our house
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glazing.
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gabe and noah’s big kid room.
I’m very excited to show you my latest project, but first, a few “before” pictures. The above is my personal favorite, as it includes Noah’s feet, which he calls “tootsie toes.” [Aside: Noah is self-correcting his quirky little words and phrases more and more lately, and my heart is mourning. He’s the last one we get to hear those from]. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but the boys’ room was in rough shape, from 3 years of wear and tear (and I do mean wear and tear). The walls were dirty, drawn on, and battered. As you see, things had grown a bit cluttered. We originally decorated the…
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grilled pizza.
We haven’t made homemade pizza in months. It’s one of our family favorites’ but a little time-intensive. Last week, David felt inspired to get a couple of books from the library and try his hand at grilled pizza. It was delicious!
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the workshop.
Four years ago, we had eight pine trees removed from our yard. David planted a garden and built Judah and Amie a magical play house in the corner. Less than two years later, Gabe and Noah arrived on the scene to help enjoy it. As cute as it’s always looked in our backyard, the playhouse has always been a bit of a sore subject in our family. And by that I mean, No one really played in it. It’s true. David spent hours buying lumber and building and painting this totally unique clubhouse for the kids, and then one day some neighbors gave us their tattered old trampoline, and it’s…
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amelie’s room.
Our sweet Amie has endured enjoyed a variety of bedrooms. When she was born we were preparing to move overseas and we lived in my brother’s house. When we brought her home from the hospital, we set her basket on the changing table in the corner of our room. Next, she slept in a pack-and-play in the walk-in closet of our two-bedroom apartment, until we moved her into the guest bathroom because she was so noisy. The child never even used a crib! We moved to India when she was 14-months-old, and she shared two different bedrooms with her big brother, Judah. Finally, back home in Columbia, she shared two…
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september garden.
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judah’s room and chores for kids.
We moved into our new master bedroom on our 13th anniversary, May 22. Shortly after, Judah and Amelie finally got their own bedrooms. I thought I’d show you around Judah’s room today, and tell you about our chore system. Judah’s one request for having his own room was to have “a library.” So we promised him one of our tall pine bookcases from the living room for his growing book collection. You may remember back in May 2016, we gave Judah and Amie a bedroom makeover. It was a fun project, and as you can see, little changed in the room for Judah once his sister moved out. Even though…
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august.
Can you believe it is already September? In 5 days my oldest child will be double-digits. I glanced back over my blog entries … posts were kind of patchy this summer, I know. I really struggle with blogs and the internet and social media in general. I think they have wonderful benefits. But they’re also one-dimensional. The things that are most photo-graphable are the fun, exciting things. Not the messes. The tempers. The two-hour period before dinner when I want to pull my hair out. The internet is fun, but it’s not real life. It’s a snapshot. I think we’re at our best when we can stop and realize this,…
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living room update.
I’ve taken a couple of blissful months off thinking about house projects; no scouring of Pinterest or spontaneous trips to Home Goods. It’s a very restful feeling to find myself not even really caring that things still aren’t completely finished. And it’s true: they aren’t. Our builder still needs to come wrap up a few items, and we’re going to have all the windows in our house replaced. And we still haven’t touched up the paint in our bedroom or put the final coat on the baseboards. But Scott’s working a job now that he said is over two times the size of our bedroom addition, so we’re squeezed into…
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good-bye goose and penny.
Before we left for our beach vacation, it was time to say good-bye to two of our girls. All along we planned for six hens; David built a coop and a run for six hens. But then when they all lived and all turned out to be females, our emotions got in the way and we wanted to keep them. But the chickens started getting aggressive towards each other and David wondered if they were feeling overcrowded. So we decided to give away the two who were getting picked on by the others. Sadly, that meant they were also our sweetest-natured girls: Goose and Penny. But that’s the way life…