Chloe Jo's New Room!

Since Chloe Jo's bed (crib converted into a toddler bed) sat in water for 2+ days after the flood, Russ and I decided to go ahead and replace it with a big girl bed. Chloe was soooooo excited about her bed and still is! She loves sleeping in it and playing on it during the day. She was also excited about her pink walls. She ran into her room and shouted, "it's pink!" one day when we came by to check out the work that was being done. I love that she loves her room so much!

This is a view of her room from the main door. I love how everything looks with the pink walls. Some of you may say it is a little too much, but Chloe Jo and I both love it! The rug is the same one that was in there before, just new. The old one didn't survive the water.

This is her Princess Hair Bow Holder and hope chest. My dad made the hope chest for me when I was younger and I passed it to Chloe Jo when she was born. I made the quilt on top of the hope chest last week. I'll do a separate post all about that tomorrow.
This is a view of her room from the bathroom door. Our full bath is a Jack and Jill so it opens to both rooms of our place. My dad made the kitchen for my niece and she passed it down to Chloe Jo. Dad made a few modifications and painted it for Chloe Jo before it was put in her room. We bought her bed frame from Target. They have a good selection of metal beds and this particular one had 100% satisfactory feedback. I love it because it will grow with her until she is ready to go to college (ugh, I don't even want to think about that...).
This is the dresser that Grampy (my dad) made for Chloe Jo after she was born. He makes each grandchild a piece of furniture (usually a desk or a dresser). I made the cross stitch, the mobile and the felt flower bouquet. I will do a separate post about the flowers, also.
This is the Cabbage Patch Kid corner. My dad and I made the wagon to use in Russ and I's wedding. I wanted both our baby nieces in our wedding (my older niece was a junior bridesmaid). My niece has spina bifida and couldn't walk at the time and Russ' niece wasn't quite old enough to trust to walk down the aisle so they rode in this wagon that was pulled by my oldest nephew. The Cabbage Patch Kids are all mine, but they look so cute in Chloe Jo's room that I let them live there. Believe it or not, I know all of their names without looking at birth certificates!
And there you have it! Chloe Jo's new big girl room that she loves!

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

I think it's been about 4 weeks since I participated in WILW! That's way too long! Go on over to Jamie's and link up to tell us what you're loving, too!

I'm loving that we are finally moved back in and settled again after the tornado/flood. There have been a few minor issues that we've had to have fixed, but over all we are so glad to have a home again!

I'm loving a few wall letters/symbols that I bought from the craft store the other day. They were a gold guilt color and I spray painted them with a nickel finish. Here's a sneak peak!

I'm loving that we cleaned out the kiddie pool and filled it back up for Chloe Jo. She loves to play in the water so her pool was sorely missed for the last several weeks!

I'm loving wind chimes and pretties that you can hang outside around your house!

I'm loving these planters. They were in the ugly hanging baskets they came in and I finally transferred them into something a little more appealing. I'm so glad I did! They look great!

I'm loving these pretty flowers Russ brought me yesterday!

I'm really loving Chloe Jo's room! I love the new paint color and her new bed is gawgeous, dahling, gawgeous. And another sneak peak!

I'm loving the headboard I made to replace our other headboard that was ruined by the tornado/flood! Tutorial here!

I'm loving my sweet, sweet family!

Happy Wednesday, ya'll!

Customized Headboard

One of the things that was ruined by el floodo was our headboard and our dresser. They weren't ruined to where they were unusable, but they looked awful! I have been interested in making an upholstered headboard for a while so we decided to go ahead and do that to replace the ruined one.

