We're DONE! Almost.

The new carpet is in, all of the walls are painted. All that is left is building shelves in the closet, installing the base boards and new doors. I would take pictures of how it looks now but, 1. I'm too lazy, 2. I want to wait until it's ALL finished before I do, 3. You are welcome to come look at it now anyway! We have had a few visitors, and we don't mind if you come either.

When we first bought our house we loved the vaulted ceiling. It wasn't too long, however, before we decided that it was a big waste of space and an energy. For some reason it took us living here for two years before we decided that adding a room there would be a good idea. Once James made up his mind to do it he had it started two weeks later. We are now three weeks into it from when we started. Both of us are in shock at how smoothly everything has gone.

To get to the real reason of this post, I just want to say how overwhelmed I am with my feelings for James. I've always known he was a hard worker, (one of the reasons I married him) but he has just blown my mind this last month. He has still worked full time at work before coming home and going straight to work on the house. This last week, Lizzy developed a nasty cold and became a pill. Just to keep her happy James would put her in a hiking back pack and "pack' her around on his shoulders. He did this mostly while we were painting all of the ceilings. We didn't have the poles to put the rollers on, so that meant we were hiking up and down ladders constantly. I know he was thoroughly exhausted (we both were) but he just kept on trooping with NO complaint! Ever. Literally. I was the one whining about my sore arms, the blisters the paint rollers put on our hands, my sore thighs from going up and down the ladders, and how hungry I was because we never stopped for food breaks.

Anyway, I just really wanted to share that. Stay tuned for more pictures of our house, or just feel free to come by and look at it. I promise it's not that exciting, especially if you never saw what our house looked like before. Because, it basically looks like it was always supposed to look like this!

Now You REALLY See It.

We are nearly done!!! The carpet comes tomorrow, then we are just waiting on the doors. This picture is of the new room after it was framed. The new room is above our living room, and you enter it right when you walk up the stairs. The white wall you see in this picture is the top of the stair rail.
The following pictures are of the mostly finished product. If you want to see the before pictures, from the previous post, "Now You See It", click here: http://jamesandalicia.blogspot.com/2009/09/do-you-see-it.html

I tried to take the pictures from roughly the same angels as the before pictures were taken. This one was taken from my front door. The ceiling you see is the brand new ceiling! Above it is the brand new floor of our bedroom.

This is taken from my stairway. You are seeing down into my living room. On the right you would keep walking up the stairs and right into the new room. The wall right in front (not the living room wall that is green) is one of the walls to our new room.

This was taken from the top of the stairs in the hallway. You can see that we don't have the door yet for the new room. We also haven't put the new base board on.

Ta Da! The new room! Behind Logan is the walk-in closet.

I hope you enjoyed the tour. I'll take a few more pictures once the carpet is in and the doors have been installed. Oh yeah, so you should study the old carpet that you can see in the above pictures in order to more fully appreciate the new carpet that will be coming. I anticipate a long and stressful day tomorrow since the carpet guys are doing it all in the same day. That means lots of furniture juggling and children juggling.

Stay tuned!

For Any Who Care

We're almost done. At this moment I am ready to plop over and go to sleep for the next century. Instead, I choose to update all of my avid fans about our house. Ok, so, I'm sorry there are no pictures, deal with it. They will be coming VERY soon!

The room itself is done. The drywall people finished yesterday (Monday) and made a royally huge mess in the process. We wanted to start painting ASAP but we knew that we had to clean off the walls first from all of the dust that attacked them during the sanding process. We started with wet wash clothes, but because there was SO much dust, it just turned the dust into paste right on the wall. So, then we started "dusting" the walls. That did no good because it just stirred up the dust but it landed right back on the walls. We finally got the vacuum out and vacuumed off all of the walls. Then we went back with wet wash clothes and wiped them down. Then came the taping and painting! I think we started painting around noon yesterday and we finished (for the day) at 10:00 that night. This morning I've painted more, but it's still not done. The main thing left to paint is the ceiling of the new room. Then just touch up.

We ordered new doors, one to go in the room and one for the closet in the new room. They won't be here for at least 1 more week. So we still have those left and the new baseboard that goes in that room.

We should be finished with the painting tomorrow at the latest. I'm thinking it will be done tonight. What's the rush on the painting you ask? Well, I'll tell you. We are re-carpeting our WHOLE house on Friday. (So excited!) We wanted to have all the walls painted at least two days before that so that the paint will be less likely to scratch.

Paint today, carpet on Friday, doors and trim sometime next week. After that? Rest. Rest. Rest.

We didn't even get to watch Hero's last night. I don't think we're going to get around to it tonight either. Maybe on Wednesday.

Hope you enjoyed the update. I would go take pictures, but you guys just want to see the finished product right? I knew it.

