Five Things I Have Learned In The Last Few Months . . .

1)  Painting is hard work.  I thought we'd only paint a few rooms starting out.  Well, everything got painted except the kitchen and two bathrooms.  So, three bedrooms, three ceilings, one large living room (and we had the ceiling done/textured by a friend), the entire basement room and floor and stairs/walls going down to the basement.  Whew.  I may never paint again.  Just kidding.  I already have about a million "little" painting jobs to do . . . like frames, and small pieces of furniture, and . . .  

2)  Sanding floors is hard work.  And man, those machines are powerful and scary all at the same time.  Oh my goodness, it looked so much better when we were done!  Come see for yourself!  :) 

3)  If you move in to a house thinking you'll only do a couple things, a couple will turn in to many more.  And cost more than originally thought.  And be a lot of hard, but rewarding work.  I'm pretty sure IF we ever move again, hehe, it will be into a house that needs NO work at all.  Those homes exist, right?  I guess since Ethan and I love older homes, that's not very likely.  (And I say "if" because I can not possibly imagine moving ever again right now. Give me 5 years.  :)

4)  Moves are stressful.  I know, obvious.  I had forgotten already though.  Plus our 10 am pickup for our U-haul fell through, and we had to scramble for a new one.  And of course we had people waiting/ready to help us, which really made me stressed.  But, we started at 10:30, and were done moving in the last box by 1pm-ish.  (We had three different places to pick up stuff from.  So not too bad, considering.)  And we were lucky to have some great help from friends! 

5)  I love our new house.  Oddly enough, it feels much bigger with all of our furniture in it.  With our Front Street house, it took us awhile to fall in love.  (I think we were just really nervous about the large purchase for awhile.)  But we are instantly in love with this one.  Probably since we've already "given" so much to it.  It's so perfect for us.  And has some old charm to it too - fireplace, built in cabinet, original maple floors - which we've always been drawn to.    It is a little weird being in a one story;  I feel like we have to be more mindful of privacy, but at the same time I love everything being on one level.  (Oh, and there is the basement play room, but that's only usable when the space heater has been going for awhile, or the kids are completely bundled up to go downstairs . . . but it'll be awesome in the summer!  :)  Anyway, we are happy to have our own place again.  Especially this place.  We feel very blessed with how everything turned out.

So Ethan wants me to share pictures of the house right now, but I really want to do a few more projects, and finishing touches before I do.  We are all unpacked, and a lot of the art/decor/photos are up, but not all.  I think I'll just have to resign myself to the fact that it will always be a work in progress.  So, I will share a few photos for you today of the living room: 
BEFORE  -

Okay, so none of these pictures are great quality/lighting.  But you can probably see that the living room wall color was pinkish/tan (not my thing), and a creamish/off white color.  I wasn't a fan of the window treatments either, and had already started to pull them down.  The carpet was way dirtier than you'll probably be able to see in the pics, and the maple floors underneath were pretty dirty/painty too.  Sooooo . . .

AFTER -

Ta da!  :)  We painted the walls "Winter Wheat" (or brown . . . which is not for everybody, but I LOVE it), and the rest is painted ultra white.  We sanded the floors and had a friend of ours seal them for us.  I cleaned out the fireplace which is currently sealed up (not drafty) and painted it with a special fireplace paint.  I was going to have candles in it, but the kids love it for playing, so no.  We had a friend from church smooth out and texture the ceiling because it's an old house and had some cracks etc.  We had the track lighting taken out and only use floor lamps in the living room, which we're big fans of.  

We're still decorating, like the wall behind the piano (oh how I LOVE having my piano back!!!) is now currently the "gallery wall" with lots of different frames I'll be painting a uniform color.  We also have new tiles to put around the fireplace, but haven't gotten to them yet.  They're small, and multi-colored.  It will be beautiful!!!  (We're also having our friend build the fireplace in to the floor so it's not "floating" anymore.)  I'm also going to paint the two stools next to the love seat white.  It's so convenient having them right there by the door for putting on shoes, etc, but they're hand-me-downs and don't quite match the other wood things in the house.  Anyway . . .  

The desk is Ethan's great grandfather's "Grand Bobby," I believe.  I think I might try to find a white cloth runner thing to help lighten it up since it's against a dark wall.  And the frame above the desk is going to be painted white to stand out more on the wall.  (All the explanations are exactly why I wanted to wait to show after pictures until all my little projects are done.  hehe :)  Also, the thing we use for a TV stand is something my mom and I found at a garage sale together when I was little.  I used it as a dresser in my room growing up, and eventually helped my mom refinish it.  She let us have it when we moved in here, and it is just perfect in the room.  Can you tell that not only do we like older homes, but we're drawn to older furniture/decor too, with character and significant meaning preferably.  :)  I try to mix the older stuff with newer, more colorful things too, but I'm still working on "lightening" the room up.  (I was worried that having so many of the walls painted ultra white, and having light floors, that it would be too bright . . . but nope.)  

The rest of the stuff we already had, and it was just so good to get it out of storage after so long!        

Some just for fun pictures!  Thank goodness I cleaned out that fireplace!  :)  The second pic shows the awesome baby gate we have.  That way I didn't have to baby proof the whole kitchen.  Love it.  And the final pic of Caleb crawling around in a tutu shows a pic of the beautiful floors in the day light. 

And lest we all forget, it was my birthday on the 13th. :) Even though I was super stressed/busy with all the house stuff, the kiddos (and my sweetie momma) still made it an extra special day:  breakfast in bed, a DELISH cake, sweet gifts, and they sent Ethan and I out to dinner.  Then we went to work on the house until after midnight.  :)  Ethan didn't give me my presents until about a week after my birthday (he wanted to wait until I wasn't so crazy with all the house stuff so I could really enjoy opening them  . . . hehe.).  I LOVED what he picked out for me!!!  So thoughtful - some piano music from a current fav artist, Tina Fey's new book . . . hilarious!, a cute hat, and a gift card for a tanning salon (which I haven't done in FOREVER, but I'm really looking forward to).  Not that he spent tons, but he said he was making up for lost time . . . this was my first birthday we weren't "poor students" anymore.  :)  It was a good birthday, but next year I will be back to my birthday WEEK tradition. hehe. 

A final picture, just because I think it's hilarious.  I walked in the room and found them in almost the exact same position doing the exact same thing.  hehe.  Caleb has really been missing his Grampa Dewey since we moved, and vice verse, but they're both managing to survive . . . barely.  :)