House Pictures: Not as exciting things like the bathroom

My old house was dark and dingy and not something I wanted to show off. I wasn't ashamed of it, but the dark doors and small windows made it not as bright. This house is bright. Like, I had to completely change all of my go-to camera settings. I don't even have to open the curtains and I have more natural light inside of here than I know what to do with.

Even though this house is clean and shiny and bright, there are still rooms that aren't as exciting to show pictures of. But they're still rooms that I'm glad to have. Rooms with huge improvements from what we were living with before.

My new bathroom is bright, with a frosted window and two different light fixtures. That makes it much easier to see what my makeup actually looks like. It also has a giant linen closet that goes all the way to the ceiling, with more space than I know what to do with.

I really love fresh and clean white towels. And their most important feature: you can bleach them!

There are two stickers on the exterior of this window that are BUGGING ME. I need a ladder to get to them, or they'd be gone.

I love love love this faucet. And the countertop. And the undermount sink. Not so much the Buzz Lightyear nightlight, but I do have kids, so you know.

 

And the laundry room:

We sold our old mismatched and crappy washer and dryer and just bought these right before we moved. Its nerdy how excited I was to have them delivered.
 

During our selling spree we got rid of our entertainment center, which housed all of the coloring books and crayons. So then I had to rethink where to keep them so they aren't spread throughout the house all the time. My current solution (cause I like to move crap around sometimes) is a white utility shelf right outside of the girl's room. It has a home, it is right by their room, and its easy enough to get to.


The hallway:

 

Is the hallway a room? I'm gonna go with yes. If I have to vacuum it, its a room. This one is giant compared to our last house. And it has lights in it, so it doesn't resemble a cave. I've hung all of the pictures I have to hang, and I still have two empty walls. My picture frame buying addiction is in danger of becoming out of control. The hallway also contains one of my favorite things: the thermostat to the air conditioner. Can't live without that.

 

After I clean up the mess of Easter I'll post more pictures. Stay tuned!

MIlestones: 9 Months

The past month has gone by super fast. We've been so busy packing, then moving, then unpacking, that all of  the days just flew by. My poor dude spent way more time playing by himself than he should have. His absentee mommy is finally done with all of the extra work that comes with moving and can sit on the floor and play with him.

The dude is really busy trying to learn to crawl. Its not a skill he has mastered yet though, he's working on it. He scoots all over on his butt, reaches all around him towards stuff so that he's on his hands and knees, then uses his hands to push himself back up to sitting. He gets where he wants to go though, and he's put a lot of miles in just by scooting around. He's also trying to pull himself up onto stuff. Dude, slow it down some. I'm not ready for that. If you sit down by him with something he wants (mostly food or the laptop) he will find a way to get to you, then proceed to maul/tackle you to get what he wants. He's a beast.

He is still hovering around 18 pounds, and probably about 2 feet tall. He's heavy if you carry him around for awhile, but he's really not that chubby, aside from his cheeks. He's got some thigh rolls, just enough to squish and squeeze, but most of him is just solid muscle. He's my little linebacker baby.

As far as food goes he still eats some purees, but I've been so busy I've barely fed him any. He does enjoy cheerios and Kix though, but he's still working on perfecting that pincher grasp, so right now he grabs large handfuls of them and then shoves them in his mouth. He will drink water out of a sippy cup, but lately if he is with my in-laws and they try to give him a bottle he won't take it. He prefers his milk straight from the tap.

Witten really loves sitting on the floor, surrounded by a pile of toys, and just going crazy and throwing them all over. He chews on them, slobbers on them, and throws them. If he gets bored with that he will play with his almost favorite toy, the box that some Melissa and Doug toy balls came him. That box is the greatest toy he has ever seen.

My boy still naps about 3 times a day, then goes to bed by 7 every night. Night time sleep is kind of hit-or-miss though, sometimes he's good, sometimes he's restless. The restless nights seem to coincide with the arrival of teeth. He still has just the bottom two poking all the way through, but there is another random one on the top that is making an appearance. Its such a random tooth that when its fully visible he's going to look like a little redneck baby.

I love to squish my boy, or put him on my legs while laying on the floor and let him "fly" up over me. That's his favorite, but I've been drool-bombed quite a few times doing this. He's my handy helper boy, he loves to come into the kitchen when I'm cooking, whether its in his high chair or activity seat, I just give him a handful of Cheerios and he is content for quite awhile.

This boy is forbidden from turning one so quickly. I won't allow it. He's my last baby and I just want to squeeze his cheeks and hug him for awhile more before he decides that he'd rather eat his onesie sticker than play with his mommy.

House Pictures: Kid's Rooms

There are no more boxes to unpack. Unless you count the small plastic tote of picture frames that need homes, which I don't. So now I can share pictures. Just a room or a couple of rooms at a time.

The girl's room just got completely unpacked and finished yesterday. One box stood there in the middle of the room for the one week we've lived here, taunting me, saying Unpack these books you lazy woman! But I ignored it till I could ignore it no more, till it was the last box standing. And I hung up their shelves and installed their closet shelving by the way buying a house with unfinished closets is a huge pain in the butt and everything in their room is now in its place.

I feel like with kid's rooms they should serve lots of purposes. They need lots of storage, cause there are SO MANY TOYS. And it should look like a kid lives there, but not completely like a kid decorated it because I cannot look at a room full of Justin Beiber posters.

