Before I am Thirty

With my 28th Birthday looming just around the corner, I have been thinking a great deal about things I would like to accomplish before I turn the big 3-0. I figure I will probably need to start now to complete my goals in time!

I would like to learn to play guitar. I am in a family of musically talented people and have never learned an instrument. Well other than trumpet in middle school, but I had braces and no desire to really learn, so I am not counting that!

I would like to go on a cruise. The hubs and I will have our 10th anniversary in a year and a half and we are hoping to celebrate with a cruise. Can you believe we will 29 and celebrating our 10th year of marriage?

I want to learn to do a cartwheel. It's not too late to learn is it?

I want to run a marathon. Nothing crazy, just a short marathon. I am NOT a runner, but would like to be able to run. ~eventually~

So here's my list I am sure I will continue to add to this list and hopefully check things off too.

Our house~ a work in progress

Well, we moved in to our house in December and I have not posted any "real" pictures. I only have a few to share because some of the house is in disarray. I don't know why I forget to take a pic when the house is nice and tidy, and it doesn't stay clean for long! So first up is our living room, or den, whatever you call it. This is where we hang out the majority of the time.

The white cord-hide thing has been painted now and is not noticeable anymore. I have also redone my mantle a little but am still trying to snaz it up a bit.

My kitchen has a major design flaw, green countertops. On my list of things to do in this house is paint the counters! I have browsed a few bloggers who have used the Rustoleum counter paint and am trying to muster up the courage to try it out.

Hailey's room is so much fun for me to decorate. She is as girly as they get. I have plans to paint her walls a light teal and have my uncle paint monkey's and vines on the walls. She LOVES monkeys!

Tucker and Hayden's room is a work in progress. I made their curtains out of the top sheets from a sheet set (they never use the top sheet anyways). I am planning to paint their walls light blue and navy blue, maybe stripes maybe checkerboard... undecided.

And poor Ian, his room is neglected. His loft bed has a desk and dresser under it so he doesn't have a whole lot of other stuff in his room. I am committed to doing his room first, since he is the oldest but I am lacking inspiration. He definitely needs new curtains and maybe a lounge spot???

I don't have a picture of my bedroom because it is sooo neglected! I also am not posting the sitting room, which we call "the front room". I recently got a job, after being a stay home mom for the past 7 years. I am going to be the K-3 teacher at my my kiddo's school, and am soooo excited! The front room is piled high with stuff I am gathering for my classroom.

So for now I am working on collecting things for my class. As soon as I get things in order with my class I plan on working on Ian's room.

Yard update

Okay, so I know it has been forever!!! I was keeping up with my blog posts until I went to submit a post after working on it for a long time, and it disappeared. I was so frustrated and have been trying to regain momentum! So I had a few plants that I was unsure about and have figured out what they are!

My rose bush is amazing. At one time there were about 30 blooms. And so fragrant!
And the weird plant that I was confused about has bloomed!

Another plant popped up to...

So pretty! And my peaches are getting big! A little bigger than golf balls.

I am loving all the beautiful things that were planted by the previous owners. We also added some clematis vines and they will cover a lot more as the years go by.

I look forward to adding to the yard each year and am pleased with the way it looks for now.

Spring has Sprung

We have been having a few nice days, in between some mighty April showers. I used some of the sunny days to tackle weeding my flower beds. As you may remember, we moved into our home in December, so this is our first Spring in our home. I am getting to see my flower beds in bloom for the first time, and I have some real beauties. We have treated our lawn with some weed killer, but these dandelions are persistent!
Here is a huge rose bush. I am anxious to see what color the roses are when they bloom!

We also had a tiny cluster of tulips appear a couple of days ago! Tulips are my favorite, I think I will plant more in the fall.

We have quite a few other bushes, trees and flowers that I have no clue what they are! We are counting ourselves lucky to have so many plants that were planted by the previous owners. Our home is 15 years old, and has many nice sized trees.

