Our Littlest Blessing is Here and a blog hiatus is beginning!

We are so blessed and happy to announce that our new son Gunnar Nathaniel was born on Friday October 11th at 11:05 am.  He was 7lbs and 20 1/2 inches long.  He came in a hurry and therefore mommy delivered him naturally within 10 minutes of arriving at the hospital.  He is healthy and doing great!

We are, of course, very busy now taking care of a newborn and attempting to still take care of my 3 year old while dealing with very little sleep. Therefore, anything less important is on hold until things slow down (we'll see how long that'll be...at least 3 months I'm assuming and up to 1 year if need be).   Pardon the interruption but family is our priority right now.  See you soon!

PS. We cover your prayers as we tackle this new challenge in parenting.  God bless!

Our Kitchen Makeover!!!

It's Done!! 

Wow! I am so excited to be able to share this with you. It's taken a LOT of hard work and a LOT of time spread out over a few months because of James being in IPC.  But it is finally done and it is lovely!! 

Before I start on the details of all it took to completely redo the kitchen in our first home, I want to brag on my hubby for a bit.  The longer I'm married to that man, the more he impresses me.  He can pretty much do anything he puts his mind to.  He is a great daddy, he is a wonderful pilot of both helicopters and fixed wing, he stays in great shape, he eats well, he gives his all in every area of his life, he fixes our own cars, builds things, and apparently is pretty great at remodeling as well.  I mean , really,  what can't he do??  He impresses me every day with how hard he works and how much money he saves us by being willing to take the time to work on stuff other would just hire out.  Baby,  I am impressed by you every day and I want to thank you for staying up late at night and working on our kitchen every spare minute so that I would be happy cooking our meals there.  I love you and I appreciate you more than I can express in words. 

Okay, now that the mushy stuff is out of the way lets get down to what we've done to our kitchen since moving into our home.  The kitchen when we first saw it was probably my least favorite part of the house.  It was fine, and functional...but just seriously outdated.   Here is what it looked like when we looked at the house. 

Our house was built in 1992, and this kitchen just showed it.  It wasn't bad just needed some updating.  So, what did we do?  We completely redid just about everything except for the floor and the light fixtures.  This is what the kitchen looked like before we began doing the hard work. 

First, we pulled out the cabinets and old back-splash and did some drywall work to correct some that was pulled off when the cabinets wouldn't come down easily.  While James was working on that, I was busy out in our 3 car garage staining unfinished cabinets. It took several full days to stain them all as you can imagine from these pictures. 

In total, we stained 19 cabinets and about 37 cabinet doors/drawers.  It was a lot of work but we saved enough money by doing this ourselves that we were able to splurge on our counter tops and actually get GRANITE!! I would totally do it again.  Here is a before and after of our cabinets themselves. 

Once all the cabinets were done, James (with the help of my dad one weekend) rehung our new cabinets and added an L shape to the right side of our kitchen (you'll see what I mean in a few moments).  So now we had cabinets hung but no counter top.  We got down to the business of picking counter tops and ordering them before we had to head to Alabama for James to start IPC.   They were installed , along with our new sink, a week or so after Jay and I came back from being in Alabama with James for a few weeks.  

Kitchen with new paint job and cabinets but no counter tops or new appliances yet.  See how the spot for the fridge is gone?? Read below to see where it went. 

Not seen in our before pictures of our kitchen is our breakfast nook/ pantry area (we were busy working and forgot the before photos).   The back wall in our kitchen used to have one huge pantry with folding doors.  That is where the washer and dryer used to be.  Well, we decided to just go ahead and move our washer and dryer down to the basement to give us some extra space in the kitchen.  (There is a partially finished room down in the basement that we plan to finish off and make into a laundry/mud room.)   With the washer and dryer out of the way, James reconfigured the pantry.  Making a cut out space for our refrigerator and a smaller size pantry next to it.  This freed up a lot of room where our refrigerator used to be, so we now have a LOT more cabinet and counter top space.   

When James came home one weekend to visit he added crown molding to our cabinets which I really like. It dresses them up quite a bit!  We also got some discounted stainless steel appliances to replace the white ones in the kitchen (with the exception of the fridge because its an AWESOME fridge).  James installed all of this himself. 

James also added some bead board wainscoting to our breakfast nook which I also adore.  It has turned out so beautifully.  We did the same in the dining room which you can kind of see in some of our completed after pictures below.  I'll do a separate post with photo's of the dining room at another point (once we have a dining room table).   

When James got home from IPC a couple of weeks ago, there was a little bit of trim work left to do in the kitchen and the last big project...the back-splash.  I hemmed and hawed about what to do for the back-splash. I'm not great at having an eye for things ahead of time and I knew our back-splash could make or break the kitchen I had fallen in love with already.   We finally chose some and got to work on it last week.  Overall, I think it was a great choice and it has completed our kitchen beautifully!  

Are you ready for some kitchen before and afters??

Before

AFTER!!!!!

BEFORE

AFTER!!!!

BEFORE!!!

AFTER!!!

I love my new kitchen and I am so proud that we did every single little part of this makeover by ourselves with the exception of installing the granite counter tops and the new sink/faucet.  Neither of us have ever done anything like this before and I think for our first go around it turned out well. We made some mistakes along the way but hopefully that means if and when we do it again we've learned and the process should be a lot smoother!  

Because I love it so much here are a few more photos along with some that include our breakfast area. 

Breakfast nook :)

Love these counter tops!

