Tour Of Homes

Since I have a house this year for Christmas, I thought I would particpate in Boomama's Christmas Tour of Homes. Can't wait to see everyone's home.

What Is Wrong With People?!?!

I just read this on MSN. I mean seriously what goes through peoples heads??

Bedroom Furniture

Shawnn & I are finally getting bedroom furniture!! I'm so excited about this, our dressers we have are hand-me-downs & don't match at all. I told Shawnn WAY before we even started house hunting our bedroom was on the top of my priority list. We really wanted to get a king size bed but the mattresses we picked out were $800 not even including the bedroom set itself. So we decided we would keep our queen size, seeing as how it's not that old & just get a nice bedroom suite. I've already been looking online & have found a few that I really like. So hear they are!!

Rambles

We had an absolute blast this weekend. We started out with Chili's takeout Friday night, & the rest of the evening was spent in our jammies watchin' tv. That's my kinda night,gosh I sound so old. Saturday morning we started out with some breakfast at Mickey D's on our way to the bowling alley. I think we have a future bowler on our hands. Brayden had a ball!!! The only other time he's been was about a year ago, so there was much improvement. After our bowling trip we headed to one of our many birthday parties for the month. Those kids played so hard, Brayden was asleep 5 minutes down the road. The rest of Saturday was spent cleaning house & watchin' tv. Then yesterday we went to our 2nd birthday party for the month. Brayden has turned into quite the little social butterfly with all his birthday parties. It's so much fun to watch and listen to him get so excited about parties.

I'm lovin' this cold & rainy day we're having. I really wish I could be at home in my jammies watchin' some lifetime movie or HGTV or napping. I've got lots of recipes for soups I'm plannin' on making this week. I love this time of the year, ask me how much I love this weather in Jan. & you'll get a different answer,HA!

Shawnn & I worked around the house quite a bit this weekend, and it's finally starting to come together. I've got just about all the boxes unpacked & things in there place. We hung some decor last weekend, what a huge difference that made! Poor Brayden is still not unpacked!!! He's not going to know what to do when he has 'his' room. Shawnn promised we could tackle it & hopefully((fingers crossed)) get it finished this weekend. Once I get his room done I'll be able to get everything else unpacked & in it's place.


This morning I had to go see the oral surgeon to schedule some surgery that I've been putting off for a long while. Dr. Curry told me I can no longer put this off so I'm schedule for the 21st.

Election Day

I'm so glad I get to be a part of such an important day for us. We could have the first black president or the first woman vice president, either way it's a big day. I went first thing this morning to vote, figured the lines wouldn't be as long this morning, & it felt great!! We're so fortuante to have this right, I can't believe some people don't care to vote. Sadly my husband doesn't vote but I'm working on him & hopefully he'll get registered for next time.

~~HaPPy HaLLoWeeN~~

Our little Speed Racer is ready to go get some goodies tonight!! He's gettin' loaded with sugar at school as we speak, ha! I feel for those teachers. Here's some pics from our past Halloweens. Hope everyone has a safe night. Let the Holiday season begin!!!

~Our Lil Nemo~



Power Ranger

My mom just sent me this email. My reply back to her "Thanks mother, just what I need to look at with just moving into a new neighborhood." I mean I guess I do need to know these kinds of things but it's still a little frightening, ya know.


Do you know your neighbors?
I mean, REALLY know your neighbors?
Well, the attached site will help you know the ones you need to know even better. Just put in your address & your neighborhood map will pop up. Every place you see a red balloon or thumb tact is the home of a convicted felon.
Just hover your mouse over an icon & not only will the name come up, but also the crime they were convicted of.
Share with your friends . .. . safety first



Felonspy

Good Monday Y'all!!!

We had a very very busy weekend, I'll leave that for another post later today. But I wanted to share this great idea I found on one of my new favorite blogs.I've been wanting to get new furniture but of course with just buying a new house, furniture is Waaaayyyy on the back burner, plus with a 4 yr. old boy, not necessarily a good idea. So I'm going to give this idea a try.

A Giveaway

Pigtails & Snails has made a very beautiful quilt and she's giving it away!! I'm loving all of the colors. My mom's room at our house is going to be done in yellow, so I'm hoping I can have this to put in there. Good luck if you decide to put your name in the drawing.

