Last Sunday my sister, Bethany, and I gave Leigh (which is my other sister) a baby shower. It went off great. We planned it at the beach and everyone had a very short notice so we weren'tsure who would come. It turned out great! Peanut is due January 1, and I can't WAIT to meet him or her.
Since our new building at church was built on our egg hunt hill, we moved the hunt to the middle school football field. Angie and I aren't sure what the final egg count was. Our goal was 3,000 and we stopped counting after that was reached. The donations of eggs and prizes were such a blessing!
It was great! We had so many volunteers step up to help with the set up and hot dog lunch and supervising the bouncy houses. My kids had a blast. Wyatt followed the buddies around, and Levi was in the obstacle course house to help little people get up the climbing wall. 
The best news was we had people register before the hunt so we could see how many people came. We had FOURTY people come that do not go to our church. TWO of those families came to Easter Service on Sunday! 
It has been such a blessing to watch the growth of our church since we have been going there the past three years. Sunday morning in our new building I found myself quite emotional. I can't wait to see how the youth and Kids for Christ programs flourish.
If you know me on Facebook, you already know that I painted the brown in one day and started the trim. Then the snow/sleet started falling and school was cancelled for two days and the trim took me forever. You simply can NOT paint with kids at home. Every time I climbed up the ladder World War 3 would ensue and it was just completely pointless. 
Landon said he wanted it "dark" and "cavelike", so here we are. This paint was leftover from the stairs last year, and the trim color is leftover from the mudroom. I planned on painting one wall to prove a point (it is too dark) and fell in love with it. Thinking of doing it in the playroom also. 
These shelves are the only new thing in the room right now. I have some more organizers, but am waiting to see where I want to hang pictures and such first. I like to hang out in a room for a few weeks, before I start putting holes in the walls. The plastic has been on those french doors since I was pregnant with the buddies! Can't believe I waited that long to poly them. Feels great in here. We even do homework in this room now. So cozy, and the kids don't have to move their stuff off of the kitchen table for supper time. I have some antique radios upstairs. Do you think they would look good on top of the shelves?
All of the crap pushed into the playroom. Amazingly, I stayed pretty calm during this one. I didn't have my usual meltdown halfway through the project. Being able to close the door on the mess helped. 
Landon said he felt like he was living on an episode of "Hoarders". Everything was pushed into the middle of the floor with tiny paths around the perimeter for my ladder. The best part? I already had all of the paint from previous projects. I only had to buy tape and a brush.
My sister in law is re-doing her kids closets and wanted some ideas. This first one, is my recycling cabinet in the old kitchen. I purchased see-through bins, labeled them with my label maker (a must), then copied the page from our trash collectors web site and put it on the door. It simply lists the things we can put into the blue box outside. The shelves are from some left over wood we already had, the brackets are from Lowe's.
This is the kids craft cabinet. These bins are from Hobby Lobby (when they were on sale for 1.99 a piece). We have different categories of markers, crayons, play doh, gift wrap, and paper. The top shelf is for school projects and extra school supplies. Always have clay, popsicle sticks, paint, glue, new crayons, sequins, beads, yarn, foam shapes, and poster board on hand. As for new stuff, I personally keep crayons, colored pencils, markers, glue sticks, and Expo markers. I get these when school supplies are on sale in August. (for example, Crayola crayons were 25 cents, so I got three dollars worth)
These bins are great for big things. We have many of these. I got these at Bed, Bath and Beyond when they were on clearance at the end of the summer. I bought every blue and green one they had. We use them for Legos, Hot Wheels city, Thomas the Train buildings, play clothes, CARS buildings, etc. This was previously a computer armoire, that I have removed the pull out keyboard shelf from, and made into storage.
The same cabinet has cork board in it (on the inside of the doors) that I purchased from Lowe's and applied with Command adhesive strips. I saw this in the Pottery Barn Kids catalog and knew I could recreate it cheaper. The buddies can put up art work and change it out as they please. They like to get behind the doors and play store. They will make posters and pin them on of what they are "selling".
Self explanatory. Shoe storage behind their door. All the boys have one. The big boys keep other things in theirs like Nerf guns, DS stuff, batteries, chargers, etc. If they are high enough, little hands can't reach them.
Stuffed animal storage. The buddies are only allowed three animals at a time on their beds. Because more often than not, the animals are on the floor. They can change out selections here. When all is full and something new comes along, something must be donated.
