Life and Loves

he bathroom is almost done. I see a lot of cleaning in my future. There is dirt and dust on everything, but the floors look nice! This afternoon Jason, Nora, Noah and I stopped at Lowe’s to pick out paint. We have decided to paint the kids bathroom yellow. I am excited because I have always wanted a yellow room! After bringing some paint samples home, I am leaning towards a color aptly named “butter”. I do love butter. :o) It’s funny bringing the swatches home. They look totally different under different lighting. I liked the color “butterfly bush” at the store, but once I brought it into the bathroom I realized it was too harsh. I got some good ideas for Noah’s room too. For our bathroom, I am thinking about a deep gray color. I picked up a color sample at HD and put it on one of the cabinets and I really like it. Slowly, but surely the room is coming together. Jason is almost done with the pipes and his dad and I got a bit of molding to go in front of the shower. All that’s left is to put the toilet back in place. Oh, and the cleanup. Sigh.

irst on the list is the bathroom. We need a whole new shower, new flooring and we wanted to enlarge our closet. Jason’s dad came down (yay!) from NC to do most of the work. He totally rocks.

Jason and I picked out the tub and walls along with a new fixture and as soon as Charley got here he started tearing out the old shower. Thankfully. we have a second bathroom which we have been sharing with the kids for a few days now. Little by little the bedroom is getting dirtier and dirtier while the bathroom is getting better and better. I can’t wait to use our new shower!

One of my favorite things to do is to peruse Lowe’s and HD. We have been there a few times over the past few days. I would love to someday refurbish a house. I know Jason wants to build, but I really enjoy improving things. Charley and I just got back from HD with the new flooring, which we had to go to the North side of town to get, and are almost ready to lay it down. Jason and I painted the bathroom about a year ago, but since we moved the closet it’s going to need to be painted again.

I also have plans to paint the kids bathroom. The walls have a beach theme (gag) and I recently found monster-themed accessories. I plan to paint a tree to complete Nora’s room, but I can’t decide yet what I’m gonna do for Noah. He doesn’t really love anything in particular and he isn’t a baby anymore. When I ask him what he would like to do he shows me about 5 different colors and asks for two or three different themes that do not go together at all. I also need to think about something that will be easy to paint over in case we sell this place. I’d love to do a neutral color and then put the peel and stick shapes, but what I have been able to find has been too girly or childish. I’m sure I will think of something.

Right now I am listening to planes fly over head every few minutes…oh Sun ‘n Fun.

We’ve run into a leaky pipe problem and Jason had to cut a big hole in a perfectly fine wall. Meanwhile I’ve decided to cook chili for dinner even though it is not even remotely cold outside. What I would love to do is take a nap or play some Mario. :o) What I need to do is Accounting homework. As they say, variety is the spice of life!

As promised, we put up and decorated the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. We had kept most of what we bought last year (which is totally unlike me) and I picked up a few things.

This is the first Santa thing I think I have ever bought. We don’t really “do” Santa. He is present though. I love to have pinecones around this time of year and candles too.

We had two stockings from last year that Jason’s mom made. They are now the kid’s stockings. :o) and I found two for Jason and I. He gets mittens and I get hearts. I would rather have made some, but that will be for another less busy year.


I am beginning to really enjoy the spot between the cabinets in the dining room. It’s a great little place for things like tiny Christmas trees with bunny angels on top!

Jason put up lights outside and I went out and finished (pretty much) getting the last few presents for the kids. I have them all wrapped and waiting patiently for the 18th when my family will come over and do Christmas for the kids. I hope it will be like this every year. It is nice to come home and see the decorations.

We went up to the mall on our date the other night to look around. Jason was on the phone with my mom who was having trouble with the TV and I wandered into the pet store. I would not say I am a dog person, but they seriously had some cute puppies! There was one in particular, a Maltese, that caught my eye. Jason continued to talk to my mom, so I decided to let the sales chick take her out to play with me. I blame Sheena for this… I totally just fell in love with this dog! She was so sweet and so cuddly. Of course the sales chick was happy to tell me all about the breed. Hypoallergenic, doesn’t need exercising, 12-14 years of life, no major health issues. Nice right?

I started thinking about it. I guess it never really crossed my mind that we could get a dog. The dog I have in mind is big and requires lots of room, but I think the kids would really enjoy a small dog. They do well with the cats. Do you hear me talking you into it? So not only am I getting baby fever with one or two more semesters of school to go, but now I find myself wishing for a little Corky running around! I should never have gone into that pet store! Oh well, it’ll pass or we may have a dog at some point in the future. I think I’ll name her Precious…

Jason tore down a shed or most of a shed yesterday. The kids and I helped by bringing some of the wood from the shed and throwing it on the fire pit. The fire was ridiculously large and super hot! I never noticed what a great little backyard we have if we could just get it cleaned up a bit, so that’s what I was doing. I started pulling down moss and cutting up vines and bush things that were attached to the trees. In all my digging I found an old wire fence that Jason had to help me pull out of the ground. He grabbed a metal pole (for a fence?) to use as leverage and took a moment to quote his father, something about give me a lever and I’ll move the world… Anyway. Out plops a black snake. We totally live in the boonies. We shoo him away and Jason is able to pull out most of the fence as it is getting darker and darker outside.

The neighbors have chickens, as I have mentioned before and the land is a bit woodsy. Jason got Nora excited about “gettin’ those chickens” by going for a little walk in the woods. They stumbled upon chickens in the trees! The chickens were walking around like they were born to roost on a branch! They were up pretty high too.



As the kids and Jason started their walk in the woods a little grey kitten (wildcat) popped out to see what all the commotion was about.

We painted the bathroom Chocolate brown. It seriously looks like chocolate. We replaced the old mirror and took out the old shelving.



Ignore the woman in the mirror! Ha! We still need to redo the floor and hang a shelf in place of the side mirror, and put new lighting up, but it is coming along. A lot better than the scary bright yellow and mauve it used to be! :o)

This is Jason putting the last piece of the floor down. Wow. The first part was easy because Jason’s Dad had replaced the flooring in the Kitchen, but the rest of the floor was covered in that tile that is peel and stick? Jason had some sort of tool that was so LOUD! It was metal that scraped it up bits and pieces at a time, pieces flying everywhere! The hallway, however, was done by hand. I was so proud of Jason to see him finally finishing I had to take a pic!



Here it is all cleaned up, completely finished. *insert Hallelujah chorus*

This is the view from the dining room.



Our broken TV



The finished product! Painted with pictures hung and everything. Woot!