Decorating

Decorating for Christmas that is!

I can finally say it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here!   Or at least a little.  But it definitely doesn't look like Christmas outside... we have no snow!!  And our temperatures are around the mid 40's some days and it's the middle of December in North Dakota!  What in the world?!  But I'm not complaining, I'm loving this weather!

Anyways, back to decorating for Christmas.  I was really hoping to get our tree and nativity set up before Christmas but the days were slipping by faster than I could count them, so finally last weekend we spent a couple afternoons getting out some Christmas decorations, our tree, stockings and the nativity set!  Better late than never!  It sure makes our home feel cozy!

our Christmas tree

Zeke and Kenzie decorating the tree

there was a cluster of ornaments at their level so I decided to pick Kenzie up to help spread them around the tree a little

they were so excited to help!

our stockings, minus one for Janessa (we needed to find one for her)

setting out our nativity set.

We read the story of Jesus' birth from Luke and then we went out and got the nativity out and re-read the story and brought out each character as they were mentioned

they kids loved it and were so excited to see baby Jesus

enjoying some hot coco and Christmas music

yum!

yum!

Growing Up

Our sweet baby Janessa is growing right before our eyes.  Each day I watch her and I wonder where the time has gone.  Six months is right around the corner!  She impresses us all with her new found ability to roll over and she's beginning to reach for us and for toys.  She gives such sweet big smiles and fills our home with squeals of laughter.  Her fans, Zeke and Kenzie and of course Mommy and Daddy and always there to cheer her on in her latest and greatest accomplishment.  The newest being food!  Or at least the introduction of rice cereal.  By now she's getting a little more used to the idea of food and doesn't hate it as much but the first go around was pretty funny.

my sweet baby is getting so big!

having fun playing in her baby gym

life's good

life's not so good.... ("what did you just put in my mouth?!")

umm yuck!

you can't make me swallow!

a little help from Daddy

(Happy 100th Post!)

Broken Camera

It's a very sad day!  About a week and a half ago our camera broke.  Fabulous timing with Christmas and a birthday and Papa and Grandma's visit right around the corner.  Thankfully I can still take pictures but our flash broke and with a point and shoot camera you need a flash!  I've used the iso setting but with any movement the picture is blurry.  So I'm just warning you that the photo quality is poor in the few photos that I've even attempted to take.  That would be my explanation for the lack of posts this past week. 

But we've been keeping busy working on projects around the house one step at a time.  And one of our main goals lately has been to create a new habit, a new normal.  Now that we're in the house and we have a floor and we've been able to move some furniture items in we don't have the need to push so much on getting things done around the house.  We can sit back and enjoy family time and take nights off from working on the house and just enjoy being together again.  It seems like it would be easy to do, and maybe in some ways it is, but we also, after 7 months of working on the house, had created a habit of working on the house.  And sometimes its hard because you look around and think 'that needs to be done and that also needs to be done, oh and that over there needs to be done too'.  But really, that will be the state of our house for another year or longer and that's okay!  Right now we need to focus on our relationship with the Lord and our family, we'll still work on projects around the house but at a much slower pace.  To be honest, that is a little overwhelming for someone who loves organization and a put together house but I'm realizing once again that it's just a season that we're in. 

Hopefully a new camera is in our near future.  (Good timing for a birthday and Christmas to be near at hand for an excuse to get a new one!) 

Kitchen Sink

We had hoped to get our kitchen sink working while Nathan had the week off the week of Thanksgiving.  Well that was a couple weeks ago and we just got around to getting it all hooked up and working.  That's how things go sometimes, I mean who needs a kitchen sink when you have a couch crisis?  I am very thankful to not have to unload the bathtub of dirty dishes when I want to take a shower or give the kids a bath, and no more walking back and forth across the house with dirty dishes or pots filled with boiling water that need to be drained.

 I must say, I think I have one amazing view from my kitchen sink.  Talk about enjoying doing the dishes, although someone did inform me that I should be doing the dishes, not looking out the window!  :)

my kitchen sink in the island (notice my nice plywood counter tops!)

the view from the kitchen sink!

