That's right, I am reusing the term "celly junk" in 2013...it reminds me of the days of riding in my celly junk, talking on my celly junk in high school (riding in my Celica, talking on my Nokia cellular phone).
FOCUS! Anyway, I have taken some pictures on my phone lately and thought I would post those random fellows on here since I don't use any of our nice cameras anymore, evidently!
Here is a video of the younguns/olduns flipping at the pool today:
And here is a video of Jacob's diving trick:
I've been doing quite a few projects around the house from May on, and by the looks of things, I have a lot more work to be doing between now and the beginning of October! I think a step in the right direction for me would be to stop finding used furniture that I need to refinish. Yes, that would be a positive thing. But, here are some of the things I have been doing:
Our whole house desperately needs a paint job, but since we're not made of money, that will have to be a job for next spring...in the mean time, earlier in the spring I thought it would be nice to paint some of our exterior doors so they didn't look so junky. And four doors later...I LOVE what a coat of black paint will do!
I had seen this growth chart on the old Bower Power blog a while back and really liked it...and Jeff did too (BONUS!), so I decided to give it a try since all we needed to buy was a 1x10. I had the stain and black paint on hand. I just downloaded a font I liked for the numbers online and the traced really hard over them (like through the paper) so they left indentations on the board and then I filled in those indents with paint.
I liked the way it turned out so much that I gave one as a gift last week too!
Back at the beginning of June, we had the annual million mile yardsale which runs through Cartersville. We picked up a few good finds that day, including these two things. I had been on the hunt for a couple new dressers for Jacob's room since he was using a matching piece of nursery furniture for his dresser and we never purchased the matching dressers for his bunk beds. I liked the skinny tall drawers because I thought it would be practical for little things for the boys (Thomas is in Jacob's room now too), like undies, socks, bathing suits, etc. It was cheap and ugly, but I knew I would paint it and hopefully make it look slightly better...The octagonal table was a sweet find since I had been talking about how I wanted either some type of greater than 4 sided polygon to go in between our two couches in the living room...or a round table. I really like the carving on this one, and again...cheap. This one has yet to be fixed up. Jeff has to take it apart and do a tiny bit of rebuilding before I can sand it down and paint it. I do however already own the paint, so it is NEXT on the list of things to do!
Filled the old hardware holes with wood filler:
Primed this bad boy:
Painted FOUR coats of red on it (I think this is a picture after only like 2 coats...red is a pain to paint with, which is convenient since I despise red. Like really, I do...however, it looks cute in the boys' room. No where else in my house though. Mark my words.)
And, the boys are asleep, and I evidently don't have an "AFTER" shot of this dresser. So you'll have to stay tuned for that. It looks a lot better and has cute hardware...every young boy's dream.
Grabbed this mirror last weekend maybe, knowing that I was going to paint it.
And I did. I painted it to match their long dresser. And there will be an "after" picture of it all together in the room, and hanging on the wall...maybe tomorrow if I and you are realllly lucky!
Got this light at Target...the same light we had before, but with a different color lampshade since they don't sell the shades separately (and spraypainting a previous lampshade didn't turn out to be the best plan I learned...the hard way).
Spray painted the base oil rubbed bronze to match the rest of the hardware in the room: (ooooooh, and a sneak peak of the wall color in Jacob and Thomas' room as well as a sneak peak at the top of the red dresser!)
So, yea, aside from the table, and the baby's room...Jeff got me this piece I had wanted realllllly badly from this antique store in town (for my birthday), and it too will need a bit of work one of these days...That fella's gonna be quite a project.
Our happy Independence Day party inside. July 4th fell in the midst of our week of torrential downpours. No fireworks. No sparklers. Just flag decorated cheesecake bars and polo shirts. (Jacob decorated the bars himself)
This was from the day that Jacob has been waiting for for two years...the first annual "Take Your Jacob to Work Day"! He only went for a few hours in the morning while I got up with Thomas and went to the dentist (during which Thomas joined Jeff at the office too...evidently this was not a good plan in hindsight, says Jeff).
Here is little buddy sporting his cape and undies. I think he's now been using solely the potty, minus nighttime for a little over two weeks...he, similar to his big brother has only had one accident and that was the first day I put him in the undies. After that, he's not had one mishap, even out and about! He has slept in underwear during naps too since day 1. One difference with the two of them is that Thomas is definitely not ready to sleep in undies at night, he still wakes up from his HARD sleep with a big old diaper! I have zero complaints though, I feel very thankful to have had 2 wonderful experiences with potty training so far!
Jacob has been making strides in his own areas. He climbs a lot. And jumps off lots of things. I hear this is normal for boys. I don't recall a lot of jumping off high things in my childhood...
I think most family has asked what I do with Thomas/what Thomas "does" while I am working with Jacob for school stuff. More and more, he is wanting to "do school" too, so I have a few things I pull out (and hope to get some more stuff together over the next couple months...add that to my to do list) that he can do while Jacob and I are working. He really likes the tangrams and by golly, he can figure them out!
This was his first attempt a few weeks ago!
Jacob also uses the tangrams in math occasionally. This day we were all done and he wanted to make up his own picture. He made a lion by a "watering hole" on the Savannah!
