Our Pet Tin Tin

We recently adopted a pet or rather it adopted us.

It was technically a stray I suppose.

It (she?) kept coming to our backdoor and made herself at home.

Rowan was all too eager to name her Tin Tin.

I can only assume she got the name from the movie, which we've not seen.

Here she is!
Tin Tin is, as far as I can tell, a green anole lizard.
...aka: Texas Chameleon...

She can be green...

...or brown!
{how cool is that?!}
And although this image is terribly blurry, you can see how she 'drinks' water...
isn't her little tongue so cute?!


She is super small...maybe 5 inches in total length...and has lived on our grill for a while.
The past two days have been super cold, so we haven't seen her around.
I'm assuming she went somewhere to get warm.
And I'm hoping when the warm weather returns, so will she.



Oh....and we also have a squatter...

Project Pinterest - Stairway Gallery

I'm waiting to post my project for the week for two reasons...

1. I haven't photographed it yet and now I need to wait for halfway decent lighting.

2. My inspiration pin doesn't have a link to the original source. And I'm not going to use a picture without giving credit. 

Well, I could not, for the life of me, find the original source of the image I wanted to share with you. So I found this one instead, as it's fairly close to the other one. It comes from The Creative Imperative.

Here's my take on the stairway gallery...except mine isn't done yet.
I still have some 'holes' to fill, but can't decide if I want more pictures or decorations of some sort.

I'm excited to see what all of you have been up to, you crafty divas you!

Link up below!




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Here are the rules:

1. Decide which pin on Pinterest you’d like to recreate.

2. Create it!

3. Flop or success, create a blog post about your re-do and include the original pin’s url.

4. Add the Project Pinterest button to your post so others can join in too!
5. Link up and check out other bloggers’ posts!

Adventure Awaits Outside Our Back Door

A couple days ago I was in our backyard and noticed the biggest bug I'd ever seen lying upsidedown on our patio.

...naturally, I ran inside to get the kids...

Seth's parents were here, too and his mom found this next guy clinging to the side of our house...

 

So, This is Pretty Cool...

Are any of you watchers of The Voice on NBC?
{we are not}

Did you see Angel Taylor's performance from last week?
{we...obviously...did not}

...let's watch together, shall we?...
{there's a reason for this, I promise}

Wasn't she awesome?
Her voice kind of reminds me of...that one girl...Bjork.
...except not totally weird.


...so why am I talking and posting about a show we don't watch?

Because we went to the contemporary service at church on Sunday....and Angel Taylor was there, co-leading with our regular worship leader, David Dunn...who I believe is also going to be on The Voice!

I sang praises to God with someone who was on prime time television.
Cool.

It's a Beautiful Autumn....er Winter

It is absolutely nuts how many differences there are climate wise between Kansas and Texas. 

A normal January for us is single digit temps and shoveling snow.

Our new norm is swatting mosquitoes and raking leaves that have dead snakes in them.

{ok, it was only one dead, non-poisonous grass snake and it was the size of a pencil. but that's one too many and way too big for this girl. thankfully I married a knight in shining armor who disposes of gross dead things for me without complaint.} 

...and if you were wondering...yes.
The kids are playing in the leaves after I found the you-know-what.
But they never listen to me have no fear and disregarded my pleas to not jump in the leaves, to not touch the leaves, and to not even look at the leaves...at least they didn't jump in the pile that had the you-know-what in it.

Howdy, Y'all!

We are nearly all unpacked, we've met our neighbors, school and work have both started back up, and life is slowly getting back to a normal pace. 

Here are some pictures from our travel days: KC to Houston.

This was our hotel room near the KC airport. My car was shipped and Seth turned in his work car, so we decided to stay at a hotel that offered free shuttles to the airport. 

As you can see, we made a stop at "Happy Meal"...as the kids call it. 

Breck on his first ever plane ride!

He did awesome!

And here is the holy terror of air travel Rowan.

This about sums up how well she did.

We also stayed at a hotel our first night in Houston, which happened to be New Years Eve. 

There was no party.

This is in our new house. I felt like taking a nap on the steps too after all the days and days of unpacking.

Finally, this is some red flowering thing on a giant bush in our backyard.

I have no clue what it's called, but think it's rather pretty!

Baby, It's Cold Inside

Yes, I mean inside.

Our kitchen is a brisk 56 degrees!
(Our refrigerator is set around 50 degrees, for a point of reference!)



I mostly blame our beautiful, but energy-inefficient wall of windows.


And the geniuses who planned out the small electrical details of our home, weren't wearing their thinking caps when they placed our thermostat on the top floor.
It's set at 70 degrees.
(News Flash! Heat rises.)

So, our bedrooms are nice and toasty, while our lower levels rival that of an icy tundra.

Yes, we could jack up the thermostat, but we'd prefer not to pay $300/month to keep warm. And yes, we could close the vents upstairs and open up all the vents below, but I'm upstairs most of the day (it's where the toy room and computer are) - I want to be warm!

I'm thinking of taking it to the next, rather tacky level: plastic on the windows...in the kitchen. Oh, it would be hideous! But that's a sacrifice I'm willing to live with. The windows need to be replaced, as they are original to the home and lack any semblance of a weatherstripping seal. I'm hoping at some point during the warmer months of this year we'll get new ones.

