Exceeding Our Home Improvement Budget

At the beginning of the year, we set as a budget for ourselves that we could spend $230 per month on home improvement. So that means anything we buy at Home Depot for repairs, yard stuff, or anything that we want to get for our home as an upgrade, like furniture and things. This was with the thought that we could refrain from buying things for a few months to save up for things that cost more. Sounds like a good plan, right?

And it is! Except...we are over budget by more than 2 grand for the year. And there is another problem that there are still more things we want to do.

I love that my girls are such good friends...most of the time.

Over the last couple of months, we have found a rug for our family room, bar stools, and a new bed. This has involved a lot of shopping around. One night when we were looking at mattresses we stopped by the Gilbert temple on the way home, so the girls could look at the grounds. They are pretty sweet. We loved wandering around and even saw an eight-year-old getting her baptism pictures done.

Beautiful temple.

So we eventually decided to go with an IKEA mattress, but we soon wished we hadn't. We were looking for a soft mattress and picked the softest one there. But when we brought it home, we soon found out that the floor model was much, much softer than the new one. We are wondering if the floor model was just super broken in, or maybe ours was mislabeled. Either way, they don't return mattresses at IKEA unless it is an exchange. Unfortunately, we had already picked the softest one. So we decided to buy a memory foam topper for the bed, and if that didn't work, our plan was to return it for the same kind to see if we could get a softer one. But we didn't end up needing to. The topper did the trick, thank goodness.

We love our new bed. It has been on our list since we got married. We have been sleeping on a hand-me-down full-sized bed for the last 10 years. It was past time to upgrade. We went with a queen sized, and it feels so big! The problem is that there are a lot of costs associated with getting a new mattress. We needed to get a base to go with it, and legs for that. Oh, and a cover for the base. And new appropriately sized sheets. It all adds up. :(

We gave our old bed to Ellie girl, who has had many sleep overs with Miriam in it. She loves her big, new soft bed. Most of the time they share the bed pretty well, but there have been a few tearful nights when Miriam had to get sent to her own bed because they broke the rules of sister sleep over. 1. Stay in bed 2. No fighting 3. Don't keep each other awake. Those can be hard rules.

Miriam's expression! It is so hard to get a family selfie!

We also got some new specific sized containers to help with our pantry storage. We also got a fantastic deal on some new bar stools. But it is not all just upgrades. It seems like there is always something that we need to get from Home Depot. This or that needs to be fixed. Not too surprising we spend a great deal of time working on house projects.

One thing we spent a lot of time on was picking out a rug for our family room. It was hard to find all of the things we were looking for a in a rug at a decent price. We quickly found out that rugs can be expensive! We wanted it thick/soft enough to kneel on to say prayers, not too traditional or too modern, match but add a little color, not show dirt too easily, among other things. We literally looked at hundreds of rugs online and in stores. We eventually settled on three. So we bought all three and returned two.

Option one: love the patchwork pattern and price, but the color in person was more burnt orange/brown than the red and blue the pictures seemed to show it. Even this picture seems to add more color than there really was. And it was a little thin.

Option two: more modern, cute pattern. A little too long of pile, and just too monochromatic to the rest of the room. Plus I was worried about it showing dirt too easily. So many designed rooms have light colored rugs. Pretty but impractical.

Option three: not too thin or thick, adds color, but matches. The floral pattern is more modern, but hopefully not too trendy. We love it. I hope I still feel that way in a year. :) That is about when I can think about buying something for our house again. Actually, probably not even about then. Yikes. 

Happy Birthday John!

"You have a birthday, shout hurray!" We love this guy so much! His birthday was on a Sunday this year, so in order to have an element of surprise, he was welcomed with a giant sign when he came home from work the Friday before.

On Sunday, we ate delicious food (mashed potatoes, crockpot turkey, salad, and crepes!), and he opened fun presents. I got him a bunch of piano music he had been wanting. The girls got him a treat, water bottles, and chocolate cereal with coconut milk.

34 has never looked so good! Love you!

At Home with Holly

Having little Holland at home while the other girls are at school has really been an adjustment for both of us. After the big girls went back to school, I don't know if she got more or less attention, but whatever it was she went into full on toddler mode. She has discovered the art of the tantrum in full force.

She can be so so adorable though. I think the main issue really is that Holland is just so aware now of what she wants and is mad that although she is communicating what she wants, she doesn't get everything she wants. She is starting to hit the hard reality that some things are toys and some things aren't toys. There is a time for ice cream, and then there isn't a time for ice cream. Life's rough.

But on the other hand, it is unusually nice to be able to spend so much time on just her. I have started taking her to toddler time at the library every week. She LOVES it, especially seeing her friend Sophie and Sophie's baby brother Oliver. Holland literally asks to go to Sophie's house almost every single day. She tells me regularly throughout the day how cute Oliver is. "Oliver so so cute!"

I think she is pretty cute at story time!

So, so cute Oliver.

