Progress 8

Exciting changes this past week!! It is looking good. They did the stucco and started the stone. We also have walls inside. Matt was able to go in one day and get some good pictures of the inside. When I went by today they are just finishing up the stone. We met with a painter (for the interior) on Saturday and that went well. We have been busy looking at colors. It really is hard to choose! So much to do!!

Here are the pictures from the progress this week.
A good shot of the side/back of the house so you can see the stucco.

And the other side/front. The molding above the windows will be a darker tan color when painted.


Inside - some walls!! The family room.

In the living room looking into the dining room.

The beginning of the stone.


Earlier in the week.

Friday - the stone is getting there!!



And this was today when they were working. Almost to the top!

So there are the changes for this week. Thanks for checking back to see our progress. We are very excited. Just about 2 1/2 months left!!

If you haven't already had a chance check out my post from Friday about my ALTERED CLOCK project. My sister, CityMomma/Country Momma, says I should submit it to Tip Junkie. I am not really sure what that is or how to do it but I will look into it!!

Have a good week everyone! I hope to be back with some fun posts this week.

Altered Clock

Here is my simple tutorial of an Altered Clock!!!


Now a lot of you out there in blog land have probably seen something like this before so it may not be something new to you. I had seen them about a year ago somewhere on-line and always thought it would be fun to make. It really is very simple, especially if you are into scrapbooking already. You kind of do the same thing but put it on the face of a clock.

For those of you who have never seen this neat craft idea here is a mini-tutorial on how I did it. I bought an inexpensive clock from Wal-mart that was able to be unscrewed from the back. I took out the hands of the clock and took off the face.



I picked out a scrapbook paper I liked and cut it to fit the face of the clock. I got an extra big clock so it took two pieces of 12 X 12 paper arranged just so. Be sure to cut the hole in the center where the hands will go back through. I picked the bright colors because I am going to use it in Lily's play room in our new house. I am going to go with primary color decorating in that room rather than pastel and pink like her room is going to be.


Then I arranged the pictures and numbers how I wanted them and put them down using my tape runner. You could do anything you wanted - pictures, no pictures just a pretty paper, numbers all around, no numbers, just a 12!! Whatever!! I used chipboard for the numbers and circles that I put them on. I bordered the pictures in ribbon - you can see that in the final picture.

Then you put the hands of the clock back on and put the whole clock back together. I painted the rim of mine red. It was black. (It was my first adventure in spray paint and it went well!! I can see how some of you become addicted!!!)

So there you have it! Pretty simple and I think it turned out pretty cute. The pictures don't do it any justice! It looks much cuter in real life!

I zoomed in on this one a bit so you could see some details a little better.


I hope you enjoyed my little project! Now get out there and go purchase a cheap clock. Now you can take it all apart and make something extra special for yourself!! :)

HAVE FUN!

Fun with Friends!

Just a quick post today because I have been busy working on my project!! It is coming out pretty cute and I should be able to post about it tomorrow or Friday! Oh! And sorry Daddy - it isn't a patriotic shadow box but I really like your guess!! :)

Lily and I had a fun day today with our friends Kate and Bobby. We are very fortunate to have a lot of friends that have little ones around the same age. We try to get together as much as possible but it is sometimes difficult with all of our different schedules. Today we met up with Kate and her son Bobby. There is a nice playground we like to meet at because it is a half-way point between our two houses. After the playground we headed to the mall for lunch and then to ride the EXCITING rides! It is so cute to see how excited they get from the 50 cent rides! So adorable. Lily and Bobby have been playing together since birth and they have just really started to actually play together. Before this they really just played in the same room but now they are interacting, chasing each other and of course imitating what each other does. It is really neat to see.

Today after swinging and going up and down the stairs and slides Lily insisted on holding Bobby's hand on the way to the cars!


Here they are riding the rides at the mall!







Just so much fun!! We did have a very nice day. Thanks Kate and Bobby! Let's do it again sometime soon!

I am in desperate need of a project!

I think of myself as a pretty crafty and creative person. I usually have some kind of project going on. Usually it is scrap booking or a stamping project. Right now I have NOTHING! I had to pack up my whole scrap area for the selling of our house. There was just way too much stuff everywhere and I had to remove the clutter. I am so excited to get into my new house and set up a craft area.

