Tutu Pretty

In the spirit of Christmas, I volunteered to help a family in need by making a Christmas present for the 2 girls.  If you read our other blog, Bloggle Baby, you know that I recently learned how to make a no-sew tutu.  I thought it would be fun to make one for each of the girls.  I found out their favorite colors and approximate waist sizes and got to work.  I sewed on flowers for an extra touch of whimsy.  ^_^  I also made a matching hair barrette with the leftover ribbon and tulle.  I like how they turned out, but I especially hope the girls that I made them for like them even more.  :)

Purple Tutu and Butterfly Hair Clip

Pink Tutu and Butterfly Hair Clip

What do you think?  Will the girls like them?

Where We Stand

I've been playing around with our camera's panoramic function.  I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet, but I wanted to post some pics of our progress.  These were the best of the bunch.  ^_^*

Nursery

Guest Room

Hallway

When we have finished these rooms, I will break out our tripod and take better panoramic pics to show you.

Last night, I was finally able to decorate the Christmas tree while Jim was outside staining.

I still need to add the tree skirt.  We also need to find a decent tree topper.  We looked for one last year, but didn't find one that we liked.  We'd like to find a star that lights up instead of an angel with a tree stuck up its butt.  LOL!  We put the tree in our dining room this year since the library is still full of stuff for our upstairs projects.

Stocking Feeder for the Birds

If we get around to putting lights up outside, I'll take a picture of them.  I'd like to at least get a picture of our Christmas tree from outside.

Other House Distractions

Besides working on the nursery, guest room, upstairs hall, and stairwell; we've had some side projects pop up.

Unwanted House Guests:  Shortly after we brought Avonlea home from the hospital, we discovered that she wasn't the only new resident.  Three different types of bees decided to move in as well!  A family of bumblebees and some type of smaller bee tried to move into our basement.  At the same time, a type of wasp or hornet was getting into our house via the downstairs bathroom's vent.  Yikes!  We decided to call an exterminator to take care of the problem.  We haven't seen any bees since, thank goodness!...

Well, except for this one.

Winterizing: The weather-stripping on our exterior doors were disintegrating, so we've replaced them.  We've also covered all the older windows with the plastic film to prevent drafts and air leakage. 

Roof:  We noticed something wasn't right with the ridge vents on our roof, so we called a roofer.  It turns out that the nails holding the ridge vents down were popping out.  The roofer removed all the nails and caulked the holes.  He then secured the ridge vents down with screws.  This should prevent the ridge vents from separating from the roof again.  Fortunately, he only charged us $110.  While he was up there, he also removed an old TV antenna for us.

Our home minus the antenna

The roof line looks so much nicer now.

Mutiny! I'm Taking This Blog Back!

After Avonlea was born, we decided to split our 2 blogs between us.  I would write mostly on Bloggle Baby, and Jim would take over Blue Century Home.  Unfortunately, it turns out that Jim isn't much of a blogger (as is quite evident); so, I'm reclaiming this blog.  ^_^

Since we've made quite a bit of progress, and it would take me forever to give each piece justice, I'll just do a quick recap of the past 3 months.

We utterly failed at finishing the nursery before Avonlea was born.  In fact, we are still working on it.  However, we have made some significant progress on the upstairs.  The walls and ceilings are painted, trim is completed in both bedrooms (except for the closet baseboards), carpeting is picked out and ordered, and we have finished staining all the stair parts and hallway woodwork.

Here is a picture of Jim holding Avonlea in the nursery before the window trim was up. 

Our sliding 5 panel closet doors that we bought way back in April-ish.

Our 4 panel door

The windows with custom-made window sills

The trimmed-out Guest Room

This is a picture of Jim ironing on the veneer for the landing.

The stair landing balusters lined up in our garage for staining.

Jim has spent a lot of time and effort on building the newel posts.  I would post pics, but I'll leave that to Jim. He wants to write about how he built them, and I don't want to give away any spoilers.  All I will say is that I think they look great!  :)

As I've mentioned earlier, we have ordered the carpeting for the upstairs.  We have chosen Shaw Stainmaster carpeting.  The hallway and stairs will be a medium brown with a leaf pattern.  The nursery will be a light beige and the guest room will be a light grey.  Jim wanted to go lighter in the hallway and stairs, but I was adamant not to go too light.  I don't feel like having to constantly clean the carpet (especially on the stairs).

Hallway and Stairs:

Style: Lasting  Color: Amaretto

Nursery:

Style: St Amien II  Color: Bridal Veil

Guest Room:

Style: St Amien II  Color: Mineral Alloy

Right now, they are scheduled to install the carpeting on Dec. 22nd.  If all goes well, Avonlea might have her nursery by Christmas.  ^_^*  Well, almost...her closet won't be completed by then since we want to try something fancy besides just a single rod for clothes to hang on.

Look at those colors!

Once all of the wall spaces and cleilings were freshly primed, we formed color-teams to fill them in. Amanda worked hard to find the perfect colors for the rooms. After a few weekends of painting, and with my parents' help, our project spaces are looking more finished than ever.

