Emma Turned One!!

Our baby isn't a "baby" anymore, although she would beg to differ. She is a lap baby. She loves to be carried around and is content to just sit in my lap which doesn't happen very often because I am usually on the move! Jeromy's parents spent the last week with us, and we had a party for her with my parents too. It was such a nice celebration. She seemed to really understand that something special was going on, a lot more than I remember with my other one year olds. She hasn't eaten many solids yet, so I didn't know if she would be able to eat a cupcake, but she ate that thing like she has been doing it for a while! She LOVES books, especially turning pages, so she was thrilled to receive some new ones for her birthday. (The other kids were pretty thrilled with some new toys too. They play with them as much as the baby does!)







She is offically a walker now too. She doesn't crawl anymore. Emma is our first one to be pigeon-toed. I was a bit alarmed at first, but I did some research about it, and it isn't so bad that she trips herself, which is kind of the test of seriousness. As the leg bones grow, they tend to straighten out. She is a quiet little one and so very mellow. She loves her sister's room and can be found playing by herself with their dollhouse quiet frequently. We love our little baby and look forward to seeing her grow and flourish. She is cherished by our family, and we are thankful for our littlest one!

Picture Update

Thought you might enjoy a picture update.


The biggest news around here in a while (along with potty training Ellie) is that Bennett finally lost his first tooth. He will be 7 next month and all of his friends seemed to loose their first tooth already, so he was excited.



I assembled this buffet all by myself! I even had to drill new holes for the hinges because they didn't line up correctly. I was VERY proud to say the least! I think I conquered my fear of the power drill too. The kids couldn't believe that I did it myself either.



I never posted Christmas pictures, so here are a few.......








Rachel put a headband on Emma, and I think she looks like an 80s miniature gymnast!

Before and After- Kitchen/Family Room

This space was really a selling point for the house. One of my criteria for a new house was having a play/homeschool space separate from the sleeping spaces. I was constantly shushing everyone while the baby was sleeping, and no one could have any fun during naptimes. It was also hard to work in my kitchen because it was so close to the nappers. Now I can cook and do dishes whenever I want (oh joy!) These two spaces were some of the darkest "cave-like" spaces in the house. There was hardly any natural light coming through the windows and the family room only had one small light overhead for the whole room. The kitchen was a very dark sage grey color and brick orange weird one. The family room was dark chocolate brown. They are all colors that I like, they just didn't work in these spaces. Again, I took pictures before we finished some projects. The eat in area in the kitchen has a overhead chandelier and the family room has a flush mount fixture in the center of the room with more light. We have a matching stainless steel microwave to match the stove, but it just hasn't been put in yet. The island will go from brown to black eventually and I think I might keep the antiqued upper cabinets after all. My plan was to get new Shaker-style plain white doors, but the antiqued ones are growing on me. One conundrum I am having is what to do with the over the microwave hood. It is copper which doesn't match anything. I think it was custom made so would be hard to replace. Does anyone know if copper can be treated to turn a darker color, like a dark antiqued bronze look?


This the the old 1/2 bath off of the kitchen



New 1/2 bath. We had a 1/2 bath in our old house, and I really liked having one for the kids to wash up and use the bathroom before meals.


Old kitchen



New kitchen- I LOVE my big island. I had an island in our previous house, but it had the cooktop in it which made the island pretty unusable. This kitchen doesn't have much cabinet space, but the island holds quite a bit. The wall that you can't see in the left side of the picture has a pantry and double folding doors that house the washer, dryer, and more shelves. I really wanted a separate laundry room, but there is a possibility of moving it down the road. I had my laundry in my last kitchen, so I knew that I would have laundry all over my kitchen floor once a week. At least I have a really big washer now. The lady that bought our house traded me hers for mine. We had a stackable that fit perfectly in the space and hers were too big. I won in that deal, big time!



You can see how dark the family room used to be.



We put in 6 recessed lights, plus a couple more in the kitchen. I like light!



