getting crafty

Here are some crafty things I've been up to lately.  Julie, remember these pictures I bought when Emma was a baby?????  I found them when I was unpacking a box and decided to put them in the kids bathroom.  The frames are white and I decided a nice bright yellow would look better.

One more coat tomorrow and I'll reveal the finished product.  Hope it looks good.

My other craft project is recovering the princess table and chairs in Stella's room.  Our night nanny Sandra gave the girls this table for Christmas and I think it was their favorite gift!!!  I found some green fabric I ordered a year ago to put in the back of a dresser and decided to give it a whirl.  It took me over an hour to do one chair last night.  Staple gun staples were too long, a regular stapler was too puny but with a little bit of duct tape, I made it happen.

 Using the iron Lynda gave me for the second time EVER!!!

Hoping to knock out the second chair tomorrow and the table this weekend.  Kinda cute, huh??  I was thinking the hour and a half I spent on this project was a waste of time when I could buy a new Ikea table and chairs but when Reese saw it, she had the funniest reaction.  She put the two chairs side by side, then sat in the new one and kept saying "I like it, I like it, I like it!"  Then she took it all around the room.   To the lego tables to build, to the kitchen to cook and back to the table to do a puzzle.  Made my morning!!!

My third craft project is some towel hooks for the kids bathroom.  The towels in that room are yellow and turquoise (thus the yellow for the picture frames) so I went with the turquoise shade for these hooks.

Before:

Primed:

And I'll show you the after at my next post.  Still needs another coat..

Lastly, our deck is DONE and the railing looks brand new.  Worth the wait.  And we have these awesome shades along the back of the house that the previous owners installed.  The sun rises in the backyard and heats up the kitchen/living room quickly.  So these shades are making all the difference.

They are on a timer and come down automatically around 8:00.  Love them!!!

And we think we had progress on the car situation today.  Wes had the car towed to another car shop and when they contacted AllState, they were told the car was already totaled.  Wes talked to a different agent (Agent Number 4 or 5) and she was much more helpful than the others.  Looks like we are closer to moving forward with the car totaled.  We will see!!  I have a doctor appointment tomorrow to set up physical therapy to make sure all my neck and upper back pain is taken care of.   OK, that's it for tonight. 

Keeping busy

So a few updates...heard from Allstate Insurance today.  They are trying to repair my car.  The car shop it is at recommended it be totaled, but Allstate says the damage has to exceed $25k, and it's only at $17k.  Wes is having it towed to another auto shop that will prepare a quote based on factory parts, which should get us well above where we need to be.  Might be a little bit of a fight, but the plan is to get that car totaled.  I feel a little bit better each day but will start physical therapy just to make sure everything is A-OK before we are done.  Enjoying my mini-van...not so terrible!!  Don't think I'll start shopping for one just yet, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Kiddos...is it possible for them to be cuter this week?  Reese blows me away with her vocabulary.  She loves learning new words....I taught her dinosaur yesterday, and she made a point today to show me a picture and say the word (bu-bu-sore) at least 3 times.  She is a sponge.  She learned Jill and Byron's name after just telling her once.  Oh yeah, Jill and Byron were here!!  I wasn't feeling the greatest at the beginning of their visit, but they didn't seem to mind:)  They got out to Barton Creek and ate some good food.  I hope they enjoyed their stay, even though we didn't feel like the best hosts.  A little pre-occupied with car drama.  I guess I'll say HAPPY BIRTHDAY JILL, since you'll be reading this tomorrow!!  Back to Reese, I took a video of her singing Winkle, Winkle Little Star.  I wish she didn't have a mouth full of food while singing, but here ya go.

Stella is doing great, too.  I got a few words out of her today...circle - ball - quack.  She is still our little athlete.  Always has a ball in her hand.  And loves running laps around the new house.  She is really enjoying the wide open spaces.   Wes bought a little plastic pool yesterday and she had a blast "swimming" around.  They love being outside.  Here are some pool pics:

AAARGH - Google Plus is not working again.  Can't import my photos.  Note to self - Find a new way to import photos!!!!!

Drake is loving the wide open spaces, too.  He loves to chase Reese and Stella around the couch.  Of course, they are lapping him constantly.  But he doesn't mind.  Just keeps army crawling around, laughing his head off.  Wes calls his crawl the zombie crawl, like he's pulling his dead legs around.  So funny.  He is obsessed with going up steps and finding Daddy in his office.  Thought he was gonna be my Momma's boy but he is always looking for Daddy.  Sigh...  Don't think that I've mentioned that he has such a hard time eating solid food.  I need to find the video I took.  I would put a puff (a tiny piece of cereal that dissolves in their mouth for beginning eaters) on his tray and he would start gagging just looking at it.  Hilarious!  He is content with milk and baby food.  The doctor said not to worry, he looks fat and happy.  We will try more solid foods in a month.  

Sorry my posts have been few and far between.  Need to get into a nightly routine of posting.  Tonight, I worked on recovering a little chair for Stella's room instead.  More on that later.

