Spring Is Here!

Spring is starting to make an appearance here in Texas! Yeah! Just in the last week or so, the trees have started blooming. 

Unfortunately for us, spring has also meant that some squirrels have wanted to make a home in our home.  Our neighbor told us that she saw a squirrel go up into one of our soffits. So after getting quite a few bids from different companies, we decided on one today.

We have two of these one-way doors on two of our eaves. The other eaves were sealed up. Once we are sure the squirrels have left the building, these last two spots will be sealed up as well. And hopefully the squirrels won't be bothering us again. And we caught them early, so they did not have a chance to do any damage inside the house. 

I got a new lens for my camera this week. I think I'm going to love it! Chris upgraded my old Rebel Xti camera to a Rebel T2i for a Happy Engagement Anniversary present last month. Woo Hoo! That was a very nice surprise. So I sold my old Xti and with the proceeds of that got myself a nice new lens, the 

Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8. 

I got to test it out today and all of the pics on this post are shot with it. 

Spencer shooting some hoops in the driveway. 

Of course some shots of Maggie. 

And the ice cream truck visited the neighborhood this afternoon. 

It is definitely starting to feel like Spring here in Texas. Not that it got that cold here in the winter. I think we had those two bad weeks and other than that just some cold weather for short bursts. All in all, a pretty good winter for our first one spent in the Lone Star State. 

I hope Spring is springing soon for everyone!

Thanks for visiting me! 

Next Project

I know I said that my next project was going to be Connor's bathroom, but  I just could not get the motivation going to remove that wallpaper. So I decided to skip that project for right now and work on our master bedroom. There is some wallpaper to remove there too, but it is just a border so hopefully it won't be too hard to remove. 


I finally narrowed down my color palette that I'm going to do and here it is:

This is a really different color scheme for us. Wish me luck that it turns out like I'm envisioning in my head. 


Thanks for visiting me!  

Operation Bathroom Redo: Complete

We are slowly making this house look more like us. After we moved in last summer, we noticed that a lot more would need to be updated to our tastes than we originally realized. We have already painted both boys' bedrooms, the office and the kitchen and had the patio around the pool redone. So we are getting there, but it takes time (and money).


For my next project I decided to redo Spencer's bathroom. This is what we started with:

I had already started to remove the wallpaper when I remembered to take some before shots. 

I personally think wallpaper is evil. Especially removing wallpaper. I also don't like brass. I am more of a silver/brushed nickel kind of girl. And I don't like oak. Thankfully, Chris and I agree on these design elements and have the same taste for decor. 

I also wanted to get rid of this tile in the shower/bathtub area, but that is outside of my DIY knowledge. And I didn't want to pay for it right now either. And it is mostly covered by the shower curtain anyways. Someday I might be able to have that redone too. 

We went from that hideous seashell wallpapered, brass, oak, yucky bathroom (remember these are just our opinions and since this is our house, those are the only opinions that count. lol!) 

To This:

We removed that wallpaper and painted the bathroom khaki, the same color as Spencer's bedroom. (The bathroom is in the bedroom.) We bought a new light fixture and mirror and refinished the vanity.


Here is a close-up of the new light fixture. I think it was the most expensive item in this redo. It was $60 from Lowe's.

I also redid the vanity and medicine cabinet in a new darker expresso color. I got this kit at Home Depot from Rustoleum called Cabinet Transformations. It was so easy! 


The kit cost $80 and comes with everything you need. I don't think I used even 1/4 of it for this bathroom. So I have more than enough to do my next bathroom. I bet I will still have some leftover from that bathroom too. 

We also put some hardware on the cabinets. None of the cabinets in this house have hardware.


And I'm sorry the pictures aren't better. It was really hard to take good ones in a small bathroom with limited natural light.

A new towel hook. The towel bar was over the toilet before and it grosses me out to have towels hanging over the toilet. I just don't like it; especially when it is boys trying to hang that towel up over the toilet. 

The towel hook, toilet paper holder, and new circle mirror are all from Ikea. 

We are so happy with how it turned out. And Spencer loves it. He said he hated looking at that seashell wallpaper every day. Spencer's room also serves as a guest room whenever we have company because it has its' own bathroom. So our guests will now have a nice, new, fresh bathroom when they come visit! 


Next up is Connor's/the hallway bathroom.

Oh yeah, more ugly wallpaper to remove! Woo Hoo! (Can you tell how excited I am?)

I'm going to take a couple of weeks off from bathroom renovating and then get ready to tackle this ugly room. 


Thanks for visiting me! 

The Weather Outside: Not So Delightful

Wow, it has been a long time since I blogged. The last time I was so impressed with the fantastic weather we were having the week before Christmas. And for the most part, the weather here has been pretty good. Until this week. 


It all started about 4 am Tuesday morning and hasn't really stopped since. The first round was sleet that was so loud it woke me up at 4am. That lasted a few hours and then changed over to some snow for just a little while. The precipitation was all over at about 10-11am that morning. It really didn't look too bad out there; that was until we realized they don't really clear roads here. We have to wait until it warms up for this stuff to melt. And it still hasn't warmed up yet. 


Our neighborhood has just been covered in ice since then. These next two pics are from that first day. The neighborhood kids were going down their ice coated driveways in laundry baskets. So the boys got all bundled up (thankfully we saved our winter gear from St. Louis) and grabbed a laundry basket. 

Sledding: Texas style. 

So it was all fun and games that first day of the storm. Chris' work closed and everybody was home and happy for a day off. 


