Kara's Korner

Texas House : Dining Room

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 17:43:00 +0000

I mentioned in my last past that I'm confused about the "boob light area" because I have a dining room.

Here's what it looked like with their stuff :

And here's what it looks like with ours :

I still need to 'finish' some things in there, but I'm not exactly sure what I want. I'd like something to flank that pottery barn mirror on either side (It was our house warming present to ourselves. I am all about DIY, but we had a coupon and free shipping and working with mirrors on a DIY project with Kalia just kind of seemed like a nightmare!).

You can barely see a glimpse of Kalia's bench through the hallway there. You walk into the house, see Kalia's playroom (that's coming up soon!), then the dining room, then you walk into the kitchen.

The buffet needs to have something up on the walls above it too, but what I have leaning against it works for now. At the old house we had a mirror above it, but that seemed like overkill on mirrors here.

I leave the dining room table set because it makes me happy. I got these napkins and placemats from Serena and Lily a little while back on clearance (pretty sure they're still there!) and they tie in with the pillows on our two chairs in our living room, so I feel like it helps the house 'flow' a little bit better.

So that's it, our dining room. See why I'm confused about the boob light area off of the kitchen?

Happy Friday guys! I'm training for a half marathon right now, so my only plans for this weekend are to not die of heat exhaustion while running 9 miles in the morning! This Texas heat thing is no joke! I have some projects in mind that I'd like to get started on, but I'm generally pretty wiped from my long runs. And Kalia. Kalia wears me out too! So we shall see!

Hope yall have a great weekend!

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Texas House : Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 19:40:00 +0000

I didn't make it a month with the kitchen the way it was before my paintbrush came out and I started going gray (Moonshine by BM).

The way it was before was entirely too busy for me. The star of the show should be the cabinets, granite, and the backsplash. There was no need for all of the faux gold / beige paint. It's not BAD, it's just not us.

This is the main kitchen area. Then there's a single pendant light that hangs down over I have no idea what's supposed to be there. I call it the giant boob light. Chris says he likes it. Shocker!

Just past the giant boob light is the eat in kitchen area with a chandelier. We have a dining room too. So yeah, the giant boob light area confuses me.

Here's a view of the whole thing from the kitchen cabinet point of view :

And another from our kitchen table point of view.

Besides being too busy, it was entirely too dark for me too. I like things bright and airy. I know, show you the after's already...

First up, our eating area.

I haven't painted the ceilings yet, but it bugs me as is, so I'm sure I'll get around to it before too long. Ceilings are such a workout though! I can't decide if I want to go a lighter gray or a lighter blue or just mix it up at least for just the eating area and do a dark blue. Sort of like this picture. as I've mentioned before, the trim and shutters are all a cream / off-white, so white is out.

I have three little vases that I leave on the table. Kalia and I go pick flowers to put in there. And then she talks about them nonstop! I got them from Antro on clearance awhile back.

The crossed ski's and pictures, as well as that HART sign I re-made found their home here in this house.

So did the key art I made.

The kitchen might as well be another playroom for Kalia. I keep her toys all over the place in here to keep her occupied when I'm cutting up stuff or doing oven stuff that could hurt her. She is definitely a little helper, but there are times when it's safer for those little hands of hers to be occupied elsewhere!

Under the boob light is a little craft table and two chairs and a bench. It's the only thing that makes sense there to me.

There are placemats on the table because Kalia is boycotting her high chair, and the big table is a little scary with how much she wiggles around, so we ALL eat at this table.

There is a paper roll to the right of it, and those little drawers hold play doh and coloring books. She loves this little table!! It's an two year old pottery barn table (they don't even make that big of one anymore, it's 54"), and we bought it off of craigslist. There was marker all over it and it was sort of dirty, but nothing a little elbow grease and a magic eraser pad couldn't take care of. Chris didn't want to buy it initially, and then was like "Wow!! We got the deal of the century!! How come they didn't do that BEFORE they sold it??! They could've gotten a TON more for this!!" It pretty much looks as good as new, cept it's already broken in. Love that Craig and his ingenious list!!

Oh, and another thing the magic eraser is great at is cleaning grout. I got down and scrubbed the brown grout until it turned gray. It was an arm workout, but not as bad as I thought it would be!

Before :

Exact same tiles after :

Amazing!!! The Target brand worked just as well too, fyi!

The view from the kitchen sink :

The view OF the kitchen sink :

and the view from the fridge :

No, all of that fruit isn't there for staging. We eat A LOT. All of us, including Kalia. Ask anyone that has had us over for dinner. We are GOOD eaters. Hey, at least it's healthy!

I keep another few baskets of toys under this side of the island too. Can't keep anything there that isn't Kalia friendly, so rather than fighting to keep her little hands out of things, I just give them something to do!

I said I wasn't going to paint these cabinets, but the more I live with them, the more I want to change something up. The paint job is good enough for now though! What do you guys think?

Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a great weekend!

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Behind the Scenes : How do I like Texas?

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:30:00 +0000

I get asked the above question a lot. By almost every single person I tell that we just moved here from Florida. I guess it's natural, but my answer is a lot more complicated than the casual aquantances I've met so far really want to hear. Or at least I'm guessing so.

So, how do I like Texas?

Let's start with the obvious. (Yes, random family pictures of mostly Kalia are going to pop up throughout this post that make absolutely no sense because it's a sin to have a post without pictures, and she is just too darn cute to not share!)

The weather.

recent trip out to San Fran.

It's wonky so far. You have to understand that I was born and raised in Florida. The coldest place I'd ever lived was Gainesville, FL. I owned a pair of jeans and two sweat shirts when I went to college. I'm used to warm, midly hot, hot, extremely hot, and there's a hurricane coming type of weather.

so proud of herself for emptying out the wipes container...oiy.

I was freezing when we came up here in April for our house hunting trip and only had jeans and a sweater, no jacket. April ... cold? What??

Kalia and I arrived at temporary living April 26th. That gave us a good solid week of normal sometimes cool sometimes enjoyable weather. Then the tornadoes came. And we were in a rickety apartment. The weather people told us to head to our storm shelter and put our cars in the garage. Umm...what's a storm shelter? I'm used to having hurricane parties because everything shuts down for DAYS before the storm arrives and DAYS after it leaves. The whole "you've got 5 minutes, there's a crazy thing coming up, RUN!!!" with an almost 2 year old and an anxious yellow lab who hates any rain storms was kind of freaky. And even though this is a mild summer, it is HOT HOT HOT here!

And I hated the apartment. That didn't help, although that really has nothing to do with Texas. The maintenance guys would just come in without giving you a call ahead to say they were coming. Then they started showing up in multiples. I'm pretty sure it doesn't take 3 grown men to fix a drainage issue in the bathtub. I felt vulnerable and so so alone in that apartment. When I went for jogs, I'd see weird people in the woods next to the jogging path, and that totally freaked me out too, so I stopped doing that as well.

So the first month I went to a bad place. I knew nobody here, most stay at home Mom's aren't in apartments so I didn't meet anyone at the apartment complex, and Kodi and Kalia were pretty freaked out by the apartment, so I didn't really do as much exploring as I would've liked to with Kalia. She is such a strict schedule kinda gal too, which makes just getting up and exploring rather hard. Oh, and I didn't have a smart phone when I first got there, and my only computer was packed away in storage. So I had no internet access until Chris came home from work to look up what to do either.

