's been 10 days since we closed on our house, and we have been working non-stop to make this house our home. It's safe to say our European style didn't quite match the previous owner's taste, so we are busy with an entire home makeover. We have a couple of weeks until we need to be out of our rental house, but we aren't wasting any time. I'm not sure what the previous owners would think of our modern flair, but we are in love with the way our house is transforming! 

                                   

Clearly we have polar opposite ideas on design! 

This picture was taken on closing day. A clean palate! 

Originally I was going to make this a dark grey accent wall, but since our furniture is grey/ black I thought the room needed some color. I was terrified to go "bold," but I figured that it's only a quart of paint, and can always be painted over if I hate it. 

Luckily Rob and I LOVE it and it matches lovely with the soft grey walls. I have to say, I'm not pleased with the way it looks in the pictures, but every time I walk into the house I love standing in the living room drooling over admiring the new life this room has! Eventually I plan on replacing the brown tile around the fireplace, but right now we have enough projects going on! 

Unfortunately I don't have a good before picture of the boy's room, but it was pretty plain and unremarkable. We are currently working on creating board and batten on the kid's side of the house. Sherry and John over at Young House Love provided a great tutorial on how to make your own board and batten since buying the actual boards was out of our budget. 

We screwed large screws into the trim and used a nail gun and a little bit of wood glue to secure the lattices, or battens.

It took a while to decide if we liked the battens 16 inches or 32 inches apart. After much debate, we went with 16 inches, and I'm glad we did!

 

Tonight we began painting the batten. It will need another coat of paint tomorrow, but I am thrilled with the way it's turning out. 

A closer look. My goal for tomorrow is to finish the board and batten and hopefully paint their room! I can't wait to see the white and blue contrast on the wall. 

Now it's time for bed. Late nights, early mornings, and being pregnant = one tired mama :) 

House Hunting

Rob calls me a pessimist, but I prefer the term realist.  So many exciting things have been happening in our lives over the past few months, but I have wanted to wait until things were certain before sharing them with the world. Like the exciting news of our little bean on the way! Who, by the way... if you haven't heard, is a little GIRL!

Also, we have been working on getting a mortgage. Since Rob is not (yet) a U.S. citizen the mortgage process was a little more complicated. However, we met a great mortgage guy who helped make the process as painless as possible. In no time we were pre-approved for our loan and the search could begin! We quickly found a beautiful home that we all fell in love with. We made an offer, and it was quickly accepted. Perhaps a little too quickly.... During  the inspection week we found out that the house would be  be in a revised flood area starting this March. That meant that we would have to obtain flood insurance which could cost upwards of $2,000 per year! We were very disappointed, but we decided it was wisest to retract our offer and continue our search.

Only a couple weeks later we came across a home that couldn't even be compared to the last home. It had recently been reduced in price, so it hadn't come up in our searches before. We went to visit it, and it was love at first sight! 

After making sure this house was not in, and not going to be in a flood zone any time soon, we made an offer. Our offer was accepted and the long waiting process began. I think it took a little over a month for all of the paper work to be completed, but finally, on March 23rd we became homeowners! 

The past few days have been filled with spackle, sanding, and paint. I can't wait to share the before and after pictures with you! And as always, thank you all for your support over the past year and a half. We couldn't have made it without you!