Basement Pic's...

Remember when our basement flooded from the washer? This is what these pictures are from. I know a little late ah well. Anyway we ripped out all the carpet and discovered we had just some lovely linoleum underneath it. This brown covered the whole rec room. Lucas' room had a different brown in it and the steps bright orange..yuck! The white on the linoleum is actually white paint don't know the story on that one. Anyway here are the before and after pic's.

This picture is the rec room lovely huh:) Wait till you see the steps you'll be so jealous.

The lovely orange we thought about leaving it..hahahaha

The steps now with the new carpet on them. I do have to touch up the paint a bit.

This is the rec room now pretty much the kid area. It's fantastic when they have friends over and sleep overs. They have their own space to hang out in.

This is the other side of the rec room opposite the tv area. Remember the game table I bought the kids love it they play with that thing more than anything. All the neighbor kids love to come over and play pool. It's so tiny but they have a ton of fun with it.

So there you have it the finished basement it's so much nicer than it was I'm really enjoying it. I have a few pic's I'm waiting for Ben to hang up and that's about it.

New Carpet

We are getting new carpet for sure..Yay!! The insurance agent was over yesterday and said to go ahead and order the new carpet. So despite the mess that was created and the hassle of cleaning and drying out. It is worth it for the new carpet that insurance is covering. Yesterday I touched up the walls in the family room and painted the trim in Lucas' room. Today I'm painting the trim in the family room then it will be all fresh and new when the new carpet is installed. I also wanted to move the furniture around I'm just trying to figure out how. We did have some mold set in we had to get treated so I'm really glad we ended up ripping it all out. It could've been much worse later on down the road. Such as us all getting sick or something. I'll post pictures after the new carpet is in.

Feeling behind...

Last week Thursday we had a field trip after that I took the boys out for lunch to use up some book its at Pizza Hut. Upon returning home from our little adventure my kids yell to me that the back room downstairs is flooded and water is pouring out. Out from where? I'm thinking my kids are over exaggerating...ahh..no they weren't pouring is exactly right. I come downstairs to find the hose from the back of the washer pouring water. Mind you I had started this load 2 1/2 hours ago and so this water was pouring for that long. I literally had 2" of water in my back room and a huge flooded mess. We have a small drain right next to the washer but it was way to much water for such a little drain. The carpet in both rooms was soaked a good portion as well. To sum it all up my dad came over with a shop vac and I hauled out my carpet cleaner to soak water out of the carpet. It took almost 3 hours to get all the water out of the back room. The carpet is still wet after multiple buckets removed with the carpet cleaner.

Now my dilemma is that the carpet in Lucas' room and the family room that got wet are starting to smell. I thought I had soaked up enough water they would be fine. So my question to all my bloggity friends do you know how to get the smell out? I did steam clean both areas today Lucas' room seems to be fine after this. The family room carpet is another story it still stinks..bad! I did use carpet cleaner for animals even thinking that might neutralize whatever has set in...nope. I finally broke down and called our insurance agent to see if we have coverage for this. He's getting back to me tomorrow...help!

Update: After I posted this I called our insurance agent. We are covered for this under our policy they are having someone come out and give us an estimate. I'm thinking we'll need new carpet in Lucas' room and maybe a new pad in our family room in that one area. We have a high deductible so we'll see what happens..what a pain. My mother in law has a unit that kills mold in the air etc so I'm going to run that over the weekend it should help.

Silly Putty fun or foe?

After Roman received silly putty for his 4th birthday and has had hours of fun with it. The other boys also wanted some after doing a little extra work for me they earned a trip to the dollar store. Off we went to pick some up and guess where I found one of them last week? On Ben's chair you know "the" chair every guy has they kick back in and relax after a hard days work. Oh did I mention that it's also pure white...yup..with dried silly putty squished into it. Nice pink stain on a microfiber chair. I couldn't imagine how in the world I was going to conquer this stain..so I turn to



The infamous brain of cyberspace. The remedy that popped up seemed to easy and good to be true. Ready for it....Hand Sanitizer..say what. Yup google says rub it on the silly putty with a washcloth and guess what...it worked. Oh happy Day! Took only about 5 minutes to work out the stain and the chair is as good as new. Whew I thought it would be much harder and didn't even know how in the world I was going to get it out. So if you ever get silly putty stuck on carpet or furniture haul out the ol' hand sanitizer works like magic.

