Kara's Korner

Kalia's Playroom

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Most of you guys have seen this picture of my formal living room :

Blah.

We intended to make this a game room, and were holding onto our old furniture from our old house turned rental property in case we needed to stage the house to re-rent it. One day I got over it and decided that was silly, and called these guys to come get all this furniture that Chris and I both didn't like anymore.

And did a happy happy joy joy dance as they hauled away all of our unwanted furniture to give to someone who really could use it. Win win!

I wanted a space for Kalia and her growing toys that wasn't just her nursery.

A space for us to play.

A space to contain the mess. Easily. I'm kind of a mess too, so containment is key in our house.

I wanted a space that will grow with Kalia, and that her friends can come over and hang out in that's safe and fun. I wanted a space free from the TV (we don't let Kalia watch it yet), where we can be creative, loud, and play as hard as we want.

A playroom. To just be a kid in without any of the adult stuff getting in the way. It had to be eye-appeasing because it's the very first thing you see when you walk into our house.

It's still a huge work in progress, but here's where that room, our old formal living room that we rarely used, and now Kalia's playroom stands today :

For the most part, we worked with what we had. We moved the extra daybed from the daybed room (which is now just a sewing machine room) out into here. Eventually we'll want a couch and perhaps storage shelves or something that goes vertical along that wall, but for now, the daybed provides seating and the three baskets are great for storage.

Kalia's got a lot of generous grandparents and aunts and uncles - and Christmas already happened, so she has lots and lots of toys. She plays with all of them in here though, she really does love them! We talk about what colors they are, read her books, dance to her music things, and make believe with her dolls in here.

Well, she really just throws her dolls around and we build with blocks and play with trucks and trains too. She's a tough little girl already!

I have three favorite things that I've bought for this room.

This lamp from PB Kids. It was on sale for 50% off, then free shipping, then they sent me a 15% off promo code, and I had to get it for her. It's cute, practical, and unique. I love it.

These stools and table are a lot of fun to beat on and sit at. Kalia's just starting to want to get up here and sit with me. I'm working on coloring with her on paper, which is fun to do up here. The best thing about these tables and chairs are that they clean up easily, and are that material that is water proof as well. These might find their way out to the pool deck one day. They're from Serena and Lilly. I got them when they had their 50% off their sale priced items. Sale on top of sale, that's my way to shop!

And lastly, I have out two of these baskets. I have a third, which I'm guessing we'll bring out after her birthday party. They are amazing for just tossing her toys in and everything being clean in no time. They're huge, and Kalia actually climbs in the one I have for stuffed dolls and plays around in there. They're from One Kings Lane and the brand is Colonial Mills. They're the large 24" ones. I've seen them on sale a few times through them. If you've never heard of One Kings Lane, or aren't a member yet, if you use this link to sign up, you'll get $15. As a full disclosure, if/when you make your first purchase, so will I :-).

I don't love the empty walls, but they'll get stuff on them eventually. We're working on another project in there this week too, so stay tuned for another update on Kalia's playroom shortly.

So what do you guys think of it? I jokingly call it Kalia's prison yard. I don't love the look of baby gates everywhere, but Kalia's is into everything, so they're absolutely necessary!

Hope everyone's having a great week so far!

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Kalia's 1st Birthday Party : Invites

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:00:00 +0000

I have no idea where the last year went. Zero, zip, nada. I can't believe in a few short weeks, Kalia will already be a year old. Sigh...

I'm slightly obsessed with taking pictures of Kalia. Before she got mobile, if she was throwing a fit, I could whip out my camera and say "smile", and she'd oblige. She'd stop whatever cry fest she was having, and smile for the camera. I don't exactly know how you train your baby to do that, I just chalk it up to be obsessed with taking pictures of her. She's a pretty smiley baby anyways, so I guess that helps. Err...toddler...sigh...

For Kalia's 1st birthday invitations, I wanted to incorporate my obsession with her cuteness into the invites, but I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for them. So I made them myself :

Sorry for blurring out our home info - sometimes my life is like a fishbowl on here as is :-), which probably scares most of you away from wanting to show up unannounced, but I do have one darn cute kiddo, so ya just never know!

I just took pictures from every month of Kalia's life so far, starting with month 0 and ending with month 11. I resized them down to 1.05" High by 1.57" wide. I messed around with the sizing of the images until I got 6 across that would fit in a standard 4 1/8" x 9 1/2" envelope, which I already had a ton of on hand. I fit two of these on one sheet of thick cardstock 8 1/2" x 11" paper.

For anyone interested in creating the same sort of invite, my margins were : left and right : 0.5", top : 0.38", and bottom 0.13".

I've got so many decoration ideas floating around in my head. I have no idea how many I'll actually manage to get done, but I'll be sure to share what I do with you guys!

So what do you guys think of her invites? Do you guys DIY invites or order them out? I'm not gonna lie, figuring out the pictures and sizes took a bit more time than I thought it would, but it just cost me postage and ink to send out. With this down to one income ordeal, every penny counts!

Hope everyone had a great weekend. Happy Monday!

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Wanna Be Sew-er

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:11:00 +0000

Do you ever come up with an idea in your head that you know is a bad one, but you just can't let go of it? Yeah, happens to me all of the time. I dream about my projects...literally, I'll wake up and jot down a sketch of some project or another that I want to do. I'm weird, I know.

Let me start this post by saying I can't sew. I can't bake, I can't sew, and Chris taught me how to iron. I sound like a great catch, huh? At least I have this blog to show that I can do a lot of things. Well, it at least shows that I'm stubborn and ambitious enough to try almost anything.

And really, even though I can't do those things, it doesn't stop me from trying. I just fail...again, and again, and again. And then I try again thinking that maybe I've gotten better. Which I haven't...

Anyways, there's a project-ish in here. My newest niece, and the first on Chris's side, was coming over for the weekend. She's 6 1/2 months younger than Kalia, so we thought it'd be cute to take pictures of them with matching outfits on.

Did I mention that I officially have a toddler now? Kalia started walking about 3 weeks ago. So taking pictures of a 4 month old and an active toddler who either wants to point out to her cousin where her eyes and ears are (by stabbing them or pulling them off) or play patty cake on the top of her head with her probably challenging enough. But the night before they were scheduled to arrive, I decided I wanted to make them matching dresses.

I can't sew.

Oh, and I refuse to follow patterns when I do attempt to sew. They use big words that I don't know what means, and I'm too impatient and give up by the time I've gotten to step 3, so I just don't use them. Which is probably a huge reason why I can't sew (see my failed pillow attempts here - and yes, Kalia's pillows still look like that. I don't think I'd do much better the next go round, so they're staying that way!).

But I have fabric that I really like and I wanted to make the girls cute dresses.

So I tried. I took one of Kalia's dresses and added some length because they're always too short on her, and then made a smaller size. I sewed the neck together once and the skirt part of the dress together once. I don't have a seam ripper either, so I just started over again.

After a few hours, I came up with these dresses :

Cute, right? I was so so so proud of these. Because I can't sew...and I did, and I thought they looked sort of awesome, even though I didn't line them to finish them. Meaning there is no hem or anything like that all the way around. I mean, why do that if I had no idea if they were even going to work?!

Unfortunately I had to take them off of the hangers and put them on the girls. Kalia's cousins dress fit Kalia, which means I obviously made them huge. But I can't sew and there's no way I was attempting some sort of zipper or buttons or any of those other fancy things, so I just made them a little bit big. I probably made an 18 month old size and a 4T size. For an almost 11 month old and a 4 1/2 month old. I'm a genius. We took some bobby pins and pinned up the straps and that pretty much fixed the problem. 'Cept Kalia wouldn't stay still, so her bobby pins kept coming out.

Daddy attempting to put back in Kalia's bobby pins.

And then we waited until the girls were nice and tired and hungry and stuck them outside in the heat and told them to smile.

At least Kalia's cousin listened. This was actually round two of pictures, but round one with the dresses. Kalia tried to beat up her cousin a little too much on round one, so we had the Daddy's stand in for this go round.

Afterwards, I attempted to get some shots of Kalia with her dress on. She doesn't really sit still for very long, so it was sort of impossible.

front

back with the straps pinned

Kalia : "peace on out Mommy and Daddy, this sitting still for photos stuff is for the birds!"

Oh well, if nothing else I tried. They looked like they'd be successful on the hangers, right??

The funny part about it is that I already have an idea for something else to make. With my non-sewing skills. What is wrong with me??

I think it's because if you tell me I can't do something, I'll try to prove you wrong. So apparently I'm trying to prove myself wrong. I'm failing. Does that mean I'm wrong or I'm right when I say I can't sew?

Hope you guys are having a wonderful day!

