basically *finished* half bath and some others!

We have one almost *completely* finished room! The half bath! All we need left to do is hang blinds, pick out/construct a mirror, get a light fixture, and a few random touch-ups. I actually have often forgotten that it is done and run up the stairs to the bathroom and then remember. That's a real bummer.

I shared in my last blog my inspiration for this bathroom. We were planning to just put the hardwood floors we have downstairs in the bathroom but one day we were shopping at home depot and ran into this awesome vintage looking black and white floor. We both fell in love and are actually really glad we went with tile in here instead of wood....we will be potty training soon- enough said.

Here are some before and after pictures of the bathroom:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

So we kept the original shelf above the toilet because we thought it was charming! Seth built some built-in shelves to go above the toilet- I feel like they look like they've always been there- which we were trying to make it look original. 

First room with crown molding!!

Also the first room with baseboards!
We found a matching toilet flusher to our faucets on clearance, which was just fun.

I still need a mirror and a light fixture. We found a light we both LOVE, just need to budget it in. 

I love my tile floors!

Porch Demo:

I think I posted a few pictures of our porch demo on facebook, but I'll post a few more on here. We really liked the idea of having a sunroom off of the dining room, but it just wasn't in good enough condition to keep. There was also a deck on top of it that was attached to the master bedroom- also a really fun idea, but it had rotted through so we wouldn't have been able to safely step foot on it. Someday we miiiiiight rebuild a sunroom and add a master bath/closet on top. Maybe. But for now, there is a door from our master bedroom leading to nowhere. Yep, we are that house. We had amazing help from family and friends at church- thank you thank you so much, you blessed us tremendously!!

This was the porch before we took it down, it was being used as Seth's wood storage shed.

Another view. We also took down the awning and plan to take down the rest, eventually. 

Our cute little helper, she didn't want to miss a thing. 

The awesome team taking it down.

Thank you to our awesome Dad B. for letting us load down your truck!

Getting closer...

Last beam to come down!

Seth doing a bunch of patch work where the porch was attached to the house. Since then he has patched it in quite a bit more. We will eventually get a glass patio door to replace the awesome turquoise door so we can walk out from our dining room to our awesome new patio. Next summer (maybe) Seth is going to build us a table, but for now we will enjoy our pair of chairs :). Oh, also, notice the door on the second floor. Yeah, be jealous your house doesn't have this :).

Furniture business:

Seth has been dreaming of starting his own furniture business for years now. He has built quite a few pieces of our furniture in our own home in his dad's shop, or on our apartment balcony, etc. Now that we have a house with a workshop in the basement and a garage to work on projects it is finally possible. That is, after he finishes building our house ;). Picking a name for his business has been sort of like picking a baby name (which, no, we still don't have one)...it has to be perfect. There is one he pretty much loves, but we will reveal it once it is official. Anyways, he did take a little time to make a bench for a friend who was surprising his wife. And I personally think it is awesome. It is made out of old barnwood. The legs were those huge beams in the barn- really really solid. Keep him in mind for all your custom furniture ideas :)

Pregnancy:

I am a little bit over 29 weeks and it honestly is going too fast. I am just not quite ready for this little man to enter the world yet. We don't even have a name picked out yet. We definitely don't have a room for him yet. I have a bin of some random garage sale boys clothes I've been buying, but not enough for how much a newborn goes through. A lot of our baby stuff is sprawled out in the spare unfinished room, basement in multiple places and a closet. This boy will probably be using pink blankets and maybe even pink onesies if I don't get moving. 

Gracie:
We have been hitting defiance with Gracie like never before. I know she's not even two yet so i'm sure we have a way to go. It.is.exhausting. We were in home depot the other day and she flat out threw herself on the ground screaming. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. We both looked at each other and said we have no idea what to do with this child, and who in the world is she?! Her own sin nature is coming out very loudly and it is honestly hard to know what to do at times. Balancing grace with discipline with consequences with not sparing the rod with i'm-exhausted-and-just-ignore-the-tantrum. And she's only 21 months. All you parents out there- you're amazing. I've never appreciated you as much as I do now. Oh, and we worked at FamilyLife for 2 years, shouldn't we have a resource on this somewhere? probably, but by the time I deal with the tantrum, i'm ready for a nap. There really is so much to love about her spunky and sweet personality, we just have to help "shape" it....