We think it turned out great and I'm very happy with it! Here is what I did:

First, I drew a sketch on graph paper of the headboard. The x's are where the buttons were to go and the bottom is the part that is covered up by the bed.
We went to our local home improvement store and bought a sheet of particle board. We had them cut it to the size we wanted. We also had them cut a second smaller piece to use as the wall mount.
I then measured out where I wanted the buttons to go. I took the board outside and set it up in the yard.
I drilled 2 holes at each x.
I then covered the whole headboard with 2-inch wide foam. You can get 1-inch wide, but I am very happy we spent the extra money for the 2-inch. I think we wouldn't have been as happy with the 1-inch. I sprayed the board with spray adhesive before putting the foam on it so the foam wouldn't move around on me when I put the fabric on.
I laid the fabric on our floor with the right side down. I then laid the headboard and foam on top of the fabric. I just folded the fabric over the edges, pulling tight, and stapled it on with a staple gun.
I decided to cover buttons for this project. You can buy a button covering kit at your local hobby shop. I've seen them at the has-everything store, also. I used a thick thread and long needle to go through one hole, string the button and go back down the second hole and tie in the back. This worked out great! We then mounted it on the wall.
I love this headboard! I especially love that it is comfortable to lean on when I want to read before bed time. I hated our old headboard because it had cubby's and was very uncomfortable. This one is perfect!

A Visit from the In-Laws

The week after El Tornado/Floodo Russ' Mom, Dad and niece came to the area for a visit. Since we weren't living in our place and the place we were staying at was out of our town, they decided to spend a couple nights in big town next door. They got in on a Wednesday evening and we were able to spend all day on Thursday! We had a great time visiting with them and it was a welcome break from the stresses of Le Situation.

Russ' Mom, Dad and Alli. Alli lives with Debbie and Tony so she gets to go on their vacations. She has a wonderful big personality and I just love her!

Tony is originally from West Virginia and he has a ton of brothers and sisters (14 or something crazy like that) so they come out this way to visit family and to vacation. Since we are now on the east coast they got to come see us, too! We were thrilled they made the detour. We just wish we would have had a place for them to come to at the time.
We showed them around big town next door and took them to our favorite Mexican restaurant for lunch. Yum! We also took them to our local farmer's market. They loved that! Tony is a gardener extraordinaire so he especially enjoyed the farmer's market. Unfortunately, the air conditioning in their SUV was on the fritz so Russ and Tony went back to our town to get that fixed (we didn't know of any reputable auto repair in big town). While they were there I took Debbie and Alli on a trip to Hobby Lobby. Fun! Fun! Alli picked out a pattern and fabric so I can make her a summer dress while we were there. I started it last week, but the pattern is screwed up (and it isn't just me! I called my Mom to clarify things and it really is the pattern!) so I have to get more fabric before I continue.
We don't look homeless, right? Right!?!

After Tony and Russ got back with the SUV all fixed up (for $20, yo!) we went back to their hotel. Alli had brought Chloe Jo some of her old clothes including a little swimming suit so Alli and Chloe Jo were able to go swimming for a while before dinner. Chloe Jo really loved getting in the pool with Alli! And don't worry. She didn't get off the steps and Russ or I were always on the edge of the pool within arms reach since CJ didn't have a life jacket or a puddle jumper to wear.
We had a great time with Debbie, Tony and Alli! We are looking forward to going west for the holidays this year!

Beach Baby...Not so much.

We decided to go out to North Myrtle Beach today for a day of fun! We felt like we deserved a fun, stress-free day after the last month. We had already planned on going out to a shop on the way to NMB that sells Minnetonka Moccasins. I have had a pair for several years and the insoles were in dismal shape so I wanted to replace them. I wear them as houseshoes all the time and love them. I did get a pair with outer soles this time so I can wear them outside. Yes, I'm that strange. So after stopping to get my moccasins we headed on out to the beach!

I don't think we could have picked a better day! It was partly cloudy and it wasn't super hot. There was a breeze coming in off the ocean. It was perfect weather for a beach trip.
We tried to talk up going to the beach to get Chloe Jo excited, but she balked at the first touch of the sand. She is such a neat-freak! She never did warm up to the sand.
She also didn't like the water at first. She loves her kiddie pool and the bath, but the ocean scared her. I understand that. The water could have knocked her down if we weren't holding her hand.
She did finally warm up to the water and enjoyed putting her feet in it.
Until it came halfway up her calf. Then she didn't like it anymore.
We had a great trip to the beach today! And if I'm going to be completely honest, this trip will last me for a while. I really hate the sand. It's too messy...and I have no idea why Chloe Jo is so OCD.

