Nesting, Shmesting...

The insanity continues.  The nesting insanity that is.  Ben and I were talking about it, and honestly, it has been crazy since we moved here.  With just keeping up with 2 crazy little girls, work, surgeries, drama...the list goes on.  Now that we have a real reason to do stuff, we are making up for lost time.  It is about freaking time!

The girls room is pretty much done.  They have been in it for a week now.  I ordered wall decals for above their beds and we are looking for a fun full-length mirror.  I must say, the colors really came together nicely.  I don't have tons of pictures just yet because I'm waiting until it is totally done, but here are some previews:

You can see the colors really nicely here.  

  The girls were having a little story time before school one morning, and I was able to snap a picture. You can see a little more of the room here.  More pics to come once the details are all done!

In between paint coats and trim and all that fun stuff, we started on the kitchen table.  This kitchen table was a mess.  Ben had spilled paint on it about 10 years ago.  We didn't use the table for years, but pulled it out about a year ago and just kept it covered with a table cloth.  That became a pain and I wanted to paint it.  Ben agreed to stain it, so that is what we did!

I decided to go to the holy grail of all home DIY and decorating.  Pinterest.  There, I found this great how to:  Centsationalgirl

I went right out and got everything that she said to use:

Then I left explicit directions for Ben to follow her directions to the tee and I left to get my hair cut.  I asked him to take pictures while I was gone- he just sort of stared at me.  Needless to say, there is only one "during" pic and I took it.   I do have before and after pics though:

Hot mess table before:

Table while getting last coat of clear coat on it:

And the final result--I am in love with it.  I snapped this pic with my cell phone, so it's not the greatest, but you get the general idea.  Still working on some different things for the centerpiece. 

Yay!  One more thing crossed off the list.  

The nursery is primed and 3 of the walls are painted.  Ben went rogue on me with the paint.  We found that we had a lot of light blue left over from when we painted the playroom a few years ago.  It was very similar to the color that we agreed to use in the nursery, so I thought we were all set.  Wrong.  Ben decided to add a quart of darker paint to the mix and see what we ended up with.  I must say, it is nice.  I can't wait to see the how it looks when the navy blue wall goes up!  Pics coming soon....

Oh!  And my crazy Daisy turned 1 this week!  Happy Birthday puppy!

Maybe it would be easier to just build a new nest...

Okay, so no pun intended, but this nesting stuff is for the birds.  I just don't have the energy to keep up with the 20,000 things I want to get done before the baby is born.  I was really counting on the almost 500 chances we had from Ben's office pool to win those Mega Millions.  Then we could have just hired someone to do everything or bought all new stuff.  Stupid lotto.

Anyway, we were actually VERY productive this weekend.  It was beautiful weather and that allowed me to get my new frame outside to be painted.  I bought this frame off of a group I am apart of on Facebook.  It's basically like Craigslist, but all local.  I was so excited when I scored this frame for $15:

Years ago, when Ben and I first got married, I got a frame off Ebay that held 4 8x10s and I loved it.  But after 2 moves and 2 kids, it was falling apart.  I had wanted a frame similar to this for a long time, so when I saw it posted I scooped it up.

I just wasn't crazy about the wood finish on it.  

So, I went out and got the spray paint that I keep seeing rave reviews about:

Honestly, I wasn't that impressed.  It kept clogging up on me!  If I stopped spraying for 5 seconds, I would have to wipe the tip off and jiggle it around to get it to work again.  I will say that the end result was very nice though.  Nice even color and a pretty gloss.

See?

I am so happy to be able to show all of our pretty pictures again!

So, while I was doing that, there was apparently some child labor going on upstairs

Ben had the girls cleaning the baseboards for him so that we could FINALLY get started on the painting.  I wish I got as excited about cleaning baseboards as they did.  I need to get them working in the rest of the house and ride this bandwagon out!  :-)

When we went to Home Depot a few weeks ago I thought Ben was crazy for buying the 2 gallon thing of Killz. Turns out he was right on. That room sucked up the entire bucket of primer!!

Years ago when we painted our first house in Chester, we didn't prime a single thing.  Lesson learned.  We are priming fools now.  Usually we get the primer tinted the same color as the paint, but since we were doing 2 different colors in this room and were painting something that had never been painted before, we opted for the white.  It did a great job and the paint went on very smoothly.

