It's been awhile

I have been missing my blog! We have been so busy helping my parents redecorate their house (which I will post) that I have had no time to think. I have been seeing some blogs where they have decided to post 6 times a week and have a schedule! My blog is less..um...cool I guess.


So in the spirit of returning I thought I would show you our family room. Below is the before picture. Don't you just love the plaid wallpaper? You can't see it very well but it also had long red shag carpet. They were counting this as a bedroom, but we saw lots of potential.

When we started the search to find a house we had some very specific criteria. High on that list was a family room. I know this room is a luxury, but it feels like a necessity. At our last place we had a loft, which was great in a lot of ways. One of the biggest problems with the loft (other than children falling off the edge) was that it was all open space. We couldn't close a door or shut out any noise. So it felt very important that we had 2 living spaces. Now as our family grows and the kids get older we have a place to send them.

Here is our version of this room (lived in and all):

Our family room actually serves many purposes. It is the playroom, the exercise room, and the media room. We still have some things to finish up but this room has been a life saver this winter.

What I really love about it is that it can look like this and I am happy about it. I love that Olive has a place to play and pull out all her toys. I love that we can invite friends over and actually have a place to be. And like I said earlier, I love that I can watch tv upstairs, or go to bed, and Scott still can play video games if he wants.

Some other great features of our family room is the built in storage it came with. Above are cabinets for books and our huge dvd collection. And the below picture is storage under our stairs that holds toys as well as lots of holiday decorations. The cabinet in the picture is going to be turned into toy storage also, someday.

The good thing about our loft was that it had huge walls. I did one of the walls as a photo wall and I absolutely loved it. Here we don't quite have the same wall space but I already had a bunch of frames so I decided to do a modified photo wall. It is kinda progressed to the the "Wall-ive" or the Wall of Olive. We better have another kid so she doesn't get too spoiled.

There you have it, a very lived in family room. What do you think?

Olive Loves Kitty

...but Kitty doesn't necessarily love her back. Olive has started considering Kitty her friend and likes to get down and show him toys or interesting things.

She chases him around the house when he is uninterested and trying to avoid her. She never lets him sleeps and pets him by smacking his face. She also loves his tail which he really hates.

It might just be the adorable only the mom sees, but I think that when she gets down to give him kisses on the nose, it is the most adorable thing ever.

She just loves him so much! I also love when we walk in the door and he waiting for us, Olive always yells "Icky (Kitty)! Moow (meow)". Yep, too cute!


P.S. Yes I know he is a gigantic panther cat.

Family Resemblance

Last week Olive turned 18 months old. Isn't she so adorable?

Actually that is a picture of me at 18 months. Fooled you huh?

You see, as Olive is getting older I keep hearing from people how she looks more and more like Scott. I'm not saying people are wrong, but it kinda boggles my mind because when I look at her I always think of my baby pictures. When Olive was a baby I thought that she looked similar to me but, still had her own "look". Now that she is getting older, all I can think is that she is looking (and acting) more and more like me. I have not seen many pictures of Scott at this age so it is hard to really say, but I think it is hard to argue with these pictures.


If you know Olive, you know that she makes the exact same face.

So, for Olive's 18 month old pictures I thought it might be kinda fun to recreate some of my baby pictures and really compare the similarities. Judge for yourself.






Here are some other shots that I really liked.

I think this might be my favorite picture. I love how the hint of green in the background picks up her eyes.


Maybe she isn't loosing as much of her chubbers as I thought. Doesn't she look like a little pudge?

For the Record

Since I can see that it was an incredibly popular subject, I am sure that everyone is desperate to hear more about Little Women. So....this is maybe only for you Sheena.

Scott watched the movie with me (because he is cool like that) the other night. I must say that I was very pleasantly surprised. I actually thought that the movie was much better than the book. I almost never think that but in this case it was a big improvement.

I thought that the casting was great, possibly my favorite role for Winona Rider (except Edward Scissorhands) as the perfect Jo and that Claire Danes really was a great Beth. I actually liked "Marmee" way more and didn't get bugged when they called her Marmee all the time. Most importantly I thought they made the Professor way better looking and charming than I had imagined him or than I felt the book had explained him. However, I have NEVER liked Kirsten Dunst and although I like Christian Bale I pictured Laurie to be much more handsome in a classic kind of way. Didn't the book say he was tall and dark like an Italian? But whatever. And what were they thinking for Mr. Brookes? That was all wrong!

The movie did a really great job at staying true to the theme of the book and highlighting the good parts. At the same they were great about leaving out or improving on some things. For example, I thought the shorter time line worked much better. I liked how they included more of Louisa Alcott's actual story like having Transcendentalist parents, talking about women's rights/equality and political opinions, and actually writing Little Women and publishing as a women. Those were the things that were progressive about Allcott and that I felt she wholely left out of the book.

I thought it was very smart they developed Jo and the Professor's realationship much more and showed why they fell in love with each other. I liked that it was the Professor that helped her find her direction in writing and eventually helped her publish, not her dad. I am also ok that they totally skipped the ending of a crazy school at Plumfield.

They also foreshadowed Amy and Laurie more than the book so it didn't feel quite as creepy. I didn't like that Laurie was all " I knew I was going to marry one of the March girl, so you will work" rather than falling in love because they have such a history or bond. I didn't like how they broke the news that they were married, it was much better in the book.

