There's No Place Like Home

It has been 5 years since we moved to Canton, bought our first house, and started the transformation, room by room.  Don't get me wrong this old house had potential but it needed some updating in the areas of wallpaper, carpet, the ceramic Green toilet, and sink in the bathroom.  I look around at all the hard work and think look how far we have come.  But I still seem to find projects to work on.  It never seems to get old to find a project within the house that I want to work on.  This is the longest I have lived in one place since living at home thru high school and ever that was not very long.  From the time I was born and thru high school I had at least 8 different places I called home.  In the fall of 1999 I left for College, those 4 years consisted of living in different rooms, living with the family I nannied for, and bunking up with friends for the summer, literally from place to place.  When Troy and I got married in 2003 we lived in Wheeling, Illinois for 8 months, then moved to Sterling, Kansas for 2 years and then in 2006 we moved to Canton, Ohio.  To celebrate for living in one place for 5 consecutive years I wanted to share all of our hard work over the years and the transformation of the place we call home.

Beware of the very 60's home decor :)

THE KITCHEN: BEFORE

The beautiful wallpaper

The progress of the wallpaper being scrapped off,

the amazing green floors, ugly brown cabinets, and

the long heater on the floor which interesting

enough is right by the floor vent....interesting.

One day I decided to start pulling up there floor thing there was hardwood under it and thinking it would be easy.  WRONG.  There were 2 layers of floor that were dark green and dark blue.  Lovingly my hubby and his brothers got shovels and took over the job and pulled up the floor.  There was hardwood under the flooring but only for part of the room because of addition that had been done.  The back part of the room, the addition, where we thought about putting in hardwood to match was not going to happen.  We had several people tell us the plywood flooring that was putting was not up to code it was way to thin.  That they would have to lay day a sub floor over all and then put in floors.  Well for get that we will just do something different because the wood would never match the rest of the house

THE KITCHEN: AFTER

not perfect but we like it

THE DINNING ROOM / 1/2 BATH: BEFORE

Here you can see the awesome wallpaper in the dinning room and the bathroom.  If you look hard you can see the awesome green toilet, sink, and the same green floor from the kitchen, yum.

Wait!  Did I mention the shag green carpet : )
THE DINNING ROOM/1/2 BATH: AFTER

Yeap under all that carpet were hardwood floors, don't you love that!

LIVING ROOM: BEFORE

Sadly I do not have one but just picture the shag green carpet and the wallpaper surprisingly was just plain cream color no flowers.  I am not sure what the point of it was but wallpaper was so in.
LIVING ROOM: AFTER

all done

Top 5 Places I love to shop in Canton for Great Deals:

1)Marc's in North Canton - I find tones of Target stuff there

2)Habitat for Humanity ReStore -  Great stuff, you might have one close by

3)Hartville Market - amazing crazy suff

4)Target - I love search the sale racks

5)The Birds Nest - this one is new, basically the lady that opened this place use to be in real estate and has lots of connects with people that purchase furniture to sell homes and she sells it at much less of the prices, or very very gently used from some very rich person who actually never used the table in the front hall.  That kind of thing and last time I was in there my mom made friends with the owner.  So I know more then I needed but the lady said by the end of the day Saturday she has sold most of her store.

For Memory Lane

And no these are not her actual treats

Ok so after Gracie uses the big girl potty I usually give her a treat because after our recent travels we wanted to quickly get her back on track.  Anyway a couple of weekends ago after she went potty she kept saying treat, treat.  I told her to hold on and she kept saying it.  Finally she blurted out "TREAT NOW"!  Yes, she was in trouble and by the look on her face she knew it was wrong.  I told her to go sit in timeout and she did not fuse once, she knew it was wrong.  I did not laugh at that moment but as soon as I could I called Troy to tell him.  

Lots of Bubbles

I need some updated bath time photo's so I thought I would share a

few with you.  She loves her bath time.

this is her bubble mustache

On the Home Front of PT

So we have had a few back slides, mainly travel has messed up Gracie's progression on PT.  But she is still doing really well.  She was obsessed with only using the big toilet then realized if she sat on the little one she did not need my help and she could enjoy a few of her favorite books.  I wanted a memory of this, enjoy!

Sporting her Malone gear and taking in Angelina. 
What a cutie.

I recently bought a very high stool for her to climb up on the big PT by herself which she has used but I am always afraid with her pants around her ankle she will fall.  I think she is not to keen on it either because she always wants to use the downstairs PT.  Mainly because she can run in and do it by herself.  Maybe she will be tall enough to try the normal toilets again this summer.

Meeting Dr N

I recently had a couple of appointments. The first one was to see if my tubes were open. This by far was one of the most embarrassing test that I have ever had. It was uncomfortable but not painful like I have heard some describe. That is done and the results came back perfect. No issue here.

Appointment #2 in the same week.  I got to meet Dr N.  He is a fertility specialist and was very nice.  I know someone who used him in the past and like him so here we go.  He was blunt straight to the point which he apologized for but I love.  Don't beat around the bush just be straight forward with me.  At this point just tell me.  He said honestly you had a problem with the first and now the second he said there is something going and basically you should have been pregnant with in the first 6 months.  There is a problem and secondary infertility happens but can be helped.  Ok...now what do we do?  A couple more test, oh fun.  So we will see how those come out and then for decisions.  This may get interesting.

Guess What?

Gracie's room is finally done.  Wahoo!  At the end of all of the re-arranging and cleaning out of closets, and going thru everything we own.  My house is very clean, well minus the attic and that will happen this summer.  I have been trying to finish her curtains since well, I think November.  That's sad!  But it looks cute and she is not allowed to change it for a while.  I love it and it has lots of different colors so as the next years pass and her favorites change I will have to just point them out.  Right now she really likes the flowers on her wall.  At some point I will find her a twin bed and layout her comforter but that won't happen until this summer.  Enjoy!

the new room

her play area

I wanted to do something with decals on the wall.  I worked on these with someone from my work and then we printed them off.  They came out looking pretty close to what I found on etsy for way, way less.

the curtains  

I have plenty of left over fabric so I will

also make some pillows with this at a later date.

I also got these letter from work, for free, wahoo.  

I thought they were pretty cool and this 

is what I did.  It is hanging above G's bed.

I thought I had a before picture but I don't.  This was a hideous 

picture of a girl.  Which I spray painted over, made a chalk 

board and painted the trim purple.  I did not want anymore white.