Salvo, NC 2014

We went with hubby's whole extended family to Salvo, North Carolina last week. It was so great to have everyone in one place and it was nice to shake up our routine a bit. The weather was beautiful and the house was lovely. 

Ian trying to stay in the shade. 

Henry double fisting those drinks. Yep, he's our kid. 

Both little boys started pulling up on the furniture and Ian is really into walking with the walker now. I'm so glad, because it would help loads if they could walk a bit. 

It's good to be back, but I'm struggling getting back into the routine. Plus, we had an awesome wedding to go to Sunday night, so it made it even harder to get up the next day ::cough, cough, wine::

Date night!

 

Memorial Day Weekend 2014

Our Memorial Day this year was filled with a big house project. And while it's not super high-impact, it is an important part of owning a house. This weekend we stain/sealed the fence.

Yeah, not very sexy, but we needed to get it done. It went really well too. I don't know if we're the only ones out there that feel this way, but sometimes it seems like every little thing we DIY goes wrong. This went perfectly though. It was definitely hard work (esp the power washing) but it looks fabulous now!

{before}

{after}

I did most of the power washing on Saturday morning and hubby did the heavy lifting with the staining on Monday morning. We also had Jake out of the house at my parents', which allowed both of us to concentrate on the staining while the twins were napping in the morning. 

I cannot even begin to explain how freaking necessary a sprayer is. Do yourself a favor and get one. Worth every penny that we spent on it, which really wasn't that much. This is the one that we bought, and it was great. Hubby did a lot of research and was pleased with his purchase. 

The key to using the sprayer is to coat evenly and keep it moving. I'm pretty sure if we hadn't had a sprayer and just rolled it with a traditional method it would have taken us 7+ hours. This only took us 1.5 hours. So worth it! 

My parents came for dinner when they dropped Jake off on Monday evening. I made this Martha Stewart recipe for chicken and spinach casserole, and it was delicious. This is an easy one to make ahead and just pop in the oven about ten minutes before you'd like to eat. 

And then Henry freaked out because he got his legs "stuck" in the railings. I can't make this stuff up. 

Onward to another week!

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Refinished Bedside Table

It's finally finished! And if you count the sander that I bought as an investment, then the whole project cost only $16, including the table itself!

This project was a great project for a beginner like myself and it has me thinking about what we're going to do when we really start the hunt for a new dining room table. Our current one is on it's last legs and it only seats 6. With five people in our family, that just won't work if we'd ever like to have guests over to eat. But I'm getting a bit off topic here. 

Back to the nightstand. When we transitioned Jake into his big boy bed, we put a small Ikea Lack table that we had in his room next to the bed as a night stand. It was okay, but I really had something else in mind. I wanted a place he could have a lamp that was out of the way and a place for books/water/cars/whatever a boy needs in the night. 

As I was perusing our local ReStore one Saturday, I found it! Fifteen bucks, sold!

As you can see though, it needed some work. No problem, I thought, a little elbow grease will get this looking great. 

So I got started. I had some wood sandpaper and started sanding. 20 minutes in I had gotten nowhere. 

So I packed up my gang and we headed to Home Depot to get an electric sander. 

Boom! All sanded in 15 minutes. Totally worth the money spent because I only ever have hour long chunks of time to complete projects. And every house needs a sander, right ;)

I used some leftover blue paint that we had to paint the legs. Then I flipped it over and used the last of some stain to stain the top surfaces. 

I used the same blue to paint the interior sides for a small pop of color on top. 

I used a spray finish by Minwax to seal it. I was very surprised how easy it was to use the spray. I gave it two coats and let I try for about 30 minutes in between them. 

I then used my Silhouette to cut an anchor shape (I bought the design for $1) out of some gray vinyl I had leftover from another project. Easy peasy! 

Right now Jake's room has a pirate theme, but I didn't seal the vinyl down because I'm not so sure I will want to keep it on forever. That's the beauty of it though. I don't have to if I don't want to!

