This Easter weekend has been wonderful so far. Aside from Air getting ill this morning and pukingthrowing uphurling (?) at church and rushing home for the rest of the day. I got to stay and teach the primary children about the Savior, while my friend kept Ames happy. It’s been such a beautiful day and we’ve spent most of it at home thinking about Christ and the meaning behind this holiday. We know that we are so blessed to know Christ personally and to know what he has done for us. We truly have so much happiness because of this. I’m not just saying that either! We REALLY are so very very happy because of it!
Christ lives and we will live again!
It’s wonderful… As is little bunny Ames. Am I right? (perfect segway)
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Some other things that happened this weekend.
Serious egg dying with the family
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A cute bib from my Momma (thanks Mom!)
(yes I am still forcing this child to eat solids every day)
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And some of my Easter decorations (so glad I can finally decorate this place)
Technically our ceilings were project number one. But, to be honest, I was NOT going to blog about them. I’m mostly ashamed of how bad a job I did at planning this project. Oy. I only decided to blog about our ceiling reno today because I think I need to send out a warning to the world. So this is more of a "Do not do this at home!" post.
Our ceilings were the most frustrating part of our renovation by far. When we first got the house we couldn't get over how disgusting and dirty they were. Specifically in the kitchen. Just stained with grease that was caked onto the fixtures and everything else. The house stunk too… I was sure it was coming from the ceiling (and the old cabinets—yuck).
All of the light fixtures had to be repositioned and changed… plus we took out a pantry and a wall that left a big hole in the ceiling.
I don't really like popcorn ceilings much either, so we thought we'd try to make them smooth. We decided to try a little trick we learned from Mr. Internet and some youtube videos, like these:
Looks simple enough!
But no.
Our texture didn’t just come right off smoothly, we've since learned that this trick might only work if the ceiling hasn't been painted since the last time it was textured? Apparently ours was.
We sprayed and sprayed our ceilings (with a water/vinegar mixture and a garden sprayer) in the kitchen, living room and hallway and had to scrape every inch of it down. It was a mess! (Luckily we weren’t living here at that time)
And what we were left with was not nice and smooth. At all. We had made it more of a problem than we had in the first place. Huge mistake. (Goodness, the frustration of this time is all coming back to me as I look at these old pictures)
Anyway, we plugged on… we tore out the wall and old pantry. We moved into the house. Air did lots of electrical work and installed gorgeous pot lights, he moved the fixture over the kitchen table over a few feet (involving a major head injury in the attic), and the ceiling fan in the living room had to be moved a few feet over also. He patched all the holes.
This was all especially bad once we started getting quotes from ceiling contractors to get it retextured. Yikes. We decided that the best thing we could do, for the price, was to just get the popcorn put back up…
(**I have to mention here that this whole thing was my fault.. In the first place I convinced Aaron that we needed to take the old texture down and make the ceilings smooth and clean. I regret this so much… now I know all we should've done was paint over it and have a contractor patch the spots that had to be done due to our electrical work and the wall we took down. Oops.)
In July, we found an LDS guy (by some funny coincidences) who textures ceilings. Not the best price, but his website had some good testimonials etc. Also, he did some work for Air’s dad at church buildings.
He was a really cool guy and he did nice work… but since he most likely won’t ever read this, I have to tell you that I would not recommend him. He got paint and texture all over my newly painted walls and didn’t clean up after himself. He forgot to paint our bathroom ceilings (as was part of the agreement)… and even after promising to come back and do them (I kept contacting him about it) he wouldn’t show up and eventually just stopped responding!! What!??
(To this day, the bathroom ceilings still badly need to be painted. I guess we’ll get to that when we work on the bathrooms this summer..)
And, you know, whatever crazy route we had to take to end up with these ceilings, they turned out beautiful. Popcorn and all.
And now we know that our marriage can weather any storm as well… and thrive actually.
You know, we are always happy to have something to celebrate around here. Holidays, birthdays, regular days… St Patricks Day? We’ll take it!
(celebrating this one mostly just means I get to pinch Air as soon as he wakes up)
And you better believe we’ll take pictures about it too ;)
Hope you all had a relaxing weekend. Ours was very much that.. Occompanied by some late winter snowstorms and taxes. Boo
I like to sit Ames down in front of the mirror for a little while every day, although he never usually pays much attention to his own reflection. He always just looks back and forth between the real me and the reflected me with a confused smile on his face. But finally I caught Ames doing this the other day.
He loves him!
Then I discovered where he learned it….
I’m so glad my boys love themselves.
I love them and kiss them just as much (more even) as they do... and it's wonderful.
↑↑silly teeth binki from my brother Jordan’s family
You know... if I had a dollar for every time I've written something really silly on my blog, I'd have like $2 maybe $3. I'm talking about Canadian dollars though... so they're worth a little bit less right now.
Oh now we’re at $4!
Air-bear and commenter Adam (Wilson?) are making fun of me for my last post, when I was talking about how Ames is a total stud and a really easy baby… and then I said “I wouldn’t have him any other way” in the same sentence??? hahaha …So now I just have to clarify that I would have Ames ANY way. Also, I am going to blame this one on mommy brain? Can I do that? Too late.
Here’s some stuff we’ve been up to:
We love Ames’ silly faces when he’s eating. He really hates eating solids.
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The neighbors made the classic blunder of keeping their car parked on the tall ice for too long. We like to laugh at them. The car is completely stuck.
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Ames likes grocery shopping
Some weird things we bought on that same shopping trip. So far they both work great.
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Ames loved the missionaries who came to visit.
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We love visiting with our friend Kyle. Awesome Kyle Vaughan (yes, he can play my favorite song on the guitar)
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We’re about ready to retire the swing… just look at this big boy!
he falls asleep pretty quickly in it.
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Sunday walk with the family. Ames was all bundled up in Tiana’s hoodie and tons of blankets. It’s still pretty chilly here… but I just know spring is coming! Just around the corner?
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Ames’ perfect ear imprint on my arm after his nap.
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Some of Ames new tricks. He can stand on his knees really well and even pull himself up to his knees from sitting!
and he can do this bbuh bbuh bbuh thing all day long.
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Another Flat Stanley done for my cousin Jessica’s little girl Sophie… this one I got to decorate. It was fun, he’s Canadian with a coat beard and skis. (not quite as cool as the Texan my cousin Jenny made)
