Projects

*Disclaimer: I don't know why it isn't showing my separated paragraphs. I promise I didn't purposefully make this all one long post. If anyone knows how to fix this, let me know! :) For those of you that don't know, I LOVE decorating. There was always only so much that I could do in an apartment. I tried really hard to make both of our apartments homey, but there are some things that go a long way (paint, changing out lighting, etc.) that I never got to do until now. Also, my biggest concern about getting a new construction house was making sure that it didn't look "sterile" and that it felt homey. I think our builder did a good job at this, but we've been trying to do things along the way to make it more "us". One of my big goals this summer is to work on the house. I've mainly been trying to use stuff we already have or buy things extremely discounted (I also found some great finds while waiting 6 months for our house to be built!) Here are some small projects that we have done so far or are currently working on: One of the first things we did when we moved in was install a couple of fans (the builder installs one, but it was way cheaper to do the rest on our own). I found some really nice ones at a sketchy warehouse for $30 each, which was a steal! I don't have a picture of the fans, sorry guys. We installed two and are planning to install two more eventually. The other project we did right away was plant a few flowers, plant a crepe mertyle in front and in back(thanks for the help, Mom) and install cabinet hardware. I was REALLY excited about this because it's a small thing that goes a long way. I found my cabinet hardware on overstock for extremely cheap. I basically just watched it for a few months and then bought it one day when it was almost free (just kidding, but was about 1/3 the price that Lowe's or Target charges for knobs and pulls). It was scary drilling holes in our cabinets, because we're not very handy. I did learn how to use a power drill though! :)

Another thing we did was have a flower bed wall built around our beds in the front. This one was a pain because we had to submit an application to our HOA to get it approved, which was silly. However, then we had two very nice guys come out and build it for us (we weren't about to try to mix mortar and pour cement, installing fans was difficult enough for us). They didn't speak any English, but we did eat donuts together and have their 8 year old son translate for us, haha! It was pretty cheap because they were doing lots of houses in the neighborhood. I am really happy with how it turned out. It was also a pain to replant some of these flowers so that they weren't being covered up.

Next, I painted the study. We actually picked this paint color out a few months ago and knew that we wanted a green study. I didn't do the best job painting, so I'm hoping the room I paint tomorrow turns out cleaner and takes me less time. Speaking of paint, one night I got inspired by some extra paint I had from a long time ago, so I painted the laundry room. It's a grey/blue color. I was planning on using it in our bathroom, but next to the light from the window, it looked like the color of toothpaste. I never in a million years thought I would paint and decorate my laundry room before I did my own room, but it's so small that it only took me an hour and I could just use things I already had that I didn't know what to do with (with the except of the "laundry sign", which I bought at World Market thanks to a gift card from my wonderful sister!)

I'm painting our bedroom tomorrow, so Mitchell and I taped it today to get it ready. It's kind of a dark taupe color. I love grey right now, and wish I had picked that for the main color in our house rather than beige, but I am sure it will go out of style in 10 years, just like everything does, and I will be glad we picked beige.

When we are done, I am hanging these 6 frames above the bed. I am very excited about this project! I bought scrapbook paper at Michael's today and just framed it in $3 IKEA frames. Thank you, Pinterest! Last but not least (and also thanks to Pinterest and my super decorative friends here in Dallas), I made this gallery wall (once again, mostly with things I already had). I just had to purchase the white flower picture (on clearance at Target for $10) and the wooden frame, which I got at Garden Ridge. We spent forever rearranging these things and trying to get them to fit together right. It felt like a game of tetrus. Sorry about the long post! I may post some updates throughout the summer as I work on more projects. My friends and I are planning on setting my garage up as a workshop and building things on our own. I really want to make a solid wood coffee table, and found a tutorial online. My friend Anna has built several piece of furniture and is hopefully going to help me with it (let's be honest, I won't be able to do it if she doesn't help me, ha!) We are also wanting to use scrap pieces of wood to make something like this: I can't save the picture on my computer, so here's the link: http://img1.etsystatic.com/il_570xN.291414905.jpg I know it sounds like work to most people, but I actually really like painting, watering plants, decorating walls, and even organizing the garage. It was perfect timing to move at the exact time that I am the most available in the past several years! Have a great week! :) Update from painting the master bedroom today (6/4):

Second Year

As I contemplate the end of this school year, a lot of thoughts run through my head. There were great moments, and there were terrible moments. There were moments that I loved my job, and there were of course moments that I was exhausted and felt I couldn't go on. I felt frustrated, I felt happy. I think this is just how teaching goes, though. It's emotional in all kinds of ways. There are all sorts of stories that I could tell to sum up this school year. There are things that I am really glad I did, and some things that I want to change for next year. However, I think that my school years will always be summarized by one kid. You know how you remember years in school based on a certain perfume you used or a certain something you always packed for lunch that year? Sort of like that. I think I will always think back to my first year of teaching and think of Arthur (I still love Arthur and am close to him this year, but he was the memory of my first year). My main memory of my 2nd year is JL (even though this is a very private blog that probably only two people read, I will still use his initials). Let me show you a picture of this precious baby.

