11 months old today....

Our little baby is 11 months old today. Her first year is almost over. HOW SAD!!! She is just as cute as ever though. She has the cutest little grin. She crinkles up her nose and shows off her little teeth....it just melts your heart. She is super busy these days. Like right now she is in the bathroom. Just a minute while I go remove her.

I thought I would post some pictures of her adventures this last month.

We took her for her first swim. It was a little cold for her! Her little OH OH OH's were sure cute though. She wasn't really fond of the water, but she loved the paddle boat ride.

Nothing quite like sand and skittle juice all over your face to make a cute picture.

I know what you are thinking. Look at that sweet innocent face. Don't let it fool you. As soon as you aren't looking she throws her food or her sippy cup over the edge of her high chair and stands up and starts doing the "Look at Me being rotten" dance in her high chair. I guess that is why dad tried to feed her to an alligator this week....

She had much more fun sitting on its head. And speaking of....if I ever lay down on the floor that is where she goes....straight for my head. She will sit on my head and pull my hair. Obviously she isn't over her hair fetish yet.
See that? That is what she does ALL THE TIME. She sucks on her thumb while she plays with my hair. I don't think she likes it wet though.

And while we are on the subject of hair. Check out hers! She is our little porcupine. No matter what I do that hair just sticks straight up in the air. It is so cute though.

She is into everything these days. She takes after her big sister K and likes to pull out the pan drawer and climb right in to play with the pans. She loves to climb into anything these days. The other day she was in my paints container sitting on all of my craft paints. She has discovered that there are treasures to be found in the cupboards, so now they are all held shut with rubber bands (yes, low budget child-proofing).

She can stand independently. She loves walking around furniture and with anyone willing to take her for a stroll. She also loves running around with Dad.

She definitely keeps us busy running around and cleaning up after her. She is so precious and sweet though....especially when she is sleeping.

Going upstairs....

Okay I am finally getting around to taking you upstairs. I promise this will be the last day of my extensive, drawn-out, long house tour! First stop is my bedroom....

My bedroom is rather feminine, but my hubby doesn't mind all the pink in there. A girl has to have a little pink right!?! So let's take a walk around my room. See the rocking chair/glider in the corner? My husband gave me that before our 2nd daughter was born. The chest at the end of my bed was made by my sweet sweet grandpa. I wood burned ivy along the bottom of it, but you can't see that in this picture. See the fabulous dresser in the corner with the mirror on it? It was given to my brother-in-law. It really isn't there style (they are more southwestern) so they gave it to us. We refinished it. I LOVE IT!!! It is another of my favorite pieces of furniture.

Here is our bed. My hubby's uncle made the bed for us as a wedding gift. My hubby actually went out to Arkansas to help him finish it. Don't you just love this cute spread? I am addicted to quilts. I HAD to buy this one for our new house. It was only $40 so why not? I am very particular about my bed. I love to have it all pretty...pillows fluffed and looking inviting. On almost any given day, if you come to my house, my bed will be made. (Of course, as I say that it isn't today....but hey I am busy making grape juice and painting, so today doesn't count.)

This is a table that my hubby's uncle made as well. The lace doily thingy was my hubby's grandma's. See the pictures of my adorable little girls when they were babies? I need to add another one of baby H, but I haven't found a frame that matches yet. There is also a wedding picture of us. The wash basin was my grandma's. When I was little my aunt made a wash basin for each of my sisters. I loved them, but I of course, was too little to have one, so I was excited to get this one years later.

I have tried many different things out in the bottom of it, but I love these sea shells in it the best. I love sea shells. I don't know why because I have never really spent that much time at the beach.

Come on in to my bathroom and I will show you some more sea shells.

I have a few of them in here. I actually started collecting sea shells for my bathroom before we even had a master bathroom. I kept them until we finally had a bathroom of our own. I had tons of them out in our last bathroom. I have actually tried to tone it down a bit because sea shells are a pain to dust. Especially this little wreath, but I love it anyway.

I made it one night when I couldn't sleep. I should not sleep more often!

I use to be a hard core, no products on the counter type of person, but I finally gave up to convenience. Here is my attempt at making something functional and cute....baskets....what a wonderful thing!

The rest of my stuff hides in this drawer though.

