~home sweet home~

The hubby & I had our house built about 4yrs ago. It's not the biggest, or the best, or the most custom house.....but we did get to pick everything out & have it done the way we wanted. It was in our price range and was perfect for our little family of three plus one cat. Slowly but surely, we are starting to out grow it. It's amazing how this happens. While we were building the house, we lived in a fairly nice 2 bedroom apartment. We grew out of that QUICK! It's amazing how much space baby things take up!! Ava was only about six months old when we decided that we needed to upgrade our living quarters! All of her toys were taking over our apartment!

This morning, the hubby had another one of his great ideas......for me to come up with a list of things that needed to be done around the house. So, while the kids were playing after breakfast I decided to tackle said list. And OH.MY.GOODNESS!! There's so much more to be done than I thought! But thankfully, the majority of it is super easy and we won't need to spend much money on it. However, I have a feeling that I'll be the one stuck doing it. And I guess that's okay, as long as the hubby takes over watching the kids! I HIGHLY doubt that I'll be able to repaint baseboards with Grayson running around.....I can just see his little fingers getting into the paint and creating an even bigger mess!!!

One of our projects that we have to tackle asap is our back door. We have some wood damage on the outside. It's awesome. The entire door & frame need to be replaced. And I'm pretty sure it's going to cost us a nice little penny....or two. Right now, we have french doors. I really like them because other then the doors, we only have the two living room windows downstairs & they let in a lot of light. So the debate is whether or not we want to get the same kind of door or a sliding glass door with a screen. Ava (and now Grayson) has a really nice swing set in the backyard and we also have a decent sized patio......so it would be really nice to have the screen door. That way, when she's outside playing I can leave the door open and be able to hear what's going on if I'm not able to be out there. The downside of having the screen door is our dog. She's not the brightest. And I see us having to replace the screen because of her running through it. And if we do get a sliding glass door, then that means I'll have to get new curtains & a new curtain rod for over the door (but that could be a good thing....right!?).

Other then deciding on what type of door we want & actually getting it replaced, the rest is pretty easy stuff. I am in no hurry what so ever to get this stuff done. I figure it could be one project a month. Or maybe every other weekend.....depending on what we decide to work on!

Here's the list that I was able to come up with.......

• Repaint interior doors.
• Repaint baseboards.
• Touch up paint throughout house.
• Replace outside doorbell button.
• Recaulk around bathtubs.
• Fix up flower bed.
• Replace tarp on swing set.
• Replace front porch lights.
• Fix living room window.
• Get new back door.
• Install blinds on loft window.
• Replace sink in downstairs bathroom.
• Repaint dining room table.
• Install ceiling fans in living room & kids bedrooms.

I put what needs to be done first in bold letters. I'm hoping that we can do pretty much all of this ourselves. And I'm thinking the only things we'll need to have to pay someone to do is installing the door & the new sink. We can handle the rest......or at least I hope we can! The last time the hubby installed a ceiling fan I had to leave......he gets a little angry when stuff doesn't go the way he wants or it's not as easy as he thought it would be!

One "mini makeover" that we were able to do was in our living room. We had a pretty nice entertainment center that we had from when we lived in our apartment. Then our tv broke (or so the hubby said) and we had to get a new one (that was bigger & had wifi & was super fancy). The new, fancier tv didn't fit in our little entertainment center so of course it had to be mounted on the wall. All of the lovely stuff that goes along with the tv had no home. The hubby decided to put it all on Ava's downstairs toybox. And that was all fine & dandy until Grayson was starting to pull up and his little fingers had to touch everything. After not being able to find anything that I liked, I decided to move my kitchen cart into the living room to hold all of the tv stuff. How nice! We must have kept the kitchen cart in the living room for a good.....oh 6 or 7 months. It drove me nuts. I hated it.

Thankfully, my awesome Gram got us a Costco gift card for Christmas. We debated on whether or not we wanted to use it to renew our membership or have it go towards something we needed. We decided against renewing our membership because 1) it's a pretty far drive 2) we didn't really shop there much in the past year... other than going to get the new tv! and 3) it was just too far! I found a shelf with canvas bins that I really liked and the hubby gave me the go ahead to go get it. And then! My mom's aunt in Pennsylvania WON THE LOTTERY!!!! and was nice enough to send us a little bit of her winnings!!! (she won BIG TIME on a scratch off ticket! i'm lucky if i win a free ticket when i play!!) So, when I went out to Costco to get the shelf with the bins, I found this..............

I was in LOVE! I decided that I would get this instead of the shelf with the canvas bins.....we would have needed two anyway & I was worried that they wouldn't be that safe stacked! I had to wait until the hubby got home from work before I could go pick it up......the back of my SUV wasn't big enough for the box, imagine that! When I got it home, our awesome neighbor came over to put it together. He's weird like that & LOVES to assemble furniture!! He got it together for us in about an hour. We had a little scare because we didn't think it was going to fit under the tv. It seriously JUST fits! There's THIS much space between the top of the shelves and the bottom of the tv! I was SUPER worried about the wires. I DESPISE wires. Like seriously hate them with a passion!!!

On my way home from Costco, I stopped at Target and picked up baskets. Thankfully, I was able to arrange my pictures & the baskets to hide the wires. I guess it will have to work for now. I am in LOVE with the way the book shelf looks in the living room. It makes it look a lot bigger! I'm sure I'll mess with everything on the shelves a million times before I get them where I like them! I'm REALLY bad about that!! I do it with our furniture all the time!!

Thanks to my Gram & my mom's aunt, we didn't have to pay a penny for our new "entertainment center"!! Well, really I had to pay for a new picture frame. But that was it!!