This is the old family room. I didn't have a good picture of the "new." We went back and forth on whether or not to paint the brick. I am glad that we did, it really lightens the room up. This room is the kid's playroom and holds my desk and is where we homeschool. The door in the left side of this picture goes to an addition. There are 2 more bedrooms and a bathroom. We don't need the space right now, so it is just storage. It isn't updated at all and doesn't have central heat and air. It is a project for down the road. We are thinking of making a 2nd master suite that could be used as a guest room or mother-in-law quarters someday.



We still plan on renovating the master bathroom and painting the outside of the house sometime in the next year. It is amazing how much my hubby accomplished, with the help of many friends, in 6 weeks. I am really enjoying my new house and am so blessed!

Before and After- Hall Bathroom

The main bathroom in our new house was gutted when we bought it. The previous owners had big plans for it, but for whatever reason, the plans never came to fruition. Their plan was to take the back half of the bathroom (which is long and narrow like a lane at the bowling alley) and give it to the master bathroom that it shares a wall with. The master bathroom is fairly small, so the idea was valid. We considered going through with their plans and enlarging the master bath, but the biggest obstacle was relocating all the plumbing. We really tried to do most of the work ourselves and didn't really hire much outside help, but relocating plumbing was outside the skill set. We decided just to put the bathroom back the way it was originally, and now we have somewhere to bowl :)


The original bathroom. It was an obstacle to find a bank willing to give us a loan with a gutted bathroom. Thank goodness for credit unions! Our real estate market is really strong here, so they don't have the same concerns with declining markets.



We planned on keeping the turquoise bathtub, but come to find out it had a hole in it that had been concealed.



New tile



It was pretty scary designing a whole space by myself. I found myself just praying, "Lord, please let this match," and then buying something. It was hard making decisions when I didn't have a sample of the countertop to take with me to buy tile, and will the light fixtures match the faucets and hardware and on and on and on. I am very happy how it all came together. The color we chose for the walls was a spa blue color- Sherwin Williams Tradewind.



We also chose to do wainscoting on the long wall and the one next to the toilet. The wall was so long, it needed some interest.

Before and After- Dining Room

The original dining room had 1970s crazy carpet and brick red walls.



We painted a more neutral color, updated the light fixture and put down new floors.

this is bennett I WANT YOU ALL TO KNOW THAT I HAVE A LOOSE TOOTH I AM 6

Before and After- Living Room

The living room is right off the entryway of the house. We went with a darker color on the walls than the entryway. I think it makes it look a little more formal. We put in a darker color hand scraped laminate wood floor. We debated hardwood, but we had it in our last house and our kids destroyed it. Hopefully the laminate will be a little more durable. The darker color wood and the shine it has to it was probably a big mistake. I am a mad woman with the Swiffer constantly trying to eradicate the dust the floor shows, but they look good :)

BEFORE
The original room had wallpaper, popcorn ceilings, parquet floors, and no overhead light. It does have a nice big picture window which was hard to enjoy with such heavy curtains.



Bennett scraping the ceilings


That is a hole in the wall that it shares with the laundry room. They had had a leak that we didn't know about until Jeromy found biological growth (mold!) on the drywall.



Some of the flooring was damaged in the living room from the moisture, so we decided to replace it. Jeromy didn't appreciate the parquet floors anyway. At this point, we decided just to replace the family room flooring too, so that it would all match. What's another 300 square feet anyway ;P



After
Some friends gave us a piano when we moved, and Bennett has really been enjoying playing it. We are going to start him with lessons soon. We also put in recessed lighting which has made a huge difference. I love light!

