Posts Tagged ‘legos’

Big Kid Room Makeovers!

Thursday, April 12th, 2018

Our house has four bedrooms, but since we moved in as just a couple with no kids we’ve never really used all four effectively. We started with two guest rooms, our bedroom and a storage room on the 3rd floor. Eventually, we renovated the 3rd floor (it used to have shiny animal safari print wallpaper), moved our master bedroom up there, and then used two-second floor bedrooms as kid rooms and one as a guest room. The nursery room has been through several renovations (original first-kid nursery, monsters, Lincoln’s nursery) and the bunk room used to be a playroom/Caroline’s nursery.  If you want a whole house tour, my most recent was in 2012 (probably the last time my house was ever all clean at the same time!) but the video below is much more accurate of the “before” status of the kid rooms.

It’s really bad. And this wasn’t even peek-disaster. Just regular disaster. Also, I am still learning how to use my DSLR for video, so excuse my technical errors.

 

But now, we have three great kid rooms! The kids like them but I like them the most. It’s so much easier to keep clean and put away laundry and organize stuff. When I want to move a toy or category of toys upstairs, I have room for them. Everyone’s laundry baskets are easy to find and they are actually putting their dirty clothes into the baskets. I will probably lose my infatuation before too long and they’ll all end up a huge mess I shout at the children to clean every Saturday, but for now, it’s the best.

Let’s start with Evan’s room, which was previously the guest room.

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E bought some really deep, strong anchors for all the shelves, so they’re very secure.

Almost everything is from Ikea. The bedding is from Target. I offered to move the dollhouse somewhere else, since I wasn’t sure he wanted it in his Big Kid room but Evan asked to keep it, so he and Linc can play with it (and they have been! Which is a change, it hardly ever got played with before.) The Force Is Strong With This One decal is just a sticker I bought on Amazon and you can buy it here.

Now to Caroline’s room:

Again, almost everything is from Ikea and the bedding is from Target. The Unicorns are Real wall hanging is from Amazon and you can buy it here. She Persisted is amazing and you can buy your copy here.

The last room is the bunk room, which Linc and Finnegan officially share. We haven’t done too much in there yet, besides clean it and change out bedding. I need to touch up the paint and move some more toys up there. But right now Evan is letting Linc sleep with him in his new room most of the time so Finnegan has the whole huge room to himself and has no opinion on my lack of formal decorating.

Again, the bedding is from Target and everything else in this room was repurposed or moved from a previous room. It’s not going to win any design awards but the boys like it and it’s a HUGE improvement over that before video.

And that’s how our upstairs looks now! I don’t think we’ll have to redo any of these spaces again…maybe ever? We don’t plan to live here the rest of our lives. Hopefully, we move to somewhere with five bedrooms before Linc and Finn are teenagers and can’t stand to share anymore.

 

 

My Week(279) in iPhone Photos

Sunday, March 6th, 2016

Dear Internet, please forgive the absolutely dismal quality of photos this week. Caroline was sick Monday and Tuesday, which overlapped with me being sick Tuesday through Saturday. I pretty much let the kids fend for themselves. The only thing we managed to do the second half of the week was swim class, and that’s only because the super warm, humid pool helped with my horrible hacking cough. Thank goodness I’m back to about 90% healthy and the house is back to the regular level of disaster instead of the kind where it looks like it’s been hit by a tornado.

Sunday:

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A Lego set that comes with four sharks is an excellent set

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FANCY HAIR for our photo shoot

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The children barely fit with all those stupid balloons

Monday:

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He knows I’m going to take it away

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Trying to cheer up his sister

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The super creepy turkey vultures are back

Tuesday:

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Linc pulled her hair, then lay like this for 15 minutes to apologize

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This cat is always judging me.

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New earrings from RocksBox are A++

Wednesday:

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Sure, do whatever, as long as I can monitor you from the couch

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Pathetic

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Linc is also judging me

Thursday:

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Sharing toys with sick mommy

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He went down for nap without nursing for the first time for me.

