How do you become the coolest Parents Ever

Well we really don't know how to become the coolest parents ever but we did have a sleepover with all our kids downstairs with movies all night. We brought four mattresses downstairs and set up beds for everyone (including Jamison) Our goal was not to become cool parents but to get the final coat of paint on the stairs(which needed 24 hours to dry, oil based is the best but takes forever to dry) So we packed up and moved downstairs for 24 hours. The kids LOVED it. They were bouncing around and wrestling all night. It was a rough night for Jamison but we got through it.


This picture was from the sleepover. They even wanted to do it again tonight!

So we still are not done with the stairs but the most time consuming and cumbersome part (the treads) are DONE!! Wohoo time to celebrate with a good nights sleep.

This is the only before picture I can find of the stairs but I swear I had one of the actual stairs and not a closet door. As you can see they were a beige carpet color with major dirtiness and smelliness going on.

And here is where we are right now:
We are going to paint the small parts on the stairway wall white. The stair risers are going to be bead board because well thats what we want. Obviously its still osb board with tons of beige paint speckles.

You may wonder why its all taking so long to finish these stairs. Well its because stairs are hard to do as they are the path between the sleeping/bathing area and the living/eating area in our house so everything has to be done in little steps and usually on weekends so we can convince the kids to stay in one area of the other. The other reason is beceause its the last house major project so you know how final projects go.

So we replaced all the treads as you saw in a previous post. Instead of nailing them in we screwed them it and put lots of wood glue on so there would be no sqeeking and so it would all be up to code. Daniel sunk all the screws and then put wooden dowels in to fill them. I had put two coats of Valspar oilbased floor and deck paint on the treads and let them set and treat for a month prior to installing them. Then I needed to touch up where the wooden dowels were and then we put a final coat of paint on all the installed stairs and here we are. It took so long because the goal was to make sure you couldn't see the screws or dowls or anything.

So here is a picture of the stairwell tonight:

We have a few more steps and then we are done with major house renovation things. Just in time for our backyard and spring.

Now onto that lovely nights sleep.

Miriam

We are not Ninjas

Our kids are not Ninjas as soon as Daniel took the treads off he put the new ones on. Sorry for the confusion :)

Sneak Peek of the family room

Our family room has been a work in progress. It is almost done it just needs some more furniture and a new couch. (which we need to find) Couches are difficult because we want to get a comfortable stylish kid friendly stain resistant fits the room kind of thing (talk about high maintenance) so it might be awhile before me find the right one. In the mean time we will stick with our red leather one.
Anyway this room started off as this:

This is how we bought it plain jane

Then add lots of paint with Opa and Daniel's hard work

Then comes floors and Daniel's expertise and diligence

Then turn off the lights and you have your own theater in your house!

I love this room! I didn't think I would because its all electronics but I really LOVE IT! We can just watch movies at home with all three kids in bed. It has surround sound and everything! Oh and we added a tv for looks.

I LOVE my husband

Daniel finished all the floors and all the transitions and everything! He is the BEST! You can look here for the before's of this room

Here are some pictures of the front room with furniture.

part of the front room

That is the front door to the right
Eva running through the picture

The little sitting area by the front window
picture taken from the sitting area
(I hate the couch but it will be there until we find a new one to go in there)
The wall behind the dining table is going to have my seascape collection as soon as I finish it
oh and the china hutch will go in the corner where the baby chair is

A view from the stairs
My dining set.
Yes Daniel even finished my chairs for me!

Alexander playing dead for the camera
why? good question.
Eva joining in of the playing dead

I have to admit I have felt extremely spoiled this time around (having Jamison) Daniel has been doing everything and hasn't complained or anything (unlike myself) He really is a great man (cheesy I know but he helps me so much!)

Miriam

King Park

This is one of the parks in our Neighborhood. Daniel helped in a community park clean-up by pruning some trees and shrubs and pulling weeds on Saturday. So we went and enjoyed it after wards. We took the Radio Flyer tricycles out and well Eva quit pretty fast but Alexander never wanted to stop. Daniel got in on the action too.Look at the concentration on his face

I was done in about 5 minutes because I can't seem to handle the heat anymore.

sneek peek

So Exciting we bought these yesterday and I have never been so excited for floors in my life. Now we just need to install them :)

Walking

We took a nice Sunday walk to test this out:
and I must say the sunsets are lovely here. I love living in an area with so many walking trails right by my house.

We found it

Daniel kept digging and digging to find the spriket. No luck look how far he dug. So we finally called the plumber people who installed it. They came out and of course they found it after 2 minutes (I think it helped that daniel already dug up so much. The guy knew where it
wasn't. So now we get a sprinkler system and yard. Yay.


Here are some pictures from our little family fourth of July on the Sunday night in our backyard. There were A LOT of big fireworks in our neighborhood. It reminded us of New Years in Iceland (no joking there were sooo many big and maybe illegal fireworks from our neighbors)
Eva officially hates fireworks! I had to put a movie on in the office upstairs and turn up the volume so that she would stop crying. She thought it was many monsters. So we were outside enjoying it and lighting the little ones off for Alexander and she was upstairs on the couch watching Anastasia.

I LOVE these

While in Utah we were on the look out for barstools. Well we didn't have to look very far thanks Kathryn.

