Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

Ok, so I'm not sitting on the dock of the bay. However, I was sitting on not-so-pretty bar stools. They weren't bad, just... plain. Why be plain, when you can be beautiful? That is exactly why our bar stools got a makeover today. Thanks to a great sale at JOANN's, this little project only cost me five bucks!

Before: A mediocre plain Jane chair in need of some love!

After: Voila! Amazing what a little bit of fabric and a nail gun can do :) 

Baby Room Sneak Peak!

Before Lucas was born we purchased a set of secondhand baby furniture. I remember being elated that I could finally have a complete "set" of furniture, and I easily overlooked the bits of water damage that were on the changing table. 

After 4 moves and toddler wear-and-tear, his old furniture was looking a little rough. I looked into buying something new for our princess, but let's face it.... I have expensive taste, and with a complete house renovation I decided I would give my hand at refinishing furniture. 

Had this furniture been solid wood, it wouldn't have been such a challenge. Unfortunately for me it's high-quality MDF. From my experience you can lightly sand good MDF, but don't expect to get water damage marks off of the furniture because it will crumble!

This is the changing table that I've been working on. I had already removed the back, normally it isn't see-through!

And this is the water damage that I have been referring to. After attempting (and miserably failing) to sand it  down, I realized I needed a plan B. I googled my problem, and several people had recommended using KILZ over the affected area, and then sanding it down. Since I had already tried sanding it after painting the area with a primer + paint, I decided I needed a plan C. Out of the pure genius of my own head (haha!) and with the help of my crafty husband, we placed a thin sheet of oak wood on top of the dresser. 

I instantly fell in love with this piece of furniture again! 

We glued it down with wood glue, then placed blocks of cement on it over night. In order to make it look like one unit again, I used paintable silicone caulking around the edges. 

After some more paint, and patiently waiting for Rob to get some help to carry it inside, I finally get to begin nesting!

I am enamored over my what-feels-like-new furniture! Now I only have to paint her crib and the large closet that comes with this set, ha ha :) 

Laundry Room Makeover

Time for another before and after post! The laundry room was the first room that I tackled in the house. I thought it would be a great way to ease my way into our massive renovation, but it was much more work than I had anticipated. 

The beautiful olive green was the same color as in the boy's bathroom, and it took me three coats to paint over it. Additionally, the built in cabinets (awesome storage!) hadn't seen paint in years, so they received a good sanding and fresh paint as well. The small shelf under the cabinets didn't seem functional, so I removed that and filled the massive holes it left behind. Although a fire extinguisher is very convenient to have, I didn't think it needed to be displayed by the garage door so it found a new home. 

Furthermore, the fluorescent lighting quickly made a departure from our laundry room, and will eventually provide extra lighting in the garage. Lastly, the trim received some TLC too!

No, I hadn't sanded the baseboards before snapping this photo- they came complete with 20 years of wear and tear!

I love IKEA, and am so happy my husband is crafty enough to hang their lighting! I love the crisp, clean light this lamp provides. 

The white rectangle on the wall is a fold-out ironing board. I do iron on a weekly basis, but I'll keep my large ironing board in front of the TV instead :) Removing it would create a massive hole in the wall, so it will stay put.

And the (almost) finished product! Our front load washer and dryer are a bit larger than the standard machines they had 20 years ago when the house was built, so unfortunately they take up quite a bit of space. We also replaced the plexi-glass around the utility sink for splashes (we tend to have a lot of those when cleaning paint brushes and rollers!). {Side note: There is quite a bit more light in the room than this picture shows, I'm simply too tired to edit or retake the picture!}

Memorial Day 2013

Memorial Day weekend we headed out to Alabama to see my "little" brother graduate from high school. He graduated with highest honors, and I am so incredibly proud of him! 

Zach and his girlfriend Lindsay :) 

Lindsay and her other two boyfriends!

After 2 days in Alabama we surprised the kids with a weekend in Destin. It was so wonderful to relax on the beach and do absolutely nothing! 

Our last day started out quite interesting. The boys got sick right before our 6.5 hour drive home, and I was stung by a nest of baby jellyfish the day before. Thankfully, (besides the projectile vomiting experiences in Panera), our drive home was rather uneventful! We hope you all enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend as much as we did! Laundry room update will soon follow! :)

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!  

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!