Should've probably stopped this prior to getting the pic - oh well!

And I went to a bad place. Which means I shut down. I tried to not shut down with Kalia, but she's a smart little girl and I know she picked up on a lot of it. I tried to be fun and cheery and the best I could for her, but that was probably about 30% of the normal me, which wasn't fair to her.

Again, nothing to do with Texas.

Then we moved into our house. My MIL came, I got to go on a date night with Chris for our anniversary, I got to get our home setup to be a home instead of just a place we lived, and I felt good. I literally felt this huge weight just lifted. I ventured all over the place to meet people. Pools, parks, our neighborhood...anywhere someone returned a smile, I talked to them and told them we were new and knew no one and almost every time that someone got my number or email and got in touch with me inviting us out to go do this or go do that.

My funk lifted, Kalia's didn't. That month that I closed up in the apartment and just talked to her, she closed up and just talked to Chris and I too. And she's old enough to really really miss her old friends and neighbors and old activities we used to do, but not old enough to understand why we can't do them anymore or see those people every day or every week like we used to. So she stopped talking to anyone other than people she knew, which after my MIL left, consisted of Chris and I.

She would cry when other kids would talk to her and cling to one of us like they were monsters. If we pushed, she bawled crying. It's pretty hard to make friends with people when you're child is crying because they look at her or heaven forbid talk to her.

And I felt terrible. I felt like such a bad Mom...I felt like I failed in explaining things or preparing her for all of the change that was about to take place. I felt selfish for closing up in that apartment.

Again, nothing to do with Texas.

Here's the problem. I have an amazing group of friends. I am so so blessed to have the quality and quantity of girl friends that I do. All but two of them lived in the Tampa Bay area with me. One of them even moved TO Tampa the month or so before I left. My best friend since 4th grade lives there with her husband who I was good friends with in high school and college. We played volleyball together, from junior high until I moved to Texas. My old neighbors were some of the most amazing people. They became my family. One of them came WITH US to our volleyball games to watch Kalia for MONTHS until I felt comfortable leaving Kalia at home without us. Who does that? Who does that that isn't your Mom or sisters anyways?? And speaking of them, even though no one lived in our area, all of our family was a car ride away. We could be there in a few hours (a little bit more than a few for Chris's family, but still easily driveable), and now we're pushing it to make it to see just Chris's folks and his brothers family by car. My family is most definitely a plane ride. And so are all of our friends.

And I didn't realize how hard it was to actually meet friends when you have a child. I've made exactly one new friend since Kalia's birth. She has become one of my very best friends, but just one. Sure, I've made acquaintances, but not the same as the girls you call to vent and laugh and cry and go for coffee or a drink or have over when you're in your pj's and no makeup on. I had an entire handful of those girls in Tampa, and most of them had kids around Kalia's age. She had real friends that she has grown up with and that she really misses.

So I guess what I'm saying is that Texas people are some of the nicest people that I've ever met. They're warm and caring and generous and welcoming. And I miss my friends. A lot. And so does Kalia.

I love how outdoorsy Texas is, I love how everywhere I turn there is parks and playgrounds and community activities. I love that all of my neighbors here brought us welcoming food and made it a point to introduce themselves. I love that there are kids everywhere here.

I really miss my friends and my old neighborhood and the close proximity of our family though.

I knew well before I shared with anyone that we were leaving Florida. The jobs just weren't there, and if I'm afforded the luxury of being able to do what I want and what makes me happy, and I can do that anywhere, my husband deserves to do what he loves and makes him happy as well. I was so excited and optimistic about the move. I looked at it as a gift. Everywhere I've lived, I've made new friends, and everywhere I've gone, I've taken them with me. Regardless of if they lived there or not. So it's a gift that I get to make more friends and keep the ones I have.

It's hard too though. Because you don't make those friends over night or over a few months. Those types of friendships take awhile to develop. I've never lived anywhere where I knew zero people outside of my immediate family. I always had a base that I grew on. Texas is starting from ground zero.

And I know they'll come. I know those friendships will come, and I know Kalia will recover and grow and learn from this too. I know that it'll unite us as a family closer because we only have each other to hold onto. One of my friends told me the other day that I have to get out without Kalia. That I need to take a Mommy break for myself, or to go hang out with one of my new friends I've made. Another one told me that it's fine for me to be the only friend to a 2 year old, but it is not fine for my only friend to be a 2 year old. I miss those friends. They're here, they're just not here.

I realize I sound whiney. I promise not to be all the time on any future behind the scenes posts, but this is just real. Just raw. Just me.

I know, buck up Kara.

Kalia started talking to kids again on the 4th of July. Slowly at first, just the boy across the street. But she's gradually talked to a few more kids, and we've even had new friends over for a playdate and been to their house for a playdate. She takes about an hour to warm up, but she's getting there. Adults are no go's though. Except for the Mom of the new friends and the little boy's parents across the street. We talk about it a lot. She tells me she's scared of people. I tell her I'm always here and they're not scary and she can hold my hand extra tight, but that we need to start talking to people again. She's making progress. We're making friends.

So, I like Texas. I just really miss my friends! I guess the moral of my story is: if my friends were crappier, my life would be easier right now! :-)

I'll be back later this week to share kitchen pictures, so stay tuned for that! Happy hump day guys!

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Texas House : Kalia's Nursery Suite

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 09:30:00 +0000

For many of you, Kalia's nursery was what brought you over to my blog in the first place. Here it is at our last house :

And here's what it started with there :

Yeah, about a million times better. Maybe 2 million. We did so many DIY projects in there, it was definitely a labor of love.

Kalia hasn't adjusted so well to the move. We were in an apartment for a month, which was so confusing to her. She's at that awkward age where she remembers stuff, knows what she wants, but can't exactly express it or her emotions that she's feeling. The first time she talked to any other little kid since the first week of us being here was the 4th of July. She still won't talk to adults.

So, we knew it was so important to get her room set up just the way it was before asap. We were so so thankful that my MIL came to help out with the move. It allowed us to paint Kalia's room prior to the movers showing up with our stuff (walls moonshine by benjamin moore and closet lucerne by benjamin moore), and on day 2 of living there, get everything on the walls the exact way it was before. Here's what we started with. Much better than the above before picture!

And here's what it looks like when you walk in :

I did say previously that those bookshelves would stay if we ever left our Florida house. I never really thought we'd leave when I said that though. They came with us.

The wall here is a little bit smaller so we had to cut them down by about 8 inches. I think they're my most favorite thing still.

The ABC wall is Kalia's favorite. She asked for it nonstop when we were in the apartment. When we moved here that was the first thing she asked for "ABC's on the wall!!!". Chris didn't really want to put 26 more holes in the wall, but Kalia and I outnumber him!

Here is the view from Kalia's closet on the other side of the room.

I realize the curtains look like high-waters. They work for now, and I really do love the curtains, just wish they were longer. I'll probably sew something on there when they start to bother me too much. When she's ready for her big girl bed, one of the daybeds will go where the dresser is, and the dresser will move to the other wall. I still don't love the cream trim, and all of my accents are white though. If I win the lottery I'll pay someone to paint all of the doors, shutters, and trim white. Gotta get on playing first!

