Give Everybody Nice Sweaters

I finally got a chance to upload the pictures from my final birthday celebration, but I have not had time to do any kind of editing (story of my life these days).  My last party was with my family and was held last Sunday afternoon after church.  It was perfect – the weather was nice enough to play outside and a lot of little people that I love were there.  I hadn’t seen them in what felt like forever!

Bren and Jett were the first to arrive and we spent some time playing with sidewalk chalk.  I had them lay down on the driveway so I could trace around them.  They are so ticklish that they couldn’t lie still!  When we finally got a decent outline, we decorated them.

Bren’s drawing is on the left and says that she’s Gone Flower Pickin’.  Jett’s is on the right and he’s Gone Fishin’.  Of course, as soon as I drew something for one, I had to draw it for the other so they’re actually both holding flowers and a fishing pole.  Multitaskers, I tell ya.

We also played some hopscotch and man! that’s a lot more tiring then I remember it being!  And either I’m really, really bad at it or there was some creative score keeping going on by Jett because I lost big time.

Bren made up her own rules when it was her turn so she beat me too.

I finally told Jett, my six-year-old best buddy, about the baby in my belly (did you catch that announcement?).  After I told him he gave me a quizzical look and said, “You want one?”  I wasn’t sure if that question was because I’d never expressed interest in having a baby (around him) or if it was more of a ’but you already have me’ kind of question.  I like to tell myself it was the latter because he loves me so much and wants to keep me for himself, but I’m pretty sure it’s really the former.  While I love all the little people in my life equally, Jett was the first baby born in my adult life that I’ve spent a lot of time around.  He’ll always have a special place in my heart.

The other two boy munchkins arrived as we finished up hopscotch.  Parker was sporting a nice bruise on his forehead.  He is ALL boy!

And this little squish face was wide awake!  I can’t believe how much he’s grown.

My mom had everything ready so we could grill out hot dogs and hamburgers.  She’d also made not one, not two, but THREE different dips (dips are my favorite food group).  After lunch I had several extra hands while I was opening my gifts.

We moved outside for dessert and this little sassafrass said she’d help me blow out my candles.

I really think Jesus (and the wind) blew out the flames before the birthday song was over, but we pretended anyway.  It just wasn’t in the cards for me to blow out candles this year.

Jett, Bren, and their parents had to leave soon after dessert because they were headed camping.  I’m still waiting to hear how that went!  Bren had her minky dot princess sleeping bag packed and said she was ready to sleep outside.  I hope, for her parents’ sake, that she did do some sleeping that night.

Ramer took turns in all of our laps.

This was my favorite shot of him; Doc had him grinning pretty good for a few minutes.

And then they had to leave too to go take naps.  I konked out for a pretty good nap too, so it was an excellent birthday afternoon!

Ok, enough of that.  Who’s staying up late tonight to go watch the premier of the Hunger Games at midnight??  This is the first time I’ve ever considered going to a midnight movie, but in the end I decided a 3 am bedtime would not do me any good at work the next day.  Doc and I have purchased our tickets for a 4:30 showing tomorrow afternoon.  I can. not. wait!!

When I first met our friends the Cooks and learned that Christopher has the same birthday as I do, I won’t lie…I was probably a little put out.  I mean, there was an understood rule that March 15 was supposed to be all about me! me! me!  And when it came to birthdays, I didn’t really wanna share.

But as it turns out, Chris’s wife, Allison, is really creative and likes to go all out on birthdays.  And since we’re pretty good friends and I share a birthday with her husband, I, by default, get to benefit from all the goodies and celebrations she plans for Chris.  We’re a few years into this whole shared birthday thing now and guys?  I’m not complaining anymore.  Sharing a birthday with Christopher is AWESOME!  Maybe even one of the best things that ever happened to me.

For proof, you can read about how last year’s birthday dinner turned into a Bowling Surprise Party for me (and Chris too, I guess…) and about this year’s Birthday Dinner #1 that Allison cooked up for us at her house.  As if that weren’t enough, this year’s Birthday Dinner #2 was all planned by Allison too!  I guess technically Doc taking me out to dinner on my actual birthday was really birthday dinner #2, but I didn’t take pictures at it.  So dinner last Saturday night (on St. Patrick’s Day) officially gets the Birthday Dinner #2 title and for once, I’m actually beating Allison to the punch and writing about it first.  Blogging victory!

Since Chris turned the big 3-0 this year, this was supposed to be a big dinner celebration with all of our in-town friends.  But because of St. Patty’s Day and the way Spring Break vacations fell, our group size dwindled down to just 8 of us.  But we still had a great time!

In attendance were the Earls,

the Solomons,

me and Doc,

and of course, the Birthday Boy and Party Planner Extraordinaire.

I didn’t realize the party was on St. Patrick’s Day until about an hour before we were supposed to be there.  I was feeling the luck of the Irish when I A) found a green shirt in my closet and B) the scoop of said green shirt mimicked my ridiculous tank top sunburn line from our beach vacay.  It’s the little things, you know?

When we arrived at the restaurant, this fun little pack of M&Ms was waiting for me at my seat, and there were lots more scattered on the table.  They’re customized Happy Birthday M&Ms and half of them said Chris is 30 and the other half that I am 29.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spied this display of push pop cupcakes.  I rushed through my meal since I knew those were on the horizon!