This One's For You Andrea

Alternate post title: New Love

Here is a glimpse of my closet. I'm shamed to show you all how badly I treat those whom I love the most. I am a true girl, I love shoes. I really do. Love them. I do not own enough, mostly because I can't stomach spending more than $20 on a pair of shoes. However, nearly two weeks ago I fell in love and I fell hard.
I was wandering up and down the shoe aisle at Target. It is a regular haunt of mine. I walked past a beautiful pair of shoes that had my name written all over them. For those of you who don't know, Mossimo is really the word for Alicia. Anyway, it was love at first sight. They only had one pair in my size! They weren't on sale, so I hemmed and hawed about it for about 5 minutes before picking them up. I walked around the store with them in my cart for the next 30 minutes. It felt like they belonged to me! At the end of 30 minutes I had to put them back on the shelf. $23.99 was about $3.99 more than I usually allow myself to spend on a pair of shoes. I slept fitfully the whole night knowing that somebody else was going to buy MY pair of shoes. It was the next morning, and I must have whined to James one too many times because he told me to GO BUY THE SHOES! I complied.

And we'll live happily ever after.

Mutual

It has been a few years, (7, I think) since I've been to mutual. Thanks to having a good friend (or two, or three) in the Young Women's Presidency, I was invited last Tuesday night! I don't think they invited me just for my good company, though that would have been nice. I went so I could demonstrate cake decorating! It was a lot of fun too, and I always like a good reason to eat cake!

This is a picture of all the girls working hard on their cakes.
This is a picture of their leaders working hard to, um....get to know each other better? :) Tiffany is actually washing dishes too; she's a multi-tasker.

The girls' finished cakes! Don't they look great?

And lastly, another cute video.

Lizzy has never been phased by loud noises, ever since she was born. Having construction going on in our house has been no different. She gets especially excited when the saw is on. Strange child. It's even more strange to me, because, while I may be a yeller, I hate loud noises myself. I really really do. I hate whistling, I hate it when people "yell" at you when they are talking, (I had a roommate we had to constantly tell to talk more quietly) I hate the tv being on too loud, and I really hate the sound of the saw, nail gun etc. Lizzy just doesn't seem to care! On the contrary, she really would get excited when the saw was on! Sadly, I didn't get an actual video of her while the saw was on, but I interviewed her about what was going on in our house and she responded well.

Progress

I took this picture a few days ago. It's of the floor joists that hold up Lizzy's room and is right above our kitchen. Do any of you see the ghost living between our floor boards?
Ok, ok, so it's no ghost. It's really James' feet! He crawled all the way in there to do some wiring. He's crazy.

This picture shows James wiggling out of that tight space.

This was taken yesterday. James' friend from work, Jed (behind James, sorry you can only see the back of his head) has built houses before, so he was our main helper. He helped James put up the floor joists and lay the floor yesterday. Our friend Rob and little Logan are also featured here. Rob came over to see if he could more fully grasp how crazy his friends are.

This bottom picture is what it looks like from our living room looking up. They did all of this yesterday.

This is the view of the new bedroom from upstairs. Right below that new floor is our living room.

James will be sad that I posted this video. It is when he was doing the wiring and was stuck between floor boards. Actually, the video is of him trying to get out. It was quite the trick for him. In his defense, he had no idea that I was taking the video, so please excuse the interesting view of James. :) It's less than flattering, but it really was difficult for him to maneuver.

A Fly

I just finished reading one of my sister's posts about a fly. It made me think of my own strange experience last night with a fly. I had just finished showering and there was a fly in my bathroom. Towel in hand, I took a swat at it. It floated lifelessly to the counter where it landed feet up. I celebrated my victory with James. He was excited that I had managed to kill it because it had been bothering him all night. I walked back over to it to dispose of it's dead body when I realized it was gone! I looked around and saw it on my mirror, very much alive. I picked up one of those little medicine cups that comes with your cough syrup and trapped the fly underneath the cup. Again I was amazed at my quick skills, not killing it this time, but capturing it. James scooped it up between his hand and the cup and gave it a good shake, thinking this would kill the fly. When he released his hand from the cup, the fly took off flying! We managed to capture it alive again and this time James threw it into the sink and turned on the water. The fly managed to hold on to the drain with all it's might! Thinking we had drowned it sufficiently, James turned off the water. The fly started crawling up the side of the sink! We turned the water on again, pushed the fly into the drain and plugged it! Hours later we unplugged the drain fully expecting the fly to come rushing out at us. We never saw it again.

There is another fly in my room this morning. It's probably the same one.

Can you Feel It?

Before I get to the point of this particular post, I jut wanted to share one of our favorite pictures with you. I was actually digging for other pictures from last year to share when I came across this one. I especially love the one shoe. Moving on...

It's almost OCTOBER! It is, hands down, my favorite month of the year. I'm not sure why exactly. I love the change in weather, and I love the Halloween decorations. I love that it means that Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner. I anticipate October the way kids anticipate Christmas. I've already been to Target specifically to scope out Halloween decor. I do it the first week of every September. I already have cute Halloween outfits for Lizzy and Logan, and they have already worn them. Did I mention that I love October?