The buddies closet. The large bins are labeled by spring summer, and fall winter. The other bins are from Big Lots. I think I paid around one dollar for each of them. They were on clearance. I recycled the lids. Kids don't use lids. Don't ask me why. If the lid is on, they just pile the crap on top of it. I put pictures on the boxes so they could clean up on their own, before they could read. Only one has changed in the past four years. Dinos is now Transformers, but we decided to keep the same label. They like to play inside their closet, they call it their "office". So I found this car rug at Big Lots, again on sale. It was around four dollars. You must dig around in that store people. Allot of times the good deals are buried.
Lastly, is my chalkboard in the old kitchen. As you can see it is simply chalkboard paint, then an old frame stuck over it with Command adhesive strips. I can put up notes to the boys for their day at school, as they walk right past here going to the mudroom. 
So, for those of you who have never been to the house, this was previously open to the living room. Every time someone opened the back door, we lost heat or air conditioning in the TV area. This wall is insulated, making both rooms very comfortable, and quieter. This is a laying area for chickens from the chicken house across the street. It works well for shoes, and the best part, it was free. 
The plan is for each child to come in, remove their shoes, and hang up their stuff before entering the house. G was home sick when I took these, that is why there is only one coat and one backpack pictured above. 
If you go back to the previous posts of the before shots, you can see that we split the row of windows in the living room. The mud room is extremely bright and cheery with this window and the side window. I want to know if y'all would put up some valances or leave the windows plain?
Saturday, I had planned to quickly remove all of the tape, and get cracking on the poly. The tape had other plans. It wouldn't come down. (it is perfectly normal to own ones personal drop cloth, admit it, you have one too)
It took two hours to remove all of the slivers of tape, using the hubs pocket knife and some super sharp tweezers. Oh yeah, it was fun.
Okay, as you can see we have copied the hallway, that we did in 2008, and continued the bead board theme into the mudroom. 
I would like to point out the darkly stained trim, that took one coat of Kilz and THREE coats of paint to cover. I would also like to point out the electrical box that was faux finished way before that was even a hobby. They also did the pole in the above shot. That is a WORLD OF NO, people. Please, for future generations, no one is being fooled into thinking that wasn't an electrical box. 
I took this one right before "the accident". See the green hat? That was the culprit. The bench stopped me and then I fell onto everything in the middle of the floor. The only thing missing is my dryer, or if you want to be exact....new appliances. My brother-in-law asked me where they were. "In Lowe's" was my reply, lol.
Since I am nearing the end of the mudroom project, I am going to post the before pictures. We previously had a dark closet, about hobbit height. I can't tell you how many times the kids thought their coats were lost, only to get a flashlight and locate it in said closet. Ha, there is the Pioneer hat that I took a ride on, nice.
Above the closet of darkness, the hubs would clean out his pockets and leave the stuff on top. Change, soybeans, corn, tickets from hauling grain, motorcycle helmets, a part of the planter, you get the picture.
This side was the area to remove shoes and coats and backpacks. In case anyone was wandering, those are egg baskets, and that bench is from the old Mount Pleasant high school locker room (not the one I fell on). Stay tuned for more.
October got REAL busy, real fast! But H1N1 stopped us in our tracks. Happy Halloween!
This is for the peeps who keep asking me what our summer plans are. The big boys have a week of Challenge at Rock Creek Park, where they will be hiking, rock climbing, camping and canoeing with Aunt Bethany and the other staff. Hopefully we can get to Carowinds at least once this summer. We aren't going to get seasons passes this year. 
All four boys are taking two weeks of swimming lessons the weeks in June after school gets out. If anyone would like to join us we are doing the 9-9:45 classes at John F. McGinnis pool. There will also be random other pool dates at my grandmothers house, of course.
Last, but definitely not least, a week at the beach. Y'all know we have to do that, lol. But that isn't until August. Oh, I almost forgot. My big boys are attending Apple Camp at Southpark and learning how to make and edit their own movies. As always, we will participate in our local libraries summer reading programs, where the boys get prizes for reading a certain number of hours. And the best part? Teaching the buddies how to sleep later. 
Last week, during Easter vacation, I cleaned out the fridge. What you can't see in this pic (because the hubs took it with his iPhone) is the two empty doors. He came in shortly after I finished, opened the fridge, surveyed the situation and started singing.......
Remember the "broken binder" episode? These are the papers that didn't make the cut into the new one. Why does he carry around everything in the binder? Backpacks are only allowed to carry your stuff to and from the buses. They go straight into your locker and stay there all day. The kids are only allowed to go to their lockers after certain periods. Levi doesn't want to forget anything, therefore he hauls it all around all day. The second nine weeks are over, and I still can't get it through his head to not carry around his math workbooks all day after second period. Wow.....can y'all believe the school year is already half way finished?Report cards come next week. Keep your fingers crossed.