If you follow me on Facebook you know I have been very nervous about the colors the girls picked.  It's not that I don't think they are beautiful colors, it's just they are very....colorFUL I guess you could say.  When Ben started putting the purple on I did breathe a sigh of relief though.  Honestly though, there isn't really anything purple that I don't love!

I think it's a pretty color.  And the girls LOVED it which made it all worth it.  

When he started the pink, I started to get nervous though.  It is VERY pink.  Like a wild strawberry type color.  Once again the girls love it and I think once we get everything in the room and add all of the accessories, it will actually be very cute.

Honestly, I would have LOVED a room like this when I was little, so I am happy that we can do it for them.  We still need to do all the cutting in, trim work and doors, but we are making progress!  

On top of all this work, I was able to clean our linen closet, start switching the girls spring/summer clothes over and even play outside!

Oh!  And Ben agreed to stain our kitchen table, so hopefully that will start soon!  

That is all for now....this little birdie has more nest readying to do!

The Playground Police

So, those of you with preschool age kids understand how during Spring Break and Summer vacations, it is a pain how all the "big kids" take over the local playgrounds.  By "big kids" I mean 10-12 year olds.  They just play differently on the equipment.  It is a whole different energy.  Whatever, it's fine.  It's a free country, they can do whatever they want.  It has never really been an issue until this past Wednesday.  This past Wednesday, my 2 friends and I plus our 8 children were introduced to the the PLAYGROUND POLICE.

Okay, they weren't ninjas, but they might as have been because they came out of no where!  

Let me set the scene:

The kids were all playing, the moms were chatting (all while supervising closely of course) and it was a great day.  We were talking about how much we enjoyed this particular park and how the kids were all getting along so great.  Perfect spring day in suburban PA.  

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a red minivan pull up.  Suddenly at least 8 boys ranging in ages from maybe 8-11 jump out and start charging the equipment.  They all have these Nerf gun things and they are yelling "WE'RE THE PLAYGROUND POLICE!!!"

That is when we look over and see that the minivan is LEAVING!!!  Whoever was driving was getting the hell out of dodge and leaving these crazed kids alone to terrorize the playground.  

I really wish I could have taken video of the whole thing because it was hysterical.  I look up and see that a 2 year old from our group is up on the highest level of the equipment, and I yell and point "Oh No!!  Someone has to get her!"  like a damsel in distress.  Her mom starts cussing, and I spring into action.  My 6.5 month pregnant self runs across the playground and up the equipment like I am freaking Wonder Woman or something to grab this child who looks at me like "WTF is your deal?"

We gather all the children together and start talking about how we are going to go to a different playground. That's when the "playground police" start mocking us.  "We're going to go to the purple playground" they say in a sing-songy voice.

Punks.

We're walking out and Emily looks at me with her hands thrown up in disgust and says "They called us LITTLE kids" She was appalled.  

As we are making our way through the police one yells "sucks to be you-we're the playground police!"

It was sort of one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed.  I am sure my story telling skills aren't giving you the best picture of it, but it was chaos.  These kids looked like a combo of the Goonies and a younger version of Big Time Rush.  I guess that is the look neighborhood tween gangs go for now.  It was insanity.  Craziness.

Next time I am going to pack an arsenal of water balloons so that I can at least be prepared for an attack against "the fuzz" again.

Easter year round?

We bought the paint for the girls room last night.  

I'm nervous.

I keep telling myself that it will be fine once we get everything in there, but holy moly-these are some colorful colors to say the least.  Perfect Easter Egg colors if you get my drift.  

At least the room is big.

Here are the colors that after almost an hour of looking at every pink and purple known to man the girls picked:

Allie picked Bloomsberry:

And Emily picked Springtime Bloom:

These color swatches don't show up great on the computer, but you get the gist.  The purple doesn't look that blue in real life. 

I think once we are done it will be pretty-I hope so anyway.  The girls are VERY excited and now that the paint has been purchased, painting WILL start this weekend!

I was wrong....

