Emskyrooney

Once again, we spent our weekend tackling another project around the house.  Exactly one year ago, we installed our patio.  This year it was time to replace our deck.   Here's how the deck looked when we bought the house (this was during our kitchen construction phase, before we got rid of the pool, painted the house, and replaced the fence):   And here's how it looked on Sunday morning before we got started: When we moved into this house we talked about possibly expanding the deck to have space for a table and chairs along with the grill.  Since putting the patio in though we really didn't feel like we needed a larger deck.  That said, the old deck was splintery and rickety and a friend nearly fell off of it when he made the mistake of leaning against the railing.  It was a death trap.  It was also originally stained an ugly reddish color that just didn't work with the grey and greenish blue we chose for the house when we repainted.  Paul tried sanding the wood down to

Back in March I swore that I'd do regular baby updates so that Baby Sister doesn't feel neglected on my blog compared to LP.  Right.  Haven't done a baby update since and that was 10 weeks ago!  Time goes so much faster when you have a 3 year old in the house.  People keep asking how far along I am and I have to think about it before I answer.  With LP I knew practically to the day!  Oh well... So here's an update at 26 weeks.  I'm on the cusp of the 3rd trimester- hooray!  Had my blood sugars tested yesterday and the results came in today- all is well.  My iron level is a bit low though so I need to start taking iron supplements which is just deja vu from my pregnancy with LP and no big deal.  My iron levels tend to be low all the time.   At 26 weeks Baby Sister (which is what we've been calling her.  LP has moved on from his "Molly" obsession and now tells everyone that we're naming her "Baby.") is about the size of an eggplant.  She i

Back in March, before we even knew we were having a girl, I put together an inspiration board for a girl's nursery and I'm beyond excited that I actually get to put it all together!  Here's the plan (for  more details check out the blog post about the inspiration board ): Today seemed like a good day to get started on the first step.  I'm hoping to get all the painting and shuffling of furniture done now while I'm still fairly mobile and it's still cool out and work on the sewing as I get larger and the weather gets hotter (my sewing room is in the basement and stays nice and cool year round).   Here's what the nursery looked like this morning (and this was after last weekend's massive clearing out of Christmas wrapping paper, boxes, and baby boy clothes): I thought I'd start with the eyelet lace border I wanted to add to the walls.  More than a year ago I ran across a tutorial for using contact paper and a piece of cardboard to add a sca

Last week we were fortunate enough to finally (!!!) take our very first family vacation to Disney World (and by our "first family vacation" I mean our first vacation since our honeymoon that didn't involve visiting Paul's family, visiting my family, or attending a friend's wedding- a trip for just the three of us with no one else involved).   And it was fabulous.  We had a fantastic time! We decided to stay in one of Disney's hotels, the Port Orleans French Quarter and it was great- from the free transportation to and from the airport (including our luggage which we didn't have to touch once we checked in at the airport in Providence- Disney got it from the baggage claim in Orlando and delivered it directly to our room!), to the shuttles to and from the parks, to the staff and the grounds and the room- it was great.  It's one of the smaller hotels on property and we really loved that after the end of a long day in the park we didn't have to walk v