Monday, August 25, 2014

The After.

This summer was a whirl wind! Moving with 3 kids will do that to you :) I finally took some 'after' pictures, but lets start with the before...

Family Room...this is the previous lamanent flooring. It looks nice, but it was really scratched up. What better time to replace it with REAL wood when the house is empty? It was a big project for Collin, but i loved the results...


Kitchen...


Downstairs...

Upstairs bathroom...

Ava's Room...


Our Bedroom...


Malacai's Room...


. Honestly, I thought about making everything look perfect and then I thought 'That's not the real us'. One thing I've struggled with in a new and bigger house its 'letting the messes go.'  I'm a better person and mom when i allow messes and the house to look 'lived in'.
I have had so much fun redecorating, shopping at thrift stores and flea markets. I was ready for a change and fell in love with the country look. I was blessed with family and friends to help paint and remove wall paper (not an easy task!!) and it completely changed the look...
 AND now the After...( with the new floors!)


The Kitchen...
We have plans to replace counter top and sink at some point.
 Just ordered new handles. These are spray painted in the picture, but reviews were wrong in my opinion-the paint did not hold up to sticky fingers :)



The Family Room


View from the front door to the french doors that lead to the deck...


Front Entrance...

I discovered these book end globes and old hymnals at a flea market in branson. love them.

I have this sign above the piano.  Love it.

I saw this little bird in Branson, but didn't buy it the first time, but i went back :)

Another view of family room...

My favorite little space...

The lower level (we officially have 6 levels in this house-that's ALOT of stairs. lol)

See that monstrous tv? It is SO heavy and was such a pain to move. Some day we'll  join the real world and get a flat screen :)



Behind the bifold doors is our teeny tiny laundry space. Collin has plans to tear out that wall and build a laundry room in the basement...

These stairs lead to the upstairs...
To the left is the bathroom and Ava's room. On the right is Cai's room and straight ahead is Marin's room. The stairs to the right lead up to our room.

Ava's Room from the doorway. Its hard to get an overview of the bedrooms, but this picture is deceiving. Her room used to be the master before they added our room in the attic, so its huge! She also has her own door to the bathroom, which she thinks is pretty cool! We are still figuring out how to decorate like a 'big girl' room :) I found a used day bed frame and we painted it white. Oh how i love paint ;)

Marin's room from the doorway...

Malacai's Room...


The upstairs bathroom. I didn't paint in here yet-still trying to decide what to do. I'm thinking a grey-ish. In all of the bathrooms the vanity, trim and tile needs to get replaced. This is our 'stay here a long time' house, so we have many projects for the future!
I saw the Rise and Shine pictures on pinterest, so I sent it to my wonderful friend Cheri and she made me an exact copy of it! I love it! I told our girls they had to sing that every morning. Marin was excited, Ava just rolled her eyes ;)


 Picture above is the guest room...
The picture below is the stairway to our master suite.
This is another room I didn't get painted, but that's a winter project :)


When you come up the stairs, right to the left is our bathroom (didn't get a pic) and then into the room our bed and fireplace is straight ahead.
This room is huge, but its hard to get a good picture of it. This room was added on (using attic space) later.


(above picture) This is what is to the right (and a walkin closet) when you walk in the door...
Love that i have a 'me space'.
 
 I had a gal make the Mr and Mrs. sign for me...there was something missing in that space, but now its filled!


And that's the tour!

There are still lots of personal touches we want to do, but i think its a good start. I'm ready for a project break :)

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Branson: The Last one.

Our last few days required a little bit of shopping and some much downtime. It was a fun time, but we were tired! Marin insisted on a photo shoot with her new friend Rainbow Dash :) My mom bought this shirt for her to go with it...




We left Saturday morning after a quick photo. We don't get pictures all together very often!



On the way home we passed a cute little town that had a large river with some falls. It was beautiful and we just had to stop! Malacai got a little mad that we didn't let him plunge all the way in.










AND the concludes our week long branson trip! Thanks for joining us :)

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

More Branson...

Thursday we went to the Fish Hatchery. It wasn't too exciting, but it was free and the kids thought it was fun feeding the mass amounts of fish. I'm talking like gazillions of fish. Some cages had just the 'eggs', some had the teeny tiny fish and others had full grown fish, waiting to be let out into the lake. The actual process of breeding fish was gross. So glad my girls didn't understand the video they showed ;)
After watching a video we walked around inside of the building and Cai had an intent to touch this snake. He was a little upset he couldn't actually touch it. Gross. (on a side note, we saw a real snake at library time a few weeks ago. The lady let each kids 'touch' it. Cai grabbed it and wouldn't let go. Gross!!)
Marin liked the turtles better...


Outside in the hatchery there was a machine you could buy fish food. The kids loved it.



Click on the picture and look closely at the water-those are ALL fish.


The hatchery was right by the dam-looks like a waterfall from this picture.


We walked down to the lake where men were fishing and found some cool small waterfalls.



Then we found a hiking trail, but stopped short when we saw a skunk  hurry back into the trees. Needless to say we turned around ;)


A favorite picture-this one is now framed :)





These two took such good care of us while in Branson-or should i say gave us a break and entertained our kids! love them!





That evening we played frisbee golf (the course is around our cabins). Ava dominated.






This little boy received LOTS of piggy backs from grandma :)



That wraps up another day!