Update on the Upstairs

It's hard to believe that we have been in our house for a year now! So much has changed since we first walked through it. We finally finished the work on the upstairs and moved our bedroom up there. We opted to put carpet down on the landing and the stairs instead of trying to refinish everything. I'm glad we did...the carpet we got is so soft!

We went with orange walls on the landing with white trim and black accents. The orange was my idea, but I'll admit that I was a little worried about how it would turn out. It is now my favorite color in the whole house.

We decided to continue the red from the dining room up the stairs since the door to the upstairs stays open all the time. It's all about the flow :)

We painted the bedroom walls gray and bought black furniture from IKEA (of course). We are going to accent with red curtains. I found some beautiful red fabric, I just need to sew it...or bribe Mom into sewing it for me!

And one of my favorite features of the entire upstairs: my new walk-in closet! Joe knocked down the wall between the closet on the landing and the closet in the bedroom and then he and Steve built the shelf and installed the bar and new lights. Now everything has a place...too bad I still can't find anything to wear in the mornings :p

Hardwood Floors

We've been working on the dining room recently. Joe rented a sander and started to refinish the floors. I cam home from work one night to find a dusty mess, but I didn't complain because it meant that I didn't have to help :p

That night, he started with the first coat of varnish. The smell was awful, but it was worth it. I could tell from the first stroke that the floors were going to look 100 times better. It was very exciting.

Once the floors were finished, we finally got to my specialty...the shopping! We found this beautiful new dining room table, that we both love and it is amazing how well it matches the chandelier that came with the house!

Now, the only thing we have left to do is figure out what to do about those horrible curtains. I am no good with window treatments, so I am currently at a loss...

Working on the House

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We started working on the house the weekend the weather warmed up a bit and we have gotten quite a bit done upstairs. We decided that the upstairs is going to be the master bedroom area instead of kid rooms. There is a chance we may not be able to get heat/AC up there without a lot of hassle, so we would rather not have kids running around space heaters and AC units. I still haven't figured out why anyone would want to cover up such beautiful hardwood floors with that ugly yellow shag carpet. I am so glad it's gone!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We decided that, since we were pulling carpet, we would pull it all out. The landing area also had hardwood floors under really ugly carpet, but for some reason only half of it is the hardwood. We'll refinish all of it, but just throw a nice rug over the part that isn't actually hardwood. Joe's desk is going in that corner anyway :)

We also ripped all the carpet off the stairs. They are the same hardwood as the rest of the house. They will be a bit more of a pain to refinish, but it will be worth it!

New Job

Check it out - Fox & Obel - the site is a little dated but you'll get the gist of it.

Fools

I was in a play called "Fools" this weekend. It was a smaller production out at the MCC barn theater. We've been rehearsing once a week for the past five months and all of our hard work finally paid off. We all did an amazing job. It was a very amusing play about a small village in the Ukraine that has been cursed with ignorance. My character's name was Sophia, and my parents hire a school teacher to come and educate me in the hopes of breaking the curse. I am a hopeless case, though..."Nineteen years old and she just learned to sit down" :p

It was such a wonderful cast, and we had so much fun with this show. It was one of the best times I've had working on a show. I am more than a little sad that it is all over and done with. We may complain sometimes that it is hard work and long nights, but no one ever wants a show to end...and we all eagerly await the next one. We don't have to wait long, though, because half of us are already in rehearsals for "A Christmas Story" :)

Bush Babies and Libraries

Nobody said that having kids was so much work! Albeit extremely rewarding work! Ian is getting smarter every day. He can make a tower of up to ten blocks using the museum picture blocks and then knock it down and sort them into their correct order by size. He can count to three. He does so each night when I turn off the light at bed time. "1, 2, 3!" Lights out. He is creating 3 word sentences describing actions and loves naming books. He now knows a number of animals on site, from cats and dogs to seals, penguins and bush babies.
One of our favorite things is to go to the library and read books and then walk across the street to the play ground. He says goodbye to the "slides" and "ups" when we leave. Yesterday we went to the playground only and he got upset that we were not going into the library. He kept saying, "read books" as I strapped him into his bike seat and making a fuss because we were going home.

so so tired

We made it through this deadline. Some of us worked until 11:30 last night... I got home at 12:30, Ian woke up at 12:45, I spent some time with him and probably got to bed at around 1:15 or 1:30... he woke up around 3:30 and realized I wasn't in his bed anymore and had a bit of a meltdown/tantrum. We got him to relax and breathe only by me sitting in a chair with him wrapped around my neck. So we sat like that for about 20 minutes before he decided he would be ok just sleeping between Mom and Dad. Then I slept and slept and woke up at the leasurely 7:30. I'm at work, it's 10am and I want to be back in bed... so so tired. Tonite I get to sleep. I am thinking a half day sounds good.