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Trunk Redo

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:49:00 +0000

Hope all of you Mom's out there had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday! It was my first with Kalia, which of course made a special day even more special. Kalia helped her Daddy and her furry brother cook and clean for me yesterday and gave me a nice break!

We took a nice bike ride down to our Y and played on their play ground too. Kalia makes it okay for me to be a little kid at those places and not look like a complete weirdo anymore!

It was a great and special day. Motherhood is the most amazing adventure, and I wouldn't change anything for the world. Okay, enough mushiness, onto the project part of the post!

My parents gave me this old beat up trunk when I was pregnant with Kalia :

Apparently they thought that I had a ton of free time on my hands between growing a baby and literally building Kalia's nursery, so they thought they'd give me something to do. Actually, my Dad made a comment about knowing I had zero free time to work on it, but he thought I'd like it anyways. He was right. But it needed a lot of work!

First up, we took off that gross top. I'm pretty sure that thing has been on there for at least 20 years, and with us kids, it had seen much better days!

Then because the laminate top layer was chipping, we attempted to peel / scrape it off with a paint scrapper.

We did as best we could with that, and eventually just sanded it down until it was smooth. The problem with what was left was that it was glued on, so we left ding marks on it where we tried to get it off. I decided we weren't stripping the whole thing at that point, and just went the sanding method. Whatever came off easily, we scraped off, and if it was stuck, it just got sanded down.

When we were done, we were left with this :

I wood filled and did a white stain on one side to test it out. I knew this was a bit brighter than we really wanted, so I went back and added a colored stain on top of the white stain. I believe this is called pickeling, but I'm not positive.

We still had to do something about that top too. We took batting, folded it over itself to give it more cushion, and stapled it onto the top.

And then went around and stapled the fabric on, folding the corners like you would a present.

After it was all said and done, here's the trunk in its new home, our bedroom.

A few detail shots :

And one last one of my cutie showing her approval while talking on the phone to her Daddy. She's too young for a cell phone, I know!!

So what do you guys think? Are you a fan of the pickeling effect, or would something a little bit cleaner have suited your style better? For me, I thought I needed to add to the character of the piece by updating it, but not trying to make it look too new. I'll show how this ties in with our Master Bedroom before too long!

Happy Monday!

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You Light My World

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:28:00 +0000

Moving along in finishing up our outside projects, we got our pendant for our entry way and installed it this week. Yay for light!

When we were looking for pendants we wanted something unique that wasn't too over the top, especially in the price arena. I saw some of the most amazing outdoor lights, but when it comes down to it, we just weren't willing to spend the big bucks on something that hangs outside. It's crazy how expensive those things are!

And then the latest Pottery Barn magazine showed up, and it had their Moroccan Pendant, and I was sold! They had just sent me a 15% off coupon for PBKids, so I called and asked if they'd apply to to a PB order. The lady said no, but that she could give me 10% off, and they were running a free shipping promo too...score! Love it when everything works out like that!

First up, we wanted to make sure everything worked before installing it. Of course, being Kara and Chris, we had a casualty.

Actually, after Chris dropped the light bulb and it shattered into a million pieces, he said "Call me TJ". My Dad's name is Tom, and TJ stands for Tom Junior around these parts. I can say I come by my clumsiness (and also knack for DIYing house projects to be fair) from my Dad. Apparently spending a weekend with him rubbed off on Chris. Love you Dad!! :-)

The pendant came with a 12 foot long cord. Where in the world do you use a 12 foot long cord to hang a pendant? It looked like a tether ball instead of a pendant!

We took out the chain links and then wrapped the wires up in the top of the ceiling. Our 8 foot ladder wasn't quite tall enough to reach though, so we did the completely safe thing and put concrete pavers up underneath the ladder to elevate it some.

I don't recommend doing this for anyone else. It's definitely not safe. I like my life, apparently Chris goes back and forth on his :-).

When it was all said and done, we got exactly what we were looking for. I love the way the light plays off the cover of the pendant.

It reflects perfectly on our blue ceiling, and we've gotten tons of compliments by neighbors already.

Chris initially thought it was too small, but most pendants are pretty small. We got the 12 inch one instead of the 8 inch one. What do you think? Do you like the new look of it? It's much better than the gaping hole or rusted goldish thing that was there before, that's for sure!

Next up for the 'finishing it off' task in the front is getting that fountain re-painted!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! We've got family in town through next weekend, so postings will probably be scarce next week. Happy Friday!!

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Goodbye Dirt Patch, Hello Sod!

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:43:00 +0000

We finally have grass in our backyard!! Woot!

We've been waiting to run into Ahmed Hassan of Yard Crashers at our local Home Improvement stores that we frequently visit, but finally decided after three years, that's probably just not going to happen. Now that Kalia is here, and her and I love spending time outdoors, that got moved to the top of the to-do list for this summer. We decided to section out the project because our backyard is pretty big. I didn't get a before picture, but our backyard is pretty much all the same. This is the section that we're waiting to redo. Kodi wanted to say hi and he missed you guys too! Do you see all of the weeds and dead sections? Ugh!

First up Chris sprayed round up all over the section we decided to sod to kill all of the existing weeds and little bit of grass that was there. After we let that sit for the better part of a week, I took the metal rake out there and raked and raked and raked during Kalia's naptimes. I got about 80% done with it all before Chris came out after work one day to help me out. He said he didn't know how I didn't make him rent a plow to pull it all up. It was such hard back breaking work. It was actually the hardest part though, so thankfully, everything got easier from there.

I might have told Chris that the success of our marriage depending on nightly massages while all of this was going on. :-)

Chris rented a tiller from Home Depot and tilled up the dirt and few remaining stubborn areas of dead grass/weeds that we couldn't get to come up.

That part was actually easier than I thought it would be. We rented it for 4 hours, and had it back in plenty of time. The only problem with the tiller was that he hit the sprinkler pipe in a few places and had to patch some holes. But after he patched that up, he laid fertilizer, weed killer, and bug killer on our fresh dirt to give the sod a good base to stick to. Next up, we were ready for sod!

We had the sod guys deliver three pallets of sod on Tuesday of last week. They didn't show up until after 6, so we didn't get to start on laying the sod until 730 - after we fed Kalia, ate dinner, and put her down for the night.

Chris removed the fence panels and had the delivery truck just take the sod straight to where we were laying it. My back loves that man! So smart!

I have no idea how most people do this, but when we get to an edge or around a tree, we our big tree pruners to cut the sod.

And then we just push it down. So simple!

We managed to get two pallets laid before it got too dark and we had to call it quits. Chris rigged our dolly with a piece of plywood across the bottom and we loaded up all of the sod onto the dolly, rolled that over to where we were laying, and just emptied from there. Again, my back loves that man! Here's what it looked like before we went to bed (and a picture of Chris's dolly rig):

On Wednesday morning we got up and laid the last pallet of sod before Chris hurried off to work. Kalia woke up well before the sun rose that day, which was only good because it meant she went back down for her first nap as the sun was rising. Let me tell ya though, we were not so chipper laying down that 3rd pallet as we were for the first two! But man, is insta-lawn (that's what I call pallets of sod vs. seeding or plugging!) so nice!

After we got the third pallet laid, we realized that we overkilled / underestimated how much sod we'd need. I told Chris I wanted to leave a small dirt border around the sod so that we could keep the new stuff away from the weeds and such, but this was a little bit much. Especially with a Kodi and a Kalia!

So Chris headed down to the sod place (they'll only deliver 2 + pallets for free) and had them put 500 sq feet of sod into his truck. That thing was weighed down!

After laying that the night before we had to leave for my sisters wedding, we decided that the next big section of the yard isn't getting done until the Fall. We're actually going to put another 1/2 pallet back here, because we still have more dirt than we'd like with Kodi and Kalia. We need to resod the sidewalk part of our front yard anyways, so we'll just over load Chris's truck and do them both at the same time shortly.

After all our hard work, here's what our new back yard looks like today :

So much nicer!! Kalia and I have already thoroughly enjoyed it this week too. We borrowed one of those big sprinkler things to get a patch wet that looked like the sprinklers weren't hitting, and her and I had a grand 'ol time running through the sprinklers. Ahhh, to be a kid again. Life is good!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far!

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Staining the Fence

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:30:00 +0000

Wanna know a great way to lose an extra few pounds and your mind at the same time?? No? No one else wants to go crazy too? Well, it's a rhetorical question, so I'm gonna tell ya anyways!

Decide the afternoon before one of your best friends is coming in town with her 9 week old baby to restain your entire 400 linear foot fence. All while the house is a disaster. I at least started on it while Kalia was napping, and she thankfully took a two hour nap before waking up! Chris was on baby duty while I finished up.

We're re-sodding the back yard (post soon!), which is one of those projects where in order to do that correctly, you have to get other things done. If anyone has ever stained a fence, you know that the stain kills anything and everything around it. So I wanted to stain before we re-sodded. So at 3:30 on a Sunday afternoon, I started.