She does have her sweet moments most definitely. And those moments that send us doubled over laughing so hard.

It took alllll summer of her hating the water, but on the last night the pool was open, she LOVED it.

"painting" :)

Happy Friday and three day weekend to most of you who get off Labor day! 

Song of the day: "How can it be" by Lauren Daigle

a few things from life lately

Whew time is speeding by. Hello third trimester and goodbye summer, basically. When did that happen?! We have been cruising along on the house trying to get as much done before baby boy makes his grand entrance as well as before we need to have a second appraisal. The whole house project/renovation/makeover/whatever you want to call it has really been consuming our time when we have free time. I go in bursts with it, some days I feel inspired, other days overwhelmed, other days just tired of working on it (rather of Seth working on it) and desperate for the season to come when we can just be a family- with only small, not-as-pressing projects and when our Friday nights aren't always "work nights" but rather the occasional "date night"....all in all though, I am loving it here in our home and each time we finish another project it feels like a new house all over again, which is sort of fun considering I love new things. The timing of how long we think things should take and when we thought we would be done has completely overturned basically all of our expectations. We now just assume everything will take longer than we think it should. It's is a lot better mentally for us and then we feel awesome when we get something done sooner :). The current project Seth is working on is our half bath....I LOVE it so far...pictures to come. (I know I know, like I haven't said that before...)

Life has been full lately as well. I got a job as a nurse again- woohoo! I work one evening a week teaching Childbirth classes (timely, right?), it's perfect right now to get my foot back in the door and not to have to find a babysitter since Seth is home then. So far it's been a blast. Though, every time I am at a class I am reminded of what is to come for me in 12 weeks......

Gracie is at a super fun age right now. She is 20 months and so full of life. She is also such a little diva. She will grab one of my purses, sling it on her shoulder accompanied with 4 or 5 necklaces around her neck and a cell phone to her ear while pushing her baby in a stroller and wearing sun glasses. I seriously love it. She is also getting much better about entertaining herself with her toys or books which is fun to watch and a welcomed break :). She is also starting to talk a ton, part of me doesn't want her to grow out of her half baby garble/ half real words. She is spirited, sweet, stubborn, hilarious, compassionate, curious and super social. Thankfully she is reallly really into babies right now, i'm hoping that is to our benefit as baby makes his arrival :).

Baby boy- we don't have a name yet, we either can't agree or just can't decide. It may come down to the delivery room at this point. Meaning is important to us when it comes to picking out a name. So we might really like a name but it has terrible meaning, so for us it's out. I really really liked a name but Seth had a hamster for two days that he returned to the store because it had a growth that he named that name so he doesn't like it. Stinkin hamster. 

We attempted a garden. But it actually looks more like a jungle right now. It's really pitiful actually, but we have harvested a few zucchini, tomatoes and green beans. Better luck next year....

This past weekend I was in Knoxville, TN for a training for Deeper Still (I have a whole other blog I've been crafting on this that i'll hopefully post soon)...it was an awesome weekend away with a group of women I call my "unlikely community"- only God could have crossed all of our paths and brought us together. 

Here's a few pictures of life lately:

This is our half bath currently, Seth just finished painting the planks on the wall and the beadboard and we have a really cool vintage black and white tile floor to hopefully go in this weekend! I can't wait to have a bathroom on our main floor!

This picture is our inspiration for the half bath, found on pinterest. We will also have a pedestal sink in ours :)

My awesome "unlikely community"...oh how I have been abundantly, deeply blessed by these dear souls.

This was a week ago at 27 weeks when I *almost* failed my glucose test, thankfully my doctor uses a more forgiving scale and I barely made it in the "safe number" parameter!

Some of our garden yield. These look look A LOT larger in this picture, they were tiny. But we were thrilled, nonetheless!