I'll share Witten's room first, there are fewer pictures. The thing about his room is that it is small. The other thing is: I don't care. He's a baby, he doesn't take up that much space. And when he's bigger we can fit a twin sized bed in there. He's a boy, he doesn't need a giant room.

The girl's room has one thing that I am especially grateful for, a giant closet. I built shelves with various hanging rods for all of their clothes, emptying the dresser of everything but pajamas, socks, and underwear. And I also fit in extra shelving for toys, all of the stuffed animals and dress up clothes, and their play kitchen. Its like a whole other room.

With all of the cluttered looking stuff shoved in the closet, the room looks nice and cute. Whenever Ava decides that the recliner is not as comfortable as a bed, we can rearrange stuff and add a second twin sized bed. Someday.

A Work in Progress

In my quest to live a box free life I have been unpacking crap 24/7. I've been on the I'm moving and too busy to eat diet, so I've eaten way too much trail mix lately. Boxes have been emptied and its safe to estimate that 89.5% of our stuff is put away.

We still have a grill and a weight bench at our old house, but I'm in no hurry to pick them up. I paid rent till the end of March there, so my grill is allowed to stay where it wants to.

I barely finished folding my weeks worth of laundry, since in an effort to move as few things as possible we sold our old ugly washer and dryer and bought new, fancy, beautiful, energy/water efficient ones. That's all fine and dandy, till you have to go 8 days without washing clothes with 3 kids. I didn't make it that full 8 days, cause a kid peed in my bed, so to the laundromat we went.

I've posted a handful of pictures on Instagram of our house, but the lack of phone jacks because who needs a phone jack anyways??? left me internet-less until the phone company could send someone to install a phone jack. Progress has been made, but more work is required. And I'm tired, and ready to resume a box free life.

For every area that looks like this:

There is another area that looks like this:

 

For all of the areas that are nice and clean like this:

 I have a huge spot on my dining room table that looks like this:

 Instead of folding laundry or doing something productive like this:

 I decorated a shelf like this:

Since I took this pictures I've made A LOT of progress. Like, unpacked the last box and I'm so close to being done I can taste it. There is a line of picture frames in the hallway that needs hung up/the pictures changed out. Other than that, things are getting accomplished. More pictures to come!

Where I've Been and Where I'm Going

My dude learning to crawl in my house of boxes and laundry baskets.

By the time anyone reads this post I'll be long gone. Not like, dead or vanished or done with blogging, but moved on to a better place. Because, we are like grown ups and bought a house. I know right?

I've been keeping it on the down-low, I didn't want to jinx it. And I've been so busy packing up all of our crap and selling some of our other crap thanks to a Facebook page designed just for that purpose that I've hardly sat down at my computer for the last month.

We bought a cute little house just a couple miles from where we live now and are set to sign the papers today, but I'm scheduling this post for a few days from now so by the time this hits the internets I will be moved on up.

Its not a big or fancy house, but its cute and its all ours and I can do whatever the heck I want with it. And it has AC! Glorious AC, which will make me a nicer person in the summer, because hot and uncomfortable Jennifer is a real bitch. It also has some things I've been doing without for my entire adult life. Not necessary things, but nice modern convenience things that I will enjoy having. Like a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, and a fridge with an icemaker. I'm ready to throw out my ice cube trays and dish drainer, like now.

I haven't been unhappy in this house, its really the opposite actually. I brought my three babies home from the hospital to this house, 2 of them took their first steps in the same living room I'm sitting in right now. My dude is on the floor right now in this living room trying to learn to crawl, but since we're moving like, tomorrow, he will master that skill and walking in the new house. This house is full of happy memories, and there is a small part of me that will be nostalgic and sad to move on from it. Till summer with the air conditioning. I've just got to get some boxes and pack up those happy memories, there's plenty more to be made.

I've never been someone who sought out change. I was content living in a small house even though nosy people told me I should move. I have no problem with a small house, especially a cheap one. But then our landlord raised the rent, and we have no lease. Then he said in 6 months he was going to raise it more. That planted a seed of discontent. David and I both got restless, so we made big plans for our tax return and started shopping around. We first looked for rentals, because there was a part of me that didn't think we were grown up enough/had everything together enough to be homeowners. But rent in this town is a joke. Everything is overpriced or ghetto. You will pay more in rent than you would to own a house, so we did the grown up thing and bought something.

To say I love our new house (even though as I type this we haven't even slept there yet) is an understatement. Its a cute little bungalow built in the 20s, so vintage and cute! But, the inside is all brand new. With an awesome, nice, beautiful, bright kitchen. I cannot wait to cook it in and then use the dishwasher. There is only one bathroom, and the kids rooms are small. But those aren't dealbreakers. We only have one bathroom now and I can live with it. And did I mention that there is air conditioning? Cause I'm kind of hyped about that. Swamp coolers were invented by the devil.

David and I walked around the yard the other day mentally chopping down ugly bushes and a big stupid mesquite tree. We planned to do actual yardwork, a thing we haven't done since we moved here 9 years ago. It was real. We were happy to have a yard to do yardwork in, a chore I loathed as a child, probably partly because my dad likes to get it done at 4 am.

Of course it goes without saying that I will post pictures on here. We need to buy a new entertainment center first, we sold our old one and our TV is on the floor of our current living room. We've been living with cheap rent so long that we have nice furniture, I'm sure it will look even better in a nice house. I'm ready to live a box free life!

My Squishy Ava

The Best Place to Nap is Mommy's Bed