before and after.... before and after-ish

Jackson's room before: pink and white striped wall paper, nasty carpet...

J's room in process: yes, he picked out the color himself. HUGE surprise he picked green... : )

Painted wall, mural, bed and toys. it's DONE!!

some after pics of J's room... his toys, train table, closet...

I painted his wall with tractors, trucks, and the letters of his name. he chose everything he wanted. : )

Living room before....scallops and bookshelves on the back wall...

dark wood in front of the fireplace...

carpet, shutters, valance, scallops, and florescent lights... not my style. ha! : )

this is where we removed the bookshelves from the wall and there was a big hole. dad and trav patched it and tada!

i don't have an after-ish for the mantle, but this is the color! i love it.

This is after-ish. The crown molding isn't up, and the quarter-round isn't on the floor, and the photos aren't on the walls, but otherwise it's done. like i said done-ish!!

the curtains i LOVE!! i bought fabric at fabric.com and sewed them. the curtain rod for the bay window was really hard, but my rockstar hubby made it work. i love him!

Crazy snow and christmas

3020 looks pretty in the falling snow! We had two big snow storms with lots and lots of snow for us to play in!!

Here's the pile of snow by our driveway! it was almost to J's chest!

Jackson walking home from Gramma and Papa's. he kept saying "making tracks in the fresh snow" not sure where that came from, but whatever! One great thing about living so close is that we can walk there! no getting snowed-in for us when we can walk to gramma's!

Here's Jackson and Daddy with the Christmas tree we picked on our "tree hunt" yes, we even made a song... although it closely parallels the we're going on a bear hunt song... : ) we were a bit late in picking the tree this year, so they were a bit picked over... we did find a cute 6 footer, however.

Our friends Kelsi and Dirk were in town from Michigan for Christmas and they brought over Super Mario Bros for wii. Jackson thought it was totally fab! he insisted on being Luigi (he's green of course) and mostly followed mario (dirk) in a bubble.

jackson and amelia from next door... she is 6 and the first "neighbor kid" that has befriended Jackson! he really likes playing with her. we're excited for nicer weather and getting to play with her and meet other kids!

Our first fire in the fireplace! Okay, it's a gas fireplace, but still we thought it would be appropriate to document this great occasion! after getting our gas bill for the extreme cold we had in december, i'm thinking space heaters might be a better choice! yikes. apparently 1925 didnt believe in insulation!!

The Figards in front of Gramma's Christmas tree! Merry Christmas!

Christmas eve we spent at the Uhrmacher's... it was a very long night and Jackson was SO SO SO TIRED and it was a challenge to get him to sleep. so, finally, he fell asleep hugging the new frog and Handy Manny motorcycle : )

Christmas morning family photo in the new place!

November 7, 2009: Moving Day!

Moving day!!! we had some great help from some great friends... getting the mattress to the master bedroom (3rd floor) and the wardrobe my great-grandpa uhrmacher made were the hardest! the guys had to tie down the mattress to get it up. ha!

jackson and grant playing in the living room.... notice there's no shutters on the wall... just brown spots where they were!

our biggest helpers... jackson, elsie and grant!

jackson and finn playing in the boxes from the kitchen that we already unpacked!

our first photo moved into the house! travis even got his tv hooked up to watch the huskers play. i dont' remember who they played or if they won. i fell asleep on the couch! ha.

November 6, 2009: moving minus one day

i forgot to post a pic of the before of the cabinets... but here's the intermediate... we painted the knotty pine cabinets white to buy some time before a kitchen remodel. my dad did a rockstar job of painting them!

yeah, three floors in this place! it's tiring. : )

pizza floor picnic.

turns out i needed a little stress relief, so Betsy and Jessica came over for a mental health break... we had a couple glasses of wine and started some demo of the ugly wood and valance in the living room. turns out they didn't paint under it, so now there's big brown squares on the wall (as you'll see in moving day photos). oh well, still better than flourescent lights and valance behind wood scallops! : )

here goes nothing...

so i've never had anything to blog about before... but now we have this great place called 3020 summit blvd... jackson calls it our "tooter-fruiter" house (yeah, an architecture conniseur already... from the tudor style of the home). we're excited for the joys and trials that will come along with this home... but a home is more than just a building it's the family and memories within!! this blog is dedicated to the new chapter in our lives.... so here goes nothing!! : )

November 2, 2009: closing day

yeah, that's our first family photo in the new place!! so first thing we did, was remove carpets...

and surprise! there was tar and wire mesh under the carpets to level out some low spots in the floor.

luckily Carl Bohlmeyer floor sanding can work MIRACLES... because tada! for only a small price increase they were able to sand out all the tar!