For the time being I have been reading blogs of some really crafty and talented people! I am getting some good ideas for future use but nowhere to store anything for now. I am getting bored without a project so today I had an idea. There is a project I have been wanting to do for a while now and I finally have something in mind I can use it for.

This is just going to be a "teaser" post. I am going to keep you guessing so you will have to come back to see what I do. I got just a few of the supplies I will need while we were out today. Here is a picture.


Aren't you proud? My very first can of spray paint!! I am so excited. I know a lot of the readers out there are so proud of me! I can't wait to see how my little crafty idea turns out. I am not making any promises but come on back and see what I come up with!

Progress 7

Not much happening on the outside of the house this past week again. They finished the first layers before the stucco goes on but still haven't started the stucco.

Here is a picture of how it looked yesterday. Basically the same as it did at the end of last week!

Here is the stone all ready for them to start. We are thinking they may start adding the stone this week.

They did do a lot of work inside. The whole house is now insulated and ready for dry-wall.

Insulation in the garage! Exciting, huh??

A pretty neat picture of our bath tub in the master bath.


Since I have been all about photo comparisons lately I thought it would be cool to see the transformation since May.

Here is the lot in May with just the foundation done.

Here is the beginning of the framing at the end of June.

And then August!! Amazing how fast it all goes.


On a sadder note....it looks like our perspective neighbors are no longer. Apparently it fell through. We are not really sure what that means but we were disappointed to hear it. We were excited because they had young children and we were looking forward to nice neighbors. Right now we are the only house on that side of the development. We are just the beginning of Phase 2 so I am sure in time there will be many more people coming. However we will be living in a construction area for a while!!

Here is a picture of the house that will be up for a "Quick Sale" as the builder calls it. Anyone in the market for a brand new home in Bucks County?? We would love to have some nice, new neighbors!!!

Let's compare......

It has been a pretty slow weekend here. Matt had to work all weekend since he is on-call. Lily and I did a couple of errands and trips to the park both on Saturday and Sunday before the rain started. No action on the selling of this house at all. I continue to get discouraged when there are no showings but I am trying to remain positive and remember we still have time!

Matt and I have been so proud of our little girl over the past two weeks. She is really growing up. Thinking about it today I started to get sentimental. What happened to that little baby?? It seems like yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital and now she is almost 3! WOW!! She is getting so big and behaving so nicely lately. We are proud of her. I was thinking about summers past and thought it would be fun to do a photo comparison.

Summer of 2006


Summer of 2007


Summer 2008
How neat is it to see that?

I know it sounds so cliche and everyone says it but they really do grow up way too fast. Anyway, she is a lot of fun at the age she is now and I am excited to see her grow and learn more everyday. I still miss those baby days though!

I have been struggling for some exciting posts this week and weekend. I hope you liked my photo comparison. I have been venturing out into the "blogosphere" and have found a lot of GREAT decorating blogs. I really can't wait to get into my new house so I can start posting some fun decorating things that I will be doing. I am getting some great ideas! There are a lot of creative people out there in Blogland!

So for now enjoy the rest of your weekend and check back tomorrow for my new house Progress Update!

Have you seen this?

I think I may have found a new addiction today. I know a lot of my family and friends who read the blog are interested in scrapbooking so I had to show you what I found. Some of you may have heard of it but IT IS COOL! After a frustrating 30 minutes of trying to get it to work I found out how easy it is...and how addicting I think it could be. Check out SCRAPBLOG! And check out this too.



This is what I made today. It is VERY basic because I am running out of free time here during Lily's nap. But isn't it too cute? I think I made it in a total of 3 minutes.

Scrapblog is a very cool site where you can do digital scrapbooking and it is all totally free. They have a huge assortment of background papers and embellishments. You can upload your pictures from your own computer or a site like Photobucket. You can also export your image if you would want to print it to make an album. Also - there is a way you can send links to family and friends in an e-mail for them to view them online. So you could essentially do a whole scrapbook and have family across the country view it on the computer. Pretty neat stuff! You can also view other peoples pages, make comments and they can view yours if you wish!

I am happy with my find today and I think I will be going back again. I still will always be partial to the traditional real paper and tape runner scrapbooking but this is fun when you don't want to get all of your stuff out!! If you check it out I had trouble at first with the display on my computer screen but it was an easy fix.

