projects and organized bliss

I have been meaning to post more all week, but it took a while to recover from Labor Day weekend! So back to Labor Day. Well, maybe I will start with our project list. We have a project list for the house of things that we want to get done, and now that Baby B3 is coming, we sat down and prioritized the list of what we wanted to get done before his/her arrival. This list has been on our brains a lot, and unfortunately is not easily accomplished with a 1 yr old and 3 yr old around all the time. Also, there were a lot of things linked together too - for example, we want a play area downstairs for the kids but to do that we needed to organize rest of toys to figure out what could go where and also we needed to clear out my craft boxes from that corner downstairs which will go in the closet downstairs after it is cleared out and painted and shelves put up. Each of these separate tasks in and of themselves would take us at least a weekend if not more for us to accomplish with the kids. Yikes, it just made our tired heads hurt.

Well, Mom and Dad B gave us an anniversary gift this year of paint labor (awesome gift that we really appreciated!) and asked if they could do that over Labor Day. OF COURSE! Our upstairs hallway needed to be painted as well as my craft closet downstairs. I didn't know if we could accomplish this all in one day, but S was going to be home to help too so I had high hopes. Then auntie C offered to come help me organize my craft stuff to put in the closet (and have K play with G), and when it turned out to be 90 degrees and 105% humidity outside, uncle J came over too with cousin G to escape the heat. Well, put 6 adult B's together and it is amazing what can get accomplished in a day! I am still flabbergasted about all the things that got done and crossed off our list:

The upstairs hallway got painted. I didn't realize how unfinished and bad (just white walls after stripping wallpaper a while back) it looked until it was painted the right color! It looks so nice now.


The downstairs craft closet got painted, my craft stuff organized, shelves from IKEA put together (very easy to assemble), a new light installed and stuff moved in - yay!!!!! You don't know how excited I am about this area. We are going to install a drop down table on the wall so I have a space to work as well, it just is back-ordered right now. (btw, C was very excited in this first picture because it is the first time she has got to roller - otherwise she always gets stuck with trim duty! =)



We still watched kids throughout the day too. Here is Pappa (or Grandpa) B playing games with the girls:


And here is W trying to escape from being barricaded into the kitchen with me as I got lunch together for everyone:


S also took the opportunity of Mom and Dad B having their pick-up to run to IKEA and get the Expedit shelf that we wanted for toy storage in our sunroom. J & C have this shelving on their front porch and have put it together before so they offered to stay after supper and J would help S put it together. This was not as easy as it sounded and although we ended the evening with shelves put together and attached tightly to the wall, there was a lot of shaking of fists at IKEA, a trip to Lowes made, J&S making a lot of parts to make this shelf go together, and J not leaving until 10:45 pm (big thanks to C who let us keep J and who brought their kids home and put them to bed by herself). If we lived closer to IKEA, we so would have brought it back. Now we love IKEA and have a number of shelves and things that we have had to put together from them (for example the shelves for my craft closet!). So we are not novices nor idiots (J is an engineer for goodness sake!) - there was something wrong with the holes pre-drilled in the cross pieces - they were not the same size as the holes in the frame or the small wooden dowel pegs that were provided. But luckily, the boys are smart and were able to figure out a way to put the shelves together and here is the finished project:


This week I worked on organizing the toys up here in the new shelf and I was able to get the downstairs area set up too:


So I am in a state of organized bliss right now! A state that I didn't think we would get to before B3 got here, and it happened mostly in one day! Between having spots to put all the toys and all my craft stuff, life is a little bit easier. BIG THANKS to all the B's that helped us out!!! We love you all.