We built the bookshelves, dresser, and the K with my maternity pictures of Kalia on there. All of that is linked up in Kalia's initial nursery tour here.

Here's the view to the left of the crib.

You can see the picture frame with fabric and mini clothes pins I did for her before she was born. I want to hang them closer together, they bug me as is. We spaced them a little bit too far apart.

Kalia's closet was "prettier" at the last house, but she's got more room with it here. She loves that little mirror down there, and it's anchored on with a nail on either side, so I'm not worried about it going anywhere. That's the toy box we built for her along with the no sew cushion I made.

Across from her room is her bathroom. She loves the big tub in our bathroom, so I haven't touched this room yet. I imagine it'll stay pretty plain for a little while, although she was begging me to get these bobble headed monkeys for her bathroom decor at bed, bath, and beyond the other day. Already?!

So that's it! Kalia's nursery. What do you guys think? It's still one of my favorite rooms in the house! It is funny / odd to me that the moonshine gray color reads more blue in this house than in the last one. I don't know if that's because the ceilings are all painted that almond color or just different light or what. It's so different how almost every ceiling in the Texas houses that we looked at were painted the same as the wall color. I had that same gray in Kalia's room, the in-law suite, the laundry room, our bathroom, and the half bath at the old house and it definitely didn't have a blue hue to it in any of those rooms. Funny how paint does that!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Happy Monday!

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Texas House : Living Room

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 21:32:00 +0000

Our living room in this house feels a little bit bigger than our last, although if you'll remember, we had a pretty big one in our last house as well.

As a refresher, here's what the selling picture of our living room looked like :

I couldn't get the same exact angel (darn no wide angle lenses!), but here's what it looks like now from pretty much the same viewpoint :

All of our furniture kind of fit like a glove in this living room, with the exception of the rug. I really wanted a larger area rug at the last house too, so I kept my eye out for one that I'd like that would fit into this space when we were in temporary living. Serena and Lily had a 30% additional off sale price, and I found exactly what I wanted.

Everything else is pretty much the same, with the exception of that coffee table. I had gotten the round one when Kalia started walking. Our previous table (you can see it under the window in the first picture of the old house) I nick named the death table. I love, love, love the look of it, but we obviously got it before Kalia came into the picture. It is super not kid friendly!

We found this one on craigslist (along with almost all of our new bedroom furniture, stay tuned for that post!), and it has the same feel as the old one, but with rounded edges. Perfection! It is so nice to be able to set a few drinks or magazines or whatever on a flat surface without having the small circle to work with!

We left my pallet shelves screwed into the wall at the old place, so this bowl houses all of my magazines and coasters.

The fireplace wall is my favorite. I love it so much. The hidden TV behind those cabinet doors to the left, the fireplace itself, and the bookshelf (that looks sort of sparse, but that's what I've got to put in it for now!) make me so happy!!

I love all of the crown molding and big baseboards in this house as well. The shutters, and all of the trim is a creamy off-white. I love white trim, but I'm not re-painting it all in this house. Not with the shutters matching the cream color. Trim I'm up for, shutters? Outside of my patience level! It is growing on me though!

So what do you guys think of our living room? It does feel pretty homey to us since this was our basic setup for the last 5 years!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

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New House Pictures : Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 18:49:00 +0000

As promised, here's my actual house tour. I haven't gone around and taken room to room pictures of the house yet, so these pictures are the listing pictures of the home. I will soon though, there's so much more to see (and the house has so much more life to it with our stuff in it - Kalia and Kodi help :-)).

The front. This picture was taken when it was still coolish outside (seasons...weird...), so everything has greened up quite a bit.

A huge selling feature of this house was this gate. Behind the gate, off to the side of the garage, is a big courtyard area with a super nice basketball net. We love to close the gate and all play basketball (including Kodi and Kalia!) and not worry about either one of them running into the street. The street is pretty quiet, but they're both a little crazy, so better safe than sorry!

The living room. I love that fireplace. And the TV goes inside of that closed cabinet. We still don't allow Kalia to watch TV yet (with the exception of college football - Go Gators!!), so this is a great "outta sight, outta mind" solution for us!

This is the view from the other side of the fireplace, looking into the kitchen and breakfast nook area.

Here is the kitchen. It already isn't this color paint on the walls anymore. It was too busy for me. Chris came home to the kitchen being painted and said he knew I wouldn't last a month with it that way! I'll share before and after pictures soon!

I do love how big it is, we were used to a large kitchen in our old home, and this is very comparable. I have visions of putting a vent hood over the stove...it feels like it got dressed and forgot to put on it's pants to me, and I also am tinkering with the idea of tearing out the drawers on the left side of the above picture and moving the whole thing back so our stools can fit all the way underneath the island. We eat there a lot, I'm not sure why it was designed that way!

I also want to put new handles on the cabinets. While I don't absolutely love the color of the cabinets, I have zero intentions to paint them. I'd love to maybe stain them a little bit darker, but I doubt that'll ever come to fruition either! I'm probably the only one in the whole blogging world who doesn't want to turn their kitchen cabinets white. I wonder if wood cabinets will become the "so 2000" thing. Like gold hardware is the so 90's thing...

The kitchen window overlooks the basketball courtyard area and I love it. Most mornings there are rabbits and about a guzillion birds hanging out in there. The entire house has plantation shutters on it too, which we absolutely love. I do love the warmth and texture that curtains bring in, but there is no way I'm doubling up every window here...too expensive!

Here's another view of the breakfast nook...which also is no longer painted that color.

And the butlers pantry. Not sure why it's called that. I wish a butler would've came with the house, that would've been awesome!

Next up is the office and the office bath. It's technically a downstairs bedroom. There's a full walk-in closet and a full bath attached to it. The coffered ceiling is amazing. While I do love the look of painted coffered ceilings, that is an arm workout that I'm not willing to do anytime soon. It works as is for now!

This is the formal living room, which is what we're using for Kalia's downstairs playroom. Do people who have formal living rooms ever actually use them? It's what you see right when you walk in, which generally isn't the most ideal for a playroom, but I don't mind it!

This is the formal dining room. We put our table the opposite way which opens the room up a lot more.

Here's the entry way. The door to the left is to the office. I don't love that the stairs and the whole upstairs is carpeted, but I will admit that it's nice for Kalia's little knees to play on.

Chris might come home to find that I've ripped out the stair carpet one day though. I hate it. I hate vacuuming it! The rails are really nice though! I would actually be okay with carpet upstairs if I could just replace the carpet on the stairs! Someday...

This is the only half bath in the house, and it's off of that butlers pantry area near the kitchen. It has a future date with my paintbrush as well.

The Master Bedroom. I love all the windows!

The master bathroom...which also has a future date with my paintbrush...

...and the view from the other side. We have a giant closet that is through the door in the above picture. Everything is bigger in Texas. We tried to find a 'reasonable' sized house. It didn't exist...

This is what you walk into once you get up the stairs. We use it as Kalia's upstairs playroom, and keep her more mellow toys up there for wind down time before going to bed. Both daybeds are in here. There is a set of doors that closes this whole upstairs off, which was also a huge selling feature. Someone can knock at the door, Kodi can bark, we can cook, clean, yell, sing, whatever we want to while Kalia is sleeping and she can't hear us. I cannot even begin to tell you how freeing that feels! Her bedroom is through the door that you see in the picture below.

