The Cloffice

 Since the office area of the house was turned into a school room, with no room to be an office and school room, I was trying to figure out where we could put an office. Thanks to Pintrest, I discovered The Cloffice!! We have a closet by the back door that we didn't really need to use as a closet. We have a good-sized coat closet by the front door, plus a storage bench. So, I decided we should make a cloffice! I liked the white-I knew it would help to make the space feel bigger and not so closed-in. I had plenty of paint left over from our bedroom, so I just used that (it actually matches the hallway pretty closely).

 Aaron took out the shelf. It was nailed in! And since Mom & Dad showed up unexpectedly and Dad can't be here without him doing a project, he got to finish it :)

We had a bit of debate (Aaron & I) about what to do for the "desk" part. I wanted to just cut the shelf down and repaint it white, Aaron wanted to get a new piece of wood and stain it. My whole idea was to use what we had and not spend much to create this cloffice. Aaron just really likes the true stained wood look. Well...Dad and I went to the lumber yard to price wood and it was going to be $50 (not to mention it was 4' x 8'!). I convinced Aaron to let me go with the white re-purposed shelf and if he didn't like it, we would go with the stained wood. I keep telling him he should never doubt my decorating sense! ;) I won him over...again.

 Aaron went through all his totes of memorabilia and found more than enough to decorate his side of the cloffice! 

 I got the floating shelves and corner shelves at Lowes (with THE dumbest directions in the world for installation!!!!). Those were the most expensive part of the makeover (maybe $50 for all 5 of them?) I already had all the paint for the desk top and walls.

We used the filing cabinet we've had for years to help hold the desk up and for obvious storage purposes. I just got a $5 can of spray paint and made it white! I also bought some office organizer stuff for maybe $20. All in all, it was less than $100 to create an office out of a closet! We have another chair in storage (at Grandma J's!) to use. And I'll probably keep my eyes open for another wooden chair to replace the roller chair.

I LOVE my cloffice! It turned out so nice! Thanks Dad for doing this!!

Isaac's Room

 I finally got Isaac's room done! It didn't take long, just a matter of getting in there between sleep times and doing it!

 His room is animal-themed. Mom got these stickers at a garage sale a couple of years ago! Coincidentally, they match the curtains and the crib set (which was from Jacob).

 I moved things around from where we put them to begin with. I felt like the glider was just out in the middle of the room, taking up too much space. I like it a lot better this way. I'm keeping my eyes open for a small side table to put next to the glider (which, by the way, was from a....you guessed it! Garage sale! Looks brand new. I love it).

 The shelf above the changing table was made by a friend of Aaron's and given to us as a wedding gift...it's worked very nicely for storing baby stuff! Maybe someday it will make it to a living room :) The canvas painting to the left is one that Seth brought back from Ghana for us! I just have it taped up right now...haven't figured out how I'm going to frame it yet.

 Isaac loves the clock (that's what he's pointing to). It also was a wedding gift. It plays music every hour and has clowns that go up and down kind of like a pendulum. He loves the music and kept hollering for more songs! It was funny.

 Had to do letters for Isaac, too! :) I was trying to decide what to put on them when I remembered these stickers. Perfect!

 These prints I'm going to make into canvases. Loving the "Kissables" black & white collage. Underneath is another Kris Goertzen canvas "For this child I prayed". I didn't think the 2 different shades of green would look very good, but I like it.

My poor baby has "borderline" bronchitis! :( Yesterday evening he started with a nasty, chesty cough (sounds like an asthmatic cough actually) so I took him in today. Thankfully his lungs are clear (it doesn't sound like it from my perspective, but their bodies are so little that it's nearly impossible to tell without a stethoscope.). So hopefully in a few more days, he'll be good as new and back to SLEEPING! Otherwise I don't think I'll survive!

Well, There Goes 10 Years...

Dad remembered that he hadn't checked on Anna like he had promised. He came back out after a minute and asked,

"Where's your boy?"

"Isn't he in his bed? He was sound asleep when I left his room."

"No, he's not there."

"In the top bunk? Anna's room?"

"No. No."

I figured he was just squished up in the corner under the covers. I go to check it out. No Jacob. I pull the covers off his bed. Nope. I look in the top bunk...not there either. I'm getting mildly concerned. If Jacob wakes up, he comes and finds us right away. And we were all sitting in the TV room the whole time so he hadn't come this way at all. All four of us are searching for him. I looked in his closet, under his bed, all over Anna's room. I'm starting to freak out a little bit on the inside. All I can think of is that the windows are open-someone broke the screen and took him. We've looked everywhere we can think of so Mom and Aaron start looking outside. Suddenly Dad says,

"Here he is!"

GOOD GRAVY!!! This is his and Anna's "secret hiding place"! He had to have been half asleep/sleep-walking. He's never done anything like this before, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised since I used to sleep walk. At 3, I took a midnight stroll, in the middle of winter with snow on the ground, barefoot in my nightgown. I got stuck between the storm door and front door and woke up screaming. It took them a bit to find me. After we found Jacob, Mom said "now you know how we felt!" Sure, except you could FOLLOW THE SOUND of my crying! Needless to say, we will be dead-bolting the door now-not to keep people out, but to keep Jacob IN! The adventures of parenthood!