Our 1st House Guests

Nana & Pawpaw are here to spend Fall Break with us and check out our new house. Brayden was so exicted waiting for them last night.
It's really sad that I don't have any updated pics of Brayden with his nana & pawpaw, but I'm the world's worst when it comes to downloading pics from my camera. Notice I'm trying REAL hard to update my blog everyday and with pics.




Here's a pic itty bitty Brayden with Nana the 1st day we came home from the hospital. My mom stayed with us for 3 weeks after he was born, talk about a lifesaver. It's so hard to imagine him that little, how time flies.





Here's Brayden with his pawpaw at Sulphur when he was a lil guy. This town is absolutely beautiful year yard, and they have so much to do. Brayden loves it there, so we go everytime we're at my parents. They took my brother and I all the time, and we have such great memories. So now when we go it brings back such wonderful memories of my childhood and Brayden's making some great memories too.

I found this, and looks pretty easy yet great wall decor so this weekend my mom will be in town so I'm hoping I can get a lil help. I wish so much I were a very crafty person that can throw stuff together with stuff just layin' around the house but I'm working on my creativeness. Hopefully I'll have a picture to show.

I'm Baaaaaaccccccckkkkkk

We've had so much going these past couple of months.........WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!! I'm so excited words can't even explain it. It's so ironic how the whole thing happened. In my daily house hunting(haha) I found a house in the area we were wanting, in our price range, & the perfect size. So we went to look at it, keep in my mind the house had just been on the market one day before we went to look at it. By that time 5 other people had already looked at it. This was Labor Day weekend so we had lots of time to think it over. I called our realtor that Sunday to make another appt. to look at it again. On Monday Labor Day we went for a 2nd look & found out 4 of the other people had been back for a 2nd look as well, talk about a bummer. But we decided we wanted to take a chance and make an offer. Our realtor called us late Monday night to let us know someone else had just made an offer BUT the sellers wanted to see our offer too. Shawnn and I being 1st time home buyers really had no clue as to what we were doing, our realtor and lender were helping as much as they legally could. So we wrote our offer, & they countered, we countered back, they countered again, & we denied. Needless to say I was bummed but I was ok to. I just knew if it were meant to be then it would happen and apparently it wasn't suppose to. WELL, Wednesday evening we get a call from our realtor informing us they wanted to ACCEPT our offer afterall!!!! I was in shock, actually I think we both were, but once the shock settled we knew it was meant to be. It's still hard for me to believe I have my own house!!! This is something I've waited for, for 5 years and we both have worked so hard to get to where we are and it's wonderful. Of course the house needs some updating and minor issues that need to be fixed but overall the house is perfect. Our inspector told us he hadn't ever inspected a house for the price we paid and it be in such good condition, that made us feel really good!! The sellers made lots of good updates like top of line the water heater, & heating and air unit. But they were so lazy with alot of stuff to. I swear they never cleaned and when they made changes inside the house they were so lazy about stuff. Of course everytime we went into the house they had all their stuff and man did they have stuff!!! So alot of the little problems we didn't see. I guess this just goes with buying a house, huh?!?! So Shawnn and I have been working our booties off painting removing wallpaper, mowing, unpacking boxes and most of all cleaning. Of course we had some GREAT help from family, without them we wouldn't have been able to get all of this done. We have managed to get our bedroom painted the hall bathroom painted and the living room painted, but still have tons left to do. Here are pics of the house when it was listed. Later I'll post pics of the house when we got the keys and of course I'll be updating with the process of changing everything too.


Here's our 1st Home!! They put lots of time and money into the landscaping out front, they have tons of purple and yellow mums they have just started blooming and they are beautiful. I think once they realized they had their house sold they stopped tending to the landscaping so we have some cleaning up to do but once we get it done it's going to look AWESOME!!!




Our back porch when I first saw the pic of this online I wasn't that crazy about it b/c it looks like it's screened it, but it's not and I think it may be my favorite spot at the house. It has a skylight and is so roomy.




Our backyard of course,haha. We're going to tear up the gardens so Brayden can have lots more room to run and play and we can finally bring his swing set home from Nana & Pawpaw's




Our dining area. I'm not real into having a formal dining room but glad we had a big enough area for a decent size table. I'm also LUVIN' my garden(I'm guessing that's what it's called) window. I have yet to put any plants in there but eventually I'll get some.



