Finished Room Friday: Entryway

Our entryway probably would have been a really good place to start my Finished Room Friday posts, but it wasn't completely finished until yesterday afternoon, so you're getting it now.

We'll start our tour outside. I love our front door.

And also our welcome mat. This was my first time buying a welcome mat. I don't think we had one for our apartment (if we did, it came with the apartment and wasn't anything special) and our townhouse had one when we moved in. I didn't love it, but I never got around to replacing it. 

Open the front door and this is what you see. See what I mean about keeping our dining room table clean? If we don't use it during the day, it looks pretty good when someone comes to the door. (Even with a few toys scattered on the ground.)

Take a few steps in and to your left is the door that leads to the garage straight ahead, the half bath on your left, and a big closet on your right.

These two frames are hanging on the wall on your left as you walk to the bathroom.

When we got engaged, my friend Emily made us a How to be in Love Forever frame (pictured here). I've always loved it, but after almost 10 years, it wasn't in the best condition. I updated it a bit to go with the colors in our new house. (I hope you don't mind, Emily!) Over the years I've given my own version as a wedding gift to a handful of couples, so I just had to change the names and date on the file I have saved on my computer and print it out.

We don't have a pantry in our kitchen, so this closet has our big flour, sugar, and rice containers as well as our food storage, 72-hour kits, a mop, and a broom. That part's not too exciting.

(Other than this hook I put up to hang our fly swatter. One of my best ideas ever.)

I loved these hooks we had in our townhouse, so I decided to do the same thing here. Rather than building our own racks, I just bought some at Target and had Rog hang them. The big one was only about $20 which I figure is not much more than you'd pay to make your own by the time you buy all the hooks. The shoe basket is pretty great and when you have boys, a weapon basket is pretty necessary. I don't think we'll be needing our winter stuff too often here, so that basket is up out of the way. I love how functional this space is and I also love that it's in a closet, so we can close the door and we don't have to see it all the time.

Continuing on the tour... This is on your left as you walk to the dinning room. My Grandma Ford gave us this black frame for one of our first anniversaries. It's getting a little beat up, but I did my best to touch it up, so it could stay hanging for a few more years. It was also in our entryway in our townhouse.

This nook is perfect for our decorative table that changes every month. We painted the wall the same green we had in our townhouse. This temple frame was also a gift from my Grandma Ford. I typically don't like anything gold, but I make an exception for this frame.

I bought new H, M, E letters a few years ago, but just now got around to painting them. (Peyton helped me during our Mom-and-Peyton time.) Seemed fitting to have a new HOME for our new home. I can't decide how the H is supposed to go. This way...

Or this way?

The wall across from the nook has a picture for each time our family has grown over the years. They were all taken by Mar Del Photography. They did an excellent job with our engagement and wedding pictures, so we've continued to go to them every few years for an updated family picture and they've never let us down. I'm constantly fighting with these frames to get them to stay level, so it's fitting that they aren't perfect in this picture.

And finally here's the view from the dining room. There's our stairs and that's the toy room door.

We got this rug (and a matching one for our living room) on clearance at Lowe's. They are the perfect green, but they are also pretty hard to keep clean. I give this one a good sweep every few days and I'm always amazed how much I sweep up. For Christmas I want a steam cleaner, so I can clean this rug. (And Rog wants a blower for leaves and grass. Aren't we exciting?!)

And that's our entryway. Welcome to our house!

Peyton's Birthday: Friend Party

We had Peyton's friend birthday party the Friday after her birthday.

Invitation inspiration here.

We had tower cupcakes.

According to Pinterest I pinned these cupcakes 4 years ago! I was so happy with how they turned out! 

We popped Maximus' apple balloons that I had stuffed with grape Frooties, princess stickers, and purple/silver confetti. Kind of like a pinata, but much easier.

It left a bit of a mess, but it was cleaned up easily and the kids thought it was really fun.

We watched the Tangled Ever After short. 

Corbyn, Rhys Howard, Elsie Wood, Peyton, Abbie, Dawn, Calla Howard, Hazel Howard, Logan, and Alleah Wood.

Abbie and Dawn were Peyton's friends from her preschool class.

We kept balloons up in the air with frying pan plates.

We also popped bubbles with the frying pan plates. (I bought a bubble machine for like $7 in the party section at Walmart. Best thing ever!) 

And painted the sidewalk with sidewalk paint.

For favors we gave out watercolors with Rapunzel labels from here. 

It was a fun and easy party that came together pretty quickly.

Finished Room Friday: Dining Room

I was going to keep with the bathroom theme and post our master bathroom today, but I realized I still have a few things I'm tweaking in there, so here's our dining room instead.

The main level of our house is for the most part, one big room comprised of the kitchen, dining room, and living room. So if you want to get technical, the dining room isn't really its own room. But for the purpose of this blog, I'm treating it as such.