She sure has kept me on my toes though. She slipped and chipped her tooth on a faucet. Worse than that was when she slipped and bit a hole in her tongue. It was so so awful, worse than you are imagining. There was so much blood that she would just hold in her mouth. She would find chunks of her tongue and pull it until it ripped off. She would hardly drink or eat anything, and there was just so much blood. This went on for about two days, until it finally started to heal. I was surprised that once it started healing, it healed very quickly. One day it is a gaping wound and just a day or two later, it just looked a little sore. Crazy.

Holly is becoming my little buddy though. She goes with me shopping, to the gym, and everywhere. This is her favorite outfit right now--her green dress and pink bow. The sunglasses are pretty awesome too.

Her favorite foods right now are "salad and cucumbers with manch" (ranch), mangos, goldfish, and almond butter "samiches."

One of my favorite things that she does right now is try to comfort people when they're sad. She gives sweet kisses and hugs while patting you on the back and saying "it's okay." Like Ellie just said, "It is truly adorable."

Her favorite story right now is "Officer Buckle and Gloria." She really doesn't like any regular story books except this one. She prefers short book or board books. She also really loves the gosling stories like "Gemma and Gus," "Ollie," "Jasper and Joop" etc. My favorite thing about those books is hearing her say the names of the characters. I don't know if Gloria, Gemma, Gus, etc have ever sounded so cute. I thought it was funny one day to see her on a swivel chair because that is one of the best safety tips in "Officer Buckle and Gloria"--never stand on a swivel chair. I have clearly read that book too much...

She still loves, loves baby bear and mommy bear, but she has also formed an attachment to one of her dolls that she has named Charlie. Charlie has clothes that can be changed, so that's especially fun. She also really likes toting around the blankets that she sleeps with and sitting in the infant bouncer chair with them. She turns the on the songs and just chills.

She also has figured out how to turn on the recorded songs on the piano. Good jazzy tunes for dancing there. I love (read: hate) it when she turns the first one on repeat. I hear that song too much.

Holland is pretty spoiled and when we go to the store she often has goldfish for a snack, and if we're taking a long time I let her play Starfall on my phone. Sometimes she accesses the camera and I find pictures like this on the phone. :)

Holland took this one!

We are also trying to potty train right now, which is about my least favorite thing ever. We are starting on week #4, which is so painful because she has definitely progressed, enough that I don't want to give up, but not enough to feel encouraged. :( She has run around naked so much the last few weeks, we have a seen a lot of Holly bum. :) I hope it clicks soon. One day after Holland went potty, I gave her a chocolate chip as a reward immediately. I laid her down to put her diaper back on. Then she sneezed. It was pretty funny to see all of the chocolate that she had sneezed all over her own face.

Chocolate sneeze!

She loves her milk and is constantly toting it around. Sometimes it gets lost though. Like the day she hid it behind the blinds by the front door. The blinds normally stay closed, and it was just a fluke I happened to look out to check something on the porch.

Holland has become super attached to Mommy over the last couple months, which is darling and sweet, but also frustrating. Especially at the gym where she has gone several times a week for most of her life. She has started freaking out when I leave her. It breaks my heart to see her so upset because she thinks I am abandoning her, but really I just am exercising for a few minutes.

We both are really happy when the big girls come home from school. I love my girls!

Redoing the Bathroom and Flooring

We just reached two years of being homeowners. Whew! I can't believe how fast that has gone. I can't believe how much time and effort we have put into our house since then. Nearly every weekend, we have almost always had something we have been working on. And then I think of our to-do list which is longer than ever, and I just get a little sick inside. So much money, effort, and time.

I should just feel blessed to have a home to work on. Which I do feel that way. Our first project of the summer start on Memorial Day weekend which was to redo the bathroom downstairs. It was by far the biggest eye sore of the house. I wish I had taken a proper before picture. The worst part isn't shown in these photos. It was the yellow stained sink. We ordered a new sink back at Christmas time. And this has been on the project list since then.

For this bathroom renovation we painted the vanity and sealed it, changed the light fixture, framed the mirror, painted the walls and baseboards, installed the new sink and faucet. We also installed new hardware throughout. We started on Memorial Day weekend and I think it spilled over into one more weekend to finish up everything. 

It isn't actually all the way done yet. I just barely got a nice soap dispenser, and we still want to hang some shelves or some cute art above the toilet.

Don't mind the ugly stool in this photo.

Our next project was more ambitious. We loved the super soft, light cream-colored carpet in the main living areas, but it just couldn't work forever. One main problem was that it was laid where we need to have a dining room table. In the family room there was that pretty white carpet in front of the only door to the back yard and exit to the garage. It was the highest quality carpet we have ever lived with, but it just wasn't practical for the long term and was starting to look pretty gross in places because of three small children living on it for nearly two years.

