redecorating dilemma

lately i've been over-obsessed with trying to finally figure out how we're going to decorate our house. i think it's cause i'm actually home all the time now, so i'm constantly see everything and running ideas through my head. kinda makes me crazy at times.

i'm always checking out etsy to see what they have new and came across this:

courtesy of: decoylab shop

i feel as though i need to make a spot for it! i'm in love!!

we have no idea what we want to do with the house: colors, accessories, places for things, etc. there's no telling where it'll end up. but in my hours of navigating through my new favorite blog, young house love...i'm in love their house.

not only have i found ideas from sherry and john's house (yhl), but i've so many other ideas from link to other websites and what not. here are some of my favorites:

courtesy of: tart house

courtesy of: don't know.

courtesy of: pottery barn

courtesy of: tart house
i love that the desk is a total diy project! it's made from 2 doors, a bookshelf, and 2 table legs.

courtesy of: young house love

courtesy of: probably better homes & gardens or something like that.

courtesy of: don't know.

how fun would that be?! to have everyone over for a party and then go outside to watch a movie. love it!

courtesy of: don't know.

notice the background there? yea...we don't exactly have that here in north texas. i can still dream, right?!

as you can see, i love open storage. so that will somehow be worked in. and i've read that in smaller houses, you should have a color that is worked in throughout the house to make everything go together. so now, what color?

what colors have you painted your house? do you have a recurring color? how did you decorate? let us know. help us with some ideas!

swimming and reorganizing

as you know, i've been watching my friend's baby, reed. well the other day, katy had the day off and invited us to go swimming with her and reed.

i was pumped! and thought parker would be too, but it wasn't as easy to get him in the water as i thought it would be. he mainly wanted to walk in and out just on the stairs. he was very scared to actually get in the water and even when i got him in the water, he was death-gripping me to hang on!

reed on the other hand, enjoyed the water! he even kept trying to climb out of his little boat. i just told katy that he's a very ambitious swimmer.

luckily for both of us, the pool wore both the boys out.

let's just say, they both got a REALLY good nap that day :)

and on a side note, we just reorganized our office, which i tried to start on my own because i got overly excited about my ideas and thought they would just come together. little did i know! jesse and i talked about it the next day and finally came to a decision about what we wanted to do. and i'm HORRIBLE at taking "before" pictures. so seeing the amount of space available now does not mean anything to you if you can't see how unbelievably crowded it was before. but anyways, here is our "new" office.

the bookshelf on the right used to be where the black shelf is. and where the bookshelf on the right is now, there used to be another bookshelf there (we're getting rid of it). the black shelf is now my scentsy product area (side note: last month was my best month yet! i sold $724!!! so if you have any questions or want to buy, let me know).

there was a square table where the long one is now. and the long table was still there, but to the left. and the workout bench was thrown in the room before too. already sounding crowded? i know! be glad you didn't live here.

to the left of the desk used to be a matching small bookshelf, which had all of our school stuff on it. and now all the school stuff is consolidated to the bottom shelf of the black shelves. and to the right of the desk used to be a filing cabinet. oh, but we're not done yet!

filing cabinet is now in the closet. and for the big shocker...all of that stuff in there, used to be on the long table that is still in the room and the square table we took out!!! and although it may not look like a lot...it's A LOT. both shelves go beyond what you can see, so there is more.

we're not completely done with getting everything up and off the floor, but it is soooo much better than what it was before. trust :)

we eventually want to paint the walls a light gray and the tall bookshelf black. it's our black, white, and gray office. i'm kind of excited about it! i think the black and white will make it seem a little more sophisticated and formal. can't wait :)

and last thing, i promise! i just remembered this picture the other day and realized i never put it up. it's one of my favorites of reed. we keep trying to get him to smile cause i still don't think he's completely comfortable being in a new place. so jesse tried to do what he did with parker when he was younger...just running with him. he loved it...

i hope that gives you a smile :) i LOVE reed's smile!

a three-day catch up

i got lazy on thursday and never posted about the day, had to work friday night, and so now i'm posting all 3 days (including today) together. get ready :)

thursday i wanted to go to the park to let parker play and then we'd go for a walk afterwards. jesse wasn't too keen on the walking idea, so we ended up going to a different park so that he/we could play basketball. he ended up calling our friend jacob and he came out to play with jesse. which turned out better because jesse wanted more of a workout from it and i definitely wasn't the person to do that for him.

parker does NOT like to be dirty. i've determined he's not really a boy haha. if he gets something on his hands, "yucky mommy yucky." anything in his shoe, he has to stick it in the air, "yucky mommy yucky." he won't continue until it's off his hands/shoes/legs/etc. i'm working on this one.