One of the two guest rooms. This will eventually become baby #2's room ... you know, when Kalia gets old enough to babysit him/her....

Onto the outside. This is our back little porch.

A view of the yard...

...which is obviously missing our pool. There's room for one, and I do think we'll add one. After having one at our last house, we've been spoiled by it! We could buy the house or the pool, but not both, so we chose a house that felt like "home" to us and we'll save for the pool. There are a few great community pools less than a mile away, so we've been hitting those up A LOT since we've been here!

So that's it! Our Texas home. What do you guys think?! We've been busy busy busy putting our stamp on it, so I'll be back next week with some posts to share!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Happy Friday!

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House Tour : Out With The Old, In With The New

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:35:00 +0000

I have promised you guys a full house tour for awhile, and I'm finally going to deliver on it.

Even though this house is no longer mine. We closed on it at the end of April.

To make a long story short, Chris accepted a job out in Dallas, TX, so for the first time in our whole lives we are no longer Floridians. We were actually officially homeless for the first time since college! We lived in corporate housing for a little over a month, and closed on a beautiful new home in McKinney, TX at the end of May.

Our house wasn't even on the market for a week before we were under contract for 99% of our asking price after receiving multiple offers. We closed in less than 6 weeks. Happy happy joy joy dance plus lots of mayhem and tears and hugs and yay's all around. It's been a whirlwind of a few months to say the least!

Onto the Tour!

The Back Yard. We didn't sod all the way down to the back, so it looks a little barren in this picture. The new sod that we laid a year ago has started spreading and filling in the dead areas though. Hopefully that'll continue on for the new owners!

The in-law suite bathroom. We didn't really do much in here...

Kalia's bathroom. We painted the walls, took out the old shower door, painted the cabinets, and faux painted the countertop.

The in-law suite bedroom. I wish I had before pictures to go along with this, but I was in panic mode to get it done. This room used to be Barney purple...blah! I painted it Moonshine by Benjamin Moore and painted all of the trim white.

Kalia's room. Ah, this was such a labor of love...I'm not gonna lie, I cried the last time I walked through here. We completely gutted this room and pretty much built everything that went into it. I replicated this as closely as possible in the new home. I really loved everything about it!

The daybed room. This room used to have two daybeds in it, but I moved one into Kalia's room, and then into her playroom. Chris installed the floors one weekend before we listed it. It's the same floors we installed in Kalia's room.

The front door and the dining room.

We hung up mirrors that went to the dresser in the in-law suite, and I painted little shelves and put fresh flowers in there for showings.

The exterior of the front door with the hanging pendant that we installed.

Our living room. I painted the back of those book shelves along the wall and really loved how it turned out. All of this trim was an off-white too, so I painted that all shiny white as well.

I also did that key art and those pallet shelves...

and made the Hart sign, and hung the ski's in an x with pictures of Chris and I from our snowboarding adventures. I'm glad that my 'stuff' gets to stay with us! I am happy to report that almost all of it fits in perfectly at the new home.

Here's a few of the front of the house, which we re-painted once Kalia got here.

We had to leave the Gator flag. It was actually a part of the negotiations!

Moving back to the inside...the kitchen. Oh, how I loved that kitchen. I pretty much did nada here. It was the huge huge selling point when we bought the house.

Kalia's playroom. This room evolved quite a bit since she arrived. The pictures over the daybed are just black fabric with a picture of her from every week for her first year. It's amazing how quickly she changed!! I painted the chalk wall, built and painted the ledges, and then added a family picture wall above the ledges. Both Kalia and I miss the chalk wall. If I'm being 100% honest, I don't miss the dust though!

The entry to the Master Bathroom from our bedroom, or the vanity area. I painted this area twice, did all of the trim white, and we took off the closet doors and spray painted them to get rid of the yucky gold color.

Last time you saw our Master Bath, it was the light blue color. I painted it gray (moonshine by benjamin moore, my favorite light gray color to go to) because I felt it was more calm and would appeal to a larger audience.

Next up, our Master Bedroom. I re-did that trunk that my parents gave me and added my sewing machine cabinet that I also re-did to finish out the space. We've upgraded furniture at the new house, so I can't wait to share what our room looks like now.

Here's a picture of the office. This room also got painted, and we took out the built-ins, sanded them down, and re-stained them. They were a blonde honey color before. I also painted the back of them to make our things pop.

This is the office bath that Chris and I completely gutted and re-did just days before listing the house. There was striped wall paper and an old toilet, laminate vanity, and builder grade mirror in here. For such a little room, it required a ton of work, but the difference was amazing. As you can imagine, we were in a rush, so just use your imagination for the before pictures!

And last, but most certainly not least, the pool deck. Oh pool, how I miss you. Our new home does not have one. I think we'll wind up putting one in, but that yard and that pool were irreplaceable!

This house and our old neighborhood and our old state, ha, were so hard to leave, but we had to do what was right for our family. As soon as I quit my job, Chris put out his resume, which is why things got so scattered here on the blog. Balancing a baby plus Chris interviewing and making up his time with his old job and trying to get house projects done during naptimes and bedtimes because I knew the move was coming was quite a bit challenging.

I'm hoping that I can come back here and share projects and our lives with the four of you that still read this blog (hey 'rents!!). I'm still working on finishing up getting the last of the things unpacked...like my sewing machine...yuck!!

In personal news, my little girl turned two last month. Crazy how time flies. Here's a picture of Kalia jumping on her big gift on her second birthday. We're still a little hair challenged!!

Hope everyone is doing well!

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No Sew Elmo Halloween Costume

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:22:00 +0000

Hi guys! With Halloween only a week away, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the cutest Elmo I've ever seen. I might be a bit biased...

Kalia is absolutely obsessed with Elmo. We still don't let her watch TV, so all she's seen of Elmo is books and dolls, but she can't get enough of him. Half of the time when we ask her what her name is, she says "Elmo!". Goofy girl!

I got the idea for this costume from this picture I saw here.

I started to tie my tulle around the elastic like she said she did in that post, but I ran out of tulle really quickly. Because I'm semi lazy, and I didn't want this costume to cost more than $10 (it cost $8 - woot!), I didn't end up doing it that way.

To make mine, I first cut the tulle into 6" strips. After that, I took Fabri-tac and glue them around a piece of elastic measured to fit around Kalia's chest under the arms. I glued on one side then double wrapped it around the elastic to hide the elastic from showing.

I thought about going back to buy more tulle at this point because it was pretty thin, but Kalia hated the feel of the tulle against her skin, even with a onesie on. She kept saying "off, off, off!!" So I took an old red paint shirt and cut it up and Fabri-tac'd that to the inside of the costume as well.

I just used white, orange, and black felt to make Elmo's face and again, used my trusty Fabri-tac to glue that onto the dress. Kalia got so excited at that point "ELMO!!! ELMO!!! ELLLMMMOOOOO!!!!" That was more like the reaction I was going for!

I Fabri-tac'd the ribbon make a halter style dress that I can tie in the back of her neck.

After I took these pictures, I cut the length of the dress a bit, it was a wee bit too long for her! Just for reference, I had them cut 108" x 2 feet for the tulle. For those of you that are craft challenged like me, it might help! I just took some of the left over tulle and tied it around a white headband she already had.