Blessed

I'm feeling beyond blessed tonight (well...this morning). Many reasons. Jacob woke up (scared me half to death) so I took him back to bed where he, of course, requested to play with my hair. I obliged (I'm not sure there's much sweeter than feeling those chubby little hands run through my hair!) but Isaac was screaming and had been for a long time. So when I thought Jacob was asleep, I slipped out of bed. But I knocked my knee of the wood floor and woke him up. I told him I had to take care of Isaac and would be back. I got some cuddle time in with my baby and went back to check on Jacob. He wasn't in his bed so I checked Anna's room. There they were, snuggled up sound asleep and Jacob had his hand in Anna's hair.

I'm beyond blessed to see those two so close, the best of friends.

I'm beyond blessed to have a sweet baby (who is growing too quickly!) that loves to cuddle.

Sometimes I look around our house and it just feels surreal that it's ours. So many people have said something along the lines of "You guys really deserve this!" And part of me agrees wholeheartedly that YES! We DESERVE this house...we waited a long time and we worked really hard to get out of debt so we could afford another house and etc etc etc. But really? We don't deserve anything. But God, in His grace and mercy and love, blessed us with this new house. And I pray that we will use this blessing to bring glory to Him, to spread His love, to be a haven to those He puts in our path.

I'm beyond blessed (those are only a few of the reasons I'm blessed! I could go on and on...). And it's only by God's grace, mercy, and love that I am beyond blessed.

Kids' Bathroom: Before

I say this a before photo because I think this weekend we're going to put tile down. Lucky for us, the previous owners left plenty of extra tile from the master bathroom! So it will be a fairly inexpensive re-do!! The only thing I've done to it is add the shower curtain and rug. I think I'll also get new knobs for the drawers.

 Mom has the coolest fishy bathroom and the kids just love it, so I decided to go with a fishy fishy theme :) No wall decor...not sure if I'll do anything or not.

 This cute decal was already here. I love this vanity because it's the perfect height for kids, but there's still the mirror above the sink that's tall enough for adults.

 It's a very small bathroom, but since it's not the only one...I don't care! ;) There's a floor to ceiling storage cabinet behind the door that holds a ridiculous amount of blankets and towels.

This little guy is a stinker! He loves playing in the bathroom, which usually amounts to a) trying to get into the toilet (GROSS!) b) trying to dump out any soap bottle he can grab, or c) trying to get in the tub! Speaking of which, I think he's eating a stick right now so I better go! Hopefully by next week I'll have the after pictures, as well as the cloffice pictures!!

Jacob's Very Own Room!

Finally got another room decorated (for the most part...are you noticing a theme??)

I'll give you three guesses whose room this is...and the first 2 don't count! ;) Once again, Mom and Dad made some awesome garage sale finds for me! (the decal, for one)

I didn't take any before pictures of Jacob's room...I should have. We painted it, with John Deere colors of course! I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a way to paint it those colors without doing the entire walls yellow/green. Thankfully I found this idea online (the stripes). I found the fabric for the curtains at Hobby Lobby. The toy box and stickers, a garage sale find (as well as the pictures...more on those later)!

 The top bunk has become the stuffed animals' bed :) I need to get some paper and re-do Jacob's name, but I wanted to get it hung up.

 Have to get the black & white collage up! Bookshelf-garage sale. Tool bench-given to Jacob by a neighbor. The roller cabinet thing is where his train stuff is kept. The little peg hanging thing is that picture of the two little farmer boys that says "Been farmin' long?" :)

 The birth announcement plate my aunt & uncle got for Jacob (it has his birth date, weight, time, etc "hidden" throughout the nursery room scene). Love it!

 Closet door to the right, with another decal Mom found.

 No truer words were ever spoken, as far as Jacob is concerned! ;)

 When I saw this at Kris's booth, I had to get it for Jacob's room. Talk about perfect!!

Another great garage sale find! I can't remember who the artist is, but Mom found these 2 prints. Perfect for my little farmer boy! :)

Next up, the kids' bathroom before pictures!

Jacob the...Scholar??

Jacob's enthusiasm for school has waned...dramatically. I'm not really surprised, and I'm not concerned. He won't start kindergarten for 2 more years because his birthday is so late. He knows all his letters and sounds and numbers, can count to at least 30, can write his name with a little help (knows how to spell it), etc etc. So I'm not pushing it and let him decide when he wants to join us (except Bible time...that's mandatory). He does great with his Awana verses! The other day was a day he was more interested in doing school. I think it had more to do with the fact that he didn't want to play by himself than it did with the fact that he actually wanted to do any school! :) He said he wanted to do "coloring school" so he got out his pencil box and Case coloring book and started working (he turned to a maze). I turned back to work with Anna on Phonics and laughed when I looked back at Jacob and saw this...

Silly boy! I guess he needed 3 pencils to do this maze! :)

-- Sent from my Palm Pixi