Before and After- Entryway

Jeromy finished the baseboards and wood work around the dining room and living room openings this weekend, so he's going to kill me for posting pictures of the unfinished work, but I had already taken the pictures last week because the house was clean :)

We retiled the entryway mainly because we wanted to tile the kitchen, and we didn't like the current tile. Our original plan was to remove the wood laminate flooring in the kitchen and move it to the dining room, but we ended up wanting to match the flooring in the dining, family and living rooms. I had a rough time finding a tile we liked. Jeromy really likes modern decor, and I don't. He wanted dark, slate grey rectangular tile, and fortunately we couldn't afford that, so I went on a hunt to find a tile that looked more modern than the normal marble-look. I had a love at first sight moment with a tile that had a pattern on it that almost looked like fabric. It was a mixture of grey and blue and green with black lines on it. Jeromy wasn't too sure about it in the beginning and after it went in, I wasn't too sure about it, but I really am happy with it now.

One of the main problems with the house when we bought it was that it was soooooooo dark. The lighting was bad and the wall colors were really dark. It reminded me of a cave, and I am a person that needs alot of light. My mood depends on it!

I thought I was going to go with a color match of Restoration Hardware's Silver Sage, but it looked too dark for us. I ended up going with Sherwin Williams Sea Salt in the entryway, hallway, kitchen and family room, one shade darker in the dining room and two shades darker in the living room. I was so worried it would look too minty, like a bad 90s mint green, but it turned out how I had hoped. It looks green sometimes, blue others, and more grey in the evenings. I am very happy with it.


BEFORE




DURING



AFTER




The baby kept following me around the house as I was taking pictures, so you'll see her pop in the pics here and there.

Long Time No Blog

I can't believe it has been two and a half months since I have blogged, but that's what it says! Most of you know that we sold our house, bought a new one and spent 5 weeks renovating it before we moved in. Life has been going at warp speed! For those of you that didn't know that, i'll give you a little background information. We had been living in a little 1200 square foot house for over a year that we bought to keep as a rental. The market in starter homes went up so much here that we decided to sell it to help us get into a bigger house more quickly. We searched for several months for a new home to fit our needs but had a hard time finding anything. We wanted over an acre with a 2400 square foot home that was either a rambler or a tri-level. We finally found one that we couldn't afford, but it had been on the market for almost a year, so we gave them a VERY low offer. They were slow in responding because they were hoping another offer would come in, and it did in the 11th hour. We got to looking again and decided to put an offer on a house that was a short sale (the owners owed the bank more than the house is worth.) It is a 6 bedroom 3 1/2 bathroom, 3200 square foot rambler (yay, no stairs!) on .68 of an acre. We knew this would be a long process, but we were in no hurry and weren't going to put our house on the market until we went into escrow on the new one (houses on our street were getting contracts within a week so we didn't want it to sell until we were ready).

It was really hard to go for several months without getting "attached" to the house because there were no guarantees that the house was ours. We didn't do much planning or anything. The house became a short sale because the owners took out a bunch of money on the house to renovate it. Unfortunately, the hubby didn't do a very good job and the house was quite a mess.

As far as short sales go, ours was pretty quick. We went under contract in mid-October and got the keys the very end of December. Jeromy took 2 weeks off of work and, with the help of some wonderful people from church, dedicated himself to some sweat equity. The house had a gutted hall bathroom when we bought it, so our plan was to re-texture and paint the interior, tile the entry and kitchen, re-carpet the bedrooms and put in the new hall bathroom. What we ended up doing is a whole other story. I don't know how many times we said, "Well, a is already ripped out, so we might as well replace b as well." The process of scraping all the walls, retexturing, and painting the house took my dad (he's a painting contractor) and a boy from church we hired, 3 weeks. We ended up replacing all the flooring in the house, re-doing the 1/2 bathroom, buying new appliances, putting in all new baseboards, replaced all the doors with trim, garage door openers, recessed lighting in 4 rooms, some window coverings, fixed the leaky roof etc. etc. etc. We basically did everything but a few things we have to save up for next. We still want to replace a few old windows, redo the master bathroom, and paint the exterior. All of the trim work and doors need to have the nail holes filled, be caulked and painted, but that has to wait until we go out of town. Our kitchen island is going from brown to black too, but oil based paint is stinky!

