It's going to be EPIC...hopefully!

As you all know Oliver and I pretty much watch Studio 5 every day.  Pretty sure my little man would recognize Brooke and Darin if we ever happened to see them in real life anywhere...that sounds a little sad :)  Anyways, the other day on there they had the fabulous Mandi from Vintage Revivals and she mentioned this EPIC room makeover that she will be doing.  So we hopped on over to her blog to see what it was all about, let me tell you, it's going to be awesome.  So that's where we get to the point we're at now.  I get to post embarrassing photos of my basement in hopes that it will soon be fabulous thanks to Mandi!  Here we go:

Welcome to our basement living room... dun dun dun!  Basically I tried to ignore it's existence after we moved in and let me tell you, I've done pretty good up to this point.  But now that Oliver is having separation anxiety every time I try to go put a load of laundry in it needs more help than just throwing a blanket down and hoping that somehow he won't move from that spot for long enough to get what I need done.  That's where this contest comes in.  Hopefully we will win and then the room will be so amazing that we will just spend all of our time in the basement :)

As you can see it's basically just a storage/whatever room at the moment.  That is our old furniture that we moved down there after getting new couches upstairs...and basically they are now just there so I can stack stuff on them.

And here is the totally awful, nasty stained carpet that was there when we moved in (now you know the need for a blanket when I bring Oliver down)

Yes, those are remnants of wallpaper that we found when I tore down tacky plastic fake paneling because I couldn't sleep one more night knowing that it was in my house!

As you can see, this room has the makings of a nice cozy place where I would love to let Oliver come play with me, but with zero budget money, we make it work as is.  Please Mandi come help me!

First Impressions

Well folks, the house is coming along quite nicely. And we're getting really excited. All we have left is to get the carpet installed and then we can officially move into the upstairs and stop living like hermits :) I will post pictures of the colors we chose once we finish the touch up work around the trim and ceiling. I've always wanted a house that leaves a really good first impression when people come and visit. One of the things Brandon and I were talking about the other day was our front door. Right now it's just white (with a couple cute crayon marks from the daycare that previously occupied the house) with a small rectangle window in the middle. Eventually we want to get a new one but for now we're wanting to paint it. These are some pictures we found of what we're thinking for a paint color. Eventually we would love to have it look like the bottom one. What do you all think?



Just a little Christmas thought to leave you with...
". . . for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself." -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

I know I'm a slacker...

I've been promising probably the whole time I have had this blog that I'll do better at updating it. The truth is, I really want to...but then I forget. So I'm being serious this time, I'm going to do better. My reasoning is this. We have a lot of family that we don't see on a regular basis and I'm sure they want to know what's going on escpecially since we just bought our house. So...I'm going to start updating the blog more often, starting now. Promise!

Our life recently...

Our life recently...packing...waiting...packing...teasing Missy by putting boxes on top of her and pretending we're going to pack her...waiting...waiting...learning to know when a situation is out of our control and putting it in the Lord's hands...packing...and still waiting! Don't worry though we're doing it with a smile :)

House

Well...we were supposed to be closing on our house today...but...we're not quite done. Technically we signed all the papers and are done, but they're waiting on something from the bank for the seller since it's a short sale. So the seller isn't done. It's been five months since we put our offer in and we were so excited this morning that it was finally going to be finished, after everything that we had to do to get to this point. Let me tell you, I was a little beyond frustrated this afternoon. I came to school and did not want to be here, I just wanted to go find someone that I could blame for not getting their job done. As I calmed down a little bit I was reading some quotes on lds.org and I found one that I really liked. It's from the May 2007 Ensign from an article by Bonnie D. Parkin the part I really liked said:
"...receiving even tribulations with thanksgiving requires a broken heart and a contrite spirit, humility to accept that which we cannot change, willingness to turn everything over to the Lord—even when we do not understand, thankfulness for hidden opportunities yet to be revealed. Then comes a sense of peace."
I realized that I needed to hear exactly what Sister Parkin said over two years ago. I can't change what's going on...in fact at this point in time there is absolutely nothing I can do to make them go faster with the closing. The only thing I can do is turn everything over to the Lord and say "I don't understand why this is happening like this or at this time, but I trust You, I know that you would never give me anything that I can't handle and I know that so long as I have done all I can do that it will all work out how it's supposed to."