New Room for Lucas...

After much deliberation I have finally decided to move Lucas to the basement bedroom. We've been talking about it for a long time and I finally just got sick of all the junk in the room the boys share. So off we went in search of paint in colors we both agreed on. I was looking for a mis-tint from a good paint shop. As it turned out the first shop I went to had the colors I was looking for in mis-tint'..wahooo! Only $6.00/gallon compared to the normal price of $25.00/gallon. Lucas and I painted his room Monday and Tuesday two walls brown and two a deep blue. Wednesday I steam cleaned the carpets and rearranged the dresser's. Today we moved his clothes down and all his junk excuse me stuff").

In the process of this the three of us Lucas, Kaleb and I thoroughly cleaned out what is now just Kaleb's room. We now have three large black trash bags ready to go to Goodwill. Everything feels so clean and cleaned out it's a great feeling. They both are excited to now have their own room.

Below is a before picture of what is now Lucas' room notice the pink on the walls it was more of a maroon color but still very ugly!


Lucas' new room this is the brown wall you can't see the blue to good I couldn't get it to take a good picture. If you look at the blue in the comforter that's the color of the blue walls. I thought it might turn out to dark but it looks so warm and cozy when you walk in I love how it turned out. We are looking for a new bed for him and also a desk when Craig's list has a great deal on one I'll snatch it up:)

Almost done..

I am almost done redecorating Roman's room. I painted it quite awhile ago and was waiting to find a good deal on a bed for him. It just happened that friends of ours needed to sell this bed and get bunk beds for their boys. We arranged to get it when their baby was a little older so finally this week Roman got his new bed. He loves it he's been staying in his bed and not coming in our room in the middle of the night to sleep. The cars comforter came with the bed so I took Roman to buy sheets for his new bed and we found some cars sheets on clearance at Meijer. Can't beat that! Then yesterday we went out looking at thrift stores for a book case and new dresser for his room. Didn't find a thing so I ended up at Walmart of all places and found this cute little bookcase for a bargain price of $12.97. It was very easy to assemble and is the perfect size for his room. Now all I have left is a dresser which I'm just watching Craig's list and the thrift stores for and his room is done. It all came together nicely he's really enjoying his "new" room.

Summer Fun!

Homemade strawberry jam, swimming and new pretty flowers in the yard what more could you ask for in summer:) Here is Roman already to go swimming at a pool I go to quite often. He loves to wear "seagulls" a.k.a. goggles. I don't know why he calls them seagulls but it's quite funny. Can you tell he loves the pool:)

Last fall the last week the local greenhouse was open I popped in to check out their awesome clearance. I bought a flat of carnations for around $1.00 and stuck them in the ground. Lo and behold they came up this year and are just gorgeous. I love them they smell soooo good. Quite a good deal!
And here we have strawberry jam I spent three hours making it today. Glad that work is done! It's such a treat in the middle of winter to pull out all the goodies I put away during the summer. Strawberry jam being one of our favorites I do a lot. I also freeze some strawberries and we make smoothies with them...yummy! I feel like such a pioneer women or something of that sort when I make jam and "put up" goodies from the garden:)

Summer chore list

Since today is the official first day of summer I decided to make up my "to do" list of summer projects I want to get done. I never complete my list nor sometimes even come close to it. But I figure if I make a list at least I'll get some things done on it. Plus posting it on here I have no excuse for losing it and I'm more likely to get more done on it if everyone knows I'm working on it. So here it is and yes some of them my hubby will be doing and I'll also be adding to the list in the next few weeks I'm sure.

Summer Projects:

Power wash the house
Power wash the deck
Stain the deck
Paint the trim around the windows outside
Replace the garage service doors
Install a closet organizer in downstairs closet
Install a closet organizer in our room
Paint the older boys room
Finish the bathroom
Steam clean all carpets in the house
Wash all windows

There ya have it the list so far I actually already did a few things I didn't put on it. Now let's see how many I (we) can get done:)

pretties from my yard...