he tried to chase after a butterfly...wasn't too successful on that one. but it was quite entertaining watching him run all over the place :)

the boys playing some basketball. it was quite hot this particular day. we were burning up, everyone bright red. and i somehow was the only person to get a slight sunburn.

after our morning at the park, we had the afternoon with reed again.

i find parker to be quite interesting with his toys since reed has started coming over. i pull out old toys that he never uses and that would be good for reed. and the second reed starts to play with them, "parker's toy mommy." all these toys sit right in front of him in his room everyday, yet he doesn't play with them. but if anyone else dare touch them, he gets upset. again, still working on the sharing concept.

friday i started the day off trying to let parker play in the dirt...since we're having the "being dirty" issue. when we were doing the yard work in the front, he wanted to help and was kinda playing with the dirt. so i bought him some gardening gloves and a little shovel. i took him out front and told him to go play in the dirt, go dig. didn't want to but for about a minute... :( but he did look cute!

we even found a fuzzy white caterpillar and 1 of the hundreds of rolly pollies in our yard.

i have also started to experiment with big-boy undies. not going so well so far. i spoke with 1 person a while ago about potty training their daughter. he said they just put her straight in big undies and she didn't like the feel of the pee running down her legs, so she quickly learned to tell her parents that she needed to potty. well, parker will tell you he pottied, but still hasn't grasped the before part to that. and it doesn't seem to bother him that much. it seems this is going to be much more difficult than i was hoping.

his big-boy undies and his favorite new chair. an outdoor foldable monkey chair that he wants to take EVERYWHERE.

and finally, we're at saturday. today my dad came over to see about wiring a wall with cable. we're trying to rearrange our furniture in the living room and move the tv to a different wall, but it doesn't have a cable hook-up. and lucky for us, my dad is the expert :)

parker ran to get his tools to help my dad. how cute! he's such a sweetie :)

dad started getting everything together and was all excited because he figured it out (there were a few run-ins to start). and he joked he was so good, until he dumped everything out of his tool box...

sorry dad! i had to. :)

needless to say, he got everything hooked up like i knew he would. i forgot to take a finished picture before i pushed the sofa back. but it's all hooked up on the inside. now he just has to hook it up on the roof. so hopefully in the near future we'll have a completely different looking living room! i'm excited about the prospects of that.

and so tonight i will be relaxing and waiting for jesse to come home. i'll be watching leap year and starting on a new project for parker. and as of right now, it looks like this:

you'll have to wait for the finished product to see what it is! stay tuned for next time :)

water fun

since we decided to keep parker home for the summer, i've been trying to find free/cheap fun things to do. over in highland village they have a water feature that shoots out water and i've seen a ton of kids out there playing. so today i decided to take parker. luckily, no one else was out there when we went :)

he was very hesitant at first to go by himself. i had to stand with him at one of the spouts for a while. i kept sticking my foot out to get him to do the same. most kids love running through the whole thing, but he never would. he mainly stood by 1 the whole time. he's a strange child at times.

he was trying to stick his head in the water/drink it. and he was quickly stopped for trying to drink it. you could smell all the chlorine just from standing by it.

today was also the first day that reed came over!

he is my friend katy's baby boy. he's 1 and absolutely adorable. we've babysat him 1 time and parker had a blast with him. just baby this and baby that. and was even upset when he had to go to bed because he couldn't play with reed anymore.

well, today marked the day they get to spend a few days a week together for the next 10 weeks. parker now has a playmate and i, obviously, get to experiment with taking care of 2 kids. it's a handful! but lots of fun watching them together. katy and i are hoping for BFFs haha.

parker gave reed kisses because he started crying. how sweet :)

and that would be parker trying to "talk" to reed. he started at a good distance and gradually got closer and closer.

i think this is 1 of my favorites! they were watching shark tale.

katy said reed loves to put in and take things out, so i found this lovely little toy in parker's room. he loved it!

so we played this fun little game of "reed's gonna get you." parker was running around everywhere the whole time, but every time that i started to walk around reed would follow me. so i decided to tell parker that reed was gonna get him. so parker would proceed with squealing and laughing...reed would start to smile. so i'd start leading reed towards parker and EVERY TIME parker would run and get on the rocking chair. and this is reed "getting parker."

and parker had to protect his toys haha.

day 1 went well...we'll let you know how the rest of the days go! definitely going to have to work on the whole sharing thing. i kind of thought parker might be somewhat ok at it since he's been at daycare with a bunch of other kids. but not so much. it'll be a project.