Here's what the fence looked like previously :

We installed it when we first moved in...literally that first week. I don't know why we thought that would be a good task to take on ourselves, but it's one of the few things I wouldn't do again. Building an entire fence with two people while you're moving is quite a bit of work! I did one coat of stain on it a few weeks after we built it, and never got around to doing the second coat. I actually started staining using a paint brush, and only made it about 12 ft before Chris came home with a spray gun and let me know that was absolutely ridiculous.

The sprayer is so so much quicker and nicer, but it's a pain to clean. We've got a system that works for us -I stain the fence, Chris cleans the sprayer. My legs were sore sore sore from staining this. In order to keep your stain from streaking, you have to do nice and even coats, which means you need to go up and down the fence panel with your sprayer. I think I did about 1000 squats.

But hey, my sisters wedding was yesterday, and I've been trying to get back into pre-Kalia shape for it! I get my workouts where I can these days!

The work was definitely worth it...here's what the fence looks like now :

Chris snapped up a few action shots of me moving my stain. As always, Kodi was helping!

Chris : "smile!!" Me : "Seriously?!?!"

And here's a good one to show you a side by side comparison of before and after with what a huge difference the new stain makes!

I promise it'll look so much better when the sod is actually laid instead of that huge dirt patch that's in the back. Stay tuned for a post on that! We do have one area of grass that's decent in the back, so here's what our nicely stained fence will look like once we get finished installing the sod :

We're actually on a big kick to get a lot of the exterior projects to the house while it's not too terribly hot out. Anyone that lives in Florida knows that doing a ton of exterior house projects in the middle of the summer can be brutal!

Anyone else getting exterior projects done while the weather is still nice, and not too hot? I have a feeling the hot summer months are going to slip up on us before we know it!

Happy Monday everyone!

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Follow up Friday : Kalia's Bookshelves

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:30:00 +0000

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep up with this idea of follow up Friday, but I get a lot of questions and emails on the same posts, so I'm going to attempt to answer them all at once here.

A lot of you guys became readers because of all of our hard work with Kalia's nursery, and especially her bookshelves. They are honestly one of my favorite things in her nursery, and I absolutely love everything that we did in there, so that says a lot!

Without further ado, answers to some of your most burning questions...errr...this is a family blog, promise!

How far apart did you space the bookshelves?

They are 13.5 inches from the bottom of one shelf to the bottom of the next. I took the largest book we had (12 inches) and added 1.5 inches for some head room. I didn't want there to be a lot of extra space. I like the look of the bookshelves completely filled.

What length are the book shelves?

5 feet long.

What about climbing? That would never work in my house, I have too active of children!

Kalia's climbing, and has been for a little while. She's just now starting to understand the word "no". We can pull with all of our might on those bookshelves, and they don't budge. We screwed them into the studs in the wall. Each shelf has two screws. After we screwed them in, I covered the hole with caulk, lightly sanded it, added another coat of white on top of the installed bookshelf, and another top coat of poly. We consider those shelves built-ins. If we ever leave the house, they stay with it.

What size screws did you use?

I'm actually not 100% positive on this answer, but I can give you a minimum that you should use. You need to use screws that are long enough to get through the shelf (3/4"), the drywall (1/2"), and into the stud (1/2"), so I would go with at least a 2 1/2 inch screw. I think we used 3" ones.

How far from the wall are the start of the bookshelves?

~ 2 inches. Most walls are not straight though, so make sure you use a laser level and mark points along the way. That way they all line up with each other, even if they vary slightly from the distance off the wall. We started the bottom one 2 inches off from the wall, and did the laser level from there.

As for how Kalia likes them, she loves them as well. She pulls off the books that she wants to look at, flips through them, then says "all done" and we clap our hands when we put them back on the shelf. She's just starting to learn how to put things back. Even when she leaves books on the floor, it takes a maximum of three minutes to put them back on the shelf. As any mother knows, most babies leave a wake of destruction wherever they go, so whether it's in her room or in her playroom (post on that soon!), it's all the same to me!

Do you see the blue cushions poking out from the corner above? Here's a closer look :

I added floor cushions that used to live in my living room for a little nook for Kalia. I snapped a few pictures of her 'reading' on different days. Such a big girl already! Happy baby = happy Momma!

Because Kalia hasn't learned how to "respect paper" yet, we have all of her hard, edible books on the bottom two shelves. She can only reach those, so those are her safe books that are pretty indestructible. The shelves above that are for books that we read to her either early in the morning, before nap times, or before bedtime. She honestly doesn't have much patience for long books other than her wind down time.

Are there any other questions on her bookshelves that I left out? Feel free to ask, and I'll update the list above with answers!

Happy Friday everyone, hope you guys have a great weekend!

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Painting the House Part 3 : The Front

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:34:00 +0000

I would love to have titled this Painting the House Part 3 : The End, but we still haven't finished painting. We just haven't finished the final side that is pretty close to our neighbors house. You can barely see it when you turn the corner, and painting with a new baby is quite challenging.

When we first moved into this house (April of '09), I wasn't blogging. I don't have a great before picture of where we started, but I did find the listing agents picture from when we bought the house. This picture is actually a lot nicer than what we really moved into. After we went under contract, they stopped watering the yard or pulling the weeds, so everything that was supposed to be green was dead, and everything that was supposed to be dead (weeds) were over grown.
We installed a 400 linear foot fence around our yard that very first week we moved in, and very shortly after that did some landscaping to the front, to wind up with this :

The new landscaping made our front yard feel so much bigger and less cluttered. The paint color wasn't bad, but it kind of felt like a dull concrete color, and I knew we could brighten it up. It also wasn't the best paint job - you could tell they only did one coat instead of two. And the previous color that they covered up was pink. Just like the pool deck before we redid it. I think one of the previous owners thought she lived in a Barbie house. ("I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world" just got stuck in my head!)

Anywho, painting this big of a house with Kalia was a bit of a challenge, but we still managed to get it done. It just took a little bit longer than most things. We also had a friend come over and help (thanks Chris!), which was amazing. Chris did most of the big stuff, and I did most of the trimming during Kalia's naptimes. If she woke up while we were painting, she happily laid under those palm trees and kicked around.

Thank goodness we tackled painting the front before she got mobile...no way would she do that now!

And after so much work, here's what the front of our house looks like today :

Ignore the spray paint and the not so healthy grass. Of course when I went to go take pictures of this, the cable company had to do work right across the front of our home. I wasn't waiting to take pictures again!

From the landscaping, to the new doors, house numbers, lighting, and finally the paint, we're both really proud of how much work we've done, and how much better it looks!

Oh, and did you notice the blue ceiling in the entryway? We really love the blue ceiling that we painted out on the pool deck when we started this whole house painting project forever ago, and decided to carry it through to the front. And yes, the pendant is missing. We finally found one that we both really like and won't break the bank this week, so I just need to order it. Don't worry though, I'll be sure to update you guys when it comes in and we install it!

Minus the pendant, the one remaining thing out here that drives me bonkers is that fountain. It is getting redone, hopefully sooner rather than later!

For those of you curious about the details, we used Behr's Exterior Paint in Satin. The house color is Sandstone Cove, the trim is just their basic Ultra White, the garage doors are Harvest Brown, and the ceiling is Tide Pools. Home Depot runs promotions on a regular basis of $20 off the big 5 gallon buckets, so we snagged up enough paint to do the entire house on one of those sales.

So what do you think of our new bright exterior? So much work, but so worth it!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far - Happy Wednesday!

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Painting the House Part 2 : Lighting

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:45:00 +0000

First off, thank you guys so much for your kind words about Kalia and my previous post. It's so nice to be welcomed back into the blogging world with open arms! Your kind words really do mean the world to me.

As promised, here's a project post!

When we got to the front of repainting the house, we knew we needed to do something about the sconces. (As a side note, I had to google that to not call them scones. Apparently my subconscious is really craving a pastry right now!) They were the original builder grade ones and had paint chips and rust all over them. In order to spray paint them, I knew we'd have to take all four of them completely apart, which I was definitely dreading. So we did some searching for new ones to buy, and the cheapest ones that I only sort of liked were $50/piece. Well, for $200, I could deal with the hassle and work with what we already had. It's funny how the price savings can be a huge motivator!

Here's what we started off with :

Look at all that rust!!

We carefully took apart all four lights, sanded down the chipped paint parts, and wound up with about a million pieces to be spray painted. The picture below is only close to half of everything that needed to be spray painted.