It is amazing how much the house has changed in such a short time. I plan on posting some before and after pictures, so check back soon.

Morning Conversations

Bennett: Rachel will you please get Ellie's tray from the drying rack.

Rachel: Yes, but don't give her her food until I get back.

Bennett: Rachel, I know, I know, I know, I know everything, okay. I know what 100 + 100 is. 101. :)


Wait a minute there, know-it-all little man. There are still a few things you need to learn. I wonder where he gets it from :P

Thanksgiving '09

We had a nice, quiet Thanksgiving this year. For the past 8 or 9 years we have spent Thanksgiving in Cayucos with Jeromy's parents, but buying 5 airline tickets is getting pretty cost prohibitive. My brother was there too, so it was a nice celebration.

What's Up Markworts?

Yes, I know that it has been 2 WHOLE MONTHS since I posted a blog. You can catch me at Facebook these days, evil creation. So, what have we been doing for the past 2 months? We have been house hunting, house buying, short sale waiting, house showing, house cleaning for said showings, child rearing, child educating, cooking, nose wiping, sinus infection coping, laughing and loving. See, I have a good excuse, things are always in a state of busyness. I need to work on that. The house we are trying to buy finally got their short sale approval, so we are going to have an inspection next week and go from there. It is hard not getting our hopes up, but that has been the case through this whole process. God is having to open each door for us as we move along in the process. The whole thing seems insurmountable, so it has been neat to see His hand in it. There is alot of work to be done in the house, so that is exciting and scary all at the same time.

Bennett is enjoying home schooling. He knows that Friday is his last day of school for the week and then he gets two whole days off and can play on the computer. (PBS Kids website) He always does his math first and likes adding alot more than subtracting. He can count money like a champ and is very entrepreneurial minded. He is also a very proficient artist and has been spending more time drawing pictures and scenes. Usually they are of battles and the like, but lately he has been recreating scenes from the Bible.



This is Bennett's "first generation" Grandma Lee Blanket. Thankfully he possesses a "second generation" one as well because this one is looking pretty sad lately. I have sewed the holes back together more times than I can count, but it still remains his favorite, and he still sleeps with it every night.

Rachel has been spending her homeschooling time learning her letters and beginning writing strokes. She has a really good memory and has learned the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 23, Ephesians 4:32, and 1 John 4:7-8. She is a good big sister and spends alot of time playing with Ellie and taking care of her baby sister. She is still our silly goose and enjoys laughing and giggling.



Rachel's favorite pastime is eating. She is a foodie trapped in a 4 year old body. Sloppy Joes are her current favorite if you can't tell :)

Ellie is 2. :) I could just write "enough said," but there is a little more to her than that. She is the happiest one of the group and the first one to clap, cheer, and celebrate anything and everything. She is also very stubborn and we are working on those darn temper tantrums! We threw binky in the garbage right after her 2nd birthday and although the first week was hard, she stopped asking for it altogether. Much easier than stopping our 4 year old thumb sucker!



One last pre-binky disposal picture. She asked Jeromy if he could put her in the garbage last week so she could get her binky. It was at least a month and a half after it went in there, but she remembers where it went and that it was "mommy's fault." I had her throw it in there, so technically, it was her fault :P

Our baby Emma will be 8 months on the 2nd. She is crawling all around, usually after me, but sometimes she goes down the hall to see what all those silly kids are doing back there. People everywhere we go remark on what a happy baby she is. She rarely fusses and is just content to play and look around. We are so thankful for that!





Emma is a tag fanatic. Anytime she sees a tag hanging off anything, she lunges for it and has to suck on it. Here she is sucking on her swaddling blanket tag. I still swaddle her to sleep at night. She doesn't complain and I figure it keeps her warmer.

Good to be back in blogger land. Thanksgiving post to follow (but don't stake your life on it!)