{Baby Boy} Room Updates

Little Man's room is almost finished! Excuse the odd colors of the wall, I swear it's a pretty gray that looks the closest to the last photo. Lighting and timing have not been my friends lately (mainly the time issue, as I'm back to working full time). 

So while this room was Lily's, I used a part of an old crib and spray painted it a dark metallic gray (almost oil rubbed bronze) and used it to hang things on for her. She loved it but we decided not to use it on her big girl room. We're still working on organization in there and this may switch over to a different wall... we'll have to wait and see! For now it's empty but I'm thinking it'll be a great place to show off (and save!) all those doctor's cards with height and weight updates, among other little pieces of fun. The hats are for the two teams we cheer on - St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals. The clothes pins are ones I dyed blue and green (we have pink and purple too but saved those for Miss Lily). 

Here's Lily showing off the toy she picked out for her "Bubby." She has a pink hippo that does the same thing (plays music) so she thought he needed one too. 

Here's the bear in the bed. She had to lay the blue striped blanket out, like she was "tucking baby to sleep." 

This shot of the gray is the truest to life color. We painted all the trim bright white to match the rest of the house (well, most of it!) and here's a shot of some of the clothes I've been buying him.... I say he's ready for a little bit (although you can never have too many baby clothes due to babies being babies!). The stuff on top of the shelf are all things we had with Lily - bags holding the baby monitor and baby diapers, body/health stuff (lotion, etc), a humidifier, etc. 

The shelf in the closet is from Target and we had it in there with Lily too. It now holds extra wipes, blankets, his socks, and small toys. We're slowly getting ready!

A full tour will come once we get a few more pieces. My parents are buying me a leather chair and have an old antique school map (a pull down kind!) that I'll be putting some where. Lily made him some artwork so at some point, I'll get it all ready. Two months from today and he should be there! 

{Lily's Garden} Sunflowers

Most of the flowers in the garden are coming to an end (the crazy heat isn't helping) but these volunteer sunflowers are just starting to pop. They are volunteers from the bird seed and I just let them grow. The rest of the garden is not picture worthy right now but that's ok. I'm hoping to edge the two new beds at some point this fall but who knows. Baby Boy is coming in 9 weeks and that'll change everything! 

{Baby Boy} Nursery



Last weekend we finished enough of the painting (all but the door) of our Little Man's nursery. As you may know, it used to be Lily's room before we switched her to our former junk room (that once was our bedroom during the upstairs remodel and had sat unused for a long time). This room still needs love and attention, not to mention proper photos, but it is looking nice!


I still need to hang curtains (but we have them), add the rug, move in the changing table/dresser (it's a giant beast), add artwork, possibly move in one of our shelving units or get something else and I'd love a brown leather chair. We have a rocker but its not that comfy. 

The crib is installed and ready, we ordered and received our new double stroller (room for Lily too), and have washed and put away all the clothes I've been buying/hoarding for him. Lily is excited and so are we! 


{40 Before 40} Update

I haven't updated my 40 Before 40 in a long time!

4 {get pregnant and have a baby} is about to happen... 11 more weeks!

5-11 {artsy stuff} ... haha... haven't even begun to deal with this stuff! It's a nice dream for later...

12 & 13 {jewelry holders} are currently half finished. Both need another coat of paint (or two) and hung up. More to come soon! Earring holder display can be seen here

16 - {organize crafts} done, need final post. You can see the beginning of the chaos here. There is still a little more to do as I want shelves lining an entire wall in my office (it's slanted and less than 4 feet tall, so only a few but it'll be great to have done!)

17 - {veggie garden} this was done last year and a complete joke this year. We were a tad busy. Maybe next year!

28 - {Grimm's fairy tales} I'm going to mark it done. I read the majority of them and all of the major stories that Disney turned into princess fairy tales.

38 - {making our house a home} one room completely done (minus the flooring that all needs refinished)... so it's getting closer! 

{Lily Lately} Randoms

Happy Friday everyone! Here's to hoping that I can get some good photos of our newly completed sidewalk, Lily's bedroom and the start of Little Man's room this weekend!

We went to Hyvee one day for lunch (we live around 25 minutes from the nearest one and happened to be near it) and Lily knew instantly what she wanted for lunch. "Chicken bone and fruit!" She started loving chicken legs (aka chicken bone) a few months ago so we got her two (she only ate one though) and a one trip salad bar, loaded up with fruit and a little bit of cheese (which she didn't eat either). She is a fruit loving girl and I love it! I shared some of her fruit so she didn't eat it all, but she can definitely put away her fair share! Check this post out if you don't believe me.


And then one night, I looked over and here are my two loves on their iPads (ok so Lily is on mine, she does not have her own!). Her favorite app? Mr. Potato Head because he makes funny noises and falls over.