Made the menu board last week :)

So we are enjoying using our new kitchen and are overall very happy with how its turned out.  It was a lot of work and like I said....we made mistakes so it's not perfect but I am PERFECTLY happy with it.  I love our new home.  

Now this was a picture taken before our kitchen was completely complete but the cuteness can't be contained.  So I leave you with what happens when you let a 3 year old play in the sink and go to the bathroom for a minute.  

He WILL climb in the full kitchen sink clothes and all and then tell you he's "just taking a bath".  Needless to say, the kitchen is fun for all of us!

Maternity Photo's!

Maternity Photos

       So.... I have an amazing sister in law who also happens to be an amazing photographer.  This past weekend she and her hubby drove all the way from Kansas City, MO to take pictures for me.   This meant a lot to me.  She is also the one who took maternity photo's when I was pregnant with Jay.  This time was extra special because James was not deployed and therefore able to be in some of the pictures with me...which.... lets face it....is FAR better!  And, of course, there Jay who hams it up and makes photo sessions a lot more interesting (for better and for worse sometimes :).  

      So all the photo credits from these photos go to Joni Bain of Joni Bain Photography.  If you are interested in any of her work or booking her...here is her website. http://www.jonibainphotography.com/     

I am blessed to have a talented photographer in my family and am excited to share a few of the photo's with you.   Enjoy!

Enjoying our home TOGETHER!

Well, some of you may realize and some of you may not but poor James has only had a grand total of about 2 1/2 weeks in our home since we closed on it in June.  He has been very busy down at Fort Rucker, Alabama working on the Instructor Pilot Course!

Jay and I went down to visit for a couple of weeks in there. James was able to come back to Tennessee for 2 separate weekends to see us and work on some more house things.  But overall, he's been in Alabama and we've been here.

Well, he graduated from IPC on Thursday and is officially an instructor pilot.  He came home yesterday and we are so happy to all finally get to relax, finish up some projects, and be together.  James hasn't been in house that was truly our own for almost 2 years and is very relieved to be back in a home again.

I am very proud of him for  everything he's accomplished at IPC and for all the work he was able to get done here in such a short amount of time.  He never ceases to amaze me.

Welcome Home Baby!

Here are some misc. pictures of the time's we've been blessed to be all together the last 3 months for your viewing pleasure :).

Lowe's Build and Grow :)

4th of July
Lake Tholocco Cabins
Fort Rucker

Drive in Movie

Lake Tholocco :)

Movies in the Park
Clarksville, TN

Watching daddy fly!!

Master Bedroom Reveal

It pleases me to no end that I finished up some artwork I was making for our bedroom today.  I hung them up and now our master bedroom is complete! To me, it is relaxing, romantic, and inviting....everything I would hope for in a master bedroom.  

I am only including photo's of the bedroom part and not the master bath for now. We have big plans down the line to re-do the layout of the master bath- so we'll see if that happens.  For now, I am delighted to show you where we get to retire to each night.

We didn't take any photos of the master bedroom when we looked at the house. I did (at the last second) remember to take a quick photo of the walls before I took down the wallpaper border that was up and started to paint.  So here's all I have for a before photo's. The room was nice- just not our style.

I took down the border, repainted, set up our bedroom set, and put out some photos.Then,  I felt like I needed some sort of wall art to go behind our headboard.  So, I headed to Hobby Lobby, grabbed some plain white canvas, some paint, a stencil, and the wooden letters J & A ( for the obvious reason).  Back at home after Jay was in bed, I happily painted away and was pretty happy with my results. 

Our new wall art :)

So, now that that's done I'd say our bedroom is complete.  

I only took photos from one direction because that's where the majority of our furniture is.  However, not seen in this photo is Gunnar's bassinet on the opposite wall from our bed. Crazy to think he'll be sleeping there within 6 weeks!!

I love our room and am happy to be able to continue giving those of you who are interested a tour of our first home!  We are so very blessed! Hope you are having a blessed day as well!

Tour of the Baby's Room

The Nursery

 Well, I am happy to present yet another completely completed and decorated room in the house.  We are having more and more of them these days.  This one is a relief to have done because I know the clock is ticking the count down until its going to need to be used by our sweetest new Erickson.   I can officially say he is coming next month...YIKES! 

Those of you who were around when Jay was a baby will probably recognize a lot of the bedding and decor in Gunnar's room.  I told myself before I found out if baby #2 was a boy or a girl that if it was a boy I'd be financially smart and reuse the things I had for Jay when he was a baby. All the while,  I had dreams of decorating a gray and pink nursery with new bedding and decor.   Well, we are having another boy and I couldn't be happier....but the gray and pink will have to wait.  

I did buy a few new things for the room including a stuffed animal frog that matches his bedding set, a jungle themed wall sticker that is a growth chart and a new blanket (because the one that actually matches this set has been happily used by Jay since he was born and I was not going to take it away).   I also was able to paint the nursery this time so I am happy to have colored walls instead of plain white.   Overall, I am happy we saved the money and re-used what we already had.  Moving, owning your own home, remodeling, and having a baby all are very costly ventures.  

So without further ado, here is what Gunnar's room looks like.  

Wait....Wait.....

Actually, first here is what this room looked like when we were house hunting.

And here is what it looked like when we moved in.

Now......drumroll please......

Here is what it looks like now.  

Now that I see this I feel like we could use a cute rug in there....hmmm.

My wonderful mother in law is hemming some curtains for me to hang here
since I don't have a sewing machine right now.  

Looking forward to rocking in that chair with my newest blessing.