30 weeks!

Had my 30 week appointment yesterday and now we're on to 2 week appointments.  Getting to this point is always such a shocker.  It's usually when you realize how quickly the next 10 weeks are going to fly by and how much you still have to do.  Especially considering in our case, we've done nothing except buy a car seat and a few gender neutral onesies.

Although the nice thing is that by your third child, you just don't really need much.  I spent so much time stressing over nurseries with the last two children and this one won't have one.  And I don't care.  One single bit.  Both of our other kids spent at least the first two months in our room, and Adalyn was in there until around 6 months, so what's the point?  Two kids will be sharing a room anyway, and since we don't know the gender, it's not even possible to set up a nursery until baby is born and we know who's sharing.

Luckily I went through a well-documented intense nesting period where I organized our house from top-to-bottom so I have all these bins nicely labeled in our basement with things like, "Newborn necessities," "Bottles & pump equipment," and then all the clothes for each gender separated by size.  Hopefully that'll make life easy for me when baby does come.  I can just run down to the basement, grab the newborn bin and be set!

Everything is going well aside from being pretty anemic, which is threatening my homebirth.  Eek!  I've got to get my hemoglobin back up so I can birth this baby at home as planned.  It at least explains why that nesting ended abruptly a few weeks ago and all I've been able to do since is lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling or on the floor while the kids crawl all over me.

I thought I was just lazy, but turns out I have a medical excuse for all the dishes in my sink.

I was measuring right at 30 weeks which I was honestly shocked to learn.  I mean, have you seen my belly lately?  This feels just like it did with Ben, when I was consistently measuring 3-4 weeks bigger than I was.  I can hardly roll over anymore.  I'm just...gr...miserable.  As it turns out, summer pregnancies are not fun.  And it's March!  And I've already gotten a sunburn!  This hot spring is going to be the death of my pregnant self.  I thought being due June 3rd would mean I'd escape all the real hotness of summer, but I'm second-guessing that when we've been reaching 80s...INDOORS...already.  I think all the morning sickness I'm dealing with again is mostly related to the heat.  Chelsea +  heat have never done well together.

Poor Ben has been hit with seasonal allergies.  Just one more thing to add to his plate, I guess.  That poor kid got all the bad genes I had to offer up.  Luckily I grew out of all my allergies, so I'm hoping he will, too, but this is what he's looked like the past few days.

My eyes hurt just looking at him!

Nothing else exciting to report around here except I have an overflowing cabinet of fabric and an itch to sew (finally!), so hopefully I can work up enough energy to tackle some projects and post 'em here!

A week in iPhone pictures.

The past week was ca-RAZY.

Our week alone started out great!  We had a fun Saturday and a great morning at church Sunday, followed by lots of this cute stuff all day Sunday.

She loves climbing up in this chair and pretending to read.  The book is usually upside down.  Cutest thing ever.  Also, I wish I knew how to work our scanner so I could scan in my mom's baby picture so you could see how insanely identical Adalyn looks here to all my mom's baby pictures.  Uncanny.

Oh hey girl, you got a little somethin' in your hair.

 He's tickling her feet :)

Oh but then the fun started on Monday when this one got sick with the tummy bug.

Followed by this one, who, let it be known, NEVER EVER naps during the day in random places.

 It did create some cute sibling snuggle moments.

 Now that everyone's all recovered, Adalyn has decided to mystify us with her disappearing and re-appearing hives.  We're on day three.  Fun stuff, motherhood.  Nobody warns you...but that's probably a very good thing.  It all sounds so much tougher than it is, and you can't imagine how worth it all the tough stuff is without living all the good stuff, too.  :)

Second/upstairs bathroom

This bathroom has been neglected since the day we moved in.  It never gets used.  Our kids are too little to have their "own" bathroom, so they use ours with us, leaving the one upstairs for...nothing.

It's tiny.  I even think it might have been an addition to this house at some point, but I'm not entirely sure.

This is one case where the bathroom actually looked better when we moved in than it does now.  Um, whoops.  Observe.

When we moved in:

Now:

I tried to make it the kids' bathroom.  I tried to make it cute.  Instead, I made it ugly.  You'll even notice those pretty paint blotches where I tried out different colors.  Ha!