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That drowned rat look is very nice

Friday:

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World, please send help, I’m locked in this house with a useless mother

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Thank goodness for naps

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From the tap is better than from the tub

Saturday:

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24 Sharpies is exactly what the baby needs

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Caroline made a dreamcatcher at school, Linc decided it’s a hat

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Linc also decided HE is a hat.

Hopefully, the last of this awful cough clears up soon and I can get back to just being normal pregnant levels of uncomfortable. That sounds delightful.

Christmas 2015

Wednesday, December 30th, 2015

We had a nice family Christmas at home, which is my favorite kind. Santa brought the kids a lot of great stuff plus E and I bought the kids a Disney Infinity so there was plenty to keep everyone busy all day (and hopefully for many many more days).

We walked to the 4:30 family service at our church. Caroline wore one of my Christmas dresses.

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 Before bed we put out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer with a drawing Caroline made and put in an envelope she borrowed from church. Then we sprinkling the lawn with “reindeer food” that Caroline made at school (oats + glitter).

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We open one present each on Christmas Eve.

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And then we tried to get some photos in our matching jams.

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And then after the kids went to bed SANTA CAME!

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And then Christmas was chaos. With bacon and waffles.

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It was a very Star Wars Christmas.

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Caroline is SUPER excited about her first graphic novel.

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My Week(232) in iPhone Photos

Monday, April 13th, 2015

This week (the one I am typing in, not the one in the pictures) is spring break and the weather finally got the memo so I am tempted to turn off my laptop, toss it in a closet and not look at it again until the weather gets back below 50 degrees. Hopefully, that doesn’t happen again until October.

Sunday:

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Grumpy baby wanted to walk around instead of sit through Easter service

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Brunching

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Evan picked this one from ALL the grocery store cakes

Monday:

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No match for fresh air

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I MISSED 100000 EVEN

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Grocery store assistant

Tuesday:

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Best Legos Ever

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Style

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Attention Target shoppers: Adorable baby in the main aisle

Wednesday:

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More Style

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DEFINITELY GINGERY

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He’s pretty convinced that is his bed.

Thursday:

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Thoughtful baby

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Her style now extends to swim class

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I am not sure why this is necessary

Friday:

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Terrorizing the ponies

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Terrorizing the dog

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Terrorizing himself (your doing it wrong)

Saturday:

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Uptown Fairy

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Wallet thief

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They demanded I take their picture next to this “sports dog”.

Christmas Photo Post 2014

Wednesday, December 31st, 2014

These are not very good, from a technical standpoint. My children were not very cooperative, I didn’t edit them much, and definitely don’t think anyone would call them professional. But they are an accurate representation of our holiday and I’m happy I have them and can share them and one day I will love them just as much as I love the tiny 3×5 prints of my own childhood Christmases.

I actually hate to even type this because I KNOW I will fail and why even TRY to start something when I know it will fail but I’m going to do a 365 Photo Project in 2015. My goal is to take one photo every day that I don’t edit. One photo taken as a JPG on my big girl camera, no cropping, no lighting adjustments, no cloning things out of the background, no white balance correction. I have to accept it as it was taken, which (hopefully) will make me more conscious of things in-camera and not letting myself say “Oh I’ll just fix it later”. That’s why I never posted Halloween photos – I never finished editing them. That is LAZY photography and I need to be better than that.

Don’t worry, I won’t post all of those photos here. I haven’t decided how I’ll do it yet but I promise I won’t make you look at a crappy photo every day. As if blog readership wasn’t down ENOUGH this year.

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Only the baby is still cooperative.

 

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I WILL KISS HIM BUT ONLY BECAUSE YOU THREATENED ME WITH SANTA

 

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Literally the only thing Linc got in his stocking

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Socks in your stocking are TRADITION. DEAL WITH IT.

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Yeah, he ate that paper.

 

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Maybe next year Santa will bring her a hairbrush

 

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Obviously she got too many presents, since she’s this exhausted from opening.

 

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At least we know E got what he wanted. (Thanks Carolyn!)

 

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He did this for like 9 straight hours.

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The t-rex attacking the ponies cracks me up EVERY TIME. I am HILARIOUS.

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I got a super cool tripod for Christmas. This is me trying it out.

 

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Happy First Christmas, Baby Lincoln!