My boy and I at David and Heather's wedding, Seth was a groomsman- it was a gorgeous wedding!

FINALLY got pigtails in this girl's hair! We have made huge progress with her letting me put her hair up! This mom is happy about that :)

Seth texted me this picture when  was gone last weekend, I love my little family.

                           Just a normal day in our home, G loves to talk, I personally think it's adorable :)

I LOVE this. It was in the home of a very dear woman in Knoxville, TN. I couldn't not take a picture.
"Your beautifully, messy, complicated story matters, tell it"

our gender reveal video :)

Intentions. I have intended to blog on so many different things recently including our house, deeper still, life, etc. I still do intend to, really I do.

About a week ago we found out the gender of our baby. We were going to be out of town that weekend with Seth's family on a little vacation, and leaving the afternoon we found out, so we wanted to come up with a fun but travel friendly & quick idea to announce the gender.

We had a pretty good idea of the gender based on how I was feeling and a slightly earlier ultrasound but still we weren't positive. Obviously we were excited and really just thankful either way.

So here is the video we sent to my family and the way we told Seth's family later that evening :)

I hadn't taken any pregnancy photos yet, time has honestly flown with this one. This picture is actually almost a couple weeks old as i'm almost 21 weeks now but it gives me something to document :) 

And for fun, here is a video of Gracie from recently. She's at a SUPER fun and yet SUPER (and ever growing) challenging age (18 months). I love that girl!

baby and little rock visit :)

Most likely if you saw my blog link on facebook, then you saw my facebook announcement as well. But I will share it again anyways, we are expecting baby #2!! I am a smidge over 13 weeks and due November 13. I will be honest, this time we were completely surprised. With Gracie we tried for about 10 months and it was a roller coaster of emotions every month. Our plan ("plan") this time was to start trying this summer, that way we had a little time to live in our home and do some more work on it. But things happened differently than we had thought they would and we actually found out on the very day we moved into our house. God has a funny sense of humor some times.  So needless to say, since the nausea & fatigue caught up to me pretty quickly, the house is still not unpacked and there are a bazillion things to do between now and next fall. Above all, though, we are so so thankful and excited about this baby and even the timing of it all.

In other news...we just returned from a trip to Little Rock. It was our first time back since we moved last June. I wasn't sure what to anticipate emotionally- whether it would be so hard or whether I'd feel peaceful and confident in our decision or whether I'd want to move back, etc. It ended up really being everything and then some. Mostly, though, it was incredibly refreshing for me and overflowed my heart with community and friendship.

It was actually planned originally because my girls bible study that was led by Aileen was about to come to an end. Aileen and her husband, Howard, are moving back to Africa, where they already have spent over 20 years serving as missionaries. What an example to us girls in her group of obedience and vision and trust. So I got to be there for some of the last sweet moments together. Oh my goodness. To sit around that table one last time that we've shared so many tears, laughs, lessons, love. It was life-giving, refreshing, bitter-sweet, tearful, sweet, fun, and just so so good to be there.

She actually threw a tea for us. A real high tea. We wore hats and gloves and dressed up. We sat on the beautiful southern front porch and sipped "champagne" (don't worry, not real) and caught up on life. Then we moved inside to a beautifully dressed table complete with tea cups and a tier of  tea sandwiches, strawberries, chocolates and scones. She asked each of us to sit in front of a tea cup that jumped out to us and then told us she was giving us that tea cup to take home. They were each different, delicate and beautiful. What a sweet gift. She gave each of us a handwritten, personal card about how she would specifically be praying for us. I will go back to that afternoon many times in my heart as one of those "unforgettable" moments. What a beautiful woman of Christ. I will hold so dear the lessons and example she left me with.

Her and her husband also thew us a barbeque with both the mens and womens groups that Seth and I had been a part of. They even bought us steak! I really felt so loved and pampered, it was something else.