I love them. I need to find better covers to protect that weaving from the monsters. While at IKEA Daniel kept saying we needed to go find some chair covers but I didn't understand why and he couldn't remember either but we remembered while driving home. Sad. Oh well these will have to do until I find some more. I love the covers they just aren't big enough. I love these barstools. We will definitely use them in this house. Don't worry we will take really good care of them while they reside with us.

Kitchen Bliss

Our kitchen is DONE. We might upgrade appliances but not anytime soon so here it is.




It looks so empty still but Daniel likes the empty counter tops a lot.

The Loft Office Reveal

This is our loft office/ relaxing area. For the original buyer there was the option to make it a 4th bedroom or just an open loft area. They obviously opted for the open loft so we tried to utilize the space the best way possible. We made it an office and also a one guest area (the love seat is a fold away bed for one!!) I still need to get some pictures up!! I have 20 framed pictures but I just haven't gotten around to hanging them anywhere.

This is the view looking out from the master bedroom. The stairs are directly to the left

Here is the actual office area. We put the computer and printer in the book shelf and still need to get another smaller shelf to go on top so that is is more hidden.

and here is the view from the computer bookshelf (that hall leads to the other two bedrooms and main bath). At first I hated the light yellow color (I am not a big yellow person I actually wanted a more beige color in here) I chose but now I like it because it bounces so much light into the area.

This is our most relaxing room so far. Daniel and I stream out netflix onto the computer and just sit back and relax at night it is really lovely.

This Morning

This morning I was awaken by my children banging frantically on the bedroom door. They were very excited and yelling "Balloon Balloon!" So I went to see what was going on and from their window they saw this

I love the summers here with balloons outside every morning!

Busy

Sorry we haven't blogged in almost a month! We have been very busy being sick and working on the house. We have made some progress. The WHOLE upstairs is done including the master bath. Yay! The entire house is painted including the laundry room (excluding the garage) It has been nonstop on the projects and fix ups but no huge hurdles yet. Ok so here are some before and afters of the master bath the BIG project that we didn't expect to touch until well Christmas or somewhere near there.Remember it was carpeted and smelled like animals. Now it is Beautiful and no more smells of yuckiness anywhere in the house! I really want to add some plants on the flat areas by the shower and bath.
This was our first time tiling. I have cut tiles before but none of the other stuff. Daniel did a really good job! Painting was kind of a pain but worth it in the end SOO much taping in this bathroom but now it is exactly how we want it. I love the color we stole it from Kathryn and painted the downstairs bathroom and laundry room the same color because we liked it so much.
Anyway I am still painting the kids beds white to make their room right and when we head out to Utah I have to make a stop to Ikea for some side tables and some covers and stuff so you won't see pictures of the rooms until they are done or somewhat done. I have been working of a bookshelf and sooo many things so I will blog about them later when I actually finish them. I hope you are all doing well.

Miriam

This is Daniel and I just wanted to share something I found humorous. We went to Hobby Lobby and it is the biggest one I have ever seen it was like the size of a K-Mart, so you can imagine how excited I was to be there. We were looking for some stamps and stencils so Miriam could keep working on Maliana's wedding invitations. We asked the lady where we might find these items and her response was "All the way on the other side of the store in the craft section." The CRAFT section its Hobby Lobby the whole store is a craft section.

Last Weekend

Carpet is coming into the upstairs either at the end of this week or the beginning of next week so we need to get all the rooms upstairs painted. We started with the master bedroom on Saturday here are some befores:

Daniel was hard at working cutting in the ceiling
and here is the After. This is my favorite corner in the room because of all the light. The color I chose is called cement. Thats kind of funny I know. Alexander and Eva insisted on posing when they saw the camera come out.
Here is Daniel ripping off tape and putting the door stops back in( that little room thing to the left is going to be my closet. Its HUGE.
We also painted the guest room. I had been picking up Oops paint at Lowes and Home Depot for $5 a gallon thinking those were the colors I wanted. Daniel made sure I tested them on the wall first and I hated them. So we got an empty paint can and mixed 4 different colors together until we hit a gallon and I actually like the color now. It is a light olive green. I didn't take a picture because we keep that room locked because of the construction zone atmosphere and we don't want the kids getting hurt. Its a pretty dark color though at least I think it is so EVERYTHING in there is going to have to be white and light but that ofsets the color well.

Sunday was not so productive. There was a cold front on Thursday and I think the kids and I got sick that day. We were dressed warm with sweaters and things but we were in flipflops and I think that wasn't smart. Anyway on Friday the kids were sick and just laying around on couches while we painted upstairs. I felt sick but not where I could really feel it just the burning throat and starting of a runny nose. But by night fall I had to take medicine and all the places on my face hurt. Sunday morning at 7 we woke up to get ready for church and the kids were WORSE and I was Way WORSE too. Daniel started to feel the sick coming and so we had to stay home. I was wishing I would be better by then because I hate missing any church especially on the first few weeks of your new ward. But contaminating the primary is not an option. I felt so sick Saturday night that I didn't want to go to the grocery store for last minute Sunday things so we didn't have any bread. We made our first rolls all sick and gross but we made them and they were yummy so I am finally encouraged to try again


and that was our weekend. I am still sick but Daniel got enough sleep last night to not get sick. I need to take it a little easier so that I get all the way better. I hate when colds linger. Wish us luck with our huge todo list for the week including finding paint colors for the office/hallway and the kids room.