Stella's new room

Stella's room was the last part of our room swapping we did a couple weeks ago, we finally got it all in order so now I have pictures to share. Her new room is the girls former "new bedroom" which was formerly our guest room and office. So now it is Stella's room and a daycare nap room. That's why there are two cribs in there! Yes, we do own 3 cribs...crazy I know! We had purchased the white one just for daycare. So once Addie is done with her crib it'll go in our guest room.

Looking in from the door

Still from the door

Looking from by Stella's crib

From the wall between the daycare crib and changing table

I like this configuration and it is seeming to work well so far!

Rearranged...again

We did some more room swapping...again. This time we did some major swapping and it's still a work in progress, we moved the girls to our bedroom, we moved to Stella's room and Stella to the girls new-old room formerly known as our den, her room will also be the daycare room and we'll re-evaluate in a year or so. The girls stuff actually fits better in our room than it did in the den. We haven't decorated it yet and we have curtains for their windows that my mom is going to hem and my step-dad is making them new curtain rods for their bedroom as well. So it's still a work in progress, but it'll work. And the three girls will share the closet for now.

Looking in from the door

I will have to post more pictures later, once we finish all of our projects...someday! I still need pictures of Paul's new room and our guest bedroom!

The Girls' New Bedroom

I had a few extra minutes while everyone is napping, so I thought I'd post pictures of the girls' new bedroom. I searched to see if I had any pictures of it when it was our den/office, but it doesn't appear that I do. Where the girls' bed is now, use to be where our futon was. Where the crib is, is where our desk sat. And the wall that their dresser is on was the big Ikea cube and another cabinet thing that I kept office and craft supplies in.

Amelia and Addie's new bunk beds

I need to get some underbed storage bins to organize some toys under there, so it doesn't look messy! I also want to get them this light fixture from Ikea for their bedroom.

I love how this purple turned out on the wall. It's very pretty and this picture doesn't do it justice! I need to put stuff up on their walls yet.

Looking in from the door. I have new curtains to replace the valances, I need my mom to shorten them for me this weekend for me.

I have bedding picked out at Ikea that I want to get the girls for their bunk beds so they both match. It's the same pattern as their curtains, but a larger print. So I may have to put that on their birthday lists! I found fun nightlight/lamps too that we want to get to hang by each bunk.

Coming soon...pictures of Paul's new bedroom.

new toy

We had to get a new wash machine yesterday and it's now a source of entertainment for the kids. After I started the second load this is what I found...

About 6-9 months ago I noticed my washer wasn't cleaning as well as it should be. We didn't have the extra money to replace it then. So Gene called Sears because it's a Kenmore, well they wouldn't service it because we didn't have the original warranty, my dad gave it to us after he moved into his new house because he got a front load set. So we've been just dealing with it. It's gotten considerably worse in the last month and the final straw was on Monday when I was doing laundry and washing clothes we all got for Christmas, well it ruined a pair of my Gap sweatpants, a brand new shirt of Stella's and a new shirt of Adeline's. And when I say ruined, I mean there is grease spots from the washer because a bearing or seal or something was going bad. So far I haven't washed my pants in the new washer, so I don't know if they are salvageable. But most of the spots have come out of Stella's shirt after 2 washes and it completely came out of Addie's. And I can't believe how white my whites are! I'm impressed! We got a super deal on it too. We didn't have the extra money to buy one now either, the timing wasn't the best, but we've been selling stuff on e-bay for a family friend and the commission will cover the cost of the new washer...thankfully! Plus we got a super deal to boot! Mary and Ron went to Best Buy and picked it up for us as the only store in Minnesota that had one was Best Buy. Mary came down yesterday to visit and help me organize all the Christmas chaos and she brought the washer down for us.

Daddy's helper

Kevin got a load of black dirt on Monday and finally had a chance on Thursday night to spread it in the backyard. He was filling in holes from moving the fence, ruts from the bobcat from last summer when we poured our patio and general low spots in the yard. The kids were hot to help him, Paul just wanted to ride in the bobcat with Kevin. Amelia, who is generally afraid of noises, decided she wanted to ride in the bobcat too, both Kevin and I were very surprised that she wanted to ride with him to haul the dirt from the front yard to the backyard. She also was giving him a hand in loading the bobcat once he was no longer able to scoop the dirt up without spreading the pile everywhere. Please ignore her messy dirty clothes, I don't put the kids in good clothes for daycare!



She's a good little helper! After she got done helping Kevin, she took a shower and then helped me to make a cake for dessert for Friday night. I love that girl!

Wonderful weekend...

What a wonderful weekend we had! We started out on Friday night by having some friends over for dinner, it had been over 2 months since we all got together, so six adults (seven with Gene)and six kids. It was a fabulous evening even though the weather wasn't nice enough to have a fire or be outside, but we were still able to have our beer can chicken, great conversation and play some wii. Adeline, Kaelyn and Rylee had a great time running about, it's fun to see how much they all have changed in the last year!