This table is the one we got back in February of 2015. It has been a great table and we have no plans to replace it. However the kids have been rough on it and it has more dings than I care to look at, so during the day it is covered up with a table cloth. We eat breakfast and lunch at the counter. When it comes time for dinner, we take off the table cloth, eat dinner, clean up from dinner, and then put the table cloth back on. This is also helpful because you can see the dining room from the front door, so if we aren't using it all day, it stays clean and our house doesn't look like a huge disaster when someone comes to the door unannounced. 

Most of the dinnerware from when we got married has been broken through the years, so I took the opportunity of moving into a new house to get a new set. 

Dinner plates, salad plates, bowls, cups, placemats.

Serving bowl, serving platter. I got the dip bowls for my birthday. (Sadly it looks like they are not available anymore.)

We hardly ever use these dishes, but it's nice to have a matching set for when we have people over for dinner. I love how the table looks all set like this. 

Side note: I'm not in love with the light fixture in here, but it doesn't bother me enough to have it be a priority to replace it. Maybe if we live here 10 years we'll get around to it.

Even though Logan was pretty content sitting in his high chair, I thought it was time for him to join us at the table for dinner. The turtle booster seat we used for Corbyn and Peyton was pretty gross from being stored in the garage in our townhouse, so I bought this booster seat. It has been perfect for what we needed. Logan can sit with us at the table for dinner.

But it also has a tray, so he can sit away from the table when the rest of the family is eating breakfast and lunch at the counter. And a huge bonus, it's a more neutral color, so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.  

And that's our dining room!

18 Months

Logan turned 18 months on September 18. He had his 18 month appointment September 23rd. He got 5 shots and did great - only cried for a few seconds after each one. He's always been a little on the short side, but not this time. At a year he was in the 30th percentile, but now he's way up to the 75th percentile!

His stats:

Weight: 25 pounds, 8 ounces (70th percentile)

Height: 33 1/4 inches (75th percentile)

Logan at 18 months:

*Points to airplanes, birds, or anything interesting in the sky.

*Gets excited when he sees dogs and wants to pet them.

*Puts tissues up to his nose and blows.

*Is getting better at letting us read him books as long as he is holding a book.

*Always wants to take a book with him to bed.

*Has been saying "Woah!" a lot.

*Shakes his head no and says, "No, no, no..."

*Is actually really good about stopping doing whatever he's doing if we tell him no (most of the time).

*Says "Baby," but only when he sees a baby.

*Loves finger puppets.

*Is starting to be able to point out things in books when we ask - mostly animals, but also Buzz.

*Likes to give fist pumps.

*Got his left bottom molar, but is still working on getting his right bottom molar.

*Gets so excited when his daddy gets home and runs to give him a hug.

*Has about 10 words that he can say, but he doesn't say them all the time. He'd rather just grunt, point, and scream when he needs something. 

*Can be a bit of a tornado - destroying everything in his path.

He started swinging on the big kid swings and is actually really good at it!

He has mastered eating only the marshmallows when he has Lucky Charms for breakfast.

One night when I was holding him, he went to grab a big bowl of watermelon off the counter while I was walking away and of course watermelon went everywhere. 

This is a horribly grainy picture, but it is too cute not to share. He loves cheering for the cougars and especially loves the fight song.

I sorted through all the boxes of kid clothes and found Corbyn's buzz pajamas. I couldn't wait for him to wear them!

He just got some new sneakers (that light up!) and he looks so big toddling around in them.

We went to visit the ducks one Sunday afternoon. He was so excited to see the "du" and pointed to them/chased them the whole time we were there.

He loves his rain jacket and gets mad anytime I try to take it off him.

Finished Room Friday: Upstairs Bath

For this week's Finished Room Friday, here's our upstairs bath. It's the kids' bathroom as well as the guest bathroom. 

I never loved how our upstairs bath was decorated in our townhouse and since our master bath in this house didn't need a shower curtain, I decided to use the one from the master bath in our townhouse in here. Everything in this picture was from our master bath. Those are nice big towels, so if you come visit (you should!), you can look forward to that.

I put a laundry basket in here in hopes that we could train the kids to throw their clothes in there before hopping in the bath. It was a good idea, but we need to do a better job with the training as Rog and I are still the ones doing it for them.

This hand towel was also from our master bath. I bought the cups, toothbrush holder, and soap pump because they were the only ones I could find to match. I could have done something boring, but I wanted color. I was nervous the kids would break them at first, but they've been fine so far and I'm pretty sure we won't have any problems as long as we keep Logan far, far away (until he gets older of course). 

We hung some hooks for the kids' towels. These towels match the room pretty well, but their other ones don't. (So every other week, I do my best to ignore them - #OCDproblems.) 

And it is a kid bathroom, so behind the curtain, we've got bath toys.  

At some point I may add some decorations, but for now I'm fine with it just like this.