Fluffy Butts

My best friend Weslie has been using cloth diapers on her daughter Avery for about a year now. I had actually thought about starting with Landon when he was an infant but there were so many different brands and types of diapers that I got overwhelmed and gave up. When the kids and I spent a week at Weslie's in April, I was able to see the whole process of cloth diapers and started thinking about it again in the back of my head. I mentioned it to Brad in July, that I was thinking of maybe doing cloth diapers whenever we have another baby, but the thought of jumping into something I wasn't familiar with on a newborn with a preschooler and toddler was a bit daunting. Landon is no where near ready for potty training, so I am figuring we have at least another year of diapers for him, so he became my guinea pig.

There are a lot of different websites that offer trial packs, where they send you a variety of cloth diapers (you'd be amazed if you knew how many different options there are!) but I know myself and knew that the pockets were the way to go. Basically a pocket diaper has microfiber inserts that you stuff into an opening at the back of the diaper, and take out for washing. Super simple, and after washing I go ahead and stuff the inserts back in, so the diapers are just as ready to go as disposables are.

We have been using the cloth diapers since we got back from our trip to North Carolina. We are loving it so far. Landon has pretty sensitive skin, he had some eczema issues on his bum and has had a lot of issues with diaper rash and the cloth diapers have been great! He used to wake up in the morning in a wet diaper and his skin would be all wet, but the cloth diapers pull in all the moisture and his skin is always dry in the mornings. It is crazy what a difference that alone makes. He seems to like them- he still tries to take them off all the time but that is just Landon being Landon :) I am so glad we made the switch and am really looking forward to using them on or next baby, too. And the best part is, the diapers I have bought for Landon are One Size- they are adjustable so they actually fit babies from 5-40 pounds. So everything I've got now can be reused on the next baby, too!

Photos from the Remodel

I didn't do a very good job of taking before pictures when we decided to start tearing out the floor and walls, so I had to go back and find some random shots that did a decent job of showing what things used to look like- so bear with me!

This picture shows the wall we took out. It came around the corner behind Savannah into an archway that led into the kitchen, and there was a pass through looking towards the dining room table. It also shows the old paint color, which I hated!

And here is how open the area looked when we took down the wall! I am so glad we decided to do that, it makes the house so much more open!!

Now these next two pictures show the floors before. The carpet was so nice when we first moved in. But since our back yard had gotten to torn up by the dogs before we redid the sod, they tracked endless amounts of dirt inside and there was no coming back from that! Brad and I had actually intended to put hardwood throughout the house when we built, but opted to do just the kitchen and by the front door, and put the other money towards upgraded countertops. In hindsight I am so glad we did, because I like our new floors so much better!

Here is Brad taking up the floors in the kitchen. Like I said in the last post, the laminate was glued right to the concrete subfloor. It was such a nightmare to get it up!! I stopped counting how many trash bins we filled that week.

And the floors after! This is looking from the kitchen out. This is before we had the drywall repaired and put the island in. You can also see the new paint color- it brightens the house so much!

Looking from the stairs at the new floors and paint. The couches are the next thing to be replaced!

And another shot of the new paint color. I love it so much! The doors and trim all got a fresh coat of paint too.

And here is the after picture of the island. This is taken from the same angle as the one of the missing wall above. Our handyman had some issues with the ceiling, because the kitchen and dining room ceilings aren't exactly level, so he installed a 1x10" beam across the ceiling. I actually love it, I wasn't sure how it would look but it adds definition to the room. Shawn and Brad installed pendant lights over the island. and I am waiting on my new IKEA pot rack too. They also covered the island with mosaic tiles, which I just love. Originally we were just going to tile the top, but Shawn had the idea to do the back too and it is beautiful! We are going to add tiles to the side at some point too, to finish it off.

Since we no longer had a wall separating the rooms, the kitchen that used to be pale blue got painted the same color as the rest of the house.

So I added an accent wall! I love the orange with the blue countertops and white cabinets!

Here is the front of the island. The cabinets are HUGE! They are so deep and wide, and the drawers are fantastic! I don't know how we survived before IKEA came to Tampa! We had looked at cabinets at Lowe's, but we got a much better set of cabinets at IKEA for less than we would have paid at Lowe's.

Back in March we had some palm trees and Birds of Paradise installed out front, and I realized I had never posted a picture of it! Brad was mowing while I took this, so the grass is super tall but the trees are just beautiful! They add some much needed shade, and keep the inside of the house a lot cooler, too.

