At least once a day, if not more, there is conversation that happens with the kids that either makes me smack my forehead or makes me fall on the floor laughing. I often tell Wes that I wish I could just record every single day with these two crazies because of how truly funny our lives and conversations can be sometimes. Some mid-meltdown conversations may not seem funny at the time, but usually they crack me up pretty good afterwards. You know, after a glass of wine, no, a good book, oh wait, who am I kidding, a glass of wine.

Here are some good examples of recent conversations we have had that I wish were on tape....

Conversation #1: About an hour and a half into an eight hour drive heading to vacation in North Carolina:

Emma: "Mommy, when are we going to be there?"

Mommy: "In about six hours baby."

Emma: "That's a long time Mommy!" (cue Emma's whimpering and whining)

Mommy: "I know baby. Don't worry, we will find a rest area soon to get out and stretch our legs."

(About two and a half minutes later...)

Emma: "Mommy, where is the resting area? I really need to get out and scratch my legs."

Conversation #2: On the way home from school one afternoon with one very tired and cranky Squishy...

Mommy: "Jack, please put your listening ears on honey and get in the car:"

Jack: "NO! I no wanna go home!"

Mommy: "Jack, if you don't get in the car, Mommy is going to put you in the car. It's not safe in the parking lot."

Jack: "NO!"

(Jack throws himself on the ground on the sidewalk)

Mommy: "Okay, Mommy's going to put you in the car now."

(Mommy picks up Jack)

Jack: "NO NO NO!!! Do it all by self!!!!!!"

(Jack thrashes in Mommy's arms. Mommy puts him down wishfully thinking he will now cooperate)

(Jack continues to throw himself on the ground)

(Mommy picks him up, wrestles him into the car, gets smacked multiple times, Jack arches back, Mommy starts sweating trying to wrestle child into car seat and eventually wins)

(Jack has even bigger melt down, but is finally strapped into the car, Mommy secretly does happy dance because at least he is finally strapped in)

(Fast forward to fifteen minutes down the road when Jack FINALLY starts to calm down after continuing to melt down)  

Mommy: "Are you feeling better now man?"

Jack: "Yes. I a little bit happy now. A little bit sad too. No. No. No. A little bit frustrated with you Mommy."

(Mommy smacks forehead)

Conversation #3: During bath time one night when Emma's hair was extra crusty with syrup from breakfast, paint from school and no doubt other bodily functions from classmates...

Mommy: "Holy macaroni your hair is crusty today Sissy!"

Emma: "I know Mommy. What is it?"

Mommy: "I don't even know honey. We are going to have to use Mommy's hair conditioner tonight to get the knots out."

(Mommy gets the hair conditioner and sets it aside while I use all my might to try to shampoo all the crustiness out of Emma's hair)

Emma: "Mommy? Can I use the air conditioner now?"

Conversation #4: During Sissy-Brother battle #45,793 over who gets to use the pink lawnmower while playing outside.

Emma: "Jack!! It's my turn to use the lawnmower!!!"

(Emma then attempts the old smash and crab to yank the lawnmower from what is now Jack's death-grip)

Jack: "No Sissy!! It's my turn!!!!"

Emma: "Mommy!! Jack won't let me have a turn!! I really need that lawnmower!!"

Mommy: "Emma, did you ask Jack nicely if you could have a turn?"

Emma: "Jack, can I please have a turn?"

Jack: "NO! IT'S MINE"

Emma: "Mommy!!!!"

Mommy: "Wanna know a secret Sissy? If you start playing with another toy and pretend like it's really awesome, then Jack will want to play with that one and then you can use the pink lawnmower."

(Mommy thinks she's genius although probably not the best parenting tactic)

Emma: "Hey Jack! Look at this awesome shopping cart!!! It's so much fun!! Wanna switch?!?!"

Jack: "Okay Sissy!!!!"

(Mommy pats self on back for issue resolved without anyone being injured from hitting or smacking or throat punching)

(Fast forward to the following day when Emma is demanding to use the green pen that Mommy is using to fill out school forms)

Emma: "But Mommy, I REALLY need that pen!!"

Mommy: "Emma, I told you already. You can use it as soon as Mommy is done filling out these forms."

(Emma holds up a red crayon)

Emma: "But Mommy!! Look how awesome this red crayon is!!! It's so much fun to use!!! Wanna switch??"

Mommy: "Nice try Sissy."

And because it's been a while since I posted some pictures of the crazy little ones, here are some funny ones that were pretty recent (at least I think they are pretty funny). It had been a while since I broke out the camera, so on one of the recent warm days when the kids were out on a rampage frolicking in the yard/pool, I thought it would be a great time to get some updated shots.

This one cracks me up because sweet, little, innocent Emma was so into posing for the camera, that she didn't realize she was being photo-bombed by a water gun about to unload on the side of her head, courtesy of The Squishy.

In case you were wondering, this is what The Squishy's "No No No" face looks like. 

That little stinker REFUSES to let Mommy take a good picture of him.

In the words of R. Kelly, "I believe I can fly...."

Dining Room Updates!

One of the reasons why this took so long was that I was just about ready to publish a good catch up post about what we have been up to in the summer and BAM! Lost the post and everything I typed up. #$*#$&#@$!!

So in the meantime, we will go with the quick and dirty Dining Room Update - Part 1!

