Our Very Festive Weekend

Joe works from home on Fridays, and I just happened to get an email from Bath and Bodyworks saying their candles were on sale for one day only, so we spent his lunch break at the mall. There happened to be absolutely no wait to see Santa. The poor guy was just twiddling his thumbs, and actually had the photographer take a few photos, just to make sure they got it right. I had a bad case of hat head, and was not really "picture ready" but I think part of the point of Santa pictures is to have a somewhat awkward yearly family memento. Ez definitely took care of that with his stony glare. He did wave to Santa before and after the picture though, so he doesn't completely hate Santa, he's just not a fan of the picture process. In Santa's words, "I can tell when a kid is gonna freak the hell out, and I knew he would be ok." Well said, Santa. Well said.

Friday evening we wanted to go visit our favorite Christmas light spots in Pasadena. We started with the tree at the City Hall:

Ez loved the giant tree, of course. He went straight for the lights, and then we walked around the tree a few times. Unfortunately, that is where our Christmas light journey ended. Two of the other spots didn't have their lights on, which we didn't understand. It's pretty close to Christmas, and one of them was decorated, the lights just weren't on. 

Saturday afternoon Ez got to play at Grandma Kat's while Joe and I went to the Nutcracker. I love ballet, and haven't been in forever. And Joe hasn't been at all, so it was really fun. We saw the IFP Ballet company, and they did not disappoint. The only downside was we had to move seats because there were a bunch of little ballerina girls in front of us standing in their seats and dancing in the aisles. It was really cute. For a few minutes. And then it was distracting. Thankfully there were empty seats a few rows back. After the show, we googled "en pointe" and looked at the images, and came across one ballerina's bare foot. Scary. They definitely sacrifice a lot to be able to dance around on their toes like that.

And just for fun, I found a little pregnancy comparison of me around 4 months pregnant with Ez on the left, and about 3 months pregnant with baby #2 on the right:

Apparently I can't pass up an opportunity to pose with a giant nutcracker. 

Some of the cute little candy dancers from the show.

On Saturday evening we went back to Pasadena for a friend's birthday party at the Melting Pot. It was a lot of fun catching up with friends, and it was cool because they had a private room, so the kids could run around without causing too much of a ruckus. I don't know if you've ever been to the Melting Pot before, but it was our first time, and most likely our last. We had heard it was expensive, but that still didn't prepare me for paying over $50 for literally: one bite-sized chunk of salmon, half a baby potato, 2 mushrooms, a side salad, and a rice krispie treat and some marshmallows. The main problem was that aside from the salad and veggies, it wasn't at all vegetarian friendly. Also, if you're strictly vegetarian, you probably wouldn't want your veggies cooked with other people's meat. Thankfully I eat salmon, but there were only 5 bites to be split among 4 people. It would've made more sense for us to just eat beforehand, skip the food, and show up for the company. Lesson learned. 

Afterward we went to another of our favorite Pasadena Christmas light spots: Hastings Ranch. This is our 4th year going as a couple (see here and here), and our 2nd year going with Ez. Now that Ez is in a forward-facing carseat he was so enthralled by the lights. When we got out to walk he was so excited his little feet were running in the air before they even hit the pavement. Ez has a thing with deer right now, and one of the streets was completely lined with lit-up reindeer, so he would go up to each one, touch it, and yell "DEER!" then get really excited when we praised him for getting the word right. A lot of the houses also have Christmas carols playing, so there was a whole lot of impromptu dancing going on. Basically, it was better than I could have imagined. Seeing Christmas through Ez's eyes is the best gift. He makes everything a thousand times more fun and magical.

I've got one more side by side pregnancy comparison for ya. Me kissing a reindeer in 2012 on the left, vs. me, the reindeer, and Ez this past weekend:

The night pretty much ended when Joe dropped his brand new iphone 6 and smashed the screen. Thankfully it's going to cost less to fix than we thought. An alternative way we could have spent our Saturday evening would have been to have a nice cozy bonfire using twenty dollar bills as kindle. But such is life, and lessons learned: no more Melting Pot and heavy-duty rubber cases for Joe's phone from now on.

Sunday turned out to be pretty productive. I did most of the gift wrapping, finished up a few gift projects, and we spent the evening hunting for the cheapest price on a new iphone screen. 

How was your weekend? Have you made good progress on your holiday bucket list? Here's how ours is looking at the moment: 

Our Modesto Christmas trip is planned. The Snow Festival isn't going to happen, because we went car shopping that day instead - a welcome tradeoff! So far I've watched half of two Christmas movies (Elf and The Holiday), so that kinda counts as watching one whole Christmas movie, right??