I'm so pumped to try a bigger piece of furniture next time!

Photo Drop Friday

Boy did we stay out late last night! 9:30. Must be some sort of record, ha. Happy Memorial Day to you, I hope you spend it doing something good. 

Around These Parts

It's been pretty low-key around here these past few weeks. This season of our lives is home-based and I'm okay with that. I know there will be times in the future where we're running from event to event and I'm wishing for a quiet day where we watch Robin Hood again and are trapped by different nap schedules. 

One of our big go-tos for lunch is egg salad. It never disappoints and everyone gobbles it up. All of or kids love pickles and mustard, so it's perfect. I put dill relish in it to give it a little kick. 

Yum. Of course, it takes a half-dozen eggs to feed us, so I can't imagine what it will be like in a few years. With three boys, we're definitely going to be keeping that Costco membership. 

If you follow me on Instagram you know we had a tornado warning last week at 3:45 in the morning. So we all traipsed downstairs and jammed into the interior storage space. To say it was tight was an understatement. Luckily there were no tornados, but the wind kept me up most of the rest of the night. 

It also inspired me to clean up that space because we had to throw a bunch of junk out into the family room to fit everyone inside. 

My babies are rapidly becoming little boys. Ian especially has started playing on his knees and for some reason to me, this makes him look less like a little baby. 

Pretty soon all of our guys will be running around and it will be quite chaotic. I'm already breaking up an average of one fight every 15 minutes. Crazy, but true! 

Pegboards. Pegboards As Far As The Eye Can See.

We spent this weekend wrapping up a project that we've been working on for about a month now. Not that it really took us that long, but with three little guys running around it can be hard to find time to work on it. 

I took the little guys to Home Depot and purchased two huge pegboards and twelve 2 x 2 x 8 boards. I had them cut the pegboard in half width-wise {such an awesome service} and that helped me get it in the car. We measured and cut the smaller pieces at home.

Thanks hubby! 

Because our walls have drywall, we had to create a frame. This allows the pegs to have somewhere to hang behind the board. Hubby found the studs and drilled the screws in to make sure we had a sturdy base. After that we screwed the pegboard itself into the frame. Perfect! And of course, since we had used the two hours {barely} that we have during nap time we had to stop. Ugh. Story of my life. So this got backburnered for a few weekends while life sped by. 

Cut to this past weekend where we were determined to finish one of the many partially completed projects lurking around the house. The garage was getting out of control so we decided to start there. We continued the frame, finding the studs as we went. This is definitely a two man job though, so find a buddy for the work. 

One more pegboard up.......

And the wall was completed. All of this storage allows us to get things off of the floor {helps prevent bugs} and instead of all of our junk hiding away we can easily see it so that I don't buy yet another slider press. 

We actually hung quite a bit of our big items up. Hey, what can I say, we've got a lot of tailgating equipment ;) Go Hokies!!

Another shot of the long pegboard wall.

This picture was actually taken before we completed the long wall of pegboard. The other side of the garage has a fire-wall separating us from the neighbors {we have a townhome}, so there was only a thin strip of drywall to attach a pegboard to. Since we knew that it wouldn't be nearly as sturdy, I chose to organize some painting supplies over there. All of my various spraypaints now live in that shoe organizer. I love those things! Every closet of our house has one on the back of the door and most of them don't have shoes in them. 

So that wraps up our big garage overhaul. I'm so glad it's finished. Not only is our garage in much better shape, it just feels so good to put a check on our to-do list!

Friday Photo Drop

We had a bit of a scary one here last night. We were awoken by the emergency broadcast system on our iPhones. We had a tornado warning, which is highly uncommon for this area. So, at 3:45 in the morning we woke the kids and went all the way down to the storage closet on the lowest level. 

Luckily we were all safe and all of the kiddos went easily back to sleep. I had trouble though :/

Pretty good week, and hubby is home this Friday, so yay! Have a good weekend!