Um, need I even go on? Have you seen a more precious child in your life? Didn't think so. His Mom better watch out before I steal him. Ah, but don't let that smile fool you. Although JL's nickname in the 6th grade is "Smiley," JL will drive you nutty. JL is one of the smartest kids you will ever meet. However, due to his disability, JL loses everything, literally. He forgets everything. We tried every timing system, calendar system, folder system, parent communication, you name it. Other students would joke around that "Smiley puts everything in his black hole." We even had several locations in his different classrooms (and in mine) to compile all of JL's stuff that he left places. His Mom has even become one of my good friends because we talked very often (she literally was on speed dial and JL knew what button to press to call her from my phone). JL lives in a one bedroom apartment and sleeps in the same room as his Mom and two other siblings. His Mom works several jobs, yet they are one of the most joyful families I have ever met. Near the end of the year, all of the teachers would joke that I had adopted JL since he was almost attached to my hip. When teachers and I collaborated about JL's work, they would always joke and say, "your son forgot to do his homework." I feel like JL characterizes this school year very well for me. We went through some hard times and stressful days (both of us!), but had lots of good times with smiles and laughs. JL had some really low points in the school year and he was mostly scattered and all over the place. However, when I look back, he made tremendous gains and I mostly remember all of the joyful times and accomplishments he made. I thought I couldn't love a student as much as I grew to love Arthur last year. I would tear up when I told his story and told about how much he grew and how much he meant to me (even though so many students mean so much to me, he was that special one). This year, it's JL. He's that kid that taught me far more than I ever taught him! Teaching is exhausting, but kids like JL make me energized and excited to keep going. As a SpEd teacher, I am lucky to get to move up with the same kids and have JL again next year! So here's to my second year of teaching, end of Teach for America (which I will probably most about later when I have more time), and the start to some time relaxing and getting things done that I have been meaning to for a long time now!

We Closed!

I haven't posted in a while, mostly becuase everything has been insanely busy, also because we don't have Internet yet at our house. We closed on the house last Thursday, and have pretty much been moving in and getting things done ever since then. My wonderful Mom came and stayed with us for a week as we cleaned up the old apartment, got ready to move, hung out with our grandparents, and then moved. Also, Mitchell's parents came and were a HUGE help for a few days as we moved into the house (also Mitchell's brother, Gavin). We've pretty much unpacked all of our boxes, and now we're just working on projects like breaking down boxes, organizing the garage, hanging up decorations, etc. It still doesn't feel like we live there, it feels like we're staying in someone else's home! I thought that I would panic a bit after we handed the biggest check we've ever written over and that I would feel buyer's remorse, but I definitely haven't at all. I feel excited to go back to the area I grew up in and look forward to hopefully riasing a family in this house! Boomer still doesn't know quite what to think about the backyard, he definitely doesn't want to stay out there by himself. He's also been really sick, maybe from the stress of moving, who knows. He went 3 or 4 days without eating though, which is very unlike him! So far, we've tried to tackle a lot of of projects to just get things out of the way. We planted one bush outside and some flowers (well, my Mom planted them!) We also put hardware on all of our cabinets, which I was really excited about. We installed blinds, which I can't say I helped with at all. This took forever though! Lastly, we installed a couple of fans and changed the bathroom lights out that the builder had put in. I didn't take very many pics, but here are a few that I had on my phone (out of order): Just a plant that my Mom bought us...I love looking at it through the window!

A picture of the kitchen, we put the hardware on ourselves!

Boomer hanging out in his backyard.

Living room, sorry this picture isn't very good!

Bathroom with hardware we installed

Entryway

Goodbye, apartment!

This is right when we picked up our keys at the model home...

Almost There

This is the week!! Inspection on Thursday, appraisal on Thursday and final walk through on Friday. From there, we will set up a closing date. They are basically done besides staining the front door (it will be dark brown like the color of our cabinets). From the pictures below you can also see they put in a tree, some bushes, and grass. The grass looks bad because they just lay down these squares and you have to wait for it to grow together. There are also tons of small cosmetic things that I'm trying to convince my type-A personality to not worry about. As long as we point them out at the final walk through on Friday, they will fix them. Our realtor is coming with us and they are also bringing in a 3rd party warrant guy to explain everything to us like the sprinkler system, electrical box, etc. Phew! I'm a bit nervous that we'll miss something, but thankful this stage is finally here.

This weekend we ordered blinds and are currently looking for a fridge that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.



Can't wait for Boomer to play in this! ^




Hope that everyone has a great week!

He is Risen!

I hope that everyone has had a great start to their Easter weekend and is looking forward to celebrating Jesus' resurrection tomorrow! I'm very thankful that we got 3 days off! Last year, good Friday was a bad weather makeup day. However, this year the weather has been so mild, we got the day off! Now we're in the home stretch with no breaks left until summer. May 24, please get here soon!