.....and here are the wonderful(sarcasm) green cabinets. Those things drove me crazy for about 2 weeks trying to decide what I was going to do with them. The cabinet doors are so plain, meaning they have no detail to them so I really didn't want to strip the paint and stain them. I really wanted to paint them black but was afraid that might not look good either. SO Shawnn said we could at least get new cabinet doors sometime next year so I found a color for the walls that complement the cabinets nicely. I don't know if you can tell but the hardware is silverware(tacky!!!) so I think once I change that and get that awful wallpaper done it'll look allot better. The green cabinets are actually starting to grow on me. They were absolutely flithy though, after a good cleaning they looks lots better. Another thing that changed the look was we got a new stove, the stove that was there was I swear the original stove that came with the house, It came from JCPenney. Like I mentioned before she had tons of stuff



More of the kitchen, it's a great size and has lots of cabinets and counter space, the only downfall about the kitchen is I only have 4 drawers, I was used to my apt. where I had 4 junk drawers, talk about a new adjustment!!! But hey at least now I have a linen closet and a garage, oh and a storage building....



This is the living room, we painted it a muted gold (kinda brownish/gold) it really warmed the room up. She had 5 ceiling to floor bookshelves all on one wall in there which close the room up so much. When we got to go in the house for the 1st time empty we couldn't believe how big it looked. I love how they did the walls, they're textured but not just regular texture they did some different technique in there. Come to find out there was wallpaper on there before and instead of them ripping the wallpaper down they decided to leave it and texture and paint. So eventually we're going to have to fix all of that. I told Shawnn that'll be something we probably pay someone to do!!



Another pic of the living room. It's more long than wide and has no windows. I know that seems crazy to alot of people, especially for someone who loves windows. We have 6 windows, one in each of the bedrooms & 2 in the kitchen. But our back door has a window and a storm door and the front door has a storm door too, so I keep those open and we get plenty of sunlight. I would love to add a skylight in the hall bath but Shawnn says that will be WAAAAAYYYY down the line.




This is our office/treadmill room. It's the last room that's going to get painted but I'm thinking I want to do a red/black/white theme in here. Who knows that could change by the time I get to this room,haha. We did however get all the wallpaper(it's hard to see in this pic) ripped down out of here, thanks to wonderful family!!



This is Brayden's room, it's the biggest of the other 2 bedrooms. It's going to be transformed into a Speed Racer room this weekend. His favorite color is red, so when we asked him what color he wanted his bedroom his response was RED!!! OMG, I'm thinking no way will I let him have a red bedroom, it's suppose to hype you up. So we've comprimised 2 walls red & 2 walls white. I really wanted to do the bottom 1/2 red & the top 1/2 white or blue with a blue or white painted border, BUT my darling husband has talked me out of it b/c he thinks it'll be to hard, and with the headache I had with the hall bath I'm not wanting another difficult project right now.



This is going to be our guest room. We don't have allot of overnight guest usually so it's mainly going to be Nana's room. I'm painting it a pale yellow(her new favorite color) and decorating it her style. She does so much for us & spends allot of time her in the summer that I want her to have her own room at our house.



The Master Bedroom It was the 1st room that had to be changed Shawnn couldn't stand to look at it. We both love black, so we painted the walls a greyish color it's kinda got a lavendar tint to it and we're going to get black furniture. I'll save all my ideas for another post.





Here's the hall bath that I've worked so hard on. I pretty much started ripping wallpaper down the first day we got in there and just finished it this past weekend. I even had several people helping. It has by far been the hardest room to deal with and the funny thing is it's the smallest room. I think b/c of the fixtures in there it makes it hard to work around. I kept asking Shawnn to please take the mirror, light fixture, vanity, and toliet out but he wouldn't b/c he hadn't ever done anything like that and was afraid he would screw something up. Oh well we managed and it's DONE that's the important thing.