Linking up with Our Pretty Little Girls, Happily Ever Mock, and Sundaes & Spaghetti for:

Home Makeover Project: Bookshelf

I shared this picture on my Instagram a week ago, but I wanted to share a few more photos on the blog as well. I have a bit of an obsession with shelves, I feel like you can't really have enough. Actually, maybe I just have an obsession with furniture in general. Especially if it's a really good deal. We bought this shelf at a thrift store for less than $40 almost two years ago. Other than a few nicks, it was pretty sturdy and a really good deal. I bought it with the intention to paint it, but at the time I had never painted anything, and so it got put off for a really long time. These were the inspiration pictures I had in mind:

I used the same paint I used for our front door, a dark bluish gray, and I mixed it with the plain gray I used in Ez's bedroom to make it a slightly lighter gray. The wood soaked up a lot of paint, so it took three coats till I was happy with the results. All in all it took about a week's worth of naptimes. Well worth the work, because I'm in love with the results. 

Even if we didn't paint though, I think just the fact that I cleaned up, got rid of some clutter, and organized made a huge difference. I've been following along with the Living Well Spending Less: 31 Days to Clutter Free Challenge. Not all of the daily challenges apply to me, but days 4, 5, and 6 inspired this project. Almost as much as I love shopping for furniture at thrift stores, I love collecting clutter around the house and sending it off to Goodwill. I'm not a neat freak by any means, but I just like everything to have a home (even if it's not put away, it puts my mind at ease to know it could be). I gather up clothes and other random things several times a year for donation. Since we just moved in July, I thought I'd already sorted and discarded most of our unwanted stuff. But toward the end of our move a lot of stuff just wound up getting thrown into boxes without getting sorted like I'd hoped, so our bookshelf was way too cluttered. I got rid of a lot of DVDs, some still unwrapped that we agreed we'd never watch. I put the rest in those gray chevron baskets that I got at TJ Maxx. I also got rid of a ton of books I knew I'd never read again, moved all of Joe's trivia books to the bathroom (we have a shelf in there and it seems more like bathroom reading to me), and moved a few books to our shelf in the bedroom. I love how organized the living room feels now. I really believe that clutter produces anxiety, and I love walking through the door and seeing our organized, (and currently pumpkin-filled) bookshelf. 

So that's my latest home makeover project! Because it was so time-intensive (and because I'm running out of stuff to paint) it may be the last one for a little while. We're heading into the holiday season, which means things are about to get hectic! In a fun way, of course :)

PS - do you have any fast, surefire ways to keep clutter under control? I feel like it's a constant battle in our house (which I'm betting all parents can relate to). 

Home Makeover Project: Ezzy's Room

It's about that time again...painting update time! One of Ez's walls is made of wooden boards, so I decided it might look cool to paint a striped accent wall. I don't think I would attempt this if the lines weren't already outlined for me. That's too much precision and measuring for a very non-type A person like myself, whose motto is "close enough." After a little searching on Pinterest, I decided I liked a subtle gray color. Here was my inspiration:

Here was Ez's room before:

I forgot to take before pictures, so this is from when we first moved in. Other than the horse and bucket of stuffed animals being moved against the wall, this is pretty much what his room looked like. With the way the furniture was arranged, the amount of play space was narrow and rectangular and not that inviting. I wanted to rearrange everything to make it more open. I moved his changing table and the small container next to it into his closet (his dresser was already in there), and I moved the crib against the back wall. That made a huge difference, and now Ez loves playing in there. He'll often wander in there by himself and I'll find him playing contentedly with his toys.

Back at our old place, Ezzy's nursery had a balloon theme. You can check it out here. Lately Ez has an obsession with moons, and one could even argue that his first word is moon/"boon" - so I ran with that and gave him a moon decoration from our room, a pond & moon painting that I made, and some moon and star night lights from Ikea. Even the gray paint is called silver moonlight. He also likes cars, so we got him the car roadway rug, also from Ikea. I think he'll love that for years to come. (I hope so, anyway!) The mini green recliner with monster trucks on it was a birthday gift from Ez's cousins & aunt. The rocking horse was a birthday gift from Gangy, Grampa, and the uncles. We got the white wall shelves from Ikea, and I really love having a few seasonal and favorite books displayed. For some reason Ez has the most Halloween books of any holiday. I think he has 2 Valentine books, 2 Christmas books, and 6 Halloween books. Not quite sure how that worked out. We'll have to add some Christmas books this year. 

