One more animal in the menagerie

I went out to grab myself a late dinner tonight and as I walked out the front door, I found a little tree frog hanging out on the side of the house. And when I came back, he was on the other wall. So there might be one or several. This is why I get to hear them and the crickets at night. I like them as they remind me of home. And while I was driving, there was a beautiful orange crescent moon hanging low in the west.

Office Organization

Here's the shelf I built yesterday for our office closet, but I couldn't post the picture yesterday. I have to build the other one today and then get it organized. I've already almost filled this one.

Updates to baby room, guest room, and office

Gene and I had a busy labor day weekend working on the house. We built the crib and tested out the ladybug bedding which is a keeper. Here's some pictures:

While we don't have a mattress yet, you can sort of see what the bumper looks like

She now has a full closet of clothes that Gene's jealous of (just the amount, not the color or style!)

We also picked out a new bedspread for the guest room. While it has some burgundies that I wasn't sure would work, it actually seems to accent the purple quite well.

I also made one of our closet organizers from Target today. Now I just have to make the other and actually organize them. But I was able to already unpack two boxes that I hadn't gotten to yet. That's my goal by the end of the weekend to have all the boxes gone. Fingers crossed.

Moving into Fall

Today feels like Autumn in Duarte because it's a nice 73 degrees and I can open my windows and feel the nice breeze. It's refreshing after getting back from my trip to Indiana.

Since I have been out of town, not much has been happening at the house, but getting back I've been working on filling the baby's room. I got quite a bit of help from the showers back home. (Thanks, everyone!) Gene's pretty sure that our kid's wardrobe has outgrown his own. So now she has a full closet and I picked out a ladybug bedding set that goes with the green in the room. Now we have to see if Gene likes it!

I also ordered our crib online and it will be coming in the next week. It's crazy to start getting ready for her. It makes the reality that she's coming in a few months that more real. I also have the car seat and stroller base sitting in the living room ready and waiting.

I'll work on more pictures soon!

Floors Complete!

After having to rip up the yellow office floor due to water (flooding from the air conditioner), we've finally finished both the yellow room and green baby's room. Can you believe there'll be a baby in there in four months? We have a lot to do to get some baby furniture in there.

But, here's the work we've done in the past week and a half:

First, the baby's room with the hardwood floor. And, yes, baby clothes are already in the closet.

While it looks like we have two different color greens in there, it really the light and sun that makes it look more lime green in the second picture.

We also got the guest room together more and have a white metal framed queen bed in there and I found a great silvery gray bedspread at Ross.

A close-up view. It needs a little ironing or steaming to get out the wrinkles.

And we also put together a white dresser in the guest room as well. Now I have to stop using it to hold stuff and actually decorate it with some silver candlesticks and a silver mirror above. And of course fill it with some extra clothes.

Here's the completed office once again. We've started moving the computers and printers in, but it also became a catch all for our extra chairs.

The new and last kitchen counter with our full dining room set.

Now that most of the big work is done, I have to work on unpacking all of the boxes and putting it all away. Then paint a few closet doors to hide all of our stuff!

Updates over the last two weeks

With the long weekend, we were able to get quite a bit of work done. We're in the final push before Gene heads to Atlanta for awhile and the housework is left to me. Here are a few updates of things that have happened in the last few weeks.

Right before we left for Alaska we got our dining room table and three chairs. We're supposed to have six, but three had scratches on them so we're hoping that we'll get replacements when I take these back. But here's what the kitchen/dining room looks like now.

We also were able to get in our long butcher block countertop in the kitchen.

Also, here's what the finished purple room looks like. Ignore all the boxes it's holding for right now as we finish the floors in the other rooms.

We were also able to paint the baby's room:

And finally we were able to get a queen boxspring for the mattress that our friends gave to us. While at the store I also found some cute lamps.

Living and Working in the house

While we're moved into the house, we still have a lot of unpacking and work to do. We got our countertops in so that I can now cook meals at the house and wash the dishes. Here's a few pictures of them.

Unfortunately, we had a setback last Sunday night when we noticed that our floor in the yellow room was squishy. That's right, there was water under our new beautiful hardwood floor. So we had to move all of the boxes we were storing in there, rip up the floor, and try to figure out the leak. We eventually realizes that it was our air conditioner (with a little advice from my dad) and there was a pump at the bottom to get rid of water that wasn't plugged in. A simple solution, but now we'll have to redo the floors in there--but not until we figure out a several ways to protect ourselves from water again.