Do you see the creepy man hanging out in one of the upper windows? We know the decorations are cheesy and amateur, but the kids give us lots of compliments when they come trick or treating!

Stop by our house October 1st to check out this years Halloween decorations!

Self Fullfilling Prophecy

Last night was our ward enrichment night. We had an activity that I'm sure sounded less than desirable to many women, including myself: sewing school bags. (Thanks to all that came!) I tried my best to make it known to all that were there that I was the last person that should sit in front of a sewing machine. I do know what I'm doing, kind of, but I'm notorious for breaking any sewing machine that I've ever been allowed to use for any extended period of time. The activity had been going for over an hour and I realized that not many people were that anxious to use the sewing machines, so not much was getting accomplished. I sucked it up and sat down in front of a brand new sewing machine, owned by the church. I was feeling encouraged that I got so much sewn while sitting there! I did run out of bobbin thread though, so under the instruction of one more knowledgeable than myself, (Christina) I was able to refill the bobbin and put it back in the machine.

Nothing else was sewn on that machine for the rest of night. I broke it. Somehow.

Cheerios and Demos

You may think that this is a picture of James modeling his work outfit. (He works for a company called Pioneer, a Comcast contractor. Now you know their motto.) Anyway, this picture is really just proof that we live with a baby. While James was on the computer I noticed a cheerio stuck to his shirt! It gave me a good laugh.

This video was taken last night.

After we put that massive hole in our wall Logan was obsessed with hanging out up there on the ledge. For the rest of the night we kept telling him, "don't fall"! Every night around 10:00 we wake him up to go to the bathroom one last time. When I got him up last night the first thing he said was "don't fall"! I guess we got the message through to him.

Don't worry, we've blocked the ledge off so he can't fall.

I Think I'm Saving Money

I try to do my part to save money. Actually, it's not really "doing my part" since I am the only one in the house spending the money. All of the responsibility is on my shoulders! I admit, I have some work to do, like learning how to do the couponing thing. (Really Mary, I'm coming over soon!) When it comes to saving money on kid things, here is what I do. I buy almost all of their clothes from KidtoKid. If I don't buy them there, then you know for sure they came off of the clearance rack somewhere else. Since Logan was born, I've made my own baby wipes. I estimated that I only spent around $20 on wipes for the WHOLE time Logan was in diapers. I did look into cloth diapers, but really, I just haven't embraced doing laundry. (But seriously, I researched them and everything. ALMOST bought them.) I do buy store brand diapers though, does that count for something? Anyway, my last money saver with kids is making my own baby food. I bought enough baby food at the beginning in order to use the little baby food containers to store and freeze my own concoctions in. (I did it with Logan too.) Ok, now my story is about it get really random, so if you're not interested, just scroll down to the pictures.

Last night I was confined to my kitchen for a couple of hours. See below video for a small clue as to why. Anyway, during my quarantine, I made a big batch of stew. As I was making my stew, I thought to myself, "I wonder if Ryan Castro would like my stew. I know he doesn't like vegetables, but really, who doesn't like stew"? Luckily, his wonderful wife, Christina called me an hour later. She confirmed that Ryan would indeed have enjoyed my stew. (I told you this was random.) Moving on....I ate some stew for lunch today. It was yummy. While I was eating it, I thought again about Ryan enjoying my stew, if only he would be so lucky to get some. Thinking about him liking my stew made me wonder if Lizzy would enjoy my stew. So, I fed some of the peas to Lizzy. She enjoyed them. Then I suddenly remembered a wonderful little gem in my life. A baby food grinder!
Food grinder on the right, ground up stew on the left, cutest baby in the world back left.

Yep, she likes it!

Arghh....I can't believe I forgot about our food grinder until now! When I make baby food that usually entails cooking squash or yams in the oven, letting them cool off, throwing them in the blender, dispersing them among their own little containers etc. I still like to do that for when I need a quick meal for Lizzy. However, the stew is totally baby safe.

The grinder has re-earned it's right as a permanent fixture on my kitchen counter top.

If the mysterious blue wall confuses you, keep on scrolling down to my previous post. Not that I explain anything there, but you might piece the puzzle together. :) Enjoy! Oh yeah, and the video is of Lizzy eating peas from my stew....the night I made it.

Do You See It?

You know that saying, "now you see it, now you don't"? Well, right now you don't see it. Hopefully soon, like in the next month, you will.

This was taken standing by my front door.

This was taken from my stairs.

This was taken from the "loft".

Taken from my bedroom door, towards the "loft". So, now you can visualize where I was standing in the previous picture. ;)

I'm sure a lot of you are thinking to yourselves, why the heck is Alicia showing us random pictures of her house? Well, I can't go into specifics just now, but soon, like in about a month, I will! Some of you already know what I'm talking about. Good for you. :)

Exciting and scary!

Sorry to be vague, but I did this for my own journaling purposes.