Yay!! No more dishes in the bathtub!

Our New Couch!!

I think I committed the ultimate couch moving crime.  You know how the story goes.  Woman finds new couch and buys it, woman has husband bring couch home and set it up then woman proceeds to have husband move the couch multiple times because she needs to make sure where she wants it is just right. 

Well I went and found a couch, we purchased it and Nathan went to go pick it up to save us the delivery charge.  He brought it home and we carried it up the stairs and opened it up, put it all together and put it where I wanted it... and my heart sunk!  It was all wrong!  Definitely not what I had in my mind.  I figured I'd sleep on it with not saying much because a couch is a big purchase and we're not just going to go out and buy another one.  So the next morning when I walked into the living room I was just as heart broken.  It was way too small.  What if we have another kid, we wouldn't all be able to sit on the couch together.  How would I possibly seat everyone for church (now that we can have church at our house)?  To say the least, I was bummed.  I would learn to like it if I had to, but I was going to try my options first.  So I called the store from where it was purchased and ended up driving into town to ask if I could exchange it.  To my delight they said yes!! 

Apparently I thought measuring was overrated but this time I learned my lesson, measured my wall and went on the hunt through the store for the perfect couch.  And I found it!  (at least I hoped I had)  But that meant some bad news for Nathan.  He had to go home, take the couch apart, package it back up, haul in back down the stairs and get it loaded in the back of the truck, drive it back to the store and start the process all over again with the new couch.  (sorry babe!!)  But I am happy to announce that I love my new couch!!  And thankfully I didn't have him move it all over our house to see where the best place to put it would be because there's only one place it can go! 

bringing the first couch home!

bringing it in the house!

first couch

way too small!

packing it back up...

out with the old, in with the new

bringing the second couch in

getting it set up

second couch

perfect!

Carpet!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I now officially have a HOME!! 

After 8 months I can finally say I have a home and we can actually move in!

All our floor is in (well almost all our floor, we just have to finish putting laminate floor in our master bathroom and eventually our foyer and stairs will need laminate floor as well but that doesn't count because it's not on the main living level)!  Talk about feeling like a little bit of heaven for your feet walking on carpet!  The kids have been running all around and I feel so much cleaner! 

Until the floor was in we were living temporarily but now we can move in all our furniture and make it homey, stay tuned for some decor and decorating posts in the future.  Finally so much of the construction process is behind us and we can move onto the fun part of putting our home together and decorating it!  I can hardly wait! 

I am happy to announce that our carpet installer was able to make it out Monday and finished putting in all our carpet that day.  What a wonderful treat to have carpet!

Nate prepping the floor for carpet and pulling an all-nighter

he would find the squeaky spots and then screw some boards in the floor trusses to be able to screw the floor down

carpet pad

tack strips

carpet being put in!!

oh so pretty!!

up close shot

even closer

finishing strips between the laminate and carpet

finished product in the girls' room

finished master bedroom!

Finally...

Well that sure took a while!  What part you might ask.  Getting the sidelights to our front door installed!  Apparently they were broken when the door was being transported from the manufacturer to Muus Lumber so Muus decided to fill in the sidelight slots with plywood and give us our door.  They told us they would send someone out to replace the sidelights once the new ones came in.  Well that was back in August when we installed our front door and they just now got around to installing them for us even though we've had the sidelights in our basement for months now. 

It was a bit more noticeable not to have them once we moved in because it wasn't sealed with the plywood in the slots, with our strong winds up on the hill it would whistle really bad, so we're really grateful to have those holes in our house sealed!

And someone please remind me to lock my front door!  Construction workers around here feel like they can just walk into any house without knocking.  Yeah, talk about an awkward moment when they realize it's not a construction zone but a family's home they just walked in on!  That's happened more than once around here and the last one I was at least glad to find out he was here to install our sidelights.

For the first few days after they were in I would do a double take every time I walked by my front door thinking that the door was left open since I wasn't used to having windows there.

I really love the look of our front door with the sidelights!

installing the sidelights

they're in!

the detail

so pretty!