I still haven't decided what to put above the big chair. I'm thinking maybe another shelf? Any suggestions? Also, my friend suggested curtains. I installed those blinds myself, and that was quite the headache (as were the shelves, for that matter), so curtains will be a future project, once the power drill and I are on speaking terms again. 

And here's a progress pic of Joe and Ez enjoying his little reading nook before it was quite finished. Love those two so much.

Home Makeover Project: Bedroom

I gave a little sneak peek of the bedroom earlier this week, and originally I thought I'd paint the dresser before I posted photos, but I've been spending the whole week slowly painting Ezzy's room, so the dresser will have to wait. I'll do a separate post on that later. 

So how did we go from the gray accent wall we'd originally planned on to teal? Joe and I were at Home Depot looking at paint samples. After I picked out my favorite grays, he said they were all more subtle than what he had in mind. I asked him what he liked and he picked out a deep jewel-tone blue. It was a very pretty color, but a little too blue for my taste. I'd had these inspiration photos posted on my pinterest bedrooms board for a long time (like way before we even owned a home):

Originally Joe hadn't been too receptive to a teal accent wall, so I scrapped the idea. But the blue he picked out seemed kinda close to teal, so I showed him the inspiration pics again, and we looked at teal samples until we found one with lots of blue in it. The color we went with is Behr's Beach Towel. I did two coats with a roller and voila:

I love the way it turned out. We got this bed frame from Ikea, which wasn't too bad to put together, considering my previous luck with Ikea products. We went to Target to look at bed skirts, but wound up finding the comforter and pillow cases on clearance for $23. Sold! I actually like the bed without a skirt. So the bed frame, comforter, and paint totaled less than $300. Not bad for how much better the room looks. Joe keeps saying how regal the room feels now. It makes me actually want to make the bed in the mornings (something I used to do maybe once a month, tops). 

Pretty much everything else in the room is second hand. We got the dresser from a garage sale. I thought it was a pretty good deal, until we got it home, put it in our room, went about our business and came back to the room to realize it was infested with crickets and they were everywhere. Eventually the crickets went away, or we moved, one or the other, but it is a very well made dresser. We got the trunk at a swap meet, and the shelf at a thrift store. 

Next up in the home makeover project will be Ezzy's room, which should be finished this weekend. Then it's on to sprucing up the furniture :)  This whole painting thing is addictive, can you tell?

Home Makeover Project: Front Door

Before: Too much white!

After: Loving the gray with the white trim.

Last week I shared our mini hallway makeover, and mentioned that I want to paint everything now. With that sentiment in mind, I moved onto our front door. I wasn't too fond of the white on white on white going on in our entry way/dining area, but I didn't want to paint an accent wall right there either, so painting the door was a good compromise. I love the way it turned out, I feel like it changed the entire room, and I was able to finish the project during Ezzy's naptime. We used Behr Silver Gray and left the trim the same white it was when we moved in. 

Next up: a lighter gray accent wall in the bedroom, and I'm contemplating painting stripes on one of Ez's walls. Something like this:

Can you tell I have a bit of a gray obsession? I want Ez's room to be gender neutral, if we do decide to paint. What do you think? Too much?

Home Makeover Project: Hallway Accent Wall

You may remember that on Friday I mentioned a few home projects we had in mind for the weekend. The main one was to till our backyard, but when we went to rent the tiller the guy at Home Depot told us we needed to soak our yard for several days or it wouldn't work. So that project got moved back. 

One thing we did accomplish was painting our hallway wall. When we got a/c installed, they removed a wall heater and replaced it with drywall, but it was up to us to paint it. We got a dozen different whitish paint samples, and tried to match it, but in the end we decided to go a different direction and make it an accent wall (which is much easier than matching the exact white/cream color out of hundreds of options!). 

We chose Ocean Ridge (home depot's brand). The hat stand used to have a home behind the front door at our old place, but it doesn't fit there here, so for now it's been sitting awkwardly in the hallway. We moved that out and added some wall hooks from Kohl's, as well as a white shelf from Home Depot and voila, the space looks completely different. The total cost was about $40, and the whole thing took less than two hours (not including letting the paint dry). The most time consuming part was taping off the trim. I thought we'd have to do several coats of paint, because I'd heard from my more painting-experienced friends that dry wall soaks up paint, but I liked the way it looked with just one. 

Now we want to paint everything! I already have paint for the front door (the inside), but we'd also like to do an accent wall in our bedroom, most likely a light gray. Expect more home makeovers in the near future!

Before

During

After