We spent the rest of our time catching up with dear dear friends. We did breakfasts, lunches, dinners, late night talks and playdates. We even got to be there when our friend got awarded Little Rock school district teacher of the year! It was full but great. We didn't get to see everyone this time but are grateful for who we did get to catch up with! We stayed with a family we had grown really close to when we lived there and enjoyed having time to catch up. They were so generous to feed us and be gracious with our in and out and smiled knowingly as we dealt with our our temperamental 17 month old :).

I was surprised by how comfortable it was being there. To be honest it felt like we never left. Those faces and voices and homes that we spent some much time with, are still so familiar. I felt at home. Like more at home than my current home. And that was hard.

The past almost-year here has been a rough transition and much more difficult than we had anticipated. I still know we were called back to Illinois and have a complete peace about that, but I wavered under the feelings of longing I had to jump right back in there. I don't really have a great solution for my heart yet. I want to be fully where I am and I want to feel excited to be there. But I think this is a lesson in obedience and slowly letting God open my heart. Don't get me wrong, there are WONDERFUL things that I love about being back in IL, and it doesn't have to do with that, really. It is more, dealing with what we left and the ache I still have for those people and places and life.

The last morning there I took a walk by myself. I drove to our old neighborhood and walked the same path I had walked countless times. I had on the song "Oceans" by Hillsong and repeated it over and over again. I cried and processed. Maybe this all sounds a little much. But I'm highly emotional and need to work through the intensity of my emotions otherwise they tend to get the best of me. So I did just that and I let it go. I felt like I could turn another page in my book called "my journey". Then I drove away. It was good, hard-good, but really good.

The whole trip was really just what I needed. So selfishly, thank you to everyone who opened up their schedules to spend time with me or us. We love you dearly!

The trip came to a pretty brutal end, actually. We were on our way to the airport...like in the car, and Gracie starts coughing and then doing this weird thing with her mouth and then she puked, a lot. It was a smelly mess and it was everywhere. Meanwhile I'm scrambling to clean her up and not throw up myself (on top of being pregnant nauseous makes a really bad combination as we are on winding roads), we get a phone call. I left my phone at the Blunier's house. Oops. And we were already running late. Then Gracie threw up two more times. It was just bad. So we finally got to the airport (so sorry Gary for your horrendously messy carseat we left you with, we owe you!) and I ran Gracie to the bathroom, stripped her clothes and gave her a quick sink tub. We got through security just as they were finishing boarding our plane. I was just *slightly* overwhelmed at this point. Thankfully she didn't get sick anymore either plane ride and was a total champ.

One of our carry on bags got checked at the plane. No problem, right? Well that's what we thought. When I went to pick it up during our layover they said they would just pass it through to our connecting flight. I had never heard of this so I questioned him like 10 times but he said it was what it was. Well, okay, we will just get it when we land in Peoria then.

We land in Peoria a little after 10pm, exhausted, nauseous (me), and ready to get home. We went to our baggage claim and waited for our bags. And we waited. And then I noticed pretty much everyone else had left. So we waited some more and finally went to ask one of the employees. Crud. All of our bags, including our carry on were still in Dallas, they didn't make the connection. But they would deliver them to our house the next day. So this shouldn't be a big deal, right? I mean a bummer but "get-over-it" kind of deal. Well the problem was our car keys were in that carry-on that was still in Dallas. Soooo we were stuck at 11pm at the airport. It was just not the ending to the day we had anticipated. I called my dad and he came to pick us up, thank you dad!

Yes, all our bags- including our car keys, came in the next day :).

I will post a few pictures below...I'm sorry to those I didn't get a picture with- Thanks for an awesome 5 days!!

At our high tea all dressed up! 

 My teacup

 Miss Aileen serving us our tea...doesn't she look beautiful?

 yummy tea sandwiches, scones & strawberries with real whipped cream

Such a dear group of women! 

 All the kids at our playdate! They've all grown up so much and sweet Annie was added!

 Forever friends (Em, I still can't get over Isaac's curls!!)

The moms- I love learning & growing with these amazing women! 

We spent a lot of time with this awesome family! Gracie was sad to wake up to none of her buddies when we got home! 

Our little champ on the ride home!

