An entirely too long and overdue post!

I have been MIA recently, sorry! We have been really busy! My last real post was during Matthew's 1st day of preschool. I can't believe how much he has learned in only a month. He amazes me daily. He seems to be fitting in really well with his classmates. We have only had one call home from the teacher saying he punched  a little girl! Oooops! We talked about it and prayed about it and now whenever I go to pick him up he says "we had fun and I didn't punch anyone!" I guess that is a good thing! We went to his Christmas concert mid-December and it was so cute! Matthew did a great job singing the songs and doing all the actions. He starts back up on Wednesday. We are both ready to get back to our regular schedule after an awesome Christmas and New Years. *Sidenote: it took so long to write this entry, it is now Friday, he is currently at preschool!

We ended November with a pretty wonderful Thanksgiving. We went to my stepfather's family Christgiving. Fortunately, they always celebrate Christmas on Thanksgiving just so we don't have to add another Christmas gathering on the 24th or 25th of December. We also made a surprise visit to my Aunt Beth's, my step mom's sister. All in all a great, low key day.

We stayed here in central Illinois this December (last year we visited Katie and Jacob in Arizona). It was a very mild December allowing many walks and trips to the park, which is always nice with a very active 3-year-old! We began the month of December with Patrick's birthday and great friends. We held a frat-style-dance-surprise-party for him! It was so much fun and a total surprise to Patrick. I think he really enjoyed himself, until we arrived home and then he wasn't feeling so hot! I won't go into further detail!

Patrick was offered a job at the beginning of December in IR radiology (Interventional ). We are really excited for this new position and responsibility. He will be working four, ten hour shifts. The same schedule he currently has but a little better hours. He begins his new job the 16th of January. He will remain PRN helping out with dialysis. His patients will greatly miss him and although fellow employees may be silently celebrating his leave they will miss the hard work and reliability they could count on him for. I hope this new job brings a lot of new friendships and a good sense of comradeship. I think these aspects are something his current job is lacking.
Christmas is always a crazy time of year for us. However, it was exciting because it was our 1st Christmas in our new home!

Our Christmas started at about 8:30 am on the 24th. We drove out to Kirby Acres to give Momma K and Big Kev their Christmas present.

All of the siblings pooled together and purchased a pretty awesome looking stone for the end of their driveway.

It started out looking like this.

Loaded in the back of the truck.

The big reveal! Ignore the awake-ness of us all, it was early!

Next we were headed to my Aunt Sara's house where we ate awesome food, opened presents, spent time with family and played games. After we packed everything up we went to my mom and Brian's house for more present opening. We were planning on going to church on Christmas Eve but we were all exhausted and still had another full day ahead of us. 

Christmas morning, we were at the Kirby's again, bright and early. There are always so many presents there. I think I received my two favorite gifts there. One being, a course on Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication. I love it! It really got me searching my Bible and wanting to learn more. I also received a Nook! Which has helped a lot on my history of the Bible searching. We then packed up and went to my dad and Barbie's house. Patrick received his favorite gifts there, Illini basketball tickets and a Kindle. I think my favorite gifts Patrick received were a miter saw and a table saw! Yahoo, let the home renovations begin!  Matthew opened a big wheel which he loves! He even got to ride around outside, thanks to the awesome weather.

After my dad and Barbie's we headed to my Grandpa and Grandma Swisher's. We had a great lunch and enjoyed a fun white elephant gift exchange. Check out the awesome-ness I came home with + $25! 

They totally do not go with anything in my house, but I love them, and I will find a place for them, hopefully!

We ended the day back at Kirby Acres for a pretty awesome prime rib dinner! We had a great two days celebrating our Saviors birth by enjoying time with family. The only thing I would of changed is making myself go to a Christmas service. Top of the list for next year! 

I almost forgot! Christmas morning we gave Matthew our presents to him. We really only gave him two presents as we knew he would be getting a ton everywhere else. The first gift was this bad boy...

                                         

 ...the best photo I could get of Matthew.