Because of all of the rust, and because we live in Florida where exterior things get pretty beat up on, I went ahead and sprayed these with both a primer and then the actual color, which was a paint and primer in one. I have no desire to ever take these lights apart again to redo this project! Here's what I used :

I also think the primer is cheaper than the paint color, and I only needed two light coats of the actual oil rubbed bronze. There was a garage sale in our neighborhood when I was working on these, and we had several people stop by asking if the lights were for sale. Too funny! We've had numerous neighbors compliment us on our new lights too, and they're shocked to find out that we spray painted them.

The key, as with everything paint related, is to do really light coats. Like so light that you're worried you're not getting enough coverage. It dries really quickly and you can do another coat right on top to get the coverage you need. My general rule with most things I spray paint is to never hold the trigger down for more than 5 seconds. It's so easy to want to do a thick coat to just be done with it, but you'll regret it in the long run. Trust me on this one!

Here's what they look like today :

and here's what it looks like with our house numbers that we added to the front almost a year ago (really, a year?!? Is this how life is with babies? Where did the time go?!).

Which is so much better than the ugly off white, rusted lights that were there previously, and they tie in so much better with our front door hardware too!

The pictures of the finished product give you a sneak peak at our finished paint job. Stay tuned for that post!

So what do you think? Worth the $200 in savings? I actually started to tackle that fountain that has driven me bonkers since we moved in three years ago this weekend, but then the rain storms came in before I could get very far. Hopefully I get to cross that one off the to-do list shortly too!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Happy Monday!

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H E L L O W O R L D

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Gosh, how I've missed this blog...

I write posts in my head to it all of the time. Occasionally I sit down and actually start a post on a project, but then Kalia wakes up from her naps and needs me, and the moment and train of thought are gone. To be completely honest, I kind of have writers block with this blog right now. I mean, where do I start off? Do I just talk about my projects and ignore the fact that I've been M.I.A? Do I tell you about what I've been doing in the meantime?

For those of you that are strictly here for projects, those posts are coming. We've done so much to the house over the past few months, all of which I do plan on posting about.

For those of you that have emailed and commented asking how things are going, this post is for you.

Last month was a big one. I quit my job, turned 30, and became a stay at home Momma. I'm breast feeding Kalia, and she's never taken a bottle. So working (albeit from home, which was both nice and a nightmare at times) while being my little girls sole source of nutrition left me at the breaking point a few times. My sister in law asked how I was doing with it one day and I told her it was like a juggling act, but I kept dropping all of the balls. I didn't feel like I could give 100% to either work or Kalia, so something had to give. Being an Electrical Engineer isn't exactly a mind-numbing career, and trying to design and debug computer chips while nursing Kalia was just...beyond challenging.

I am so blessed and fortunate that we're in the position for me to walk away from my job. One of the reasons we waited 5 years before starting to build on our mini family was so that I could take this option if I wanted to. If you knew me in high school or college, I used to say I was never getting married and never having kids. I've got a million private reasons why I used to say that, but the bottom line was I hadn't met the right man that I could see forever with. And then when I did meet him, I wanted to make sure we were solid before expanding. I honestly don't think I ever realized how amazing all of this could be.

Now don't get me wrong, Motherhood is much more challenging than I ever thought possible, but it is also much more rewarding. So much more rewarding!

As for Kalia, she's growing like a weed and doing all sorts of fun things these days. She is 10 months old and started taking her first steps last week. She can crawl faster than Kodi can walk, is very energetic, doesn't sleep a lot, eats a ton, is quite animated, laughs a lot, is a complete goof ball, and is like a bull in a china closet when she plays. She's every bit our daughter, and there's not a single thing I would change about her. Well, maybe I'd like it if she slept a little bit more, but I can say she comes by it honestly!

So for all of the holidays I've missed on posting about, Kalia says :

Happy Thanksgiving!

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy 30th Birthday Mommy!

and finally...Happy Easter!

Thanks for all of the sweet emails checking in. I promise project posts are coming up next! Hope everyone has been doing well, and I'm excited to 'be back'!

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Painting the House Part 1 : Stucco Tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:31:00 +0000

Last September, we started painting the exterior of the house. Yep, I said started...we never got past the first 25%. At the time, it made perfect sense. We were having pavers installed for the pool deck and wanted to go ahead and get the back painted before installation. Chris was in school, and I was in my first trimester of pregnancy.

For the past year, almost every day when we'd go for a walk or run, we'd laugh at how the back of our house was a different color than the rest of it. We were busy working on the nursery, and then the whole having a baby thing left us with very little free time to paint this big 'ol house.

And then I found this :

Do you see all the cracking on the side? And the rust coming through? It was worse on the other side of the trim, but I couldn't wait to take a picture, we just started poking to see how bad the damage really was.

Taken after we poked around some - it wasn't quite this bad to start off with!

It was bad.

And then Chris got out his side grinder and went to town.

Most sane people probably wouldn't have gotten that far, especially not with a 4 month old, but we're not sane sometimes. We've done a little bit of stucco patch work, and neither one of us have been happy with the outcome. This, obviously, needed more than just a patch job.

I gave Chris the green light to go ahead and see how bad the damage was, which meant he just keep breaking it apart until we got to good boards, by convincing him that we've needed to paint the house for some time now, so we'll just do the stucco work, and then repaint the entire house.

Logical, right?

Chris bought into it. A few weeks later he questioned why he ever let me talk him into painting the entire house because of a little stucco trim work, but that's another post for another day.

Back to the stucco...

We decided we were going to google and utube "how to stucco", and then go to the big orange box store and have the guys there help us with getting supplies. Then Kalia needed a nap, and to be fed, and a diaper change, and to be played with, and we realized that we might have bitten off a little more than we could chew.

So, we caved in and decided to get a few quotes. If the quotes were reasonable, we'd pay someone to do it. If they were absurd, we'd go back to plan 1, and just accept the fact that it was probably going to take us 10 times longer than normal to get it done.

First quote came in at $225. We had a few other places we were going to have them repair too, so we thought that was pretty reasonable. The second quote came in at $1500. Wha??? We asked a buzillion questions and they both were using the same exact methodology. Um, we'll take the $225 guy please.

We took pictures and asked lots of questions during the process, so that we'd know how to do stucco work if we ever needed to again.

Here's what the stucco guy was starting with.

And here's the how-to for any of you over-ambitious diy'ers out there!

First he cut back the rest of the old stucco work to make it nice and even.

Then he added the new trim boards (pressure treated wood) to fit.

Next, he took this piece of mesh and wire with paper backing :

And put it over top of the wood boards, securing it in with nails.

After that, he nailed in the protective vinyl edges. The vinyl edges are an upgrade from what was previously there. Most old houses used metal galvanized edging, which was why we had the rusting in the first place. Well, that combined with the fact that the previous owners had the sprinklers spraying on the house. We moved them out shortly after we moved in, but the damage was already done. Water plus metal is no good!

Just an fyi, all of this stuff can be found at your local home improvement store.

To keep the edges secured, he added staples along with the nails.

We had another area that was starting to show some wear, so we decided to go with a quick patch approach on fixing it. To do this, he needed to chip out some of the old stucco to give the new stucco something to stick to. It's basically roughing up the surface like you would for most paint projects, but instead of sanding, he used a metal scraper.

This is what it looked like after he was done chipping it off.

To bond old stucco with new stucco, some type of liquid bonding agent is needed. It kind of looks like Elmer's glue. He applied this using a sponge to all of the areas where the new stucco would go on top of the old stucco.

That's just the prep work!

Next up, the mixing. To create the sand finish to match the existing stucco work on the house, he mixed sand in with the stucco mix. He recommended not going too heavy on the sand to keep the final product strong. The mix was approximately 50/50. He mixed this dry in a large wheel barrow.

After dry mixing, he put the mix in buckets and added water. To mix the stucco, sand, and water he used a drill with a stirring tool to make a very smooth final mix.

The actual stucco work itself is a lot like working with grout.

Just put the stucco on your trowel and spread. He used a tray to hold the stucco, which seemed a lot easier than dipping the trowel into the bucket. I'll have to remember that for future projects!

Then smooth it over the surface,

until your area is completely covered.

Finish by taking your soft sponge and gently wiping until you have a smooth surface.

And that's it! It's definitely a lot of work, but at least we know it's do-able for the next go round. The stucco guy even took off $25 for stepping on a plant (it'll come back), and for us giving him water. What a guy!

Anyone out there willing to tackle stucco work on their own? Make sure to stay tuned for more house painting projects. It's quite a bit of work, but it's looking a-mazing!

Hope everyone's having a great week. Happy Tuesday!

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You Are Beautiful

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:53:00 +0000

Hey guys!

At some point I'll be back to publishing more regularly than once every month or two, but for now, this is the best I can do. I started back at work six weeks ago, so things just keep getting more and more hectic. Don't assume that means we're not still house projecting, we most definitely are! We're just a little bit slower, and it takes quite some time to get it up here on the blog.

Onto the project ...