After we decided to paint the playroom, I got this big itch to lighten the entire house! What a better spot to start than our old school dramatic brown painted dining room! We painted this color not long after we moved in and were trying to be all "whoa, look at me, I own a house and now I can be all dramatic with my paint now that I don't live in a white apartment anymore". Yeah, live and learn. We had also added some crown molding which I still love, but even that was in need of some touching up.

Here is an early before picture of what the room looked like for a while, complete with old school, awful curtains, and standard crooked brass light fixture.

Here is what the room looked like about five years later on Emma's first Birthday. As you can tell, not much changed. The only change we pretty much made was that we removed the curtains. I know. We are big time DIYers.

And here is what we ended up with after painting the same color as the playroom! Big difference no?

Not only did it incredibly brighten up the joint, but it gave me a new refreshed love of our dining room set which I was not a big fan of anymore. It was completely blending into the walls and now looks much better and definitely stands out. That picture was taken pretty much right after we completed the painting, and we have since made a little more progress prior to putting the house on the market. 

I originally made a new centerpiece with some light pinks and blushes, but turns out for photography reasons, our stager wanted the table set for pictures, which required a smaller centerpiece so that pretty much went right out the window (although I loved the color combination). 

While repainting, I did some extra caulking and also gave our crown molding a fresh coat of paint, which made a big difference! Wes also painted the ceiling which went from cream to a bright white, which again helped to brighten things up. 

It's funny to how even some of the smallest updates can make a difference! I even spray painted our old rusty icky registers and even that little makeover helped!

With the addition of our new awesome Door Casings, an updated (and inexpensive) chandelier and some new prints for the walls (which you can't really see), we were in business!

 

Let's take one more look at the before and the after for full effect!

Before:

After:

Door Casings!

Oh hey...remember that one time I was all like "Oh, life has been crazy but things are back to normal so I'm going to post more"? Yeah, me either, because it never really happened outside of my head! Then again, I'm sure life will calm down a bit when the kids get older right? Like, when they go to college? Until then though, we are having a blast, and apparently not posting about it!

Since the last time I blogged, you know, back in 1974, we have been busier than ever and wouldn't you know we decided to head full force into moving and selling our house!

But unlike King Julian, as The Squishy would say, "I no like to move it, move it."

It certainly sped up our schedule and list of things to do around the house, and yes, I did make a spreadsheet that could be sorted on date, week, priority, completion, you name it. More on that another day though. I know, the suspense is killing you.

One of the things that we had to get done and something that I have wanted to do for a long time now was to finish our Door Casings in the entry way. When I say a long time, I mean a long time, like since February of 2012. Remember way back when we did our Board and Batten in the hallway? We set ourselves up to eventually do the Door Casings, just never got around to it. So since February of 2012, we have been living with this random board jetting up the wall at the end of our hallway.

Well no more! Here is a crappy cell phone picture of what the foyer to dining room doorway looked like before. (Check out that sweet tall board on the left).

We basically followed how The Charming Nest created their Door Casings, with a few minor changes here and there based on our doorways. I won't bore you with a lot of the details because we pretty much followed the instructions on The Charming Nest's blog to a T. We just had to make a few minor updates based on our doorways like how much the top molding overhung the sides, etc. A lot of the pictures are also quick snaps on my cell phone but you will get the idea.

The first thing we did was measure the width of our vertical boards and removed that portion of our baseboards so the upright boards would sit flush against the walls all the way down to the floor. This was pretty easy with using our Dremel Multi-Max, which is rapidly becoming my favorite tool. 

Next was adding some of the larger pieces of the woodwork. I think we followed the advice from The Charming Nest and added the top horizontal pieces first. Then little by little we added the vertical side pieces, and then a 1x2 board (laying on its side) along the top. Borrowing my brother's nail gun certainly helped this process move along (although that thing still scares the you-know-what out of me). Luckily, most of our light switches and outlets weren't in the way. We did have to trim a bit of the plastic light switch cover in the playroom but that was it.

Next, we added some smaller lattice pieces to hide where the wall met our new wood. We also added a piece along the top to fancy things up a bit. Most of the bigger pieces came primed already, but we figured we would be priming and painting most of it at the end after filling in the nail holes and caulking, so most of the lattice we painted after installation.

We also added some cove molding, similar to what we used in our Board and Batten Hallway project directly under the top 1x2 piece (you can see it in the picture above). The casings looked a little rough until these smaller pieces got added, which started to had a pretty big impact on the overall look.

Oh, and we still had that little issue of the baseboards. In order to cover the giant holes in the floor (ouch), we boxed out the bottom of the door casings which had another big impact on these babies. This was probably one of the tougher parts because we only had a small circular saw, so these 6" wide pieces had to be flipped over mid cut in order to cut the whole thing (our blade wasn't big enough to cut them all in one slice). Wes did a great job though and there wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed after a little spackle and caulk and paint!

Since it was a whirlwind of a project and has been a whirlwind of a couple months, I don't have the best before and after pictures, but here are two shots from our MLS listing where you can see the finished product! It made a huge difference to our entryway and really jazzed up the downstairs!

It was well worth the hard work and we couldn't have done it without the hubby and my Dad!! Great job guys! (I get the easy parts of using the Dremel, spackle, caulking and painting)! This is definitely  a project I'd love to do in the next house, if we ever get there!