Virtual Home Tour: Living Room

Here is the room in which we watch a bit too much TV Living Room.

This photo was taken while standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Those hanging photo things were made by Chris per my request. I think I'd like some wall words above it. And the couches are extremely ugly, but they're La-Z-Boy reclining couches, and mighty comfy, so we're going with it for now! :)

The decor on the right was made by us. The decor on the left was all either made by us, or bought at....DOLLAR TREE. No, I'm not too proud to admit that I use Dollar Tree decor! :)
A closer look...
Panning left around the room. Good thing we live out in the country, since we have no blinds! I'm trying to find some inspiration for window dressings as well.

And panning left some more. This is our front door, which leads out onto a small front porch. (You'll see photos of that later.) The frames on the right were, again, made by Chris or bought at Dollar Tree. Frame on the left was bought at Hobby Lobby. The photo on the left is another one of my favorites of the boys, taken a couple years ago. They're both walking barefoot while carrying their shoes.

And the photo below shows the doorway to the kitchen. The little screen thing on the left was made by my Grandpa (dad's dad). Right now I have random photos in it (they need to be updated really bad!).

And that's it! Still a work in progress, but we like it! It's super cozy in there...one of my favorite rooms!

UP NEXT: Kitchen

Virtual Home Tour: Girls' Bedroom

Today I'm showing you the girls' bedroom. I, of course, HAD to go with a girly color on the walls. My mom and I painted the walls pink and green (I don't remember the exact color name, but I do remember that the paint guy mixed up the color WAY WRONG. He used the wrong base color, and we got one entire coat on the walls before we realized it. The first coat looked lighter because we were painting over white, but once I started on the second coat, I knew there was NO WAY I had picked such a dark purplish color! Sure enough, it was wrong, so we had to start completely over. I was thrilled.).

This is the extent of the wall decor right now! I obviously have more work to do in this room too. :) And these little plaques need something else, but I can't decide what yet. I bought the little butterfly and flowers at Wal-Mart for 50 cents each, and Chris cut and painted a square of wood for each one. Not bad for $1.50!

That door on the left goes into a huge storage closet. Very nice to have that! And if you look closely at all the trim, you'll notice that I need to do a couple more coats of white on all of it. We ran out of time before our big MOVE date, so it didn't get done. The trim was painted BLACK. Ick.

Here's where Aniston sleeps at night...

And here's where Emmersyn sleeps...

The carpet in the girls' room needs to be replaced too, so we're hoping to replace the carpet in the entire upstairs and stairwell all at the same time. (I think I already wrote about that?)

I love the girls' room, but I'm already dreaming up a makeover! It won't happen for at least a few years, but I just love thinking up fun decor ideas for a little girl's room. It's addictive!

UP NEXT: Living Room

Virtual Home Tour: Boys' Bedroom

Welcome to the boys' room!

Right inside their door is their precious "Lego Table". I'm entertaining the idea of moving the Lego table into the toy room. Not sure on that yet. I'd like for them to have a safe place for them to keep their creations, where they know their sister can't get to it and destroy it.

Here's Xander's bed.

I need to shorten their drapes, dontcha think?

Pierce's bed...

These beds are the same ones that we had set up as bunk beds at our old house. Chris made them so that we could use them as two separate twin beds with the dresser detached. Not bad, eh?

We (well actually, my mom) painted the blue on the walls before we moved in. The brownish color was already there, but I think I'd like to redo that soon-ish. And the carpet HAS to go.

Here's their dresser...you can't see it very well, but there's a photo on there that is one of my favorites. When Xander was just a baby, Pierce fell asleep right next to his sleeping baby brother. It was so precious. And I'm pretty sure I took that photo just yesterday. [sigh]

I'm still not even CLOSE to being done with this room. I'm still working on the decor, so I'll probably post more pictures once all the decor is up on the walls. No promises on when that will be though...

UP NEXT: Girls' Bedroom

Virtual Home Tour: Master Bedroom

The setup of the Master Bedroom (I use the word "master" VERY loosely) is not ideal. Here is a shot taken while standing right next to the dining table. You walk through a door, and immediately on your right is the bathroom door. Straight ahead is our bedroom. It doesn't have its own door (yet), and it's extremely tiny, but if I had to pick any one room to be lacking in size, it would be the master bedroom. It's just a place to sleep, after all.

Here's a photo taken standing right next to the bathroom door.

And here's the bed.

Closer shot of the same spot. Each item on that shelf was either bought at Dollar Tree, or made by Chris. There's also a super old Bible up there...I found it at an Antique Mall once, and I just love it! And the headboard is looking pretty sad. We actually made this headboard. Chris cut a piece of scrap wood and I put batting and material on it, then some fancy schmancy buttons on it. I really liked the way it turned out initially, but that was three years ago and it's been through two moves since then! It might be time to redo it!?

The wall to the right of the bed....Again, Dollar Tree mirrors. Yes, I know I'm cheap, but I like to change stuff around a LOT so going with Dollar Tree/garage sale/homemade decor enables me to feel less guilty about it! :)

Dresser area. The stuff on the wall came with my package way back when I signed up to be a Home & Garden Party consultant (that was shortlived!). The plant thingy came from a garage sale; the candestick holders that I'm using as bookends came from Dollar Tree; the books were random books that I had around the house that matched the decor; the framed saying came from a sweet gal we used to teach in Family Night at our old church; the gold candles came from the Wal-Mart clearance aisle; and the music box was a gift from my parents.

