One reason I don't have time to blog as much as I'd like is this nut, who just happens to be 18 months old today! Jameson, you're a riot and you make us laugh so much. You love Belle, Emil and balls the best in life right now.
It's a lot to recap the last 8 or 9 months, so I'll just try to hit on some of the bigger things. This blog basically serves as our family repository. Our children do not have baby books. I take that back. Colter has a book that is somewhat completed through about three months. Ellis has a book and I think we wrote some of his birth story, and Aunt Gina put his footprints in there in the hospital, but it stops there. I didn't even buy a book for Jameson. It's my goal to get caught up on digital photo books but I have yet to complete a year, so I'm about 11 years behind on my goal to document married life. I love making memories...I'm not so great at remembering to remember them.
I digress. The last post I did was after Ben was done with dog school and we started settling into a new routine with a new dog and a new school schedule for Colter. Let me just say...we barely survived kindergarten. Actually, Colter excelled and loved it, but I felt like I was behind from day one. It's so different having a child on their own schedule rather than tied to yours. But we eventually figured out how to get by, and were able to pepper in some house projects along the way.
In October we tackled the front entry door. It was installed for 11 months by the time we got around to staining it. But hey at least it's done, albeit a little darker than I had envisioned. You win some, you lose some.
In November we painted over the second of three bedrooms that we originally painted yellow in March of 2016. The first re-coat job was only 9 months later in December, just before Jameson was born. I was never a fan of the yellow we chose, so I'm slowly erasing it from my memory. I have nothing against yellow, just unhappy with our particular choice. Just say "no" to Benjamin Moore Straw.
This second room is the toy room. This one was the worst in my opinion, because when the sun would set in the west it shone its brilliance right into this room and made the yellow 7 times more blinding. So it was time to give our retinas a break. I wanted to paint the room but also try to figure out a way to add some multi-purpose here so it could double as a guest room, mostly for cousin sleepovers. We scored a hand-me-down futon from Matt and Lena which does the trick. The only thing is that the wooden frame was painted teal. Now normally this is my dream, but in this case I just wanted to neutralize it and painted it white instead.
Also in November I finally convinced Ben to hang the TV downstairs on the fireplace and rearrange the furniture to have more play area. I've since rearranged furniture again but the TV has stayed in place. Actually, the first TV he hung lasted a week before there was a random thunderstorm and lightning struck. Literally. Shorted the fuses and fried the TV. Thanks, November. Anyways, we moved the upstairs TV down and that one has held up just fine!
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| on the Fall 2018 short list is painting this paneling. cannot wait. |
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| yes, two Christmas trees. no regrets. |
In December we tiled the kitchen backsplash on a whim. We had most of the supplies left over from the downstairs bathroom remodel and Ben had taken some time off around the holidays, so the natural thing to do was spend Christmas Eve Eve tiling the backsplash. True to Reuschel form, not only did we end up with the kitchen a mess, we ended up with Emil inside for the day due to the fact that he ate half a tennis ball. We had no hydrogen peroxide in the house but thankfully Todd and Julie (our neighbors) had a huge bottle which might have saved Emil's life. He threw up most of the ball and a crisis was averted.
January brought us influenza for two weeks straight so we were pretty much down for the count. February brought my busy season at work, busy weekends, a trip (for me) to Costa Rica with my friend Cassie, and very little time to accomplish anything.
In March we stained, finished, and reinforced the shelves in the pantry. These had been bare wood since the time we moved in, so we finally used some leftover stain and poly to finish these up. Plus some of the very long ones had started sagging, so Ben added some brackets and we are back in business. Having this pantry is amazing but man it can get out of control pretty quickly.
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| I hope I don't make this face as often as Ben says I do. |
Also in March I was able to put a vision into action that I'd had for a while. We saved a lot of old windows from the house with the intention of using them as decor. The windows from the bedrooms were these cool tall, skinny things that I wanted to use as frames. I didn't want current pictures in them because I didn't want to have to keep switching them out. And I didn't know how to best mount them. So I didn't do anything. Then I thought about using them for baby pictures of the boys. Which was a good idea, but honestly their baby pictures look nothing like them anymore so I changed my mind. And we had made the mistake of not getting professional baby pictures for Colter. Sorry buddy. So my next idea was to use pictures from when each of the boys turned one. And that's what we went with. The windows themselves needed some TLC; Ben glued parts of the frames back together, and I sanded down the chipping paint and put on a fresh coat to seal it all in. Super cute, I think. These are hung in the hallway that now connects the original upstairs to the addition, and it's right by the boys' bedrooms.
In April Ben gave me a great gift! Doors to block the furnace that's in my closet. This is one of those "shouldn't take too long" but in reality took all evening projects. So not fun, but great reward in the end. And it's so good to check that stuff off the list.
In May we started moving to the outside project list. With the help of our friend Tony's dad, Ben got our neighbor's swingset moved over to our property. Our kids are in their glory! Thanks so much, Todd and Julie!
Also in May Ben built steps on the northwest corner of the porch. These are so great! We have to stain them yet at some point, but the treds need to acclimate for a while before we can do that.
Also in May we painted the mudroom and kitchen entry doors and the last of the porch ceiling that we never got to last summer. It took this little section of porch from blah to blue(ish-gray) in a few hours. These things drive me nuts. We bought the paint last summer and just never finished it. Because life.
While the house is starting to fill up with furniture and decor, I still check Craig's List every few days to see what treasures need a home. One such day I found this beautiful couch for $50 and decided I needed it for our "formal" living room. Ben had some major doubts ("too Victorian") but dutifully went on the errand to pick it up from the psych office I bought it from. The frames on the wall were found in the attic when we were renovating, and the wreaths are from Hobby Lobby. Attic finds + Hobby Lobby + Craig's List = 90% of our house.
I'll sign off now with some pics from last week's vacation at Big Star Lake. I sure love these goofballs!
