Cleaning House

No, not my own house, my blog, so to speak. I'm in the process of making it look all cute and stuff for the upcoming arrival of COLLEGE FOOTBALL! No, not excited at all. Stay tuned...and I promise more pictures, funny Olivia stories, or SOMETHING to go with it!

San Antonio

This past weekend was very busy. We went to the Circus on Saturday here in Austin, then on Sunday we made the drive to San Antonio to go see Nickelodeon Storytime Live. It was at the Majestic Theatre in downtown which was really neat. It was definitely not as big of a hit with all of us as the Circus, but Olivia loved seeing all of her favorite Nick Jr. characters. After the show, we walked around on the riverwalk and had lunch. A few pictures from before/ after the show...this time I made sure to sneak my camera in with me! If you were hoping to see some pictures of a grown woman posing as Dora the Explorer, well I am sorry to be the one to disappoint you, but unfortunately there was no picture taking allowing during the performance. There were a few that tried to "sneak" one in (always someone), but those ushers weren't fooling around.

Waiting patiently for the Nick Jr. crew

Right before show time. Greg and I spent a good portion of the show doing this...watching Olivia for a reaction.Tuckered out!

Like a Circus

Greg and I had been excited for weeks to take Olivia to the circus, but we weren't sure how she would react. We got in our seats as the show started and she was in total awe. We of course watched her for her reaction more than the show itself, but it was really well put together and kept her attention for the whole 2 plus hours we were there. It's hard to say what she liked the best, but definately either the elephants or the dogs. I didn't take my camera to the show because I had read online that cameras weren't allowed, but I learned my lesson because EVERYONE had their camera. I was a little disapointed, but here are a couple of pictures I took before we left.

Been A While...

I've been busy busy and lots of fun things going on, so unfortunately the blog gets pushed to the back burner. A lot of changes in the past few weeks in the Barber household. First, and most exciting....we are expecting baby number 2 in February! We are so excited and I was just saying how it still hasn't fully sunk in, at least until this morning when I tried to find a pair of shorts to fit. Then it seemed a little more real. So far so good-feeling pretty good, no wierd cravings, although I definitely have been craving certain items, like my Mango Magic smoothie from Tropical Smoothie Cafe. I drive a good 40 minutes to get one, and it is worth every minute!

The house is really starting to come along. The kitchen is complete, with just a few touch ups needed. The backsplash looks fantastic-I just keep staring at it! Greg worked really hard, and he did a great job. The only other thing we need for the kitchen is a larger kitchen table. We haven't done any major projects other than that, just lots of little things, like trimming the bushes, painting the front door, installing new house numbers, etc. Slowly but surely, this house is becoming home.

Also exciting is that Olivia will be starting Mothers Day Out in just a few weeks. I can't decide if I am excited or sad. I know this will be so good for her, and me, but at the same time I am worried that I won't know what to do with all of that free time! (I'm sure I will manage.) It is only two days a week, from 8:45-2, so it's perfect. I am hoping that we don't have major meltdowns when I try to leave her, but we will cross that eventful bridge when we come to it.

Our last little bit of news really isn't THAT exciting, except to me of course! I finally upgraded to mommy mobile status. We traded in my 4 cylinder Nissan Altima (I am already missing the gas mileage) for a (much) larger V-8 new to me Suburban. We decided we wanted something higher up off the ground for me when, as Greg so kindly puts it, "You get REALLY big." Thanks dear. Hopefully loading and unloading Olivia in and out of her car seat will be a bit easier. The other upside, this monster has a DVD player, which we have decided is an invaluable tool when traveling with our almost 2 year old.

I'm trying to remember to take more pictures. I don't know if it's the baby brain already or what, but some days I am just lucky to remember where I live. (I kid). So that's the latest and greatest here. A few recent pics of Olivia, my almost two year old!

Making Progress!

There has been some major progress made on the new house. We have finished all of the big stuff....entire house painted (walls, trim, doors and cabs), tile installed and carpet installed. Greg is now working on installing the granite in the kitchen as well as the backsplash, hanging lights, plumbing fixtures, new sink vanity in the powder bath and new toilets. Baby steps! Here are just a few before and afters, even thought the afters aren't complete yet....but a major improvement I think.

The kitchen before-this was the baby poop colored walls that I was talking about (there really is no other way to describe it). What you can't see from the picture is that the walls have no texture to them. It's like the previous owners painted over wallpaper or something. Interesting. The "faux finish" is also interesting.

The kitchen as of now...we replaced the crown on the top of the cabs with taller crown, added lite rail (sp?) to the bottoms of the cabs, added panels to the sides of the cabs, routered (I might have just made that word up) a piece to fit the cabs under the sink, removed the appliances, textured the walls and are in the process of adding granite tile counter tops and a black composite granite sink. I ordered stainless appliances which should be here next week...woo hoo!

Living room before. Yuck. Notice the amateur stain job on the floor. Oh, and hi Mom!
Living room currently. We still want to redo around the fireplace and add some wood detail/ new tiles...but that will have to come later. We tiled the floors with a staggered pattern which turned out really neat. We painted the balusters black, and will restain the handrail a darker stain at a later date. The wall color throughout is called Ripe Wheat by Behr and we chose a flat enamel which was rated really well and is supposed to be easy to clean up the occasional crayon drawing, but it is actually a flat paint. The girl at Home Depot about died when I told her how much paint I needed for her to mix.
Living Room-another viewMy laundry room ( : I know, who paints their tiny little laundry room-I DO! I have seen several DIY design blogs with green laundry rooms and I absolutely loved them. I am going to make some kind of cute window treatment, and add a few touches so that maybe doing laundry won't be so bad after all. Hey, a girl can dream right?

A close up of our granite tiles. I would have loved to put in real granite slabs, but it didn't make sense when you compared the prices of the two for this particular home. We are going to lay the tiles so that the grout lines are minimal, so hopefully it will look okay! We found these at Floor & Decor and they were only $1.99 a sq ft. To do our entire kitchen counter top and backsplash was only $600! That is so cheap! More on the backsplash later.

4 am

First, let me just point out that this is the SECOND post this week. Don't let this fool you. I am still going to slack in the blogging department, however this whole blogging thing is a great distraction from what I should be doing, which is cleaning my house. Cleaning my recently sold house I might add! Yep, it's official. We close on our new house this Friday, and won't close on our current house until the first part of July, which will give us plenty of time to work on the new house and move. WOO HOO! Inspection is scheduled for tomorrow, so we are just hoping and praying that everything goes well.

On to my reason for posting (the real reason, not the trying to get out of cleaning reason). It started with my 4 am wake up call this morning. Olivia was talking (yelling) to one of her many stuffed animals. Here is what I heard over the monitor:

Olivia: "Car. Daddy car."

(pause- apparently waiting for response from Baby Stella).

Olivia: "No wayyyyyy! Wooooowwwwww. Daddy car."

(apparently she is really impressed by daddys car).

Olivia: Cat? Yeah, cat."

This went on, loudly, for about five minutes....just enough time to fully wake us up! It's currently 9:32 am and she is still dreaming away. Must be nice!

Sweet

I found this cute little outfit at Target (pronounced Tar-jey in my family) for Olivia last week and couldn't pass it up at 12 bucks for the set! It matches her navy Converse perfectly! She was way too enthralled in her cartoon to give me the time of day.