Hope everyone has a great Halloween!! I've been working on a ton of house projects, but most of the time, I either can do them or blog about them! Hopefully the hubs job will slow down here shortly and I'll get some time to catch up on here...

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Diaper Wreath and Wishing Tree

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

Well, since we're in party mode, I thought I'd keep it rolling by posting on some of the baby showers I threw / helped throw while I was on my hiatus from blogging.

I've made a diaper cake before, and I've received a diaper cake before. Let me tell ya, after unrolling a million itty bitty tiny diapers and trying desperately to make them flat so they'd lay in my diaper basket I had for Kalia, I really would be a happy camper if I never had to make one or unroll one ever again. Those things are a pain! They are super cute, but not so practical. I mean, I guess they're practical, it just takes a.lot of work to get to your present!

But I know they're cute, and if nothing else, baby showers are supposed to be cute. Sooo...I decided to make a diaper wreath instead!

Here's the materials you need :

All you do is take those little diapers, and tie a string around them until you fill up the wreath form.

This one was going on the front door of one of my girlfriends parents house on a tiny nail, so I didn't want it to be too heavy, so it just got filled with diapers.

This next one I hung in the mirror above my buffet in my laundry room and added in a few toys for the new baby boy. I know when Kalia reached the age where she started wanting toys, I was so grateful that friends had gifted me with them, even though they weren't something I thought to register for.

And this last one was for a second time Momma. She's got lots of toys, so I stuck with bath supplies to fill her diaper wreath with. Her first one was also a large baby, so I skipped the newborn diapers and went with larger ones. Much more practical when your baby outgrows newborns dipes before even leaving the hospital!

Another thing I did for all of these showers that was a big hit was a wishing tree. For my girlfriend that was having a little girl, I took a branch, spray painted it white, then added in a tiny bit of silver spray paint to make it more girly and added in white rocks.

For all three baby showers, I used this cute little bird notepad and had people write their wishes for baby and Momma to be. It's a cute way to do a personalized guest book. I added these little buckets to hold the pens and paper in.

For the Momma's that were having boys, I stuck to bare branches and the yellow and brown rocks.

I also used baby bottles for vases, which I thought was a really cute touch.

Unfortunately, with a wee one in tow for all of these showers, I didn't snag as many pictures as I would've liked to. Chris snagged this one of Kalia and I at the first shower...it is crazy how much she's changed (she was 5 months in this pic). She looks so little here!!

Ahhh...love those dimples of hers so much!!! Sorry, sorry, back to the post...

All of these babies the showers were thrown for have already been born, and I'm so glad I could help their Momma's get ready to celebrate their big days by throwing these showers for them. I am, however, officially on a baby shower hiatus...for now anyways. I'm actually onto wedding stuff (yay Jenny!).

Anyone else throwing a massive amount of baby showers, or got any fun ideas for bridal showers / bachelorette parties (that's not x rated!)? I swear, something gets in the water around these parts...it seems like we go through spurts where everyone is pregnant!

Hope you guys had a great weekend! Happy Monday!

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Kalia's First Birthday Party

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Hard to believe my little girl turned one over two months ago. She grows so much every single day, sometimes it seems that if I blink, I miss some milestone that happened!

I tried telling myself I was going to keep Kalia's First Birthday party simple. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on it, and I wanted the decorations to be for Kalia...after all, it was her party. While I succeeded in making it so my decorations didn't cost a lot of moola, staying true to myself, the decor wasn't exactly simple...but Kalia loved all of them, so overall, it was a success!

Forwarning, this post is an overload of pictures (aren't most of my posts?!?!)! Special thanks to Erin and Chris for photographing Kalia's big day so Chris and I could just enjoy and celebrate. Kalia's first year was filled with so much more laughs, cries, tribulations, joys, and absolute amazement than I ever thought possible!

When you walked in the front door, this is pretty much what you saw. We hung crepe streamers from the pendant, which looked really cool at night, sort of okay during the day. Kalia thought it was amazing though, so that's what counted.

We blew up these balloons using our air compressor, and then threaded a needle through the bottom part of the balloon and pushed all of these along clear fishing wire. We used clear tape (with no adverse affects) to tape where the balloons crossed. Kalia would stare up at these balloons and say "ba! ba! ba!" all.day.long. The girl loves her some balloons!

I also printed out the Happy Birthday Kalia banner, cut it out using my straight line cutter thing a ma bob (technical term for it!), used my hole punch to put holes on both sides of the letter, and then strung ribbon through it. I taped the back of the ribbon to keep it all in place. More than likely, you'll see that banner for future birthday parties as well!

Then, of course, there's the chalk wall with the window ledges we built and a bunch of our favorite pictures from Kalia's first year.

If you looked to the left of the front door when you walked in, you saw this :

You can see the gifts chalk sign I made letting guests know where to drop them off. We blew up balloons and shoved them in-between the dining room chandelier and twisted crepe paper and hung it around the dining room. Kalia loved this too. Her eyes were drawn up for most of the week leading up to her party! The entire cost to decorate both of these rooms was $12. Not too bad, eh?

Here's a better look straight on :

The basket to the left (the table and basket don't normally live there) held the party favors for the wee ones.

I took inexpensive frames, fabri-tacked the back of them with fabric (pink for the girls, blue for the boys), and wrote the kids name on them in either pink or blue (again, girl or boy). For the most part, I actually had pictures of Kalia with the kiddo to put into the frames, but there were a few cases where the picture frame just held a blank sheet of photo paper with instructions on how to insert another picture in it's place. I glued twine to one side of the fabric, and then just pushed the backing shut after punching a hole through the center of the picture. Here's a blank one so you get the general idea. Imagine Kalia + a kid named Blake on that blank sheet of photo paper though!

The mammoth project of the entire birthday party was this giant number one. I initially tried to tape pictures in the shape of a one on the wall, and got about three pictures in before Chris told me that was ridiculous and went out to the garage and made me a cutout from some old cardboard boxes we had lying around. The bottom is actually taped on, but you wouldn't know with the pictures covering it. The top left was the most recent pictures and it went all the way down to the very beginning days of having Kalia home. This took a lot of time, but brought back so many fun memories.

To be 100% honest, this is still hanging in my dining room! Kalia goes up to it all day long and points out "Daddy!", "Momma!" and "Kodi!". I'll take it down and put these pictures in a photo album at some point, but probably not until I get to work on a project to replace it. Which might not be until she's two. Oh well, my house, I'm okay with it! I actually love to look at it too.

If you remember from Kalia's invites, the only sort of "theme" I had going on was pictures. I was successful at taking pictures every week of Kalia in her rocking chair with her pink pillow, and hung them around the pool deck in a clothes pin line.

It's amazing to me to look back at those weekly pictures and see how much change occured every.single.week. When you're living in the moment, it seems like everything is the same, and then it's just...not...but documenting it week by week was something I'm really happy I can look back at.

Kalia absolutely loves the water. She's a little fish in there, so for activities, we just stuck to splashing around in the pool. Kalia couldn't have been happier!

I think Chris might of had just as much fun as Kalia did!

...of course there were the chalk signs and fabric heart with Kalia's name on it too...

For the food, we kept it simple. We did sandwiches on fancy bread/bun things, fruit, and numerous other side dishes that family brought (thanks awesome parents!!).