...but for now, we'll make do.

Before & After: Dining Room to Office

When we moved in, we knew there were just a few things that had to go. Such as the wallpaper...especially in the formal dining room! It took us much longer than planned to strip the wallpaper and repaint, but Seth's parents came to visit one weekend about a month or more ago and basically striped it all for us!


Seth's Office Before

(or more commonly known as the Formal Dining Room)



Seth's Office After
(please excuse the mess!)

I plan to buy/make a dark brown & white striped valance, but who knows when that'll happen! And yes, that's a large Jessica Simpson cardboard cutout in the corner. Kevin Harvick's in another corner.

Wednesday's Nature Hike

Yesterday the kids and I went for a very long walk around our neighborhood.
We usually take the same way, since the roads here are really meandering and I know how to get home!

But, yesterday, the wind blew us in a new direction.

(photo by Breck)

We ended up finding a pretty neat nature trail which is super close to our house.

It even has a teeny tiny creek!



and Rowan found some teeny tiny nature ball seed thingies that fit perfect in her mouth



Breck actually did a really good job of staying with me during our walk.
Would you guess that there are houses just to the left, behind those trees?



and on the ride home, Rowan screamed and refused to sit down - nor did she want to walk with us, but rather run away from us, so I let her stand as I pushed the stroller. I know, I know. At this point, we'd been gone for about 1.5 hours and I was ready to be home.


I would like to note, however, that her screaming stopped abruptly when the high school track team ran by us.
And suddenly started again when they were out of sight.

365-232: Garden Gnome

This little fella was given to us by Seth's folks.
He's our house warming gift/replacement gnome!

And he even has an extra special surprise underneath him...

a toad house!


Thanks Lorrie and Gale!

A Quick Hello!

Much to my surprise, one of our neighbors has graciously decided to share their internet connection with the community!

But, who knows how long that’ll last…

~~~~~

Seth got home early on Friday afternoon. Almost immediately, we went to get the U-Haul. Gale (Seth’s dad) came down to help load up the storage unit and the two of them nearly loaded all the boxes in the garage as well! Seth’s brother, Josh, and a few friends came over around 6pm to help load the furniture and whatever was left. They finished around 9pm! And we still have stuff at the house that needs to be moved. We got the biggest U-Haul available and it did not take care of a 3-bedroom house.

Does that mean the truck is too small or that we just have too much stuff???

Good thing we’ve moved to a 5 bedroom home! ;)

Seth and I left the “old” house around 10pm last night. It takes at least 2 hours to get to the “new” house and we had to stop for gas. Plus, the U-Haul we got was a piece of junk and Seth wasn’t comfortable going over 65mph. We eventually made it here around 12:30am. Yawn! I bet we didn’t actually fall asleep until well after 1am.

This morning my brain must have been rarin’ to go because I woke up at 6:30am. My body was not thankful for that. (and neither was Seth!)

Now I’m just waiting until Seth gets up (so I can finish my “noisy” unpacking! ;) ) and then at 10:30am the movers (aka: family and friends) get here and the fun begins!!!

~~~~~

This Sunday Seth and I plan to head back to the “old” house to mow the yard, do some deep cleaning and grab whatever will fit in the car.

I imagine this week will be mainly filled with unpacking and generally getting settled. We’ll all have some serious adjusting to do now that our family will be living together again. I’m afraid that’s going to be more painful than I thought.

I’m hoping to establish a very set schedule with the kids. I’ve charted our days out…somewhere…now it’s just a matter of finding and unpacking that box!

Breck will begin potty training boot camp, as he needs to be potty trained before he can go to preschool. (Which, by the way, is only a handful of blocks away! Hooray for walking distance!)

~~~~~

But, I better get this posted before my connection disappears!

Hopefully, I'll be able to post again before Tuesday!

Hope y'all have a great weekend!!!

Lloyds are in the OP!

(OP = Overland Park)

Yesterday was our big day - we closed on our new house!

The kids and I left around noon and the closing was at 3pm.
We got to KC a bit early - like, an hour early.
So, I called Seth and he met us at a McD's close to the closing place for a snack.

We hung out there until it was time to sign our signatures five thousand times.

When we got there, our realtor was already waiting for us.
blah, blah, blah...sign, sign, sign, write a big fat check...badaboom, we own our house!
That was done at 4pm.

Then on to the best part of the day!!!
(Breck kept saying "this is the best day ever!" by the way.)

I'll let you see for yourself:

and look, my cookie sheet fits!



both kids already love the fireplaces...

they're great for doing yoga:


or just having a seat:




and I must mention that the seller left the house in immaculate order! She cleaned eve-ry-thing. Everything. The top of the mantles had NO dust and they're both taller than me! All the fixtures had been shined, carpets vacuumed, floors swept, etc etc etc. She even left us full rolls of tp in the bathrooms! And the part that was most helpful was that she left notes for anything that would be better understood with a little explaination. She even went so far as to map out and lable all the plants in the landscape!!!
She left us a personal note, too, which I thought was awfully sweet.

Hopefully in the next week or two I'll have some before and afters - there's not too much we'll be changing - peeling some wallpaper and painting a room or two. Oh, and some landscaping fixes, too.

...stayed tuned! ;)

365-225: New Front Door