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By Alyssa, September 21, 2011 3:45 pm

I mentioned in my nesting post that I’ve been, well, a little crazy about redecorating our house this summer.  Maybe it’s because Haus was out of town (and I could get away with it… mwah, ha, ha, ha), maybe it’s creative juices from the baby, whatever the reason, I’ve went a little nuts!  Be prepared for A LOT of pictures.

First, let me post a picture of something I could NOT do by myself.  I tried and failed.  When we darkened the wood floors throughout our house after the kitchen disaster, we noticed that the railing ended up not matching anything.  Wasn’t a big deal, but I got it in my head that I could paint it myself.  The rest of our house has white baseboards and I thought, why not paint the railing white.

So I dusted, cleaned, taped, caulked until it looked like this:

Not so bad, right?  What I should mention is that I did all of this six months pregnant.  Yep, ladder and all.  It got worse when I started priming the lower section and realized there was NO WAY I could reach the outside of the railing on the second floor.  It would put me much higher up on the ladder than when I taped and my big belly prevented me from leaning over the railing.

Soooo, I swallowed my pride and started getting estimates.  Didn’t realize how hard it would be to call painters, but after painting the rest of my house by myself (my mom and sis helped some too), it was really my first painting call for help.  Long story short, the guys I hired were worth every penny of their $500 estimate and the stairs now look like this:

After the railing was finished, I called in some help for my next project.  My super tough friend, Nanc, helped me pull down a 9 foot mirror from my bathroom.  Here’s the mirror and, yes, that sucker was probably a little too heavy for a pregnant chick to pull off the wall, but Nancy might be as crazy as I am:

You can see there is a common theme with me doing ridiculous things preggered.  I DO NOT endorse that kind of behavior for others.  Anyhoo, here’s another before picture of the bathroom:

Since moving in three years ago, I’d wanted that stinking mirror gone so when it finally came off the wall I was ecstatic.  My dad helped me recenter the light fixtures (with a super cute helper):

He also retextured a few spots where the mirror was glued and pre-hung some mirrors I found on Craigslist. Thanks, Colonel!  You can see from that last pic the mirror was HUGE.  My dad and a girlfriend’s hubby moved it to the garage, not me.  I’m not that nuts.  Once it was down, I painted, hung the mirrors and decor stuff, and made curtains.  Check out the transformation:

I painted the mirror wall light tan and the other walls a dark chocolate brown.  The curtains were really easy to make and almost all of the decorations were waiting in my basement to be put up somewhere.  Total cost for the shelves, mirrors, paint, and curtain material… $125.  That’s it!

About the same time I decided to transform the bathroom, I changed up our master bedroom too.  I pulled down a picture bar holder thingy (yep, that’s the technical term) from our den and put it above our bed.  I sewed curtains with coordinating material to the bathroom, and made wall art to create this:

Sorry, no before picture.  Just imagine this room without curtains or the wall hangings.  I love two things about this wall.  First, I faked a window.  There’s actually only one to the right of our bed, but I’m kinda weird about symmetry.  I also love the way the canvases turned out.  I got the idea from a friend of a friend’s website.  It was so easy!  I used her instructions to glue old atlas maps my father-in-law gave me on blank Hobby Lobby canvases:

This picture doesn’t really do them justice.  The Modge Podge made glossy, expensive-looking wall art and the materials only cost me $15.  LOVE!  I surprised Haus with the entire master suite transformation and, thank goodness, he LOVES it too.

With the picture hanging thingy off the wall in the den, it looked like this downstairs:

Of course I couldn’t leave it like that!  My final do it yourself project was to create a gallery wall.  I found some cute shelves at the new IKEA in Denver (my first IKEA experience and that’s a whole other post!) and gathered all the excess stuff I didn’t use in the master bathroom.  I discovered this website which showed me gallery wall options and just started nailing and affixing things with command strips.  Now our den wall looks like this:

I bought and modge podged the “A” from JoAnns, and, believe it or not, everything else was in the basement or in other parts of the house.

Hubby doesn’t LOVE this like he loves the master suite, but he doesn’t hate it so it stays.  Yes, it’s busy, but what I really like about our gallery wall is that it isn’t like anyone else’s house, encompasses a lot of aspects of our family, and, much like the other decorating, didn’t break the bank.  The two IKEA shelves and new picture printouts cost me about $30 total.

So there you have it.  Want to change up things in your house?  Gather every unused decor item that you can find, search some websites for inspiration, and just go for it!  I’m so glad I did.  I know I didn’t provide a lot of tutorials in this post, so feel free to ask questions in the comment section.  Happy decorating!

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By Alyssa, September 11, 2011 1:42 pm

September 11th, 2001: I was frustrated that morning that my car battery was dead and I didn’t have a way to get to work that afternoon.  Haus and I had only gotten married a few months before and were living in a townhouse in Caldwell, Idaho.  We had very little to our name and no television.

Despite just graduating from college, I was a waitress at the Olive Garden waiting for a school date to start my Army career and Haus was a framer for construction company waiting for us to be in a more permanent place to finish his engineering degree.  We were so young.  I called my parents to borrow a car as they only lived a half-hour away and it was my mom that told me the shocking news.  I spent the rest of the morning standing in front of their big screen watching the events unfold.

