Kiersten’s Blog

When we moved into our house back in December, we did a lot of big things.  There was a lot of work to be done, and we did most of it.  There are still a few lingering projects that would be nice to do someday (like the kitchen and the bathrooms, even though we did paint the kitchen cabinets) but I can wait on those.  Except for that kitchen sink and faucet.  Ugh.  Anyway, it’s the little things we’re doing now.  Taylor has been changing out switches, outlets, and switch and outlet covers from those old off-white colored ones to brand new bright white.  Downstairs we had some really ugly brownish metal switch covers.  Now most of the switches are done and it makes a huge difference in the look of our home.  I’m sure nobody coming over would even notice, but they would probably notice the ugly ones that were there before.  That’s kind of how I felt about all of the touch-up painting we did when we had a break from the kids.  The little things really do make a difference.  I guess that’s how it is in life too.  Sometimes I forget that I don’t have to do big, extravagant things to make a difference.  It’s really the small details that count.  Oh, but thanks to Taylor, a big thing got done today too and our car is now parked in the garage.

I spent the better part of my kid-less time painting.  But I wasn’t painting a mural.  I wasn’t painting a whole wall.  I was painting corners.  I was cutting in.  Sure, there were some walls that needed to be completely re-done, but most of them just needed a bunch of touch-ups.  I counted up the hours and I spent at least 12 hours with a paintbrush, painting corners.  That’s not even counting the 4 hours Taylor helped yesterday.  Let me tell you, I won’t be pulling out another paintbrush any time soon.  The problem with this job is, it’s not noticeable.  Sure, I notice it.  But that’s because I stared at all of the missed spots before.  Nobody’s going to come into our house and look around and say, “Wow!  It looks like you’ve been painting!”  It’s not that I want praise from others, it’s just that I feel like I put in so much work, that I wonder if it’s even worth it if it’s not noticeable.  I guess all of those spots won’t bug me (or Taylor) anymore and that probably makes it worth it.  So, no pictures of the finished product because you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway.

The kids are home now.  I missed them, but I didn’t miss the screaming.  I’m sure they were perfect little angels for Taylor’s parents.  That seems to be the way things work out: they’re horrible for us, but great for everyone else.

We’re kid-less, at least for the next couple of days.  Taylor’s mom has been wanting to take them and we’ve been really needing a break from them.  They probably need a break from us too.  So yesterday after church, we packed up, drove to Hemet and dropped them off.  We’ll see them again on Wednesday.  On the way home last night, I made a list.  A list of painting.  When we first moved into this place and had to paint EVERYTHING (okay, we didn’t do the doors) including the ceilings in four days, I promised Taylor I would never paint again.  Now that we’ve been here six months, It was high time I did some touch ups.  I made a list of each color of paint we have and where I need to paint it.  The list got to be quite long.  There was quite a bit of cutting in to do between the walls and the ceilings that just looked bad.  Plus, for some reason in our haste to paint in the beginning, we were sloppy around the outlets, so the outlet covers (almost all of them) need to be taken off and the outlets need to be painted around.  Then, of course, there are spots where we accidentally hit a different wall in a spot with the wrong color, or spots that needed another coat, or other spots that need some touching up because there are crayon marks or dirty handprints or any number of other markings.  I spent my whole day today, or at least six hours of it, painting, but instead of getting mad and swearing never to paint again, I felt great!  I can see a difference and it’s nice to see all of my hard work paying off.  The problem is, once I get started, I can’t stop!  I keep finding spots that need fixing and I figure I might as well just do it while I have the paint out.  I was cutting in on the ceiling in the kids’ bathroom and noticed that half of the ceiling had never been painted!  I can’t believe I’ve never noticed that before.  So things like that would come up and I would have to fix them.  Consequently, I only got the ceilings and the bathrooms done.  I didn’t finish the kids bathroom, but I did get part of the kitchen done.  Tomorrow I hope to finish the kitchen, the kids bathroom, and paint around all of the wall plates and touch up all of those other spots that I mentioned earlier.  I keep thinking that it shouldn’t take me as long tomorrow.  After all, I don’t have as much time.  That probably means I just won’t finish.  Maybe in another six months I’ll get around to it again.