Here's Miss Lily with our 10 year old cat, Taz. Many people don't know about Taz because she hides whenever company is over. She is actually now coming out more, letting people (like our house sitters and my parents) pet her on occasion. Don't think about picking her up though, she still hates that. I think it may have something to do with how she is most likely completely blind in one eye from the accident she had as a kitten (right before I "adopted" her, aka stole her off the streets). We've taught Lily not to bother her but Lily was so excited (as excited as she gets about cats, she's not a huge animal person) that Taz was close to her and asked if she could pet her. This is huge for Taz! 

And then there's another animal story. I came home from work to let the dogs out our back porch and found this little guy in one of our coolers. Doug had found him on his way home and we had been talking about how Lily should see a turtle up close some day. She got her chance today and it hissed at her. I seriously didn't think regular turtles hissed, but this guy did! We let him go in her garden, hoping he'd stay around but he was gone when we went out later to look for him (her?). I was kind of hoping he'd stay around in her flower garden but no such luck. She seemed a little disappointed when we couldn't find the turtle but we talked about how "he's at home with his family now." 

{Lily's Garden} Fence

As one of our many to do lists this summer, adding a fence to Lily's Garden kept coming up. For awhile I had other plans but was talked out of them for a few reasons (time, cost, etc.) but mainly it came down to looks. While at one of our many trips to Lowe's this summer, we found a no dig fence panel that I liked, Doug liked, and it fit our budget. Plus it was a no-dig fence, meaning it was seriously easy and all you do is push it into the ground and put the pole through 4 holes (two for each panel). Doug and I put 8 panels up super quick one day and ended where you see it below... where the newest bed in Lily's Garden ended. We've since dug a small trench for the brick row to continue (it'll go the length of the garden) but haven't done it yet. I did finish buying the rest of the panels (we were a few short) and additional poles. 

The below shot was taken as soon as it was done and before I realized how sad my potato vine looked. A good watering and some rain over the past couple days have perked that baby right back up! The smaller container holds Lily's cacti she picked out at the beginning of the summer. They, obviously, are loving the heat. 

This is one of my favorite shots. It's of the new bed I made last month and shows how well the flowers are doing. There was a few days in there that made me wonder if I didn't water them enough (it's been known to happen!), but they've perked right back up! I'm not so sure about the pink coneflowers to their left though, but they are still new so we'll see. I think they'll be ok. I do need to go pick some weeds now that I analyze this photo. And our "remove all grass and replace with rocks" to do will most likely not happen this year, but who knows. 

{Baby Boy} New Room Plans

Ahh, plans... sometimes they just don't happen. You know what I mean? Baby Boy's room is just that. Plans that didn't happen due to scheduling, time and money. Mainly the first two, but a little bit of money too.
We had plans of making a room similar to his sister's new room and looking like this...

But with dark wood floors and furniture, not white.

BUT...

New plans! We're going to keep everything as is now that the room is empty and just paint the walls. The paint was bought last night and I am ready to paint another room (ok, not really, but at least there's not that much cutting in!). It's going to go be gray with accents of navy (which we will use in the future for the walls), teal, and white to name a few. Although I wasn't planning on it, a few touches of red will show up too.

I'll keep you updated as we change the room once again, but before you leave, check out the before photos from when we toured the home....

Blue walls, baby poop brown trim and a stencil. There was some weird draped fabric (seriously, that was it, not even hemmed) for a "window treatment" that I took down almost as fast as some of the other stuff in this house.
  
  
We painted it a bright green (it was brighter in person) and an offwhite trim. This was before I made all the trim in my house go white as I continued working on the rooms. This was left over paint from my dad (meaning free) and we were dirt broke at this time in our life. We also added crown moulding which I love.


The bi-fold doors are now off, exposing everything in the closets (there are two). I thought about curtains but never got around to it with Lily so we will see what happens with Baby Boy. Once the actual remodel happens, some closet configurations will be occuring, combining them into one large closet. In the above photo, directly to the left of the closet is a closet in the adjoining room that we may take over for this room and then swap it out with the closet on the right of the door above. I'll keep you updated if that decision sticks.

{Monthly Recap} Summer

I'm jumping on the Recap bandwagon and posting everything we've done this summer. I know most do it by month but since this is my first post, I figured I'd sum up everything we've done since school let out. Some projects haven't had their final posts (work duty calls) but I promise I'll get to them soon. With that said, we have done a lot this summer and I thought I'd do a post over everything we accomplished.
Right at the beginning of summer (I actually had to take a half day on the last work day, missing the all staff breakfast) to find out that we are having a BOY!

Doug's parents, his sister and Will came to celebrate Lily's birthday.

We celebrated with a family party for Miss Lily's 4th Birthday!