So we decided we wanted to install some laminate to replace it. We decided on laminate because it was something affordable that we could install ourselves, plus it isn't as cold or hard as tile. We shopped around and found the best deal at Costco of all places. We found some that we really liked and ordered the rest of the implements. Sometimes ordering things online get damaged on the way to house, like this level. (And some baseboards we ordered :( )

We decided to start in the back family room so in case we messed up, it wouldn't be the first thing people see when they enter our house. :) So, we moved all of the furniture to the front room. Good thing we don't have very much furniture yet. :) All of it could fit into either room fairly comfortably.

Bye, bye soft carpet. :( Are we sure we want to do this???

We pulled up the carpet and pad and found a bunch of glue and a large settlement crack. This was a big hiccup on the installation timeline.

Scraping off that glue!

We had to pour some self-leveling concrete and try to level the floors. Fortunately, it was a fairly contained area we had to deal with.

Look at all of the laminate we bought! Maybe about $900 worth? Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the expenses. We had to buy a lot of tools, underlayment, and baseboards. Just the concrete was about $100. Whew! Universal truth number one about house projects: it always costs more than you'd think.

Lots of laminate! $$$

I think we did about 650 square feet of flooring. It was a lot.

We bought all of the laminate back in June. We pulled up the first section of carpet the last weekend in July and installed the last baseboard over Labor Day weekend. The box advertises: "Install it in a weekend, enjoy it for a lifetime." Universal rule number two: house projects always take more time than you'd think. In addition to Saturdays and some weeknights, John took a couple of days off work to help the project move along. One room done!

Now it was time for the other room. Pulling the carpet made a whole heck of a lot more dust than I thought it would. I probably swept that room maybe five times? The dust on those blinds is seriously making me cringe. We are going to have a big dusting day really, really soon.

We put all of the carpet and pad out by the side of the road for bulk garbage pick up which coincided with this project (not by chance). People pick up stuff in bulk pick up all the time, but I was surprised that someone knocked on our door and asked if they could have the carpet and pad. I wonder if they actually used it... It was nice quality carpet, if a bit dirty, but not completely gross.

Having concrete floors and no furniture made us realize how echo-ey and noisy our house can be. Holland was a champion and napped through all the banging right below her room while we installed the floor and baseboards. And that banging was loud. John and I wore ear plugs while we installed everything.

We got so familiar with that laminate that we had little name for each design on each board: circle, big line, little line, two dots, plain jane, sunset. It was so funny when there was a random different design thrown in here and there, completely unique in all of the boxes. This happened at the very end.

I have to say that the most painful part of this whole project was the baseboards. We decided mid-project to replace the baseboards, rather than just install a quarter round to cover the expansion gap. Turns out installing baseboards is a big, ol' pain.  It was kind of funny/painful to realize we had accidentally cemented in our old baseboards in family room corner. Let's just say the walls were not untouched in the process of taking those out. Universal truth number three: house projects will always require more effort than you think they will. I really like how everything turned out though!

I wish I could say that I feel all of this relief to have it over, but the truth is now I feel stressed that we did something wrong or it will get damaged, and all of this money, time, and effort will have been for nothing. Because worrying always helps everything... Oh well, on to the next project... :)

First Day of School 2017

Our girls' first day of school was on August 3rd. School starts so early around here! They were so, so excited though. We had a great summer break. Even though everyone was sad about it ending, the girls were thrilled about starting school.

They were finally going to the same school, and Miriam was finally a full day friend. The thing they were probably the most excited about was riding the school bus together.

Unfortunately, there was a new bus driver this year, and he assigned them seats, not together. There were many, many tears over this. And I'll be honest, I was a little irritated too. They really aren't particular trouble makers, and I know they asked politely. The situation has been at least temporarily resolved though because Miriam just started sitting with Eliza anyway, and he hasn't said anything. I guess I should be more supportive of them obeying the rules even if they don't like them, but I am not. They are so cute together and even held hands getting on the bus together for the first time. So stinkin' adorable.

Eliza has Mrs. Wendt who is a complete gem. I was expecting to feel some let down since she doesn't have Mrs. Whigham this year, but Mrs. Wendt has the same radiating love countenance, so I am good. There are a few more girls in the gifted class this year, and Eliza has made good friends with a girl named Teagan. This seems like the most solid friendship Eliza has ever had. I really hope it continues that way.

Miriam has Mrs. Zastrow. My first impression of her is the same thing I was told about her, she's intense! I don't know how you can have that much intensity with 1st graders, but she definitely gives that impression. Fortunately, Miriam does well with really clear rules and expectations, so it works for her. She has more homework than she has ever had before, which isn't too surprising because it isn't kindergarten anymore. If anything, Eliza has less homework than last year.  We'll see how the year progresses.

So it is just little Holland and me at home for a good chunk of the day now. Which would seem like a breeze except Holland has turned full on tantrum toddler on me since the start of school. She is communicating more and more all the time and loses her mind if she doesn't get what she wants. She is really keeping me on my toes, but is so, so adorable when she wants to be. :)

So now we're back to the grind--homework, schedule, lunch packing, etc. I miss my big girls, but I am so glad they love school.