A very domestic Friday & our week in pictures...

I guess I've been a little MIA this week. I'll attach some pictures to show you what I've been up to! Justin and I celebrated our 6th year of marriage on Sunday, his mom's birthday on Tuesday, and we've been hanging out the rest of the week. Nothing too exciting to report on. I've had a wonderful day in the kitchen and behind the sewing machine/cutting table! I made about 12 cups of homemade chicken stock. Our pastor's wife gave us a fabulous recipe and boy do I have some beautiful stock to put away for another day. We had 3 roasted chickens for dinner on Tuesday and basically I threw the carcasses, carrots, celery, onions, salt & pepper (and the rosemary that I stuffed in the carcasses before we ate them) all in a 12 cup stock pot, covered it with water and let it cook all day! It smells heavenly and I just harvested some WONDERFUL (preservative free) chicken stock. I highly recommend you try it. Now, I just have to run to the store for some more freezer containers to fill!

Several weeks ago I bought fabric to make matching dresses for the girls and a daygown for our little boy! :) I cut them all out last week and today I've been working on making the piping and the collars! I'm really excited about them! I'll be sure to post pictures once they are all done... it may be a few weeks at the rate I'm going! Morgan & Paige had a great day playing with Judson and I, of course, enjoyed the company of Tami! Thanks for coming over!!

As you can see Paiger is never far from food. Here's a short 30 sec video from this morning.

Where my PEEPS at?

It's been a terribly CRAFTY Saturday here at our house! Thanks, Sister, for the idea to make a PEEP wreath. Anna, I don't know if you took her up on the idea or not, but I sure did! And boy was it fun! We made the wreath for GiGi (Justin's mom) for her birthday and we delivered it to her this afternoon. She loved it so much that she made us take it home with us! She knows were having some friends over for lunch after church and insisted that it hang on my back door for a day or two and then she'll take it! :) Isn't that nice? So, it's back at our house and since we're having some kids over here I figured I'd "PEEP" up the kids table with a PEEP tree... or three! I honestly can't stand the way these things taste but they sure are fun to play with! :) Thanks for the idea Sister, if the kids don't man-handle them I'm hoping to put them away for next Spring! And as you can see from the pictures... Morgan had an absolute blast helping. Thanks, Mom, for her "big girl" scissors. I've only busted her once trying to cut her hair with them! I screamed so loud I'm sure she'll never attempt it again!

House Renovation {part 3: DR & LR}

I really should be showering right now, but the dining room and living room were clean so I decided to take advantage and do post 3 on the house renovation. I took this picture above of our china in our china cabinet while snapping a few pictures of the room and thought it was very fitting to precede the dining room post. Justin made our china selection all on his own... not bad for a guy! I think he liked it because there were dogs, horses and guns on it! What a great compromise for china that both men and women will dine from!

These two rooms are directly off the kitchen and family room. Here are the before pictures...

Dining Room (Justin standing in door to kitchen)


If you turn around 180 degrees you'll see the living room

(lovely butterfly wallpaper is accented on the foyer wall too)

the foyer

Originally the only entrances into these two rooms were from the kitchen or the foyer but thanks to my husband's handiwork we opened up the wall 9' between the LR and FR for a better flow.

progress (you'll see that terazzo in the FR that almost caused a divorce) :)

We removed the foil wall paper, the white carpet, the vertical blinds and the dated curtains. We added a little paint (Benjamin Moore: Camoflage) to the walls and wood floors. My sister donated to the cause a gorgeous antique light fixture that she bought on ebay for $16. The Lamp Man himself had to rewire this one, as it was a tad too tricky for a novice like me. The the furniture in the LR and the mirror and light fixture in the foyer all came from that same antique mall that I love and ironically all from that same booth! The rug in the foyer came from AAA Freight Salvage house.... it was brand new and 100% wool and the best part $50. The blinds throughout the house I bought on blinds.com and the curtains came from none other than JcPenney and the curtain rods from Home Depot. I think that covers it. So, here it is now... I took many more "after" pictures; the before were taken when we were just "looking" at the house so I unfortunately didn't get every single angle!

The end...

Wordless Wednesday!

Daddy Can Fly!

I'm not really sure what to say. We are hard up for entertainment and this is some of the best entertainment we've had around here in a long time. I've been laughing so hard I thought I'd throw up. Justin normally doesn't wear ankle socks with crocs... that too makes me laugh really hard. He's been in the yard this afternoon cutting down trees and he put them on as "house shoes". To me, it just adds to the humor of it all. Please enjoy!

Morgan says, "Paige, hold on for dear life.

Daddy's about to fly over us at a high rate of speed"

I'm certain this won't be as funny to any one else but I can't help but post!

House Renovation {part 2: the office}

As I begin to type this post my mind is still lingering over on Erika's (my twin sister) post from today... and what better timing for me to link to her (once again). She just finished a beautiful post on my parents and I can't believe I didn't give them any credit in my first renovation post. As you will see from her post that I have inherited the gift of being a hard core renovator from them. They can take any & all things "old" and make them "new"! So be sure to read up on them on her post!

Moving right along to the next room in our house: the office. I'd have to say this room is close to the top of my list of favorite rooms in the house. It's a very small room and "L" shaped. It only has enough room for what it's intended purpose is. Sometimes I think we think we need a "huge" office space with all kinds of tables, etc. (like what you might see in Pottery Barn) but truthfully, if you have some cabinets & closets to hide your junk then the rest of the space is somewhat wasted! Our house was built by a plumbing contractor and I assume he used this space as his home office. We definitely considered it an added bonus! Especially since it has two different work stations; one for Justin and one for me (and all my sewing goodies!). If you look back to the pictures of the den you enter the office through the first of 3 pocket doors off of the den.