When we first moved into our place, it needed to be fumigated for termites.  We had been in less than a week when we had to move out.  We spent that weekend with Taylor’s parents, where his mother helped me make curtains and/or valances for almost all of our windows and patio doors.  When I say “helped” I mean she did most of the work and I tried to figure things out here and there.  They all turned out really cute except for the valance in our bedroom.  I was really excited about it when we bought the fabric, but once I put it up, I hated it.  So I went to the store and bought some fabric that I thought would work better.  I LOVE the new stuff I bought.  It’s my favorite window in the house (I think).  I’m going to attempt to explain how I made this super cute and easy valance.

I started out by cutting a piece of fabric large enough for the size of window I was decorating.  Since I didn’t have one, I had to sew two pieces together.  I just lined them up so the pattern matched.  I can’t even tell where the seam is unless I look really hard.  Then I took some foam board that I bought and cut it to be the right height of the valance I was making.  Since you can’t buy foam board long enough to make it the right width, I hot glued it and stapled it together end to end.  I then wrapped the fabric around the foam board and hot glued it on.  Taylor already hung the rod, so I took it down and hot glued the back of the valance to the curtain rod.  Easy peasy.  Really, it didn’t take much time (or crafting skills) at all and I absolutely love it.

I had some leftover fabric from my valance and curtains so I made a square wood frame.  Okay, I bought the frames from Ikea and just assembled them.  I then stretched the fabric over them and stapled it to the back to make fabric squares.  I hung them in our stairwell.  I just love that fabric.  I wonder what else I can use it for.

I finally got around to putting things on Ashton’s walls.  We’ve been in this place for six months now, and Ashton’s room is the only one that doesn’t have anything on the walls.  Ours doesn’t have much and still needs a lot of work, but his was really starting to bug me because I had a few ideas, but I just never got around to finishing them.  I have had the valance up for a while, but I’ve been needing to tweak a few things about it.  I finally did it today and it took all of five minutes.  Why I didn’t do that months ago, I’ll never know.

Marisa (my amazingly crafty sister-in-law) sent me the cutest letters spelling out his name months ago.  I was so excited about them and until today, they sat on the dresser.  They looked cute, but the dresser is tucked away under the windows in the corner and behind the closet where you can’t see it.  I needed a shelf to display them.  After I looked around a bit for a perfect shelf, I remembered that I had a shelf.  I didn’t need to buy one.  But I did need to finish it.  I wasn’t looking forward to that job, so it took longer than it should have because I kept putting it off.  Finally last week I finished that project.  Now it was time for the hanging, but every time I had a minute to do it, Ashton was sleeping in his room making it impossible for me to work in his room.  Taylor told me that he would do it (because he didn’t think I could) but finally today, I took matters into my own hands and did it.  And I love it!  If you want to see a better picture of the letters, Marisa posted them on her blog here.

We also added on the adjacent wall a “beach” sign.  In case you were wondering, the sign really is pointing in the direction of the beach.  I really like the way it’s looking and have a few other ideas milling around in my head that will be in the works soon, I hope.

P.S.  I just realized that you can’t see how cute the letters are by the pictures I took, so I’ll have to take more because they are SO adorable!!!

You probably haven’t noticed, but I have never taken a picture of our garage.  All the before and after shots were of the house.  That’s because the garage still looks like before.  We haven’t cleaned it.  There are cobwebs.  The ceiling still has stains, as well as popcorn.  It’s really not that exciting.  And it was full of junk.  Not only was it full of junk, it was full of unorganized junk.  Today Taylor took care of that problem (I mean the unorganized problem.  He would take care of the junk problem too but he’s afraid of throwing away my treasures because he doesn’t want my wrath.  Even so, it’s still not completely organized, but it’s definitely more so than it was before).  It’s amazing what that man can do in a matter of an hour or so.  Now we can actually fit our car in the garage!

