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.  

Kid's Bathroom Before and After

Kid's Bathroom

Before and After 

The kid's bathroom was a pretty simple and quick makeover.  The decorations were a little too Victorian and heavy for our taste....especially for a kid's bathroom.  A few quick changes made it into a peaceful and pleasant place for our little boys to take care of business.  

We only have one before photo, because truthfully I've been horrible at remembering to take before photos.  This photo is from when we looked at the house and its not the greatest picture but it'll give you an idea what the bathroom looked like.  

Good space...horrible mirror...enough said. 

So we added a fresh coat of paint, switched out the mirror and its come together nicely.  We do plan on painting the cabinet and getting new hardware but we haven't made that change yet.   Here is what our bathroom looks like after a new paint job, a new mirror, and shower curtain. 

 Simple makeover but I'm happy to reveal another room to you all! More coming soon :) I promise.

Our Playroom

Our Playroom

I am so happy to reveal one of my now favorite places in our house.  Of course, even as I type that I thought of about 3 more places in our home that I am falling more in love with each day.  We are truly blessed.  However,  this is by far Jay's favorite room in the house....the playroom.  

It's a wonderful blessing to have a room dedicated to toys, learning, and play.  This is our first ever "playroom" and it took some new bookshelves, some seating, some creative organizing, and some decorating but its turned out to be a place we all can enjoy hanging out.  

Our playroom is a room in our basement. Here is a picture of the room the way it was when we looked at the house.  

Now, obviously they were in the middle of packing so it was quiet a mess but I remember it feeling so dark down there.  We knew this would eventually be the playroom so I was already busy cooking up ideas.   

I began by unpacking and organizing the toys in the organizers we already had.  Once that was done it was obvious our one cubby shelf wasn't going to be enough.  (PS.  We have lived in 4 different houses since Jay was born and have not had all of his toys in one place until now and...it was way more toys than I realized).  So I went out and bought a couple more cheap bookshelves and a few more baskets. I finished organizing with those.  

Once the toys were all organized I thought about decor and seating. So off to Hobby Lobby we went and bought a lot of our decorations or supplies to make some decorations.  Then to Walmart and Target for some seating for adults. 

I made two of these. One in blue and one in green with supplies purchased at Hobby Lobby.

Jay actually made these with me. We just used canvas, mod podge, and tissue paper circles.
I'm so glad I included him in the decorating of his special play space. 

We were graciously gifted a children's table and chairs from my sister who no longer needed it.  I bought a can of blue spray paint and some chalkboard spray paint and painted it to match our decor.  I think it turned our pretty well and its fun to be able to draw on the tops. 

Before

After

Now, I still have a TON of teacher's supplies from teaching kindergarten and now that Jay is old enough to do preschool with me at home I wanted to have a place to store it in the playroom.  So we took an old cabinet from the kitchen, gave it a fresh coat of paint, and hung it in the playroom.  It has a lot of great stuff that I can use with Jay when we do our little preschool time at home. 

I also went ahead and hung up my calendar and weather charts and we do that most days as well. 

One of the last things I did was make and laminate labels to put on Jay's toy bins.  I wanted him to be able to know where everything belonged so that finding toys and cleaning up would both be easier.  This took me longer than I thought because our printer had been in storage for almost 2 years.  I had to order a new print-head and wait 3 weeks for it to come from China so that I could have a actual functioning printer.  But, once the printer worked the rest was easy.  

Oh, and I forgot about organizing our art supplies. Here's where Pinterest worked wonders for me.  We had a TON of art and craft supplies, I wanted them neat and organized so that we could find what we wanted when we were crafting.  So here's a couple of things I did. 

Used the wonderful "over the door shoe organizer" to hold a lot of our stuff. 

Put stuff Jay uses often in tins that he can easily reach.
I probably will hang these by there handles at some point but they worked well on shelf for now. 

Overall, I am very happy with this playroom. We are eventually going to change the carpet down there because.... well it's a little ugly!  But for now we are finished.  Here is the big reveal.

  Remember the before?

Here is the after!

Don't mind the mess on the table. Jay was creating!

Light switch extender to Jay can turn on the light by himself. 

One of my favorite finds. Target for $12.  

I'd say he's satisfied!

Hope you enjoy a look at our playroom.  Hopefully as things slow down for us I can get around to blogging more of our first home makeovers.  Have a wonderful day!