Christmas card 2014

I was super excited about our Christmas cards this year!

Matt and I tag teamed it and I loved how they turned out.

Matt made the actual Christmas card

Love it!

being married to a designer is the best :)

And now here is a surprise for you..

I made the year in review letter myself!!

I may be a little proud of it cause I never thought I'd be able to pull it off

Yes Matt helped me ;)

but mostly he showed me how to use the program and I pretty much did the rest.

Matt could have made this in like 30 minutes,

and it may have taken me like two days haha

but it was way fun.

2014 was a great year!! 

It was full of big moments for us

I'm pretty sure I'll always look back at 2014 as the year we became adults haha

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and is looking forward to the new year :)

Fun fact:  I typed this whole post with one hand!

poor little Micah is sick and is all about cuddling.

Can't complain about the cuddling, but its hard to see him so miserable

He is already doing better then yesterday

so heres to hoping this sickness passes quick

Before and After: Bedrooms!

Now that Christmas is over (which was amazing by the way)

I can get back to my before and after posts! 

In case you wanted to read the other posts on the house

here is the story of buying the house

and here is the Living area before and after

And now that brings us to the bedroom before and after pictures! 

Here is the master bedroom before 

And After!

Sorry about the doors and boxes and what not. 

We told ourselves we would never make a trip to the house without 

taking something over. 

That way we got a head start on moving which was a life saver.

So the master bedroom used to be two bedrooms. 

The previous owner knocked down the wall to make it into one very long room.

Its kind of a funny shape, but its been nice to have so much space.

We brought a mattress over so once the carpet was done so we could sleep there

 after working late into the night.  

Also beneath that curtain there is a new window that isn't broken :)

So for this room we patched and painted the walls and put in new carpet

When I first started painting the grey on the walls I didn't really like it! I was a little freaked 

out cause we had already bought a ton.

But as it dried and I got more on the walls I started to like it..

and then I started to love it!

Now I'm so glad we went with that color I think its perfect.

The true before and after for this room is yet to come.

I have big plans!! 

I'm super excited about it 

but just getting new flooring and paint in there made a huge difference :)

Now here is Micah's room

His room is hard to get pictures of because it is very small

And just like the rest of the house it still needs trim 

The pictures make the color of the walls look almost the same 

but before it was much more blue. 

Also the ceiling was the same color as the walls which I felt made the room 

feel even smaller and darker. 

Getting the ceiling white made a big difference 

Those words on the wall were actually stickers and if we painted over them you 

could still see an impression so we had to peel them off.

super fun

The paint color is the same grey thats in our room,

Still loving it

Once again, I have big plans for this room!

It's going to be real cute 

Micah has yet to sleep in his room. 

We moved in right before Christmas and so soon after  we moved Matt's mom and sister 

came (Yay! so much fun) So Micah's room has been the guest room since the basement is 

unfinished.  It's worked out great though because our room is so big that Micah 

just stays in there with us.  His crib is being painted anyways, so his pack and play is his bed for now.

So those are the bedrooms we have redone so far.

There are two more in the basement, but besides ripping out carpet 

we haven't done much down there. 

(except for in my laundry room and food storage, super excited about that)

Well, until next time,

hope everyone is having a great Saturday! 

Oh Christmas Tree

We finally put up a Christmas tree! 

We moved in one night and then the next evening we put up the tree

Even though the house was a wreck and we could barely even find cloths..

Putting up the tree and getting in the Christmas spirit was just more important :)

Micah's favorite part was the beads and the lights.

So he combined his two favorites and was in heaven

We had a lot of last minute things to do that night so we ended up decorating pretty late..

Micah was really sweet, but he was definitely tired.

He ended the night like this..

It's a shame that his Christmas jammies were lost at the time haha

Having a little guy toddling around is making Christmas even better!! 

He is so much fun I can't wait till Christmas morning it's going to be amazing

It also makes Christmas decorations a little hazardous 

He may or may not have tipped the tree over....

Standing it back up.. ^^

oops haha 

lesson learned? Only buy shatterproof bulbs and make sure the tree is sturdy 

The good news is we got to decorate the tree all over again! 

And its even better this time..

The even better news is that it hasn't tipped over again.

(fingers crossed)

Before and After: Living room

I'm SO excited to finally be showing before and after pictures of our house! 

So many hours have gone into this place, but it has been well worth it! We moved in a few days ago and so things are now a mess, but I managed to sneak a few pictures before too many things got brought in.

But keep in mind that we had a million tools and also a bunch of toys laying around.. 

So it was hard to get a really clean picture of the after :)

So here is the living area

Before

And After

As you can see we aren't quite finished..

Some trim and outlet covers are still needed 

But I REALLY wanted to be in before Christmas

So if it wasn't absolutely necessary at the time we didn't worry about it.

