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AHHHH.....I am so flippin' excited!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE how this redo turned out.  Now, if money were not an issue I would have swapped out our couch for a white one.  I am somewhat in love with the Ikea ektorp sofa in white.  Although once my time in Never Never Land has ended I am reminded that it may not be practical to have a white couch with 6 kids who have been known to somehow acquire a 3-1/2 inch accumulation of mud on their shoes. 

Here is how our living room looked back in May.  I had received two book cases that needed a coat a paint and some crown molding. We had also inherited some really nice (REAL) leather chairs and I found a Pottery Barn-looking table on Craigslist to put between them.  While I loved the new seating arrangement, slowly everything started turning brown.  Every new piece we ended up with was a shade of brown and it was just TOO MUCH brown!  I love brown like anyone else.....but EVERYTHING?  No thanks.  I needed some COLOR and light!  Below was my inspiration room via pinterest (a Lettered Cottage design for HGTV).  SEE? Doesn't that WHITE couch look amazing!?  Oh well, maybe a slip cover in an oat color is in our future.

INSPIRATION ROOM

Just to prove we are COMPLETELY crazy... I started painted the bookshelves a mere 48 hours before Christmas Eve while knowing full well that I was hosting Christmas dinner here at the Farmhouse and also had a PACKED schedule between painting and hosting (Christmas with my in-laws, Christmas church service and wrapping the presents for SIX kids). Why I chose to dig in is anyone's guess. After emptying the book shelves there were books EVERY WHERE!!! Yep, that is my dining room where I was to be hosting Christmas dinner for 15 people in less than 48 hours!  AHHHHHH!!!!

I got the bookshelves finished (3 coats and a layer of wax) and started puting some sample swatches on the walls to try to find the perfect shade. The one on the left if the wood stove is Oyster Bay from Sherwin Williams (the one from my inspiration room).  It ended up too dark and too green.  I wanted more of a light aqua.  The one on the right was perfect!  It is Pottery Barn's Woodlawn Blue by Benjamin Moore.

We added some trim to fake some board on batten like we did in the kids bathroom.  I also touched up all the trim paint.  During this process everyone (but the baby) came down with the flu but I was bound and determined to get this done during my short holiday break from homeschooling the kidlets.  DIE HARD! Notice my sick hubby passed out in a Nyquil coma on the couch! Yeah, it was bad.  I stayed up till 3 am for two nights in a row to get it done. 

Then the new color went on.  I LOVED it!  Like, I would marry it if I could!  It was a perfect shade and perfect hue for what I wanted.

We added a new jute rug and a few new lamps but everything else is the same. I didn't have the funds for new furniture.  I am working on painting my backdoor red like the inspiration room. I will show you that when I am done. I am also trying to convince my hubs that a light colored slipcover on our couch would not be impractical.....not sure if I am going to be able to even convince myself of that......

(see in the very far right side - the beginning of a red door.... YAY!) Valspar's Heirloom Red

We also painted and distressed some furniture with homemade chalk paint.  I learned about chalk painting here and was super excited to try it.  I was VERY concerned about how it would hold up on the chest that serves as a foot rest and a hot wheels trick-course.  It hasn't chipped yet, so I am impressed!

See poor flu-stricken Maddie and her puke bucket......uggggg....the flu SUCKS!

New gallery wall.

I added six frames alongside the book shelves just like I pictured it in the drawing I made last May.

And here she is in all her glory!!

Yeah, it really lightened things up!

How do you like it?!

I am so sad to say I didn’t take many photo of Christmas at ALL.  UGGHH….  I seem to be so busy that I forget to capture things.  I am getting worse and worse….NEED TO REMEMBER TO PICK UP A CAMERA!  And every photo I have is a cell phone photo. Bad photographer, BAD!  That is actually one of my 2013 habits/resolutions (later post) I am working on.  So here are a few photographs from Christmas 2012.

The kiddos on Christmas morning.

My sister, Jenni, my momma, Roberta and me.

Waiting patiently to open gifts!

One of Maddie's most very favorite people, Uncle Bobby.

My brother, Michael, Me and my sis, Jenni.

Christmas Eve

Sorry I have been away....we have had a busy couple of weeks!  Time for a Random Recap? YEPPERS!

