PAINTING

We decided to paint our living room and hopefully, our master bedroom before we move in. I say "hopefully" because who knows if we'll get to it or not. We move in 6 days and I haven't even started packing!! Anyways, it's much easier to paint before we move in so I'm hoping we can get it all done.

I went to Lowe's and picked up some samples. Living room samples:

We decided to go with the bottom right (Lyndhurst Timber from Valspar using No-Voc paint) as an accent wall and the bottom left (Dusty Trails Olympic paint) for the rest of the walls. I got the idea to use Dusty Trails from this blog.

Bedroom samples:

We went with the far left sample, Valspar's Metropolis (again in no-voc)

Our friends offered to watch Brennan today so we could get a chunk of the painting done. I had visions of Brennan running around and touching walls and smearing it across the floor.






Tomorrow, we paint again!

Quick Update

I wanted to update real quick like because I haven't in a while. Brennan has a friend coming over to play and then we close on our new house and I'm nannying Kennady all day so it's going to be a fast update, so sorry! Here's some quick photos of what we've been up to:

I made a wreath!

Closer shot

We've been going to lots of birthday parties. Here is Brennan and Barrett at Colton's party this past Saturday.

I'm continuing to bake my way through this book. Latest: ciabatta bread. I had gotten the book out from the library but I like it so much I just ordered it from amazon.

And lastly, we've been playing outside a ton. This is Brennan and his cars.

Oh, and here is the video that Jon and Andrew (and others) made for Easter services on Sunday. It's a little long, but worth the watch.

The Road from The MET Church on Vimeo.

I'm hoping to update soon with pictures of our new house and the painting process and all that. See you soon!

The Guild Shop

Jon had to work all day Saturday doing a video shoot for Easter. I was determined not to sit at home all day so I loaded up the B man in the car and we headed towards downtown Houston to hit up The Guild Shop. I had read about it on this blog and it looked amazing. I had high hopes.

It turned out to be a big fat FAIL. The store itself was awesome, awesome, awesome. But it really was a total fail. First of all, we hit a huge traffic jam on I-45 and it took us forever to get to the store. I love Houston traffic, did I ever tell you guys that? Then the store made me dump out my yet-to-be drank coffee (oh no you didn't!) before I could shop. Then they told me I couldn't have a stroller in the store.

I tried to gently lead my 2 year old son through an antique store FULL of glass and ceramic and vases and plates and frames but alas, it was stressful. And then about 5 minutes into perusing the store, I noticed Brennan had lost his two favorite race cars he was toting around in the store. So I ran around the store looking for Lightning McQueen and Mater. Luckily I found them near the antique toys (should have known). I was sweating and stressed and Brennan was miserable.

After that, we hightailed it out of there and went home to play outside, which we probably should have done from the beginning. But I'd rather try and fail at sometime than sit at home. So I'll leave ya with a tip, don't antique shop with a 2 year old in tow, ha!

Easter Prep

Anyone who has a family member or friend that's on a church staff understands this: the two weeks before Easter (and Christmas) are CAAA-RAZY! Jon's been working over-time and will be until Easter Sunday. It's not too bad and I'm not meaning to complain, it just is what it is. And we close on our house two days after Easter, so that worked out great!

Unfortunately, Brennan woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday with the stomach flu. Booo. I kept telling Jon to go back to sleep since he's got a lot on his plate but he wanted to make sure the B man was okay so he stayed up. It was our first experience with the stomach bug. I told Jon I think we earned our parenthood card. ha! Yesterday wasn't super fun but he seems to be on the up and up.

In other news, I'm currently reading this book and it is awesome.


It's about a family of four that chooses to live off of food that they grow in their own gardens or can buy locally for an entire year. It's seriously so interesting. I know, that's weird, right? Oh well. I'm weird.
She talks about teaching her kids to be patient and wait for the BEST- and food tastes it's best when it's in season. So unless it's canned or frozen, they don't eat strawberries unless strawberries are in season, or cucumbers, or whatever it may be. She also discusses the impact of pesticides and insects that are now presticide resistant and how organically grown foods have more antioxidants than conventional foods because they need those antioxidants for themselves simply because they are learned to grow in an environment where they have to fight off bugs and such. She also discusses why most people view local and organic foods as foods for rich people.

We haven't exactly jumped on the whole organic and local train ourselves (yet), especially seeing that this is what I made for dinner.

Still working/baking my way through this book. Last night I baked this batard loaf. It was sooo good if I do say so myself. Tomorrow night, it's ciabatta time!



