Pumpkin Painting

Before we get much further into November, I wanted to document Elizabeth's first time with painting! My mom bought a little pumpkin for Miss E, as well as paints and paintbrushes. She loved it! I'm thinking once things settle down a little more, we'll be painting more often! :)

What do y'all think? Does it look like she enjoyed it or what!?

Weekend in Review

We had a wonderful, low-key weekend! We kicked it off Friday evening by having dinner at Fuddruckers and going to La-z-boy to pick out a rocking chair for David's room! We hit the jackpot while there, too! They were having a pretty big sale, so we were able to get a nice rocker for him that will hopefully last a LOOONG time. :)

Saturday, we let Elizabeth have Lucky Charms for the first time... Do you think she liked the marshmallows!?  ;)

Messy marshmallow face.

Then, Elizabeth "helped" Daddy in David's room. Alan painted his room while E and I hung out in the living room!

"helping" Daddy

Sunday, we celebrated E's 17 month birthday by going to church and finding her new room (we missed promotion Sunday)! I can't believe that she'll be a year and a half next month! I'm waiting to get my big camera back to take some good "17 month" pictures. 

So excited to play with her doll house!

Such a little lady

Someone has decided that they don't like to nap on Sunday afternoons... I think I'm going to have to sit in the back seat and keep her awake because if she even sleeps for 15 minutes, she won't nap! We got home, fed her lunch, gave her a bath (she had lasagna), and then attempted to put her down... She wasn't having it! We left her in her crib for about 30 minutes, just rolling around and playing with her lovie. Alan and I finally gave up and brought her to the living room. And E was as happy as could be. Granted she got a little cranky as the day wore on, but did remarkably well for not having a nap!

Alan finished the second coat of trim in David's room, so now all we need is the furniture and David and we'll be good to go! :) Less than 70 days (hopefully) until he makes his arrival!!

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow?

For some reason this nursery rhyme just popped into my head while I was out checking on our growing garden this morning. It is looking really good and I can not wait to start getting fresh veggies to eat. We already have jalapeños and tomatoes that are growing our a lot of our bell peppers have begun to flower, but no fruit yet. One of our squash/zucchini plants has taken off and the other two are moving at a slower pace. The green beans amaze me! Alan set up a ghetto trellis for them to climb up and most of the plants have begun to do just that, all on their own. Here are some pictures to document the growth, sense everyone is just so interested... haha.

Baby Jalapeño 

Cherry Tomato

Squash or Zucchini 

Proof of our ghetto trellis

Winding it's way up the twine

Close-up - it amazes me that it just curls 

around the string on it's own

Another close-up of a green bean plant

In other news, only 4 days until I graduate! I can't believe that in just a short time, I will officially have my Master's of Education. It's crazy to think that after all this time in school, 18 years (including 1-12 grade, undergrad, and grad school), I will finally be done! My dad and grandparents from Texarkana will be traveling down Friday afternoon, and my Granny will come for graduation and dinner and then head home that evening. I'm so excited to see everyone, but am sad that my mom and sis won't be able to come. PGisd decided that prom needed to be late this year, so that is interfering with graduation. 

Well, I'm off to go paint. We're trying to get the master done before family comes down. I'll post before and after pictures once I'm done.

Closer by the day

Well, not much has been going on lately. We're getting closer to posting a before and after picture of the dining room. We've painted the room, put the chair rail up, and painted the chair rail, now I just need to finish some touch ups and the dining room will be complete... That is, until we can afford to replace the flooring and baseboards. How I would love to do that right now, though. Once we painted, the baseboards started looking kinda yellow, and now that we have the super white chair rail up, it's even more yellow.

On to some more exciting news... I've finally turned in my petition for my course change only 2 months later than I should've... Now I've set up the date for my orals. March 30 at 2 pm. The day I long for, but am not looking forward to. Those that know me best know that I HATE talking in front of people, especially professors. Put in me in front of 25 kindergarteners and I'll do just fine, but it's something about "old people." Not that any of my committee members are old, it's just that they're people I look up to. Oh shoot... I just hate talking in front of anyone, forget that they're professors. Haha.

On another note, King mysteriously got out of our bathroom sometime today. You see, instead of keeping them in kennels while we're gone, our dogs go in our bathroom with a babygate in front of the door. They are both good jumpers, so it was only a matter of time before they discovered they can jump out. Gracie, bless her poor dumb heart just isn't smart enough to realize she can do it, too. Unless Alan just somehow managed to miss out on the fact that King wasn't in the bathroom. It's not like he gets distracted ever... We shall see what happens on Friday, though.

Speaking of Friday, we're off to Abilene this weekend. Yay for more traveling. We haven't seen Alan's parents since Christmas, so it will be nice to visit with them, even if it is a short weekend. And then it's the infamous SPRING BREAK! Oh how I need a break. I love, love, love teaching, but I'm ready to sleep in and do nothing all day for a while. My goals are to finish unpacking, finally, paint some more, and clean the whole house. Only 3 more weeks until my family is coming down for Easter and my brother's 21st birthday. Gotta be spotless.

