Family Photographs

So I've dabbled in Senior portraits and I've gotta be a pro at taking baby photos by now (okay, maybe just with my baby) and just this past weekend I did my first family photo shoot for some friends of ours. We went to the park where they got engaged and the fall colors made very beautiful scenery.

Anna, Brent + Baby Liam were very photogenic, although Liam is usually much more smiley than he was for pictures. He seemed to really be taking in the scenery, too much to look at to pay attention to me and my camera and my crazy noises.

Here are some of my favorites.

social hangover

Just when I think I've been super busy, last weekend's events reminded me that my day to day isn't so full after all.

In preparation for our friends coming to stay and our housewarming we had been unpacking (still, I know), deep-cleaning and decorating the house (finally). I don't have a lot of pictures of our newly decorated walls or the lovely faces that came through our doors on Saturday, instead I'll show you this horrible photo...

This is a before + after of the grout in our dining room + kitchen. I already hated this tile before, but I had no idea that it was this dirty! I've cleaned these floors frequently since we moved in 6 months ago. I simply focused on the grout with an abrasive bristle brush, and look what I've been missing!

The only thing worse than having lived with this dirt for so long without knowing it is that this discovery came after I had already washed all 100+ tiles on my hands + knees with steaming hot water. As if I didn't have enough to do the day of our guest's arrival, I scrubbed all the grout clean and then wiped the floors down again. Yes, I cleaned the floor 4 times in one day. I wanted to die. (insert dramatic tone here).

I calmed down quite a bit once our guests arrived. I decided to just let the messes that were undone wait for the next day and just hang out and relax for a while. Meeting their little baby Liam was so overdue, and he's just a doll! (photos coming soon...). That night we watched Community + 30Rock before bed and it felt weird to sit and relax for an evening after not doing so for more than a week.

On Saturday it was go-time once again. I started baking fairly early to get the rest of the brownie cupcakes done. I had already made the other treats earlier in the week (recipes coming soon...). Ben did some finishing touches outside, we tidied up our room and I was still setting up the food when our first open house guests arrived at 1pm.

We showed the house, ate food,  and visited with friends + family until 4:30pm or so when it was just us and our house guests again. Then we went out to dinner and the babies made a mess of the place and passed out on the car ride home. Us parents weren't far behind.

Sunday after church I did some family photos for our friends, which I'll post about later. When we got home to our house, just the three of us again,  Malakai wanted to explore the neighborhood a bit before dinner. He chased his shadow, went up and down the curb a dozen times and felt the textures of concrete + dirt.

It was a whirlwind of a weekend. We were surrounded by people for 48 hours straight. It was great, I'm thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to relax in the calm after the storm.

How was your weekend?

Thankful on a Thursday: motivation

We're expecting house guests tomorrow and because I'm a special kind of crazy, I also chose this weekend for our open house. Both of these things have surely been the motivation we needed to get our house together.

We've painted and installed the new kitchen faucet that we bought before we even owned the place. Half of our house now has stuff hanging from the walls. I've unpacked and set up the entire guest room.

Just to give you an idea of how far our house has come in the last 6 months, here is the progression of our guest room.

When we moved in, March of 2010 this was the "catch all" room.

It stayed this way until we got our other bed out of storage from Ben's parents house. Then we had to move the big things out and the boxes against the walls.

Then we brought the ab lounge out of retirement for a bit. Except, the laundry used it more than we did.

{can you even see it in this photo? ha!}

That's what it looked like just last week. Giant 7 foot tall stack of boxes was long gone but there was still a mess of toys and the boxes to the left to contend with. 

Today it looks like this!

{map of Oahu, repurposed wine-rack, and Malakai}

{overflowing bulletin board, craft cart + sewing machine that I barely know how to use, dresser with more craft items on top + inside}

The entire bottom shelf of that craft cart is full of gift bags, gift boxes, and tissue paper that I've saved for the last 3 + years. From bridal showers, our wedding, birthdays + other holidays and of course baby showers. I saved it all and just reuse one since I have something for EVERY occasion in there.