Of course there were desserts. Anyone that knows me in real life knows that I can't bake worth a darn. My wonderful sister-in-law made these amazing cake pops that were a huge hit!

Her amazing mother made these deliciously cute cupcakes (good baking must run in their family ... my Mom can bake, I'm a mess, she didn't pass that gene down to me!)...

...and my amazing mother in law made these scrumptious cookies. Can you believe it was Chris's idea to stack them this way before people showed up? Love that man!

Kalia, of course, had her smash cake. I actually attempted to bake one the night before, but after you could throw it against the wall and put a dent in it, I called Publix and paid the $10 for a wee cake. Kalia was initially overwhelmed at everyone singing to her...

...but quickly got over it and dug in. She actually didn't like her cake though - she's not a fan of sugar just yet, and I plan to keep that up as long as possible!

Yay! The party was a success!

I'll end on a family photo from the end of the party. We had such a blast celebrating making it through the first year of Kalia's life. Some days we were in survival mode, but every day I'm thankful for. We are so blessed to have such a healthy, happy, and fun little girl. I wouldn't change one single thing for the world!

Gah, love both of them so much!!! So what do you guys think of the decor? It was a little time intensive, but Kalia loved it, so it was definitely worth it!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

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Tutorial : Hanging Purse / Diaper Bag Rack

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I was going to call this Hanging Coat Rack, but lets be real, it's like 100 degrees here in Florida, and there is not a coat in sight around this house!

I made my mail holder for my office almost two years ago. It's held up great, and we use it all of the time, but there is one problem with it.

See that purse? It's a wee bit small to fit all of Kalia's stuff in when we're heading out. So the mail hanger has gotten to be quite crowded with all of our various bags we keep stalked up and ready to go around these parts. We've got a Mommy bag, a Daddy bag, a gym bag, and a beach bag that we hang regularly, along with the bjorn, Kodi's leash, and few other miscellaneous things. The hooks on the mail holder weren't cutting it anymore. They work just fine, we just need more.

I saw this on One Kings Lane and immediately got inspired to do something about it.

Image courtesy of One Kings Lane

This was perfect, and with some left over scrap wood, I knew I'd be in business.

Here's how I recreated my own version.

First up, I got out my scrap wood. My dimensions wound up being pretty close to the inspiration piece, although I think mine is a little bit taller. It is 25" x 9". The small boxes I cut into 5" squares.

After all of my little boxes were cut, I sanded with 150 grit sandpaper. I sanded until ~~my arm almost fell off~~ the edges were round and pretty.

I used these three stains I had left over from my American Wall Art I did awhile back.

I stained the back board white, and here's what my little blocks against it looked like :

After that, I taped my little blocks and stained with the white...

...then the blue...

...and finally I taped,

and applied the red stain.

When I was done, I was left with this :

I gave it all a little bit of distressing with 200 grit sandpaper, focusing on the edges.

I purchased hooks at my local home improvement store, and traced out where I wanted the holes to go....

...and then pre-drilled out the holes prior to installing the hooks.

After that, I just installed the hooks and used wood glue to apply the blocks (using my laser level to make sure they were all even), and viola :

Storage solution fixed! I hung it in our laundry room, which is the perfect place to drop off the bags as we come in and out of the garage. Now we've got two storing options. If we come and go out of the front door (which we do when we jog or bike down to the Y, Publix, or the park), we've got the trusty mail holder, and now when we come and go out of the garage, we've got this!

Most of the time at least one of these bags is in the office room on the mail holder, but I put up all of the bags we had sitting on top of the washer (which drives me bonkers), and snapped a quick pic before having to go rescue Kalia from doing some sort of suicidal activity...like trying to drown herself in the toilet!

So what do you guys think? Anyone else have a million bags hanging around, or are we the only ones that like to switch it up constantly?

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Happy Monday!

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Building Crown Ledges

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:59:00 +0000

I am so excited for today's post! For my very first time, I teamed up with the amazing Ana White to bring you this. I came across her blog over two years ago when I wanted to buy a bench that was outside of my price point, and found her plans to build one instead. She is one of my favorite blogs and virtual people to keep up with, and is so so talented. It's such an honor to work with her!

As most of the things I build start, I saw this :

Image Courtesy of Restoration Hardware

And wanted two of the large ones for above the entire length of Kalia's chalk wall. Except I wanted the finish to be a little bit brighter, more appropriate for a fun playroom...and by no means did I want to pay the $225 plus tax and shipping per ledge for their 75" ones.

I think I told Chris about 100 times that we could build these before he bought into it with me using scrap pieces we had lying around to do a mach up version of these. They are seriously so simple to make.

Lucky for you, Ana White drew up an amazing how to, so you don't have to follow my scrap board pieces to buld this for yourself. Just hop over to her site and follow the simple directions!

The ledge is essentially two 1x5's and a piece of crown molding between the two. We used a 1x4 for the top and a 1x5 for the bottom piece...

...and then used a nail gun to put the crown molding piece in between.

Because our ledges go all the way across the wall, we only had to worry about finishing one out of the four ends of our ledges...which was the only sort of tricky part with this whole project.

For the full tutorial, check out here : Ana White Building Crown Ledges .

After both ledges were put together,

I primed it all and then gave it a few good sandings with my 150 grit sandpaper, followed by a final coat of the 200 grit sandpaper, until the entire thing felt really smooth.

After that, I painted my base coat of turquoise on. I used left over paint that I had from my sewing cabinet makeover I did awhile back.

I know, entirely too bright, but I expected that! Like I said, this was my base coat. Two notes about this...

1. That orange container you see there is a big thing of Floetrol. For painting things, it is my best friend. Especially in this extremely high Florida humidity. It basically acts as a conditioner for latex paints. It extends out the drying time and makes it a whole lot easier to eliminate brush strokes.

2. I almost always do a test run on pieces to see if I can get the desired outcome before just jumping on board with painting the entire thing when they're this big. I took scraps and painted about a million different color and finishing combinations until I came up with one I liked. Much easier than being frustrated at the end with all of the hard work you do on a large piece!

After I put the base coat on, I took some leftover gel stain I had (Minwax's Red Mahogony) and spread it generously on top.

My goofy hubs took that picture and then decided that I looked creepy with no head, so he needed a head shot too. Maybe I was supposed to photoshop these two pictures together, but I don't know how to use photoshop, so you just get the picture.

I wiped off the excess gel stain until I got to a color combo I liked. There was a minor freak out moment here where I couldn't get the gel stain off quick enough and I thought I ruined the entire thing and was going to have to sand it all down and start from scratch. Chris (goofy hubs!) came to the rescue and told me to just wipe it down with paint thinner. That was actually a brilliant move. I just added a little bit of paint thinner to my rag and went up and down until I got the ledges just right finish wise. Then I sanded down the edges a bit and added a few coats of polycrylic, and viola!

We added j hooks to the back and mounted both ledges side by side.

Details shots :

Here's our finished ledges at Kalia's birthday party (thanks E for taking these pictures!) :

The total cost of this for both ledges was $100. That sure beats getting two of RH's ledges for $500 + once you add in tax and shipping, and my ledges are two feet bigger!

So what do you think of them? We really love how this room is coming together. It's a really fun bright space!