They didn't put any pics of the master bathroom on the realtor site. We're not changing it and if we do it'll be a long time from now. That bathroom is by far the best done project, I think they had someone professionally come in to do that room. The hall bath was done horribly. We have lots of things to fix, I'm just so thankful that all of the stuff is minor not major problems. It's all stuff that you have to really look for to see. Now before we got all of our stuff in there we could see lots of flaws but now that we're slowly fixing them and have our stuff in it's harder to see them. I wish they would've put pics of the entrance way & hallway b/c they did a really cool wallpaper technique. They took wallpaper ripped it up, dipped in some mixture then put it on the wall, looks really good!! Don't get me wrong I love my house and I know I've focused a lot on what is wrong with the house, but there's lots of good too. They updated major things and put in new light fixtures. Oh did I mention we got a brand new roof 2 weeks before we moved in, I mean that's a great house. We feel like we got a wonderful house that's in great condition it just needs some cleaning and maintanice.

Anyways now that I've told you all about my new house I really need to get to work. I hope you've enjoyed my tour. I promise to post more often now especially since I'm updating our house. Hopefully tomorrow I can show you the pics of the house when it was empty!!!

House Hunting

We've looked at 6 houses now and only 1 have we really liked. Of course, it has a pending contract now, but that's ok. Just means it wasn't meant to be, right?! So last night we looked at 3, and all were big NO'S!!! BUT our realtor informed us of one that's more than likely come back on the market. It's a repo and apparently the bank and the buyer had a falling out, darn for them good for us!! The best thing about this house, it's has a POOL!! How cool is that?!?! Here I haven't even looked at the house and I love it already,haha!!! The realtor is going to find out what's going on with it and let us know today hopefully. I'm trying to not get my hopes up, but gosh it's hard. My philosophy on the whole house buying is whatever happens happens. We're in no rush & we're enjoying being DEBT free, do you know how wonderful that is?!?!?


Shawnn's playing in a 2 day golf tournament this weekend so my parents are going to keep Brayden for me so I can clean, organize, get kid sale stuff ready, and hopefully enjoy some alone time. I love my sugar booger & my husband but, I love some alone time too even if it's spent cleaning & organizing my house!!!

The Big 2 7

I can't believe my birthday is here already, how the time flies. It doesn't bother me to get older, well as of now it doesn't bother me. I've always heard your 30's are your prime, so I'm looking forward to that. Someone told me your 20's are for being young & dumb, needless to say that made me feel alot better....lol. Sunday is my birthday so Saturday night Renee is throwing me a fiesta. I'm so excited she got a margarita machine and a pinata and we're having lots of mexican food!! Nothing better than mexican food, margaritas and great friends. Hopefully, we'll take lots of pics, we always have good intentions of taking pics but we never do.

Man A Mighty I'm Feeling Worn Out......

I've been so tired, well really, sleepy this week. I go to sleep and don't wake up till the alarm goes off the next morning but I'm still so sleepy. My plan for tonight is to get in bed at a decent hour,like 9!

I got Brayden's birthday stuff ordered and it should be here by Monday, so I can get all the invitations out in plenty of time. I've got everything ordered as far as food and have most of my 'plan' made out for that day.

We've got a pretty easy busy (is that possible?!!) weekend planned. Seems like we've had something going on every weekend for a while so it'll be nice to do things but at our on pace this weekend. I was talking to my mom about her & Brayden's schedule for the summer, and it's already planned out and before we know it, it'll be August again.

Speed Racer Birthday

I can't believe Brayden's birthday is here already!!! I've had the location booked for a few months now and kept thinking I had tons of time, WRONG!!! It just seems like once Summer gets here everything is in fast forward mode, and it's all over before I have time to take it all in. Oh well that's life I guess. So after realizing this past weekend that I hadn't bought invitations I've been panicking just a little. As I've mentioned before Brayden's birthday party's don't always go as planned so I wanted to double check our location was still booked. Seeing as how it's been a while since I booked it and I have horrible luck I just knew it had been reserved to someone else. BUT all is well there, thank goodness!! So we decided on Speed Racer birthday, originally it was Hot Wheels but now we've decided on Speed Racer. I wanted something a little original and I found what I was looking for, it's semi old school Speed Racer with a little bit of the new Speed Racer. Brayden's watched allot of the original Speed Racer cartoons and this Friday we're taking him to see the movie. So if anyone has suggestions for party favors or decorations feel free to share.

Been A Long Time

Hey all!! It's been a long time since my last blog. Just really haven't been in the blogging mood, and well everything I had to blog about would've been negative stuff. I told myself when I started this blog I wouldn't talk about negative things going on in my life. But all is back to normal now.