Then Wednesday was still so cold, so nothing melted and school was canceled. 


Then Thursday was still so cold, so nothing melted and school was canceled. 


Then Friday, it snowed some more! So nothing melted and school was canceled. Again. 


This was not what I was hoping a Texas winter would be like. This is seriously disappointing. 


Seriously. Disappointing. 


On a different subject, I have been redoing Spencer's bathroom and I am just about done with it. I should have pictures next week to share. I really like how it is turning out! 


Thanks again for visiting me!  

The Weather Has Been So Delightful!

Seriously Delightful! The last few days the temperature has been in the high 70's and low 80's. It is hard to believe that it is the week before Christmas and we are walking around in short sleeves and no coats. 

Unfortunately it came to an end today. We are gray and the temps have dropped back down. It is only suppose to be in the 50's for the next week. Bah Humbug! I want that 80 degrees back!

Yesterday we took advantage of this awesome weather and drove over to Dallas. Neiman Marcus has an awesome Christmas window and it has these tubes the kids could climb through. I have always wanted to go to NYC to see all the Christmas windows but I haven't made it there yet. I thought I could at least see one that is relatively close to us.

The theme of the window was outer space. It had rocket ships and monkeys in astronaut suits, aliens, and these monitors that we couldn't quite figure out what they did.  

 The best part was these tubes the boys could climb through. They went in and out of the windows. 

 Here is where the tubes came out over the sidewalk. It was really neat! The boys had a great time and went through it twice. 

The boys sitting in front of one of the decorated windows. I only took my small camera with me (didn't want to lug the big one around downtown) so my pictures didn't turn out great. I didn't realize I got so much reflection of other buildings in most of my pictures. 

 After we got done at Neimans, we had lunch and then headed back to the car. I couldn't find any parking garages and ended up parking at a meter on the street. And that only gave us two hours to play. There was a small park right by our car so the boys played there for just a bit. 

I do like this picture of the boys playing with all of the big buildings surrounding them. Dallas is such a pretty city. I can't wait to go back and explore it some more. It really was the perfect day to be walking around outside. 

And I thought I would leave you with this last picture.

This is what you get when your kids ask you if they can use your camera to take some pictures of the Christmas windows. 


Thanks for visiting me! 

Getting that Perfect Christmas Card Family Picture

Last weekend, we decided that we needed to get ourselves together to take the always pleasant Christmas Card Family Photo. 


You know that annual picture where you lovingly request your children to put something on that resembles the Holiday season, then pose for a few hundred pictures. And for goodness sake, please look happy while we are doing it! Yes! We are a Happy Family! 


We wanted to take our big picture outside by the pool this year; but of course it was way too windy to do that on the day we finally get ourselves in gear to take the picture.  


So we move indoors to the living room by the Christmas Tree. I really wanted to use the lighted Palm Tree in the picture. 


Which was suppose to be by the pool. 


But it was too windy. 


Once again, procrastination ruins a good plan.

So we move the Palm Tree to the living room. 

Yeah. I know. It doesn't work. Darn. 

So the Palm Tree gets axed. In come the kids and the dog. 

Okay now let's make sure the remote clicker is working. 

Looks good. 

Look, I joined the picture now! That is the beauty of the remote. Very handy little device. 

Now if we could just get Maggie to look at the camera. 

Maggie, please look at the camera. Please.

Well, you know that old saying they have in Hollywood. Never work with dogs or

Children!

I think my motivation was gone by that last shot.

Thanks for visiting me. 

Pool Renovation-Completed!

Last week, we finally got the pool finished up. Yeah!  We originally were told this would be about a week to a week and a half project. It took a little over a month. It wasn't too bad, but I am happy that I won't have men just show up in my backyard every couple of days. 


These next two pictures are what it looked like right after the concrete was poured. These pictures really show the comparison of what we had and what we are adding. 

Sorry the pictures are kind of dark. I haven't quite mastered the proper balance between shade and sun in the same shot. 
As you can see, there just wasn't much space to put chairs around the pool before. 

And now the completed project........

We love how it turned out! We picked out the color of the overlay and I think it looks so good next to the house. 

And another angle looking towards the pool. 

And yet another shot, this one showing the new concrete we added up next to the house. This is also where we chopped that tree down. 

Now we can't wait until next summer so we can use it! We will have to do a little landscaping and replanting of grass next summer. I would love to get a palm tree or two to plant back there. Our neighbors have some around their pool and I love them. 


This was all finished up on Tuesday, and then we had to wait two days for the sealant to dry before we could put our furniture back on it. We thought everything was good and Friday I went out to admire the new patio and noticed the pool pump wasn't working correctly. Grrrr! 


So we put in a call to our warranty company and they are sending someone out tomorrow to look at it. Actually one of our neighbors came over to look at it yesterday. Chris and he worked on it for over two hours, and got it working again! Yeah! We think the problem was one of the filter baskets was cracked and allowed leaves to get into the pump causing it to clog. We are still having the warranty folks come tomorrow just to make sure that was it. It does seem to be working much better though. 


We are also getting a new front and back door tomorrow. Right after we moved in, we found the back door was rotting. So that needed to be replaced. We also decided the front door needed to go because it has two windows in it. Which you can see straight through to the back of the house from. Not great for private mornings when you want to hang out in your pajamas and not have everyone who comes to the door see you. 


So we can't wait to get our new doors tomorrow and then we are done with home improvements for awhile! Well we hope we are. As long as nothing else breaks down! Fingers crossed! 


Thanks again for visiting me!