Upstairs Kids Bathroom

Complete with beadboard, trim and crown (not pictured, but was added later. :))!

We're using the original tub, sink and medicine cabinet which were way too cool to get rid of. Very "Restoration Hardware". Now, all we need is white subway tile for the shower surround, white hexagon tile for the floor, white paint on the beadboard and trimmings and a paint color on the wall! Any suggestions? Maybe a wallpaper geometric print?

Sitting Room Paint

In this room, I painted last night with a color called "Hazel" by Sherwin Williams.

I can't wait for that tan-nish mauve-y fireplace to be painted a crisp white!

I love putting Adam on Daddy duty for the night so I can contribute to the house in some way.

I'm Thankful for PAINT!

During this 4-day Thanksgiving weekend, we've had some family and friends come to help us paint. The whole left side of the house is now painted in "Croissant" by Sherwin Williams and looks beautiful! London, a friend of my sister-in-law's and my brother-in-law, Daniel were two of those helpers. We are so grateful for them!

Dan had to borrow Adam's painting pants and we got a kick out of how they fit him.

This is how the color looks as you enter the entryway.

Looking to the left in into the living room.

Really makes a house look like a home doesn't it?

This is just a close up of the primer over the termite damage on the living room ceiling. We still have to paint over it with ceiling paint and hopefully that'll disquise it that much more.

Keepers of the Home

We had a group of kids and their moms come do a service project over at our house a couple weeks ago. Never would I ever thought I would end up being a service project one day, but we were so blessed by these kids and their moms willing to serve us in this way. They raked leaves, cleaned out our flower beds, swept, mopped, dusted, cleaned windows, picked up trash, hauled off sticks and broken branches, sprayed weed killer on the driveway and cleaned the bathroom all in a matter of 2 hours. It was such a morale boost for us to just work in a clean area as far as the interior was concerned and not have to worry about the exterior for now. It was even better when one of the girls was like, "Thanks for letting us clean your house!" Um, you're welcome!

Can-Can you do the Pecan?

You have to say pecan like they do in the south in order for that to rhyme: pee-can. I still say puh-kahn though.

However you want to say it, we have 'em.

We've collected two and a half of these buckets already! I just won a bid on a pecan nut cracker on ebay so we can get crack-a-lackin!

Phil's Progress

My brother-in-law Phil so generously gave up a week of vacation time to come help fast-forward the renovation. He's does renovations for a living, so to have him work in our house all day every day was amazing. Adam joined him in the evenings and took 2 days off of work. With the two of them combined, we saw major progress. What you may see in the pictures below may not look like much, but it's almost what you don't see that Phil worked on even more. All the walls are sooo smooth as he mudded and sanded the walls over and over to make them perfect. The crooked window sill is now straight, the doors have trim around them which took a lot of detailed cutting, the support beams got wrapped with thin wood, and we have crown moulding, base board, primed walls and painted trim!! Plus, being a part of his family's business we were able to use his business account at Sherwin Williams and get $200.00 off of paint!

Door casing around entry way door

Door casing around french doors in sitting room

Crown moulding in master bedroom. I found a crown guy on Craigslist who sold his for $1.00 less than Home Depot per linear foot and delivered it all for ten bucks!

Crown in entry way

Crown in hallway

During one of their workdays, it rained the entire day that they hung crown moulding. It made for such a cold, wet rainy day and they were exhausted.

The kids and I brought them Bojangles Bo-berry biscuits and coffee for a little pick-me-up.

Hallway Before

*sidenote: We really liked the pine on the walls, and really debated leaving them natural or painting them. In the end we decided to keep the ceiling natural here in the hallway (luckily no termites had found there way there!) and paint the walls to avoid it looking like a sauna, which it always reminded me of that. :)

Hallway After. The ceiling is natural, but you can't tell in this pic because it's taped off.

Primed ceilings and primed beams above Adam's head.

The support beams are made of pressed wood and had a really rough and uneven edge. That's why the guys decided to wrap it with thin, but real wood so that it would make it smooth and able to be painted more evenly.

Primed ceiling in living room. We were hoping that by painting the ceiling, it would make the termite damage on the left unnoticeable. Well, you can still see it. I think our when we paint our ceiling, I might pick more of an antique white in hopes that it might disquise it a little better and won't be as "bright". I think an antique white will tie in the kitchen cabinets too a little more than a bright white would.

Thank you Phil! Come back anytime! :)

Prosperity and Adversity

Luke 12:22-31

And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

The other day we were talking with our small group from church about worry and how we often worry even though God ALWAYS provides. We get to the point of fretting about something, God provides, and then we tell ourselves never to worry again. Then, the vicious cycle begins all over again.

Last Monday, we had insulation guys scheduled to come that morning and pump insulation into our exterior walls. With all of the sheetrock, trim and paint work we are doing, we figured we better beef up for the winter and pay the big bucks to get the insulation in beforehand so we didn't have major heating bills come January. The only catch is is that we are at the end of our budget and this was not something we had planned for and all of our monies were accounted for other things in the house. We have pinched and pinched on this budget to make the money stretch as far as possible, but we finally realized we might just have to put this insulation cost of $1,200 on the credit card. Early that morning, we found out that the insulation guys didn't take credit card so we had to regretfully cancel our appointment because we just didn't have the money in the bank.

Would you believe that by the end of the night I had two seperate members of our family call (unknowingly to each other) and with the two combined had offered a total of $1,700 towards helping us finish this renovation. Praise God for these generous families that so willingly gave. We love them. And we love insulation which came later that week. Our babes can sleep in heat. :)


That blue tank was a big insulation hopper that pumped through the tube into all these little holes in the wall. It looked like a carpet cleaners vaccuum.

Little holes were drilled on the tops and bottoms of all the exterior walls.

These were all the holes after Phil and Adam mudded over them.

Major progress happened this week with Phil in town. I'll have some sweet before and after pictures to prove it later.

Eat Your Heart Out, PB.

Pottery Barn has had these in their "Harvest" decor section of their catalog which are authentic "found" dough bowls. I wonder how a Pottery Barn exec could just happen to "find" thousands of these and then sell them for $150.00+ a piece. I'm just saying, who happens upon that many dough bowls? Aren't they pretty?


Then these pretty vintage wine jugs with the little story on PB's website tells about a wine entrepenuer invested a lot of his money and time in picking out specific bottles for his company. He had a warehouse full apparently. These go for $100.00+.

I poked my head in the attic access to the left the other day after eyeing a few things and decided to crawl in and see exactly what was in there. *side note: I painted the loft. You like? I love oops paint from Home Depot. 5 dolla.

Anyway, I weasled my way into the little hole on the left and stepped on the roof rafters to look closely at some things that the light of my flashlight had landed upon.

Found some trinkets in a wooden box including an old New Testament, an ancient pair of Keds, an old flashlight and one old baseball cleat.

I also found an old galvanized metal ice cream maker.

But my most favorite finds of all were....

An old whiskey bottle and dough bowl! (I'm huffing on my nails right now and brushing them across my left shoulder. Have no idea what I'm talking about? Do exactly what I just wrote and then you'll see. :)) Technically, if I were going to spend $250.00 on those pretty PB items (which I wasn't), I'd be $250.00 richer right now. I can't wait to display these on my kitchen table!