Shawnn and I had a little getaway this past weekend. We went to Lake Tenkiller, we have some friends that have a boat and house there. We had a great time and can't wait to go back. We're actually hoping to go in a couple of weeks, guess we're hooked!!

Brayden's growing like a weed, I can't believe we'll be celebrating his 4th birthday in a month!! It's just a crazy thought to me to think he's 4 already. I still remember being pregnant with him.

Dentist Appointment

I had to have a root canal done so today I got my crown put on. Which is no big deal, but while there my dentist showed me my latest x-ray. I have a black spot under that tooth(the root canal one). Ok so he says this and all I think about is BAD BAD, I tend to do that huh!??! Anyways he explained he had never seen this before and at first was a little worried and actually was getting ready to call me to have me come back in so we could remove the tooth. But first he went to his dad, who is also a dentist, and found out he had patient that had the same thing. So they compared x-rays and they look identical. I already have an appt. with an oral surgeon to have some other stuff done, so they're going to check this out too. More than likely he said, it's fine that it's probably just a void. I really hope it's just a 'void'.

Brayden's Birthday

I know some people will probably think I'm crazy but after last year's birthday party I told Shawnn I will not stress or break down again because of a birthday party!! That's not what they are about. So we chose the date for Brayden's birthday party a year ago!! Crazy I know but his birthday is July 3rd, it can be a good thing. Most of our family and friends are either on vacation or at the lake for 4th of July, so it makes scheduling a party a little on the difficult side. So we either have to have his party early or late. At this age it's really not a big deal because he doesn't grasp that concept yet, in a few years will be a different story though. Last year was just awful, I know I shouldn't say that but I seriously wished I could've just not done a party. It was 10 times more stressful then anything to do with my wedding planning!! We couldn't do it this date because of whatever reason, couldn't do it here because it was booked or someone didn't feel comfortable or blah blah blah!! So we ended up having it at a friends house (since we don't have a house we can't fit that many people in our apt.) which was very nice of them and I'm very thankful for having friends like that. They weren't even there,they just let us have their house for the night. But it was so thrown together and I'm not a thrown together kinda person, I like having a plan. There was more to the awfulness but I'm not going there, I think I've complained enough. So because of last year's mess, I've already booked Brayden's birthday location. After lots of phone calls, research, comparsions, discussions between Shawnn and I.........we booked a pavillion at Ben Geren. It's a big pavilion with lots of tables and it's right next to the big play area and not to far from the restrooms (ugh!! I know), plus if we want to do any other kind of games we've got so much field. It's 3 months in advance but hey I will have no worries, unless of course we have rain that day, which I do have bad luck but I'm not even going there right now. I will deal with that if it happens!! So now I can rest and relax for the next couple of months before I start with all the decorations and theme. Brayden last night said he wants a Danny Phantom party, we have no clue where that came from. I'm going to try to steer him towards Scooby Doo or something like that.

Easter

We have had a fabulous weekend!! Yesterday afternoon I took Brayden to the Kisr egg hunt, what a nightmare. I doubt that we'll do it again. Way too many people and not near enough stuff. Brayden did get about 10 eggs but some kids didn't get any! It was also B.A.C.A.'s annual kids day at the park, so they had 2 bounce arounds, & face painting. Personally, I think they should've had a couple more bounce arounds for the amount of people there. We stood in line for at least 30 minutes for Brayden to bounce around for a couple of minutes.

This morning we went to church, it was a great service. Brayden had a blast playing, so I think we'll be going back!! I'm so very thankful I went. When I was younger we went to church as a family but we stopped going. Then when I was about 14 I started going to another church. But again I stopped going. Before I moved to Arkansas I had started back to church, this time I went to a non-denominational church, I loved it but then I moved here. I really want Brayden to be in church so I plan on us going from now on. This afternoon we had Easter lunch at Shawnn's grandma's. The kids hunted Easter eggs. Brayden only wanted the 'rocket' eggs that he brought. I had bought Brayden a bubble wand from Wal-Mart that was only a $1, and the kids had so much fun with the bubbles! We're now home and I have some stuff to get done for a busy week ahead. Hope everyone has had a great Easter!