We have a charming nursary in light Sage Green, which will eventually be decorated with songbird theme.

Also, We have a comfortable Lilac Time purple/grey/blue guest room, where you may stay when you visit. This photo also shows the custom windowsill we built. The windowsills are designed to be an easy transition between the window caseing and the baseboards, as the large windows are so low to the floor.

The interconnecting hall is in traditional Lyndhurst Timber, and will look remarkable with the stained wooden handrail and built-in shelf.

Painting by numbers

It sure seems like a while ago that we were doing all this painting. During the first weekend in September, my parents came to help prime all of the drywall we had recently finished finishing. Mom and Dad are a great team, and they white-washed the bedrooms and hallway in no time.

Dad and Mom working diligently. 

While they were upstairs working with white primer, Amanda and I were out in the garage working with white paint on our surplus of window and door casings and baseboards . As Amanda had a limited number of comfortable maternity clothes, she also wore a blue disposable coverall. Incidentally, she looked like a blue M&M with a paint brush. 

Jim and Amanda pretending to work while no one was looking. 

Soon enough, our working construction zone was gone. Evidence of the rough original studs, electrical wiring and insulation was only barely visible along the bottom edge of the wall. All of the measurement notes, chalk lines and repair work on the drywall had been replaced with a fresh clean coat of while primer. We now had a 'blank canvas' that resembled two bedrooms and a hallway! 

How refreshing, it looks better already! 

Well Side-Project Conclusion

Woah, no real posts since August?! You probably figured that we lost our motivation in our various projects, or moved out, or were eaten by trolls. Well you figured wrong. We ate one of the trolls.

Actually, we have had a wild ride during the last month or two. This was the last leg of the headlong race to finish the nursery before the birth of our first child. There has been much productive work in the last few weeks; however, our sweet daughter Avonlea won the prize. Not really a photo finish, as she was born two weeks early and our 'completion' status is about a month or two away. In reality, Avonlea is sleeping (sometimes) in a bassinet in our bedroom, and our projects are in pretty decent shape.

The day before Avonlea was born, my family came over for a working party. While Mom, Dad, Amanda and I were painting upstairs, two of my brothers Andy and Tom worked together to finish our well side-project. As you may recall, our well was way overgrown and needed some serious help. In one afternoon, my brothers spread out twenty 40lb bags of chipped granite around the well. The area around the well looks really super great, and I am thankful that I won't have to pick up 800lbs of stones on my own.

 

See how great it looks now, thanks Tom and Andy!

 

 Mom and Dad purchased all the granite, then Tom and Andy installed it as a belated birthday present for me. To think, I would request bags of rocks for my birthday!

As if it wasn't cruel enough to make my out-of-state brothers, who I don't get to see but once or twice a year, move around a bunch of stones; once they had finished, I asked them to walk around our yard and pick up rocks. Here is a photo of our incredibly strong and resilient outdoor workforce. 

 Thanks guys, you're amazing!

Updates Coming Soon!

Sorry, Folks!  We have lots to post and pictures to share of our progress, but we've been a little derailed by our daughter coming 2 weeks early!  Things are a bit chaotic, but I hope to have a new post(s) for realsies by next weekend.  I'll try my best!  Thanks for your patience.  :) 

In the meantime, here is a picture of our newest member of Blue Century Home.

Avonlea Rose

Weeds Be Gone!

We have continued our work on the well weed deforestation project.

These are pictures of what the area looked like after we finished pulling up the weeds and raking up the lava rocks.

 Looking better already!

And here is the area after putting down the weed barrier.

The next step is buying the gravel to put on top of the barrier.  So far, we've only checked out Lowe's.  Who knew rocks could be so expensive?  Maybe we're just frugal.  LOL!

We've also been working on the upstairs.  This past week, we've measured the rooms and hallway for trim (baseboards, window and door trim).  We've ordered it from Galehouse Lumber and it should be delivered in about 2 weeks.  We'll hopefully be ready for it by then.  We still have a little bit of mudding to finish in the hallway, but then we can start the priming and painting process.  I can't wait!  I think my subconscious is waiting for paint to be on the walls before it will let my pregnancy nesting drive kick into gear.  We decided to go with the same style baseboards that we used in my craftroom.

Awesome News!

Our humble little blog has been discovered by the people at Be @ Home.  This is a website that has awesome little articles about home and garden decorating.  You can find their website at:
(http://pocketchange.become.com/category/home-and-garden .
They contacted us to be featured on their Best of the Web.  This is a page that features blogs around the interwebs that have caught their eye.  We felt honored to be considered.  :)  Here is the link:
http://pocketchange.become.com/2011/08/best-of-the-web-be-home36.html .
Our blog is mentioned about 1/2 way down the page.  Since the feature went up, we have had over 100 new blog views.  No new followers or comments yet, but we'll take what we can get.  LOL!  :)