• We had a great Christmas, spending Christmas Eve with Mike’s family, Christmas afternoon with my extended family and Christmas night with my family.
• Christmas morning we always reserve for just the eight of us.  Christmas with a large family is always exciting and almost always includes lots of squealing and laughter, paper flying with abandon and two large cups of coffee for mom and dad!  
• A few days before Christmas I started playing around with sample paint colors for our living room.  Remember those book shelves we got for FREE that needed painted (like back in MAY!), well I finally got around to painting them in our break from school.  Once those were painted I started in on the walls (I have had half a dozen paint chips taped to my wall for MONTHS).  Which lead to changing everything else! Okay, not everything; but it is a totally different look in there now, much lighter and brighter.  When does painting a room ever end in JUST paint?  Can I get an “amen”, ladies?  I CAN’T WAIT to reveal it to you!
• A few days after Christmas and in the middle of our impromptu living room redo we all got the influenza virus that lasted until, well… we still aren’t 100% over it yet! YUCK! If you are part of a large family then you can understand how yucky it is when EVERYONE is sick and it last for what seems like FOREVER!  Makes you really appreciate feeling well!
• New Year’s is traditionally spent at the lake house, but this year we decided to go to my sister’s place and help her and her family with a bathroom remodel.  Although with her having the flu and all 8 of us with it, it did not happen. So we stayed here and it was one of the most boring New Year’s Eves  in history…..but it was quiet and restful which is what we needed at that time.  So boring it was!
• Speaking of my sister…..SHE IS PREGNANT!!!! They had such a hard time getting pregnant with their first little girl and ended up using a small dose of fertility meds to achieve it.  They have been trying for years now and they just found out they are pregnant!!!!! AHHHHH! So happy for them!  Can’t wait to find out if I am going to be blessed with another beautiful niece or a nephew!  GOD IS GOOD!

• We are 1/3 of the way through this school year and I usually take Christmas/NY break to evaluate what is working and what is not.  I will do a separate post on homeschooling update soon.  Most of what we are doing is working well but I do plan on changing a few things up.
• I have never really made resolutions before but this year I started a list of habits and projects that I want to work on in 2013.  This will also be a separate post. I am excited to incorporate them into my daily habits over the next dozen months.  

So I think that catches you up in a nutshell! How was your Christmas/New Years?

Talking to many mommas, I have realized that laundry is the arch enemy to a lot of us! I will say having a system makes keeping up with laundry much more attainable.  I developed a system a couple of years ago and it streamlines my laundry activities into one central spot.....the laundry room.  It also allows my children to become active participants in the laundry chores which makes my load lighter and gives them added responsibilities.

Here is my laundry room....

And a closer look:

Over the years our "school room" has been moved around to many places.  We have used the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the extra bedroom in our basement.  Because we are a very relaxed family and I love the idea of incorporating learning into our everyday lives I tend to have inner turmoil over having a "school ROOM" per say.  I like the notion that school should happen where ever we feel inclined to learn at that moment.  Although the reality is that with eight people, at least three of which that have major focusing issues (Andrew, Faith and myself) and the many distractions of our household (read: 6 loud, busy children), we NEED to have a separate, purposeful room for our school work. Because of these exact reasons I have used my basement school room more and more over the last few years.  While at one time it was used mostly as a playroom, its main function now is that of a school room. I have given you glimpses of it each year we have used it in prior posts.  It is always evolving to better suite our needs.  This is what our room looks like this year!  This is a 360 degree photograph of our basement school room. 

I made this video back in June and just haven't posted it yet!  Sorry!  Here is the promised video tour of our backyard.

I have a hard time believing at times my kids are growing up fast.  I am no longer a mother to all "littles".  I have a few "bigs" now.  My little joyous soul, Maddie Jo, turned 7 at the end of the month!  Yesterday she looked like THIS, I swear!

How did this happen? She is looking soooooo old!!!

Lately she has been really fascinated with sea horses, so I went with it. 

Sea horse necklace and bracelet set....

of coarse, a crocheted sea horse.....

Even a sea horse cake (can you tell.....the sea horse was encrusted in sprinkles!?) We also had some scrumptious pulled pork butt, complements of "Evil Dr. Pork Chops"!

She did pick out one item that wasn't sea horse related; her very own "garden hat"

Happy Birthday dear, sweet princess of mine!

Happy Birthday to me!  Yep, I am thirty!  No longer can I claim to be in my twenties….but with almost 6 kids…..I am far from pretending to be younger than I am!  The day was beautiful and I took the monkeys to the park to play, eat a picnic lunch and take a long stroll.  My husband and father in law even met me at the park for lunch. 

 

We had dinner here at the farmhouse and Mike was kind enough to cook (okay, we ordered my favorite pizza – but really, lets be honest, the pizza was way better!).  I had spent the day before preparing a black tie mousse cake for my birthday cake.

I really wanted one and they are about $40 to purchase one….BLAH….I am cheap remember?  So I found a recipe online and it turned out AMAZING!!!! I am linking to the recipe only because it is silly to re-write it.  I followed it exactly and it was so good I really wouldn’t change anything.  The only slight variation I made was on the final layer (chocolate ganache frosting).  I ended up doing the icing in two steps.  I first poured on a thick layer of chocolate ganache and swirled in the white chocolate, leaving the spring pan form in place. 