The ribbons on the push pops matched the wrapping paper and the flags on the age labels coordinated with the M&M packages.  These details were not lost on me!

And ooooh wee, were the cupcakes tasty!  They were all homemade chocolate cake and icing, but half had a layer of caramel in the middle and the other half had a layer of cherries.  Yummo!

For anyone confused, you just pushed the cupcake up like you would a push pop.

Doc took down a whole cupcake in one bite at our wedding, so it didn’t surprise me at all when he did it again with this.  The boy’s got mad skills.

He makes me so proud.

That’s where my pictures from this birthday dinner stop.  Chris and I did get to open more birthday gifts before relocating.  Since the weather was so nice, we spent the rest of the night sitting out on a patio people-watching (one of my favorite pasttimes, and St. Patt’s Day did not disappoint). 

I’ve got pictures to download from my last birthday party of the year.  Hopefully I’ll get to do that tonight!

…It’s so hard to say goodbye!  At the time that this posts, I’m probably sitting in the front seat of our rented minivan boo hoo-ing as we drive towards our house that’s not brand new, doesn’t have a pool in the backyard, and isn’t within walking distance of the beach.  And, last I checked, it was raining cats and dogs at home so we’ll likely be greeted by mud puddles and foot-high weeds.  Sigh…why can’t we just stay here forever?

This week was the kids’ spring break so we brought them (and Doc’s parents too) to see the beach house for the first time.  During building, we kept it a secret from them so they had no idea it even existed.  I mean, they knew we were headed to the beach and that we were staying in a house, they just didn’t know it was our house.  As we pulled up, we told them we were all going to take a quick tour of the house and then we had to meet out on the patio for a family meeting.  Doc used his serious voice thinking he’d make them nervous (especially since last week we’d had a family meeting and told them about the new brother or sister they’ll be getting in September!) but I think they just thought he was going to go over the “vacation rules.”

Before telling them the house belongs to us, we asked them what they thought about it so we’d get an unbiased opinion.  They both thought it was really cool…they got their own rooms and it had a pool!  I had my camera poised to snap a pic when Doc told them that the house belongs to us.  I was ready to catch their excitement on film!

Um yea, not really the picture I was expecting.  What we actually got was about a billion questions.  “Wait…so this used to just be an empty lot?”  “You’ve seen this house before?”  “We can come here anytime?”  “Other people can come here too?”  I guess it was a lot to take in.  We asked them if they remembered all the mattresses and couches that used to be in Mimi and Poppy’s (my parents) garage.  “Yea?”  Then we told them those were the mattresses we’d be sleeping on the couches that were in the living room.  Slowly but surely it all started to make sense to them.

Then they got excited!  And also wanted to know why didn’t build a third floor.  We tried to point out the positives; tweens don’t really get mortgages and things like that.

We also told them that noone had swam in the pool yet so the race was on to see who could get suited up first.   Wyatt was first but we made him patiently wait for his sister so they could jump in together.

Finally she made it down and we counted them off.  They made sure I had my camera ready so we’d know for sure exactly who went all the way under first.

Three, two…

…one!  Looks like Anna’s off the ground first.

But Wyatt’s catching up.

Looks like Wyatt made it under first.  The camera doesn’t lie.  Just don’t tell Anna, ok?

It didn’t take long after they jumped in for us to realize the pool heater wasn’t turned on.  Pool water on March 14th is COLD!  Doc spent a while on the phone with the pool guy.  Turns out the gas wasn’t hooked up yet.

Wyatt became the pool boy and got to work cleaning out the leaves.

The rest of us pretty much just sat around and watched.

I spent about an hour out by the pool the first day.  I was finishing up a book on my kindle and just had on shorts and a tank top since it really wasn’t that hot.  As it turns out, the sun was doing a job on me and it looked like I was wearing that tank top for the rest of the trip.  That, or a bright red bib.  Lemme tell you, it was awesome.

Before we got the heat turned on, Anna mastered the art of getting onto the raft without getting wet.

Poor Wyatt got soaked every time.  Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind.

The second full day of our vacation was my birthday!  My sneaky little family turned into busy little bees while I was in the shower that afternoon, because I walked outside to a surprise party on the porch!

I wish I’d had my camera to show you things from my point of view.  Doc told me to come outside and I saw the balloons but noone was there.  And then Lala appeared from behind the bike shed, Anna and Papa rounded the corner of the house, and Wyatt pulled up the driveway on his bike.  And they all had presents!  (Anna’s and Wyatt’s were even wrapped in paper they’d decorated.)

Lala took lots of great pictures at the party but yea, I’d just stepped out of the shower so must of those will remain unposted.  One of the presents I opened was a new pair of TOMS ballet flats.  Super cute!

I also got a Built bag for my laptop.  Really excited about finally having something to cart my computer around in!

Doc baked brownies for the party and Anna arranged my candles into a 2 and a 9 (last year in the twenties!).  Unfortunately, there were no matches so I had to pretend to blow them out.  That just means I got them all and my wish will come true!

Later that afternoon Doc took me out for a quick shopping trip and a birthday dinner.  Of course I didn’t take a picture of us actually showered and cleaned up, but it was a great date night!  It was a really good birthday and I’m so glad I got to spend it at the beach with these guys!

