A little house tour

I don't really know what inspired this post, beyond the fact that I've kind of got houses on my brain since it's highly possible that we might be moving next spring. I also remember seeing several 'link up' house tour posts in years past that I, for whatever reason, never actually participated in. So, here it is: my very first house tour. I'll start with the downstairs and will include a tour of the upstairs in my next post. Warning: you will see frequent photo bombs in the form of small children and the occasional husband throughout this post.

 

The following three pictures are your view upon first walking into my house. To your immediate left, you'll find the small table & mirror pictured below in the first pic. To your right, you'll find our dining room (second pic- a better view to come). And straight ahead, you'll find the hallway leading to the family room (and a small toddler running towards you).

 

A better view of the dining room:

 

The bar and pantry area that's in between the dining room and kitchen. I love this little nook.

 

Below are various views of the kitchen. The irony of the fact that I have a double oven when my skills in the kitchen are mediocre at best isn't lost on me. I will say that my mom and my in-laws very much enjoy my double oven when they're cooking for the holidays, though.

 Hello, magnet explosion on the fridge. Macey and Camden enjoy the animal and alphabet magnet games, so I've accepted fridge clutter as an inevitable part of my life for now.

 

Little table & chairs for the kids. They eat meals at the big table with the rest of the family, but often eat snacks at the little table.

 

The family room. Matt calls it the living room, but I grew up with a formal living room, so this room feels much more like a family room to me.

 

Probably my least favorite thing about this house: our steep staircase with no landing. Not exactly baby/toddler/small kid friendly. But, I do love our picture wall.

 

Downstairs bathroom. It used to be a dark shade of green, but I'm a big fan of its newly updated light blue paint and beach theme.

 

This has already been pictured in another post on my blog, but for consistency's sake, I decided to include it again: the downstairs playroom. Which is really the old master bedroom. I have changed one small thing since this picture was taken: I added another string above the one pictured to display more of Camden's preschool artwork.

 

And finally: the master bathroom (which is now just the bathroom in the playroom). Although it still gets a good amount of use: Matt, for some reason, still prefers to shower in this bathroom.

There you have it, folks. The first floor of my house. Stay tuned for the upstairs tour, coming soon.

Introducing...Our New Playroom!

As promised, below are some pictures of our new playroom. For those of you who didn't read my previous post, we had a pretty useless downstairs master bedroom (we are using a bedroom upstairs so we're not on a different floor from the kids at night). The room had an old TV, an old bed that was never used, and Matt's exercise equipment. Like I said, wasted space. So, we made it into a little play area last weekend. There's still a bit more work to do; my mom is going to create some art work for the big empty wall over the TV. But I'm happy with what we've done so far and the room has already gotten a lot of use. So yay- no more wasted space!

These canvas paintings of Special Agent Oso, Jungle Junction characters, and Mickey & Donald are courtesy of my talented Mom. These paintings used to hang in Camden's room. He's kind of outgrown these characters and Macey's bedroom walls are much too busy for more paintings, so I figured the playroom is the perfect new home for this art work.

 

I tried to make sure we have a fairly equal amount of "girl toys" and "boy toys" in the room.

Excuse my little photo bomb (and yes- those are Santa jammies she's wearing in January. Don't judge me). Hanging on the wall you'll see several samples of Camden's preschool crafts. I had no idea what to do with all of his crafts, but I kept hoarding them anyway. This idea was inspired by the play date we went on last week and Pinterest. It's simply some thick string and lots of colorful clothes pins to hold up the work.

You'll notice that Matt's exercise equipment is still in the back of the room; unfortunately, we don't have another space for it. But, no worries- the kids still have plenty of room.

Here's our outdated TV, which is perfect for Camden's new obsession: old school Nintendo. He plays while sitting on his comfy blue bean bag chair. 

Camden-isims

Oh, how I love to listen to Camden's little voice and his daily running monologues, questions, and stories. It's so crazy for me to think how much I used to worry about his speech and what a late talker he was. At four years old, you would most certainly never know that Camden didn't come out of the womb speaking in full sentences. Here are a few of my favorite recent "Camden-isims":

We were driving in the car and Camden was carrying on his usual one-sided conversation in the back seat. Then I hear: "See what I'm doing, Mommy?" I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Camden rubbing one eye furiously. "What's wrong, buddy? Does your eye itch?" I asked, a little concerned. "No, Mommy. I am scratching off my eyeball so I can be one of the one-eyed minions."