All of our previous homes had totally bare flower beds. The first house we rented, we lived at for almost 2 years, and we upgraded the flower beds with some ivy and a few rose bushes. Then we bought our first home in Inwood.It was a new construction and had sod in the front and back, but that was about it! We lived there for 5 years and did a lot to the yard. We planted a Japanese Maple (my fave tree) in the front, but it didn't survive the first winter. We rented out that house and moved to a bigger house in Middletown. The builder had done a pretty nice flower bed with lots of trees and bushes, but no flowers! I wasn't loving it but knew we would only be there temporarily so I just dealt! So now, finally, we are at our forever home and I can actually reap what I sow! For some reason one large flower bed is totally empty, so I will be working on that area in the near future!

What is your yard looking like this Spring?

No More Pull-Ups!!!!

I am so excited, and I hope I don't jinx it, but my boys are finally staying dry at night and have not worn Pull-Ups for a week now at night! All of my kids were potty trained early, my first son being the oldest when he was trained fully, nighttime trained included, right after his second birthday. My little lady was trained fully at just 18 months, she was soo easy to train! And my twin boys were daytime trained at 18 months but have been wearing Pull-Ups at night since then.
My kids are all very close in age, 18 months and then the twins together, so diaper time has been overlapped always having at least one in diapers since my first son was born 7 and a half years ago! I can not believe I have been buying diapers and Pull-Ups for SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS and I am finally done! WOOHOO!!!! So just for fun I am going to do a quick glimpse of my kiddos over the last 7 years!

Cannot believe how quickly the time is going! They are all getting so big!I want to just hit pause or slow or something to just savor all the time I have with them because I know time will continue to speed by too fast. Here is a more recent pic of the kiddies.

Disaster Table Completion

Okay so it took forever and I had quite a few hiccups along the way, but the table is finished. Well it looks finished and I have moved it into my family room! I still need to apply another coat of poly. The poly that is on it now is a high gloss. I read about furniture painting and found some tips online that suggested a couple of coats of glossy poly (for durability) with a final coat of matte poly. I prefer the look of matte furniture but with four kiddos need some sort of durability. I think it looks pretty nice in the room!

It is not perfect. It had some gouges in the top that are more visible now that it is painted black. I thought I had sanded it enough. I sanded for days, I'm sure my neighbors are all glad I stopped sanding! The shape of the table is not really my style but it was given to me and we can live with it for a while. So here are some more pics and a reminder of the process!

I was planning on staining the table to match some other furniture in the room, but hated it stained!

And finally, after way too long, finished....mostly!

Coffee Table disaster

Okay, so I know it has been for-ev-er since my last post! I have been working as a sub at my kiddos school. I am still not finished this coffee table. I would have been finished if the stain was not horribly ugly! The table was going from black to a cherry stain. I loved the look of the pine wood natural, but it would not have matched any other furniture in the house.

Well, I started applying the stain and was not loving it... at all! I thought maybe I would like it more after the second coat, so I sanded a little and applied a second coat...still not loving it! Then I thought, well I am in too deep to turn back, and applied some poly. I hated it! So there it sat in my garage for a week and a half.

Finally, I mustered up the courage to just paint it back black. And that is the process I am doing now. I like it so much beter black. I know people seems like a lot of work to just paint it back to black, but this table was beaten up. It had gouges in the top that I sanded out, and the paint was peeling off from a bleach-in-all-purpose-spray-bottle mix up! So no completed project yet, sorry!

I did get something done yesterday. I got rid of a little brass in the master bathroom, the cheapo way. I had the horrible gold knobs that I had spray painted a few weeks ago and that made a huge improvement. Now it was time for the blinding light fixture! My hubs got a little ahead of me and yanked the whole thing off before I got in for a before pic, so my before pic is of the fixture sitting on my bed:)

I quick zap with some bronze spray paint and ta-da!

Much better, right!