2009 Family Pictures

Here they all are! I couldn't be happier with how they turned out. I consolidated some of them into collages so they would be easier to upload, but if you click on them you should be able to enlarge them. Our photographer, Krysia Photography, absolutely rocked. If you are near Cincinnati you should definitely book a session with her. Not only is she incredibly talented but her rates are VERY reasonable AND she allows you to purchase the digital images/copyrights (which is what we did) so you can make as many prints as you want. This will save you a ton of money! Can you guess what our family will be receiving for Christmas??? Mom - please tell me which ones you like best!

Our Fantabulous Christmas Card!

Sorry I didn't get many pics uploaded last night. Our internet connection at our house is being extremely slow. And either my computer or Yahoo is having issues and not allowing me to read my emails. I will try and get some uploaded later this evening. But I wanted to show you our awesome Christmas Card. I am so impressed with these. Not only is the design great, but the print quality is excellent. I'm not sure where our photog got them printed from, but the cardstock is very good quality and the finish is "pearl" which I've never seen before. It has a slight shimmer to it and is very pretty.

Front of Card

Back of Card

Today has been a really great day. Nothing special. Just one of those days spent at the house getting stuff done and enjoying your family type days. This morning we ran some errands and stopped by Goodwill so I could find an old picture frame. I'm wanting to make a magnetic chalkboard to use as a message board in the kitchen. We came home and while Brady was napping I was able to do a little cleaning and get started on some Christmas crafts. Rob cleaned the garage and cleaned up my old frame for me. He even offered to prime and paint the glass for me. I still need to go to Hobby Lobby to pick out some paint for the frame. I'd like to do a funky color - something different than plain brown or black. Now, we're spending the evening watching football and are cooking a boxed Uno's pizza - not quite the same as a real one, but it will do. Rob's been getting on me to order some LaRosa's from home (they'll put it on dry ice and overnight it to you), so maybe I will surprise him sometime soon :)

So excited!

HORRAY! Our pictures/cards arrived today! I am so excited and happy with them. I will upload them later this evening. I posted one of them as a new header, but it is a little larger than I wanted - I will play with it tonight! Yipee!

Master Bath Reveal!

So here is the other home improvement project that we have been working on over the past month. One thing that I am finally accepting and coming to terms with is the fact that when you have a child things get done at a much slower pace. Tasks that used to only take me a few hours to complete now take days and tasks that used to take days now take weeks. This bathroom is a perfect example of that. Rob and I have had to work on it a little at a time. Some days we didn't touch it at all. The main changes we made are upgrading the nasty linoleum floors to ceramic tile, replacing the baseboards, and adding beadboard and a chair rail to the walls. Then we painted the top half of the room a pretty milk chocolate color and replaced the towel bar/toilet paper roll. We'd like to replace the shower head and light fixture, but that stuff can wait.

I will say that beadboard is a total PITA to work with. Rob and I both agree that we never want to work with it again. Rhoda at Southern Hospitality posted about some great beadboard wallpaper that I would like to give a try in our breakfast room. Tiling the kitchen floors is next on our list, so we will see if I can talk Rob into letting me put that on the walls at the same time.

Here are 2 before shots.....

And now the afters.....

(please ignore the filthy toilet brush - it's on my list to replace this month)

Now I need to brag on my awesome husband for a little bit....He did such a great job on the floors and on the beadboard. He hadn't tiled anything in over a decade before he started on the bathrooms and he had never installed beadboard before. I really admire him for not being scared to try something new. He just jumps right in and figures it out as he goes along (although this part really stresses me out sometimes!). I love that when I ask him to do something (home improvement wise) he actually gets excited about doing it and doesn't complain.

I am excited that these projects are finally done and we can concentrate on the upcoming holidays! I am determined to have all my decorating and shopping done by Dec. 1st this year, so that I can actually ENJOY the festivities. Last year I was stressed to the max. Let's just say that a new baby + Christmas = insanity!

I still need to get around to uploading more pics of our Ohio visit. Hopefully I will be able to get to that by this weekend. Also the photographer that took our family pics while we were on our trip just mailed us our Christmas cards & CD with our pics on it. I should receive it by this weekend or early next week so I will be posting those as well.

We OWN it!!!

We paid off our car today!!! I am sooooo excited about this. We bought our Acadia last summer when we were needing a larger vehicle for our growing family. In addition to obtaining the vehicle we also obtained an annoying little thing called a loan. Rob and I were both raised in very sensible families who always drove paid-for cars. This usually meant buying used vehicles or in my mom's case driving the same car for almost 20 years!!! So this was our very first time having a car payment. And lets just say we despised it. And *technically* this was a used car when we bought it. But it only had 3,500 miles on it and it still had that new car smell. So to us it was brand new. Anyway, back to that annoying car payment....I am a huge Dave Ramsey fan and while we don't follow all of his principles precisely we do keep a very close eye on our budget and we made it a priority to put as much extra money towards the principle on the loan every month so we could get it paid off early. We failed miserably some months and others we did very well. I also have to thank Rob for his great work ethic and working overtime anytime it was available to him. So we got that sucker paid off in 17 short months! Now, we have an extra $440 every month, which I wish I could say I was going to spend on something really fun. HOWEVER, Rob has an astounding amount of student loan debt (those pharmacy degrees are expensive!) which we are going to start chipping away at with the extra money. Otherwise it will take us another 27 years to pay them off (I'm not joking - our mortgage will be paid off before his student loan would be!).

Guest Bath Reveal....

So. One of the many projects we've been working on is the guest/Brady's bathroom. This was one ugly room to begin with. The only upgrade that was ever done in here was crown molding. But you couldn't even see it because it blended in with the white walls. I've wanted to paint the room for forever, but never felt like doing it (I really don't enjoy painting). Here are 2 before pictures:

Before

Before

And now for the afters. The largest part of this project was installing ceramic tile floors. We had yucky linoleum before. We also installed faux board and batten on the walls using this tutorial. Then I painted and Rob put up a new towel bar. I must say I'm not that happy with the paint color - it turned out much more "apple green" than the "sage" color I was going for. But I'm not about to paint it again.

After

I must say Rob did an excellent job with the tile considering he hasn't tiled anything in over a decade. I was really nervous about letting him do it, but I do love the results! And please ignore the toilet paper roll that is just sitting on the holder. We normally have to keep it up on the counter top since Brady enjoys unrolling the whole thing and eating a few squares! I still need to find some accessories and something to hang on the wall, but it will probably take me another year before I find something I really like.

Happiness

My new flowers & window boxes!

confession: these are the ugly $6 plastic window boxes sold at Lowes that I spray painted black.

They're Done!!!

Go here, click on "Client Proofing" at the top, and type in Brady for the password.

Beautiful!

I couldn't be happier!

It's coming, I promise.

One of these days I WILL get around to uploading all my photos from our trip and Brady's party.......after I finish the other 1,245,988 items on my to do list.