Growing up, we NEVER parked our car in the garage.  My parents still don’t park their car in the garage and they have a 2-car garage.  That’s why I was amazed the first time I went to Taylor’s parents house and they had 3 cars parked in their 3-car garage.  Now they have 3 cars and a motorcycle and a bunch of bikes and surf boards and kayaks and tools and food storage and . . . I could go on and on.  It’s pretty amazing.  Anyway, my point was, we have a 1-car garage and now we can fit one car in it.  That amazes me.

I love my living room

When I was in college, we had a few times where we would have get-togethers or sometimes even class at a professor’s home.  Being a music major, we spent a lot of time with the same students, as well as taking a lot of classes from the same handful of teachers.  Some of these teachers became somewhat of adopted parents for some of us.  It was always fun to “party” at their house.  Especially as a group of young college students living with roommates in apartments, it was a breath of fresh air to get out and spend time in somebody’s home.  I know things are a little different here, but on Friday, Taylor invited his music theory class to our home during their class time.  We had breakfast burritos with them and they jammed on their instruments a bit.  It was kind of nice to see how the tables have now turned.  I get to invite students into my home now.  I love having a home where we can do things like that.  Tonight we had one of Taylor’s co-workers and his wife over for dinner.  They had us over when Taylor first started his job, so we were long overdue to re-pay the favor.  I really love that we have a home where we can entertain.

When we first moved into our new house, it was a mess.  We weren’t finished with the remodel and we hadn’t unpacked much.  Since then, we’ve made a lot of progress.  My goal has been to keep our home clean.  Isn’t that always the goal?  I’ve tried my best to find a place for everything.  This process is a long one.  There is still a bunch of stuff in our messy garage and our closet downstairs is also a bit of a mess.  Besides those things (and a couple of others) I have felt like we have kept the house pretty organized.  In fact, London’s room stayed cleaner for a longer period of time than it ever has.  But in the last week, I haven’t been very on top of things.  Other things have kept me busy, not giving me the time I need to keep my home organized.  As it got worse, I had less and less motivation to clean it because it seemed like such a huge job.  Today I had the time (not really the energy) and the endorphins from my run this morning, that I got to work.  I started with London’s room and moved on from there.  We got rid of some toys and consolidated the rest.  I was afraid to tackle the kitchen, but once I got started, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.  Now I feel so much better!  Sure, I’m not finished cleaning the whole place yet, but having clean carpets and a clean kitchen sure make a difference.  Hopefully I can keep it up better this week.

It’s been two months and two days since we moved into our house.  It’s high time I posted some before and after pictures.  The guests are gone and the place is fairly clean, so here it is!

There you go!  That’s your tour for the day.

I’ve seen a number of posts lately of confessions.  Most are confessions of “famous” bloggers who want to show that they’re normal too.  They talk about how they don’t usually show the slightly negative things in life.  They just talk about the good things they’re doing.  They post daily about crafts they do with their kids or other similar stories.  In reality, this just makes them look really good and it makes a lot of moms feel as though they’re inferior in some way because they’ll never be as crafty or as innovative or as organized as so-and-so.

That brings me to my confessions.  Oh wait, I don’t have any.  I know that any of you who read my blog don’t feel at all inferior after reading.  In fact, I probably make you feel really good about yourself!  But let me make you feel even better.  It’s kind of embarrassing, but I vacuumed my carpet for the first time on Saturday.  If you recall, we got our carpet on the 23rd of December.  Saturday was our carpet’s one month-iversary.  Good thing I vacuumed that day.  I have so many excuses that I won’t go into, but it just didn’t get done.  After cleaning up on Saturday, I looked around and sighed.  It was the first time that I’ve actually looked at the place and felt no anxiety.  Things are turning out so well.  I promise I’ll have more “after” shots soon.  I’m almost done.