Oh, and there are some things in this cabinet. We bought this cabinet at Lowe's. It was just their cheapest bathroom cabinet. Then I attacked it with our Dremel. It has a plastic finish, so believe me it wasn't easy, but I think I succeeded in giving it a little character. Sorry, I should have taken a little closer picture of it.

Well I guess that is all for the Master Suite. Oh wait, I forgot the closet.

Well that is all for my home tour. What is that you say? I forgot the girl's rooms? Well, yes I did. I haven't decorated them yet. They are not even on my radar at the moment. They are a mess!! One of these days I will get around to making them cute and then I will post some pictures of them.

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Onto the family room......

Sorry I have kept you standing in my dining room for so long. (It has been a little busy around the itybty house!) So come on into my family room.....
My family room still needs some decorating, but it is getting there. I just found the fabric to make some pillows that I have had hiding in a box for over a year.....one of these days I will get them done!!! I also need to fix up something fun over my armoire and bookcases. This is my FAVORITE piece of furniture. Did you guess that my hubby made it? Well, he did. He made it for me for my birthday a couple of years ago. He was such a trooper! My birthday is in February and he started working on it in January....in the FREEZING garage. He spent many evenings freezing his poor little fingers off trying to cut and sand all the wood. We did bring it inside to paint it and polyeurethane it. We distressed it and antiqued it. It was such a fun project. We are always amazing ourselves with what we can do. We just love building stuff.

Do you want to see where all the blogging magic happens? This is where I spend WAY too much time. I have a project in the works to do a board over this desk to display my daughter's artwork (back to the 2025 plan again....sigh). I guess it would be no surprise if I told you that my (AMAZING) hubby made this desk too. This is actually something he made in High School. It is sooooo heavy. Luckily it hasn't gotten too banged up with all the moving we have done. I was surprised when we bought our house that they didn't put a mantle in. So in the meanwhile, until we can get one, we put my favorite clock and some vinyl (of course!) above the tile surround. I am excited to crank up the fireplace on a cold winter night and snuggle up with my hubby, some hot chocolate and a good movie.

Can I tell you about my curtains? I had been looking around for something to go on my sliding glass doors. I wanted something that would match the window next to it. I found some curtains that I loved at Lowe's. After hunting for the price I found that they were on clearance for $4.00. SWEET!!!! They were regularly $32.00! The only problem.......there were only 2 of them.....I needed 4. The cashier looked them up on the computer and told me that they had at least one more at another Lowe's nearby. So the next morning I took off to the other Lowe's praying that they would still have it and hoping that I would be able to find one more at another Lowe's. Well just my luck, they had TWO!!! So I got them and had them hung up by that night. I love finding a good deal. So do you need to use the bathroom? Okay, sorry I asked, but just in case, here is our guest bathroom. Do you see that blue sticker on the toilet? Yeah, I should probably take that off. One of these days I will be perfect. Ha ha ha! I still have plans to put a cabinet (for bandaids and sunscreen) above the toilet and put some sort of painting or picture above my towels.

They had left over granite from my kitchen, so I got to have it in this bathroom too.

Come on through the bathroom to my laundry room.

Yes, I think a man designed my house. I don't know of any woman that would have made the laundry room smaller than the master bedroom closet. This is the only thing about my house that I have really hated. For some funny reason, I don't really think your bum should hit the wall when you are bending over getting your laundry out of your dryer. I must be grateful though....at least I am not washing my laundry in the river!

This room is actually much better than it was. When we moved in it didn't have any cabinets, so we put in the wall cabinets and the base cabinet, so I could have some storage space and a place to put all the detergent and stuff (Yes, the builders were men too!). We have another cabinet that we are actually going to bump out into my garage space so that I have a place to put some laundry baskets and to hide that monsterous pile of laundry. Can you tell I don't like to iron?

And we can't forget the vinyl. I think I might actually hang this sign on the wall, with some adorable black and white snap shots I took of my girls playing in the laundry drying on the clothes line. Do you see those fun GIANT clothes pins? I saw some in a model home once and loved them. I found them in the Pottery Barn catalog and they were EXPEN$IVE. I ended up finding these at my local grocery store and they were cheap. Another sweet deal.

I would really like to get an antique wash board to go in here, and maybe an old rug beater. My sister gave me an antique iron (it is on the counter, so you can't see it) and I thought it might want some good old friends to play with.

