After finishing up the landscaping rocks/mulch, we moved on to the next project - sanding, priming and painting the backdoor! Alan painted our front door black last summer or the summer before.. So we decided to paint the back door black to match!
all sanded and ready to be primed
all primed and white trim painted
all done! We wanted some white trim to match the window panes
The next couple of weeks we will be preparing and having Madison's 5th Birthday and party and then September holds our 10th anniversary which includes a weekend trip plus Alan is taking Madison on her first tent camping trip, so I'm not sure how many house projects will get done in September.. Maybe some small things. October is just as busy! The Fall/winter we will focus on the inside and planting privacy trees and fruit bushes/trees. Love getting projects done!
The year flew by! going to be hard to beat 2011 in the happiness department! Lots of changes happened this year! Here's some of the milestones in order as they happened throughout the year...
Going from this...
..to this.
Going from 117 lbs pre-pregnancy to 110 in the first 3 months to 132 at 9 months was quite the adjustment! Finding maternity clothes that were my size was quite the chore too! I did manage to find some, though by September I looked like I was about to explode!
Going to Vermont in March. Other than having to fly on not one, but 2 planes(4 actually) to get there and back, we both loved Vermont. Alan had a business trip and I took advantage of that and tagged along. We stayed in Manchester but traveled to Burlington to do some shopping and visit the Ben & Jerry's factory. A tad boring but we did get to sample some ice cream. If you plan to go, go during the week when they are in production. That would have been interesting to see. We have recently joked about having a Fall house in Vermont. If I'm ever brave enough to get on a plane again, I would love to go back in the Fall. I can imagine it's just beautiful! And we promise next time to let our friend Brad know we are there.
Finding out in April that we were having a girl! We both had a feeling from the beginning that she was a girl and seeing it verified was such an emotional moment. I didn't really realize how much I wanted a daughter until they told us we were having a girl! We kept going back and forth with the names Madison and Riley and once we saw her beautiful picture, we knew she was a Madison!
Also, getting our house painted was in April. We kept putting it off and finally after 3 years, we finally committed! I'm so glad we did! It's made a huge difference. I still have not decorated the walls like I want but it's good for now. See all of the wall colors here but here is the living room painted in Sherwin Williams Grassland. It's a sage green, since you can't tell by the picture.
Alan's work threw us a huge baby shower in June. I mean, Madison is 4 months old and I have yet to buy a pack of diapers.. We were so blessed to get so much stuff!
Our baby shower in July given by my best friend Amanda, her mom, my mom and Alan's mom. We had a lot of fun and I got more great, much needed things! I'm so lucky to have such good friends and family!
Finishing Madison's room in July. This seemed to take for.ev.er. but we did it and love it! The tree pulled it all together and hopefully she will like the color when she gets older so we don't have to paint it every time she changes what cartoon character she's into at the time!
Quitting my job in August to be a stay at home mom and wife was the easiest and hardest thing I had done in a long time! We both knew that's what we wanted, even before getting pregnant, but telling my friends of 7 years and the greatest boss that I was leaving was hard! Not getting up and going through the motion of that work routine was an adjustment. We are so blessed to be able to let me stay home and I love spending my days with Madi and I love seeing all of her firsts firsthand.
Also in August was a not so pleasant thing- Wilma's accident. She got hit by a truck and broke her front leg. She had an external fixture for 3 months and is back to normal! We are not letting her play hard for a few more months just to be on the safe side. I didn't blog about it but she had surgery last week to remove a knot on her chest. She's had it for years but our vet decided it was best to go ahead and remove it. She is doing just fine but now has to wear that horrible e-collar again!
And of course, September was a fantastic month! Our sweet Madison was born! Lots of major changes from here on out! She has brought so much joy, laughter, smiles and exhaustion! :) Bringing her home from the hospital on our 5 year anniversary was the best gift ever! She has changed our life for the better and seeing her and Alan playing has made my love for him grow bigger. I thought I loved him as much as I could but I was wrong!
Our 5 year wedding anniversary in September. As mentioned above, we got to bring Madi home that day and it was such an emotional ride home! I think between the happiness of bringing her home, happiness of it being our anniversary, exhaustion from lack of sleep at the hospital(boy were we in for a rude awakening when we got home!), confusion of what to do when we did get her home and the reality of "Oh my God, we have a child!", we cried the entire ride home-about 20 minutes. Being married to my best friend for 5 years has been great and now sharing the joys of parenthood with him make things even better! Love you babe!
Madison's first rollover in November! Just proves that our little girl is growing up so fast! Excuse the cheesy mommy 'yays' :)
Wilma's removal of her fixture was in November also. This was a big day for everybody! Madison got to spend a few hours with her Grandma(my mom), Alan and I got to go to eat alone(for the 2nd time) and of course Wilma came home without her fixture! We were so thrilled to bring her home without it!
Madison's 1st Christmas! She loves all the things everyone got for her! Already looking forward to this year's Christmas! A baby brings a different kind of joy at Christmastime.
