Taking a Break

Well, I didn't get anything house wise done today.  And I'm sure the Grandma's are tired of seeing pictures of the house... its been awhile since I posted pics of the girls.  Its been snowing a little bit the last few days, leaving an inch or so behind. The last week we've gotten about 5 inches.  And today its been a light snow pretty much all day long... supposed to get 3 inches by tonight.  So we went outside to play in the snow (the girls were driving me nuts!!)  We'll see how fast they get tired of the snow! LOL! 

The dreaded toy room

So we got the bookcases together and the books on it. I'm going to put the scrapbooks on the empty shelves as soon as I dig them out of a box in my scraproom.

And next - I did it! I went downstairs and after much flipping out (because I hadn't been down there in a few days and you seriously could not see the floor because they had dumped every toy, crayon, bead, etc) - I started sorting through the mess... and I sorted, and sorted, and sorted some more.

The girls had taken every Little People set they own out of the box, so I made them find all the pieces (except two... but they've gotta be around somewhere!) and put them back in the respective boxes and they got to choose two to keep out. Then I put the shelves together, sorted out the toy drawers, put the books on the bookshelf, barbie stuff in the barbie house, etc...

And three hours later, this is what it looks like

Now... I guess I'm going to have to start going through the boxes in my scraproom!

Day... whatever!

AGGGGHHHH!!!! I'm so tired of the mess!!!! It seems like I get one room done, and the girls have trashed another, so then I straighten up that one, and then we fill it up with stuff again!

We spent about $400 in Fairbanks yesterday on bookshelves, computer chairs, a carpet for the playroom, and shelving for the girls closets. Which means instead of spending the weekend putting our stuff away, we spent it putting together the storage so we can put our stuff on it. Needless to say, we haven't been able to clean because we've made a bigger mess putting the stuff up! ACK!

And I'm tired, and my back hurts, and I'm tired... so we got the shelves up in the closets (but I'm not taking pictures because we've already put junk on the shelves!) We got both the computer chairs put together (one for the scraproom) and one of the bookshelves... Dustin is putting the other one together as I blog... hehehehe!

And look what my lovely husband did today as I was totally unmotivated to do anything but cook! LOL! Seriously, we had breakfast and lunch and I did the dishes, but I didn't want to leave the kitchen today!

Here is our master bedroom. Now, I know the before picture doesn't really look that bad, but TRUST ME!! Over the last few days it was a 'catch all' room and you couldn't see the floor, much less get into the closet. I crawled over clothes and linens to get to bed and have been wearing jamas out of my dresser as I couldn't get to my closet to find real clothes!

And now...

My closet... seriously, you couldn't even get in here before! And the clothes were on the floor in the bedroom, not hung all nice. The only thing I had to listen to from my husband was "You have way too many clothes, and look at all these shoes!!! You cannot possibly need this many shoes!! Why don't we get rid of some!" LOL! You'd think he'd learn after how many moves... and I've actually downsized my clothes and shoes!

And the master bath - which has been done since we got in the house, but this is what it looks like :)

Day 2 Progress

So Wednesday night, since I slaved over the kitchen all day long, I made Dustin do the living room!  Plus, he wanted to hook up his TV, and xBox, and Playstation... and everything else! So the room with the TV in it was a priority for him!  Remember what it looked like before:

Hey, I think he had it pretty easy compared to the job I had with the kitchen. Especially since the clothes were just thrown in the girls' closets and whatever else didn't go in the room was put in the office for me to do the next day! MEN!

The girls are happy to have their TV back as well! LOL!

See the snow outside the window...

This is what it looks like from the front porch - we have about 4 inches and its still snowing lightly outside.

And then yesterday I got some of the office done too! I was tired of sitting on the floor to get to the computer!  Before:

Off to the right (not in the picture) there is still a large pile of books.  I think they were packed in a box in our basement, we're going to buy bookshelves to put them in. Oh and it turns out they broke the computer chair... so we have to buy another one this weekend.

I also did the girls closets last night and separated all the clothes into summer, winter, and by sizes (somewhat). And we were able to put their clothes in their closets!  Ruby and Karis' room before:

Now... matching princess quilts and the dresser is moved to the wall on the left.

Next job is Sierra's room and the master bedroom... I've semi-started the scraproom, but I'm not taking any pictures of the mess yet!! And I'm dreading the toy room... its worse than a few days ago as they've basically dumped every box of toys onto the floor!

