Color!

We have been busy over the past few days.  First, the new car seats came, and Zach and Drew both enjoyed playing with the big boxes they came in.  Perfect timing, as Zach just wrapped up Boxtown week at preschool.

Here's Zach in his fancy new car seat.  So far it seems pretty nice, but with the cold weather comes heavy coats, and any 5 point harness is a pain with a big heavy coat.  

Last week we finally took the plunge and started repainting the inside of our house.  We've lived in this house since it was built, which was 5 years ago.  We picked the original paint, which was a nice color, but, being builder paint, it was very flat.  Having flat paint with two dogs and eventually two kids is not a good idea.  After 5 years, the hallway was a mess.  It was so marked up, and I just hated it.  Plus, the neutral color is nice, but not real fun, so the last couple of years I've really been itching to get some color in here.  I finally wore Mike down so that he was open to the idea, though still a little hesitant to bite the bullet.  It just took me getting the ball rolling, though, and we're now on our way to a more colorful house.  Painting started on Saturday, and as of right now the kitchen, hallway, and stairs are repainted a similar color of beige, and the laundry room and half-bath are pool blue and sundance yellow.  The living room and dining room will be painted next week.  

Here's our painter hard at work:

Ok, we're not really letting Zach paint everything. Our friend Bryn is doing it for us. I used to teach with Bryn's wife Brea, and until she started back full-time this year, she was in playgroup with us. It's really nice having somebody we know and trust in here doing this. And he's way faster than Mike and I could ever be, which is really nice. Plus, he's nice to Zach, which is a bonus, because Zach likes to talk his ear off, if you can imagine.

Here's Zach doing what he does best- talk.  In this picture he was talking to Bryn while Bryn painted the bathroom:

Now for some before and after photos of the bathroom.

Before- just beige

After- sundance yellow

Now, stay tuned to the blog for a new "after" photo of the bathroom.  You may be thinking the same thing I was the first time I really got a good look at the yellow bathroom, which was, "Holy crap, that is VERY yellow."  Turns out that a little 1 by 2 inch rectangle just doesn't really do the color justice.  On the little paint strip it looks like a nice yellow, but in the little half bath, it's way too bright.  It hurts my eyes.  So, I picked a lighter yellow, called pernod, which is apparently a type of liquor.  It hasn't been repainted yet, so I'll post a new picture when it is.

Now, here's the mud/laundry room.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture before it got painted, but it was the same color as the rest of the house- beige.  It also did not have the cabinets before.  Mike and his dad hung those the evening that the room got painted.  I love the new laundry room.  It's such a fun, bright, cheery color, and the cabinets really pop in there.  Plus, the cabinets surprisingly offer much more storage than the shelves we had before, and it's just nice to have our crap hidden away instead of in plain sight.

We didn't take pictures of the kitchen and hallway, because they're basically the same. I'll post more pictures next week after the living room and dining room get painted, and once the bathroom is repainted, too. It's so great to have a little color in the house!

Saturday night we went to a wine tasting party hosted by our friends Tyra and Curtis. It was a lot of fun to get out of the house without the boys, and for Mike and me to hang out with some friends for a while. Plus, I like wine sometimes, but I don't know enough about it to try something new. I don't want to spend $6 on a glass of wine and then hate it, so I end up ordering something I know I'll like, or just getting water (usually the latter). At this party we got to taste 6 different wines, 3 red and 3 white. They were all written down on a piece of paper with some notes about the wine, which was really helpful. I kept the paper so that I know what to order sometime. I really liked a couple of the whites, which surprised me, because I usually just drink red wine. Mike even tasted most of them, which was surprising because he's not a wine drinker at all. We had fun chatting with our friends, and then came home to watch the Hawkeyes win big in Minnesota.  Thanks for a fun party, Tyra and Curtis!

Here I am with a couple of my good girlfriends, Sara and Tyra:

And here we are with our husbands- Curtis, Mike, and Matt:


Drew is getting so busy. He crawls all over now, so I have to keep a close eye on him at all times. He loves to get up on his knees and kneel, and he sometimes manages to pull himself all the way up to standing. The only problem with that is that he seems to sometimes forget he's a little wobbly still, and he lets go, and then he falls over. He also learned how to splash in the bathtub the other night, and had a blast with that. Here he is crawling around with a screw from Zach's workbench in his mouth. He was just tooling around, doing all sorts of things, and this was like his little pacifier. It was pretty cute. It makes me think of my nephew Cam, because he used to do that sort of thing.




And this is a picture Mike took tonight while I was working out. I thought it was cute, which is why I'm sharing it.