We're done!

This is the look of excited exhaustion! Yesterday, I was giving the pleasant opportunity of having a weekend in the middle of my week. Our offices closed all day for the ice that was melted by noon. I was ok with that though because there were lots of things to accomplish and with the hubby being home we were able to do just that. We slept in ate breakfast and got to work.
After about 4 hours of work... this is what we got. I'll take you now on a 360 degrees tour of our new office space.... First let's remind ourselves what this room looked like when we bought the house. These were literally the only two thing in the room... there was marker/crayon drawings on the back of the door, a single 24 inch closet door with no light on the inside and really hideous carpet.

This is what we have now...A double door closet...My really cool and much need IKEA bookshelf.


My desk area with our DVD and CD storage...


The cool new cabinets for Zach's art work and art supplies plus just some plain office supplies.


Zach's desk with his art displayed from the painting class he took last semester.


And the remaining CD storage under the window in the room.


Also, notice the fan matches the color of the flooring that we picked. And look at the pretty flat ceilings now that they have been scraped of the dusty popcorn. So much better.


Overall... this is what we did... painted all walls, rebuilt the closet wall, framed closet door, hung doors, painted and put down new baseboards, scraped and painted the ceiling, put down new flooring, moved electrical work for the light installed in the closet, and loaded everything back into the room... it is now functional and I think that I will actually enjoy using it! VERY EXCITED to have this project finished.

I'll end this post with another pic of the small group girls... we all attended Jamie's baby shower this past weekend. What a blessing to have these girls in my life. Love all of you!

Books & Bottoms

Before the point of the post... here's a pic of our finished guest bedroom.  A couple of months ago, Zach and I got some bed risers so that we could store more things under there, but then you could see under the bed so easily when you walked in the room.  My mom made this very cute dust ruffle and we used the easy method of Velcro to attach it.  I'm glad to have my storage area hidden.

And now for books and bottoms.... 

Last night, the non-prego girls in our small group hosted a "showering" for the prego girls.  It was a great way to honor these girls and their special little bundles that will arrive all within a month of each other.  Below: Holly and baby Maddy due on April 4th, Sarah and baby Camryn due on February 28th and Jamie with Baby Girl ?? due on March 7th.  Craziness... in just a few short months all of their lives will change and our small group will expand with three new little girls!

Here we are all the girls... Angela, Jessica, Holly, Sarah, Jamie, me and Shevawn.  It was such a pleasure to host the shower with Jessica and Shevawn and so easy to plan. 

Here is all the loot that the girls ending up taking home with them.  We decided to get them books to start their little girl's libraries as well as diapers and wipes to get them started when the little ones come. 

We also had a little laundry line of onesies as well as surgical masks care of sister Kim.  Hopefully these surgical masks will come in handy for changing those stinky diapers.

The cupcakes that Jessica made... C, M & ? (wish the Libby's would have told us their baby's name).  They were yummy nummy and I sure had my share of them.

One of the games played... We called it... "What is it?"  Three jars of baby food with no labels.  The three couples were given the option of smelling or tasting.  Drew tasted all of them with no hesitation, though I think that he was sorry after the fact.  The flavors... Turkey & gravy, Green beans with Rice, and Organic Bananas.  By far the bananas looked the best, but I sure wouldn't bother to taste them.

Opening presents... 

The boys paired up to play "The Price is Right."  They had to guess the price of three baby items without going over the actual price.  Aaron ending up with the Boudreax Butt Paste.

Tyson won the Sippy cup... 

Drew won the Nasal Aspirator or as Jessica and I call it the Booger Sucker.  Hopefully it will be useful to the Libby's.  

It was a great night and we were so happy to honor these special girls.  Not too much longer until we get to meet the new additions.

Update:  The office is coming along very nicely.  We won't be able to finish by the time Zach's starts school (that's tomorrow, Jan 20th), but we should be able to finish by this weekend.  More pics to come once the room is done!