As for the rest of the trip, we did as little as possible.  We spent a day or two at the beach and lots of time lounging around the pool.  I spotted three of these guys (or maybe they were all the same one?) hanging out by the pool with us.  To be so afraid of snakes and other creepy crawly things, I actually think these little lizards are pretty cute.

We bought two more bikes while we were in town so now there’s a total of four at the house.  There were lots of bike rides while we were there.

As always, Doc was the head cook and whipped up some great seafood meals.  Like the pool, we also broke in the dining room table and ate dinner at it a couple nights.

While I was in the back taking that picture of Doc grilling, I also snapped a couple of the back walkway since I left it off our tour (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four).  This is the view from the back door looking towards the pool.

We’ve got an outdoor shower with both hot and cold water.  Wyatt took a couple of ten minute “rinse offs” after swimming in the freezing cold pool; I think he liked it.  Next to the shower is a rack for you to hang your towel.

So that was our quick spring break vacation!  I’ll leave you with this picture of Little Miss Sassy.

Last Sunday night, my sweet friend Allison invited us over for a birthday dinner.  Her husband, Chris, and I share a birthday and our friend Charlie’s is 2 days earlier.  It’s a perfect excuse for us to all get together!

Charlie and his wife Sarah live a couple hours away so we don’t get to see them as often.  We were really excited to see them this time because they were bringing the newest addition to their family, Mr. Gus.

Doc LOVES babies when they’re fresh out tha oven and still a little squishy.  And Gus was on his best behavior which made him even easier to love on.

Jenny took her turn with baby Gus.

I always love eating over at Allison’s cause I know the grubs gonna be good!  For this dinner, she whipped up a Mexican meal and I think we did a decent job and knocking it all out.  The highlight for me, though, was definitely dessert (isn’t it always?).

Here’s Jenny and Darrin post present opening but pre-dessert.  See those mason jars in their hands?  We all got one with our name on it and inside was an ice cream cone.  (Also, see that orange box with 2 silver bowls in it?  I got one too, but we’ll come back to that.)

Sarah and Charlie were also excited about birthday presents and dessert.

This one’s blurry but Chris and Allison were there too.  Thank goodness since it was their house…

I’ve gotten really bad about forgetting to ask anyone to take a picture of me and Doc.  We were there too.  I was even wearing a cute new scarf.  Boo.

Anyway, while we wondered about the cone in our jar, Allison and Chris started scooping out homemade ice cream into bowls.

By the time our ice cream made it to the table, it had been topped by some kind of awesome homemade caramel sauce.  Allison had a fancy name for it but I can’t remember it.

Then we were told we could open our jars and found out the cones were full of pecans that we could pour on top.

And then we were instructed to crumble our cones on top too.  Yum!

Not gonna lie, it was a pretty awesome dessert.  So much so that I wanted it again for breakfast the next morning.

So remember that orange box in the picture with Jenny?  That’s a custom food bowl holder that Chris made.  Back when Allison posted about the one he made their cat, I not-so-subtley hinted that Lolli kinda wished she had one of her own.  And it worked! Allison mentioned it to Chris and he made her one!  I’m so glad because she’s been eating out of heart-shaped bowls for over a year. (It made sense at first since we got her around Valentine’s day.  There’s really no excuse for why they became her permanent food bowls.)

Since she’s only ever eaten out of her heart bowls, she was a little confused at first and had to investigate.

Hmmm…kinda gotta paw it to make sure it’s ok.

And face plant!  I think she approves.

Just so we’re clear, Lolli wasn’t the only winner from that birthday dinner.  I also got to bring home a really cute L mug and a snazzy new bracelet.

Thanks for hosting us, Allison!  I’ll be back soon with more birthday celebrations!

It’s that time again!  Sherry (from YHL) and Katie (from Bower Power) have announced yet another Pinterest Challenge…

The Pinterest Challenge was dreamed up by Katie B. in an effort to get us to stop pinning and start doing.  You may remember that for the Summer Edition, I set my crayons out to melt in the sun only to result in a Pinterest Challenge FAIL.  (Thankfully, I was able to redeem myself the next week.)  I completely missed the Fall Edition of their Pinterest Challenge but this time, I’m all in!

Tha basic idea is to take somthing you’ve pinned on Pinterest and bring it to life, all while putting your own spin on things, of course.  Easy enough, no?

The problem for me is that, while definitely a big fan of Pinterest, I’m much more of a “looker” and not much of a “pinner.”  In fact, save for a few things from my first couple times to log on, you won’t find anyting on any of my boards.   Mostly, I just get on Pinterest without even loggin in, do some looking around and then call it a day.  Because really, how many times do people actually go back to things that they’ve pinned?

All that said, for my Pinterest Challenge project, I couldn’t really pick a project from something I pinned since there’s nothing there to choose from.  So I just picked something I saw on the home page that I liked.  And it’s actually something I’ve seen pinned several times.  But while there are different versions, the first one I saw was here, by JK JK.

The pin links directly to Jen’s post on how she did it and in her first paragraph she mentions that her inspiration came from Anthropologie.  So we’ll give Anthro credit for the original idea, and Jen credit for bringing it to my attention.

Enough chatter, let’s get to the dang project already!

