February 26-March 3

February 5-11

November 6

Today we made some very important progress in the “redo the family room” project. This was like two phases done at the same time! One of our work friends husbands owns a home project kind of business, and he really seems to do everything from tile to plumbing to kitchens. They both came over today, Ginger to socialize and Dale to work on the TV. After the incredible work he did in the walls to make the cables and outlets totally professional, it is hard to imagine Chris having tried to do this on his own.

Now the TV is mounted over the fireplace and we have three new outlets behind it!

August 27

The many home projects/adjustments we tackled this summer allowed us to repurpose our “fancy” living room into a playroom. The furniture in there was perfectly lovely, but we didn’t use the room much AT ALL and Aaron hasn’t ever had a playroom. So, we passed the nice furniture on to Sarah, brought up the sleeper sofa from the basement and moved Aaron’s toys in. It still has the nice curtains and painting over the couch…but that’s fine for now. There is Aaron playing with his Cars track, which can now stay set up in a space of it’s own. There is a couch for him to sit on, or for us to read on together, and his city rug stays out too. He has already made great use of it as he gets used to the whole idea.

Here is what it looked like outside when I got up this morning at 8…it’s Hurricane Irene day. She should be rolling up in here about 4 this afternoon.

and she did. It rained A LOT, and hard, and it was VERY windy, but that was about it for us. We did not have any damage, downed branches or trees, or loss of power. Many friends who live 30-40 miles north had loss of power, but we just had a rainy day inside.

August 18

Today was our last chance to take Aaron to Minnieland for a “school day” before we go on our vacation next week, so here he is ready to go.

We took the opportunity to work on a project we have been wanting to tackle for a year now, a remake of our family room. We have been really frustrated with the lack of seating in the room considering how big it is, and ever since my parents got a giant sectional that seats like a million people, we have been wanting to make a change. However, we have a perfectly serviceable set of furniture in the room and the new update would require us to get rid of it. Until this week, we really had no hope of doing that because we have no place to store it. However, Sarah and Zack are moving into a big new place and we tried offering all the furniture we could and they wanted every bit of it! Win-win!

So began phase 1 of 4 to make this room the way we want it. Here’s the room in the morning after I emptied out our giant entertainment unit…

Here’s the room after we broke down the pieces as much as we could without additional helping hands…

And here’s the new tv in it’s temporary home (phase 2 is mounting it on the wall over the fireplace)

Okay, okay, here’s the Beyonce picture on the tv box.

And here’s our new sectional! Couch and tv are both screamin’ deals from Costco.

This couch is really amazing. It is seven pieces, each one separate, so they can be arranged in endless configurations around the room. This is the way we would keep it for family time, but if we had a large party we could adjust it for more seating/less footrests, and we can also adjust for when it’s time to add a Christmas tree or pack and play.

He looks pretty tiny on the couch, right??

MAN we are excited!

August 12

And finally, the last step in this room redo, toy storage. I really wanted some pieces of the Trofast toy storage system from Ikea. I first saw this at Jen Graham’s house (she blogged about it here) and have loved it ever since. I’m a sucker for bins and shelves and all things storage. So I dragged my hubby to Ikea, a place he is most definitely allergic to, and showed him this system in all it’s glory. He thought it was perfectly functional and we came home with all the pieces a kid’s bedroom could hope for. Here’s what we got:

Tall unit on the left side of his desk/hutch with shelves and bins (we have had the desk and hutch for years, that isn’t new)…

…and stairstep unit on the right side of his desk with the three different size bins you can get with the system.

So here is the whole wall…

Aaron and I spent a few hours deciding which of his toys would move up to his room and the amount of storage he has in here now is just amazing. There is a little green bin still empty and an empty shelf as you can see. Aaron loves having his nice Legos out on the tops where he can stand or kneel and play with them.

It’s like a real kid’s room, where he can actually play. There is room for toys and open floor space to play with them. He was really excited to show Daddy what went into what bin. He likes to organize things. His system and my system rarely match, but he likes to have a system all the same. :)

So now, all of Aaron’s things are moved in to his room and it is really his!

August 11

Next step in room readiness…window dressing. We got new blinds from blindschalet.com because the ones that were in the room came with the house and were broken when we moved in. We also got some dark brown curtains with cool texture at Bed, Bath and Beyond, finally using one of those infernal 20% off coupons that come in the mail each month :)

August 9

Today we hit another milestone in the creation of Aaron’s Africa room…we put together his new headboard and bed! We found them on Amazon, a company called South Shore furniture that has an incredible selection of children’s furniture. The instructions were extremely clear and everything went together very easily. I am excited about Aaron having a couple of little shelves for bedtime items and three drawers under the bed for jammies and toys. Having the bed really made the room usable, and after we got his new bedding on it and turned on his lamp, he actually asked us to leave because he said he wanted to go to bed :)

Here are some photos from today’s progress.

August 3

Today was mural hanging day! This thing was no joke. We tried it once a few days ago, but it didn’t go well because unlike regular vinyl wallpaper, it is truly PAPER and so it acts differently when it gets the paste on it. Lots of stretching and expanding. The instructions were…kinda helpful, but there is a lot more they could have included to let us know what to expect in the hanging process. So first attempt down, second mural ordered (thank you NanaGrampy for getting both) and here we are more experienced and ready to get it done. It really did take 4 people to get the darn thing up, but it looks SO AWESOME. I have never seen anything like it! Here’s where we got it: http://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Graphics-GATHERING-PLACE-MURAL/dp/B0012VL8QG

For the love of Pete, if you ever happen to get this or something like it that is more paper-ish than vinyl and haven’t hung one before, send me an email first for some tips!

first two panels…

third and fourth panels…

put up some more border…

and here is the little man in front of the whole wall! There were still some fit and finish things to do in this pic, namely trimming the excess off of all four sides. Nana did ALL of that work while Chris and I were out for a date night! 

