Wanna know what I do...

when I put Hunter in bed and Grace is asleep? It is an addiction of mine. I go to the computer and check out Pioneer Woman's blog. It is on my favorite's to see on my blog. I love her. I love how she writes, I love her pictures, I love how she shows how to take pictures, I love her way of showing how to cook things. Yep, I am addicted. If you haven't checked her website out you should! She posts something new everyday about her life, a new recipe, and new photography everyday or close to it. Maybe you can get addicted with me?! :)

I am going to work on my house projects tomorrow night going to hopefully finish up the touch ups on my red wall. I got so many ideas for the rest of the house but we are working on saving to make bunkbeds for the kiddos to have both kids be in Hunter's room and we are getting new closets for them so we are saving up for them this next month. Super excited about that project! Going to hopefully tackle making a bunkbed and assembling closets when Larry comes home in September. Should be fun and I will do before and after pics! But I still have plans to tackle my fish tank wall. I did take before pics so I have to post those soon. Maybe tomorrow. I will have some extra time on my hands tomorrow! :)

big girl pull ups

My baby is potty training herself. I have no part in this. She all of a sudden wanted to go potty on the toliet and I have let her. She started this with me last Saturday and by the fourth time going to the bathroom and it was only 9am I had to go get pull ups for her. It was too much work taking her diaper off and putting it on. I also didn't believe that we were in the potty training time of her life. But we are. She went poo and pee in the toliet all day. Once she had her first pair of pull ups on she would not let me put a diaper on her she threw a fit. So I gave the rest of her diapers to daycare and we have pull ups and some big girl underware. But she is all about her big girl pull ups and she calls them that. The last two days she has been not so great at going potty in the toilet but I think she is just getting used to playing at daycare and realizing she has to go. On Sunday, I was making my way to the bathroom and she followed me and asked me "mama you go potty" and I told her yes so I started to go and she said "good girl mama". Precious, isn't it?! So we will see how this goes. I didn't believe it at first cause I wasn't ready for it but it doesn't seem to be in my hands she is on a mission to be like her brother and so I will just let her. My baby girl is getting to big :(

we are good

No colds here. I did notice that Grace has two teeth coming in that might be why her nose has been running like a fawcet. She has been such a joy and telling me no mamma now. And she is the worst taking to the store she wants to walk and not be in the cart and hasn't learned or mastered the no touch rule. Baby steps we are working on it. Hunter has been not wanting to go anywhere but straight home after daycare but I had to learn the hard way and he had a fit on me yesterday and today he said the same thing he just wanted to go home so I took his word for it and we came home. I am learning and it is baby steps for me. No big plans for this weekend. My house is a mess and I am just going to plug away at cleaning it and tackle my new red wall and fix the sides and moldings. I dragged out the old paint for touch ups so I am getting closer to finishing the red wall project. Next is my long wall project, this one has the fish tank on it. My ultimate goal is to get a new L-shaped couch but that will take time. For some reason I am thinking I need a pop of green on this wall even if it is in a picture. Green is just stricking to me lately not sure why. I will try to get pics taken of my new wall project the fish tank/couch wall but I can't tackle it until for a few more weeks. I got to make another trip to IKEA to get a shelf I want and so I gotta wait on that. Got some new picture/frame ideas up my sleeve for my shelf idea and see what comes of it. I also got to work around hanging with my kiddos and cleaning. My normal weekend of fun. :) I feel the need to clean out alot of toys this weekend and taking alot to Goodwill :)

colds?

We have possiblity of sickness going on in our house. Grace's nose has been flowing since the weekend and she has a cough off and on. I keep sneezing and blowing my nose. Hunter coughs and sounds all nasally. I just know that we all are going to get sick this weekend. Hoping for wellness. My kids have been pretty healthy since they were born and rarely get sick, thank goodness. Knock on wood. :)

monkey's

Hunter is my Curious George. He loves to learn new things and remembers things really well. Grace is my monkey see monkey do. If she sees her brother, me, or her Papa doing something she has to do it to. My kids are my little monkey's cause they remind me of monkey's. Hence, Curious George is a monkey and monkey see monkey do. Crazy what I come up with, huh!?!

RED!

