Today

A couple things about today. First of all, little miss Coral, 5:15 am is to early to be getting up. It makes mommys eyes burn and head ache, so sleeping in is probably a better option. Oh speaking of mommy, you are WAY to little to be calling me that. I would prefer it if you called me momma, not mommy and certainly not mom.

Secondly, I really dislike getting groceries during the summer. Coral and I have it made in the winter. The grocery stores are practically empty, and if there are other shoppers, they are usually old people who coo and awe over Coral, or other mommas with young babies. Summer time is totally different. Today the grocery store was total chaos. Children were running everywhere. Although I do enjoy watching Coral watch the other older kids, calling each one of them "EMMA" and doing her biggest giggle for them. I am thankful for a daughter who is so social and gives everyone in the store a big smile and says "HI" or "see ya" in her little lisp.

Thirdy, why doesn't house work ever end? Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that I spent hours on my hands and knees scrubbing our front deck, and now its full of cob webs again! Spiders, you are not welcome in my house, make your silly little webs somewhere else. It seems like I can clean my kitchen four times in a day, and at the end of the day it still looks messy. Well today my dishes are going to pile up on the counter, and Im choosing to not care about it. I do however LIKE certain messes. Hurricane Coral knows how to make a pretty good mess of her toys in our house. Those kind of messes make me happy. Its proof of all the playing that she has done during the day. Proof that she has used her imagination with her babies, learnt new words with her books, or finally figured out that shape sorter she has been working so hard on.

Ok, this fourth one is a gross one. Yup Im going to talk about poop. Corals poop. My baby poops WAY to many times a day. All you momma friends of mine, how many times a day does your baby poop? Coral is still pooping five or six, sometimes more, a day. Ugh. I really wouldn't mind, except her bum doesn't really get a break. These past two weeks she has had a horrible rash on her bum. Im talking open sores rash, which makes it difficult to change her because it hurts her when I wipe, so she always tries to wiggle away (and that girl has got some strong legs). So lately we have been letting her run around the back yard naked (I don't even want to know what my neighbors think when they see my beautiful daughter pop a squat right on the lawn). The last couple of nights I have been going and checking on in the middle of the night to see if she is poopy. Sure enough she is. Is that the trick though? Do I have to wake her up every night to change her diaper?

Lastly, Im feeling really blessed today to be able to be a stay at home mom with Coral. I love everything about it from our morning snuggles, to reading on the guest room bed (her favorite bed), making forts in our walk in closet, seeing her excited face when I start filling up her blow up pool, watching her tease her pooch all day, watching her do a little boogie every time she hears some music, and so much more. Coral brings Andrew and I so much joy everyday, and Im so thankful that I am able to be at home with her, and not have to miss a single moment of it.

Now, time to put Corals new bathing suit on and splash around in her pool with her. Yard and house work, will you please just stop until shes older? She is only little once and I want to enjoy her without any distractions.

Living Room Makeover!

A more appropriate title would be living/dining room/ kitchen makeover. Yup, while Andrew was away, I attacked the biggest room in our house. Remember that dark grey color I mentioned that was in our master bedroom before I painted it? Well our living room was painted that same grey. It didn't look as dark in this room because of all the natural light, but still, it was to dark for my taste. I like my wall colors to be light and fresh feeling. I also found that the shade of grey was hard to work with regarding accents in the room. No matter what color I tried (purple throw pillows, green, yellow, beige) nothing quite looked right. The color always seemed to be a little off. So, once Andrew was out the door for his trip, I started prepping for a living room makeover.

The color choice was easy. I had left over paint from our master bedroom, and not wanting to waste it (or have to pay for new paint), I decided to use it.

Here is a picture of our living room before I started painting

Edging in this room was really hard. The previous owners did an awful job painting. They got paint all over the ceiling, baseboards and trim.

It took three coats, and lots of extra attention to get that trim looking good. I must admit that the light walls gave me kind of a shock. I gave it a night, then decided to re-arrange some things in the morning once the shock had kind of worn off. All it took was switching one picture and I was instantly inspired.

I put some funky fabric on our white end table

The kitchen got some new pictures leaning against the dark back splash. Remember that frame I looted from my Parents last weekend? It looks perfect in the kitchen.

My favorite part of my new living room is this wall of bright pictures. Theses were free printables off the internet from here

I put some brighter books on the top shelf and new fabric

My yellow end table got some new things added to it, and a picture hung behind it

I added some new things to my wooden tray

And there you have it. Our new living room completed. I was so excited when I started putting things with color in the room (especially the free printables). With the old grey I dreaded trying out a new accent color because I knew that it would probably look funny and I would want to change it again right away. The new color is so light and neutral that pretty much any color that I chose to accent with will work! And the cost of re-doing this large room was totally in our budget with the grand total being $13.00. Not bad eh. So what are your thoughts? Is my new room cozy and inviting?

Inspired to Paint Again

Yes I got inspired to paint again....paint on canvas that is (although just wait until tomorrows post for some pictures of a newly painted room in our house....what, you guys didn't think that I would just sit around my house while Andrews away did you?) But back to my new painting. It had been a while since I picked up a paint brush. There was no real reason for it, sometimes I just have no inspiration to paint. So my canvas waits patiently for me in my closet until I have that artistic feeling again.

I stared at this canvas for a long time before I put any paint on it. Usually when I paint I have a picture in my head of the end result. I have colors in mind, and usually a spot in my house to put it. This time I had nothing. No thought in mind, no place in my house to put it, only the inspiration to pick up a brush and paint.

Every year my parents have a garage sale labor day weekend. My dad and brother-in-law Joel build furniture to sell (remember the large cupboard my dad built in my curb appeal post?  Furniture like that). Its a huge garage sale, and we always have a blast doing it. Last year there were random people that asked to use the washroom. While in the house, they noticed the paintings on the wall (some done by myself, the rest done by my very talented momma). They asked if they could buy them, but my dad (proud of our paintings) said no. So this year my mother and I (and hopefully my sister...yup we all know how to work a paint brush) have decided to do some paintings specifically for the garage sale.

So not knowing what people would like, or whos house it would eventually be going in, I finally started to put paint on the canvas. I took a few different colors (black, purple, yellow, blue, green) and just poured the paint on. At this point I realized that I actually only have a couple tiny paint brushes left (Im horrible with washing out my brushes when Im done using them) so I used a rag to smear the paint around for the background. By the time the background was done, I still didn't know what I was going to paint over top of it. So I did what I used to do in high school, and "doodled" around. There was a flower that I used to draw ALL over my books while I was listening to the teacher and taking notes. I still have my notes from college and this flower can be seen on all over them.

                                       The end result?

Im very happy with how it turned out, and it was neat to see the end result knowing that I had no vision for it in the beginning. Hopefully someone likes it as much as I do and buys it for there home, but if not, I have the perfect spot for it in Corals big girl room :)