Actually, before we do, I just need to throw out there that I really, really wanted to participate in this challenge, but I only had one night to crank out my project.  And also, every minute that I spent working on this Monday night was a minute not spent packing for the beach or watching The Bachelor Finale – two other Very Important Tasks.  (And don’t even get me started on Crazy Courtney…)  So this project is faaaaar from perfect.

I didn’t want to put a whole bunch of nail holes in my wall, so I decided to make my letters on a piece of wood.  To beef up the 1×12, I framed it out with 1x2s so it’d sit off the wall a little bit.  The picture below shows the back side and how it’s framed out.

Here’s the end of it.  I did not miter the corners of my 1x2s, there was no time for little details like that.

I painted the wooden “box” using the same method I explained here.  A coat of red+black, and then three coats of red.

Then I took my electric hand sander to Big Red to rough ‘er up a bit.

A coat of polyurethane (water-based cause it dries faster) later, and I was ready to add the letters.  I used my Silhouette machine to cut them out of regular typing paper and then just eye-balled the spacing.

I wanted to use a nail with a big head on it so my yarn wouldn’t slip off, and the only ones we had on hand were roofing nails.  The pain that comes with roofing nails is that they’re all stuck together (to load into a gun maybe?) and you have to pull each one off.  Thankfully, the hubs stepped in and separated the nails for me.

I used the paper letters as a guide for where my nails needed to go.  Basically, every corner got a nail, and the curve of the R got several.

I just lightly tapped the nails in at first and then, after removing the paper letters, I hammered them in further to make them good and secure.  It really didn’t take long at all to get all the nails in, especially since I was not being a perfectionist about it.

Adding the yarn was the fun part!  I used a cream yarn I had left over from knitting hats and opted to do four rounds on each letter.  I tied a knot on the top left nail of each letter, wove the yarn around the nails four times, and tied off again on the same starting nail.

I made this to hang above the bed in our bedroom.  I’ve never felt that the bed needed anything over it since the headboard is so chunky, but it couldn’t hurt to add something, right?  Plus, I’m running out of other walls to decorate.  Oh, and the chunky headboard was another reason I framed the 1×12 with the 1x2s, so it’d look more substantial hanging up there.

(Please ignore our tired, worn, desperately-needing-to-be-replaced bedding.  Hopefully a room makeover is in the semi-near future.)

By the way, I toyed with doing “DREAM” instead, but I already have that on another sign somewhere.  RELAX seemed like it’d be good, easy block letters to do.

I really like the side view since you can see all the layers of string.

So there you have it, my quick and easy yarn letters.  As far as this Pinterest Challenge project goes, I’d say I nailed it.  Har.

I’ll be linking up over at Young House Love and Bower Power.  You should swing by and check out their projects (Sherry’s awesome bean bag project can be found here and Katie’s very cool watercolor painting is here) and all the other ones too!

March is my favorite month (I’m pretty sure I’ve already explained why) and so far, March 2012 is shaping up to be pretty swell.  Now that we’re all moved in to the Beach House, I’ve got all this extra time on my hands and since the weather’s been semi-decent, we’ve been able to enjoy doing some fun stuff!  I haven’t been great about taking pictures but I’ll go ahead and get caught up on what I do have pictures of…

Last weekend was our weekend with the kids.  We invited my parents to join us for dinner (flank steaks! and homemade ice cream!) and after they left for the night, I took this picture.

It’s not a very good picture at all, but here’s what’s going on:  all four of us (five if you count Lolli who was sitting on my shoulder) were sitting on the couch using some kind of tech-y device.  The tv wasn’t even on.  Wyatt was on his laptop, Anna had her iPod Touch, and Doc and I both had out our iPhones.  It’s no secret that I’m terrified of technology taking over the world, so this was slightly alarming to me.  Hopefully this is not what family nights of the future will look like.

Speaking of sitting lined up in a row, the next day we ventured out for a family movie.  We haven’t had time to do this in forever!  (In fact, I’ve already been to the movie theater twice in 2012, which is some kind of record for me.)  We brought Jett with us and the kids voted to see The Lorax.  In case you can’t tell by their craned necks in the dark picture below, our stop at the concession stand before going into the theater meant we got front row seats.  Super!

The movie was really cute if anyone’s thinking about going to see it.  I would recommend it, especially if you have kiddos in tow.

Yesterday we were invited to join some friends on a trip to the zoo.  You know what’s crazy?  This was the first time Doc and I had been to the zoo since our wedding day back in 2009!  As much time as we spent there prior to the wedding getting things planned out, it’s weird that we hadn’t stepped foot there since the big day.

It was a great day to be there.  The weather was great – a little cool but perfect if you were in the sun.  The animals seemed to enjoy the sunshine as much as we did.  First we saw the panda who was going to town on some bamboo.

Little Alice crouched down close for a good look.

Did you know you could ride a camel at the zoo?  I had no idea.  This could’ve totally changed my entrance into our wedding ceremony…

Andrew‘s smiling in the picture below, but rumor has it that the back seat of that camel is no luxurious ride.  Apparently there’s some sort of bar down the middle that hits in all the wrong places.

Alice loved the camel ride so much she went for a round two on the carousel.

I would like to buy this elephant some moisturizing lotion.

My favorite, the giraffe!  Next time, I’m definitely feeding one.

We ended our zoo trip with a stop by the fountains.  So fascinating when you’re so little!