I'm beyond excited to have this room done. It has been the door that always stays closed when people stop by because of it's scary mess. Who am I kidding, that door is closed when it's just us to keep Kai out of it! 

Tonight we put the finishing touches on the rest of the house. I'm really looking forward to decorating these bare walls! 

This week I'm so thankful for...

331. feeling at home in our "new" house. 

332. my mom stopping by to lend me a jelly roll pan so I can make this for the open house. 

333. fog in the morning and sunshine in the afternoon.

334. a quiet moment to myself to finish up this post and get to baking.

335. all the friends + family who are coming to see us this weekend.

336. Malakai's growing personality.

337. Ben's non-stop hard work on the job and at home.

338. the baby gate that arrived in the mail on Monday. 

339. our self-soothing sleeper.

340. inspiration.

What are you thankful for?

getting there

Malakai hasn't been much of an independent sleeper. From day one he would sleep best snuggled up with Ben + I. At the time we weren't planning on co-sleeping and knew very little about it, but we learned and we loved it.

Around 5 months of age he started sleeping in his crib more regularly. By 8 months he refused to sleep in our bed at all (which made me a little sad). Yet he rarely slept through the night. He needed soothing to sleep at the beginning of bed time and 2-3 times in the middle of the night. It hasn't been a burden to us, we've gotten used to this routine.

A few months ago we knew that we needed some help assisting Malakai in his transition to independent sleep. Cry it out was never an option. It just doesn't work for any one of us in this household. I had heard great things about the book The No Cry Sleep Solution and ordered a copy from Amazon.

When it arrived, Ben and I read through it and then discussed the sleep solutions and habits we needed to create. We took notes and followed the plans, but quite fluidly. We never forced anything, but what worked best for us was to get a more solid routine going and to stick to that as closely as possible for as long as possible.

When Ben gets home in the early evening he has playtime with Malakai. They go get the mail together and run around the house until dinner time. After dinner we all hang out together and try to quiet things down a bit. Then it's bath, jammies, story time with daddy and bedtime. At bedtime Malakai transitioned from needing to be rocked until he was passed out asleep, to just recently refusing to be held and falling asleep on his own after a few minutes of snuggling his blankie {his lovey of choice}.

It sounds simple but we have waited a very long time for this. He'd fake us out here and there over the months by falling asleep on his own and/or sleeping through the night soundly, but it was never a consecutive event. All this time he has been getting enough sleep, and so have we, but he just needed help getting calm and comfortable to drift off. Often he would be fighting a cold or teething pain. The child has 12 teeth at 15 months old. All four of his molars hit him at once and one of them is all the way through.

There's no remedy or solution that fits every family. We have always done what works for us and will continue to do so. Now that I'm writing about this, Malakai could revert back to waking 2-3 times a night and needing to be rocked to sleep and that's okay. We'll do what he needs, when he needs it...I think that's called parenting.

Needless to say, I really recommend The No Cry Sleep Solution if you're looking for some good information on the science of sleep, ideas about gently setting routines, and great worksheets to help you get there.

The past week we've had time to unwind or get things done while Malakai sleeps and then get our own 8 hours of uninterrupted rest on top of that. We hardly know how to handle this new normal.

Now if only I could figure out how to get him to nap away from home...

it's not easy, being green.

On Saturday morning Ben + I took Malakai to visit my in-laws while we got some work done on our home. Ben's goal for the next few hours was to get the new kitchen faucet in place. Mine was to prime + paint all the patched holes in the dining room and living room.

Ben did some prep work and then had his dad come over to help him remove the old faucet. The removal alone took 3 hours. Something about a corroded washer and the right wrench. The actual work to get the new fixtures in took only 20 minutes!

Meanwhile, I washed the walls, primed the nail holes and patched a few others. These nail holes have been ugly white dots on our walls since we moved in. Something we have just gotten used to. While the primer was drying I scrubbed the baseboards and lower half of the walls in our living room, dining room and hallway.

