The One With the Swings

Continuing on through July are family dinners every Monday.

It can be insane some days to have an entire night every week blocked out for a family event.

But our kids love it.

I have to go by myself with the kids since Eric's work schedule has him working 3-11 on Mondays, but it works out, and it makes me not have to cook a night, so it's really a win-win.

 

My grandpa put up swings the other day and the two little girls have just adored playing in them.

It's pretty adorable.

One of them has the red swing.

And one has the blue swing.

And they don't like sharing with the boys.

 

Paxton also got a new look.



The One With the Vanity

Preslie is a diva.

BAD.

It's cute right now when she is three.

But I'm sure I'll be in for it when she's thirteen.

I look forward to it.

 

I'm not sure what possessed me to think that adding a vanity to her room would help this diva attitude. But I found this hideous little girls vanity on craigslist for $20.

I rarely find ANYTHING on craigslist it seems.

I'll get on there and look around, but everyone wants all this money for their stuff that, let's face it, is crap. I don't like paying money for other people's crap.

I've been looking and looking though for some sort of a coffee table/ottoman thing that I can redo to put in our living room. The space between our new sectional is such a random size and shape that it's proving extremely difficult to be something ready made to fit there.

Bring in Craigslist.

Only problem is the people with stuff that is old and awesome and would look great redone know that their stuff is old, awesome, and would look great redone . . . . and they like to charge you for it as if it already is redone.

Tough one for me because I think of all the time (that I don't have) that will need to be put into it and all of a sudden paying a $100 for a coffee table I will have to buy paint for and put blood, sweat, and most likely many tears into, doesn't seem all that reasonable.

 

In all this looking around for a coffee table I have happened to find two great things.

1 - a midcentury upright grand piano

2 - a hideous little girl's vanity

 

The piano I will go into more detail on later. My original plan upon seeing this thing on Clist was to sand it down and whitewash it - keeping in line with this current obsession with light white things I've had. But then after my husband and five of his greatest guy friends (they are pretty great in my book after doing this) moved it from a little house about 30 minutes away and into our garage I noticed that the aged black look this beauty had was spectacular . . . and all of a sudden I couldn't think of redoing it.

Added bonus - when I started to think of how much time it would take me to sand this sucker down I was more than happy with how it currently looked.

 

Back to the little girl's vanity.

On craigslist it looked like this:

 

In truth it wasn't terrible as is. I'm sure as is it probably would have made some little girl very happy.

But I had grander plans for it.

I've wanted to add aqua into Preslie's room for some time now and this seemed like a great piece to do it with.

 

So after HOURS of sanding (and an entire office full of pick dust) I finally painted it teal.

And then it looked like this:

 

Not terrible either really. But I had wanted it to be aged and look distressed and old. So I went to work dry brushing it with white paint. And then I sanded again and used dark brown stain over the top.  And this was the finished product.

The drawer pull is ending up being a challenge as the pull actually went into the drawer, which I hadn't been planning, but I am sure I will find a little crystal drawer pull around eventually. 





The One With July

The rest of July we mostly tried to lay low. With temperatures in Nampa hitting well over the triple digits it wasn't much fun to play outside unless it's with the sprinkler.

The kids have spent many afternoons on the tramp with a sprinkler blowing up through the bottom.

They think it's pretty hilarious.

Eric has truly been enjoying not having school work.

I'm sure he's beginning to wonder how he ever fit it in to begin with because everything else has just taken up all the extra space it left behind.

Me, I'm working on school work. My classes are doubled up right now so I feel like all I do is work on schoolwork.

 

Anyway, moving on.

July has been nuts.

We had TWO surprise birthday parties.

One for my bestie.

The next for her husband.

And neither one of them knew that the other was throwing a surprise party for them.

FUNNY!

 

Then Eric's buddy Bryan's fiancé Lisa (got that straight???) turned 30 and we celebrated with a surprise party at Barbacoa. We had never ben to Barbocoa's before, so it was fun for us. Nice to get dressed up and head out on the town sans kiddos for an evening of fun with adults. Eric's brother, Mat, ended up being in town so we drug him along too.

The food was delicious! To be honest we filled up on sushi right before because we L-O-V-E sushi, but then we went and kept eating at Barbacoa because everything they brought out was delicious! The guacamole??? Ya, - uhmazing! And I don't even like guacamole so that's saying a lot.

 



 

Other than all these birthdays, and school, and work, and homework, and church callings, and family time, we really haven't been doing a whole lot. Although some how we don't have time for anything else. . . . I guess we must be busy!