I've been mentioning that we're redoing the master bedroom. Part of that was the vanity / closet area, which we painted a little while back. The closet has the two big sliding doors that are mirrors, which I walk by every time I go to take a shower or get dressed. That didn't really used to bother me...

And then I had Kalia. I'll be completely honest here, I've never really struggled with body image or my weight or anything in that regards. I've always been really active, and my body, for the most part, has reflected that. The doctor released me to exercise when Kalia was 6 weeks old. I thought it'd take a month or two, but that I'd be back to my old shape in no time. Well, two and a half months have come and gone since being released, and I'm still not where I'd like to be. I do exercise every day, I do a minimum of a 2 mile walk with Kalia and Kodi, and a few days a week I do a 5k with Kalia in the jogging stroller, but I'm still not there yet. I continually have to tell myself that it took 10 months to put all that weight on, it's not just going to disappear in four long months.

I walk by that stupid mirror (its become stupid now) every.single.day and am constantly reminded of how my clothes don't fit yet, how my body seems to have a mind of its own, and how I'm not where I want to be with my weight loss. I'm not far off, I'm just still not there. I'm at the awkward stage of my old clothes fitting, but looking like someone glued them on me. I'm going to be 30 in 5 months, and I'm a Mom...pasted on pants isn't exactly the look I'm going for.

Well, enough is enough. No more pity parties, no more feeling bad about myself, and no more feeling sorry for myself. Motherhood is such a beautiful thing. The fact that we're willing to put our bodies through what we do to get this incredible little person here that we get to shape and mold and love more than we ever thought possible is a beautiful thing. The fact that we sacrifice our bodies for 10 months to carry this little person and then bring them into this world is a beautiful thing. That's what I need to focus on ... that's what I need to be reminded of. My new found extra poundage is well worth the extreme joy and love that my little girl brings to me every.single.day.

Sorry about the rant...I'll try to avoid being too Mommy hormonal and move on. There's a project in here too, I promise!

I bought two of these canvases on clearance from Jo-Ann's forever ago. They were 8$ total, and I knew I'd find a use for them at some point.

Chris thought I was crazy. Well, Chris always thinks I'm crazy, that's not really anything new. Those canvases have been sitting in a closet for quite some time. When I came to my "enough is enough" epiphany, I busted these bad boys out and got to painting.

I took step by step pictures of this, but they're lost somewhere in the 1925 pictures that are currently on my camera of mainly Kalia. I'm a little obsessed, I know. So, you get a few pictures of my cutie instead :

Amen to that!!! Hehe!

Really, I took those canvases and put a coat of white paint over top of them, then took my brush and dipped it in a little bit of the dark aqua paint that we painted the vanity area with and faded that down halfway through the first canvas, and then took the light aqua color that we painted the master bathroom and faded that down all the way through the bottom of the second canvas.

After that dried, I just took my paintbrush and painted on the words using the metallic white paint I had left over from doing the faux granite effect in Kalia's bathroom. It's not perfect, but that's kind of the point of the project. It's not really supposed to be. It's still beautiful because I made it, and it means something to me. For-warning though, it's semi impossible to photograph. There's no lighting in that area, and the flash bounces off of my metallic white, so just use your imagination to picture it a little bit more subtle :-).

With the flash on. Kodi thinks the addition of Kalia is exhausting!!

The rest of these are without the flash on, so the color is a bit more true.

I used the colors I did because of where I hung it. I like how it blends both the vanity area and the master bathroom colors together.

So, what do you guys think of it? I debated about doing it for awhile because I didn't want to come off as conceited, but it's my bathroom vanity area. I know why I painted it! If you have any questions on how I did this, please feel free to ask. I'll respond to them in the comments section.

Hope everyone is doing well. I've actually made quite a bit of progress in the Master Bedroom, redid the office, and am now planning away at making our awful formal living room Kalia's playroom. Oh yeah, and we're repainting the house. Life is never dull around these parts!! I hope to get the posts up soon. My goal is to really start back blogging more regularly after Christmas time. Kalia's starting to finally sleep through the night most nights, and I'm finding my balance in life, so I hope you guys will stick around to see what's next!

Happy Monday, hope you guys have a great week!

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Still Alive

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 03:27:00 +0000

Hey guys!

It's been over a month without a peep from me, so I thought I'd let you guys know that I'm still here. We've actually got a few house projects that we're working on, but things go quite a bit slower these days with Kalia around.

I got quite a few emails and comments from you guys when I was pregnant about not knowing how I was doing everything and something or another about being a super woman. Well, I'm here to tell you I am most definitely not a super woman. I'm a new mommy, and I spend my days figuring out my baby. Initially, I felt the need to still get a lot of house projects done. I felt that I wasn't being 'me' without it. It kind of put me in a sad place, so we did the vanity to give me a little bit of sanity.

But somewhere along the way I realized something. I'm a go-getter, I'm a do-er...I don't rest that much, and my idea of relaxing is playing volleyball or running. I don't stop. I'm committed to doing things the best I can, I love to learn, and I love to be hands on with things. I love to be active, I love to create, I love to inspire, and I love to finish every day proud of what I've done. That's 'me'.

And these days, I get all of that, and so much more with this little girl :

She's 'me'. Her and her Daddy fill my days with so much joy and happiness...I can't even begin to describe it.

I had motherhood all wrong before she arrived. I thought I'd teach her the ways of the world, I'd teach her how to be a good person, how to do the basics initially, and how to succeed in life later on. What I didn't realize was how much she'd teach me. In 10 short weeks, she's taught me to see the world differently. She's taught me that I have a whole lot more patience than I ever thought I could...she's taught me to be empathetic to other Mommies...she's taught me that the best things in life lie in those little eyes and those little dimples. She's taught me how to love more openly and completely. She's taught me how to be a better me, and she's teaching me new things every day.

So please forgive the lack of diy posts. Right now, Kalia's not at the age where she can participate in diying too much (although it's hard not to write posts on every little thing that she does do...but I spare you guys and have a family blog just for that :-)), and until she gets there, my diying is limited to naptimes and after bedtime. House projects can wait until then...I've got more important things to learn and grow from in the meantime...

I hope all of you guys have enjoyed your summer and are doing well! Thanks for sticking around Kara's Korner, I really appreciate your support.

I'll end on one last one of my little cutie. Enjoy!

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Vanity Area Update

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:09:00 +0000

Well, we finally got around to our first home improvement project since having Kalia. She doesn't really sleep as much as normal babies do, so getting things done, besides feeding her every hour or so, is quite challenging! Unfortunately, she came down with a cold last weekend. While she was sleeping her cold away (she's better now!), Chris and I took advantage of the down time and repainted our vanity area.

We had repainted our bathroom back in January (post here), which left our vanity / closet area looking pretty bad. The two colors clashed pretty badly, and we knew we wanted something a bit darker to make the area a little bit more cohesive, but went to work on the nursery instead.

Here's what the area looked like prior to our paint job on Sunday :

And here's what the area looks like now :

If you look carefully in the next few photos, you can see how this area ties in with our Master Bathroom paint color scheme.

The paint color is Mermaid Net by Behr. We took the Tide Pools paint swatch that we used to paint the bathroom and went two shades darker so that the colors would flow well from one room to the next.

We both were a little iffy at first about the dark color, but it feels warm and soothing all at the same time, and definitely makes the bathroom a cohesive area instead of being so disjointed.

This is just one of a multitude of projects I've got planned to get our Master Bathroom up to par. Every time I walk into Kalia's nursery, I'm jealous that she's got a nicer room than us!

So what do you guys think about our new vanity area? Do you like the dark color, and how it compliments the light color of the master bathroom, or is it too dark for you?

Stay tuned to see what else I've got up my sleeve. I'm ready for a nice, relaxing Master Bedroom instead of the hodge podge of a room we've got going on right now!

Hope everyone's doing well. Thanks so much for all of the sweet compliments about Kalia's nursery...I so appreciate every one of them!!!

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Nursery Room Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:17:00 +0000

I can't believe we started on the nursery room back in January, and just finished it up a few days prior to Kalia's due date (May 30th)! We've come so far and done so much in there though...it's a room we both truly love and can't wait to watch Kalia grow up in now that she's finally here.

In designing the nursery, I wanted to create something that would grow with Kalia. We put a lot of time, energy, and love into creating what exists right now, which I knew we would, so the thought of trying to change it up in a few years because it was too 'baby' wasn't something I was willing to do. The second huge consideration was that Chris and I had to love the room too. Not like it, but love it. Let's be honest here...while Kalia's in the nursery phase, the two people that are going to spend the most time enjoying or hating the nursery room design are Chris and I. Kalia will enjoy all of the patterns and shapes in the nursery, but the functionality and feel of the room is more for Chris and I right now than Kalia.

