Category Archives: home

House Progress – Kids’ Bedrooms

November 14, 2018

Whew! Time for some house blogs! Today I’m going to share the progress on the kids’ bedrooms with some before pics and during remodel pics. The upstairs of the house is finally looking like an actual house instead of a complete tornado of demo and dust! After many hours of figuring out how to redesign the upstairs two apartments back to single family, we finally came up with 4 bedrooms (master, Ivy, Leo, and Faye’s), 3 bathrooms (girl’s shared, Leo’s, and master bath), a laundry room (previously an apartment’s kitchen), and a playroom (previously an apartment’s dining room). We combined some rooms, closed off some hallways and doorways, and even knocked down several walls to design the space to make it best liveable for our family. We got walls up and sheetrock and mudding going on this week! Excited to share this progress!

IVY’S BEDROOM – Starting with Ivy’s bedroom! This was an apartment’s living room but also had access to the closet, which was originally a closed in patio with french doors out to a little patio. It’s neat to see the old pictures, but, the patio is definitely not usable and the french doors (that were downstairs in the basement and we are reusing for our master closet!!!) were replaced with windows. The patio columns are still in her closet! It’s kinda weird but also kinda cool. Haha. Here’s a picture of the house back in the day! You can see the patio and french doors in the very top right corner of the house!

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So long, Black Rock Circle!

October 30, 2018

Today was a rough day! We are officially MOVED OUT of our house! We hauled our last few boxes out of the beautiful home, did a few loops and reminisced, slowly shut the door behind us, and I couldn’t even look back because of the tears in my eyes, such a bittersweet feeling.

As I was walking around the house, remembering a happy memory in each room, the hardest rooms for me to be in were the kids’ bedrooms. We brought all three of our babies home to this house. We grew into parents in this house. We have watched them grow up from babies to crawlers to walkers and to crazy spunky fun toddlers. We held them as they cried and hugged them as they were happy in this house. We saw them all take their first steps in this house. All those memories within these walls. I think what is hardest is that these kids won’t even remember this house. They’re all so young. They won’t remember me rocking them to bed as babies in their bedrooms, or teaching them how to go potty in the bathrooms, or teaching them how to ride a bike in the driveway. That’s what’s so weird. All of our memories in this house are just that, memories. Memories we will take with us as we shut that door for the last time.

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Kitchen Inspiration

August 29, 2018

Now that we have our kitchen design down, time for some inspiration to finish the look! I told John, I GET THE KITCHEN, because I’m the only one that cooks! 😆 So it’s been really fun (AND HARD!) dreaming up my dream kitchen and how to achieve a timeless/antique/modern/character filled kitchen. I initially thought – WHITE KITCHEN. I’ve always loved the timeless clean crisp look of white, but it really wasn’t calling me with how the house is so rich and bold. I have been loooooving the navy and dark kitchens lately. So I scoured the internet and Instagram for all the inspo and I’m loving how it’s going to turn out!

CABINET COLOR: I’m all about the bold and moody colors for this house! With the rich stained wood beams everywhere I want some bold colors in it to match! I chose Farrow and Ball Hague Blue for the entire kitchen. I was going to do two-toned with white uppers, but was kind of hating how it didn’t match. Plus we plan on doing very white counters and white walls so I think we will be okay with the rich deep bold blue color.

Here is Farrow and Ball Hague Blue: isn’t it dreamy!
(Go Willow Homes)

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Ivy the Helper

August 3, 2017

Three kids basically means you have your hands full at all times. There’s always someone that needs something at all times of the day. Since having Faye, it’s been tough to keep up with things around the house, being a stay-at-home Mom has never been harder! Recently though, I’ve been noticing that Ivy is asking to help more and more, her intuition that Mom needs help has definitely kicked in (thankfully!).

I’ve been having her put her laundry away and make her bed for about 6 months now, but that’s really the only chore I have made her do, besides the obvious ones such as picking up toys and dressing herself. I feel like I’ve totally deprived her of helping out and being independent! Not that any child really likes chores, but Ivy totally does! I plan on taking full advantage of that until she’s a teenager and hating it! I think it’s the feeling of being involved and doing what Mom does.

Ivy has recently asked to help dust and empty the dishwasher, she’s all of a sudden such a big girl and such a big help! I feel bad that I haven’t had her help with those things for months! It took her to ask to help instead of me encouraging her to be a big girl and help out around the house. #momfail. I love that she’s independent and I know that having chores around the house will make her feel involved. Time to encourage all of that!

I looked up some other chores on this site and this site that are age appropriate and I couldn’t believe all the ones that I could be making her do! We’ve been doing the no-brainers, like pick up toys, get yourself dressed, put clothes away, etc., but the ones I never would have thought about are helping set the table (WHY didn’t I think of this! DUH!), scrape your own plate into the garbage, water the plants, clean the windows, put away groceries (obvi she knows where the snacks go! Haha), etc. I am excited to get her to try out some other chores around the house! Here’s another site that has great ideas too! I’m considering doing a chore chart. Looks like a fabulous way to stay organized and to encourage them doing their chores on their own.

The thing I have to get over, is that I know it probably won’t be done exactly how I would do it (I tend to be particular about some things!), and it will take longer than if I do it myself, but what a great opportunity to teach!!! And for her to learn! And hello, 4 hands are better than 2! It will take patience on both of our parts for sure, but she is to the age where I want her to feel her worth around the house and take pride in learning and helping out. And she is antsy to help! Time to take advantage of that before it’s gone! :)

What are some chores you have your toddlers do?

Shared Girl’s Room

May 29, 2017

Ivy and new baby are going to share a room! I can already imagine them staying up past their bedtime chatting about princesses and happy endings. Looking forward to that best friend and sister bond. But first we had to get through the process of redecorating! I opted for a pretty simple room and OF COURSE kept the pink wall (color is Amaryllis by Sherwin Williams) :) The other three walls were a bluish gray that I haven’t liked since we moved in, so I finally got rid of it since I had to patch a bunch of holes to move around art anyways! I painted those three walls Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore, looooove the soft crisp clean white. Ivy helped out with picking where she wanted things, except that she wanted the crib RIGHT next to her bed, I had to talk her out of that one, so cute, haha. She’s really excited to get baby in there! It’ll be a few months until the transition into sharing a room, but I’m happy to have it done already!

Starting with the baby’s crib corner. This is Ivy’s old crib. I love that Jenny Lind spindle style. So adorable. I chose to match Ivy and baby girl’s crib and twin sheet, love the pale pink and white. The swan adds just enough decoration to the pink wall!

bookcase // blanket

mirror

storage basket

Moving on to Ivy’s side of the room. Hers basically stayed the same, but she LOVED the flamingo animal head so had to have that!

twin bed // mermaid quilt // bunny // twin sheets

lamp // side table (similar here) // OK to wake clock

Now to the dresser. I LOVE this dresser! It has tons of room, big drawers, and is actually a really great piece, for IKEA! The right half is new baby’s clothes and left half is Ivy’s. Plenty of room!

I had so much art work from before, so I wanted to reuse some of them. The shelves worked great to add the art and some other decor.

changing pad cover // storage bin (similar)

love is spoken here // lamb // swans // floral // tea // alice in wonderland // cat // love

Really happy with the way it turned out! Nice to be a little more minimal in there and thankfully her room is big so plenty of room for her baby! My favorite might be these animal heads! #targetdoesitagain

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