Real Life Reveal: Day 1

I always think it's fun to get a glimpse into someone's life. Is that weird? I think it's just refreshing to see how others live. I am slightly obsessed with reading blogs and sometimes I get blog envy. Same thing goes with Facebook. My life  is nothing if it isn't a chaotic one. And you know what, I love it anyways. I love that sometimes we have dished in the sink from the night before because I felt it was more important to watch a movie with my husband or play hide and seek with my girls. Or to just lay on the couch and scroll through Pinterest for hours and hours. Let's be honest. 

I'm fine with it. Envy is for the birds. 

My bathroom is the one room that I clean only when I think about it. 

Something like after I shower and everything is misted over and I wipe down the sink with a wad of toilet paper. Something like when the trash is full and I actually take it out. :) 

Yea, last Friday Emma had a dentist come to her school to teach the kids about dental hygiene. I love when things like this happen to her because she learns something new and gets really excited to do it, and do it right. If you look closely, this is what you will see: a bottle of lotion laying on its side. 5 things of tooth paste and a length of yarn tied to a hair band- or a leash for Emma's dog, Sparkles. 

Sometimes a girl just doesn't have the time or motivation to clean up after herself and her family. 

Sometimes a girl would rather watch Scandal on Netflix. 

Entry to my Heart

I am a woman of lists. I have lists out the wazoo. I have lists of lists. Heck, I even have lists of lists of lists. This list is continually growing. Sometimes, if we're lucky productive, things will even be crossed off. So far, we have replaces all of our faucets and light fixtures. We've painted four out of our eight rooms. Not bad...50/50. 

This year though, I have some high hopes and some big dreams. We've been in this house for 2 1/2 years now, and I have yet to really make it feel like our home. It's certainly a work in process. We've come a very long way so far, but this rodeo is far from over. I have big ambitions, but a small wallet, if you know what I mean. We have some big items on our lists- like our two bathrooms, our kitchen, replacing our flooring, replacing our windows, and continuing to make out home somewhere we feel safe, comfortable, and we want to race back to at the end of our days. However, we had to save and scour stores and the internet for good deals. Recently, we got a new washer and dryer. They are Samsung front loader machines and there were mildly the love of my life when we first got them. Anything to make my life easier is fine by me. These were the first of our appliances that we replaced. The rest are yet to come. 

There is something I've been seeing a lot of lately, planked walls. This is one thing I am dying to do this year in my entryway. It is at the top of my list. 
When we moved into this house, everything was painted the same color. This included walls, ceilings, and even some fixtures attached to said walls and ceiling. Right now, I am crushing on these planked walls. This is something that could be done relatively inexpensively and I think it will bring so much character into our dull entryway. She needs a face lift, if you know what I mean. 

I have found quite a few tutorials on Pinterest that I will try to replicate for my space. Here are some of my favorites. Seems easy enough. 

1. The House of Smiths 2. Domestic Imperfection 3. The Lettered Cottage  4. Southern Living

Out with the Old...

I just had 3 days off. Ben and I had a lot on our to-do list. One of those things was replacing our hallway light. We moved into this house about 2 1/2 years ago and we have since replaced all of our light fixtures. This was the last one. It's been on our To-Do List: Home Edition for about 1 1/2 years. So, yeah, this was a big deal. And I couldn't be happier with how it looks. God bless those little things that make such a big difference!

Here is the before and after. 

It might not be a big improvement in your mind, but believe you me, it is to us :)

Emma Had a Little Lamp

Emma has this lamp in her room. It started a drab brown that didn't really go with anything else in her room. Ever since she moved into her "big girl room" downstairs, I have been trying to make more her. I want her to be happy in it. I also want her input. 

She is full of great ideas. :) It was her idea to paint it yellow. 

The first step was taping off all of the electrical parts. I taped off the top part where you put the light bulb and the cord also. Then I moved it outside to my spray painting area- aka the back deck. I'm pretty fancy around here. 

I used a primer spray paint first. This helps the yellow spray paint stick better. 

Then I sprayed it with the yellow paint. 

I love how it turned out and so does Emma. The yellow is so much happier. 
A quick and dirty easy project. Thank goodness!

My Fair Hutch: Part 2

Over the course of two nights, Ben and I were able to put together our hutch. We got in place, and I love it. Prior to putting it there, this was the space we had our kid's play kitchen. Who knows where that will end up now. I guess I'll have to clean our play room :)

Today I was lucky enough to put things in it. Over the course of the last 7 years, I have known that I would eventually have a hutch. Well, since my wonderful husband finally made my dreams came true...I was able to get everything I've been collecting over the last several years. With this includes white pitchers, glasses, and vases. I even put some of our plates and my cook books. I love how it turned out. 

