Five on Friday: Random Ramblings

HAPPY FRIDAY!  

Surprise!  I'm not at work today - volunteering for Habitat for Humanity with some co-workers - so kicking the weekend off right!!

Linking up with these ladies: Darci, April, Natasha and Christina.

{ONE}

Project progress

I'll start here, as my last Five on Friday featured the below picture:

And now?  The furniture is all painted and sealed and now I just need to find some hardware.  Which is easier said than done because of the "not so normal" width of the larger pulls - but we will find something.  So for now, we just open it without pulls and it's all good.

Did you notice what else is new?  PAINT!!  Thanks to Vanessa's recommendation, we bit the bullet and got the same navy she used in Nash's room and painted Charlie's.  It took taking our kids to my parents after church on Sunday and leaving them there until dinner to get it done (FINALLY).  But Charlie loves it!  Now I just need to get up all the decor I got months and months ago.  He's so excited!

A quick before:

{TWO}

Speaking of - can we talk about how much you can get done on a day that your kiddos are somewhere else?  HA!

I told you that we were lucky enough to take our kids over to my parents right after church last Sunday for some grandparent fun while we worked our butts off at home.  They got some entertainment and we couldn't believe how much we got done!

1. Finished taping and painting Charlie's room

2. Organized his clothes and took out his old dresser (took it apart)

3. Moved all his new (painted) furniture in and got the clothes in it

4. While we let the paint dry (literally), I made 6 freezer meals with stuff that I already had

5. Jimmy mowed the lawn

And then we went to my parents to eat soup...and then passed out from all that work.

But felt VERY accomplished!

And we even snuck in a date on a Tuesday this week!  Sushi and a free Old Dominion concert - yes please!  Besides the smokers that literally smoked a whole pack of cigarettes standing in front of us it was a great night!

{THREE}

This deserves a post of it's own...but last week was a whirlwind because we joined 800,000 other people on Tuesday to go to the Royals World Series celebration.

It was crazy.  We were crazy.  The whole thing was crazy.

But these pictures say it all (more on the rest later!!)

{FOUR}

So literally RIGHT after the parade we were driving home (with the rest of KC)...and Maddie threw up in her car seat.

Then even better.....Charlie threw up all over me when I was carrying him upstairs to take his {late} nap.  It was horrible...so both kids went into the bathtub.  Then Charlie had a 102 fever and got sent home from school on Wednesday morning (yep, wasn't just a one off throw up like his sister)...and poor guy wouldn't kick the fever until SATURDAY morning. Seriously!

My dad was nice enough to let Charlie come over and hang out and my dad took good care of him on Wednesday afternoon, then hung out with dad on Thursday and after a trip to the doctor with me on Friday morning and confirmation of a negative strep test and positive flu test (UGH!) we went back to let Papa take care of him.  Seroiusly, this picture (and this little man sick) was the saddest thing.  He's still not back to sleepign at all - but at least he's back to his normal self.

{FIVE}

And finally - speaking of normal three year old selves.

OMG

Does anyone else feel like this???

Seriously #three is wearing us OUT.  Hardcore.

We are going to do some Christmas decorating this weekend and cannot wait (got a HUGE new tree!).  Even though we are hosting Thanksgiving, it will put everyone in the Christmas spirit (right?)!

Oh and PS - Thanksgiving was 2 weeks from YESTERDAY!  HOLY COW!

Room flip = play room

When a baby comes along, your perspective changes. On everything. And when I say everything, that includes even big purchases you made in life that you were confident would be perfect for a baby at the time. I'm talking about our house. Yep, pre-Charlie I loved our house. It went from an outdated, old house to an updated, clean, modern home. A home that we made our own ad we literally remade every room in it. I loved that we became a family of 2 in it when we got married and then became a family of 3 when Mr Charlie came!!

So why the change of heart as I'm telling you just how much I love it??? Well it mainly has to do with the overall layout..it's a side by side split. Which means we have lots if space, which is great, but where we were always playing with Charlie was in the downstairs family room. That means when mama is in the kitchen (for some reason I'm there more times than not), I am not within view if my sweet baby. Therefore, everything I need to get done in the kitchen (making dinner, lunch, cleaning dishes, washing pump parts, etc.) goes on the back burner bc I want to at least be able to see him playing. I dream of lots of house updates in a future home, but I was literally upset about the layout and spent hours on my zillow app looking a houses with open floor plans. Only in my dreams right?! That's right because I've made it clear to Jimmy: no 2nd baby or no moving until I'm done with my masters (Spring 2014). So dreams of a new house cannot become a reality for now.

I pretty much sat at lunch complaining about this to my fabulous and very creative/DIY friend over lunch one day. She's got such a great perspective on things and is thrifty like me and presented me the perfect solution. She challenged me to be creative with the spaces we have. She asked me why does the room designated as the dining room HAVE to stay a dining room? Couldn't we just move that into half of the living room (that's a WAY underutilized room anyway) and use the dining room as a makeshift playroom?! Um- yes, we absolutely could. Might be a bit odd when people come over but for us, the functionality would completely outweigh anything.