I came up with the general color scheme for Kalia's room when I came across this image on Benjamin Moore's website :

I loved everything about this color scheme, but decided because it was a baby's room, that I wanted the gray color to be a little bit lighter. This color scheme uses these colors :

lucerne
AF-530

storm
AF-700

paper mache
AF-25

Accent Colors
royal flush 2076-20

I used BM's Moonshine as my gray color for the walls, and used my existing white paint I had for the trim and pieces we built. When I picked up the paint from Benjamin Moore, I also grabbed their paint cards so that I could continually go back and compare the color blue and pink that I wanted for accent colors. I had the paint swatch card in my wallet and pulled it out and compared it for anything and everything that I bought to go into the nursery. It was such a great way to stay within my color palette

I scoured and scoured the internet, and went into baby shop after baby shop looking for ideas. The first go round, as much as I'm embarrassed to say it, I came home from Pottery Barn Kids crying. I'm not a pastel pink kind of gal, and store after store, that's all I could find. The internet was a much better source for me personally. The one item that I completely 'borrowed' the idea of was Kalia's bookshelves. All of the rest of the ideas I came up with pretty much on my own...I tried to design the nursery to be appropriate for a baby / toddler, but not scream "BABY!!!".

Lets go back to where we started with this room. This room was a mess when we moved into it, so we kept it as our junk room while we worked on fixing up other rooms in our home. Previously, I used it to do all of my building and painting projects.

We had to redo everything in this room to even get to a blank slate. We cleaned out the junk room (see here), primed the walls, removed the old carpet, painted the ceiling, and installed a new window (see here), painted the walls and closet, and installed a new ceiling fan (see here), painted the trim (see here), installed bamboo floors (see here and here), all to wind up with a clean slate room to start putting stuff in.

And here's where the nursery stands today (and all of the details on cost, where I purchased an item, and links to each initial post) :

This is the entry way to Kalia's Room. Both items on the hallway walls were gifts from Kalia's baby showers.

Next up, here's the crib wall. Details from this picture are below.

Curtains : Ikea (post here). Cost : Hava Curtain Rod : 39.99, white curtains, 19.99, pink curtains 24.99 on clearance.

Blinds : Home Depot (post here) Cost : $50.

Crib : (initial post here). From Bratt Decor. Cost: Crib and mattress (and a mobile not shown), bought off of someone for $400, white sheet from Target : gift, bedskirt from Pottery Barn Kids $53 (I wanted to make this, but ran out of time / energy!). Next to the crib is an old planter bench that I threw fabric on top of ($3), and am using as a stand for our diaper champ (gift), and we actually have since put Kalia's clothes hamper up there too.

Monogram : Made by me, post here. Cost : $5 for spray paint and pictures (already owned everything else).

Rug : (initial post here). From Land of Nod, Cost : $289

Chair : Pottery Barn Comfort Swivel Glider and Pottery Barn white twill with stone piping slipcover. Cost: free - gift for my birthday. (It's amazingly comfortable). Pillow : Marshall's $15.

Side table / ottoman - Calypso by Target. Cost : $50 (used completion discount plus 5% credit card discount).

Here's a close-up of the closet (details below) :

Closet System : Made by us (initial design post here, toy box post here, no sew bench cushion tutorial post here, entire closet system reveal post here, closet filled with clothes organization shown here). Cost : Wood : $50, adjustable hanging racks : Home Depot $20 , Mirror : Home Depot $30 , letters for name : Jo-Anns $10, hinges for toybox : Home Depot $17 (for all 4 hinges). Baskets : Lowes (already owned).

Next up, the bookshelves :

And from another angle (that's a little bit brighter) :

Here's what it looks like with the rest of the room (as much as was possible to capture) :

Bookshelves : Made by us (initial post here, follow up post here). Idea from Elizabeth Sullivan Designs (see here) seen initially at House of Turquoise (see here). Cost : $40 for wood. Already had paint and screws.

From there, we'll move onto the daybed wall :

Pillows on Daybed : Made by me (post here). Elephant pillow - made from a tea towel from Anthropologie. Cost : $18. All other pillows I had the materials for. I've had the big green pillows for quite some time now, but they're from Stein Mart.

Daybed : Made by me last year. (making the daybed post here, moving to the nursery post here). Cost: Already owned, free.

Alphabet Wall : (initial post here) Flashcards from Etsy (here). Frames : Dollar Store. Cost : Flashcards $64 (with shipping). Frames : $26.

If you keep turning, you'll see Kalia's dresser :

Another shot of the dresser with the crib :

Dresser : Made by us (build post here, finishing post here). Cost : Wood plus drawer glides: $150, already had everything else for building and painting, handles : Pottery Barn $6 (used discount code and $25 off $50 coupon), lamp : Kirkland $25, changing pad : Target $20, changing pad cover : Pottery Barn $19.

Gallery Wall above Dresser : Full post here, Consists of hand-me-down Mirror refinished (post here) and diy wall art (post here). Cost : Mirror, free, wall art : $10 (diy frames, fabric, and clothes pins).

And, of course, the best part of the nursery is this little girl right here :

She made all of the hard work worth while. I took that picture a week ago for her 3 week birthday. I love her so much!!

Whew...that post has been awhile in the making (and took awhile to type up). If you have any additional questions that I didn't cover, please check the initial posts out, and then if I still haven't answered them there, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get to answering it in a somewhat timely manner!

Hope you guys enjoyed the full nursery post! That room really has turned out to be our favorite in the house thus far. It took a lot of hard work, but it's something we both truly love and are proud of. What do you think of it? Anything you would've done differently?

Hope everyone's having a great week!

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Happy 4th of July!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:28:00 +0000

From the cutest girl in the entire world...

I might be a little biased :-).

How 'bout from our family to yours...

Kodi had a tennis ball in the pool that he was a little more interested in. He normally doesn't miss a good photo op!

Hope everyone's enjoying their day!

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Anniversary Gift

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:13:00 +0000

Four days before Kalia's arrival, and 2 days before my scheduled induction, Chris and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary. We don't really do typical gifts for our anniversaries...we plan a trip instead and call it our anniversary gift. Well, this year our anniversary gift was Kalia. And she was promptly late!

I wanted to give Chris something that told him all of the things I loved about him, so I got a deck of cards :

Took construction paper and typed up various things I loved about Chris, and decoupaged it to one side of the card (yes, for all 52 cards!) :

And then took the pictures that Erin had taken of Chris and I back in November, used glossy print paper and printed out the images to size of the cards, and then decoupaged those to the front of the card.

I put the cards in a tin box. I actually meant to decoupage the tin box too, but ran out of time / energy prior to heading to the hospital. Chris really appreciated the gift, and had a lot of fun reading through all of my serious and funny ways that I love him. He also loved that it incorporated pictures of us that he can go back and look at anytime.

For dinner that night, we headed to Melting Pot. The hostess / waitress / manager all couldn't believe I was out and about at 40 weeks and 4 days pregnant, but I told them I was trying to test my luck to go into labor on my own. It didn't work out too well, but not for lack of trying! Here's a few pictures of us from dinner that night. Man oh man, I was so pregnant in these photos!!

Hopefully I'll get around to posting the final nursery sometime soon! Sorry I haven't been responding to emails / comments just yet, but supposedly this sleep thing gets better :-), so I should be back at projecting with a cute helper, and responding to comments / emails soon!!

Hope everyone has a great week. Happy Monday!

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Coming Up for Air

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:35:00 +0000

Hey guys!

I know it's been quite awhile since my last post...but little Miss Kalia is keeping me quite the zombie these days. I think I've been on the computer a handful of times since we've gotten home.

One of my big concerns prior to having Kalia was breastfeeding. I really really wanted to be successful at it, and was worried that I might not be. Well, Kalia is already taking after her Mommy and Daddy in that aspect and is quite the over-achiever. She feeds about every hour to hour and a half, which doesn't leave me much time to get any sort of restful sleep at all. Which means I'm a zombie all day / all night long.

One of my neighbors put it best...we're in survival mode right now. Chris feeds me and Kodi, and I feed Kalia. We've managed to go on our nightly walks almost every night the past week, which even though it takes away from sleep time, is helping me keep my sanity around these parts.

I actually do have some projects to post that I finished up prior to little miss Piggy getting here, but I just haven't been able to get on here for any significant amount of time. I can start pumping next week, so Chris is going to take over one of my night time feedings, and let me get more than 1 hour of sleep at a time. Woot! Hopefully I'll start to feel like the 'old me' energy wise again at some point.

Every day is a blessing, every day is rewarding, every day is a challenge, and every day I'm thankful.

Oh, and as a side note...breasts for breastfeeding are so poorly engineered. I can tell they were made by a man. There is absolutely no reason for both faucets to turn on when you latch onto one. What a bad design!

Anywho...

'Till then, hope these cute photos will tide you guys over!