That pretty much gets you caught up on what we’ve been up to the last week.  Tonight we had the first of several birthday dinners but I haven’t downloaded my pictures yet.  Maybe tomorrow!

Let’s wrap this thing up, shall we?  The last stops on the tour are the master suite and the “mini master.”  I think we’ll start with the mini; it’s downstairs and we got a small peek into it on Part 2 of the tour when we were in the kitchen.

The mini master is the only bedroom downstairs and even though it’s probably the smallest in size, the tall ceilings keep it from feeling tiny.  It’s located at the back of the house, just off the kitchen, and the builder called it a mini master because it has it’s own full bath.  This is where Doc and I stayed while we were there and we give it a 2 thumbs up.  It’s quite cozy.

So let’s get closer.  Here’s the view from right at the door.

Early on in our shopping, my mom and I were visiting my aunt and she took us to a great furniture outlet store.  We bought three of the beds there – all brand new and ridiculously cheap.  One was the footboard and headboard that we had to paint white.  We had to buy side rails for it since it wasn’t a complete bed and now it looks great in the “Jackie” room.  The king bed in the master bedroom was the same situation; we had to buy side rails for it too but at least we didn’t have to paint that one.  For this room, we got the solid wood headboard for 100 smackaroos.  We attached a metal bedframe to it and called it done.

Hopefully you recognize the flower painting above the bed.  That’s the $8 Target canvas I made over a few weeks ago.

Here’s a shot of the side wall.  The curtains (made by my mom) look a little wonky since we kept drawing them closed at night.  And in this picture, that mirror looks really low but I promise if you were standing in front of it checking to see if you had something in your teeth, the height is just right.

The floral fabric used for the curtains, shams, and bed skirt is a Premier Print.  The cream matlasee was another TJ Maxx find and it only had one sham to go with it, which explains the random single pillow in front.

Across from the bed is the mustard yellow dresser that I’m still in love with.

The last wall of the room has the closet and bathroom doors on it.  The green chair sits in between the two and, from this picture, kinda looks like it sticks out and would be in the way, but I loved having it there to throw my clothes everyday.

Beside the bed sits the little yellow side table we made.  Sorry this picture (and the others, too) is so dark.  My daylight was all gone and I didn’t turn on my flash.

I completely forgot that the bottom half of the curtains in this room were solid yellow when I decided to paint the table that color.  So there’s a slight yellow overload but I really don’t know what other color I would’ve painted it.  I had also forgotten about this yellow lamp that we bought for this room.  The crazy thing is that it’s the exact same shade of yellow, even the glazes match!  I probably couldn’t have matched them better if I tried.

We added a few more buoys to the bottom of the table.

The bathroom is not tiny, but it was still had for me to get good pictures of.  I couldn’t stand back very far to get a good shot.  And just in case anyone reading this really notices details, yes, the knobs on the drawers were still missing.  They’re there now, though.

The countertop is another granite remnant that our builder picked out.  I’m so glad he had good taste!

This is about as good as I could get of the tiled shower.  The white strip of sheetrock on the right has since been painted.

Who’s ready to go upstairs to the real master suite?  I am, cause I think it’s my favorite room.  (Although I do change my mind about that a lot.)

The master suite is upstairs over the dining room and mini master side of the house.  Here it is from the door.

Let’s start with the color scheme.  My mom bought this blue and cream chevron fabric (another Premier Print) completely by mistake.  I had asked her to pick up a different blue fabric and she grabbed this one because I had gotten a swatch of it too while at the fabric store.

It is not unlike us to have a few yards of fabric (or even a whole bolt!) that we don’t even have a purpose for, so we just held on to this and figured we’d find a place for it.  Then my mom found this brown print somewhere and had the idea to use them together for the master.

Shortly after pairing the two together, we had our big score at the furnitre store that was going out of business and found the painting that’s over the bed.  It was perfect.  (And if you’re a Dooce reader, she has the same painting hanging in her house!)

So that’s how the color scheme came about; we just then had to put it all together.  We went out on a limb with the blue walls (Rain by Sherwin Williams) but we wanted at least one room that wasn’t a neutral color.  I’ll admit, I was very nervous about this room once I saw it painted.  Before it had any carpet or furniture, the blue walls and white trim looked really, really bright.  I wasn’t sure that our cream furniture was going to work.

I was nearing panic mode and ready to start over on the decorations when my mom told me to relax.  She reminded me the curtains would hide a lot of the bright white trim and the carpet would tone it all down.  I’m glad I choked down that chill pill because I really like this room now!

The cream quilt is Martha Stewart and is reversible.  The other side is a sandy brown, just a shade lighter than the fabric on the bed skirt.  Mom made all the throw pillows except for the round one in front.  That one came from TJ Maxx.

Remember the neutral Rast dressers with the neutral lamps and neutral lamp shades?  I’m glad that I stuck with all the neutral since they’re flanked by the chevron curtains.  I love the way they look.

Across from the bed is the cream dresser I painted.

On one side of the dresser sits this cute little footstool.  It was not needed at all, but the fabric store was itching to get it out of their inventory so we did them a favor and bought it.  The top is a hinged lid for some hidden storage.

On the other side of the dresser is this chair we picked up for $100 at an estate sale.  We had to have it recovered but it was still a really good deal.

The painting hanging over the chair is the one my mom did at our painting class.