The past few weeks have been pretty stressful at work, and I've found the weeks going by very slow. I guess this is just how the end of the year is with state tests and trying to finish strong. I'm starting to prepare for all of the 6th graders that I will add to my caseload next year. Many of them have severe disabilities, so my work load will definitely increase a lot. I'm hoping to drop a lot of the extra responsibilities I have this year in order to be able to handle my caseload.

The current dilemma is whether to move at the beginning of May or at the end of May. We've made many pro/con lists, and have yet to come to any sort of decision. The house will be done very soon. They put in carpet yesterday, so all that's left to do is stain the fence, put in landscaping, and install our front door (I'm so excited about this one!). This will probably be my last post before the house is completely finished! Here are the pictures from yesterday:



This is a shot of the entryway from the front door. They finally took the wrapping off of the tile so we can actually see what it looks like.



We will soon have next door neighbors! Let me tell you, this stage of the building process (framing) is LOUD!!!! I'm glad it only takes a few days and will be done before we move in. Now we'll just have to deal with the neighbors on the right of us building, which will hopefully happen sometime when we are at work! :)



These are the guest bedrooms. Not too exciting.



This is the mysterious hall bath that I couldn't take a picture of until they put electricity in because it was too dark. This is the only place in the house that we paid to have something cosmetic done, everything else came standard (or was a structural thing that we added that we couldn't change later, like the patio). We decided to put in the tan counters and stain the cabinets. You always hear warnings to only do structural upgrades when you build, because the builder will charge you an arm and a leg to do cosmetic things and it can add up very quickly. Thankfully, their cosmetic upgrades were very reasonable and everything else just came with the base price of the house, one of the reasons we decided to build (not any hidden costs). They also gave us $5,000 to put towards upgrades so I guess the few things that we did paid for themselves.



This is the backyard with the fence in. They still need to stain the fence and put grass in. We got them to agree to make the fence 8 feet in the back for free, which I am now really glad that we did!



The kitchen with appliances!! So excited. I accidentally turned the dishwasher on yesterday and started screaming because I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. Also, I didn't know if it was completely installed or if water was going to start spraying out at me, ahhh!!! Note to self: do not press any more buttons until the house is ours.

I will say that the biggest blessing the past few weeks has been meeting neighbors. Something we have been really lacking since we moved to Dallas is community, although we have many great friends that live here. One of the cool things about moving into a new construction neighborhood is that everyone is moving in at a similar time, going through the same thing, and are usually at a similar stage in life. We've already met so many people that we know will become great friends. We stopped by yesterday, intending to stay for 5 minutes. We ended up staying for 2 hours talking to several different neighbors on our street that had just moved in that day. We even sat around in lawn chairs in one of their empty living rooms (they had just closed that day), laughing and getting to know one another. One of them is even a teacher in a nearby district. Everyone is so friendly and seems to be outside, taking walks, and spending time with one another. Most of them even have dogs and we have joked about making one of the green space areas a dog park! I think that more than owning a home, the community and the friendships that we will form with our neighbors is something that will answer a huge prayer that we've had for a few years now!

Have a great week! :)

Katherine

Getting Close!

Alright, I started to think that it was quite boring to post updates on the house each week, so I waited two weeks this time. There have been quite a few changes, and we are guesstimating (new word??) that they will be done in a week or two. We are hoping to not have to move until May, but that all depends on a lot of things. We need to get someone to rent our apartment, we need to time our move to a date that my Mom and sister can fly down (and Mitchell's parents can come), and we want to wait until May so that we don't have to pay our first mortgage until July. The timing probably won't work out perfectly, but that would be ideal! We'll see what happens. Anyways, here are recent changes:

These are our bathroom counters in our master bathroom-one of my favorite parts of the house!! The hall bath has counters that are light tan but I don't have a picture of that because it's too dark in there. :)

This is our entryway...we have lights now and have electricity everywhere! I have never seen this light before and didn't choose it, but I don't really care what this light looks like so we didn't think it was worth mentioning to them that it was different than the one we thought it was going to be.

This pic is showing that they graded the lot for landscaping (and put sprinklers in). They will probably be putting a fence up soon!!

This is the light fixture in the dining room.

The kitchen-the most recent change is the back splash, which they did yesterday! I was nervous about this color choice but LOVE how it turned out! Mitchell may or may not have had to crawl through a window for us to get into the house, oops! They locked all of the doors we we really aren't able to get in now unless we schedule it. We justified "breaking in" today though because we needed to measure the windows for blinds. From what I can tell, all they have to do is carpet, landscaping, front door, appliances, fence, and some painting. Woohoo!

That's all for now. It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon and I'm going to spend some time at the pool with my sweet friend Jessica! :)

-Katherine

Chicago

I'm trying to avoid posting pictures (or at least not too many up close ones) of students on Facebook. However, I keep this blog pretty private/hidden, and I had to show you all these precious faces! I'm really dreading going back to work tomorrow, but I'm not dreading seeing the many faces that I adore! These are my 9th graders that I taught last year. You should see my 6th graders this year...they would make you melt! There are a few that I am tempted to kidnap. Just kidding, but seriously. They are really cute and I am going to need some parenting advice from their parents on how to have such sweet children someday.