The Office

So my pictures just uploaded backwards and you'll see the point of the title of this post after about 4 pictures.  How frustrating is that.  Oh well... as you can see below, this is Bailey's new chair.  She is very thankful that we moved the papasan chair down into the living room for her pleasure.  We all have our spots to sit now in the living room.... Zach takes the couch, I have the recliner and Bailey has the papasan.  Works for me.  What a cute little pup.

I'm about to show you one of my most favorite Christmas presents from this year.  You may ask... how could a trash can be that great.  Well here are my top ten list of reasons.... 

10.  It's pretty.

9.  It matches our kitchen well.

8.  It's bigger than the last one.

7.  It holds in trash smells better than the last one. 

6.  It has a cool foot pedal to open it.

5.  You don't have to worry about the trash bag falling inside of the trash can, if you know what I mean. 

4.  It's not an eyesore. 

3.  Can I say it's pretty again.

2.  The lid stays on. 

And the #1 reason... not once since using this trash can has Bailey been able to tip it over and get all the trash strewn across the floor.  This was the main reason for being on my Christmas list this year and I'm sooooo thankful to have gotten this pretty Stainless Steel SimpleHuman trash can.  Thanks mom and dad!

The most sentimental gift of the season... (besides the really pretty necklace that Zach gave me) was this Rooster than now sits on top of my fridge.  My dad got both my sister and I roosters for our kitchens and we had to pick.  I let me sister pick first and so this is the one that I got.  My dad watched at Tom Thumb for this litle guy to go on sale and he got a steal.  So you may ask, what's the significance of a Rooster.  I sure didn't know until I got one for Christmas....  Well in Portugal it's the symbol of good luck.  So I guess that if you have one in your kitchen, your cooking is supposed to be better than before.  Well see if that holds true in 2009

And now to the point of the title of the post....

And no, I'm not speaking of the ever popular TV show on NBC... I'm talking about our office in the spare bedroom on the second floor of our house.  It is getting a complete and much needed makeover.  Part of our Christmas present was the flooring for this room.  Getting the flooring, just made all sorts of ideas run through Zach's head and so now we have a very large project on our hands that needs to be done in about a week.  Zach starts back to school on January 20th and I'd like for the room to be ready to put back together by then.  ;-)  We'll see if that happens. 

This the point that we are at right now... the carpet has been ripped out and the walls are being painted a new coat of white.  When we moved into this house we did a lot of stuff, but we didn't touch this room, so the paint is much needed.

The wall that you see in the pic has a fresh coat of white paint.  It's looking lovely.

The ceiling has been scraped... we figured since we were ripping the carpet out we might as well get the popcorn off the ceiling.  It's gonna look so much better as a flat ceiling.

This is the opening to the closet that Zach modified... you'll see the old opening in later pics.  It's now going to have double doors and be much more accessible.

Here's the whole opening for the closet door... another handy thing that Zach added was a light in the closet.  Not sure why they didn't put those in to begin with, but now it won't be a problem.  It's gonna be a cool light too... when you open the door, it comes on and when you close it it goes off.  I'll never forget to flip the switch that way.  ;-)

This is the closet with the new frame... before any drywall was put up.

Oh yes... this is the part that we don't like to discuss... I would like to forget that it's there, but it's somewhat hard when you wake up and go to bed with this mess.  We moved everything that was in the office into the cubby in our bedroom.  Good thing is that this is on Zach's side of the bed... I don't think that I could stand it if it was on mine.

And this is the beginning of the demolition.  It was a mess... what am I saying, it's still a mess.

The original closet door opening.  A 24 inch wide door for a closet that was at least 6 feet long.  It's too small of an opening.  It will be much more functional now.  

Let me just say... I'm working on a mac right now, and it's not cooperating with me... it could be the user.  I'm just saying, I don't get it like a PC.  

I will be glad when this project is finished, so that the entire house can be deep cleaned... right now there are layers of dust on every object and it's definitely doing a number on my allergies. Well I'll let you know how we progress... and for now, I must go get to painting.