I love this picture because my two full grown cousins are in the bounce house and Matthew is not!

To be completely honest when we showed Matthew the bounce house on Christmas morning he hated it. He  did not want anything to do with it. I even told him we were going to take it back and he did not care at all. We were pretty let down. We thought it was going to be the best gift ever. After a few beautiful days and having friends over he wouldn't give it up for anything! I think it is really going to be great this summer. The other gift is a work bench we had been working on for a while, we just never got around to finishing it. We decided to make Christmas our goal and Matthew loves it!

Between Christmas and New Years we did take a trip to Chicago to attend a funeral for Patrick's grandmother. She passed away the Monday before Christmas. This will be the third funeral we have gone to Chicago for. It is always a weird event because of course we are sad at the passing of a family member, but it is also the only time we see our family that lives in Chicago. After the visitation and funeral there is always a luncheon and it is so much fun! I love catching up with everyone and seeing how their kids are growing, right along with Matthew. I wish we lived closer or made more of a point to visit outside of a funeral. 

New Years day we went to my Swisher grandparents to visit with my Aunt Debbie and cousin Kristen who had come from Texas to visit. I enjoyed catching up with my cousin Kristen. She is probably one of the funniest woman I have ever met! I wish we lived closer.

Aunt Debbie, Grandma Peggy & Me

Benjamin, Aunt Debbie, Me & Kristen

For New Years Eve we went to my Aunt Sara's for great food, company and games. We were not planning on staying out till midnight but we made it and then came home and collapsed!

 Cynthia and her best friend Sonya.

 Claire and I.

 Group photo!

Goofy photo!

 Playing games.

Claire...12:01 am, time to go home!

We have had a few days of snow and took full advantage of them!

To catch everyone up to speed on our house progress. It is moving slowly but surely.

Let's start with the bathroom.

The last time I blogged about the bathroom it looked something like this:

There has been a little improvement made. We now have much better lighting and tile to put down under the shelving.

Now we just need to get around to actually laying the tile and framing out the mirror.

We have started to hang photos in Matthew's room. There are many more to hang.

Along the other wall in his room we have hung a wire to show off all of his art work he brings home from school and church. Excuse the current artwork. It is mine. For some reason when we start to paint at home he just prefers to sit and watch me rather than do his own thing.

We have also painted the kitchen and are getting ready to paint the dining room. I put up some sample colors on our cabinets to see what color I think will be best once I build up the courage to actually paint them. Sherry, from younghouselove recently painted their kitchen cabinets and they look amazing! It gave me a little bit of motivation, but I am still too scared to do anything. : / We also decided we were going to purchase new counters before we paint the cabinets. Sorry I do not have any photos of the kitchen currently. I tried to take some but the lighting is not very good so the quality was not good enough to post a photo. We are currently changing out all of our light switches and outlets. They were all a dingy beige and we are giving them a little update with brand new white ones. I didn't think it would make that much of a difference but it really makes a huge difference.

There is so much more I should have been sharing over the last two months but time got away and I know I have exceeded the appropriate length a blog should be!

Happy Wednesday!

I have a lot to write about! A little house updating, a little blog advertising and a little bit of fun!  We have been quite busy over the last two weeks.
I will begin with all the house updates.

We FINALLY have TWO fully functioning bathrooms in our home! Yippee!
To be completely honest we haven't had that since April 8th, the day we got the keys!
We are so excited to be able to choose which bathroom we are going to use.
Let us take a little look back to where it all began.

       

Yeah, it was pretty scary when we first viewed our home, but we saw so much potential in it. 

Was the wallpaper hideous? YES!

Was it scary that there was matching wallpaper on the ceiling, walls, cabinets? YES!

Was it creepy that the curtains and shower curtain matched the pattern on the wallpaper? Yes, yes, yes!

Was the floor carpet? YES!

However, it was so big! There was so much storage. So much potential!

Here was the scene on April 8th.

Brittany and Alice enjoying their demo job!












A few days weeks later. We had ripped all the carpet out and installed tile. 