Then I put it in the freezer to set and when it was good and cooled I removed the spring form side and finished the side icing (with a much cooler, firmer leftover ganache) and crusted it with mini chocolate chips. AMAZING, simply amazing!  It was 5 layers of goodness….devils food cake, chocolate mousse, vanilla custard, dark chocolate ganache and finally a chocolate chip crust……mmmmmmm….

RECIPE HERE

Free stuff…it always gets my attention!  When my dad told me he was tearing down an office building with built in floor to ceiling oak bookshelves, I really couldn’t say no.  But where to put them?...  We have a very open floor plan in our home which is SO nice for flow, but not so great when finding wall space.  We finally decided that the bookshelves would go in our living room.  We have been doing school upstairs now (instead of the school room) because the basement just seemed so disconnected to “life”. We had been keeping some of our books in the dining room, but not all would fit.  I have always wanted a place to store the majority of our books anyway.  So we went for it.  We decided that two built in bookshelves on either side of the wood stove would be great.  We definitely want to paint them and add crown molding to unify them and make them official “built ins”, but they are up and holding books at the moment so the first step is accomplished.  

Here is what our living room used to look like: (I totally stink at remembering to take “before photo when we all the sudden decide to uproot everything, so sorry these aren’t really that great, but you get the point)

{This is the wall where the leather chairs now reside}

Here is my very rough vision of what I wanted it to look like:

{drawing of how I was imagining it looking before bring in the bookshelves}

And now, here it what it looks like now – half completed.  Please envision this with the bookshelves painted the same as the trim and with crown molding running around the tops of the books shelves and extending around the room.  

{Chairs and table}

{One side of bookshelves}

{Other side of bookshelves}

{Full view of room}

Thanks to my awesome parents for the FREE leather chairs and to my hubs and father in law for hauling them here.  Also, check out the $50 craiglist table! Yeah! SCORE!

I will post a picture in a few weeks of the final product.  I am also thinking of painting the walls a Pottery Barn blue??..….  Hmmm….I am still thinking about that one…..

Next project on the list is to tackle the office/craft room.  A few months ago I had moved the “nursery” corner out of our room and turned it into my craft area giving Mike the entire office.  Well, as you probably have heard, God laughed hard at our “plans” to be done having children! LOL! (I am SO grateful He is wiser than I am!)  Now, the craft area is back in the office and in need of some organization.  The same building that supplied us with the bookshelves also supplied us with a nice set of upper cabinets, albeit in the same ugly honey oak tone (and brass hardware)! Luckily, a little paint and some new hardware can solve the worse of outdated-wood-toned-brass problems!  Stick around to see that room!  

Mike and I FINALLY got the garage mess under control a couple of weeks ago!  Since last year when we started our home based lawn business our garage has taken a turn for the worst.  Ever heard the expression “cramming 10 lbs. of stuff into a 1 lb. bag”? Yep, we were doing it! Our garage was bursting at the seams!  We bit the bullet and finally accepted defeat.  No way of arranging could untangle the mess of bikes, mowers, aerators, tillers and everything else that was now parked in our garage.  And don't even get me started on the van we now own that could quite literally eat and spit out an average sized minivan.  In another post I will show you the beautiful shed, concrete work and landscaping that we put in.  But this post is dedicated to my thrifty little ditty of a bike rack made for a cost of…..wait for it……$35!!!  This is my not-so-original design (that is a larger version of this one) for a bike rack that holds 8 bikes!

Or you can buy one for $350!!!

You will need - 

• 6 – 10’ foot sticks of ¾” schedule 40 PVC pipe
• 6 – bags of contractors pack (10 in each bag – so 60 total), ¾” PVC tees
• 6 – single ¾” PVC elbows
• Glue if you want (I didn’t glue ours – that way I can take it apart and add to it if I need to!)
• Hacksaw or PVC pipe cutters
• Rubber mallet to tighten joints.
  

You can cut all the lengths first or cut as you go.  I cut as I went so I could try out a section or two before I assembled the whole thing!  Now just assemble it according to the photo above. Obviously, use elbows on the ends and not tees.  I would say that if all the bikes are the same size I would make the sections (6” ones) separating the bikes a bit longer.  Staggering the handle bar height makes 6” work, but with two of the same size bikes the handles bars get a bit tangled.  Also, if you have any bikes with oversized (wide) tire you will need to add a little length to the 2" piece (2-1/2" to 3").

I even color coded so everyone knew their "assigned parking spot"!