Making our house our home -- Part 2

After getting the flooring done, we started painting. We've painted almost every single room in the last week. Some are still in progress, but we're mostly done. It's pretty fun seeing the transformations of the rooms. I've never been able to paint (my parents never owned a home), so it's taking some getting used to living with color. What a HUGE difference new flooring and some color make!!

Dining room before:


Dining room after:


Kitchen before:


Kitchen after:
(the cabinets will eventually be painted white)


Formal living room before:


Formal living room after:


Family room after:
(I don't have a before picture, but it was just a big empty room before -- there wasn't even a couch!)

We chose 3 colors that were on a coordinating color card thingy at the store. I love all the colors individually, and I love them in pairs. But now I'm second-guessing myself seeing them all together. Our kitchen, family room and dining room are all a really open floor plan, so I'm worried that it looks a bit like a circus in here. What do you think?! Here's a view from the family room so you can see all 3 colors together. Be honest!!

The bedrooms are still a work in progress, but I'll get pictures up as soon as they're closer to being done! :)

Making our house our home -- Part 1

We've been busy, busy, busy the last 2 weeks! Derk's mom flew in on a Wednesday, and the chaos began early Thursday. And it hasn't stopped since.

Thursday we went and bought the flooring. Then we came home and started ripping out the carpet in the dining room (who does that?!) and the linoleum in the kitchen and entry. It has been such a process. The builders apparently did a pretty rotten job of leveling the concrete, so Mom spent many hours leveling it out before we could lay the planks. She's pretty amazing and knows how to do everything! Well, maybe not everything, but I've never been able to come up with something she doesn't know how to do. :)

My house was trashed for a good 3 days. As you can see in this picture, my stove and dishwasher are in my living room (the dining room table and the 6 chairs are in there, too -- they were behind me when taking the picture), and then you can see past the kitchen where my fridge is in my laundry room. Which also meant I couldn't access the washer or dryer to do any laundry. I never thought I'd miss doing laundry, but I proved myself wrong! ;)

The kids had lots of picnics outside since we had nowhere to eat inside. We put the carpet remnant we ripped out of the dining room onto the back patio for a few days. They loved having picnics on the carpet. Asher is missing from this picture because he refused to get clothes on. . .

Derk, hard at work. He gives me this cheesy smile every time I ask him to let me take his picture. Go figure.

Cambria insisted on staying by my side pretty much the whole time. She desperately hates being away from me. I love that, don't get me wrong. But when ripping up flooring, using cement and trying to lay planks, it gets kinda rough having a 2 year old trying to help! ;) But she sure is a cute little helper!

Derk and Cambria taking a much-deserved rest on the new floor. I had to disturb their peace because they were laying where the fridge goes, and I was beyond desperate to have my laundry room back! :)

We also thought it was quite humorous that the laminate boxes said "easy installation". Nooooooot quite! I think it was a combination of many things, but this floor nearly did all of us in! If it hadn't cost half as much as hiring professionals, I would have been very tempted to skip the DIY. But now we have the pride of having a great floor that we did ourselves, I guess!

Getting spoiled

Derk's mom came down to help us with some projects around the house. And of course that means the kiddies have gotten pretty spoiled! Their favorite treat is the pool Grandma bought them a few days ago. It's only 3 feet deep, but they sure have a blast! They couldn't even wait for the water to fill up all the way before getting in. :)

We've also gotten spoiled by Grandma's cooking. She made a really delicious dinner the other night. The kids and Derk had a lot of fun helping her make the meatballs!

5 little cuties

Just in the past week, the kittens have become really cute -- venturing out of the closet, playing with each other, wobbling around as they work on their walking skills, developing their personalities. It's funny, but each kitten really does have a very distinct personality, very different from the others. They're so much like children. I had some time to kill this morning, so I took some pictures of the little darlings. I tried to get individual pictures of each one, but I could only get a few -- there were a few kittens that really didn't want to cooperate with me. :)

No grass yet, but....

.....we still manage to have fun in the backyard!

Guess what we have?

Derk, the kids and I spent all evening yesterday outside -- we went for a nice bike ride around our neighborhood, sat in our camping chairs and listened to Derk play guitar and played soccer and frisbee. It was so fun. Once it got dark, we headed inside, and Derk noticed 3 of these puppies by our front door:


We've lived here a whole year, and we've had no run-ins with any nasty desert bugs -- no scorpions, nothing. Figures my first encounter is with black widows. And they're not just dinky ones, they're at least 2 inches long! And they're all females, which is even worse. So we brought the kids outside, showed them the spiders and the red hourglass on their bellies so they know how to identify them in the future. Then we came inside and watched a video online about black widows together.

After that, I sent Derk to the store to buy bug killer while I put the kids to bed. When he came home, we went around the perimeter of the house and found a total of 6 black widows, but only had 3 confirmed deaths.

Tonight we went out again after the kids were asleep, and we killed 7 more, not to mention a really large egg sack! That brings the total to 13 now. 13! All I can say is that it's a really good thing our house is new, otherwise I'd really be freaking out that they were inside! Our neighbor came over yesterday and told us he has a good exterminator he'll give us the name/number for, so we'll call him on Monday after we get the info.

So. Creepy.

And we're back!

What a crazy week or so it's been! We got the keys on Friday, moved on Saturday and have been going non-stop ever since! I got the last of the boxes unpacked over the weekend, so now I'm just organizing and trying to make some sense of the inside. It's mostly done now. We ordered a couch last week, so once that arrives, we'll have a fully functional house. Next week is when all the fun decorating will start!!

We just got the internet back this afternoon, so here's a look at the past week in pictures--

Kyrie had a presentation at school about planets. . .


Cambria's started trying to do her own hair
and comes up with some, er, bright outfits. . .


Asher, Bri and I checked out the park in our subdivision. . .


I planted an herb garden for my kitchen windowsill. And it's GROWING!!!


And last but not least, Isis had her kittens!
She had 5 of them last Thursday.
The kids can't get enough of them.