And now that we are moved in we will start to tackle the little details. 

It's way easier to work on the house now that we live here..

No more driving back to the apartment every time Micah needs a nap or food.

We can just stay here 24/7 and I am loving it!

So let me just give you a little glimpse into what went into this remodel. 

As soon as we got the keys I was so anxious to get in there and get to work! 

We started by getting the nasty blue carpet out. 

And let me tell you it was GROSS

It may not look super bad in the pictures, 

but anyone that saw it in real life could tell you that it was really bad.

Pretty sure that carpet was really really old.

Just getting it out was a huge improvement and I feel like it made the place way cleaner. 

Once the carpet was out the house looked like this for what seemed like forever.

It was nice cause we didn't have to worry about getting paint on the floor or anything like that.

 I have always dreamed of the day I would get to choose my own wall colors and flooring for my own house.. I have been pinning and imagining what it would look like for a long time.  But then when it came right down too it I didn't really know what I wanted!

It was a SUPER hard decision! 

Lucky for me I have a designer for a husband :)

It was nice to know that he knew what colors would go together and stuff like that.

We make a pretty great team. 

I come up with ideas and he makes it happen by finding the right colors 

When we first thought this house might be a possibility (in October)

I pretty much immediately imagined wood floors throughout the whole living space..

which is weird for me cause I never thought I'd want a bunch of wood floor

(carpet is just so cozy) but this space is just so open and elegant looking that wood just seemed right. 

And I LOVE how it turned out.

The color is exactly what I wanted

We were actually going to do more of a grey on the walls,

but we went to a friends house and they had this color of walls and we loved it. We also thought the warmer color would go good with our flooring.

As it turns out paint is super hard to choose! 

It's basically impossible to tell what the color will really 

look like from those little samples.

So it was nice to see this color on walls before we bought a 

whole bunch of it.

(sorry about the stove in all these pictures.. We had to take it out of the kitchen to put flooring in and it hadn't been moved back yet. haha)

Fun Fact: I didn't really love the fireplace at first

I didn't think I liked the color of the brick, but once we got the walls painted

and the floor in all of a sudden the fireplace could really shine.

And now I love it!! 

It's amazing how it's surroundings affected the looks of the fireplace. 

We got the fireplace inspected and cleaned and had a fire in it the other night

It was awesome. 

We are planning on having a fire Christmas Eve 

so excited. 

What you can't really tell in these pictures is how bad the original paint was.  

It was stained and dirty and just really old. 

It was more yellow then white.

We painted the walls and the ceiling and it made a world of difference. 

Right before we started moving stuff in they moved the stove so I got a few stoveless pictures.

Plus it's kinda fun to see it in different lighting..

Putting the couch in was kind of a crazy moment for us.. 

It was like it brought everything together and made it real!

We had officially taken and unlivable house and made it awesome.

That right there is a pretty great feeling :)

All of the long days and late nights, the stress, and the craziness was worth it!

I'm so glad we went with this house even though it needed so much work.

It's so cool to look around and know that we did this! 

And to know that we got a great price because we were willing to put in the work.

So that's it for the living area! 

up next: The bedrooms :)

Micah at a whopping 15 months!

I think it's about time for a Micah update..

Micah is 15 months old! 

He is like a little sponge just learning and soaking everything up.

He has nine teeth.. 4 on top 4 on the bottom and one molar! 

He must be growing because all of a sudden he can reach up and grab things off of the table and other places I don't think he can reach.

He is super easy going and it has been the biggest blessing since we have been so busy on the house.  He just putters around and plays with whatever he can find.  He is such a sweet and happy little guy.

He has been so happy.  He does cute little things and then looks up and giggles.  Its the best.

One of Micah's favorite things to do is find one type of thing and carry it around from place to place.. For instance we have a bunch of ice cube trays and he will take them all out of the cupboard and then put them back, then he will take them to the living room and then bring them back.  It takes him lots of different trips, but he just keeps at it. It's real cute.

He does the same thing with these dvd's that we have at out house. 

He takes them all over and and stacks them up. 

He especially loves to take them to this drawer and put them all in and then sit in the drawer. 

It's his favorite thing and it cracks me up.

He is also obsessed with stairs.  Basically his favorite thing.

We finally have carpet on our stairs so he can finally play on them and it makes him so happy. 

I also thought he was real cute in jammies and his cowboy boots 

Micah LOVES soft things! 

Especially bears.  He has four bears and without fail they always make him smile when he sees them and he loves to snuggle them. 

We handed him this panda bear at ikea and it made him so happy! 

He is a pro at making messes. 

This is the kind of thing he does while I'm trying to clean..

Sometimes I wonder why I even try.

Micah always puts a smile on our faces.  He is constantly doing some goofy something or other that makes us so happy. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this age is so much fun!!

I just can't get over it. I love my Micah so much :)