We are in!

oh my word. I cannot believe how long I've neglected to write here. I have a lot of good excuses if you want to hear them but you'd probably rather not :).

Well we are in the house! As of a week and a half we have been living here as a family again! There is still ALOT of tender loving care and projects that need done, but we are in and that in itself is huge. We are so so so grateful for the help from family and friends to get us to this point- thank you does not express our gratitude. 

I call this house our labor of love. When we bought it we had sketched out and dreamed up and pinned a thousand ideas that would be PERFECT. We thought we would be there in a month or two. And then things started taking longer and we kept running into more complications or "road blocks". And more. And more. And we realized it was going to be harder and take longer than we really every imagined. 

It took a toll on us, really heavily actually. We had some painful, isolating times of hurt and stress and trying to transition back to Illinois and parenthood and marriage and fears. Thanks to God's grace and family and friends and good sound counselors, we are coming out the other side...the one that feels more like spring. New life, fresh perspective, new hopes. Realistic expectations (at least semi realistic). 

It is has sort of paralleled our house, really. First we had to do demolition- tear out the old or the things that needed redone. Then we had to fix the stuff that no one can see- the plumbing, electrical, heating/air, etc. Then we started to slowly piece, room by room, back together the parts you can see. The parts that make a house look pretty and enjoyable to be in. It was like that with us too. God used a house renovation to dig up stuff in our lives and marriage that needed major redoing. Changing of bad habits and selfish ways. Then we work on the hard but foundational things- the electrical/plumbing things. Eventually if you keep putting bandaids/quick fixes on problems, they will break down. Then you start to see the results of the hard work- the noticeable things, little by little. One victory at a time. 

I realize I have posted ZERO pictures and I fully intend to post millions in the not distant future. I would like to fix it up just a liiiiiittle bit more...but I might cave and snap the photos anyways just how it is. 

Anyways. My main point in writing this blog was to share with you a quote that someone recently shared with us. 
"Hope does not diminish because Christ cannot diminish"

Love & Blessings,
Ang

Oh, here a few sneak peaks at the house:

This photo shows a bit of our countertops, floors and cool new barstools!

I love tulips! And beyond them you can see through the dining room into the living room.

Our new rug that we got from our house shopping weekend in chicago! I LOVE it.

one year pictures!

The snowy COLD day coupled with a van that has no heat leaves me a chance to sit down and blog. 

Life has been one CRAZY season recently. Gracie keeps changing her nap schedule and eating habits. We packed our rental and moved everything to our unfinished house. We are living back and forth between our very gracious parent's homes (will they ever get rid of us :)?) We are trying to survive an Illinois winter...and yes I forgot that they were this cold. 

And we are totally renovating a house.

It has been a crazy and hard and challenging season. And I admit that pretty much every day there are moments (and some days, the whole day) that I have a downer attitude. We never see each other anymore, will we like each other when this is done?, I don't know what to do with my baby's ever-changing-patterns, I don't know how to pick grout color, I want to move back to the south where I can feel my fingers when i'm outside.....

 

Two things that I have found super helpful through this whole remodel season:

1. be super gracious. (the obvious disclaimer, I fail, often.)

2. laugh together. like belly laugh kind of laugh. 

Other really really essential things: God's ability to change my perspective in an instant, humble my expectations, and give joy and hope.

I've had several ask me to post before and after pictures of the house and I really do intend to write a whole bunch of blogs on the house. But I want to have finished product to show with the before photos. That and I just haven't taken the time to write one yet. If you really want to see the before, come see it in person and grab a paintbrush and bring a hammer :).

Okay, on with the point of writing this blog...Gracie.

I finally had the chance to take some of Gracie's one year photos this week- actually on the day she was 13 months. I find that because I take her pictures instead of scheduling them done somewhere, I'm usually behind "schedule". Oh, well.

I still would like to do some more but we'll see....right now I am happy to at least have a few! She was totally being a ham. I love seeing all the dimensions of her vibrant personality come out in a span of a few minutes through her facial expressions. 

Here are some of my favorites: