Look what I made

As you probably already know I've been building and making things like crazy lately, well I think I'm about done with most of it.  I still have a few things on my list, but I'm taking a little break for now.  I just wanted to show off my work, so here ya go.

The book shelves I talked about here are finally done, it makes the room look so much better.

The laundry room has been moved, it's now it the room once known as the mud room.  We just moved everything over, but I built the hanger rod with shelf and the shelf at the bottom with the cat food under it.  We left the hooks on the other wall, but once again I added a shelf and additional hangers for hats.
Here's the finished room:

Here's the room before:

And here's the old laundry room:

It was also our pantry and junk storage room, wish I would have clean up a little before this pic.

So moving the laundry room was just the beginning of our other project, the new dining room.  Let me back up just a little bit. When we bought our house 3 years ago, it was 3 bedrooms with an office, dining room, and breakfast nook. The office is now Nathan's bedroom, I added a door to the dining room and it's now Baylee's room. So we've been squeezing into the breakfast nook, which wouldn't have worked in the long run, as it was tiny!

Sooo back to the new dining room. Here it is. We had to put in a new floor because we couldn't find brick to match, and as you can see I'm still working on re-upholstering the chairs. But I now have a pantry, no more going into the laundry room to find the canned goods!

Updated pic

The old breakfast nook, the old laundry room was behind that wall.

I'm so glad to be done with this project, it was a lot of work. I still have a pretty long list of things I want to do, but we went way over budget on this project so they will just have to wait.

Baylee turns 3!

My little Baylee is 3-years-old today.  But it feels more like she's turning 4.  She's always been a little beyond her years, that's because she does everything her big sister and brother do.  Baylee keeps me laughing all day long, even her fits are cute.  She says things that just sound funny coming from such a little girl.  She gets along with her siblings for the most part, but when she wants something she'll let you know, very loudly!  Alivia has been trying to teach her the right way to ask, when Baylee starts screaming "I want apple juice!!!", Alivia will tell her, "mommy only gets it if you ask nicely and say please."
Baylee still hangs on tight to her blanket, but also has other favorite toys that must go with her to bed, the talking puppy, chickie, horsey, and a backpack of whatever made the cut that day. She loves to carry around all her toys in her backpack, I think she thinks one of her siblings will take them if she doesn't.  She really loves doing whatever Alivia does, which most of the time is coloring.  I love it, I hope they always get along so well. She also likes to watch Aaron play computer games, and has started playing some games on her own, (when Aaron allows it).
She's now old enough to start ballet, that will be so cute and if her and Alivia are together she'll love it even more!  I can't wait to see what this year brings!  Happy Birthday Baylee!

What should I make today....

My latest obsession, building things. In the last couple weeks I've built a dinning table, storage cubes, re-sized my existing TV stand, and I'm starting on a pair of bookshelves.  It all started with wanting a new dinning table, but not wanting to shell out the cash for one, so I googled how to make a table and found a great website, ana-white.com. From there I learned how to make a farmhouse style table, and saw plans for tons of other things I want to build. I just wanted to share my creations with everyone, so I've posted some pictures below.

The table is still in the garage, Matt thinks it needs more sanding. Ugh, sanding is the worst part! By the way all the wood for this table was about $50.

Our TV stand came with the house, and I like the look of it, but it was way too tall. So I chopped about 12 inches off the bottom and fixes the doors. I also made it about 4 inches thinner. Now I just need to finish the bookshelves for each side.

I made these storage cubes mainly because I didn't know what else to do with this big empty space behind the sofa. It was originally built as a TV/media center. These are just two of the 4 I'm making but you get the idea...

Also you can see the sheets of frosted plastic I put in the doors, it used to have chicken wire, which didn't hide the mess behind them.

San Diego weekend

Had a great weekend at Legoland and Sea World.  We met up with my brother and sister and thier kids, my mom and my other sister.  The kids loved all the rides, even the rollercoasters.  Nathan took off with my youngest sister and went on all the bigger kid rides. We even did a little trick-or-treating at legoland.  Alivia's favorite part at Sea World was the dolphin show. Of course Aaron loved the Penguin exhibit, and Baylee loved going on all the rides at Legoland.

 

DC & PSU trip

Matt and I were able to take a little vacation, just the two of us. We are lucky enough to have Matt's parents stay at our house and watch the kids while we were gone.  We flew into Washington DC and spent the first day sight seeing.  We toured the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the National Museum of American History, and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.  We've seen much of DC before, when we lived on the East Coast, but there is always something more to see. Instead of trying to walk the two miles stretch, we decided it would be easier (and more fun) to rent bikes.  DC has these ride share bikes, you can pick up a bike at any of the ride share locations, and drop it off at one of the dozen other locations along your route.  I thought it was fun riding bikes through DC, but a little scary riding with traffic. I think the last time I rode a bike I was in grade school.

The next day we headed up to State College, PA for the first Penn State game of the season.  We drove up with a couple friends we knew from the school days and then met up with a couple other friends. It was so much fun hanging out with everyone.  It was crazy hot that day watching the game. But we were able to cool off at our favorite sports bar, Champs!  Good times with great friends!

The next day we decided to explore Great Falls Park, we met up with some friends we knew from Matt's work.  Another crazy hot day! We did a little hike up to see the falls, then down to the river where Matt went for a swim.  Again it was great catching up with old friends while exploring new things.