Under Construction

What a busy, busy spring and summer we have had!!! It all started back the week before Easter when Brad and I decided to start some home improvement projects. There was a pointless wing wall that separated our kitchen and dining room, so we decided to take it down! We popped into one of the under construction houses across the street to be sure it wasn't a load bearing wall, and then we started whacking away! It was a lot of fun tearing out the drywall- Savannah helped too! Brad used a reciprocating saw to cut out the 2x4's and then we had a very dusty house!

The main reason we took the wall out when we did was because we had planned to redo the floors in the house over Memorial Day weekend. A few weeks after Easter, after we had moved the aquarium upstairs, I was repainting all the walls in the main areas of the house. I HATED to color it was painted when we moved in, but Brad refused to redo them until we decided to do these other projects but I had the responsibility of doing the actual painting. Let me tell you, painting is not easy to do with kids running around all day!. I actually got it done pretty quickly and the color is FANTASTIC, I absolutely love it and it is exactly what I wanted two years ago!

Anyway, while I was painting one afternoon, I happened to look up and there was a softball sized pocket of water in the ceiling right over where the couch is. And it was dripping on the floor! I freaked out, thinking the aquarium was going to come through the ceiling! I called Brad at work and of course he didn't answer so I had to have the receptionist page him for an emergency over the intercom- he was freaking out thinking there was an emergency with the kids- but he rushed home after telling me how to turn off the water to the tank. Luckily that stopped the leak and the bubble dried up. Later that night I was in the kitchen fixing dinner when suddenly there was a huge gush of water from one of the can lights in the kitchen ceiling!! Easily 2 gallons of water just poured out into the kitchen! We were very fortunate that it didn't start an electrical fire!!

So we had a plumber come out and wouldn't you know he couldn't find ANYTHING wrong. Our assumption was that Brad had dumped tank water into the sink upstairs, which maybe burst a pipe over the kitchen SO we shut off the water upstairs. The plumber was great, he stayed for over 2 hours trying everything he could think of to find any signs of water leakage and there was nothing. I even let him cut into the drywall in the kitchen ceiling and there was NO signs of any water being present, ever!! Even the water that came through the light should have left some kind of marks and there wasn't any evidence of anything happening! It was very frustrating but then we felt pretty lucky that the damage was minor. All we had were 3 holes in the ceiling, but we had other drywall repair projects so that wasn't a huge deal.

So over Memorial Day weekend Jaime, Shawn and Madalyn came down and the boys put new laminate wood floors down in all the main areas of the house- the loft and hall upstairs, kitchen, dining room and living room downstairs. They look fantastic! They are light wood and do so much to brighten the house up. It is such a difference, I am so glad we did it! It was a nightmare prepping for it... we had laminate floors in the kitchen and by the front door already... usually when you put laminate floors down you put an underlayment between the new floors and the subflooring. The geniuses who built our house didn't do that... they actually GLUED the laminate floors to the CONCRETE slab below. Really?! Luckily we had started taking them out a week before Memorial Day, if we had waited until the last minute we never would have gotten it done. It took us a solid week to get the old floors up- I worked on them all day and Brad got right to it after dinner. We actually weren't finished when Shawn got here Friday night! We had to literally sit on the floor and hack at the old floors with a flathead screwdriver and hammer. The old wood would actually split and splinter. It was awful. But totally worth it for how the floors look now.

Two weeks later, the Swanson's came back down- Jaime and I were shooting a wedding in St Petersburg- so the boys started another project- a custom island in the kitchen. We bought some awesome cabinets from the new IKEA that opened in Tampa, and Shawn and Brad tiled it with mosaic tiles. Shawn put an electrical outlet in it, and hung pendant lights over it for us. It looks awesome and gave me some much needed counter and cabinet space! The island is technically a peninsula, attached to one wall but is 72" long and I think 24" wide. I LOVE it.

So after all those projects were finished, we brought in a handyman to do our drywall repairs. We had the spot over the couch, the spaces in the ceiling from the plumber, as well as a lot of wall spots from taking the wing wall and arches down. It was a 3 day process the week before the 4th of July but our handyman was great and did a fantastic job for us. After the weekend of the 4th I painted the new drywall and we are DONE! I have a few more touch up spots to paint but the big projects are out of the way and our house looks awesome. We now have a 100% original house in a cookie cutter neighborhood!

The reason it has taken me so long to update all this is because when I went to update a month or so ago, I had gotten a bug in my photo software and almost lost all my pictures! I had just backed up but it was scary for a few days trying to figure it out!! Of course now I am posting this from the computer without the pictures but I will do another post soon with all the photos of the new house. I can't wait for you all to see it!! And of course I need to do a long update on Landon and Savannah, too!!