Then Ben asked that I touch up some spots on an edge where two paint colors meet. Our once lavendar living room became a lovely shade of tan called "fresh linen" the night before we moved in. Because it was such a rush job, there were a few errors here and there. One that really bothered my husband was where the tan bled over to the green on a corner in the hallway.

We had asked the homeowner's to leave all the paint in the garage and they obliged. Over half of the house was painted in a lovely sagey green color that we left because we liked it and it actually matched some of our throw rugs perfectly. There was only 1 quart of this green paint in the garage, from 2002. I mixed it up anyway and began to touch up the corner for Ben. As it went on it looked great. I finished the corner and moved on to the dining room and living room {which is basically one "big" room}.

As I was painting I said to Ben + his dad, "Well this looks perfect, there's no doubt that this is the right color of green!" and continued on my way.

As the touch-ups dried I went to remove the taped edge from the corner and it tore off the tan paint! I mean, we were using some fancy painter's tape which is made specifically not to do this. There was a huge lavender splotch underneath and I panicked because we had nothing leftover of this color. So, I called up Ben's mom to say I was going to be late picking up Kai and ran to the nearby hardware store to pick up a quart of Dutch Boy's Fresh Linen.

When I walked in the door, I  saw this...

Now, both Ben + my father-in-law are colorblind and when I called them out from under the sink to look at this, they were both stunned. We have been living in this house for SIX MONTHS and had no idea until this mishap that these two walls were different shades of green. 

I could list all sorts of explanations as to how we didn't notice until now, but after the work that ensued, I don't have the energy for excuses. This disaster was obviously bigger than that of the small purple spot on the other side of the house. I began checking all my patch work and only 2 walls were this lighter shade of green. This one, and the one on the end of the hall that I had just painted the entire edge from floor to ceiling. 

Needless to say I was distraught. This whole project was supposed to take 3-4 hours so we could pick up Malakai and put him down for a nap, then move on to other smaller projects. 

Oddly enough Ben and I had just been talking about painting this very wall a dark shade of grey some day in the future. So I figured rather than ordering a whole gallon of this dark green we might as well paint it the color we wanted. I grabbed all my paint samples and magazine pages and we chatted about shades of grey. I also tore off a piece of wall where we already had this lovely eye-sore to match the light green for the end of the hallway.

The faucet turned out to be faster than the painting after all and I'm so happy with how it turned out. 

By 2pm we finally picked up Malakai and he crashed immediately. Ben stayed home with him and I ran to Home Depot {my least favorite store of all time, but we had store credit there}. This post is getting long, so I'll spare you the exhausting details of the issues I had with the employees in the paint department. I grabbed a patch repair kit for the gaping hole in the wall, a quart of the custom light green, and a gallon of Glidden "seal" grey.  

When I got home we ate a super late lunch and got right to work. Ben patched the hole while I started cutting in with the dark grey. He rolled the rest of the wall while I painted the edge down the hall for the second time. I tested a small patch and let it start to dry before doing the whole thing. It looked great, so I continued to repaint and then came back in to help Ben with the dining room. 

When we looked at the hall again...it wasn't such a great match after all. 

I wanted to die. We were both so exhausted from the morning project turned entire-weekend life sucker. With our house in disarray and too much toddler-height wet paint, we went to my parents' place for dinner to let things dry until Malakai's bedtime. 

At 9pm we put the 2nd coat on the entire wall, and the first coat on the patched hole. We had also decided to paint the entire end of the hall in the dark green to cover up all the mistakes. I painted that stinkin' edge for the 3rd time that day as I grumbled about having 4 shades of green {including Kai's room} on our walls at that moment. 

Sunday after church we put the 2nd coat on the patched part of the grey wall and I meticulously fixed the  edges {another painter's tape fail} and we called it "good enough". 

{yes, I painted with a toothpick}

Here is the semi-final product of our new dining room wall {awaiting decor of course}. 

I really love how it turned out {despite my worries the entire time that it somehow looked purple}. My favorite part is how the red + black decor contrast with it. I can't wait to put something bold and red up on the wall!

Now...on to more projects in preparation for our housewarming in T-minus 5 days!