Check it out and let me know if you make a page! Fun, fun stuff!

We love Hannah!

My daughter has a new best friend and her name is Hannah! No, she is not an imaginary friend but actually a little girl on the very exciting DVD - The Potty Movie, with Hannah.

Lily has been very resistant to going on the potty so I started to back-off quite a bit over the past months. When August rolled around I started getting a little more concerned that it would never happen before September when she will be starting Pre-school. I still continued to not talk about it too much and just let her initiate the conversation about the potty. One day a couple of weeks ago we were on our weekly trip to the library and we picked out The Potty Movie to watch when we got home. She already had the book but I decided the movie could be cute and maybe even more of an incentive. We brought the movie home and after lunch watched it. It is a very cute little animated movie about how Hannah is a big girl now and thinks she is ready to use the potty. She has her friend Teddy with her to help her along the way. There is also a little rock n' roll type song that they play during the movie. Lily was dancing around and singing! She loved it. We continued to watch the movie throughout the week. Lily knows all of the words and will sing right along. We also have the whole book memorized!

Throughout the week she started wanting to sit on the potty more often. She would read the book and watch the movie while sitting on the potty. One night she finally decided to actually GO on the potty! YAY!! Matt and I jumped around and cheered and she was so excited. Since that day she has been non-stop. She wears her big girl pants all day and goes in the potty! We are so proud! We are certainly not completely potty trained yet but definitely heading in the right direction!

The funniest thing about it all is through all of this she will quote the book/movie. It really cracks me up. She walks around saying these things!

~I am a big girl now. I don't want a wet diaper to get in MY way!
~I am so proud of ME!
~I sit right down and wait a bit. I look inside and then I laugh and clap!
~ I'm off to the potty, I think this time I'm ready

The best was the other night when we went shopping to pick out those special new big girl pants, she says right from the book "It's time to go buy new underwear. Can you guess who gets to choose that very special pair?" It was really, very cute.

So, that has been our excitement for the week. We are very proud of our big girl. She seems to be getting bigger and bigger everyday. In some ways it is great to see her growing and becoming more independent but of course we always think about those baby days and how she is growing WAY TOO FAST!!

Here she is proud with her sticker potty chart - ALL filled out from the week!

Here is a picture of The Potty Movie and The Bye-Bye Diapers Potty Pack! Of course I had to order this with the Hannah doll for Lily since she loves Hannah! I can't wait to get it in the mail. I know she will be excited!


Anyone out there about to embark on the wonderful world of potty training I highly recommend The Potty Movie - with Hannah OR Henry for boys! Hannah or Henry may just become your new best friend too!!

Back In the Game!

The "Real Estate/House For Sale" game that is. We had over a week of no action on our house for sale and it was getting discouraging. This week we are back in the game. We had a showing Monday, Tuesday and one tonight. There is also the possibility that the woman interested in changing the stairs will work out. The contractor came and we should hear something about that by the end of this week. Fingers, toes and everything still crossed that something works out soon. I keep saying "We still have time!" which I think we do.

So, the blog has been lacking a little bit because I have been spending any free time I have cleaning and getting out of the house for the showings. I hope to have some time later today or tonight to do a few posts. I have a good one ready to write about some really great progress our BIG GIRL has been making!!
Check back to see what it is all about!

Progress 6

Monday again and here is the update for this past week.

They started the stucco. You can sort of see in this photo although it was darker outside when this was taken. This is the first coat of the stucco so it is sort of gray.

We had our walk thru on Friday and saw all of the electrical done on the inside. Not too much to see in those pictures but here is one taken of the kitchen. If you look around you can see the recessed lights ready in the ceiling and some outlets around in blue.

Something REALLY exciting added. Our front staircase. Still covered up with no railing but you get the idea.

SIDEWALK!!! Woo Hoo!

And here is a picture of it this weekend. The first coat of stucco is done. Where you see the white wrapping is where the stone will be. Maybe we will see the stone by next week?! We hope so!
Check back to see what happens this week!

Furniture Fun weekend!

What a great weekend we had together. Matt didn't have to work at the hospital so that was absolutely wonderful. He did play a gig last night but that was later so we were home for the night anyway. We were very busy the whole weekend and we got a lot done. Unfortunately we weren't busy cleaning this house for any showings. Still none. It has been a week. I am not getting worried yet because I know August is a busy vacation month. I am hoping all of the people interested in our house are at the shore and there will be a bite soon!!

