Finished Room Friday: Master Bath

After decorating the upstairs bath with everything from our master bath in our townhouse, I didn't know how to decorate this master bath. I decided to do it in the same gray and yellow color scheme as our master bedroom. I had to completely start from scratch and spent a good couple hours in the bathroom section of Target picking everything out.

While I was decorating for June, I came across this lemonade sign. I decided to make it a permanent decoration in our bathroom and do a lemon theme.   

We hung it above our toilet. (It was hard to get a good picture because the toilet is in its own little room.)

I bought some fake lemons from Target and put them in a pitcher. I thought this was pretty clever because of the whole turn lemons into lemonade thing, but Rog wasn't too impressed. 

We put privacy tint on this window, so we wouldn't have to constantly be climbing into the tub to open and shut curtains or blinds. I did put up curtains too because I thought it would look funny if we had curtains on one of the windows, but not the other.

Rog and I are not bath takers, so I doubt we'll ever use this tub. Ironically there's a light over the tub, but not the shower. We also will probably never use those towels.

I love that our shower is not in our tub - makes me feel grown up. (Although squeegying it down every time I take a shower is not my favorite thing.)

We had our towels (that we actually use) hanging on an over-the-door hook, but we could tell it was already hurting our door, so I had Rog put up a permanent hook that I found while looking for something else in the craft room. It was on my list to buy the next time I was at the store and I found it just in time!

I bought a $2 clock from IKEA and decided to "hack" it. I carefully took it apart, replaced the white background with yellow scrapbook paper, cut out vinyl numbers with my Silhouette, and then put it back together. I was a little amazed and very excited that it actually still worked when I got it back together!

I also ordered a lemon to paint from The Wood Connection and made my own lemonade sign (inspired by this printable).

I originally bought an oil rubbed bronze soap dispenser and cup to go with the faucets, but the soap dispenser broke, so I decided to buy yellow ones (like the ones I got for the upstairs bath). Rog thought they were ridiculously expensive and I'll probably never hear the end of it.

And that's our lemon bathroom!

Third Quarter Reading

Life this quarter was much less crazy than the second quarter of this year, but I still wasn't able to find much time for reading. Partly because I was busy unpacking, decorating, and getting us settled in our new home, but also because I didn't read anything that I really got into. My nightly reading with Corbyn saved my numbers yet again.

Excellent:

1. Keep Me Posted by Lisa Beazley. Two sisters living on two different continents decide to rekindle their relationship by writing letters to each other. One of the sisters scans the letters and posts them to a private blog to preserve them. The blog's security settings accidentally are changed to public and the blog goes viral. This book was fun and light without being too light. It also included some good insights about parenthood, marriage, and relationships. This was definitely the best book I read this quarter.

Great:

2. Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts, and My Midlife Quest to Dance the Nutcracker by Lauren Kessler. Lauren falls in love with ballet and the Nutcracker as a young girl, but quits ballet at the age of 12 when she overhears her teacher telling her mom she will never be a dancer. Years later she embarks on a transcontinental Nutcracker tour and then makes it her quest to dance the Nutcracker with the Eugene Ballet Company. I thought for sure this was purely fiction as it seemed impossible to me that this could ever happen, but I was surprised when I got to the end and realized this actually happened. There was a big part in the middle about motivation and what it takes to do something scary which was kind of interesting, but at the same time significantly slowed down the story. It was fun to read a book set in Oregon and I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes look at what it would be like to dance professionally.

3. The Twits by Roald Dahl. Mr. and Mrs. Twit are smelly, nasty, and ugly. They play mean jokes on each other, catch birds to put in their bird pies, and make their monkeys stand on their heads all day. This is definitely not one of the books Roald Dahl is famous for, but it was pretty fun and very entertaining. Corbyn especially enjoyed it.

Good:

4. We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee. Benjamin uproots his family and moves them to a dilapidated zoo. (If you've seen the movie, you know the basic story.) I had heard the book was not even close to being as good as the movie, but I decided to read it anyway. I love the movie and was surprised by how very different the book and the movie are. (The book of course being the true story.) It was interesting, but at times I felt like there were just too many technical details that bogged the book down. I thought it would have been a lot better if it focused more on the family's story instead of the details about buying and refurbishing the zoo. 

5. George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl. George decides to make his own medicine to give to his horrible grandma. What happens when he gives it to her is quite surprising. Another of Roald Dahl's lesser-known books and not his best, but it wasn't bad either.

6. How to Break a Dragon's Heart by Cressida Cowell. We took a break from the Dragon books when we started reading all of Roald Dahl's books, but Corbyn wanted to start reading them again. I thought this was one of the better ones in the series. (Or maybe it was just that I had gotten burnt out and enjoyed it more after having a break from them.)

Meh:

7. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl. This is the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that I had no idea existed. I didn't enjoy it as much as his other books because it just seemed so far fetched (even for a Roald Dahl book) and I didn't really care for it.

Hopefully I will find some books I can really get into, so this next quarter's reading can be a little better. I just started Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty, so things are definitely looking up.

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!