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!

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!

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!!!

Painting, swimming and Tarheels-Oh My!

What a big weekend! Emily's room is done! Well---mostly. I still need to get some things on the walls, change her curtains and blinds, but the big part (the painting) is done! Ignore the crazy look on her face here. She really does like the room! :-)



I am thinking about doing hot pink for her curtains. I got new blinds-white wooden ones like the rest of the house, but they are the wrong size. Since I am currently obsessed with wall decals, I will be adding some of those too!

Now the before pictures. Don't say I didn't warn you. I'm sure this color palette worked great for the previous owners, but it just doesn't really go with the flow of our house!



We thought about keeping one of the stars, but ultimately decided to cover them all.




We didn't paint all weekend! The girls started swim lessons! They are taking them at a local college. It worked out great because they offer the parent/tot class (that Allie and Ben are taking) and the Level 1 class (that Emmy is taking) at the same time! Even better---I don't have to get in a bathing suit! :-)


Some of our friends are taking the class with us! Ben has hit it off with the husbands of two of my friends. All 3 guys have 2 year old's that they are doing the parent/tot class with! It was so precious to see these big guys dancing around in the pool with the babies!



Emily is taking the class with a friend also! There were some tears at the first lesson, but I think they will end up loving it! Emily has literally been counting down the days until her next lesson!


And, of course, it is MARCH MADNESS here at the Gravitt house! The girls wanted to show their support for Daddy's favorite team! Even though we are now Pennsylvania residents, we are happy and proud that the Tarheels will be destroying Villanova this weekend!

And the project for this weekend is....

Emily's bedroom! It is WAY overdue. I mean WAY. Her room is currently mustard, or maybe it's more of a school bus yellow with a navy blue ceiling with stars stenciled on it. Clearly, this was painted before we moved here. Because her room is upstairs and all she does is sleep in it, her room has not been a priority. Well, now she is older and even she (being the hip little chicklet that she is) has noticed that it is tragic. She told me she wanted her room blue. Then she wanted it red. So we "compromised" and her room will be purple-I told her that we were mixing blue and red to get the purple color. It's called "A touch of violet" and is the same color we used in her original nursery in Chester, then again at the beach. It's the only color we have done in all 3 houses!
I have taken the before pictures and will upload them with the after pictures when we are all done.
I have to go paint now! :-)

Mission Organization

I'm getting there....."there" is back to where I was 4 years ago. Completely organized and put together. It's taken me a while, but hey, give me credit-I had 2 kids in 2 years and moved twice in 3 years. It's been a long 4 years. Good, but long. Anyway-enough excuses---time to organize again.

I have these problem spots in my house. My biggest bone of contention at the current moment is my front foyer. My husband (who I love and adore) seems to think that the floor is the perfect place for his coat. He comes in, throws his wallet and keys on the front table, shoes, hat and coat in the floor, along with his computer bag and that is where they stay. DRIVES ME NUTS. I am working on a solution to this problem now.

I have these 2 things sitting in boxes waiting to be assembled-I have been told it is a weekend project---during March Madness--we shall see how this goes-lets just say I'm not holding my breath.

These will go on the wall behind my front door-I ordered both in black.They are from the Westfield Collection from The Company Store http://www.thecompanystore.com/

LOVE THEM!!!
Some of their prices are a little much for me on some things, but if you have an account with them, they send great coupons and usually there are some good free shipping codes or deals on http://www.retailmenot.com/

In other house news, the master bedroom is coming along quite nicely. Just for a refresher here are some before pictures (Before we painted and the new furniture arrived)

Our old Master was a mess. The furniture was really old (it was mine from when I lived with my parents, and before that belonged to some old woman). Don't get me wrong-it was fine, but it was a full sized bed and we had just really outgrown that. The room just made me angry when I went in there. Not really good for a master bedroom. But since it was upstairs and no one other than us saw it, it wasn't really high on the priority list. That all changed after Ben got his bonus! Yay! We decided the days of the girls having the nicest bedroom furniture in the house were over. We started with the mattress--we found a great deal on a KING and purchased that first. We then started looking into furniture. I found a couple of collections on-line that I liked, and off we went to the furniture store. We ended up getting the Madison collection from Raymour and Flanigan (http://www.raymourflanigan.com/) and we were really pleased with the transaction. I didn't realize you could negotiate furniture prices! We were able to get a king sleigh bed, 2 night stands, a dresser and mirror and a chest for a nice price! Here are some after pics of the bedroom! I chose Restful by Behr-approriate name for a bedroom, no?

We are in love with this room now! I have 2 framed pictures of the girls to hang up (another weekend project, I have been told) and I added this above the bed:

This was our wedding song and when I saw this vinyl decal on ETSY (http://www.etsy.com/), I just had to have it!

So....that is all for now! Hopefully once all the "weekend projects" are done, I'll have more pictures to post!