Here it is before in all it's brown glory:

We kept all the cabinets, closet doors and all the counter tops (it's amazing what a coat (or 3) of paint can do). I absolutely loved the cornice boards but didn't love the brown & gold fringe tape the bordered them. A great upholsterer had the idea of banding them in the same fabric as my "new" chair, and when he told me he'd charge $35 to do it... how could I say no to that!? The "new" chair came from the same antique mall that all my living room furniture came from. In fact it all came from the same booth... I'm hoping to meet that booth owner one day and thank him for his low prices & his willingness to come DOWN on everything by at least 20%!! The chair pictured below was a whopping $25. Thank you sister for the fabric.

Here are the after pictures:

The walls are Abington Putty by Benjamin Moore (a color that you can't go wrong with... it's in the den too) and the counter tops are a semi-gloss of a color called JAVA that I found at Lowe's. It might be an Eddie Bauer color. It's a chocolate brown with a hint of mossy green in it.

The old school house pendant came from my sister. She found 5 of them at an antique store in Apalachicola... she bought all 5 for $45. I spent a few hours cleaning and rewiring them with the help of my husband... who you can see by the pictures below was delighted to help me! She gave us 3 of the 5 and the other 2 hang over the bar in the kitchen. They were a cinch to rewire and thanks to the Lamp Man (who carries odd & old parts) everything I needed was just 5 minutes away... and the total to rewire them was about $15. The photos below were taken by a 2 year old in our rental house prior to moving in.... she's such a good helper! The pictures are lovely of not only our faces but also our house... which looks as though a small tornado had just swept through! Oh well... here are those school house pendants in the process of becoming "new"!

House Renovation {part 1: the den}

If you've been with us long enough you've probably gathered in your mind that Justin and I have lost ours. In just a matter of days we will have been married for 6 years and in those 6 short years we have lived in 6 different houses. The house we currently reside in is the youngest of those 6. We're not totally crazy, we have owned and renovated only 4 of the 6. When we moved to Dothan last summer we had a lovely lot that we fully intended to build a lovely house on. However, as we're taught in Proverbs 16:9, "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps", our plans were not His plans and due to some underestimating of the expense involved with building a house (and actually having dirt to build it on) we determined building wouldn't be a wise decision. We truly feel the Lord confirmed our decision in many ways. So we sold the lot and the search started for a house we could make a home. We aren't really new house people so I'm not sure what we were smoking when we thought we'd build a house... oh yeah, Erika talked us into that one! We always joked that if it doesn't have termites, wood rot, plumbing problems, shag carpet, old wiring, etc., etc., etc., then we are definitely not interested. We looked, and looked, and looked, and looked... you get the point. And then one Wednesday night after church we decided to "drive by" this house. We had seen it before but not given it much thought. It was on the market for well over a year and half (maybe 2).

So we looked and this is what we saw...

And then we turned the other way and this is what we saw... (minus "Red" the painter who gave us the most astronomical painting quote you could ever imagine... I think he was scared of the task and thought "I'll bid so high they'll run the other way"... we did!)





Honestly, it was one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen. The flier advertised "designer vertical blinds in every window". I do believe that the words designer and vertical blinds are oxymorons. The room pictured above is what we call the "den"... it is the room you walk into from our side entrance. The carpet was white, the walls were stained very dark, the "little foyer" area you see pictured above was covered in corduroy wallpaper. There were vertical blinds everywhere... and yet despite all of these flaws we were still drawn to the house. We both saw such potential in it. This is where I go deeper so hang with me PLEASE...

We have a good friend, Tommy Tolleson, and from my understanding the following ideas originated with him so I can't take complete credit for them, but I can whole heartily agree with his assessment and evaluation of taking something old and making it new.

There was something about this house that intrigued us. We could see past the ugliness of it's emptiness, windows, walls, floors, cabinets, bathrooms, ceilings... shall I go on? We knew from past experience that we could do "something" with it. Does any of this sound familiar to you? I'm hoping so and if not I hope that you'll read carefully and consider this comparison. What we (anyone, not just us) can do to a house, the Lord can do to a person's soul. He can take something old, ugly, worn out, sad, lonely, empty, angry, and sick and make it a new creation. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" A "heart renovation" is an eternal renovation. All the money and effort we have poured into this house we know will not last, we know will be outdated, we know will fade; but what the Lord can do to a person's heart is eternal. So, as I prepare to show you what I think is a dramatic renovation, I hope in your mind you will be reminded of what a dramatic renovation our Lord can do in a person's heart. It's about a billion times more shocking and dramatic than a simple coat of paint on walls and trim. I also hope that you will be encouraged to think of things in your life (whether it be a home, a relationship, or whatever) that could benefit from a "simple renovation". We live in a culture that is so driven by consumerism that we have trained ourselves to think that we always have to have "new" things, when I'm convinced that what we already have or what is used can be just as good if not better! I'm thankful that we have a gracious Savior who looks at us, sees our ugliness and decides He can "work" on us, rather than toss us to the wind! I've been stalling on posting pictures of my house because I keep thinking, "well, I'm not really done yet and there's still some crap in the corner" but then as I type this I'm reminded that similar to how I will continue to work on this house, the Lord continues to work on us and truthfully, this side of Heaven we will always have "crap in our corners". So, without further adieu... the den after pictures!

Stay tuned... more rooms to follow!

{by the way: if you live in a new house, are building a house, have new things, etc... please don't think i think any of those are "bad" in anyway... i am just simply making a point that this house sat here empty for so long and no one was able to see any potential in it. there were a handful of people who had looked at thise house and said, "you bought that house!!??" when i told them which house we had purchased. i wish they could see it now! :) }