excuse me
while i catch my breath from that last post. i should REALLY update this thing
more often. where were we? oh yeah, our life outside of baby Rhoden…
march 24th marked moving day to dallas! we actually
picked the keys up on the 23rd and stan packed up all of our clothes
and dropped them off after school when he picked up the keys. then he drove
back to the apartment and gathered his boss, brandon and some amazing college
kids from church and packed up a church van full of stuff. our plan was to set
up our office space, build our two bookshelves we purchased from ikea, put all
of our clothes away, organize our storage space on the balcony with all of our
tools (ya know…circular saws, chop saws, jig saws, pneumatic nailers…the norm
for apartment life!) and whatever else they were able to cram inside the van.
things didn’t go exactly as planned. we did manage to get everything out of the
van and into the apartment. ha.
the main issue arose when we realized the space we picked to
set up our “office” was not going to work out. even with downsizing our living
room furniture (more on that later) it just was not going to fit. bummer. so we
went with plan b, which was to put it next to the fireplace, where we had
planned to put the record player. and we’ll put the record player in the
nursery/guest bedroom. not ideal, but it will work. after that, we just ran out
of time. i did manage to get all of our clothes hung up in the closet. and one
bookshelf built.
saturday morning the movers came and had everything loaded,
moved and unloaded by 11:00 am. amazing! shortly after i got home from work,
stan’s mom and step dad came over to bring us food and help mount our
television above the fireplace. insert issue #2 here. there aren’t any studs in
the wall above the fireplace. crap! after some brainstorming, we decided on a
solution to fix the problem and we are going to try to make it look more like
an intentional art piece and less like a solution to a major problem. i'll let
you know how it goes once we follow through with the plan…
i currently feel like all we do is unpack, yet it looks as
if we haven’t even started yet! here are some of the projects we’ve been
tackling other than unpacking boxes…or in order to be able to unpack boxes!
well, this isn’t really a project…i just wanted to show off
our new furniture! i thought these would both for sure fit in our living room, but it is an awkward shape and we couldn't make it work so we ended up putting the chair in our bedroom next to a built in bookcase, as a little reading nook. it will also be nice for those few months where baby is in our bedroom and i don't want to go to the nursery to feed.
this dresser. I don’t even know where to begin. we purchased
this dresser along with two matching nightstands from an older couple through
craigslist. it had definitely seen it’s better days. i wish i could find a
before picture of these bad boys because, wow it was bad! i spent an entire
week trying to strip them—unsuccessfully I might add—almost 3 years ago. and then
they just sat in our garage everywhere we went because i wasn’t brave enough to
start tackling them again. our intention was to sell our current bedroom furniture
and refinish the dresser and nightstands, and use it as our own. well, fast
forward a few years and we FINALLY sold our furniture! yay. unfortunately, that
meant we had no where to put our clothes. ya know, the little things like socks
and underwear! we have worked out butts off over the past week to finish the
dresser. it didn’t turn out as smooth as i'd hoped, but it was a labor of love
and our first piece of furniture to refinish together so it is perfect to me!
and if i'm honest, stan did most of the work. ya know, since i'm with child and
all. i helped as much as i could and just wore a mask but he did most of the
stripping, all of the sanding and most of the painting. i painted the drawers.
that's it! here's the finished dresser:
the color is a grayish with a blue tint to it. we still need to buy knobs or handles, but we haven't found anything we liked yet. i think we are planning to go to anthropologie at some point and pick up some mismatched hardware. up next are the nightstands…but we don’t mind waiting a few
weeks on those. we are burnt out on refinishing furniture! and we don’t really
use our nightstands to store anything anyway—just to hold a lamp and a cup of
water. which it does perfectly fine how it is!
while we were refinishing the dresser, i decided it would be
a great time to do this:
i stained four crates i purchased a while back with the intention of building a
shelving unit, similar to
this:
like most of the projects i start or purchase supplies for (living room curtains, anyone?!),
it didn’t get done at the old place. BUT! i finally made it happen at the new
place and we love it. we found two old, beat up wooden crates at an estate sale
and i painted the outside blue and we had them stacked in our old place and
decorated. well, we decided to leave two of the crates i purchased unfinished
and mix in the blue crates also. here's what it looks like, undecorated:
once we finish decorating them i will take an after picture! currently, they are just stacked on top of each other. but before the baby starts crawling, we plan to attach them together and tether the entire unit to the wall, so if the bambino pulls on it, it doesn't come tumbling down.
tonight we are planning to hang our picture ledges and straighten up the guest room. my sister and her boyfriend are going to be staying over and they kinda need a place to sleep! my parents are going to have a full house, LITERALLY, with my brother, sister-in-law, their son mason, their baby grayson, my sisters' two kids, and her boyfriends' kid. WOW. four adults, a teenager, three kids, a baby, two dogs and a cat. in 1300 square feet.
tomorrow night is the gender reveal! we are going to the early service at church sunday. followed by easter at my parents. and then easter at stan's dad's. but i'm so excited to see family i don't get to see very often! i haven't see my brother in 18 months! i saw his wife and kids last june so that was nice. but once a year is not enough! i'm so glad we'll be going to visit them in italy in may!
in news other than moving...
stan is finishing up his second to last semester at dallas baptist university! he was notified by one of his professors that he was awarded an honors scholarship--so proud of him! aaaand then we received the official notification in the mail and we can't accept the scholarship because it is conditional upon the assumption that he will be attending DBU in the fall AND spring semesters. what a bummer! i found out in february that i failed the audit portion of the CPA exam again. so i'll be going for round 3 in may. and subsequently, i lost credit for the business and economics portion since my rolling 18 months expires in june. that was really disappointing.to be honest, i really struggle with whether or not i even want this for myself. which is definitely revealed with my priorities regarding this test. i don't think it's something that i TRULY want and so i don't make it a priority. and that needs to change. i don't want to do this. but i know there's a purpose behind it and i know that if i persevere, it will open up opportunities that i want for myself.
like i mentioned earlier, we are planning a vacation in may to visit my brother and his family in italy! we'll be spending 10 days with them. i cannot wait! i've never been out of the country unless you count mexico/the caribbean, which i don't. my mom will most likely be going with us! it should be a good time! i can't really think of anything else that's new so i guess that is it for now! maybe sunday i'll work on a pregnancy update!