However, we did get our guest room painted purple last night. Here's a few pictures of that:

More to do today to get our stuff put away and get ready to lay more floors in the guest room

Finally, an update

I know that you've been anxioulsy awaiting an update, but Gene and I have been so busy at the house (as well as with work) that I haven't had time to really update what we've been doing. But we're getting close to being able to move in. Here's pics and news from the past few weeks:

Gene ripped off the last of the countertop. He was the winner of who could get the most off in one big chunk.

I finished the floor in the office:

Gene installed our new dishwasher:

Gene cut and sealed our butcher block countertops. I can't wait to get these into the house. They're beautiful.

Yesterday and today we worked on finishing up the touchups in the kitchen, laying elastilon and then laying the floor. We're almost halfway done!

We also finally replaced one of the lights in the hallway with a much prettier and updated fixture.

We've also been slowly moving boxes out the house and into the closets. Next weekend we hope to bring most of the big stuff and be in by Sunday/Monday.

Day 49: Breaking Countertop and Mowing Grass

So on Friday, my mom was here to help us out. We took off the counter of the kitchens so we can get them ready for our new butcher block counter top. Here's a few pictures of her working hard:

And here's what we finished by the end of Friday:

Here's the nicely mown lawn as well.

Day 44: Floor and Hummingbirds

Two pictures of our little hummingbird mama in her nest! I have to bring over my hummingbird feeder for her.

And of course here's the progress on the floor:

Outside of the house

Here's a picture of the outside of our house. It's really yellow, but it was a sunny day.

Day 43: Tile...

So today Gene spent a lot of time ripping out tile in the foyer so we could lay down either new tile or hardwood there. I think we've decided on hardwood. That tile was tough as it was really stuck to the floor.

I finished painting the hallway touchups and yellow room so Sunday will be floor laying.

Exciting news on the bird front--we have lots of hummingbirds, but yesterday Gene found a little hummingbird nest with a little bird sitting in it! We might have baby hummingbirds. However, we do have two nests in our eaves with birds in them so we'll have other babies as well--but they're near our doors and the birds fly out angrily whenever we go in and out of the house. But we can't remove the nests until they're done having babies.

Day 37: Floor, glorious floor!

Today we were finally able to lay floor and finished most of it in the master bedroom. We'll just have to continue on out into the hallway and make sure it connects and flows. Here's a picturs of what we have done so far with lots of little spacers to give us room away from the wall.

In the pictures the floor looks darker than what I think it looks like in real life. However, it does have variation to it. I can't wait to see what it looks like with all of our furniture in it.










Notice in the second picture how shiny white that closet is--that's due to my brilliant paint job. Or less than brilliant as I think the closet will quickly not be seen from all the stuff in there. But it does have a new coat of paint.

And here's one last up close look at the floor:

I think this approximates the color much better.

Below are our adventures in gardening (which means here's what blooms each week)

We have a sort of lily that has bloomed near our rose bush. One of our other trees we discovered is a red bottle brush tree with beautiful magenta blooms. We also have tons of birds in our backyard and saw a male hooded oriole on one of our trees--it was a beautiful bright yellow with just a little bit of black on it.

That's the update from this weekend!

Day 36: Trying to get to the floors

Gene and I spent the day at the house painting trim and and closets in the master bedroom. This touching up and detailed work took us much longer than expected. (Added by an extra trip back to Home Depot to exchange Swiss Coffee for Ultra Pure White.)

We got the layer of Elastilon (this magic stuff that will make our floor all stick together) down, but didn't yet get the wood down. We stopped so because we needed to start cutting stuff and Gene didn't want to make mistakes because he was tired.

On the way home, Gene stopped and saw tons of boxes being thrown out by some of our apt neighbors, so he took them and now we have a lot of packing to do.

Day 29

Here's what we got accomplished last week. Painting the living room Gobi desert.

Then after we did that, Gene was able to prime the kichen and we were able to start painting it on Thursday night.

And here's some pictures of our lilac, rose, and loquats:

There isn't more to say really as I'm just catching up on last week's work. I'll have more after this weekend.