The master bathroom is obviously the biggest one in the house.

The half wall ledge at the end of the sinks was still missing a piece of granite when I took these pictures.

Mom made more faux roman shades to hang over the windows in here.  The fabric is a coordinating one to the chevron in the bedroom.

My freestyle painting from our paint night is hanging over the soaker tub.

The tile shower in this bathroom is a lot like the one downstairs, except bigger and with a bench.

Here’s a final picture looking back into the master bedroom.

I guess this brings our Beach House Tour to an end.  Sadness.

I’m also at a loss for what I’m supposed to do on the weekends now, with no more furniture to paint or wall art to create.  I gotta say, decorating and furnishing an entire house from 450 miles away is not the easiest thing in the world to do, but I’m more than pleased with how it all turned out.  Doc and I are going back in just a couple weeks and will be taking the kids (who still don’t even know it exists).  I can’t wait to see their faces when we tell them its ours, but mostly, I can wait to just relax and enjoy it!

So what do you think about it?  Too much hype for what it is?  Glad its over so we don’t have to talk about it anymore?  Or are you ready to come for a visit?  Which room would you choose if you got first dibs?  Give it to me straight.

Wanna know something?  Part 2 of this tour took me 3 hours to write.  I’m not sure that’s the exact amount of time since it was spread out over two days, but believe me when I say it took fooooor-ev-er.  And then I finally hit publish and half of it disappeared.  Poof! Gone.  Just like that.  So naturally I had to spend a good 45 minutes crying and flailing about before I could pull myself together and redo it.  And the second time around wasn’t nearly as good as the first.  I didn’t even re-write about the cute red and white polka dot bakeware we bought!

All that is to say that I don’t have 3 hours right now to spend click-clacking away on the laptop, so I’m going to break the bedrooms part of this tour down into two posts.  Forgive me, will ya?

It would probably make sense to start with the downstairs bedroom since that’s kinda where we left off, but I’m gonna switch things up and go straight to the Jack-and-Jill bedrooms.  I’m crazy like that.

So come on, let’s drag our hineys up the stairs and get this tour going again!

The picture above is of the upstairs hallway, so you can get oriented with where we are.  The door at the top of the stairs is the laundry room and then the two bedrooms are on the left (with a linen closet in the middle of the hall).

Also at the top of the stairs is this eye-sore of a breaker box.  Now you see it…

…now you don’t.  That was an easy fix.

And now let’s peek our head into that room on the left.  We’ll call it the Jill since it’s got polka dots and polka dots feel girly to me.

Here’s a straight on view of the bed.  The bedding is Martha Stewart and the painting was done by my sister-in-law, Beth.

Here’s the wall across from the bed.  We bought two of those white dressers, one for each of the J-and-J rooms.  My mom made the curtains and they match the bed skirt and pillow shams.

On the dresser in this room sits two wooden buoys and a lamp.  The lamp is a Pier One lamp that I found at a yard sale.  My mom has the exact same one at her house and I definitely paid a lot less than she did.

There’s another buoy hanging on the closet door.

In every bedroom closet, hangers are awaiting our guests.  This one has one of the luggage racks too.

Remember the Ikea Rast dresser with the grey top?  It landed in this room.  The lamp is from Marshall’s, or maybe TJ Maxx.  Can’t remember.

Lamp on!

Here’s the other side of the room.  The door leads to the bathroom.

The bench is one that we made a long time ago.  It’d just been hanging out in the shop gathering dust, so we added some baskets to the bottom and thought it’d be a good place to put a suitcase or something.  The top is stenciled like the other Rast dresser.

The window pane mirror was just 20 bucks on sale from Hobby Lobby.  It’s not perfect but it works.

That sums it up for the Jill bedroom so let’s check out the bathroom that joins the two rooms together.

We let our builder pick out granite remnants to use in the bathrooms, and I love the color of the granite that he chose for this bath.  I think it looks good with the grey walls and the white cabinets.

These cute little jars came from a consignment shop and were the perfect color.  They’re the exact same shade of blue as our other accessories.

We hung my ocean grass and beach rock shadowboxes above the towel racks.

The other side of the room has the toilet (obviously) and a bath/shower combo.  My mom made the shower curtain and that thing hanging above the towel rack is a shelf of votive candles that’s got mirrors.  It’s kinda hard to tell in this picture.

The trash can and shower curtain hooks both came from Target.

Bathroom tour…check!  On to the Jack room!

Well, I forgot that this room had some polka dots too so maybe it should be the Jackie room?  Doc says this room is his favorite because it’s so white and clean.  We’ll see how long the “white and clean” lasts after we start renting the house.

Straight on shot of this bed.  We found the bedding way early on at Marshall’s and thought it looked beachy.  It seemed like it would be easy enough to match with all the colors.  Turns out nothing in the whole entire world is the same colors as the stripes in that duvet.  I’m not exaggerating at all.  The painting is another Beth original.  Oh, and that’s the bed we painted white.

The stenciled Ikea Rast dresser found a home in this room.  I don’t remember where the lamp came from but it’s pretty cool because you can adjust the height of it.  The curtains and bedskirt were both plain white (you know, since nothing in the whole entire world matched the bedding) but my mom added some grey stripes so they wouldn’t be too, too plain.