My Fair Hutch

Remember that post where I told you all about my fetish for Ikea.

Well...it hasn't gone anywhere. In fact, it's back and bigger than ever. For my 7th wedding anniversary, my husband surprised me with a trip to Ikea to get a hutch. Technically, it isn't a hutch- it's listed under the bookcase/storage section- however it totally 
fit the bill for what I was looking for. 

I was looking for something to put some of my prettier things in- to show off- up top. On the bottom, we closed it off because we will put other things (big appliances, our dust buster, and other odds and ends). Eventually we'll get rid of our peninsula in our kitchen, and this will just be extra storage space for us to take advantage of. Our house is large, but any extra storage we can get, I'll take. :)

We have it in our possession now and are in the process of putting it together. We're going on night number two. It takes a lot longer putting furniture together when you're limited to after "bed-time" and the Cardinals are winning their 3rd straight division series. Wahoo!

I'll be back later this week with an update on how the process of putting it together went, and how it looks in my kitchen. I can't wait. 

Backyard Bounty

We have two fruit trees in our backyard- An apple tree and a pear tree.  We’ve been in this house for over two years and this is our third fall here. We decided that this would be the fall where we finally try to take advantage of our fruity situation in the backyard.

It’s that time of year where both types of fruit are ripening up and are good for the picking. With this ripening, they fall off the trees…hence this mess on the ground. Some of these apples have been bitten into by the birds. Some of the pears have been stepped on or mowed over and were literally mush, 

mashed into the ground.

Yesterday afternoon, we went into the backyard and started picking up these pieces of fruit that have made their way to the ground. And by we, I mean me. I did most of the picking up. Which is fine, because I was quite a bit quicker than my husband and my 4-year-old daughter. Bless their pear-loving hearts!

Once the fruit was picked up, things were looking better. Like maybe now we look like we know what we’re doing and are getting the hang of it.

 Now to the fun part, picking the pieces of fruit off of the tree that looked as though
 they could fall off at any moment.

This is what we got. The apple tree is not quite as bountiful as our pear tree. 

Our pear tree rocks my socks! We get the ripest, juiciest pears a girl could ever ask for. 

The question now, is, what to do with our bucket of pears.

I have some ideas running through my head of what recipes to try with these apples and pears. 

That’s why I have a Pinterest account J

For now, though, we’ll just enjoy eating them out of our bucket.

Fall Fancy

Fall is my favorite season. I love the colors changing, the crisp fall air, and the decorations that come from all of it. My front porch was something I have been wanting to make fancy for a month now. It was looking pretty drab. 

Now, it looks fab. Ha. No, but really. These mums were on clearance for $0.15 each. So, I got 8 of them to fill my planter boxes. The boxes are actually old ammo crates that I got from a ski resort. They were free! Really, after $1.20 and a little bit of grunt work- sweeping- and we have a fancy porch now. I'm happy with the results. 

So are the girls. And yes, there is dirt on Kaitlyn's chin. She is such a good helper. Before this picture was taken, there was dirt all over the porch because she wanted to help mix the dirt up and sweep it around...and around. 

We even ran into this guy while working on this. That's a snail. I thought it was a slug at first, but Ben notified me that it is a snail because it has a shell. 

Who knew!?! He's so smart. 

After we finished with our flowers, the girls and I collected some pine cones that have fallen in our yard. 

With those free pine cones, I filled a vase I had laying around and put in on display in my living room on my console with my other decorations. 

Like I said, fall is my favorite. I tried waiting until October 1, but with that being on Tuesday, we did it all this weekend. With the fall decorations come Halloween decorations and Emma has not stopped talking about Halloween. She is going to be Ariel and she CANNOT wait. It's both cute and obnoxious. Let's be real here. 

Happy Fall!

Kingdom of Chaos

I am a working mom. I have two small children. I have a busy husband. 

I am a daughter, sister, aunt, niece, and cousin. I am a friend. 

Sometimes I don't have time to do a lick of cleaning. 

This is what my living room looks like. 

What does yours look like? Do you let things go?

I do so I can have dinner with my family at the kitchen table. So I can play with my kids. So we can all have tickle fights because the tickle monster has come out to play.