1 week birthday walk...we were finally allowed outside! Kalia is so funny with her hands!

Just have to make a note that the camera is on a fence post on a self-timer for this photo. How Kodi knows where and when to smile is beyond me. He's part human I think!

Go Gators!! Kalia's Uncle Shawn and Aunt Christina really really love Kalia. They're Seminole fans, and this headband is from them. Now that's love!

Daddy moment...Kalia loves him so much already. See her hugging him?! Chris is amazing with her!

Awww...the swing and the bouncer were two of the best gifts ever!!

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Kalia's here!

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:15:00 +0000

The absolute best project that I've ever done in my entire life made her grand entrance on Tuesday, June 7th, at 4:07 a.m.. It wasn't always an easy road, but one that I'd do again and again to get her here.

She came out weighing 8 lbs, 6 ounces, and 21 1/2 inches long.

We're all so happy she's here!

My two favorite people in the entire world :-).

I'm taking some much needed family time, so project postings will be on hold for a bit. This latest project has taken quite a bit out of me! There aren't words to express how great the reward is though...

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Laundry Room Redo

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 10:36:00 +0000

I'm chucking this one up to psycho husband, not psycho wife this time. Normally I'm the go-getter and starter of projects around this house, but Chris takes all the credit for this one!

We've been looking for a new washer and dryer for quite a few months now. I told Chris when we were redoing the front doors that he had to put his search for the perfect washer and dryer that were perfectly priced on hold for now. I couldn't handle dealing with the door issues and trying to figure out what the hey washer / dryer I wanted, and where had the best price, at the same time.

Well, the door had been in for a good week before Chris decided to resume his washer / dryer hunt. And he found the perfect washer/dryer for sale for 25% off both. So last weekend, we tredged our tails up to Lowe's, had them price match a set from Best Buy, and came home with a delivery date of Thursday for the new set.

Our laundry room has been in a sad, sad state since we moved in. It's one of the rooms we've yet to touch. The fact that we came home from this with 2 days to spare before my official due date didn't bother Chris at all. Chris took out the old appliances before I could snap up a few before pictures, and it was late when I was taking this, but here's sort of where we started :

Here's a picture of our old dryer to give you an idea of what we were working with before. This thing was on its last leg!

Saturday morning, while I was finishing up Kalia's nursery monogram, Chris spent quite a bit of time cleaning out the old dryer vent. Wowzer...that thing was most definitely a fire hazard, and I'm so happy that he got it done before Kalia gets here!

We decided the only expense we were willing to incur for this laundry room redo was the actual washer and dryer (they're expensive enough, even on sale!), so for the rest of the laundry room, we used what we had laying around. Chris painted the walls leftover gray we had from Kalia's nursery (Moonshine by Benjamin Moore), and I painted the laundry room door Lucerene by Benjamin Moore. We took the laundry room door off to sand it down and paint it. I think we were daring Kalia to arrive. We have a thing with having doors off while I'm entirely too close to labor (see here). Chris painted most of the trim work...I helped some, but he gets to take the credit for most of the work. After all of that, we were left with this :

Which was such an improvement, but those stupid laminate cabinets were driving me nuts. We thought about pulling them off of the wall...but we're not sure what's behind them, and neither one of us was really willing to get into dry-wall work. So the cabinets stayed. I lived with them for a full day before deciding there was no way they could stay that color, so I got up early Monday morning and primed the cabinets. When Chris got up, I was sitting at the computer, and he wasn't very happy to see paint on my hands! He was a good sport about it though and helped me put on the two coats of white paint (Ultra Bright White by Behr), which isn't a perfect paint job, but it really makes the room look so much better!

These cabinets are temporary anyways, but I can at least live with them this way.

On Thursday, the Lowe's guys showed up with our new washer and dryer...

We actually had a laugh at Kodi's dog bowl. That's the first piece of furniture Chris and I built together, quite a few years ago. When we redid the kitchen at the old house, we had the granite guys take the leftover granite from our kitchen sink cut out, and make the top for this using our dog bowls for cut measurements. They hesitated initially, but we told them it was either that, or we'd go elsewhere. They obliged!

The trim in here finally matching the white doors looks so much better. Only 2 + years in the making of getting rid of all of that old awful off white trim!

I love the new color of the washer and dryer too! Maybe I'll actually do some of the laundry now! Chris would be oh so happy with me. The only "gender tasks" we have in our home is that Chris does Kodi's poop patrol in the backyard. He drew the short stick somewhere in here.

Ahhhh...SO much better!!! We've got a few things planned to finish over this laundry room...building pedestals, adding some wall decor, and as previously mentioned, removing those cabinets and adding some functional shelves up there, but this is such a huge improvement from where we started! And...I absolutely do not plan on doing any of that this weekend. At 41 weeks pregnant, my 'mojo' is most definitely running out!

Hope everyone had a great week and enjoys their weekend! Today is Chris and I's 5 year wedding anniversary. I'm so thankful, lucky, and blessed to be married to the absolute perfect soul mate for me. Chris is not only everything I could've possibly wanted in a husband, he's my very best friend in the entire world, and I can't imagine a single day without him! Happy Anniversary babe!! (I know, enough mushiness...sorry!) When we got married, everyone started asking us when we'd have kids. We told them all we planned on waiting till we had been married for 5 years or so before expanding our family. We didn't really intend to make it this close to our 5 year wedding anniversary, but that's what you get when you have two engineers in one marriage I guess!

Happy Friday!

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Welcome to My Birthing Month! Take Two!

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:18:00 +0000

Oiy...in my first "welcome to my birthing month" post I said I wasn't even entertaining the idea of going later than May for my due date because I live in Florida and it's too hot.

Well, Kalia has other plans, so I'm just along for the ride. I've tried every sane old wives tale in the book, and she's just not ready to get here yet. Plain and simple. I actually went for a 4 mile walk on Sunday with Chris and Kodi, and as I was dragging my tired body up my driveway, one of the neighbors told me I should keep going so that I could walk Kalia out of me (to be fair, she had no idea that I was coming in from going that far). Yes, I'm sure if I managed to walk for an entire week, she'd show up eventually!

But...without a doubt, she'll be here this month. Very soon too...and that's all that matters! One of my nieces birthday is June 17th, and she said it would be so cool if Kalia and her could share a birthday. I told her that would not be cool at all! She'll be turning 8, and she agreed with me that she was just ready for Kalia to get here now too.

This past weekend, Chris and I finally headed to the plant nursery to fill our empty planters. We also ran to Lowe's, Marshall's, went out to lunch, ran to Wal-greens, and finally ended at Publix before heading home. It's funny how differently you look at places when you're 40 weeks pregnant. I notice where the bathrooms are first, and then second where a good place to lean against or something to sit on while we're deciding what to purchase.

Anywho, I thought I'd show you guys our pretty new plants today while I'm waiting for Kalia to get here.

We spent a few hours out here on Sunday and Monday, and I'm really loving the pop of color these plants add to the pool deck. We were supposed to get rain on Monday / Tuesday, so that's why our hammock is missing...but I took a nap in that for a little bit on Sunday too...before getting up and heading on our 4 mile walk. Sigh...restless exhaustion at it's finest!

Anyone else experience the 'over-anxious' neighbors or random people you run into at the stores telling you what to do to get your baby to come out any faster? I feel like I should make a maternity shirt that says "what NOT to say to a 40 week pregnant woman" and put a list of things on it for people to read and think about before saying something. I'm so anxious as it is already!! Oh well, everyone means well by it...I know, I know! 40 week pregnant hormones + patience just don't go so well together these days!

I still have another room we gave a face-lift to to show you guys too, so stay tuned for that one!

Hope everyone's having a great week so far...Happy Wednesday!

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Nursery Room - Monogram

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 30 May 2011 10:53:00 +0000

This is the last nursery project I plan on doing before Kalia gets here. I actually didn't really plan on having to get it done before she arrived, but since she's showing up fashionably late, the last and final project is complete. Sort of. I'm still working on sewing her quilt, but right now my sewing machine and I aren't on speaking terms, so that one most definitely will wait until after she gets here. Hopefully before her first birthday! (Kidding...sort of).

For above Kalia's crib, I wanted some of our maternity pictures displayed. I initially planned on just doing some sort of canvas or frames, but after doing the gallery wall above the dresser, I decided I needed something a little bit different for above the crib. I walked in and out of there about 1000 times, and finally came up with something that I thought I'd like...decoupaging our maternity pictures to a big huge K.

We have at of scrap wood left over from various build projects, so this project was pretty close to free. Actually, it cost $5 for the spray paint and pictures.

First up, I drew out my K on a leftover sheet of 3/4'' plywood. I couldn't decide if I wanted 5 x 7's or 4 x 6's, but after laying out both sizes, the 5 x 7 K was just too big. I do kind of wish I would've made this so the arms of the K were the same size as the body, but I still like the final outcome.