Across from the bed is another one of those white dressers with the mirror that my brother painted hanging over it.  We added a splash of color with the lamp I spray painted.  The white chair beside it is a good place to throw your purse, or something.

This wall is my favorite part of this bedroom.  I love the flower canvas I made hanging over those cute grey drawers.

Closer…

Cute, right?

And that, my friends, wraps up the Jack(ie)-and-Jill bedrooms.  My favorite rooms – the master and “mini master” – are next.  Promise.  Be back soon!

Well, you’ve been patient long enough.  Come on inside!

When you step inside the double red doors…

…you’ll find yourself standing right in front of the stairwell.

To your immediate right is the dining room.

I am more than pleased with how the dining room turned out.  The striped rug completely fills up the room, which I love.  I was nervous it would be too small for the table, but that’s not the case at all.

Speaking of the table, it’s made of some awesome textured wood.  I love the top of it.  Kinda wish it lived in my house.

Even though the light fixture is not what I originally had in mind, I like the way it turned out.  It looks nice over the table.

The items on the back wall (with horizontal paneling) should looke pretty familiar to you.  The lamp is one that we scored early on, that’s the red buffet that I made over, and of course, the mirror that I recently painted.  I’m glad I went with the grey for the mirror, and I liked that we turned it to be vertical instead of horizontal since the ceilings are so tall.

Those tall skinny birds were a TJ Maxx find.

Over in the corner hangs Beth’s chocolate cake painting.  Mmmmm…

This last shot of the dining room was taken standing at the door to the screened-in porch.  The door beside the hutch is a closet, and over to the very far left you can see that just past the stairs is the living room.

Speaking of the living room, let’s head that way.

From this view, we’re back at the front door like we’ve just entered the house.  You can see the living room and kitchen are all one big room.

Let’s focus on just the living room for a minute.

Let’s see…the tv armoir came from a second-hand store in Florida.  Besides building the black box to raise the tv, we also added a few things to the bottom shelves so it wouldn’t be so empty.

I wrote a post about some bargain deals that we got when a local furniture store was going out of business.  That’s where the couches, coffee table, and side table came from.

We added a couple Target throw pillows to the big couch.

Standing in the living room, if you turn back towards the front door, this is your view.

The red chest is another bargain deal we got at the furniture closeout sale.  It came in a box and sat in the garage for so long that we completely forgot what it looked like.  I could’ve sworn it was smaller, but luckily, it seemed made for that space.  The lamp was purchased with all the others a while back, and the bird painting was done by Beth.

The painting in the corner, back behind the love seat, was purchased from a local artist back home.  We thought that corner needed a little color and that the flowers cheered it up.

I almost forgot to mention that the curtains hanging in this room (and the dining room, too) are the ones that I painstakingly put all the grommets on.  Glad they turned out well!

During the whole process of purchasing things to furnish this house, I would say we only had two real splurges: this red leather chair and the rug.  The red chair came from Macy’s and reclines.  It’s so comfortable!  (The floor lamp came from the same place as all the others.)

The rug is like a cloud under your bare toes.  I could walk around on it all day.  Or just lay down and take a nap…I’m better at that.  It came from Capel Rugs.  I really expected it to shed all over the place, but it didn’t at all!  I’m gonna watch it for a few months to see how it holds up and if it does well, I may be taking out a small loan to purchase a rug like this for every room in my house.

Beside the big couch is an end table.  We actually purchased two of these but just couldn’t make the other one fit.  I’d say only having one piece of furniture that didn’t work out was pretty good!  We kept this plain and simple with just a lamp and another bird since we know it will be used a lot by visitors for remotes, drinks, cell phones, etc.

Just behind the end table and couch is what our architect called a “game niche.”  We really didn’t know what to expect for it.  I thought it would be a cutout that went all the way up to the ceiling and you could put a piece of furniture there.  As it turns out, it’s really just a couple shelves to store games on.

We did have a few games that we put in the big basket on the bottom shelf.  Mom also cleaned out her book collection and donated a few romance novels.  What’s a beach vacation without those, amiright?

We also stuck a few buoys there (they match the ones on the dining table) and added this oh-so-cute beach bike on the bottom.  It came from Hobby Lobby – 50% off, of course.

And I’m sure you noticed the Sunrise and Sunset birds hanging over the shelves.

Before we make our way to the kitchen, let’s make a quick pit stop. As you can see in the picture below, just past the game niche but before you’re technically in the kitchen is a door.  That’s the half bath.

Ok, actually, before we make it to the half bath, can we stop and look at the in-need-of-a-mopping floor for a minute?  I voted for a darker finish and was outnumbered…and I’m so glad I was!  This is pine wood with a coffee stain and I love the way it turned out!  Oh, and maybe you noticed in the picture above that there’s no shoe mould.  The builder didn’t automatically put it down but we requested that they put it down.  When Doc and I left Tuesday morning, the builder hadn’t even arrived yet, but my dad texted me just a few hours into our drive and said it was already done.  Check that off the list!  I think it makes it look a lot more finished.

Ok, ok, now we can peek into the half bath!

It’s a small bathroom nestled under the stairs and has horizontal wood paneled walls.  We didn’t realize it wouldn’t have a mirror when we arrived so we had to go shopping for one.

The cute little nautical weights hanging to the left were found at Hobby Lobby.  I thought they were kinda fun.

