The Chaos Continues

I told myself I wouldn't post until my life settled down a little bit. Then I realized today that that will probably never happen, so I post now as I have just cleaned the entire house (it's still not perfect, but it's "clean"), haven't showered, and have a to-do list 8 miles long.

The move went well! Thanks so my awesome uncle and aunt who were divinely inspired to call us to see if we needed help moving, the process went quite smoothly. We left apartment living on Tuesday, August 5, and moved into our house on Thursday, August 7. It's so different having 2.5 times more living space than we're used to, and our own yard. The house is never clean (I'm so glad we opted for a smaller home) but I love the extra space. We've become quite the DIY-ers by painting the front living area... twice (didn't look so good the first time around), painting the banister and front door, finishing our kitchen table, putting in under cabinet lighting (still in progress) and painting our new entertainment center (also still in progress). I've been shopping like a crazy woman trying to make the house look more like a home and things are starting to come together nicely. Here's some before and after shots for ya.

BEFORE


AFTER

The stuff on the end table in the corner still needs a home and I need some drapery on the windows, but otherwise, it's lookin good!

BEFORE



The whole table was finished in this light color (not my favorite) and had a lot of dings and chunks scraped out, but after our little staining escapade...

AFTER




BANGARANG! Love the darker stain. We still have to do the chairs, but I'm saving that for when I have more patience (this project takes A LOT of work)

The Banister and Door
BEFORE
White and colorless (sorry, I don't really have a good before picture, you can see a little bit of the railing in one of the above "before" pictures)

AFTER

Beautiful chocolate brown railing and green door. Yes, we're missing a white banister piece, and no, I can't seem to find them anywhere.

And finally, just some other pictures...

The color I'm painting my new TV stand and hutch. I'll also be putting a brown glaze on the edges to give it more depth.
P.S. if you're ever shopping for an entertainment center, buying a TV stand and hutch separately will save you some major money. If they don't match, like mine, just repaint or refinish it yourself.


I LOVE that the fridge came with a water/ice dispenser. Divine.


My refinished coffee table that I found at DI. Love the old antique look it has.

Next, we had our friends Kristin and Cameron visit us last weekend! We had a blast with them, they're the greatest. Since I'm a terrible picture taker, I didn't get any pictures with them, but I did get some of the kids at the Town Center playground/water park.





We went to an outlet mall on the border of Nevada and California which had some AWESOME outlet stores... Gap, Old Navy, Children's Place, Banana Republic, Hollister, Williams Sonoma, and there were more, we just had to please the kids. Anyway, best outlet mall I've ever been to (even better than Patomac Mills in VA, which is supposedly THE OUTLET... sorry Patomac Mills, you've been demoted). Anyway, I saw a really cute cake mold at Williams Sonoma that would be perfect for Ashton's birthday, but my inner budgeter told me not to buy it. The last morning Kristin and Cameron were here, Cameron disappeared (telling me he was going to get something to surprise Kristin) and came home with the mold!!! I couldn't believe it. Not only was it super nice of them to get it for me, but the outlet was 40 minutes away!!! ONE WAY!! That's almost an hour and a half of driving! That's love. You guys are too awesome for words.



Finally, Monday night Adam asked me if I would make his 15 yr old brother a birthday cake since his mom was out of town. Problem was, his birthday was the NEXT DAY. But I never turn down a decent opportunity to make cake. So I thought and looked around for ideas. For those of you who are blog stalkers, you may know where I got this cake idea, and since I was in a pinch, I felt no remorse for copying someone else's creativity. The kids were pretty neglected on Tuesday as I tried to finish the cake, but they put up with me pretty well. You should see the mess I made though. It was IMPRESSIVE. I'm not the cleanest person by nature (I like to blame it on a creative mind) so if I think something's messy, it must be pretty bad, and it was just about the worst. Ashton found an "empty" can of frosting (yes, I cheated and bought the boxed stuff, I only had 20 hours to put together an entire cake, get 8 hours of sleep and take care of 2 demanding children), but he seemed to clean out the dregs pretty well. Here's what I found after 10 minutes...



After cleaning him up and putting on some finishing touches, I ended up with this beauty...





Yay! It was fun to make. Anyway, that's been our last 6 weeks in a nutshell. Now I need to go prepare my talk for Sunday, ahh!
Ciao