When Aaron’s room is all done, this is the wall where his bed will go. Looks pretty awesome, right????

August 2

We all went on a little outing today, because we had promised Aaron a trip to Chik-fil-a and out for ice cream (thanks to the Cold Stone gift card the Stones sent Aaron!!). First we had our lunch and ice cream, then we headed over to the mattress store where NanaGrampy bought Aaron a twin sized mattress for his new room, and then we went up to Babies ‘R Us to check out strollers. My parents went WILD buying stuff for Baby Sister, as we are calling her. My dad looked at gear with Chris and I while my mom headed straight for the clothes. Here’s the clothing portion of what we came home with. Pretty cute, right? :)

July 31

Today we hung some of the border in Aaron’s room today. We couldn’t go all the way around yet, because some of it will butt up against the mural, but we did most of it. We are SO happy with how it looks with the blue and brown paint colors. It just looks SO sharp! And, best part…it’s peel and stick, just a giant removable wall decal!

July 28

I didn’t take any pictures today, but luckily my dad got this one on his cell phone of Aaron and I working on brown paint. Mom is painting the wall behind us. How cute is my little Handy Aaron?

July 26

Lots of fun going on today!

First, Aaron wanted his picture taken in front of the Dan Patrick Show.It’s Grampy’s favorite and has been on most days. Aaron loves to watch it, and ASKED me to take his picture in front of it. Too bad it’s McLovin’ in the background.

Later, Jojo came by to make a food delivery for our dinner tonight and brought his frisky and adorable puppy, Dexter. He is ADORABLE. Aaron was a little freaked.

Here’s some delicious Filipino food that Jojo’s mom made for us. It was SO good!!

And in the evening (note that Aaron is in his jammies in every picture today), we did some painting in the Africa room! This is the blue at the top of the walls to make the African sky. Although an orangey sunset might be more evocative of the savannah, this goes with the lovely blue sky on the watering hole mural Aaron will have on one wall.

He REALLY wanted to help…so…gotta let him. It is his room after all.

July 24

Here is a tiny bit of the scariness that formerly existed in Courtney’s room. When the Africa Room is done and Aaron moves in, there will be a twin bed there, so Chris and my dad moved the large queen bed down to the garage. Once they got the mattress and box spring down there, the under bed area was revealed. Courtney came over from her mom’s to deal with this mess. Although it may seem like clutter and junk, there is plenty of true nastiness under there, hence the lack of a zoomed in photo. It’s not the kind of area you want to touch. She cleaned it up really quickly, amassing a huge bag of trash, and the “after” picture is below.

ta-da!

July 20

Okay, if you are severely squeamish, be warned that I will have a picture of Aaron’s incision at the end of this post. It is not open or anything, and is covered with little strips, but, just saying.

But first, we have begun work on Aaron’s new big boy room, which has been Courtney’s room up to this point, but is now going to be converted into “The Africa Room.” we are very excited about beginning this project and working on it with my parents help. Aaron is very excited about having a bigger room with more space to play and store his toys, and of course, he picked the theme. This is somewhat of a before picture, although not a truly authentic one, because to show it before Courtney cleaned it for my parent’s stay would just be criminal. Couldn’t bear to photograph it. Anyone with teenage rooms in their houses? You know what I’m talking about. At least here you can see the girly purplishness of it. The bottom half of the walls has purple wallpaper that came with the house, and at the time we moved in, Courtney had a purple flowerdy bed set, so it worked out. She has changed bedsets since then, but no decorative modifications have been made to her room because we couldn’t bring ourselves to put a whole lot of money into a room with surfaces you can never see because it looks like a tornado/trash heap.

Okay, more room updates to come.

Now that Aaron doesn’t have to wear a dressing over his incision anymore, I find myself nervous that he’s going to get it scratched or irritated. The dressing was extremely itchy in the hospital, and giving him a fair bit of agony for his little 4 year old self. He was constantly asking us to scratch his back, and of course, I would lightly rub around it, and he would say, “No Mommy, SCRATCH it, give me your claws.”

Now that the dressing is off and the skin continues to heal, we hope the itch will start to subside.

Ready for it???

As you can see, he has some bruises and irritation around it. At the time of this picture he still had plenty of bruises all over himself from surgery positioning and multiple IV lines, but as I make this post on 7/25, most of that is gone. The band-aid is over the hole where his drain tube was inserted. When the dressing came off that was just exposed, and since it was a hole in his back, I figured it deserved a little covering. Those strips will start to dissolve and fall off on their own in a couple of weeks. This is why he can’t be in water, because that would cause them to fall off before they should. They are all still there, but we will post another picture of his back after they are gone.

June 26

This morning we spent some time getting the patio table and chairs cleaned up for summer use. It felt good to get it done, and reminded us how nice it is to be out on the deck. The inspiration might even last into the summer and yield a new coat of deck stain and some new lights out there!

This evening we got together with our friends for some swimming and dinner. The kids had a great time being rowdy and we got in a good visit before Aaron’s surgery.