Saturday morning Mary and Ron came down for a visit and to drop a few things off. Mary is having knee-replacement surgery on Tuesday morning, so please keep her in your prayers. My grandpa has been working on an island for our kitchen and had it completed, so him and my dad also came Saturday morning to install the island. I just love it, it turned out beautiful and I can't wait to organize it. I really can't wait until the day we can afford to refinish the other cabinets, get new counter tops on those, new flooring, and get rid of the awful green color that is my kitchen. Hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later! The island is just the start of the transformation. Below are some pictures of the new island.

We need to find some bar stools for by the island. Notice the 60's cabinets. Someday it'll all match and ignore my mess on the counters...I was prepping for dinner.

Lots of storage....note awful green color in background!

Beautiful.

Saturday evening we went to my Dad and Mary Jo's for dinner. We hadn't seen them since the girls' birthday party in March, so it was really nice to get together with my dad and it was the first time we've had dinner at his new house and he's lived there for a year! My grandparents were down for the weekend and my cousin Jakob came over for dinner as well. The kids got to go for a "swim" in his "pool". Which was pretty exciting for him. His "pool" is a jacuzzi tub that is sunk into the floor of his bathroom and the water comes out of the ceiling to fill it....the perks of being a contractor! haha. The kids always have to check it out whenever we go for a visit, and Papa has been promising them they could go for a swim in it sometime when they came over, they didn't let him forget!

Big project....

So my big project of the day was cleaning upstairs. We recently put our extra crib together in Amelia's room in preparation for Adeline to move up there before the baby comes. We had given my sister the dresser that was in Amelia's room for her baby, it was a dresser my dad had made long ago and we've been moving it all over the place, so thought it was perfect to give it to Amber to use. We bought the girls a new dresser at Ikea for their room. The bedroom was in complete disarray this morning when I started, I should have taken before and after pictures. We hope to replace the windows upstairs this summer, so Amelia's room has temporary blinds on the windows. We took her closet door off for the carpet before we moved in and just left it off as it didn't latch real well, so over the weekend I bought her a super cute curtain at Ikea for her closet "door". So now we need to get a bar or something to hang the curtain with over the door and I also need to hem the bottom so it's not so long. I may have to wait for my mom to come visit! Just kidding, I'm sure I can figure out how to hem it! Here are some pictures of my end product from today. When I walked into her room this morning there was furniture and toys EVERYWHERE!

Amelia and Adeline's new dresser with their new night light I made them.

Adeline's side of the room
*we're hoping to move her upstairs this coming weekend

Amelia's bed with her old bedding from our old house, she had a full size bed up until about a month ago, so now she's back to a twin. This bed is temporary, it's the trundle bed from Paul's bedroom, we just need to go bed shopping for her.

Layout of their two beds.

I'm happy with the progress I made, I'm also very excited that I can see the floor again! Amelia agreed that she'd help keep it clean....we'll see how long that lasts! I feel like I'm nesting already, I am wanting to eliminate extra clutter around our house, don't be surprised if you drive by our house and see a bunch of free stuff on the curb! Haha!

Exciting things at the Taaffe's!

Lots of exciting things are happening at the Taaffe's! I can't believe it's already they 22nd of October, where did this month go? We've had a busy October thus far.

The weekend of the 5-7th, the kids went to Gran and Papa's for the weekend, so we could work on the playroom. A couple weeks prior, Kevin removed the fireplace and sheetrocked the hole. So we spent our entire weekend working on the playroom. Removing the carpet, painting and new flooring.  We weren't going to do the flooring yet, as we figured the new carpet would cost us about $1000 for the playroom and we just don't have an extra grand to spend right now on carpeting. But when we got the fireplace out we decided the carpet looked horrible that we decided to just do the floor as long as we had to move everything. We opted against the carpet and got laminate flooring at Sam's club and it was very reasonable, our whole project, paint, flooring, etc. was less than $500. We still had money stuck away for our Vegas trip that we decided to put towards the playroom. We're very happy with our "investment" and the kids love playing in here now. See the pictures below...

the start of my stenciling

The next exciting thing...

We have a walker! Or I should say...Runner! Just in the last couple weeks he's really started cruising, he's practically running. And he's not stop from the time he gets up until he goes down for a nap and then all over again. I can hardly believe he will be ONE in less than two weeks. Crazy!!

I just have to share this picture...nothing special. Amelia decided to "dress" herself. The shirt she had on, she still had her pants off after her nap time diaper change and wouldn't let me put them back on and then she found the socks in my bedroom, they have penguins on them. Then her cowboy boots. And to top it all off, she had been eating M&M's so she as a pretty face!

Our last exciting thing...

Amelia is now sleeping in a "big" girl bed. We took her crib out last night after dinner and put my old daybed into her room as a bed for her until we get her bunk beds. We let her pick out her own bedding at Target and I think that helped the process along a little. She slept great in her new bed last night. Very little fussing when it was bedtime. Didn't even try to get out, at least not that I know of. She woke up earlier than usual, but I think that was to be expected. She woke up at 5:45 and she usually sleeps to at least 6:30. I think after a week, she'll be in a routine and we shouldn't have a problem. Now if we could just get the potty training thing down. She does great for a couple weeks and then regresses...maybe she's just not ready? She knows everything, just forgets to tell us when she has to go and when we ask her she'll usually go, but not always. Oh well, baby steps!

She made each of us lay
in her new bed with her...