Well that is all for the tour today. I will take you upstairs next.

Kitchen and Dining Room Tour

Welcome back!!! Are you ready to see my kitchen. I love to see kitchens, and I think most people do too. I guess that is why kitchens are such a big selling point for homes. So here is my kitchen.....

My kitchen is where I had the most influence in the building process. We came into our house when it was almost completely done. I got to pick the carpet, the counter tops and the appliances. Everything else was already picked out. I can thank my builder's wife for her degree in interior design and her great taste. She did a fantastic job picking out everything else (except for the bathroom countertops, but I will save that for another post!)

The builders were already planning on putting in granite countertops, so I just had to pick out the color I wanted. This wasn't an easy task since I was 6 hours away. So they Fed-Exed me some sample pieces. I don't know what happened along the way, but most of them arrived broken. The Fed-Ex man wrote on his computer thingy (you know what thingy I mean don't you?) that the box had "EXPLODED" and that is what it looked like. We assembled back the pieces and tried to imagine what they would look like in a kitchen we couldn't go look at. There was really only one option that we liked in the end, so that was easy (Where is my Easy button?). They also asked what appliances I wanted, so I found the Clean Steel G.E. appliances. They are not supposed to fingerprint as bad as stainless steel, and they are magnetic. Unfortunately those appliances were not in their budget. Luckily for us our realitor cut us a deal and paid $1000 towards the appliances for us. Sweet! So I got the appliances I wanted after all. Yipee!

I was on a blog the other day that was ripping on fake ivy plants. In particular, fake ivy plants over your kitchen cabinets and how horrible they are. Well as you can see I must not follow current trends. LOL!!! I love my fake ivy. They have been with us in every one of our houses. We have history together. I wasn't just going to shove them in a box and forget about them. I love that I don't have to water them or take care of them. Can you see that rooster up there? My sister gave him to me and I love him. I was sad when I was decorating because I couldn't find him. It was a happy day for me when I finally unearthed him from a forgotten box hiding in the garage.

Can you read the vinyl above my pantry? It says, "A Pinch Of This, A Dash Of That". It was the very first decoration I put up in my house. I told my hubby that I was going to limit myself to 2 vinyl items per room. He he he, I don't think it happened. I went a little crazy with it in my pantry....

but don't you just love it. I love having an organized place for everything. And if it is cute then all the better. And why we are snooping in my pantry do you want to see in my fridge too?

What? You didn't see any vinyl in there? Well yes, there isn't, but just give me a few more months. ---Insert wicked laugh here--- I do have vinyl other places that I didn't get pictures of. I have a Mommy's Kitchen Helper list on the inside of one of the cupboard doors, and a label on my garbage disposal switch (so my hubby doesn't get confused again....this one was actually his brilliant idea...did I tell you he is amazing?) While we are looking in things let me show you inside one of my favorite cabinets (Don't worry I won't drag you around my kitchen showing you in all of my cabinets....unless you ask!)

Don't mind all the mess in there. I wanted to show you the cork board we put on the inside of the cupboards. I love it in there. It gives us a place to put our calander and all the crazy reminder notices and things we need. Do you see all the post it notes stuck to the side? That is because I can't find any more thumb tacks. I hate to go buy more because I KNOW I have some.....somewhere.

Do you want to see in my oven too? Ha ha, just kidding! I will tell you though that there are chocolate chip cookie dough brownies cooking in there right now. YUM!!!

Well, let's move on to my dining room.....just take a step backwards, and you are there! I just finished making the curtains to go in here and in the kitchen. We had a hard time with the dining room ones. We couldn't figure out how do do curtains in the bay window. Finally we purchased a l--o--n--g rod and my amazingly talented hubby bent it to fit the bay area.

I should have gotten a better shot of the buffet by the window. It has some pretty fun legs. This was my hubby's grandma's. We inherited it after she died. It was painted a funny creamy green color. We sanded it down and refinished it. It is one of my favorite pieces of furniture. I also love our table. We actually bought this table about a year and a half ago. Since we were living in my in-laws house for the last year it just sat in a box in our storage unit. It still looked brand new when we set it up here.

