IT’S A BOY!!

Holy Cow I can not believe I am actually having a boy!!! After being 1 of 3 girls and my sister having 3 girls and I have 2 girls already it was looking like the odds were not in my favor for having a boy. Sure enough, God has blessed us with a little boy. Honestly, I am over the moon excited but I am also a bit nervous. I have no idea what to expect from boys and I don’t have anyone close with experience with boys and I don’t even know where to begin and no reference to go from. Naturally of course, I went shopping and started with some clothes.
Here are some of his pictures from today. He seems to be perfectly healthy and normal and everything seems to be growing just fine. Praise God!

I love my girls with all of my being but I am so excited to have this little boy join us and add another element of love to our family!

Playroom Makeover… Part 3 Finger Painting and Trundle Bed

I started this post just about the paintings and then I realized I never mentioned the finished trundle bed and curtains. I made 2 very simple curtain panels out of that bird fabric I found and I LOVE them so much!!! Can’t really put my finger on why, but I do. I think they are very classy yet casual. The bed also turned out great! I got all of the bedding at Target and then made some throws out of left over fabric from the curtains. I also brought the little yellow table I painted in here, but now I am not too fond of the yellow so it may get refinished in the future.
Here is the finished product

So, anyways, back to to the paintings. They are hanging in the picture above. I love them but I think they need a little something more but I am not sure what it is yet. maybe frames?
Let me back up. I wanted to add some art above the trundle bed in here but since it is a play room after all, I figured who better to be the artists than the kids who play in here? So, we had a finger painting day. We don’t do this often (if at all) because Avery is just now getting to a point where she can handle a craft like this and Norah, well, she needs lots of help and direction. It was a blast though and their personalities really came out!! Avery wanted the paint to be put exactly where she wanted it and needed to be very precise (as much as an almost 3 year old can be anyways). She got really upset when I helped her splatter the paint lol! Norah, probably due to her age, just wanted to roll and smear all in it! she did a better job of really covering the canvas but didn’t have a real plan. She loved splattering and thought it was funny.
I was able to sit back and just let Avery paint so I got a few cute pictures but I really had to help Norah out. Luckily Jeff was home at this point and was able to take some pictures (don’t look at me and my pajamas! lol)

I am so thankful to have a room where we can do stuff like this!! Here’s some close-ups of the finished products.
Avery’s:

Norah’s:

I especially love the foot prints in Norah’s. Can you spot them? She took off running across hers and I actually kinda like it! lol
If I really want to get interpretive, Norah’s could be a field of flowers with a blue sky. There’s even foot prints in the grass! haha Ok, maybe a little bit of a stretch.
As I was cleaning up I wondered why I do these things to myself; I must be a glutton for punishment! But then I think back and can still remember days when I was little painting at my grandma’s house. Memories, that is why I do it! Who cares about the mess?!

Playroom Makeover… Part 2

I mentioned a while back that I am working on transforming our playroom/office into a more functional space to also become our guestroom.
It is still a big work in progress but we were able to finish a huge part of the makeover this weekend. With enormous help from my dad, we built these shelves for all of the toys. Words can not describe how much I love it and how thankful I am to have a dad who was willing to build these with me and come spend a whole day assembling them!! I have a wonderful husband too who is always there to help me out during my crazy projects . 
I want to do a before and after picture but I really want to do one big post showing the overall transformation. I couldn’t pass up doing a special post for these shelves since they are so wonderful and took a lot of work!

Here it is in all it’s glory! there’s even a very snug spot to fit around the TV mounted on the wall. (I say “snug” because I gave just enough space around it to barely get it mounted and all the plugs down the whole in the wall behind it). The top shelves are stuffed with stuffed animals. I could really get rid of some of these, or at least find another way to store them, but for now it works. Plus, that is about 7 feet up so I can barely reach it so I don’t want toys they play with regularly up there anyways.

Adjustable shelves for different size cubbies and toy boxes. Speaking of, when we went to put the shelves on, we realized we miss measured the holes so we had to go back and re-drill all of the holes. It was such a pain to try and get the shelves even and level at that point!! Thanks for your patience, dad!!

Shelves up high for DVDs so the girls can’t get to them anymore

I went out and got different size plastic boxes for every toy that has multiple pieces. Isn’t organization a beautiful thing??!!

I ordered a Melissa and Doug magazine rack for all the board puzzles that they got for Christmas. 1 was just enough for all of them but I will need to order another one very soon. It’s wonderful!!

Unfortutely, as large as this shelving system is, I am out of room already!! I had to put all of their books on the other built-ins in here, but I am hoping that for every birthday and Christmas I can just keep going through the toys and getting rid of stuff that they don’t play with.

This has also began to force some disipline on us. Since they can’t reach everything (especially Norah) they have to ask for something to play with. This allows me to start enforcing the “put your toy away before getting a new one out” rule. We aren’t perfect about it, but in the past few days, the mess has stayed under control a thousand times better!

Hopefully within the next week or 2 I can reveal the whole room!

Making the best of a yucky rainy day

What do you do when you have a chilly raining day? Go play in it, of course! lol The girls got these adorable rain coat sets from their Meemy for Christmas and they LOVE them. How can I pass up a drizzly day like this to let them get some use out of their rain coats and boots?