Here's my inspiration for redoing the space simply and easily:

Source: Martha Stewart

I fell in love the second I saw this on Pinterest.  I ran right out and bought the peach and light aqua paint, as well as a mirror.  The mirror ended up in our bedroom when it didn't fit over the hole left behind by our current medicine cabinet mirror.  Whoops...again.  So now I'm keeping my eyes open for a mirror that will fit over that hole.

I went on the hunt for a shower curtain like the one pictured, but ohmygoshyoucan'tfindanythinglikeit!  

This is as close as I could come after searching for hours upon hours.  It's at least the same color.

It doesn't have the best reviews ever, so I may end up going with this one instead:

(This is the same exact shower curtain we have in our master bathroom, from Target, but the one we have is white and it's held up so well for years and years.)

So the rest of the tentative plans are to get some sort of window treatment, an old quilt rack to paint the light aqua, a mirror that I can paint peach and a trashcan that I can also paint.  The walls are already gray so we're set there and I already have a set of brand new white towels just waiting for this makeover!

This bathroom will also get tiled whenever we tile the other bathroom and our kitchen.

The entry way.

Or front steps, or whatever you want to call them.  :)

Here was our house when we bought it.

I really loved it all!  The red door, the little walkway, the black shutters, the fun little light by our door.  Over time, everything just got so worn.  The red door is dingy now and I'm just tired of the bold red.  The top stoop, which was painted grey has peeled off almost entirely.  It needs a whole new coat of paint.  But the worst of all is the landscaping.  Oh my gosh.  I guess we don't have green thumbs?  Because this is what it looks like now.

Ha!  Quite a different sight, eh?

This is a project all its own, but figured I'd mention it here.

Now, let's get back to the front door.

Here's its current state.  In need of some TLC.

See how dingy the door looks now?  And that spot under our door that's missing siding?  It was missing siding when we moved in, too, but they'd painted it so you couldn't really tell.  I guess it needs to be repainted again.  Or I suppose we could do the legit thing and somehow replace the siding without it being noticeable.

The whole top stoop needs repainting, like I said.  Our bushes to the right that you can just barely see need some TLC, too.  Look at all those leaves!

We need a storm door, first and foremost.  I want more light in our living room, which is what this door opens to!

Secondly, I want to paint our door this color for sure.  I'm dead-set on it...unless the hubby objects.  Which is very possible, but that's what batting your eyelashes is for.  And we need new hardware.  And that lettering!

  Source: Leen the graphics queen

And we definitely need some plant action going on.

Lastly, I would just adore being able to do this chalkboard, and we have a spot, but I just don't know if we'll be able to accomplish it.  Husbands are great at figuring out the logistics, though, so I intend to pass this question along to him and let him work his magic.

Source: houzz.com

That should wrap things up!

The basement.

Prepare yourself.  This might be the worst before picture (well, pictures) I've ever posted, and I must be crazy for posting this before I have an after to dazzle you with!  But this is reality.  Right?  I don't have enough time or money to make over every space in my home right now, so some things are reeeeaaally slow works in progress, like our basement.

Our basement seems like such wasted space.  It's 1600 sq ft (though only part of that can be used to live in as probably 400 or 500 sq ft is our "utility closet," so-to-speak.  I finally decided that rather than wait to save up the money to professionally finish it (which will never happen), we'd just do the best we could to "faux" finish it.

Here's what our basement will look like again once we get all the clutter cleared out.  This is what it looked like upon moving in, before tossing (literally) everything down the stairs that we didn't know what to do with right this very moment.

That's part of it.  There's a large walled-off area to the right that houses our air conditioner/heater/water heater and a whole workshop area that Tim is going to love once we get this thing clean enough that he can use it.  This will also be where we store everything once we're "living" down here.