I'm baaaaaaack!

My sister told me that I had 24 hours and then I had to start blogging again. I think that was at least 72 hours ago. Oops. We have been so busy this week! We finally were able to move back in to our place last Saturday and since then I have been trying to get everything organized and some projects finished. I marked 3 projects off my list! I'm ready to get back to blogging! Thank you for all of your kind words and support during the last month. I'm going to leave you with this picture of the tree on top of our house. You can tell very well, but the roof was caved in in the middle. The picture doesn't do the damage justice.

Stay tuned! I have several projects I want to share!

This isn't the good update I was hoping to do.

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted last so I thought I should update about our situation. We were supposed to move back into our home on Saturday. The contractor called and said it was done so we went and checked it out first. What we found did not make us happy.

First of all, the floors were all redone. I was glad it was all getting replaced because it needed to be updated anyway. Well our awesome landlord used the cheapest materials he could find. The carpet is something you would see in a church building and doesn't even have a carpet pad underneath. It is laid directly on the concrete. Plus, there is a seam going through the middle of our living room that is very visible. There are bubbles in the carpet in the closets in both rooms. The carpet guys didn't cut the carpet to be flush with the wall so there are parts where we can see the concrete. To say I wasn't happy is an understatement. I was even more disappointed with the tile. Again, he used the cheapest tile he could find and it looks like something you would see in a grocery store or Wal-Mart. Those are great for commercial businesses, but it's very dated in a home. I was hoping he would take the opportunity to put a nice tile down that is more modern. I understand that he wants to be cost effective, but it was a ridiculous tile choice especially since he is wanting to sell the place.

The painters were there on Thursday and they said they painted everything including our bedroom and the living room. It was very obvious that the living room wasn't completely painted. There are marks on the walls that I know were there before. Plus, they got paint on a couple of our wall decorations (we were told the living room wasn't going to be painted so we could leave the stuff on the walls as long as we got the furniture out). They also got paint on some of my dishes. If I had realized how sloppy the guys were going to be, I would have gotten everything out of the house. They had told us that we could also leave our dishes because they were going to cover everything with plastic. The plastic didn't do squat and I had to throw away several cooking things. On the upside, Chloe Jo's pink bedroom turned out great!

It ended up that the flooring and paint were the least of our problems. As we were doing a walk-through, I looked at Chloe Jo's closet and instantly spotted mold. Green, nasty mold growing on the walls of her closet. There was no way we were moving back in with mold. Then we found more extensive mold damage under the sink in the 1/2 bath. Needless to say, we didn't move back in on Saturday. We went back to our friends' house feeling very dejected and disgruntled with our landlord causing us to decide to pursue other options.

When we first had to move out of our place, we looked for other rental properties in our area. We were only able to come up with 4 homes that were available. 3 of them were in a part of town that we don't need to be living in. The 4th home is on a highway and I didn't want to live on a highway with a small child. The safety concerns me. We were so upset that we decided to pursue the rental on the highway. Our landlord has never been a good landlord so at that point we were more than willing to move on. We waited until Monday and went in to the real estate office to see about the home. We had to fill out several pages of information before they would even talk to us about the property. After filling everything out, the agent looked over everything and found a "problem." She needed a "local credit reference." This was not something we could provide because we haven't bought any furniture or expensive items in town. Even if we had, we wouldn't have financed them. That being said, the agent started treating us like we weren't worth her time and like she just wanted us to get out of there. I never thought that us not financing furniture or using a rent-to-own place would make us lose out on a rental house. She said the only other option is a double security deposit. That's a lot of money that we don't have.

We left there and I lost it. I have held it together through this whole mess (except for the initial "our house is flooded" realization) until that point. We had pursued all of the options and had come up empty with every single one. I felt like we were homeless and there was nothing we could do about it. We checked into a hotel and are now living here until the mold problem is "fixed." I don't believe for one second it will be fixed correctly. At this point we are going to move back into our current home and keep an eye out for other rentals. We don't want to buy a house here because we don't think we would be able to sell it easily if we were to ever move.

And that's all folks.