So, back to the fun stuff. We decided to get some furniture shopping done this weekend since we had our days free. We first went to a model home that is the same model that we will be getting to get some exact measurements. It is really a treat when we go here because Lily thinks it is the coolest thing to be able to walk around this house. She was a good girl and helped us measure things with the tape measure. (I have to include pictures because Matt says the posts are so much better with pictures....too bad he isn't commenting on any of them!)

Notice Lily measuring in the bottom right corner!

Helping Daddy in the kitchen

OK - now of course we tell her not to climb on the furniture and not to touch anything in the very decorated house. She listened pretty well yesterday. However, she is still a 2 year old and doesn't listen to everything we say!! HA HA! I had to snap her picture when I saw her doing this....she got down right away, don't worry.

After the measurements and a stop for lunch we headed to Raymour and Flanigan. We had a very helpful salesman and found all of the furniture that we want for our family room. Because of the layout of the room we are going to go with a sofa, love seat and an accent chair. We also liked a coffee table and sofa table from this store. Here is a picture of the sofa and the love seat. The pictures are kind of blah but they are really nice. The color is called "olive" but it really isn't that green. It is very neutral when you see it in person. I think it looks very green in the photos.


Very comfy too. We also picked out an accent chair in a floral pattern. It is red and neutral tones as well. It is more of a country feel because that is the kind of decorating I like. I was surprised Matt agreed to it but he actually liked it a lot. Here is the pattern but not this chair.
I want RED as an accent color in my downstairs decorating. I may even paint a wall red in our dining room. Not sure of that yet. I am planning on using some of the photographs Matt has taken (red barn, red, white and blue flag) for the family room also. I want it to have a cozy, country feel but not over the top country! More to come on that.

On to the DINING ROOM. Today we went to a local furniture store near us called Gamburg's. We found our dining room set that we really love and an entertainment center for the family room.
First the Entertainment Center. This was taken in the store.


And back to the dining room....here is the Hutch/Buffet whatever you want to call it!
Also - those friends/readers that I had asked about the Credenza in the brown wood - We found out it DOES come in black so I am super excited. I think it would have looked good in either wood but I am happy with the black. Here are a couple of other pictures of the dining room furniture.


The table.
The bottom of the Hutch.

And the Wine Credenza which will also be in black.
This whole dining room set is really pretty and BIG so I think it will look very nice in that room. I am super excited. Now we have to plan a dinner party!!

OK - so if you got this far I am sure I bored a bunch of you with all of my furniture talk. I am just excited about it and wanted to share. I know there are some of you out there that will be excited to see it!! :)

Much more to come on the decorating of the new house! So much fun! Thanks for looking!

August already?

Hard to believe that we are nearing the end of the summer. August! Wow! Can you believe it? It always seems that once the 4th of July passes the summer just flies on by. In some ways we are all excited to see the summer end so that fall can come and we can move into our new house. Other days it is sad to see the long, warm days end. The end of summer also means we are one step closer to Lily's 3rd birthday. We can't believe that she will 3 already. As Matt said the other night, "It's just not right!". :) Time just goes so quickly.

This week has been an eventful one in some ways and uneventful in others. Unfortunately we have not had any showings this week so no progress with that. The contractor did come in to look at the spiral staircase for one possible buyer but no word on that yet. We will probably hear more about that next week.

We had our pre dry wall walk thru today and that went well. It was really neat to see all of the electrical wiring done already. They will start doing the dry wall later next week. It has gone so quickly. Stay tuned for Monday's post with pics of the progress from the past week.

On an exciting note, our very stubborn and determined little girl decided this week she was ready to start to go on the potty. Now, we are by NO MEANS potty trained but it is progress. Until this week she was in tears with the words "potty" or "big girl pants" so things are definitely moving in the right direction. She has gone a number of times and continues to show a lot of interest. YAY!! Our big girl is growing up!

So, as August begins I hope everyone savors the last precious moments of summer and gets ready for the cooler fall days ahead. I know we are excited to see the changing of the leaves in our new backyard and to buy a pumpkin for our front step. But...we won't rush things yet. Still more time for the pool and the beach! ENJOY!