I am not a patient person. I bought "barn red" paint yesterday and had to put it on today! I started right after I put the kiddos down for their naps and Grace crashed and Hunter was talking in his bed and went to sleep after about 10 minutes. I turned off the AC and opened up the doors and windows! This was probably not the right day to do this but I was getting ready to paint! I had to recruit my mom and wayne to help with the kiddos after they woke up and once mom and Wayne got here both kids amazingly woke up at the same time. Hunter wanted to stay home with me he gets in a funk and just doesn't want to go anywhere but Grace was all for leaving with them. So the wall took me about 3 hours or less to do! Pretty good for my first time painting all by myself! I chose the color, put up the tape...Wayne helped to.. and I painted it all. Yes I have to touch up all the sides and yes my pics still have the blue tape on the sides but I took it off tonight and now I have to take a few days to finish up the touch up. I love my new red wall! Larry likes it to I texted him a pic he went back to Canada today. Maybe that is why I wanted to get this project started it gave me something to do. (my next project is to get scratch protectors for the shoe rack and moving the rug out from under it so it just will have the wood shelf.)
Here it is! If you don't remember what it looked like before read the last post. The paint dryed up very quick because I had the doors and windows open cause of the smell and it was such a hot day. When Grace came back with my mom I closed up the house because it had gotten up to 85 degrees. The smell of the recycled paint wasn't too horrible, yes you could tell it wasn't the same ole paint smell but for only being a little over $10 it did a great job. Don't you love my floor cleaners? Yes, I still need to clean my floor but I keep looking at my new red wall. Love it. Anne gave me the idea to paint it cause my previous wall color was blending into my new white frames. So I came up with red for my wall color. Love, love, love it.

I have found I love to decorate walls and take pictures and make something out of them. Maybe I can put it to good use sometime :) I got projects in the works :)

next wall project

This is my next project. I am painting this wall red. And put a welcome sign up on the left hand side wall. I bought paint yesterday and I am so excited about it! It is recycled paint that cost $10.70 a gallon! It is from paint that people drop off at the recycling center and they take it somewhere and make batches of 10 colors and than sell it. It was the only red they make and it is perfect! I took the last gallon but they can try to locate more if I need it but I don't think I do. If your interested in getting this kind of paint I got it at Miller's in OC. They said it smells like recycling the first few days but than it goes away. So if that is all that will be the downside I think I can handle it to save a few bucks! So hopefully soon I can paint this wall and show you all!

first wall done

The look before.

My new curtains! The color is a red barn with gold designs. The first curtain attempt. I learned to buy longer curtain rods learned a lesson about that.
Went and bought longer ones with cute orange glass balls.The look after! Love it so much better. Yes, they aren't perfect the house got added on so one window is slightly higher than the other. But I don't care it looks worlds better!

wow!

My 19 month old daughter has shown me today that she can pee and poo in the toilet! This is the first time for me and she did it for my mom one other time before this. At first I didn't want to take her to the bathroom when she said mama I go pee. I thought seriously are you just pulling my leg. So we all went in the bathroom and ten minutes later she did it! I can't believe she did it but she did! Than after nap she wanted to go pee again and she did it in the toilet! Where did my baby and little girl go?! So very, very proud of my Grace!

so much has gone on

I don't even know where to start. I put my curtains up but I haven't posted a picture yet cause I am not 100 % in love with them yet. I got too short of curtain rods, I think and I just bought some more today that are wider than I think I will love them. But I got to get them up now. Maybe this weekend I will get them up and post a picture of them. It is crazy what curtains can do to a room. Right now they make the room alot darker cause of how much light is coming through the window hence that is why I have to put them further out on the wall so I can expose more window. But they do make the room look different and more homey. I also am going to find a red paint to paint one wall red and it should make a nice difference.

I celebrated my 34th birthday on Sunday. I went to the beach with Larry and the kids. It was a nice day. I also went and spent the day the Saturday before and went wine tasting for the first time with some of my girlfriends. I had a blast! I will post pics and more info about that soon. Life has to slow down in order for me to post stuff on my blog but it will be coming soon. Pictures will be posted soon too!

I might even update you on my life and tell you where I am at but not in this post.

new look

I am obsessing about curtains! I got some today and I think they are going up later today! So excited! So here is my new look of the living room before the curtains!

Here is my new table. It used to be a big farm, square type table that seated 6 and I went and got a small round table. It actually works out better and the kids seem to like it cause they are right by you when you eat with them. The flowers are from our front yard. The rug underneath I took out of the house today. It was driving me crazy. We have had it for years and it gets so much animal hair on it and playdoh that when I vaccum it it takes forever. So it went out the door to the shed. Here is the room the way it looks right now minus the rug!
Here is another view of the room. I even mopped the floors today while the kids were sleeping. See Kramer on the chair? He likes it without the rug underneath :)
Here is a picture of the new computer area. The computer usually is on the right side of the table but when Larry skypes us we have to move it to the middle cause the cord is too small. The table is an old table of mine before I met Larry when I lived in my apartment. Love the purple curtains!

Here is a painting that my mom painted for me. I moved it to another wall. The shelf is a free item I got from Davies Clinic. They used it to put pamplets on it. Love it!