I'm actually going to do something a little different with pictures on the ledge, I'll have to share what I wind up with at the end. This was so fun to put together, to reflect back on some of our favorite memories with our little girl. Where oh where did the last year go?!?!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. We just got back from a 2+ week family vacation, so I'm really behind in posts. Hopefully I can catch up with some things this weekend and be back on track. Happy Friday!

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I'm an idiot and a chalk wall

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:00:00 +0000

This past weekend we went on a cleaning spree. Kalia had been sick pretty much since her first birthday party (her one year check up was that Monday - I'm pretty sure she caught it there - darn not first thing in the morning appointments!), so once she started sort of being on the up and up, I felt the need to sanitize everything. And I do mean everything. Like 3300 + square feet of everything.

Yeah, I know, still doesn't explain why I'm an idiot...I'm getting there.

We started in the living room and conditioned the leather, dusted every single surface and every single thing on the surface, cleaned the fans, the baseboards, you name it, it got cleaned. Then we moved onto the kitchen and Chris even took everything out of our pantry and cleaned and re-organized it. So Saturday was busy busy busy with taking turns playing with Kalia and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. It was past 11 when we deemed the house done enough for the night and headed to bed. Kalia wakes up at 530 a.m.(oiy!).

Sunday we started on the cleaning kick again (I know, we're totally the life of the party these days), and I think all of the cleaning chemicals and sheer exhaustion must have gotten to my brain by the time Kalia woke up from her first nap.

We took down the balloons we used as decor for Kalia's birthday party the night before (decorations post coming soon, promise) and decided to leave them in Kalia's playroom for a few days because she has a thing for balloons. Apparently so do we.

When she woke up, we all went in the the playroom to have some family playtime (we try to make sure we both play with her at least once a day on the weekends instead of constantly trading off). Chris decided a fun game would be to spike the balloons off of Kalia's head. Kalia could have cared less. Me, on the other hand, took issue (playfully!) with him spiking balloons off of my little girls head, so I decided I would spike the balloons of off his head for Kalia.

Chris, also, could have cared less.

I guess I thought I'd really show him if I spiked it closer and harder.

A balloon.

Really??

So I tossed my balloon up, and impatiently waited for it to float itself back down so I could spike it as hard as I could into the back of Chris's head. I swung through the balloon as hard as I could and in my follow through (because now I was entirely too close), I hit my middle finger on the back of Chris's shoulder.

Snap.

Such.an.idiot.

The conversation from there went something like this :

Chris : "Ow Kara, that really hurt my shoulder!"

Me : "FFF!!!!"

Kalia : "Baa! Baa!! BAAAA!!!!" (Everything she's happy at is either ba or da)
Chris : "What'd you hit me with??"
Me : (Hunched over holding me hand) "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!!!!!"
Kalia : "BAAAAA!!!!!!"
Chris : "Seriously, what'd you hit me with??"
Me : "My . middle . finger. I'm.pretty.sure.it's.broken. Ow, ow, ow."
Chris: "Are you serious??" takes a look at it. "Yep, you're serious. That sucks. Guess my shoulder doesn't hurt so bad anymore. How do you do these things Kara???"

Kalia : "BAAAAA!!!!!! BAAAAA!!!"

Seriously, I am such an idiot. The sad thing is it is typical me. I build stuff, move trees, and think I have He-man strength when it comes to most anything, but I can't even spike a freaking balloon without breaking something.

Anyways, the point in writing that is that if I have typos, ignore them (I'm trying to type sans middle finger), and I'm behind on my posts because it takes forever to type them. Please forgive me for lack of responses on my comments as well, I'm getting there!

Whew...that took forever. Now, onto less idiotic things...like a chalk wall!

That's right, my walls can talk! Well, I guess they can't talk per say, but you can read them now! I've wanted to do a chalk wall somewhere in the house for a long long time. I told Chris before we were even pregnant that when we had babies, one of the walls was becoming chalk. He said no, but eventually I broke him down (some tasks take longer to break his disapproval of than others).

The large wall with nothing on it in Kalia's playroom screamed "pick me, pick me!!!" for a chalk wall. And I listened.

Yeah, those cleaning chemicals are still getting to me...

I'm not gonna lie, painting that huge wall that you see when you first walk into our house black, was daunting. But, like I said, the wall told me to paint it, so what am I supposed to do? Ignore crazy talking walls? No way, not this gal.

I'm losing it, I know. Must.sleep.

We sanded prior to painting. If I had to do this over again, I'd sand more thoroughly. It's hard not to rush through projects with a wee one in tow, but chalkboards are supposed to be like butter, and ours is a little more cottage cheese like. Still fun, and still totally function able, but for those of you that haven't gotten on the chalk wall train and plan on it, sand, sand, sand!

You can see the original color the previous owners had this room. Lavendar. With a pink pool deck. I have no idea what they were thinking. Moving on...

I painted three coats of the chalkboard paint on.

The paint looked super streaky, but wound up drying just fine.

After all the coats were dry, I primed / conditioned the wall. Holy foreverness. I was kind of dumb (theme of this post I think), and used a tiny thin piece of chalk to do this. Well, like three of them by the time I was done. I smartened up for Kalia's birthday party and bought big fat chalk, but I initially only bought the skinny white dustless chalk. They really should call it less dust chalk instead of dustless. Chalk is dust. It doesn't give off as much dust as the big fat ones do, but it still creates dust, so don't let it fool you!

I attempted to erase the entire 16' wall with a tiny tiny felt eraser. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Again. Holy foreverness, again. At that point I was feeling a little silly, and sent Chris this picture:

Minus taking forever, the felt eraser didn't really erase it so well either.

At this point, I think Chris was majorly regretting letting me wear him down over the chalk wall. But after going back over it with a thin dust towel that is now our official eraser for the wall, we were both really happy with the outcome.

I didn't leave the crooked paint line as our finish for the top of the chalk wall, but I can't show you in this post what I finished it off with. My finger hurts too badly, and this post is long enough!

The kids had fun drawing on the chalk wall at Kalia's birthday party, and Kalia and I have had fun on it since then. Or maybe I've had fun and Kalia's had fun eating chalk. I know, the poor girl doesn't stand a chance. Sigh...

But she'll have fun on it soon enough! Has anybody tried those chalk ink pens on chalk walls? I'm really curious to know how those work and if they erase well or leave etchings behind. Let me know if you've tried it out!

So what do you think? Well, besides I'm an idiot ... I mean of our new chalk wall, not of me! (Dear all of my lovely family members, no comments necessary on the idiot front!!) This was one of those projects that wasn't exactly for her birthday party, but I wanted to have done before the big day arrived.

Hope everyone is having a great week! Happy Hump Day!

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Kalia's First Birthday Party : Chalk Signs

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:30:00 +0000

I showed you the fabric heart I did yesterday. I mentioned that my vision for the fabric heart was to use it as a photo booth.

I not only wanted to capture pictures of the guests, but I also wanted them to be able to write messages to Kalia as well. It'll be a lot of fun to look back at these years down the road. So next up on the project list was chalk signs!

Lucky me, we had an old dresser that had seen much better days and was on it's way out to the street. We pulled out the drawers to take some of the weight off, and a lightbulb went of in my head. (Yes Dad, that happens every now and then). I needed thin wood to make my chalkboard signs for the party, and the bottom of the dresser was made with thin wood. Score!!