We tackled Lily's Big Girl Room Remodel (more to come as it's done!) but let's remember what it looked like before...

I took out a bajillion staples from the drop ceiling....


And during...

Her room got two new windows...

A lot of new insulation...

And with new insulation, comes new drywall...



 And so much more that I need to write about!

The rest of the house saw some improvements too! Let's not forget about the deck...
 
A final post over the entire deck will happen soon too.

Then there's the project we hired out - our new sidewalks and part of a new driveway (a final post to come on that too).

It's completely done, don't let the picture fool you. But before we got out there to clean it up, a major downpour happened and now it's solid mud. I do really enjoy our short cut from our front porch to our driveway though and will love it when the ground is covered in snow and I'm wrestling a 4 year old and newborn.

We also spent the summer doing fun things!

We took Lily fishing at Bass Pro where she caught TWO fish!

So this doesn't fall into the fun category but she ended up fine (although the red spot on her forehead is still there), but Lily fell at daycare and I rushed her to the doc to see if she had a concussion (she did not, thankfully!).

Lily showed everyone that eating a handful of berries is the only way to do it!

I created a new flower bed in Lily's Garden and edged the whole thing with our recycled bricks.

We went to my dad's uncle's farm for July 4th, celebrating with lots of cousins and great food.

We got to see this little guy's face in 3D and learn that he is perfectly healthy and normal and wonderful.

We enjoyed the local county fair and Lily made a new friend, becoming fearless and oh so much fun to watch on all the rides.

We took our annual trip to the Lake with my parents on their boat.

I finally got around to taking Lily's photos for her 4 year old photo shoot.

Doug's closet finally got storage solutions in the form of shelving, containers, and a rod to hang clothes on.

And I got to see how big Little Man was again and to see his chubby cheeks again. I can't wait kiss him!  

I've also showed off some May flowers, plans for Baby Boy's new room (that got put on hold, more info to come in a future post but it'll happen some day!), I showed off Lily's Garden in a June tour, I wrote about missing my brother on his birthday, and now that summer is almost over and work is about to start up again, we're about to tackle painting Little Man's room so we can move the furniture into it, clean up our house and prepare for another busy school year!




{Curb Appeal} Sidewalk

The concrete is almost completely finished! We now have this cute little "circle" (technically a rectangle like shown below) that I can envision Lily, and our future Little Man once he's out and old enough, riding around with their bikes. Lily loves to ride her bike up and down the street on the sidewalk but turning around is hard, so this will be a nice learning spot for her. 

The view below is from our front porch, looking toward the driveway. The lighter concrete is the dry concrete and the darker concrete, towards the top right, is the wet concrete. They did a great job of connecting our driveway to the driveway entrance from the street (whatever that's called) because they didn't redo that and it was raised some. 



Again, it's looking from our front porch but more towards the front yard and large rock than the driveway. I have plans for a small planted flower garden around the foundation stone. It'll involve some bricks (gotta use up that pile!) and some coneflowers and maybe some other stuff. Annuals maybe? Who knows! 

For those curious, there's a reason why it's not connected yet. He has that and our final stair (to our porch) to finish and he didn't want to be charged a small load fee (that's a big chunk of money!), so he will finish it once we gets our neighbor's sidewalk poured. Now that our neighbor is doing her's, everyone on our side of the block has had it done. It makes for a nice ride for Lily! 

Not sure why it's sideways, but that's where the step will be. It's formed up and ready to go soon! 

{Curb Appeal} Concrete

There is something to say about hiring out a job to professionals. Doug, my dad, myself, and others can easily help us with many projects (as seen with our upstairs remodel, Lily's big girl room remodel, and our back deck to name a few) but to be able to leave a large job to others is just nice. If we were working at our jobs (we're off for the summer), this would be even nicer as we could come home from work and see the progress. But we've been working away in Lily's room and random other jobs (Doug's been tackling the weeds and overgrown trees this week while the weather was cooler). 

So anyway... enough chit chat, let's get to the photos...

See the semi-before photos here.

Here's our driveway. They cut it back because it was in horrible shape. This is a midway done shot, as they hadn't poured the city sidewalk yet.

We had them connect our main sidewalk to the driveway with another sidewalk. This makes going from our cars to our house so much easier as there wasn't a nice walkway before and walking through wet grass (or a bunch of snow) made it hard. OK, first world problems I know, but I'm imagining this in a few months with a 4 1/2 year old and a newborn on a cold day. 

Looking toward the street.

Our front yard, minus the giant pile of dirt. They smoothed it all out and will seed it soon. We have high hopes for this area and it'll include two blueberry bushes and possibly more garden spots. 

A shot towards the house and what will all be part of Lily's Garden soon.

My Instagram photo..follow me at thebrickbungalow

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