Jen- you're brilliant. I love that you present me with feasible and creative solutions to problems I present to you, you rock.

I went home that Monday night and told Jimmy about the idea. He was interested but did roll his eyes a bit because I seem to always want to change something. With no time that week because I had class or was studying- Jimmy was awesome and surprised me by moving what he could that Wednesday night I was at class. I was SO excited when I walked in the door!!!! Best surprise ever!! Then my parents and cousin came over that Friday and helped Jimmy move the heavy china cabinet.

And well, with a few changes, few additions (bought a play mat, installed a new light fixture and acquired a free rug from my mom) measuring a couple times , it was complete. And after a week and a half of living with it- I think we all love it!! We even had a play date upstairs and Rowen and Bo loved it too!!!!

So this my friends, is how you make an old house work when you don't like it anymore. Be creative, talk to awesome people and just do it.

And be thankful that Christmas Eve 2010 you decided to knock down the wall between your kitchen and dining room. Because that wouldn't have happened with a baby around....

New "play room"/ old dining room

View of the new half living room/office from the play room

Dining room & living room all in one.  Now that's utilizing space

View from the other side - with the china cabinet

DInner parties involve the TV - horrible I know.

View from the front hallway (kinda weird, right?)

Masks and wine cabinet are still around!

Looking into the play area from the family room

So....what do you think?  Kinda weird or just really freaking useful??  I have to say now that it has been like this for a week or so....I couldn't love it more.  We use the upstairs a lot more and are taking advantage of a room that we never used that much before in our house (upstairs living room).  Wahoo!  And that means mama is happy and we don't have to move.  Even better.

And you know who else likes it??

This kid!  He loves the play mat and that all his toys are right there!  It's so nice in the morning when we are finishing up breakfast and packing up all our bags and lunches, etc to just plop him on the play mat.  He loves it.  He's a rolling machine these days and even rolled 3 times and even up knocking his head on the hardwood floor.  Crazy man!

Overall - we love it and it works great for our family!!!  Which is the most important!

What will I do now?

So the wedding is over. All the planning all the little DIY projects. All the crazy trips to Michaels/JoAnns/Hobby Lobby, etc. No more guest lists. No more wedding blogs (well, I'm not able to give that up quite yet). So WHAT DO I DO WITH MY TIME?

As Jimmy says, "she will find something to do". Yes, true story. So what is that? Well, apparently it's reorganizing the kitchen, this week at least. I wasn't really planning on it, but I had an itch to make things more organized and flow better for awhile and last Friday night- it hit me hard. So I reorganized the drawers and the tupperware cabinet. After grilling out, Jimmy and Danny were downstairs watching the game and came up to stuff everywhere....but I put it all back in a logical place :)


Tupperware cabinet after. You are lucky I didn't take a before. It was bad.


Spice cabinet!! WAHOO!! This was what really got me going. None of our spices were organized. Half were on the spice rack on the countertops and half were in this just stacked wrecklessly. Looking for a spice was dangerous! So I found this little spinner at Bed Bath and Beyond and it's actually the perfect fit! You have to de-assemble it when taking in and out, but how often does that happen? I also bought little glass spice jars for all the spices that weren't in fancy containers. Next up...labeling! Luckily I have a knack for paper after the wedding stuff!


Island drawers after. I moved all the pots/pans to the island so you can pull out the drawer and it's easier to get to them and see what your "options" are. It just drove me crazy hunting through the small cabinet by the stove!!


Crock pots galore....and a toaster oven and waffle maker!! Not heavy use items, but accessible when we need them!


Oh, and I've also started cooking healthy meals every night. I stole the idea to use E-mealz.com from Vanessa and we are LOVING it!! So far, the last 2 nights of dinner have been delicious, nutritious, and not too much of a mess to make. JImmy helped me cook on Monday...and let me just say that we will be doing "lessons". He did a great job though! Just a little confusion between "T" and "t" in measuring and he said it himself that he doesn't have the timing down of finishing everything at once. Never fear Jim, your wife Brittany is here and I will help you become a wonderful cook!! But the best part was we got to use the new candlestick holders my grandma passed down to us last weekend!!


Now we are moving on to my NEXT project. Let's just call it an add on. If you had walked around out kitchen, you would know that we had dog bowls EVERYWHERE! And most of the time people that weren't used to them would kick the water over and accidentily run into them. Plus, the dogs all ate whereever and it seemed more logical to separate them. In come younghouselove.com. They had a post about cute little dog bowls that they transformed (used to be people bowls). So we went to Target on Sunday and found these dog "placemats" on sale that do not slide---and best yet, they match the kitchen! And then picked up some plastic, stylish people bowls that now are the dog bowls. Green for boys, White for girl. I'm loving it because there isn't water all over our floor (from spilling it but also from them drinking very sloppy) and they are loving it too!!


Boys are across the kitchen!


Next project?? I actually hesitated posting this picture because it's quite embarrassing. But this is our pantry. When Lauren lived here, 1/2 was hers and 1/2 was mine. Well ever since she moved out, I've just stuck stuff over there and this disorganization is NOT working for me. So bring on the labels!!!