Pizza's on it's way. Should be here shortly. I'm gonna go pop open a can of Dr. Pepper and wait. =) Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Interview

Well, today was the much anticipated interview with the preschool that I am really wanting to teach at. I was nervous, which wasn't surprising seeing how I haven't had to really interview for a position before. Right now the school is in the process of signing contracts for next year, so I'll find out in the next couple of weeks if there is a position open!! Prayers would be welcome that a 5 day a week pre-K class would be available!!!

In other news, we got a lot accomplished this weekend. We started with the dining room redecorations. We've painted the room, purchased the chair rail, and cut it down to size. Now all that is left is painting and installing the chair rail and touching up the paint on the walls that got messed up by testing out the size of the chair rail pieces.

In other news, I completely unpacked all the boxes in the guest bedroom and organized and put away all of our Christmas decorations and wrap into the closet! Only two rooms to go! The "pink room," (or my teaching room) as I've dubbed it is being worked on today and Thursday and the office will be worked on next week. You see, we have 6 boxes of books - most of which are all my "pleasure reading" books that have been read at least 2-4 times each- (not including the 4 boxes of preschool books, 2 boxes of my old textbooks, and the2 bins of Alan's textbooks) and only one small bookcase. When we lived in College Station, we had two huge built in bookcases plus our other smaller bookcase that matches our office furniture.

In order to remedy this problem, my mom has so generously offered to give us the beautiful bookcase that used to be in my room. Alan and I decided to make a spur of the moment trip to Texarkana this weekend in order to do several things... 1) Return the table and chairs to them that they gave us in order to trade tables and have one that is slightly more "formal" for our dining room, 2) Pick up the rest of the bedroom set that they are giving to us (we already have the dresser and one nightstand), which includes a four poster bed frame, another smaller dresser with mirror, and the other nightstand, 3) Pick up the bookcase, and 4) Visit with my parents, sister, and grandparents.

Our weekends for the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy, it seems. First our trip to Texarkana this weekend, next weekend a first birthday party for my favorite (and only) nephew, and then a trip to Abilene in the beginning of March to get a mattress and Alan's grandparents old Grandfather clock. Somewhere in there we need to find time to finish painting, work on some minor updates to the house, and finish unpacking and decorating.

Well, got to get back to cleaning out the pink room in order to get it done by Thursday. That and I desperately need to start the laundry that I should've done over the weekend but was too lazy to do... Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Jen

Paint and more

Well, we've painted our kitchen completely. And as we speak the hubby is painting around the crown molding and baseboards of the living room and foyer. I'll post pictures as soon as we have everything back in place. The kitchen, as previously posted, is this gorgeous red color, called Red, Red Wine. The living room and foyer are painted Sunset Beige. The Sunset Beige has turned out a little more orange than we thought, but I still love it! It definitely looks great up against the red kitchen. And it'll look even better when I get my brown leather furniture and giraffe print area rug. =)

We purchased My parents so generously purchased our first piece of furniture for us. I ordered it last night and it should be here within six weeks! I'm so excited! Right now, the unfinished but beautiful buffet that Alan built is sitting in the new buffet and baker's rack spot. When our new furniture comes in, I get to put Alan's buffet into my teaching room! I already know exactly what is going in the shelves. I can't wait to put it to good use! For now, though, I hope we finish it soon. The buffet and baker's rack is pictured below. I couldn't figure out how to copy and paste the one that showed them together, so you'll have to use your imagination.

       

Eventually (as in we've got to get our house painted, TV stand built, living room furniture, and some other odds and ends purchased first), we're going to get the table and chairs that match to put in our breakfast nook. 

Here's the table...

And here are the two types of chairs...

Wheatback         Ladderback

Woven Seat

Wheatback         Ladderback

Fabric Seat

Which chair would y'all get? The wheatback or ladderback? It's called wheat back because the little rails on the back look like wheat stalks (you can't tell in the picture and when I try to make them bigger, it just gets blurry). Which seat would y'all get? The woven one, or a fabric one? Keep in mind, if I did get the woven one, I could always get those cushions to put on it. And if I get fabric, do I just get a neutral color, like off-white? I know I have several months, if not years, before I can get the table, but I like to plan ahead. 

Ok, that's enough for now. I'll post pictures tonight tomorrow when I have more time (and when the house is more organized).

Jen

Color Crisis Averted

I've decided how to avoid the crisis with red and green paint colors. Instead of having green paint in the living room, we're going to paint it a tan-ish color. In fact, the exact same color as my parent's living room (unless I decide it won't go with the couch). This way it'll look good with the furniture we have now and the furniture that I really want to get, which would be leather furniture and giraffe print area rug. I couldn't copy and paste a picture of the furniture, so I'll just have to leave you with a picture of the rug that I want. Boy how my tastes have changed. Needless to say, I'm super excited to have the red kitchen back on the agenda. :)

Now, on to dinner preparations (yummy Mexican Casserole) and a 3-day weekend full of packing, packing, and more packing.

Jen