Brayden: Month 10

+Walking all over the place


+Finally got some teeth (2 bottoms)


+ Loves banging on everything


+ Usually has at least one bruise somewhere( see above!)


+ Claps his hands


+ Is always smiling!

Crumbling Patio Tiles

It's hard to believe it has been three years since we had our front patio floors done. Way back here, I blogged about our front patio and our decision to lay tile out there. Well, in retrospect in was not the best decision for us. We have had some cracking which was pretty irritating. However, this past Saturday when Tim was out grilling, it literally started crumbling under his feet as he walked.

I don't want to deter anyone from using outdoor tile because I have many a friend who have had a lot of luck with it. For us, it was a waste of money. Our contractor charged us an additional $400 to level the front patio to prevent this very thing from happening. However, now that we can see under the tiles we realize he only leveled areas, not the whole patio. So once that first crack occurred, water was able to get under the tiles and run through the areas he didn't level. This has lead to tiles popping up and cracking all over the place.

While I knew it would probably be a case where we needed to rip everything out and start over, I decided to call the contractor first to have him come out and take a look and see what, if anything, could be done. Conveniently enough, his number is not in service! After trying for a few days to reach him, I decided to get a few estimates on pavers. Originally, we considered pavers out front but thought it would be too expensive. Now that we are paying to have the floors done a second time, we probably should have just went with that from the start.

I got two estimates. Originally we planned to tear out the tile and then just pay someone to install the pavers. However, the first guy who came out gave us a great price to tear out and haul away the existing tile in addition to doing the pavers. We have signed a contract with him and he hopes to get started next week. We have a few small obstacles to work around: we need to raise/trim both our storm door and our gate to get onto the patio. We plan on taking a look at both of those this weekend, with the help of my handy dad, to prepare for next week.

I am hesitant that the pavers may crack as well. I asked the intaller and he is using 1 inch pavers. He is also going to level the floor ( where the original installer missed) and does not think we will have any issues. So I am hopeful it will have a bit more staying power this time around. Fingers crossed for a completed "update" post next week! :)

Brayden: Month 9

+ Walks with a walker.

+ Started swim lessons and loves the pool.

+ Still toothless.

+ Wakes up smiling and happy.

+Waves and says "Hi".

+ Has tapered off in the weight department: 23lbs and the 75th percent!

+ And he has officially been out as long as he was in! Pregnant picture was the morning of my c-section- I was HUGE!

Brayden's Rustic Nursery

When I found out I was having a little boy, I knew I wanted to do a wood accent wall. With that in mind, I had two different ideas of which "theme" to go with.
A deer/hunting theme...

Or a nautical theme...

I decided that before I could commit, We would paint and do the accent wall to get a better feel for the room. First, we painted the walls. I chose a darker beige by Valspar called "Transit pass".

As far as the accent wall goes, there are HUNDREDS of tutorials on Pinterest. I read about 50 different blogs using everything from pallets to scrap wood. I was nervous about that for 2 reason: 1) the rough texture and 2) chemicals. Ultimately I purchased tongue and grove cedar panels from  Home Depot. They had LOTS of variation in the boards which I really liked. I also chose three different stains to use, all by Minwax. 

From top to bottom: Red Mahogany, Provencial and Ipswich Pine. 

All the boards were stained using my preferred method of staining, cheesecloth! When we were getting to the end of our staining project we ended up mixing a few of the stains together to give us some more color variations.

We gave the boards 48 hours to fully dry. We were a bit nervous about the installation because we have crown moulding installed in that room and were really unsure how things would work out. We ended up leaving both the crown and the baseboards in place and began our install working from the bottom up.  Since I was pregnant at the time, my job was to sit on the floor and tell the installers ( my husband and father) the desired length and placements of the boards. Tell people what to do? I had that covered :)

The install went really quickly! The groves fit together well and we used a pin-gun to secure the boards to the wall. I think we knocked out the install in 2-3 hours. This is what we were left at the end of the day. 

Doing the accent wall made my theme decision easy...we went with a deer theme. The crib and dresser were actually purchased from a garage sale group for $300. The Monogram over the crib was purchased from this shop on Etsy. 

              I did paint the dresser sides and switch out the knobs with "deer antler knobs".

Overall, we are really happy with the space. It is a small room but very functional. The accent wall is by far my favorite element.  

Brayden: Month 8

+ Crawls everywhere... and quickly I might add!

+ Stands for extended periods of time.

+ Loves pretty much every food I give him, especially puffs.

+  Babbles "ma-ma" and "da-da".

+ Wakes up smiling and is SUCH a happy baby.

Brayden: Month 7

+He is always smiling.

+ Big sister makes him belly laugh.

+He army crawls everywhere. 

+Still no teeth. 

+Loves being outside on the swings or going for a walk. 

+21lbs 4oz of cuteness!

Dress Up Station

Charlotte is OBSESSED with "costumes". She specifically asked for Santa to bring her a "Let it Go  pretty dress and shoes" for Christmas in exchange for her pacifiers. I may have had to search high and low but I finally found one in her size. She also left out all her pacifiers for Santa that night and hasn't asked for one since! But I digress. She ended up with so many dress up items, it left Tim and I looking for a storage solution.

I took to Pinterest to look for ideas. I really loved this fun blue one by Rain on a tin roof.  But the cost of the Billy bookshelf was a bit more than I wanted to spend. Plus it required a trip to Ikea, where I always spend more than planned!

I also really liked the dress up "cart" by Shanty 2 Chic.  I didn't need it to be a cart as we just planned to leave it out in the playroom. and I wanted to use the side cubbies for shoes. But it wasn't anything that couldn't be adapted. Plus they give FREE plans on their website, Looks like we had a winner!

We made a family trip to Lowe's to purchase supplies. We followed the plans provided for the most part. The exception is that we did not use plywood mentioned, we used pine boards cut to size. While we have access to a saw, our Christmas stuff was still in our garage and we wanted to avoid it being covered in saw just. I simply provided the cut list to Lowe's and had everything cut to size for me. I did however ask for them to cut additional 9 3/4 X 11 1/4 squares, as I knew I wanted to add more cubbies. We also chose not to add casters. I had left over paint from our Ikea Kitchen Makeover so that was one less cost as well. We walked out of Lowe's spending just under $39!

Tim set to work assembling the unit. It same together pretty quickly and was looking like this the next day!

We spaced out our "cubbies" 7 inches apart from the top of the bottom trim. The top one is slightly smaller but its perfect for open storage. I filled all the pocket holes with wood filler and sanded everything down. I used the leftover paint from the Kitchen on the inside and white paint on the outside. I also had some Benjamin Moore Advanced Paint leftover from another project and we had JUST enough to cover this. It took two coats.  I then made a trip back to Lowe's for two knobs. Charlotte picked out these pink ones.

And then I grabbed a mirror at TJ Maxx. I lucked out that there happened to be one the right size in the first store I went to! The mirror was $9.99. Once the paint dried, we attached the knobs and mirror and added felt pads to the bottom instead of the casters. We hung up all her "dress up" outfits and moved all over her shoes and jewelry.

She LOVES it. Although I will admit it has contributed to an increase in costume changing throughout the day!