On the back wall we hung two little sailboats.

The only other thing in this bathroom is this picture of footprints on the beach.  This is actually a picture that I took on our honeymoon.  Doc and I were they only people on the beach one morning and I loved the look of our married footsteps.  (Awww…) So we brought a little bit of St. Lucia to our beach house in Florida.

Ready to head to the kitchen?  Here we go!

The bar is looooong and I love it.  We have 5 barstools at it right now but it could easily fit 6.

I also really like how the black granite on the white cabinets looks.

And the pendants hanging down are perfect.  I love the industrial feel that they add to the room.

Let’s hop over to the window over the sink.  It’s got another pendant hanging in front of it and we added a faux roman shade to the window.

Long time readers will remember that before we started this whole house building process, we actually put an offer on an existing house.  That was a rollercoaster in itself…one day it was ours, the next it wasn’t, and on and on.  Well, one of those days when we thought it was ours, my mom and I jumped the gun and bought this fabric for the kitchen.  The walls were painted red and we thought this would make the cutest little cafe curtain with the red walls.

Have you ever heard that having a rooster in your kitchen brings luck?  That must’ve been what I was thinking about when I saw those funky little roosters.  We could use some luck!  We bought a coordinating red and white polka dot fabric to use as trim and were more than pleased with our purchase.

That same afternoon, while browsing through Marshall’s, we stumbled upon this guy.

A red and white polka dot rooster!  It’s like it was a sign or something!  We couldn’t leave the store without it.

But, as the story goes, we didn’t get that house with the red kitchen.  We still liked the fabric, though, and since we already had it, decided we’d go ahead and use it in this kitchen too.  Of course, that kitchen had much bigger windows than our kitchen, so if anyone needs a rooster throw pillow or something, we’ve got quite a bit of extra fabric we could get rid of.

Keeping with the rooster theme, we added this little fella to our collection.

We even added roosters to the walls.

We found this plate at a consignment shop and thought it’d fit in great too.

My dad says that we’ve gone and “country-fied” our beach house with all the ‘chickens.’  I don’t think so; I think they’re fun and funky!  What do you think?  Too many?

The rest of the kitchen is just your typical ol’ kitchen stuff – stove, oven, microwave, ice maker, sink, and fridge.

Here’s the view from the kitchen into the living room.  Hi Mom!  Hi Doc!  Don’t mind me…just taking a gajillion pictures of the house…

And this is the view to the other side of the kitchen.  The door on the right is to the half bath and over to the left you can kinda see into the bedroom at the back of the house.

And with that, I think we’ve come to a good stopping point for this part of the tour.  We’ll check out the bedrooms next!

I have way too many pictures for one post so forgive me, but I’m going to have to break this up a bit.  Seeing as how this something we’ve been working on and talking about for months, it seems fair to give it more than one measly post, right?

‘Spose we better start outside.  Now, first, lemme tell you that while I was there, there were still several things left to do.  Thankfully, most of those things have been completed by now, but I may not have a picture of them after completion.  So keep that in mind while we go through these photos.

You’ve seen this shot several times, but never before with red doors.

Up close, though, you can tell that there’s only one coat of paint on the door so far.  A rain shower kept the painters from finishing that before we arrived.  The cross bars in the windows will also be painted red.

This view, below, shows the door from the front porch to the screened-in porch on the side.

And here is that porch from the side.  The screen was just installed the week we arrived, and I have a good feeling there’s going to be a lot of time logged on that porch.

I forgot to take a picture of it once we put furniture in it, so that’ll have to come at a later date.  For most of the weekend, the front porch was crammed full of empty cardboard boxes and trash.  We were that house on the street.  I’m sure our neighbors were thrilled when we finally took it all to a dumpster.  When we first got to the house, the porta-potty was still on site.  As excited as I was for it to arrive to officially mark our worksite, I was way more excited to see it go!

Right now on the upstairs balcony, we just have two comfy papazon chairs.  Hopefully soon we’ll build a hanging bed to go up here too.

Here’s a pic of our little bike shed.  The floor hadn’t been installed yet while Doc and I were there, but it’s since been done.

I didn’t take too many exterior shots while I was there because the landscaping still hadn’t been done.  All we had were a few palm trees and a lot of sand.  It was a bit of a hot mess.

My mom texted me photos later in the week to show that the sand has now been covered up!  Our plants are in and the beds are covered with pine straw.

The pool still needed some work so I didn’t take many pictures of it either.  While I was there, the water had just been added and didn’t have any chemicals in it.  The heater also hadn’t been hooked up and, after a huge storm we had one night, it was full of leaves.  With no pool tools, we couldn’t do anything about them.  We bought 3 lounge chairs (on sale!) from Target while we were there.  I’ve already tested one out and I must say, they’re great for napping!

The pool man came later in the week and got everything cleaned out and up and running.  It’s ready for someone to take a dip in it!  Mom and Dad also went back to Target to pick up a few more patio chairs and tables.

A view from the top.

I hate that we didn’t get jump in it while we were there.  Doc and I will be going back in just a few weeks so hopefully, assuming it doesn’t rent out in the next few days, we’ll still get to be the first ones to swimming in it.

So that’s the exterior.  I guess I forgot to take a picture of the back porch.  That’s where the grill and outdoor shower are.  I’ll invite you inside next…