I still stand by my orignal opinion that I wished it had worked out with Jo and Laurie. I thought that when Amy told Laurie to "make her love you" he was going to go off and work hard and be honorable. Then when he showed everything that he had accomplished, Jo would realize that she always loved him and now was proud of his efforts and integrity. Then Jo and Laurie could have started a school for boys with all his money and even though Jo wasn't the perfect match for his "world" they would balk at society and marry for love. And Jo could grow and learn to be proper and polite for Laurie's world. I think that would be a more progressive ending rather than a "match of worlds" wrap up which kept all those inept and discriminating social rules intact. Yep, I still think that Jo and Laurie is the better ending.

Well, now that I have given you a movie review that no one cares about and an alternate ending to a book that obviously no one wants to read about, I hope you will still visit my blog. And thanks for (hopefully) not liking me less for boring you to death if you read the whole post.

Argh!

*Spoiler Alert* if you have not read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, then you may not want to read my following post.


I have recently been reading some of the classic books that I hadn't ever picked up before. I just finished reading Little Women and I HAVE to post about it. I usually don't hate books, but I hated almost everything about this book.

I like reading books in comparison and I started this book thinking that I could compare it to Jane Eyre or most of Jane Austen because of period and theme, just set in America. Personally, Little Women fails in comparison to those books. It has no wit, none of the mystery or suspense, half way through I had to give up rooting for the love interest, all of it argh!

I really hated the first third because I felt like it was so immature or written for a young audience. I think I felt that because it was so preachy. When they are little it is all about bearing their trials, being so morale, so good and wholesome, so wise and humble, and not to mention always learning a lesson from their foibles.

The second third got interesting mostly because of Laurie confessing his undying love to Jo. But then he just goes and falls in love with Amy? What devotion! And Jo marries the old guy? I'm sorry but I didn't find it romantic. I wanted all the problems of the 2nd third of the book to work out to be a happy ending. By then I was like 300 pages in so I figured I bettert plough through and finish.

I would never usually post about books but I just couldn't resist. I haven't disliked a book this much since....Brave New World(?) but maybe it was hating high school and not necessarily that book.

Have you read it? Did those same things bug you? Am I the only person in the world who didn't like Little Wonem? Tell me what your opinion is!

Valentine's Day

For the past two years I have thrown a Valentine's Day party for my 6 nieces. We had so much fun and I thought I would share how we showed our love this year.

Olive helped me make the cookies and treats. She loved wearing my apron.


I got her this cute V-day dress but she was not in the mood to let me take pictures of her in it.

I told you, not in the mood.


These were the party favors I made everyone. The card says "Let Love shine through your Heart". Then they can hang them in their windows. I think they turned out really great.


We always eat crepes for lunch with yummy fruit smoothies to drink. I saw cups decorated like this in a book and thought this party was the perfect time to do it myself. The girls loved how fancy it was.

We decorated sugar cookies, played games like heart bean bag toss and Love Twister, and make a tied heart pillow. It was a very busy party.

These are the prizes they won for the games and decorating contests.


Here are some close ups of the table decorations. I got most of my ideas from Martha Stewart. Her website has everything.


And finally, a view of the whole room. It was a blast and I can't wait until I can have this party for Olive and all her friends. It was such a great day. Hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day too!

One of my Favorite Rooms

I LOVE our new kitchen. This was the room that had the biggest transformation and a huge pay off but was relatively simple to change (minus the wallpaper removal which has already been dicussed).

Here is how we saw the kitchen when we were thinking(for 2 seconds) about buying this house. It was updated with new appliances, cabinets, wallpaper, and counter tops in the 70's and remained very unchanged. As one of our neighbors said "She had it cherried out". In the era, this was a very stylish kitchen. A few lovely highlights are the faux marble counters and the almond appliances. Why do they even make almond color anything?

As you can see we changed almost everything in this kitchen. I am absolutely ecstatic about how it all turned out.

This is my favorite view of my kitchen because you can look through the dining room and into the front room. (You can see my Valentine's decorations hanging in the dining room). And, yes, our kitchen design was very inspired from the amazing kitchen on Dexter.

Although very out-dated everything was in really great condition. We kept the cabinets and repainted them white which I love. We added new hard ware, new lights, refinished the countertops, and put in our fabulous new backslpash (thanks to one handy husband and some cool tile products) and presto!

Here is the view looking in from the dining room. We added this inexpensive move-able island and it completely changes the functionality of the room. We can now feed Olive at the little bar area and have tons of cooking prep space. This was probably the best investment because of its daily use.

This is basically the same view as the "before" picture. Quite the difference right? I would tell you about all the amazing deals that we got on our various appliances, but I won't bore you with those details.

I wanted to include a close up of the backsplash. The glass tile looks so stunning next to the black countertops and gray walls. To add a "pop of color" as the design show say, we chose red accents in the rug, dishtowels, and obviously KitchenAid.

The previous owner used this spot as an eat in area with a table. I really wanted to be able to have a "family desk" area with computer and this space worked perfectly. Also notice the wall of pantry space, including a broom closet and a recipe book file storage compartment type area. Are you in love yet? I sure am!