Here is my very curly hair girl! Aren't her curls so pretty?!

This is my new framed wall. I had it full of frames and took them down and puttyed the holes and put fresh paint on it with new frames from Ikea. They are so cheap and I love them! I am thinking of painting this one wall red so the white frames pop out more.

Here is my new star that I bought yesterday! So excited about it! It only cost $8.98! I got it at a store in the OC called Real Deals Home Decor. Love that store it was my first time in it and I loved it! But I had my kiddos with me and I learned they can't go with me there again. They wanted to touch everything and I about had a heart attack cause I didn't want them to break anything. The store is over by Home Depot and they have great things to put on your wall!

I love this! It is a shelf that I got for free at Dr. D's house. I got to go to his house during a week day on working hours and help Linda take stuff to a huge garage sale at Hope Village and she needed help taking stuff there. So I got to see what they were giving away and if I wanted it I could take it! So the shelf became mine. I am looking for some hanging words that say welcome on it to hang on the pegs and then I should be done. The candle holder was free got that from Annie and I put my fake candle that has a timer in it and it turns on at 7pm and I have no clue what time it turns off probably midnight. I bought the frame for cheap and put pics of the kids and Misha on it. The Ansel Adams pic is from when I lived in my apartment.

Kiddos checking out the flowers I had just put them on the table.I will post pics later of what the living room looks like with curtains if they go up!

Pete

I have a new fish tank cleaner boy. His name is Pete and he is a Pleco fish. He should be a great help with cleaning the fish tanks algae problem. I hope. Welcome to the family, Pete! I would take a picture of him but he is hiding under a big bushy, algae infested plant and isn't ready to come out and clean yet.

hello my friends

I am still here. My kiddos are both asleep and have been since 9:15pm! Love that! I am doing great. Loving life and things are looking up. Can't blog yet about it but my family might be staying together. Fun and exciting stuff is happening but it is my secret. :) I wanted you all to know I have added a couple new blogs on the right side of some of my favorite places to go to. Check them out! I love my new camera but I feel bad all I have done is turn it on and it asked me to do the date and I had to turn it off. Didn't want to break it yet. :) But I did get the camera case set and took all the products out of their not so cool plastic cases that didn't want to get off. So I think tonight I might turn on my camera again and see what I can do.

My Hunter has been so much better with this last trip with Larry leaving I think that we are on the home stretch. The only thing that has changed is he started being wet at nap time and bed time so minor adjustment. He also stopped eating but we are working on that one and he is getting better. He also has issues with sharing and hitting his sister on the head but we are working on that. Sigh. I love my buddy and he keeps me going. He also gives really great loves. And it is so heart wrenching when he says sorry mama for things he really doesn't need to be sorry for. My buddy and I are learning. Learning together. Grace is such a talker I can't even tell you what or how much she talks. She just talks and repeats everything you say and talks just like Hunter. She loves to sing and she can sing her ABC's fast and slow. She can sing almost a whole entire kids CD of songs by herself. She can count up to 12 she did that today. She can say so much I wish that my baby girl would stop growing up so fast.

Today Grace put on two little swimmers one on each foot and had a fit cause I didn't want her to have them on. So we compromised. I let her wear her pj's with one little swimmer on over her pj's. She wasn't happy with this at all she wanted two one on each leg but after ignoring her she settled down and wore her one little swimmer over her pj's and looked so funny but I loved it. Gotta love stubborness.

My Hunter LOVES Thomas the train. He got a train set the other day with some bday money that we had left over. That boy could play forever (if his sister doesn't come near the train set) and play and play with his train set.

I got a new...

very nice camera for my birthday! It came to me early with everything included. A bag, a card, a battery charger, a cleaning kit, my very own card reader, a screen guard, a mini tripod! I also got photoshop! I also got money to go to a photograpy class! I am set! Thank you to my mom and Wayne for doing this for me! Better pictures are on there way once I figure out how to work this awesome camera I got!

18 months!

OMG, I am so behind in blogging it is crazy! First thing first. My baby turned 18 months last week and she had her check up yesterday and here are her stats!

Weight~ 24 lbs (she wouldn't step on the scale not sure how true this weight is)
Height~ 32 inches

I didn't get a print out of her head circ. so I will check her chart but it isn't as big as it has been.

My big girl can talk, talk, talk. She wants to do everything herself even walk to the car to get in her car seat. She pretty much wants to do everything like Hunter does. She is such a joy and I am blessed to have her as my daughter. Now if she can just stop growing so fast that would great! Here she is with her Cousin Nate. I heard yesterday that she called him Nathan Arthur at daycare. Which is his name. She is such a goof. Nathan is almost 1 month older and they both keep us on our toes. They are too much fun.