We still had a long way to go.        

Next came the long and tedious process of sanding, scraping, mudding, and spackling over and over and over again. Once it was finally done it was well worth all the hard work. We had a freshly painted bathroom.

 ...and then we installed the toilet...and trim...

Then I removed all the doors and trim from the linen closet beside the shower. 

I wanted it to be a little more open.

Next came the vanity.  We probably looked at a million different bathroom vanities. We even bought one and I made Patrick return it because it just wasn't what I wanted. All the vanities I wanted were ridiculously priced. So after going quite awhile without a vanity I made up my mind to build one (meaning my husband would build me one). I still was hesitant to start building because 1) I had no idea where to begin when it came to building something and 2) I figured the wood must be pretty pricey since all those vanities online were so expensive. Then one Saturday two weeks ago I was tired of living without a vanity in the main bathroom of our house. So we headed to Menards. After spending about 3-4 hours at Menards we had all our wood and screws to at least get started. We called up some favors from friends and family asking for  tools, saws and advice and we were on our way. By the end of that night we had a pretty good frame built. All I had to do was start staining. After staining we started putting pieces together and before we knew it, we had a pretty awesome looking vanity. It's exactly what I wanted. It is the $1200 vanity I salivated over on the internet and best yet...my hubby built it for me. I love it!

We went ahead and used the same counter that was on the old vanity. It was the right size, in great condition and best of all FREE! Bringing the grand total for this vanity under $50!!! We are going to be purchasing a new faucet causing the price of the vanity to rise significantly but nothing close to $1200!
We still have a few areas that still need work. We need to frame out the mirror, purchase an above the mirror light, hang some decor and figure out what we are going to do with this ugly area.

This area is right under the bottom shelf that use to be the linen closet. We did not put tile down because at one point in time we discussed putting a laundry shoot down there. After discussing the pros and cons we decided to just tile it. When we went to Lowe's to purchase the 9 whole tiles we needed to finish the project we learned they had been discontinued. For the time being I am going to put a little curtain over it but I am hoping we can figure something else out for this area. If you have any suggestions we will gladly consider any and all.

Once we have a completed bathroom I will share many more photos.

On to some smaller updates that have taken place in our home.

You may or may not have seen this light fixture in our dining room. 

It use to look like this...gold.

It now looks like this...after being spray painted with ORB (that is for you Sherry).

Yes, I along with Brittany pretend that Sherry, Brittany and I are blog BFF's!

Our master closet use to look like this (imagine closet doors, I forgot to snap a photo with the doors attached)...

It now looks like this...

I plan on painting the shelves and walls in the closet and hanging a pretty fabric instead of doors. I am sure I will post pics once the project is complete. We decided to place shelves in our closet for a number of reasons: 1) we do not have many hanging clothes, and the hanging clothes we do have can go in another closet in another room for the time being. 2) We never put our clothes in a dresser anyway. They end up all over the floor or a mess in a basket. I am great at folding laundry. I am horrible at putting the laundry away once it is folded. This way I can just put the folded piles of clothes right on the shelves. 

Genius if you ask me!

Eventually, we plan on purchasing some sort of armoire that will probably have a hanging rack in it and a few drawers. That should be enough to hold all of our hanging clothes. Something along these lines, maybe a little less fancy.

For now we love having the extra space with no dressers!

Here is a photo of Matthew's CLEAN room! 

It doesn't happen often and I thought I should snap a photo and record it before the moment is gone.

Other than bathroom remodeling and updating I have been babysitting again. I took some cute photos the last time Matthew and I were there and I thought I would share them with you.

Fighting bubbles is a hard job but someones got to do it!

I have another blog to add to the list. Last time I added Brittany's and this time I am endorsing my cousin, Kristen's blog. She has been through a lot during her short life, and unbelievably lived to tell about it, and that is exactly what she will be doing over at her blog. I am excited to hear how she has overcame the obstacles that have been placed in her way and what the future holds for her. 

Happy Wednesday everyone!