Now, brace yourself.  Here are the befores and the currents:

BEFORE:

 CURRENT:

BEFORE:

CURRENT:

BEFORE:

CURRENT:

BEFORE:

CURRENT:

BEFORE:

CURRENT:

And this is the room where we have slowly started moving everything that needs storing:

Part of the reason it is so crazy in our basement (and also the biggest reason we will probably  never professionally finish this basement) is because two summers ago, this basement took in quite a bit of water.  We had to pull the carpet back and tear apart our nicely organized basement (honestly, it was!) as quickly as possible to move everything over to the right side of the basement, the part that stays dry.  This is despite having a waterproofing system down here and sump pump.  Now, granted, it only happened because we got so much rain in such a short period of time, but I don't want to pay so much for drywall only to have it ruined the next time we get a massive amount of rain and have to pay to put up all new drywall again.

So, long story short, our basement, without spending a lot of money on additional waterproofing, will probably never be fit to be professionally finished, but we're okay with that.  Luckily, though, because of the waterproofing and sump pump, I don't think we'll ever have standing water down here, so I think we're safe to set up a playroom and little living area and a craft area/office down here.  If we ever do get water down here again, I don't think it would be enough to ruin anything.

Our tentative plans:

Replace all the windows.  They're old and original and gross and some are so caked with stuck-on dirt that you can't see out of them.  I'd love to add a few recessed windows, but I hear the price tag is pretty steep and I don't think that's a project we're ready to tackle on our own yet.

Spray the ceiling black.  A cheaper alternative to drop-ceilings that also keeps us from having to give up so much of the height in the basement.

It'll look like this:

Source: Cool Home Creations

We'll repaint the cement walls white again...hopefully in the right way this time, as so much of the paint down here has already bubbled up and peeled off.  I've been reading a lot about how to properly paint basement walls.  I'm pretty sure this one wasn't done properly.

Someday, hopefully, we'll get new carpet, but for now, we'll just stick with the office-grade carpet that's already down here.  Might as well, right?

I'll separate my craft room/office from the playroom & living room with some pallet dividers that Tim is going to build me.  I think they're pretty dang fun & industrial and as close to free as you can get!

Source: My Friend Staci

We may add some drywall to close off the area that goes up the stairs just as a safety measure.  They're definitely not nice stairs, I'd definitely rather be able to block off the kids' access to the utility room and this seems like the best way to do it, but that's still up in the air depending on cost.

The rest will probably just be accessorizing and trying to make this as homey as possible without professionally refinishing it.

"Master" bathroom.

I use the term "master" loosely, as this isn't really a master bathroom.  It's the bathroom that happens to be right next to our bedroom but is the main bathroom that everyone (guests and kids alike) uses.  We have one other shoebox bathroom, but it's upstairs and the kids aren't really old enough to use the bathroom on their own, so we've just made this one the family bathroom.

Our "master" bathroom looked like this upon moving in.

 

We didn't do much to it except to fancy it up with our own belongings.  The biggest "upgrade" we made was to replace the towel rod with a bigger one.  The one they put in was builder grade and tiny and wouldn't even fit two towels.

That's a terrible picture, I know.  I searched for probably an hour because I know I've taken many more pictures of my bathroom in its time than this, but with no luck.  If I wasn't so lazy tired, I would get off the couch and take some more, but I'm lazy tired.  So this is what you get.  It looks better than this in real life, so just pretend.

It's a small bathroom, so that's complaint number one.  It was also cheaply refinished, so that's complain number two.  I'll never really understand why they painted the walls gray and then chose tan tile for the shower.  Or why they chose this white/cream hideous linoleum to butt up against a white vanity, a white tub and a white toilet.  They put beadboard on the walls, but in the cheapest/rigged up way possible.  My hubby said it's not even real beadboard?  Is there a "faux" beadboard I don't know about? It's hard to explain without seeing it closely, but it looks pretty bad.  The seams are terribly noticeable, they used so much caulk (or some kind of filler, whatever you call it) all over that it's just gotten gross and dirty and almost off-white in spots and I can't clean it up anymore than it is.  Sadly, we are definitely going to have to rip the beadboard off and redo it at some point.

The first and biggest project we want to tackle (and have wanted to tackle since the day we moved in) is to tile the floor.  I've been drooling over wood floors in bathrooms on Pinterest, but I'm too scared to have wood in a bathroom, especially with little kids, so it'll never happen.

I've toyed with the idea of painting the cabinet black, though I think once we tile in here, I'll really like the crispness of the white so I'll probably leave it.  I think the only reason I don't like it right now is because it's a white vanity on a white floor.