And here's some more sneak peaks of our house. The formal dining room:

We hope to eventually put down hard wood floors in this room, paint the lighting fixture to an oil rubbed bronze and maybe even put up some wainscotting.

This is the office:
We're still not sure if this is going to be an actual office, or a playroom or what. No major plans for this room for a while though.

I hope you're all doing well! It's been super gorgeous weather these past few months so we've been outside a lot (gotta get in our outside fix because June hits, ha!). Jon's working on a pretty decent sized side project and I've started packing so our evenings are filled with work! But it's good work so we're happy. Take care!

Quote

I saw this quote on moneysavingmom the other day and loved it.

"The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money." -Author Unknown

I like to move it, move it. . .

Can you believe this- we close on our house in two weeks. Two weeks. And this will be our third move in less than two years. Wowsers. My mom motivated me to get off my hiney and start the packing process. We went to Target and bought six bins (which I've been meaning to do, promise mom!). We pretty much have all of Brennan's non-essentials packed!


I dropped my parentals and Steve off at the airport about two hours ago, le sigh. We had an awesome time together! The Dad and Steve played a lot of tennis, my mom and I got some home decor shopping done for our new house, the parents went on a date night out to the Woodlands Market Street, and we spent quite a bit of time outdoors (they enjoyed our back patio for their morning devo time:)



Welp, would love to fill y'all in more, but this chica needs to start packing!

Ohhhh, Bread!

As you know, I'm trying to bake my way through this book. I've already baked a boule:

And yesterday, I baked a baguette:

Two successes, whoop!!

We've had a wonderful week with my parents and Steve-O so far. They've watched B for us so we could go on a date night (mediterannean food, my new favorite, and Lowe's, ha!). We've checked out Harwin, which is a super cheap shopping district where you can score really awesome jewelry. We had not been before so it was kind of a drag for the boys, but mom and I had fun!
We've eaten Tex-Mex at Los Cucos and chilled at home playing my favorite game, bananagrams! Tomorrow is their last full day and they leave Saturday afternoon. But, I'll leave you with another sneak peek of our new house!

SNEAK PEEKS

A few shots of our week so far. . . .

Mom and Brennan playing bubbles together (one of his favs)

Opening birthday presents from Grammy and Grandpy (sorry it's such a bad photo, Steve!)


A sneak peek at the house (we took mom and dad by to show them the new digs). . .


Another sneak peek. . . living room and kitchen.

Weekend Recap

Hey guys!

It's been an eventful weekend!! Friday night I watched Kennady (the sweet baby girl I nanny once a week) until 8:00. Then Jon and I cleaned the house, set up beds, extra, attempting to start preparing for my parents arrival the very next day. I even sent Jon out grocery shopping at 10:30 at night because we literally had no food in the house.

Saturday morning I went for a run (and ohh, for some reason, I felt TERRIBLE). Anyways, I rounded the corner to head towards home and saw flames shooting out of our neighbors house. Thinking back, I should have gone straight to their house, but I sprinted home to get Jon and we headed over there. There were already two other neighbors outside. We knocked on the other neighbors house to get them out of their houses in case the fire spread. We talked very quickly about going inside to see if anyone was in there but it was already completely covered in smoke.



About 5 minutes later (but it felt like eternity), the firefighters arrived. They actually asked Jon to help move the fire hose. It was a little traumatic. We saw them pull a lady out and put a tarp over her. We found out later that two women had died. We still don't know what caused the fire.

After that little event, we ran some quick errands and then I picked my parents and little brother, Steve up from the airport. They had tickets to the Final Four games which were held in Houston, so my brother, dad, and Jon went straight to the Reliant Center where the games were held. My mom and I went out to dinner, went shopping at Hobby Lobby, worked on the yard and cooked.

WHEW. Will update again soon with the rest of our adventures. I'm just thankful for my parents and their sacrifice to come down here to be with us and help out. We love them.

Bread

So I recently got the book, "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" out of the library and it's been rockin' my world! The basic premise is that making fresh, homemade bread everyday is doable and should not take up hours of your time. It takes about 15 minutes to make the initial dough, but you keep that dough in your fridge (for up to 14 days) and tear off a small 1 lb portion every time you want to make a loaf and bake it.




My goal is to bake my way through this book (and run 25 miles a day to make up for the calorie influx). I'll try to keep track of my progress here on the ol' blogger. I'm excited!! I started with the boule (see photo above) and it turned out really yummy! There's flatbreads and naam (ohhh, who doesn't love naan), pitas, challah, bagels, etc.