Later that afternoon, I idled in the lobby of the restaurant with the other waiters at work discussing the implications of the terrorist attacks… not a soul came in to eat.  I can remember thinking, I’m going to be in the Army and my Army is going to war.

That night at dinner Haus and I sat silently in our tiny kitchen knowing that this day would forever change the course of our lives.

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By Alyssa, September 10, 2011 6:15 pm

Four months ago I became a single parent.  After hating his job for almost a year, Haus came across an opportunity to work a short term engineering contract in Portland.  We prayed and talked and prayed and he decided to take it.  He quit his job on a Tuesday in May, worked until Friday, then packed up over the weekend, and hit the road that Monday for Portland.

He left without a solid timeframe for returning to Denver and, oh yeah, with me 19 weeks pregnant with our third kiddo.  Crazy?  Maybe.  I didn’t feel like I could argue at the time as I’d left him on pretty short notice twice before during my overseas Army deployments.  The first week after he was gone, I thought, I can do this. I’ve deployed before, I know friends that have done this while their husbands were deployed…. no worries.

Then I realized I needed someone to mow the lawn pronto, my two-year-old lost his mind having Daddy away, and a neighbor tried to verbally assault me at a block party knowing my hubby was out of town.  That was week two of our separation.  Thank goodness I had some good support around me.  A girlfriend’s hubby volunteered to mow our lawn every two weeks, Haus started a webcam schedule with our little guys which helped them immensely, and the rest of my neighbors banded together to support me despite the one bad apple on the block.

Unlike my military spouse friends, I had opportunities to see Haus during our time apart.  I took a hard look at the calendar and made a last minute trip up to Idaho in June so that Haus could spend 24 hours with us, vacationed for two weeks in July as a family in Portland, and made it through August on my knees praying as Haus negotiated a permanent job back here.  Around the end of August, we found out he would return for good on September 10th and the boys and I made our paper chain link countdown.

I learned two very important lessons during the last four months. Lesson 1- having your hubby away while you’re preggered with two small children stinks, period.  If it weren’t for friends that wouldn’t take “we’re fine” for an answer, I would have lost it on a daily basis.  Lesson 2- I will NEVER compare myself again to a military momma that has her hubby away.  They are ten times tougher than I am as their husbands are usually gone for more than a year, in a dangerous place, and they only get a two week spouse visit OR LESS during the separation.

We picked up Haus from the airport this morning so right now it seems like the time flew by.   Then again there were nights during the last four months when I really wondered if I could do it another 24 hours. Enough whining for today though, it was tough, it is over, and I’m going to go watch some football with my Hubby. If you were one of those that helped us out, I cannot thank you enough, and if you’re a military mama with your man deployed, I’m praying for his safe and quick return.

The boys and their just-returned Daddy

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By Alyssa, September 9, 2011 9:13 pm

My nesting pattern so far:

Prior to Bubba’s birth- decorated his nursery, organized our CDs, right before he was born, baked a few pies and cleaned our ceiling fans (Yes, I did stand on our kitchen table nine months pregnant to accomplish that last task).

Prior to Zeke’s birth- reorganized the baby clothes, sold and bought baby items on Craigslist, redid the nursery.

Prior to baby #3′s birth… and the kid’s not born yet so I add to this list daily- reorganized our entire filing system to include color coding, reorganized our master closet, reorganized the boys closet, labeled bins and reorganized the basement toys, sorted through all of our manuals, software items, old picture CDs, etc. and, of course, labeled everything, scrubbed down our front porch and front door, redecorated our master bedroom, created a gallery wall in our living room, moved furniture upstairs and downstairs (with help on the big items), tried to paint our stair railing upstairs and down (then realized I really shouldn’t get on a ladder and the belly wouldn’t allow me to reach OVER the railing to paint so hired some really nice contractors), painted and decorated our master bathroom, reorganized our homeschool room, and started to scrapbook Zeke’s baby book (that I’m determined to finish before baby #3 is born).

Wow, now that I’ve written it all out I really must be nuts.  I will offer an excuse that with Haus gone the last four months (see tomorrow’s post) I tried to stay busy and not lonely at night after the boys were in bed… but, wow.  I’m crazy.

Look for decorating pics next week!

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By Alyssa, September 6, 2011 10:42 am

Remember my weak sauce suburb garden from last year?

This year I had zero motivation to redo the garden, but Haus surprised me by installing an automatic drip system on Mother’s Day.  Hmmmm, no watering work, I thought.  Why not throw a few seeds out there.

So that’s exactly what I did.  I used all the seeds I purchased last year, bought a couple bags of compost to mix into the existing dirt, and let the boys help plant.

What happened next was crazy!  With an automatic watering system nourishing the plants 10 minutes in the morning and evening, I became the owner of the garden of Eden.

Squash with lettuce thrown in

Marigolds surrounding beets, carrots, and lettuce

I enjoyed fresh salad from the garden all summer and yesterday I harvested about a dozen beets and carrots I hadn’t touched since planting in June.

Lesson learned?  Go ahead and buy a super easy to install drip watering system and watch your thumb turn green.

P.S. As a side note, I don’t think my harvest was quite as plentiful using last year’s seeds but it didn’t cost me anything extra so I didn’t care.

P.P.S. The Dig Corp drip irrigation starter kit Haus bought and supplemented from Home Depot cost us about $50 total.