Camden had a sleepover at my parents' lake house a couple of weeks ago. His cousins, Jacob, Alex, and Will, also attended the overnight party. Just last night, Camden started telling me a story about his trip to the "boat house". He began, "Mommy, when I was at the boat house, me, Nan, and Alex went up in the sky in a big balloon. Then when we were coming down, we saw God. He was wearing a purple mask. He looked like a Ninja Turtle."  (He clarified later that this was a dream he had while at the boat house. I can honestly say that I have never in my life imagined God as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.)

Camden was invited on a play date by a friend at school. When I told him, he said, "But you're gonna have to ask Jacob's mommy for decorations, because we don't know how to get to his house."

This afternoon, we were sitting in the Starbucks drive-thru line when Camden piped up from the back seat, "Mommy, did you get your gingerbread latte yet?" I laughed for a good couple of minutes that he has my Starbucks order memorized. (Also, I should probably cut back on the lattes.)

I love this kid. (Side note: this was his first professional haircut last week. Doesn't he look like such a little man?!)

 

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On a totally unrelated note, I've decided to begin a mini project. There were two catalysts that led me to this little undertaking. Catalyst one: the enormous toy explosion that happened in our house after Christmas. There are toys everywhere you look, even though I made it a point to donate a good bulk of older toys in the weeks before Christmas. Secondly, at Camden's play date, his friend had an awesome little designated play room. Combine these two factors, mix with a little Pinterest searching, and voila: I am officially determined to transform a room in our house into a play room. The room in question? Well, it used to be the downstairs master bedroom. Then we had kids, I decided we had to be on the same floor as the kids at night, and we were left with a pretty useless space downstairs. Right now, the room houses Matt's gym equipment (which will unfortunately have to stay in the new play room; there's just nowhere else to put it), an old bed that no one ever uses (we'll be getting rid of this), and a TV that Camden has just started using to play (old school) Nintendo. So, I'm going to be giving this room a little makeover this weekend. Look for pictures to come.

Chatty Macey

Camden didn't talk when he was 16 months old. He babbled a lot, dropped the occasional "mama" or "dada" but beyond that, he just wasn't a very vocal little guy (until he hit 2...and he hasn't stopped talking since). So, hearing what is on a 16 month old toddler's mind is all new to me. And it's a source of daily entertainment. Here's a quick glimpse of some daily conversations in our home:

Greetings:

Macey likes to greet everything and everyone. We often hear, "Hi, Mama", "Hi, Daddy", "Hi, bro", and "Hi, Nan" around the house. But she doesn't limit her greetings to people! Often when I go to get her out of her crib in the morning, Macey will be in the middle of a conversation with her pink riding horse that Nan and Pop got her for Christmas. "Hi, neigh neigh", she will say while waving to her new friend.

When we're getting ready to leave the house, she'll say, "Hi, shoes", and collect her favorite sparkly silver shoes to bring to me.

My personal favorite, though, is when she greets her food: "Hi, cheese" or "Hi, cookie". I love that she offers them a friendly hello before eating them.

Of course, she also says "bye bye" to all of these people, toys, and food as well.

Other:

Macey has been saying "good girl" since she was about a year old. (I think I've mentioned before that, ironically, she mostly deems herself a "good girl" when doing something dangerous or defiant, like scaling the kitchen table. In fact, when I hear her utter those two words and she's not in my line of vision, I know it's time to go search for her.)

Anyway, "good girl" has now morphed into "good girl, Mommy" or, even more entertaining, "good girl, Daddy." I'm not sure yet if she's trying to convince us that she's a good girl or paying us a compliment. Either way, it's hilariously adorable. For example, while waiting to check out at the grocery store, Macey likes to hold my credit card. When it's time to pay, she will pretend to swipe it while saying, "Good girl, Mommy."

She's a talker, this girl. And also, it's worth noting that I typed this entire post while she sat (read: wiggled, climbed, and reached for things) on my lap. So, if there are any glaringly obvious typos, spelling errors, or grammatical errors, I'm blaming my chatty little assistant.

Yep, this one.