The Six Week Sofa and A Few More of My Favorite Things

While most of my posts are updates on the babies, occasionally I like to post about a few other things of interest to me, like a recipe, craft idea, or a home decorating update.  This is going to be one of those posts, just a head's up for those of you who might have been expecting a baby update.  There are still a few pictures of the babies sprinkled in there for good measure too!  This post will feature the Six Week Sofa, the sitting area Before and After pictures, and a few pictures of some of my new and old favorite things.

The Six Week Sofa is aptly named because that is how long we have waited for its arrival.  After a two hour (with toddlers in tow) furniture shopping ordeal, I finally broke down and decided to order this couch and a chair Special Order for the sitting room.  I don't know why when I said "we need a neutral/small sofa" that translated in the sales lady's mind to a lime green sofa on clearance and a neon blue crushed velvet chaise, but needless to say our options were limited.  The Special Order sofa was the exact right color, texture, and size for the space and we had exhausted all of the other options in the store.  We definitely weren't about to take the babies to a different furniture store.  Since this wasn't our living room furniture and we didn't NEED it to have a place to sit, I figured it would be fine to wait however long it took to come in.  Note to self: don't ever buy special order furniture again.  I do not have the patience for it.  We still don't have the chair, maybe it will turn into the Eight Week Chair.

This is what the "sitting area" has looked like for the last month and a half:

And today, at long last, the much anticipated Six Week Sofa arrived:

The chair, when it is finally delivered, will go next to the lamp and roughly under the black frame.

Chloe and Brady are trying to figure out what all the hoopla is about:

Now for some of my favorite things.  This next picture is of my Aunt Gigi's lamp.  She bought this lamp soon after my PawPaw (Aunt Gigi's father) passed away (I was about ten years old).  At that time she told me she was going to hold onto it for a while, but she believed that one day PawPaw would want it to be mine.  Aunt Gigi mailed me this lamp and it arrived on February 18, 2011, the day the twins were born.  Since we didn't feel comfortable having it in our very cramped and small house with the new babies, our amazing friends and neighbors Carlea and Dustin gave it a home for about a year for us.  Now that we have moved into the new house, it has assumed a special place in the sitting room.  Every time I look at that lamp now I am reminded of Aunt Gigi and of PawPaw.

A few other favorite things reside on the side table next to the sofa in the sitting area.  The shadow box has our wedding invitation and one of the boutonnieres from our wedding in it.  My brother Thomas saved his boutonniere and made this for us and I love it.  The glass container holds the two different colors of sand we poured together on our wedding day in lieu of lighting a unity candle.  I am glad we decided to do this instead of the candle lighting because now we can always keep our sand.

On the dining table across from the sitting area, sits a new favorite thing.  Our friends the Dermodys brought us a beautiful orchid when they came to the house warming barbecue we had a few weeks ago.  I repotted it and have been trying hard to make sure it lives.  My Grandma says the best way to keep an orchid alive is to leave it alone.  So I've been trying to do just that.  So far it is working (fingers crossed).  Another one of our friends brought us some beautiful calla lilies that I also repotted, but unfortunately I overwatered them and I am trying to rehabilitate them, but I don't know if I will be able to or not.  Here are some pictures of the orchid:

And the last favorite thing is an old favorite.  It is a picture that used to hang in my room when I was little.  My mom found it in the basement, cleaned it up and had it shipped to me.  I was amazed that it got here all the way from NC in perfect condition!  I hung it in the playroom and I love to look at it and think of my Mom.  I am so glad the kids will be able to enjoy it just like I used to!

Well, that's it for some of my new and old favorite things!  I hope everyone had a good start to their week!
 

 

The Saga of the Purple People Eater Kitchen

When we first went to see the new house we loved a lot of different things about it.  The neighborhood, the fact that it was one story, and all of the space!  One thing I did NOT love and couldn't look past was the dark purple kitchen.  Chad didn't seem to mind it too much, but I told him I just could not live in a house with a dark purple kitchen.  As a condition of us renting the house, we asked that we be allowed to repaint the kitchen.  It turns out that we have permission to repaint almost all of the rooms in the house, so we are excited!

I had hired a certain painting company before to repaint some areas in our city house back when we had it on the market, and since they did such a great job that time I decided to hire them to repaint the kitchen and two bathrooms in the new house.  I exchanged about 5 emails back and forth with the owner of the company, and signed a contract for the painting.  I had arranged for the painters to come the day before we moved in and the appliances were delivered.  On the morning of the scheduled day I rushed over with the babies and all of their gear in tow to the suburb house to meet the painters at 8 AM.  They never showed!

Obviously I was upset, particularly since the whole move had been scheduled around the painting.  The owner of the paint company came out to the suburb house personally to apologize, and then offered to paint the kitchen and the two bathrooms for FREE the next day.  I was very surprised and pleased that he offered this solution.  The only problem was that meant on Moving Day we would have the painters, the movers, the appliance delivery people, Chad, Meepie, Jaden, me, and the babies in the house at the same time!  At one point that day we counted and we had 13 people in the house!  Also the wall where the refrigerator was had to be painted first thing in the morning so it would dry before the people from Best Buy delivered the refrigerator around noon!  Chaos!

Anyhow, I tell you all of this so that you can appreciate the lengths multiple people went to in order to eradicate the purple people eater kitchen!  Here are some pictures:

PURPLE KITCHEN BEFORE:

NON PURPLE KITCHEN AFTER:

Whew!  Happy Friday everyone!

 

Pictures of Babies' New Rooms

We are getting more and more settled into the new house.  It is starting to feel more and more like home!  I have some pictures to share with you of the babies' new rooms.  It has been a super busy day and I am tired, so I won't gab on, I will just show you the pictures!

BRADY'S ROOM:

CHLOE'S ROOM:

So far the babies have seemed to really enjoy having their own rooms.  Chloe in particular has enjoyed the quiet space for napping and sleeping since Brady had a tendency to wake her up when they were sharing a room.  

Happy Wednesday to everyone!

 

A Few Pictures of the New House

We moved over the weekend, and boy do I have lots of things to share with the blog!  Of course, I also still have a household that is about 45% in boxes and two one year old twins to look after, so I have very little time for the blog at the moment.  Luckily I do have a few pictures I wanted to share while I had a moment! Please excuse the picture quality, these were all taken on my phone and not my digital camera.

First off, the playroom.  It is the most organized room in the house at the moment.

Entrance to playroom:

Playroom left side:

Playroom right side:

Reading area of playroom:

The thing on the wall is a list of really cute/sweet "Playroom Rules" on vinyl letters I got from Etsy.  They look good but were really hard to put up!  One of the rules was ironically "Try to be patient" while we were impatiently trying to get it on the wall.

Now here is another room in the house I love, an actual dining room (We've never had a formal dining room or table before)!  We did not paint this room, it just happened to be this color and we like it!

Now here are just some random pictures of random places I took over the weekend.

Here is the babies' first breakfast in the house:

Here is the entrance hallway:

Here are the babies playing by the bathtub in the master bedroom/bathroom area:

You can't see much from the picture above I just liked the way it looked.  At this point there was NOTHING in the house except me and the babies and the bare essentials.

And finally, here is Mr. Brady outside of the playroom.  This is the first time he ventured out a little.

I have a LOT more to post about but it will probably be quite a while before I update again.  Hope everyone is doing great!  We are enjoying the new house!