My front yard is just gorgeous right now with all these flowers blooming. The first three pictures are all iris's I also have a deep purple one that bloomed the day after I took these three.
This flower is from a snowball bush I'm not sure if there's a real name or not for the bush but the flowers do look like snowballs.
Here is one of my favorite's it's a miniature lilac bush that I planted right by my front door. Lilac is one of my most favorite smells.
Here is a lone little rose on my carpet rose bush there are a million buds on it so hopefully this one will have some company soon. I also have a pink one right next to it.

These two bushes are both wigelia's just different types. My favorite is the one above the foliage on it is so pretty.
And lastly this is one of my other favorite flowers a peony I have white and pink ones. I plan to add some other colored ones for next year. These I cut and put them all over my house they look so pretty and also smell really good.

Don't know what you got till it's gone...(singing)

Yes losing your very one and only shower in the house for three days makes you really appreciate it when it's working again. Friday night Kaleb went to take a shower and after just resting his hand on the tile in our 40 some year old bathroom his hand went right through the tile. He was a little freaked out to say the least. The tile just eventually rotted and what Ben thought would be an easy fix for now turned into remodeling the entire area. We have intended to completely gut the bathroom but just not so soon. So Sunday after church Ben started in and worked all day plus Monday and then Tuesday he finally finished it. Plus working in Concrete he was pretty exhausted when it was all said and done. But my honey worked tirelessly to get it done and it looks sooooo much better. We still have to drywall a lot of areas and gut the rest of the bathroom sometime this summer but oh how sweet it is to have a shower again.
Quite a difference eh:)

cleaning...

AAAHHHH...sigh...I get such a high almost from deep cleaning I'm a crazy women I think..heehee. This morning after we did some school the boys and I went through ALL the toys in the house and purged...big time..YIPEE!! Can you tell I'm so excited about it! We got rid of a lot of big things and then we went through and organized them all talk about fun!! Then onto their rooms Romans was easy he doesn't have much. Lucas and Kaleb's room took a little longer but we got rid of a bunch more stuff and put things where they belong. We found many "missing" items to other toys to. Mysteriously they have a lot more legos and magnetix than they did before. What a productive morning I love those now we must make our donation to Goodwill. My next project is teaching Roman to clean up the toys after himself. He has a horrible habit of just dumping out toys and walking away from them. I've decided enough is enough and I'm working on him playing with say just the legos and then picking them up before getting out say the play food etc. It'll take awhile I should've started much sooner but it's one of those things that I let slide and it was easier to have the boys do it with him etc. Well now he's three and kind of a slob so we are going to correct that..wish me luck!

Bug Quilt

Here is the bug quilt I made and hung up in Romans room. I made it a few years ago but never really hung it up. I decided it would go good in his newly painted room. I really like it in there it looks so cute on the wall. I'm thinking I might paint some bugs on the wall. We'll see I'm not much of an artist.







Here is an up close shot of one of the squares. The quilt block is called bugs in a jar. It was one of the most fun quilts I've made. I'm going to tackle a wall hanging for my other boys room next.

Romans room

Alright here's what I've done so far to Romans room. I'm almost done but have a few decorating things to hang up yet. I repainted the walls, windows and trim. Ben hung up new blinds for me and the coat/sweatshirt hooks. I painted picture frames I had laying around the house and made pictures for them. The last thing to do is buy him a new bed but I'm looking for a really good deal on one. His toddler bed should last him for awhile yet so I can wait for that good deal. I will take a picture of the bug quilt I made when I get it back from the fair next week. My goal was to redo his room for less than a 100.00 and so far I only have 45.00 into it. I'm hoping the bed won't be much more than 50.00 so I can stay on budget. This is why I've made my own decorations for it. Roman finger painted one of his hands for me and I hung that up. Then I made two creative memories pages and hung them on the wall in the painted frames.

Roman "helping" to decorate a picture for his room.
This is the picture Roman made he had such a blast finger painting he's never done it before.

The creative memories pages and also the hand prints picture on the wall.

The hat/coat hook rack my hubby hung up for me.