And I thought I'd include a photo of one of my most prized possessions. I got this mirror with a sweet poem (written by my mom) for Christmas from my parents in 2007. They bought all the materials necessary to make it, and then had my Grandpa make it for me. The mirror part opens, and the inside is a huge area to store jewelry. I just love it. Love it love it.

And yep! That's it! Our plan at this point is to eventually add onto the house. We would like to add on to the area next to our bedroom and the bathroom, which would give us a bigger bedroom, another bathroom, and a bit bigger laundry room. The addition would be two-story so we could add on a third bedroom up there. (We're hoping to eventually be foster parents, but at this point it's out of the question because you're only supposed to have two kids per bedroom.) But we've decided that we won't do any additions until we've reached certain financial goals (ie. completely debt-free, and then some).


But for now, I sleep just fine in my little bedroom! In fact, I really love it!

UP NEXT: Boys' Bedroom

Virtual Home Tour: Toy Room

I love this room. Not because it's anything special to look at (in fact, the opposite is true), but because there's nothing better than having a main level that is virtually toy free! And with four young children, having a toy-free main level is something almost unbelievable.

Right now the walls AND ceiling are painted a dark, drab, midnight blue. I'm not a big fan.
But I have some really fun ideas! We'd like to have the whole upstairs recarpeted, and we also hope to replace all the trim and doors throughout the house eventually. For this room, I think I'd like to paint it yellow, add some chair rail, and replace the banister. And then I'd like to randomly hang some photos of the kids playing with toys. I also want some BIG wall words that say "PLAY" somewhere in the room. But by the time we get around to it, I'm sure I'll have changed my mind ten times! Haha!

UP NEXT: Master Bedroom

Virtual Home Tour: Bathroom

Well, there isn't much to our bathroom. It's pretty tiny, and it's nothing special. It's our only bathroom, which could pose a problem in a few years, but we're hoping to somehow remedy that when the time comes. For now, it doesn't matter much to us that we only have one small bathroom, as it's only a place to get clean and, well, you know. :)


UP NEXT: Toy Room

Virtual Home Tour: Homeschool Room

Before you ask why on earth we call it the homeschool room, let me explain. When we first looked at this house, we thought this room would be great to set up some desks and have school in here. That is something we hope to try in the future, once replace the windows, put in drywall, patch, fix, refloor, paint, etc. For now, we use it as a place for the kids to go in and out the door, hold homeschool supplies, and I also keep the Pack N Play full of clothes, diapers, and wipes for Aniston. This way I don't have to run up and down the stairs umpteen times a day!


In this photo, the "wall" that the Pack N Play is against is were the basement stairs are.

The door shown here is one of the two doors that lead to our deck. Ignore the mess! :)

This is our homeschool bookshelf (we already need a bigger one!). Just to the LEFT of it, you can see where Chris boarded up a window that used to be there. On the other side of that wall is the kitchen. And just to the RIGHT of the bookshelf, that wall ends, and there is counter and bar stools right there.

Again, not my favorite room, but I'm SO excited about the potential! New windows, fresh drywall and paint, and a little bit of new floor, and this room could easily turn into something fantastic! :)

Virtual Home Tour: Basement

I've decided to start with some of the rooms that I like the LEAST in our house.

The basement

The basement has great potential, but for now it is the place where I run on the treadmill everday walk by the treadmill and feel guilty for ignoring it yet another day. We also have the (dusty) piano down there, a TV for distraction for when I do finally get my big butt moving on the treadmill, and also a wall lined with things that need to be sold or given away.

(The stairs need to be carpeted or something!)

Here's the view of the basement, taken from the stairs. We have a clothesline down there! And that door there leads into our 2.5 stall garage (woohoo for having a garage again!).

And seriously, that's it for today! I know...I'm so mean! Hee hee hee!

Carbonite

One of my 90 goals was to backup all of my important files monthly. That seemed like no big deal, but when I sat down to back everything up, it took me HOURS.

As if I have HOURS to spend making copies of my files.

Forget it.

But what if my computer crashes the day after I spend hours creating new designs? Or what if it finally dies a week after I've uploaded all those precious birthday photos? The last time my computer crashed I lost almost 3 years worth of letters that I had written to the boys right after their births and birthdays. I felt sick.

Behold, I have found my perfect solution.

Carbonite.

Here's how it works. You download the program. You select which folders/files on your computer you want to have backed up. I selected my "My Documents" folder, which includes EVERYTHING important to me, excluding my Outlook data file, so I selected that one too. Then you do an "initial" backup. It says this initial save can take up to 3 days. Mine took about 18 hours. The reason it takes so long is because the program DOES NOT RUN while you are using your computer. It waits for your system to idle, and THEN it goes to work. BRILLIANT! I wish my AntiVirus scanner would work that way!

And here's the best part: Carbonite looks for changes to your files/folders, and if there have been changes made, it replaces the old version of the file with the new version. And if you add a photo or file to your "My Documents" folder, it detects it and saves it! Wow.

So now, when I've spent hours creating new designs for customers, I don't have to be concerned that my computer might crash and therefore render all that hard work useless!

Carbonite? It TOTALLY works for me!