See the pretty flowers on the table? My hubby picked them for me. I love this time of year because the wild sunflowers are everywhere. I love them. My hubby always brings me some every year. And isn't that baby cute! She is sitting in her high chair eating crackers so I can take pictures of stuff. She is such a good baby to let her mommy play and be silly.

Well that is all for our home tour today. Our next stop will be the family room and I will probably squeeze the 1/2 bath and laundry room in with that. Stay tuned!

Entry and Livingroom Tour

Come on in!!!! (Don't you just love vaulted celings? We had them in the house I grew up in. I loved them. We always had the biggest Christmas trees.)

Please remove your shoes and place them in the basket. With new carpet, a yard full of dirt, and a crawling baby, I am sure you can understand why.

Let me show you around. And since I love details I will share all of those with you too.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this table. I love it even more because my hubby made it for me. Have I ever told you that he is amazing!?! I should have taken a close up picture of that little stitchery on there. I made that a few years ago. It says, "God Bless Our Home". Are you wondering what is in that cute little burgundy chest? I have reward papers for my kids in there. When they get their chores done they get to pick a paper. They have random rewards on them like: stay up 15 minutes extra tonight, Big Hug, 25 cents, watch a movie, have a treat, etc. I would tell you what is in that drawer, but I really don't remember. In our old house there was a Handyman magazine in there, but I don't know if it made the move. And don't you just love that R. Don't you think R is the prettiest letter in the alphabet....okay, okay, I am a little bit partial. :)

Here is our coat closet. There is this space above it that was the hardest spot to decorate in my house. I still don't think I did it justice. It is hard because it can be viewed from 3 different sides. I tried and tried to think of something to go up there that would look good from 3 sides, and I couldn't. I figured that most people coming to my house would only see one side, so I went with that. I love these candle sticks....and bonus because they were cheap! Before we left our old house my friends threw a good bye party for me and gave me this cut metal sign. It says, "Home is where your journey begins." I love it because I love the ladies that gave it to me.

So you want to see in my closet? Oh, don't be shy. I don't mind showing. I love looking in peoples closets. You gain a much better sense of who people really are when you see what is hiding behind closed doors.

Yup!! I am far from perfect, and I have the messy closets to prove it. Once I get that board painted though things will be better. We will put some hooks on it to hang all those coats and back packs on.

Now onto my living room. Oh wait, I forgot to show you my fun banister and railing.

I love the combination of the wood and iron. LOVE IT!!! I will take you up stairs on another day.

Come into my living room.



One MAJOR criteria for me when we were looking for a house was that it HAD to have a formal living room. I love this space. My formal living room was my favorite space in my last house. I have not formed such a strong bond with my new one yet, but I still love it. You have to have a place for the Home Teachers to come and not sit on toys right!?!

Do you like my couch? When I went looking I had a really hard time finding what I had in mind. I was actually looking for a solid green couch, but this was the only one I could find. I thought my hubby would never go for a floral couch, but he did. (I told you he was amazing right?)


And who wouldn't love a couch with legs like this. Oh and that mirror above the couch was my hubby's grandma's. I love it too.

Here is our new piano and side tables which we have added since we moved here. I even found tables that had the same cute legs as my couch.
Do you see that tree on the table on the right. That is a very special tree. We got it from a neighbor when we got married. It is actually several trees that have their trunks braided together. It was to symbolize our marriage as we intertwined our lives together. It is really cool. Anyway, on to another of my favorite things....this shelf.
Can you guess where I got it? Yes, my hubby made it for me too. I tell him what I want, draw him a picture, and he whips it out like lightening. He is wonderful and so good to me. I love this shelf. It reminds me of sweet things. My dh gave it to me for my birthday when I was pregnant with our third daughter. See those cute candle sticks? My sweet friend gave them to me. They remind me of her. That stitchery I made is supposed to remind me to bring more love into my home (yes, I sometimes forget!) That picture hanging below is a picture of my hubby's whole family that was taken at his little sister's wedding. Every time I see that picture I want to cry. I know you can't see it, but my hubby looks AWFUL in that picture. You think that is a horrible thing to say, but he had just had surgery 2 weeks before to remove a cancerous tumor. It reminds me of those days and makes me think of how grateful I am that he is still around. And of course the picture of my precious little girls...yes, I love this shelf.

Well that is all for the home tour today. Stick around for tomorrow when I take you into my kitchen.