XOXO

car trouble and decorating

So most of you got my email about my car accident but for those who didn't:

I was driving to the doctor about a bad bee sting reaction when a horrible driver decided to turn left in front of me while I was going 50 mph.  I can't believe we both walked away without major injuries.  I have some serious whiplash that has gotten worse by the hour.  Chris hogan picked me up from the accident and took me home.  I'm so so thankful none of the kids were with me.  I made it to the dr in the afternoon and got some good drugs.  Wes came home from California early.  Glad Lynda was here to hold down the fort until he got home.   Oh, and I'll be driving a mini-van for the next few weeks.  Don't laugh too hard.  Here's a pic I snapped before they towed my car.

 

Traffic was shut down both directions on the 2nd day of school.  Oopsie!!

I originally was going to the doctor about a bee sting I got on Sunday.  Reese and I went to Sunday morning meeting while Kaitlyn kept Stella and Drake.  Then we ran errands.

Getting back into the car, I felt a sting on my arm.   Never saw the bee but wow, did it hurt.  I haven't been stung in over 20 years.  And that reaction was quite bad!!  I remember going up to Chester pool looking like the elephant man.  Here are the progressive pics of my current bee sting:

5 minutes after, not too bad

5 hours later, a hard welt about 6 inches across

Today, hard welt is still there with a bruise in the center.

So the doctor gave me an epi-pen for future stings that are above the chest so my throat and face don't swell.  And as long as this one doesn't get infected, Benadryl and Cortisone should do the trick.

But let's get to the important stuff.  The house!!!  Here are some improvements made this week.

We have a pantry door!!!  No more barricading the food supply with boxes so Reese doesn't eat herself silly.

And see those cherry tomatoes and plant in the foreground?  Those came from the garden next door and taste like candy.  Wes and I will have to take gardening lessons from her.

Here's the half bath downstairs getting some color from some Marshall's prints that used to hang in Stella's bathroom.  Can't see from this picture but they are bold colors.  

The kids on their playset.  If we go out first thing in the morning, we beat the heat.

 

Here's another tour of Stella's room/playroom.  

Sneezing is funny.  This one is a few weeks old but so cute.

odds and ends

Had a LONG day of unpacking.  Here are some cute videos I took of the kids throughout the day.  The first time you watch this video, watch Reese and Stella chasing the ball.  The second time you watch it, just watch Drake and see him blow bubbles with his spit.

Drake and his fake laugh.  

Here is a 360 degree tour of Stella's room, where we added a wall and a closet.  

Guess who can climb stairs!!!

Flexible Reese talking on her foot phone.

YIPPEE!!!

There is so much to be excited about!  After a LONG day of moving, we have everything in the house and it's time to start unpacking.  And there are a LOT of boxes.  I'm pretty sure our toy collection multiplied while it was sitting in storage.   So I'm trying to take it room by room, but it's a slow process.
Here are the pics of the house after Wes and I cleaned all day Friday.

Now here are a few pics of the progress in each room.

Let's see my new kitchen table!!!!!  The girls love sitting on the bench and eating snack.

The guest room is the storage room for the next few days until I can organize the rest of the house.

Stella's room/playroom.  This was the open area at the top of the stairs that we walled off.

Reese's room

The master bedroom with another round of cleaning.  

Wes cooking dinner in our new kitchen!!  

They love being big girls.

Nice hair, Reese:)

Cruising!!

Soooooo, I still have a lot of work to do so I better sign off and get to it:)

Can't wait for y'all to come visit us!!!!!!!!!!  The guest room will be ready soon!

Getting closer!!!!!!!!

Painters will be done tomorrow at noon!!  Steve, the head honcho, is meticulous.  I had made a list of a few things that needed to be touched up but before we could cover it, he pointed those items out and a few more!!  He is pickier than I am!!  And I have to brag about my negotiation skills.  I talked him down (way down) on the price - our friends just had their walls painted (no trim) and paid much more than we did for walls AND trim!!  I also talked the deck guy down $5000 on the deck bid.  And the deck is looking fabulous.  Pretty much done.  Just waiting on the railings, which is turning out to be a bigger job than they bargained for.  Here are some pics.

It looks dirty in these pictures but they were just getting ready to clean it.  Super happy with how it turned out. 

Lots of cute kid pictures today.

Guess who is at the bottom of the stairs?????  Daddy!!!!!!

Drake loves being part of the crew.

Stella bit me when I was putting her teething medicine on her molars.  OUCH!!

Reese loves having her hair put in a ponytail.  She only lets it stay for 2 minutes and it is the world's tiniest ponytail.

This girl LOVES ice cream.  As soon as she's finished, she chirps "more, more, more???"

So Stella would only eat the juice of beef bourguignon.  No meat, carrots or mushroom.  Just the juice.  But she loved it!

Look how blonde Stella is getting!

Sigh.  Still the cutest baby in the world.