Chris came into the garage at some point during this, and agreed to make my cuts for me with the jig saw. I don't fit behind tools anymore, so I either have to bend over waaaay low to get things below my belly, or just pass the task of to Chris.

After Chris made the cuts while I held the board in place, we were left with a huge giant K.

I spray painted that black (while wearing my awesome mask), and then got up in the middle of the night to decoupage our maternity pictures to it. Sleep is getting harder and harder these days, so I moreso just nap a lot. My weekends consist of : nap, project, errands, eat, repeat. Anywho, I don't have pictures of the giant K just spray painted, but just imagine the image above black.

After the decoupage, here's what my K looked like :

I decided the ends needed a little bit ... more ... to it, so I cut out circles of fabric and added fabric type flowers. It added a feminine touch without being too girlie. These two fabrics are leftovers from her quilt too, so once I start speaking to my sewing machine again, this will tie in perfectly.

The centers are just pins that I snapped off and then bent into place. I glued them down using quick grip, and then attached the flower with quick grip to my K, but only where the pins were. That way I could still ruffle the 'petals' of my flower to have more of a 3D look.

Chris came in and thought the middle of the K needed flowers too, so I made a few smaller blue ones while I was at it.

We put the hangers in the back of it, and hung it above her crib. Here's the final product :

What do you think? Too big, too small, or just right? I debated about painting the K another color besides black, because I do love color in a nursery...but ultimately decided the pictures would look better against a black background. I also decided the black background went with her crib skirt and crib a little bit better, but I'm still on the fence about whether or not I'm going to add color back in.

Here's how it ties in with her crib :

When she gets big enough to pull things off the wall, we'll either have to put a screw through this, remove it, or pull the crib away from the wall so she doesn't pull it down on herself. For now, I'm just ready for her to be here already! Oh, and ignore the wrinkly sheet and bedskirt. The last thing I feel like doing is ironing these days!

And my favorite part...here's where we started with this wall :

And after a ton of work, here's what it looks like now :

Installed bamboo floors, painted walls and closet, new crib, custom built in closet system, custom built dresser

(To see my documented projects and paint colors I've used on this section, click on any of the links below the picture.)

So that's it...my last and final nursery project. Maybe Kalia was waiting for me to finish that up before deciding to show up. I'm done, she can come now!! I'll do a full nursery tour and recap everything sometime soon. Unless Kalia shows up...then I'll go MIA for a little while before sharing her with you guys, and then do a full nursery room tour! :-)

Believe it or not, we had a busy busy Friday and Saturday. I've got another room that we gave a mini face-lift to show you guys later on in the week, so stay tuned!

Hope everyone's enjoying their Memorial Day today! Happy Monday!

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I'm linking up to the parties in my sidebar...go check out what everyone else is creating!

Mini Living Room Project

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 27 May 2011 10:55:00 +0000

I know, you guys can't believe I'm so close to my due date and still doing projects. Me neither. I think breathing these days is a project in and of itself. But things that would normally get put on a 'list' drive me nuts right now, so if I can muster the energy to get something done, I do it. Even if it's small.

After we moved the cable, I noticed the shoe kick around the fireplace just looked...off. It's too light, doesn't blend in with the floors, and certainly doesn't go with the fireplace.

It didn't bother me as much when the obnoxious cable was running across the harth, but now that the cable is gone, the shoe kick bothered me.

When we redid the front door, we stained the shoe kick to match the floors, and I was completely amazed at how well our 'already had on hand from another project 5 years ago' stain blended in with the floors. I have plans to do do something else to that fireplace, so I decided that I wanted to stain the shoe kick to blend in with the floors instead of painting it to match the fireplace.

So, one night this week, when my big 'ol body couldn't get comfy, and my hubs loud snoring wouldn't allow me to fall back asleep, I got up and stained the shoe kick.

I think this needs one more coat (we did two on the front door shoe kick) to officially be done, but I might have to enlist the helpful hubs to do the second coat. Scooching around on my rear in the middle of the night to do this did not feel so awesome. To be completely honest though, as of me typing this post, he has no idea that I even got up to do this, or that it's done. I'd be in so much trouble if I got caught doing this in the middle of the night! I'm pretty hard to slow down, even when I'm exhausted.

It looks much better than it did before though. I'm happy it's not screaming out "hey, look at me, I don't match". Because that, my friends, was getting annoying.

Hope everyone enjoys their 3-day weekend. My tired body and tired brain are excited to have an extra day off of work. Why in the world I thought it'd be a good idea to work up until Kalia gets here is beyond me. For future reference for any of you guys, working up until your due date (and even possibly past...please Kalia come this weekend!), isn't recommended.

Keeping my fingers crossed hoping that Kalia comes by her due date, which is Monday. I know, I know...enjoy the carefree life with just Chris and I...it's just hard to enjoy when you can't breathe, sleep, or get up from low places on your own, let alone are a constant sweat ball from this amazing Florida heat. Come on Kalia!!! Yes, I think I said that I was ready for her to get here 3 or 4 times in this post. That's how ready I am though....

Happy Friday everyone!

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Chris the Cable Guy

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Wed, 25 May 2011 10:27:00 +0000

I really wanted to title this post "My Dad is a Big Butthead", but I decided it worked better as a subtitle.

Let me explain.

When we moved in 2 years ago, we went around and around on different configurations for our living room. Within a few months, we found a couch off of craigslist, bought some bucket chairs, and eventually had a layout that we were both happy with.

The one problem with our layout is that there is no cable behind the TV. That, in and of itself, is not normally that big of a deal to fix, however the wall that the TV is mounted on goes directly to the outside pool deck, and is solid concrete. We've had "move the cable" on every.single to-do list for the past year and a half or so, and it always gets neglected.

So how does any of that fit in with my Dad being a big butthead? Well, if you know him, you know he just is one regardless (my sisters will agree!), but that's besides the point. Back in December, I wrote a post to the weather about our frigid Florida winters, and included this picture of how we sleep during the winters (this was prior to us getting our new a/c and heat system installed a little while ago) :

Chris told me not to post this photo, and not because the lighting was horrible with it, but because the cable cord was showing. I told him all of my readers were too nice to comment on that. I was right...a few of you guys even commented on how much you loved our coffee table.

My Dad...not so much!

I forgot to take into account that he reads my blog too. He left the comment below :

Biggest.Butthead.Ever. The funny part about this too is that my Dad knew that I had pre-posted that and was out in Hawaii by the time that post was published.

Sigh...

Well, enough is enough!! My parents are staying here with Kodi when we have Kalia, so, once again, we put "move the cable" on our to-do list. This past weekend, we finally crossed it off. Chris said he didn't want my Dad coming over yet again with that stupid cable still running across the room.

Ugly Cable

As expected, this wasn't an easy project. Chris got up in the attic and pulled the cable up from the previous exterior wall and attempted to drop it down into this wall. Since the wall is solid concrete, that wasn't working.

We drilled a hole in the top of the ceiling to see if could find a hole to send the cable down that way, but all we did was create a hole for us to patch. Beyond the drywall is more concrete.

We decided our only option was to bring the cable in from the exterior wall again. Not exactly a seamless pretty project, but much better than the cable running across our fireplace.

Chris drilled behind where the TV is mounted :

The drill bit sticking out through the other side made us both laugh.

After that, Chris drilled from the outside to the inside to try to widen up the hole a bit ...

That's the cable sticking down from the pool deck area ceiling.

Yeah, things are starting to look worse at this point instead of better, huh?

This was the hole from the inside :

And this is the most ridiculous drill bit I've ever seen :

But hey, it got the job done!

After much finagling, we got the cable from the outside of this wall to the inside, and pushed back up as much of the cable as we could back into the attic. For the outside, I can't decide if we're going to get some sort of tubing, paint the cable to match the house, or mount something to this wall to cover it up. This is one of those 'domino projects'...check one project off the list, add a few more.

You can see in this next picture what you see of the cable from the majority of the pool deck.

For the inside, we still have to run the power line up to behind where the TV is mounted. Because there's already power on this wall, that, hopefully, shouldn't be as bad. Famous last words, right?

Woo Hoo!!! No more cable!!!

We were both entirely too tired on Sunday night to do anything more with this, so it's another "good enough for now" project that we're checking off the list.

Oh, and as a side note, I actually finished off the front door this past weekend too. I painted the trim, the wall around the trim, and Chris helped me grout the missing tile piece back into place. So that project went from a "good enough for now" one to a completely crossed off the list. Whew!

It's true that my Dad is a big butthead, but I'm really glad we've finally gotten this project crossed off the list. Chris too...it's been one of those things that's just been an eye-sore for entirely too long now.

Love you Dad!!!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

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