I took apart the dressers and drew out my various shapes onto the wood.

And then got to cutting with my jig saw.

After I cut out all of my shapes...

(no in process pictures from here on, sorry! naptimes were flying by!), I did two layers of chalk paint over each of them.

My sister in law has a whole lot prettier hand writing, so she wrote a message for the guests instructing them what to do with the chalk signs and the photo wall.

We left out some chalk, and left my point and shoot camera sitting on the table.

I taped balloons to the ceiling so that the photo wall felt more secluded, and then added curling ribbon to the bottoms of the balloons. So much cheaper than using helium balloons! I added the accordion scrap paper things in the background after doing some test shots and deciding the wall was missing something. The guests did the rest.

I cut out one of the signs to look like a stop sign and hung it from Kalia's playroom with rules on it. We've had some not fun experiences with those mats and food and shoes!

I also used a sign to tell guests where to leave the gifts. I'll show the full decor later, but for now, here's a cropped shot of the gifts sign :

So what do you think of my photo wall? We had fun with it, and I know those pictures will be so fun to look back at one day!

While I'm on the topic of pictures, thanks so much to Erin and Chris for gifting Kalia with photographing her first Birthday party. They take such great pictures, and did an amazing job capturing all of the details and moments so Chris and I could just enjoy the celebration!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! More Birthday posts coming soon!

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Kalia's First Birthday Party : Fabric Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 23:59:00 +0000

I have about a million posts to write on everything I did for Kalia's First Birthday Party. I kept the decor pretty inexpensive, more work on my part than actual cost.

I'm not really good on 'themes' with parties. For a baby shower I was helping throw, one of the girls asked what kind of theme we wanted to go with (I was in charge of decorations) and I said "baby". When they said, yeah, but what kind of baby theme, I replied with "baby girl." For my own wedding, when the florist asked what kind of flowers I wanted, I said "pretty ones". When it comes to parties / events, I'm not really big into themes, I just want everything to mean something and look cool. Does that count as a theme??

But for Kalia's invites I sent out, I used pictures, so I guess that was sort of my theme. I decided to mimic her nursery colors of both blue and pink as well, and went forward with a game plan from there. I am a little crazy about pictures...especially of Kalia. I have always loved capturing moments, so I decided to incorporate some of that into the party decor / events as well.

I've seen photo booths used at events before, so I wanted to recreate something like that, but a lot less pricey, and something relating back to Kalia. So here's what I did :

I picked up a large piece of clearance fabric, and had Chris hold it up where I wanted it to go to make sure the empty wall I was putting it on didn't dwarf the fabric.

Then I drew a large heart in chalk on the fabric.

I used Kalia's ottoman from her nursery to trace the circular parts of the heart, and then a ruler to draw the straight part.

After that, I took a pink and a blue paint pen and got to writing Kalia's name. Over.and over.and over again. I sort of felt like I was in elementary school and had gotten in trouble and had to write my name on the chalk board about a million times.

In all honesty, it took me probably about 15 minutes to write it out. It just seemed like a lot longer than that!

The fabric needed a large frame to go in, and there is no way I'm dishing out the cash for one of those, so I made one. I wanted the frame to have a little more detail than my normal picture frames, so I whipped out my router tool for the first time. That thing is amazing. So easy and so fun to use! Here's an in action shot :

and here's what the wood looked like afterwards.

I initially glazed the frame to bring out my routing detail, but the glaze just didn't go with Kalia's fabric heart, so I nixed that. After I nailed the large frame together, I gave her a few coats of white spray paint.

From there, I just stapled the fabric to the back of the frame. I can't decide if I want to reuse the frame for something else, so I didn't put too many staples in it. In hindsight, I should have either glued the fabric around it and cut it off, or just gotten over it and put enough staples to pull it tight. The fabric wrinkled a bit more than I would have liked. Overall though, I was still happy with the final product.

Besides this being the photo wall, we also did Kalia's smash cake using this as the back drop.

Kalia wasn't sure what to think of the 40 people singing Happy Birthday to her! I'll have more in action shots of the photo wall coming up shortly, so stay tuned for that.

Hope everyone's had a great week so far!

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Exterior Fountain Makeover AND a Krylon promotion

noreply@blogger.com (Kara) — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:58:00 +0000

I know, I know, I disappeared again. That's because I'm now officially a Mom to a one year old, and I had about a million projects I wanted to get done before her first birthday party! That year most definitely flew by. I think I blinked a few times and then it was over. Pictures of the party and projects coming soon, I promise!

One of the things that's been on my to-do list for forever has been that fountain / bird bath that sits outside the front of our nicely painted home.

It's dingy looking and I'm not sure if you can tell in the picture or not, but the undertones in it are pink. Just like the pool deck and the front entry way used to be. Call me crazy, but I'm just not really a pink kinda gal.

I took the easy way out, initially, with redoing this fountain. I took my favorite Ocean Breeze spray paint from Krylon and went to town on it. I like blue and all, but this turned out entirely too blue for what I was going for.

That's okay though, I had a backup plan. I thought it might be a bit much with the bright bright blue and the old kind of feel of the fountain, so I added glaze to it to add back in that rustic / old vibe it was supposed to have. After waiting 10 minutes for the spray paint to dry, I smothered the entire thing in glaze.

And then just wiped it off.

Doing this piece by piece was really a lot of work. I kept stacking them up to make sure I still liked the end product before proceeding with the next one.

Look how much difference the glaze vs. non glazed section looks like on here :

And finally, after quite a few naptimes and getting eaten up by mosquitoes after bedtimes, I was left with this :

We coated it with polycrylic hoping that it'd keep a little bit longer in the weather, although the Krylon spray I used is indoor / outdoor. I'm not worried about the spray paint, moreso the glaze. I used the ocean breeze on the exterior lights in the back well over a year and a half ago, and they've held up to the Florida weather just fine.

I really like the look of it against the red colored plants in the front. I'm sure they have a formal name, I just have no idea what it is!

I also like how the fountain color ties in with our ceiling color. As a side note, I think we hung the pendant in our entry way too high. Good thing Chris didn't clip the extra wire. He does want to shoot me though for realizing this after he thought we were done with that project. Oops!

Now onto the fun part ...the promotion! If you live in the Tampa Bay area and would like the opportunity to win a $2500 Lowe's shopping spree, listen up! All you have to do to win is visit one of the 15 participating area Lowe's (see more info here : http://www.krylonatlowes.com/), take a picture with your smartphone of you in front of the Krylon display, and text your photo to 80202. That's it! You can only enter once and the promotion runs through June 23rd. Every day two winners will receive a $25 gift card as well, so the sooner you enter, the better!

For those of you that know me personally, no, I didn't get a smart phone, and no, I didn't get text messaging. So, that's one more chance for you to win because I'm still in the dinosaur era and can't enter. Boo! One day I'll upgrade, one day!

So what do you guys think of my fountain redo? Too bold or out there for you? Anyone else have anything out of the ordinary color wise greeting passer by's?

Hope everyone has a wonderful Father's Day weekend, and if you're swinging by Lowe's to pick something up for your Dad, don't forget to enter the Krylon promotion!

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*As a full disclosure, Krylon contacted me asking me to post about their promotion. In return, I received three cans of their spray paint.

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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I'm linking to the parties in my sidebar!

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!