Day 1: Kitchen

So remember a few weeks ago when we first moved in:

And then yesterday it was this:

Well, after about 5 hours today, it now looks like this!

My back hurts, I'm done for the day... will work on a room tomorrow!

Our Stuff is HERE!!!

We got our household goods today... all 9,000 pounds of it!!! We have so much crap, I've already started a 'Give Away' pile!  So Dustin wanted the movers to unpack and take the boxes with them, and he said he would put all the furniture, etc together!  BAD IDEA!!! I told him, but ultimately let him make the decision... one that we will never make again!  It's so much easier to unpack ourselves and put it where we want, otherwise you get this:

Everything unpacked in the kitchen... drawers are filled to the brim with random junk that doesn't even belong in the kitchen!! GRRR!

Plates, dishes, everything basically shoved into the cabinets and piled on the shelves... the top cabinet I had already started to straighten out!

Computer room... not too bad, just a big pile of scrapbook paper and stamps that was marked computer paper so the box got put in this room and unpacked and put on the floor.

Clothes for some reason used as fillers for our electronic boxes, so now they decorate our couch.

DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED!!! GRANDMA'S, THIS MESSAGE IS FOR YOU! THEY DO NOT NEED ANY MORE TOYS FOR CHRISTMAS!!!  I'm thinking a limit this year... two toys and two outfits per child! (seriously!)

Hmmm... the cleanest room in the house for once!  I did not want them touching my scrapbook stuff... ahhh...look at the pretty boxes all nice and neat against the wall....

Sierra's bedroom, Dustin had already put up the bed. Don't even think about looking in the closet, its piled about 4 feet high with clothes and linens.

The master bedroom... not much difference here tonight except that we were able to pile everything against the wall and put the bed together. It's SO VERY NICE to have my own bed back!

A box of bath stuff... so where does Dustin put it... in the bath!!! GRRR!!

Ruby and Karis' room... this is actually the best room now, the beds are put together (after about 3 hours and me telling the girls that this was a 'bad word zone' so stay out!) and everything else was moved out (P.S. don't open the closet)

So everyone has beds and I will work on the kitchen the next few days so we can eat and cook. Definitely have to find a butcher's block cabinet or something for all the extra appliances I have as we had WAY MORE cabinet space in Germany.  We decided that we will just take one room at a time (not counting closets) and hopefully have everything put together in a few weeks!  So nobody plan any visits until the middle of October, because I'm not giving up my bed again!

Happy Birthday Ruby!!

Ruby is officially 4!! Woohoo!!  We had a small get together with our friends and their kids on Sunday for pizza and ice cream cone cupcakes.  Enjoy the pics!

Here's one ice cream cone you can eat from the bottom!

Our new house

These pictures were taken on Wednesday when we moved in, so basically we had nothing in here.  Shortly after the beds and kitchen table were delivered and we've since had the computer and TV and the rest of our unaccompanied baggage delivered. And we bought couches and shoe racks and some other shower stuff.  But here are the pics:

From the kitchen into the dining area. Half wall on left towards back covers stairs that lead to the garage.

Turned around in the kitchen into the family room. Door on left leads to back yard.

From back door. Our yard is fenced and there is a gate on the right that leads to the park.

From hallway to stairs to the garage.  Bathroom on left, kitchen is on the other side of the wall on the right.

One car heated garage, above where I'm standing is a loft for storage.

If you turn around the in hallway, to the right is the living room. Stairs on the left lead to the basement.

From the hallway to the left is the family room (Also seen from the kitchen) Stairs lead upstairs (we have split stair cases).

From the half landing on the staircase leading upstairs to the bedrooms.

The girls bathroom, now decorated in purple, blue and lime green fish and octupi!

Master bedroom. Master bath is on the left and walk-in closet on the right.

Master bath.

Walk-in closet... hey, I'm excited! Its been FOREVER since I've had a walk-in closet!

Ruby and Karis' room.

Sierra's room (and the new baby in about a year).

Basement - HUGE laundry room! This is the only room without drywalled in walls.

This will be my scraproom. There is a solid wall on the left that is shared with the playroom - its a nice sized room for my scrappy stuff!

This is the girls' playroom. Its about 10x14 feet.

And here is a sunset from the parking lot of the Lowes in Fairbanks. It was much prettier, but I made Dustin drive around the HUGE LOWES sign so it wouldn't be in my picture, and by the time we got the girls in the car and did that, the sun had set more :(  Oh well... I have three more years to get the perfect sunset shot :)