THIS is madness.  Last week I posted about how when I am pregnant with summer babies, I apparently get March Madness.  Last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?), I thought I had gone mad because we were talking about moving the rooms around and painting.  I was wrong.  So, so wrong.  Talking about it is one thing.  Actually doing it....that is the maddening part!  We dove in on Saturday cleaning out the "guest room".  I use the term guest room lightly.  It's more like a junk room.  Yeah, I clean it when our parents are coming to visit, but most of the time it's the "Oh crap, people are coming over, throw everything in the "guest room" room"....as is evident by these before pics:

I mean really....who lives like this?  Apparently we do.  I wish I could lie and say "it only looks like this because of.....", but sadly it looks like this until a day before we get out of town guests and then I manage to tidy it up for a weekend.  

Notice the big computer monitor?  Yeah, that's circa 1998.  It has now been properly recycled at a near by computer shop.  

How we have so much crap is beyond me.  It's not like I'm a hoarder.  In fact, I can't stand clutter.  I guess out of sight out of mind though, because I can close this door and not worry about it.  Well, I could...until the madness hit.

So anyway, we started cleaning this room out and finally throwing stuff away, making donation piles, etc.  and as of Saturday evening, we got it to this:

Progress right?  We thought so and were pretty darn proud of ourselves.  The next day we worked even more and decided it made the most sense to get Allie totally moved out of her current room so that we could transfer the guest room into there.  We crammed Allie's bed and dresser into Emily's current room:

Clearly, the madness is starting to get to them as well, as is evident by the facial expressions.  Actually, I don't know who I am kidding...faces like these are a daily occurrence in our house! :-)

We were then able to move the guest room furniture and my sewing stuff into their new home:

So....phase 1 is complete!! 

The room over the garage is now pretty much empty and we have chosen paint colors.  We hope to start painting in there for the girls this weekend and have them all moved in soon.  Then it will be onto the nursery!  It is slowly but surely coming together.  

Stay tuned!

Please Read....

I met Hayley when I first moved to PA almost 4 years ago. She is an incredibly talented "DIYourselfer", but more importantly, she is an incredible mother. Here is the latest blog post she posted. I just want to share it because of it's message. We don't choose our children...they choose us. Ethan chose Hayley because of the amazing way she loves and supports him: 

http://cometothemousehouse.blogspot.com/2012/03/severely-autistic-coming-to-terms.html

Decisions, decisions....

I have March Madness.  Not about NCAA, though I do enjoy the tournament.  I have pregnancy induced March Madness.  It happened when I was pregnant with Emily and it is happening again.  Must be a summer baby thing.  I have gone into hyper organization/redecorating mode.  We have 3 bedrooms upstairs that we are going to be switching around.  Emily's room will become the nursery, Allie's room will become the guest room, and the current guest room/my craft room will become the girls shared room.  All 3 rooms need to be painted.  Hence the madness.  It takes me months to pick out paint color for 1 room.  Now 3 rooms?  Madness.
My husband is a HUGE UNC fan.  Huge.  If it were completely up to him, our son would be named Roy Williams Dean Smith Gravitt.  I told him we could do a UNC nursery for the baby.  That won me tons of awesome wife points which I plan to cash in at just the right moment.  Ordinarily I am not into themed rooms.  It's not that I dislike them, it's just not for me.  This room will have a UNC basketball motif, but there will be no basketball wall borders.  Again, just not my thing.  Ben has a TON of old newspaper articles and magazine covers that we plan on framing and hanging in the room.  He also has an basketball autographed by Michael Jordan that his super cool wife got him.  That too will be going in the room.  He wants his friend to paint the UNC monogram thing (not sure monogram is the right word, but you get it) on one of the walls, but I haven't totally approved that idea yet.  I don't want the room to look like a locker room.
So, anyway, I went to Lowe's today and picked out pretty much every pale blue color they had.  True Carolina blue is a little bright for a nursery, so I'm hoping that I can convince Ben that a paler shade will do the trick.  Because of my aforementioned March Madness, he is treading lightly and pretty much agreeing with whatever I say right now!
So it's decision time.....maybe I should make a bracket and start eliminating tourney style.....

Stay tuned as I *think* progress might start this weekend!!!

Well, hello there....

It has CLEARLY been a long time since I have updated this blog!  I am once again a SAHM with a baby BOY on the way!  We are all very excited here at the HipHickChick house.  Because of our new little addition and my insane nesting, there are many projects either underway or about to get started.  Stay tuned to follow the progress!