I've got my eye on this faucet upgrade from Overstock, but it'll have to come out of my "blow money" (thanks Mr. Ramsey) because my hubby thinks things like that are silly.  I think they make huge differences on a minimal budget, so I'm all about them!

Next up, I want to replace our waffle weave shower curtain with one just like it, but an extra tall one that reaches from floor to ceiling.  I first saw this idea on Young House Love and fell in love with it!  What a great, dramatic effect again, on a small budget.

Source: Young House Love

Since we have a small bathroom and I discovered what tall mirrors can do to a small room when we moved into our house (the only reason we still have ugmo mirrored closet doors is because it makes our room feel so much bigger than it is!), I'm thinking of mounting a floor mirror on the back of our bathroom door, sort of like this (but picture on a door):

Source: House of Turquoise

See those gorgeous wood floors in the bathroom?  Wish I had the guts!

Once we get some tile on the floor in here, I think I'll go simple with white towels/white bath mat.  I am loving that simplicity these days in bathrooms.

And for the big decision: the PAINT!

I don't really know yet.  I'd leave it gray except I've never loved the way the gray clashes with the tiles in our shower.  Can we get away with tiling our floor something completely different and not even in the same category as the tile in our shower?  I'm pretty sure the answer is no because the tan tile is totally visible outside of the shower curtain. So I think we'll have to go with a tan tile to complement the tile in the shower and then I'll probably switch our paint color to something more along these lines:

Source: Better Homes & Garden  

Then of course we'll accessorize appropriately.  :)

Living room.

Here was our living room right before moving in (courtesy of realtor.com pictures):

 

Things I loved about the space: the built-ins, the fireplace, the brightness of the room and the wood floors.

Things I didn't love?  The small size, the way we could never find a good way to layout our furniture to make this room feel anything but cramped, the lack of a mantel and the brick color (although I know it could be so much worse).

Things I changed about the space that I wish I wouldn't have?

I painted the walls.  WHY?  They were a pretty gray and now I am getting ready to paint them back to gray after going tan and then blue.  Observe our current living room, swallowed up by the massive furniture we bought back when we were renting homes (note: don't make that mistake like us):

My plans for this space include:

 Going back to gray walls

Moving this massive sectional down to our basement to use once we get our basement faux finished

Move the TV to our bedroom (and that entertainment center down to the basement, too, as it's taken a major beating in its few years with us thanks to kiddos and looks pretty rough)

Bringing in the new (to us) couch that's in our garage right now, covering it with a white slipcover and bringing up an extra chair we have in our basement and covering it with a white slipcover, too.  Yes, white seems dumb but at least it can be washed/bleached and this will be a sitting room and used much less often.

Switching out the antique folding table in our entryway in lieu of something like this:

source: Nesting Place

Then making a wall like this:

Source: Tatertots & Jello

White curtains

Keep the rug for now

MORE STUFF ON THE WALLS!  I cringe at how plain this space is every time I walk into it.  All the walls in our house are like that, actually.

Add in elements of blue, like two lamps similar to this (but with a very different price tag - have seen them at Home Goods):

Source: Layla Grace

Pillows like this.  The chevron and the blue, although I don't want a blue so bright and vibrant in my living room so I'll tone it down with something softer.  The great thing about going neutral with little pops of colors in accessories is that they're easily changeable (unlike painting your walls this blue color that you'll love initially and then get tired of very quickly - ahem, not naming names).

source: Michaela Noelle Designs

This is pretty much the blue/minty green color I'm going for.  I love everything about this whole scheme.  It's so bright and cheery and airy!

Source: Simply Kelly 


In fact, I already have two throw pillows almost this exact color!  Funny enough, I have four different throw pillows on my couch and they're not the same color family at all.  Um, classy.

If I find a dresser for the entryway that's fairly rustic/shabby chic looking (aka distressed), I intend to have Tim make me one of these to use as a side table:

Everything else is still up in the air.  I'm  not a big coffee table person, so I doubt we'll end up with one, but who knows.  We have a giant one just taking up residence in our basement right now.

Here's my color scheme I threw together: