18
May 12

A few before and afters, and a baby haircut.

The painters are done – hooray! (Well actually, I lied. They are *almost* done. They have to do one more coat on the fireplace, but in comparison of the entire project, they’re like 99% done.)

It’s been a whirlwind week and I think some of my brain cells died from the fumes. I’m tired – wahhh, but now I have to clean (eek!)

Here are a few before and afters!

The stairs before...

The stairs after in Benjamin Moore's Black Ink

The fireplace before

The fireplace after in Benjamin Moore's Sparrow

I also took Bitty for a haircut and she finally figured out how to eat a lollipop!

What a little ham.

She also gave some sweet snuggles yesterday :)

Kisses from Bit!

Happy Friday!!


15
May 12

Things I know:

1. There are 5 loads of clean, but unfolded, clothes on my bed and I am too tired to fold them.

2. I’ve spent the past 2 mornings at 7:30AM at the paint store. I really don’t want to go to the paint store tomorrow morning.

3. Bitty is cute when she eats chips at the mexican restaurant.

Chips!

Chips with "sauce!" ("Sauce" = salsa.)

My little lamb.

4. The modern pendant lights in our kitchen are DONE SON! Much to our electrician’s surprise, when he took the pendants down, there were recessed light fixtures under the pendants (which is exactly what I was going to have him install!).

Peace out pendant.

5. Bitty’s hair is now long enough for pigtails. And they are about the most precious things.

PIGGIES... WITH BOWS.

Cheesin'!

6. Girls with glasses, but not the famous bloggers (The Girls With Glasses Show).

She loves her sunnies. Yet she broke them tonight.

7. My one Mother’s Day picture with Bitty. (We were kind of late leaving for church, so no pretty pic!)

True that. Double true.


09
May 12

Swatch out now.

I did something very outside of my comfort zone today…

I tested paint swatches on our walls. And our fireplace mantle.

I was going to wait on Kris to do it for us, but I was too anxious to see the colors on the walls. So as soon as L went down for her nap, I busted out the paintbrushes and got to it.

Here’s what we’ve picked for the “white” for downstairs, Feather Down by Benjamin Moore, and for the mantle (Sparrow by BM):

Feather Down & Sparrow

For our bedroom and bathroom, we’re going to use Stonington Gray:

Bye bye lime green.

In Bitty Bit’s bedroom, we’re getting rid of that ZLAMalicious turquoise and using Dream Whip and Cream Puff, with Cotton Balls on the moulding (our contractor’s adding that to her room for us soon). No pic yet because I haven’t swatched it.

I’m still undecided about our office. I think I’m going to use Feather Down in there, too… but I’m not sure yet. Definitely not keeping that red.

I wanted to share some of the furniture that I spotted at Knight yesterday. I think I could use all of this somehow. But my wallet couldn’t keep up ;)

I think it would look swell in my house. Just saying.

Kris says he needs this chair.

Cute club chair.

I think the pattern would be overwhelming for our den, but it's cute anyway!

I LOVE this coffee table.

The fabric is killer.

Wouldn't this be fun on one side of a dining room table?

I really think I'm buying these for our bedside tables.

Pretty

Den-worthy!

Almost neutral.

Beautiful!

Ikat anyone?

Lamp/side table combo

Dining room table

Bedframe

And finally, because I can’t resist, a little nugget:

The Dandelion Princess


07
May 12

Paint colors, among other things.

Around 8:00PM, my eyelids get heavy and I’m pretty much no-good for conversation.

These past few weeks have been exhausting.

We are loving every bit of our new house, except for maybe the dishwasher? It likes to run all night. I think something’s wrong with the ??? (I’m drawing a blank; you know, the twisty thing, you um, twist to make it start? Yeah, that thing). Our painter starts on Monday and I’m feeling the pressure to make decisions about paint colors. I’ve gotten great advice from my mom and my friend Kistler, so tomorrow, I’m going to Carolina Supply House (home of Benjamin Moore paints in Florence) to get sample pots to live with a few colors on the walls for a few days. I think I’m going to do white or close-to-white on the walls in the living room, office, kitchen, guest bedroom, and guest bath, and gray in our bedroom and bathroom. I’m going to do L’s room in pink inspired from a pin on Pinterest (listed below), and a seagrass wallpaper in the office bathroom. I’m also contemplating accentuating the moulding on the fireplace with a darker shade – maybe a greige.

Speaking of Bitty, she has a little bit of a cold or something and I’ve tried to keep her home as much as possible. Which is not hard, because obviously, I’m losing my mind. Did I tell you that I said “Happy Friday!” to the woman at the City of Florence water department last MONDAY. She said, “You must be joking.” And I said, trying to hide my embarrassed but obviously confused face, “Oh… yeah, sorry about that. Uhh… we just bought and sold houses today and it’s been kind of stressful.”

Yikes.

PS, embedding Pinterest images makes my HTML weird. Not going to fight it tonight. Or probably ever.

Siri hates my Southern accent. I asked her, “How do you care for a rose bush?” She heard:

Not exactly, Siri.

Wrong again.

Mickey had a case of the Mondays.

My happy napper during lunch, with her Bun Bun :)


02
May 12

We moved.

Literally. That’s what’s been going on.

Apparently, moving is one of life’s most stressful events.

(Let’s just see if I can start one more sentence with another adverb.)

So, we’ve moved. And the house is glorious, really it is. But I have about had it with cardboard boxes! And Lime! Green! Paint! Our painter can start in 3 weeks, and I am most appreciative.

The Little Bungalow was on the market for 6 months. In this market, it sold relatively quickly. But it was a long 6 months of dropping our plans and speed cleaning the house in 15 minutes to get it shown. Every time we left the house for the weekend, not only did I have to pack for myself and my kiddo (which is SO hard, gosh why is it so hard to pack for a baby? They’re BABIES for crying out loud!), I had to leave our house show-ready. Blah!

The best news? One of our good friends/quasi-relative bought the Little Bungalow, so I know he’s going to love it just like we did :)

We knew that our new house was meant to be the moment we walked in the door. It was perfect! I can’t wait to do before/after pics as we put our touch on it.

The scales of chocolate, ....err, um justice.

The BUSTAS together again!

Bitty loves boxes!

Settling in nicely to her new dining room.

Peekaboo!

Mama's little helper.

And PS? For the first time in the history of our 4 years of marriage, WE UPGRADED TO CABLE! Hellooooo HD!


29
Apr 12

A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

I spent a glorious 3 hours at my hair salon, conveniently named The Salon (ha), last week. When I got back from Vegas, my hair felt fried. I think it was because of the hard water in Nevada, but the ends have become damaged over the past few months. I’ve been growing it out since I was pregnant with L, and it was time for a summery change. So I asked Barbi to take off a few inches from the length and we did caramel ombre and highlights! I LOVE the way it turned out. Of course I took an awkward self portrait so you can see:

The new 'do.

We also took the baby to the pet store yesterday to see the birds, bunnies, and fish. They had CHINCHILLAS. CHINCHILLAS ARE BALLIN’. They are also like expensive rats. But ballin’ rats. L wasn’t too sure about the chirping birds, as you can tell from this photo:

Hanging at the Pet Smartz

Also, I forgot to mention, my stylist has launched a line of hair accessories called Bloom. They are ADORABLE (you can see more on their Facebook page), but here is the headband that my mama bought for me! It was so fun to wear:

Bloom

L is vacuuming the floor with her Playskool toy that says “This place is a pig sty!!” and I’m working on a cup of coffee.  Happy Sunday! Here’s a video that you need to listen to, right now.


28
Apr 12

Saturday Snippets

Remember L’s Hello Kitty towel?

The regal princess.

Yeah. We can’t use it as a towel anymore. She wants it to be her cape, because it has a KITTY and a BOW. Two of the things that make her world go ’round. So if we run into you at the store, and my child is wearing a terrycloth Hello Kitty towel on her head, no judging allowed.

I saw this link of this dad who plays Bohemian Rhapsody for his kids every morning as they drive to school. BRILLIANT and sweet.

I have a few favorite “pinners” on Pinterest. I could re-pin EVERYTHING they pin. I don’t want to be like a stalker, but I really want to save those images! Would you be weirded out if someone pinned like, 20 of your pins? It wouldn’t bother me… but it still makes me nervous.

It’s like the internet high school lunch table, where you don’t want to seem too eager to sit down but you really want a good spot by the funny people.

…too deep?


27
Apr 12

The Hives.

So pregnancy puts your body through the wringer. There’s no denying that. But one of the lasting symptoms that I wasn’t expecting? Postpartum hives. From the moment L was born. (I wrote about it once, here.) And when I say hives, I don’t just mean itchy skin. I mean ridiculous welts. At one time, I couldn’t even get my hair cut because the act of someone else washing my hair made my scalp and neck turn into one giant welt.

The problem was, no one could help me out! Not my OB/GYN. Not my family doctor. Not even (gasp) Google. The only answer I got was that it must be hormonal and when I stopped nursing, it’d get better.

Well, here we are, 4 months after ceasing the nursingala, and around 5:00 every day (aka the point where I’ve had just about enough and it is time for daddy to come home and relieve mommy for a few minutes), I feel that ol’ itch start to creep up my spine. Before I know it, I am one huge hive again. What gives?


26
Apr 12

Broccoli, celery, gotta be…

Her first episode of "Veggie Tales."

Kris took Boot Scoot on a daddy/daughter date to the Christian bookstore to buy a couple of Veggie Tales DVDs. I am really excited about setting up the DVD player next week so that we don’t have to rely on ETV anymore!

Is it just me, or are kids’ bathing suits sized REALLY small? Bitty wears 18m clothing, but a 18m one-piece bathing suit is super short in the waist. I had to buy her a 4T(!!!) suit at Target yesterday to fit the length of her torso!


24
Apr 12

For context:

If you’re curious about this video, see the last post. (This is Bitty’s theme song.)

BTW, what if we named our next child Pernell? Pernell Meade.