Great Clip

More house

So people were complaining that I did not put good enough pictures on the blog of the house... so here are a few more.

I will start with the yard since that is were we have done the most work. I mean real heavy duty work. The are we live is known for their rocks. Make two new flower beds and turning some good soil into all the other beds gave us at least 20 five gallon buckets full of rocks! Not to mention the 1 - 2 foot boulders we were pulling out either. Besides the rocks we pulled out huge railway ties. They had them all over the yard. They were 6-8 feet long and pounded in with re-bar it was awful. Caleb did not want to deal with taking them out but I hated them so much that I just went out and pulled them all out by myself while he was at work and could not argue. Yeah I am nuts but I love my yard now so it was worth it.

So this is what it looked like before. I hate wood chips, especially by my back door where Joshua liked to dig and track them all over my kitchen. Also the railway tie dividing the wood chips from the porch was raised about five inches. So Joshua and Caleb and I tripped and hurt ourselves several times.

This is what it looks like now. I planted star jasmine to climb the fence and am going to palnt ground cover between all the stepping stones.

This is our kitchen garden, basically just herbs some tomatoes and peppers, which grow all year round here!

We added a peach, naval orange, meyer lemon, apricot, and liquid amber tree. I also have honey suckle, boston ivy, and morning glory climbing the fence. My goal is to not be able to see any fence in a year.

We have a nice lawn for the kids which we actually extended by shortening the porch a little and using the pavers to connect the back door to the porch. It is so much cleaner and greener. I love it.

Inside we have not done much besides decorate. I am going to start painting this week. This is our kitchen. The walls all over the house are going to be a light yellow and I am planning on painting the cupboards white as soon as possible. But I love the size an lay out it works great for us.

This is our staircase, entry, and living room. It has really high ceilings. The whole house has a very open light feeling. I love the floors. Again the walls will be yellow and all the wood white.

Joshua's room is scary! It is going to be painted Martha Stewart lemongrass and white trim. It is a really pretty green color. This is the first room to be painted.

This is our family room. Last week we finally got couches. I got black leather couches! Yeah I know not what most people would pick for me but I wanted the, to be stain proof and durable. We found them on craigslist for super cheap, and the next day I was walking through target and found a perfect picture table for the corner on clearance! I was so excited. But it was still not looking "me" enough so I decided it needed some black and white pillows to soften and warm them up so....

Before and...

After...

We have had some really cold weather...well cold for us 60 degrees and raining! Anyway we lit a fire in our fireplace. It works great and makes the family room so cozy, and warms the whole house.

And the ugly blue lazy boy in the picture above now looks like this. I have always wanted to recover and finally just went ahead and did it the other night. I am going to recover the lamp shade and make matching curtains for the window as well.

Last but not least this is my view out my bedroom window. We do live in a tract so we see other houses, but I also see some beautiful mountains and sunsets. Also in the neighborhood we have a private pool and park that we use regularly.

Well that is what I have been doing lately. We love living here and love our house. Even thought it has kept us very busy lately.

A day off

Caleb had a much needed day off. We needed a break from working on the house so decided to do the 20 minute drive to Oak Glen. It is a beautiful little canyon known for their apple picking, cider doughnuts, and cider. We had such a fun day hiking in the mountains, picnicking, and sampling all the apple...butters, ciders, doughnuts, syrups etc. They were good, but we have been spoiled by cold hollow cider and doughnuts. No one can beat them. Despite that we had a great time, and had a taste of fall in shorts and t-shirts :).

Fall

We have a lot of farms and groves and orchards around us, so the other day we went to one of the near by pumpkin patches.

They had a hay ride, a petting zoo and lots of different kinds of pumpkins. The kids loved it. Abigail loved the goats and was not scared of them. She wanted to be down on the ground petting them the whole time. Joshua of coarse liked the hayride.

11 Months!

Yes Abigail is turning one next week, so I thought I better post these before then.

She loves playing peek-a-boo with the blanket.

She has the funniest spunky personality. We just love playing with her. She is almost walking. I think she could walk if she would just let go of my hand.

Joshua loves preschool. I have parent teacher conferences today so I am excited to hear what she has to say. He also has school pictures next week. For going only twice a week for a few hours they really run it like a school. He is also learning to sound out his letters and has been practicing a lot.

These two love each other so much.

We closed!

After four and a half months of waiting we finally closed on our house!! We are so excited. It is a three bedroom three bath home with a loft. We love it. Especially the hardwood floors. We have already re done the back yard. We had a lot of fun designing it and doing it all on a tight budget together as a family. It was a TON of work but fun. The yard had all these railway ties around the whole yard and wood chips by the back door. It was a mess. The ties were rotting and by the door the chips were constantly getting in the house and we were all tripping on the big ties around the porch. Overall the whole set up made the yard look dry and chopped up. So we added a few flower beds, some grass, trees, vines, and shrubs. You can see the pictures... we love how it turned out and can't wait to see it in a year when it is all filled out.

We have not painted yet or made any improvements inside. I am planning to repaint all the walls a creamy buttery yellow and paint all the wood white. We are also planing on tiling our bath and the kids bath. As we progress I will post some more pictures.

The house is in a more rural area. I run to the temple through orange groves every morning! That is the greatest part of our location...we are five minutes from the temple! We actually go to church in the stake center there. Also we are on the road to big bear one of the biggest ski resorts in California, so we are on a higher shelf than Loma Linda and Redlands so we have mountains and hills all around us. Most important we are higher than the smog, which is a huge problem in the inland empire. Caleb is 15 minutes from work, and I am 8 minutes from downtown Redlands and Trader Joes! Hooray for Trader Joe's! Also being close to the mountains we have pumpkin patches, apple picking, raspberry picking and lots of other "Vermont" things to help us feel at home.

In short we love the house and are so happy that we decided to move into this neighborhood and area!

Here is a slideshow with some pictures of the house. Some are the yard and how we re did it and some are also the area around the house. We had an amazing thunder and rain storm and I caught the rainbow from our front driveway.

Here are pictures of what the yard use to look like. You can see the biggest change is that we got rid of the wood chips and stepping stones right out the back door and instead extended the porch a bit added grass an herb garden and some roses. We plan to put grass along the side yard between the stepping stones as well. So we are not totally done.

10 Months old

Abigail is ten months old. Well almost eleven now but here are her ten month pictures.

She is almost walking. She has taken a few steps, can stand up with no support, and cruises along all the furniture. She is hilarious we all just can't stop laughing at her. She loves to play peek a boo, and anything that Joshua is doing. She can now point at things she wants and says Mama really clearly. She has three little teeth, 2 bottom and one lonesome eye tooth on top. She is cutting her top front teeth this week though. We love her and have so much fun with her.

Joshua is getting so big. He loves going to preschool. He also loves playing and digging in our backyard, and some how always ends up in just his underwear and a thick layer of dirt all over him. He also loves playing with Abigail and is a very sweet and helpful big brother. Although he does get a little too excited and forgets that she can't actually walk yet. I always hear an "I'm sorry baby" every time before I hear her cry. At least he is sorry!

This was a few Saturdays ago. We were going out to the jogger for my run and Abigail crawled out and sat with Figaro. She loves Figaro and has to sit on her and pet her every time we see her. She even tries to imitate me when I call for her and gets all excited about it.

Abigail loves her walker and is a speed demon. Our house is kind of a circle so she zooms around and around following Joshua on his Winnie the pooh car. Joshua drives too fast to get a clear picture of.