Also in December, my dad passed away. It was and has been a trying time for my whole family but we are dealing with it. At least he isn't in pain anymore.
Hopefully 2012 will be a great year for us! I am anxiously awaiting all of Madison's firsts this year.. Sitting up, standing, walking, tooth, word.. Wow. This is going to be a great year! Hopefully Wilma will have a less stressful year and can get completely back to normal! Cheers to 2012!
So we finally, 3 years after moving in, painted the walls! Well, we hired someone to paint the walls. :) If you've been to our house, you know that every room in the house was builder beige except Alan's office which is a light blue/silvery color. I have all of the color swatches below each picture and the colors are listed in the details.. All colors are Sherwin Williams.
Our living room. Looking for a picture to hang to the left of our tv cabinet. This color is 6163 Grassland.
The front door/living room. The weird shaped wall to the left and the wall leading up the stairs are a different shade than the rest of the living room. The weird shaped wall connects to the hall, which I wanted a different color. It's 2 shades lighter than the living room, but on the same swatch. It looks like a big difference in this picture but it doesn't really look this different in person. The color is 6169 Sedate Gray.
Laundry room. This is the original color I had picked for the baby's room but after we looked at some crib bedding, we decided to go with the color we finally chose. I liked this color so much, we painted the Laundry room that color! I have since added a vase with flowers and a picture to the shelf and the shoes and balls are now put away.. I hope to get some bins to organize better. I also hung the picture below from this post across from the washer. The color is 6679 Full Moon.
The Dining Room. I think this is my favorite room color in the house. I picked out this color early last year and decided to go with it and I'm glad I did. It makes the dining room so warm! Color is 6128 Blonde(the center swatch)
The Kitchen! After getting our tile backsplash last year, we couldn't decide which color we wanted. We had picked out a sage green before the backsplash and then when we got it, realized there isn't a spot of green in the tile. This color is growing on me and will look a lot better once we get artwork up. I think I will love it then. The color is 6247 Krypton.
The baby's room! As said before, I had picked Full Moon(yellow) for this room since I was determined to have a hot pink and yellow room for a girl after seeing this room online. I do still love that nursery though! We obviously haven't done one thing in the babe's room since we are waiting to find out what we are having to start buying furniture and everything so it will stay this way for a few more weeks. It is actually closer to the color of the swatch below. The lighting was bad. Color is 6729 Lacewing.
The baby's/guest bathroom. I wanted this to be neutral since our guests' use this bathroom and I'm not huge into theme type bathrooms. Once we find out what we are having, we may lean toward that gender in the color selection but it won't be any themes. I do love this color though. 6086 Sand Dune.
Our bedroom. I am loving this color too. I had originally wanted to do our room a really light concrete gray and the bathroom this color but I'm glad we decided to do it the opposite. We are completely grayed out now! I will be on the look for new bedding and curtains(our current ones are really dark gray) but I still love these for now. I'm glad we decided to paint our tray ceiling too. And I'm trying to decide what artwork to hang over the bed. I'm thinking 3 11x20 frames with black and white pictures in them of us and then when baby gets here, switch them out for pictures of us with the babe. Color is 6276 Mystical Shade.
Our bathroom. For some reason the lighting made it look like we don't have a blind on our window, but there is a Roman Shade there.. not sure why it disappeared. Alan was real skeptical about having gray walls with brown tile but our tile and counters have gray swirls through them and I think it turned out good and will look even better when we get matching curtains and towels. The little room beside our tub is our toilet and it's the color of the bedroom. 6724 Destiny.
On a side note, we went to the doctor today and had a great report! Baby's heartbeat was in the 150's and we will find out April 22 the gender of our baby!
Baby's now the size of an avocado! Tiny bones forming in baby's ears mean he/she can now hear you! Eyebrows, lashes and hair are filling in and taste buds are forming! This week was great. My appetite is still growing. I can eat until I pop and 30 minutes later, I'm hungry again. Belly measures 33" this week and my weight was 108.6 at the end of the week. Bedtime is 10-10:30.We also painted the entire inside of the house this week(except the bonus room upstairs- pics of house to come later this week!). Baby's room is now green! Lacewing from Sherwin Williams to be exact. Hard to tell from the tiny square but it's a little more limey in person. We went out last weekend and looked at some nursery bedding/decorations and came to the conclusion that light limey green was the color that was used in both boy and girl bedding. I can't wait to start buying things to decorate!
We left for Vermont on the 24th(Thursday) and came back yesterday(27th). Alan had some business up there and I decided to tag along! We had a great trip. Baby's first plane ride! I will blog about that later this week too. In the meantime, look at these precious clothes I got for the baby on our trip. Carters and Gap were having a great sale! Closeup of the sweetest onesie! And couldn't be more right!All in all, week 16 was a really great week. I'm glad Alan and I got to get away for a few days, even if our flight situation wasn't the best. More on that later!
