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First day of Kindergarten....Last day of Kindergarten...

As with the others...I know the next time I blink she'll be graduating high school...it all goes so very fast...I can remember when I was in the hospital waiting to have her...unsure if she'd have Downs Syndrome....then she was born and we had to face 2 surgeries and 7 weeks of her at the hospital....I was sure that she would *never* leave and get better....and now here she is....graduating kindergarten ready to officially enter the world of being a big kid!

Libby 4 Year Old Preschool

Libby started 4 year old preschool last week.  Hard to believe that we are almost done with the preschool years!  Time has flown way too fast with these guys.  She was so excited to start-she begged me for braids, to which I complied.

She seems so big to me but I know in just a year or two when I look back she'll look like such a baby!

Then and Now

How did they go from that.....

To this....

In the blink of an eye?

The top picture is Anne's first day of school ever-3 year old preschool-and below is Anne starting 4th grade and Jamie starting 1st.  I am sitting here with tears in my eyes because my children are not only growing up so fast but they are both so beautiful and gorgeous-inside and out-in every way.  Hope they both have a GREAT first day!

Kitchen Wall Re-do

As I stated before John and I have been living in a frat house for 9 years. Seriously.  We left the original owner's paint colors for 6 years before painting ourselves.  We only hung things where there was an available nail hole.  And our decorating and furniture was reminiscent of a college student's.  It's embarrassing.  So these past few months I've been pretty focused on redecorating.  The family room (with the new sectional) is about 90% or more done. I need a few finishing touches but it looks good as is.  My next part that I want to redecorate is the eat-in area of the kitchen.  I focused most recently on the area above the microwave.  Now I don't have any real good pictures of what it looked like before but here's one from back in the day that sort of shows it.

Look behind Anne and you can see how bare the walls are.  This picture was taken 4 years ago and nothing has changed. All that was on that wall was a French board and a calendar.  So without further ado here's what it looks like now.

Here's what I did:

~The bottom picture shows the letter A on a black back ground.  I got the back ground as an unpainted piece of pre-cut wood.  I painted it black.  The letter A was a loose letter that I painted gold and then glued to the board.  The total cost for this was under $4!

~Below that are some hanging file folders.  I got those on Amazon for $25.  It took me months to find some I liked that were a good price.  I'm still not in love with these but they were certainly the best I could find after looking for so long.

~Next to the file folders is a wooden chalkboard.  Got it on sale at Meijer for only $10!

~Original French board-not moved or changed.

~"It is well with my soul" picture that was on clearance at Meijer for only $9.  What a steal!

All in all I am pretty pleased with how the wall turned out.  I'm even more pleased that I found some great pieces for such a low price.

My next project is to tackle the back wall of this room.  I already have a good idea of what I want to do I just need to put it all together.

Merry Christmas 2014 from the Atwoods!

Merry Christmas friends and family!  We are skipping snail mail Christmas cards this year and decided to go paperless!  Here's what we were up to this year!

In February we hit...DISNEY WORLD!  So wish we could go every year but it's not in the cards for 2015.  We had a great time-Libby wasn't the biggest fan-in fact the picture I'm sharing may have been one of the few times she smiled all trip . But the kids and parents had a great time!

For spring break we headed to our state's capitol and learned all things Lincoln in Springfield

Jamie turned 5 and Anne turned 8 and they had a joint birthday party at Chuck E Cheese.  Basically a dream come true for them.

Jamie graduated preschool and played T Ball

We had a HUGE garden this year and adopted some baby bunnies for a few weeks

Libby turned THREE

In July we spent a wonderful few days in MI with some good friends at their lake house.

Anne started third grade, Jamie started kindergarten and Libby started preschool.  And I may or may not have shed a few tears.

We got a kitten we named Oliver

For Halloween we had a Princess Sofia, Pirate and Ballerina

And finally and most recently we bought a sectional and redid our living room!

Phew!  That was our year!  Merry Christmas to all and may 2015 hold blessings and joy for everyone!

Presenting....Our New Family Room!

A little over a month ago a friend inspired me to think about getting a new couch.  John and I had been thinking about it for a while because there was NO seating in our family room for friends.  We ALWAYS had to sit at the kitchen table to socialize.  And even when we were watching TV as family our poor kids had to sit on the floor.  So we started looking into sectionals.  My friend also gave me other suggestions and I started to see some real possibility.  Here's our (pathetic) before picture and I'm sad to say it looked like this for the 8.5 years we lived here.

There used to be a bench along the wall here.  It held all of our board games.

And now for the pretty remarkable (if I do say so myself) transformation!

Our new sectional!  It was $1230 on clearance.  To give perspective almost every single sectional we looked at was over $2500.

We already had the lamps and we switched out the corner table with one we had stored in the garage.  The circular iron work was $15 at Homegoods and the two squares were found at Good Will for only $6!

The painting was another Home Goods find for only $40.  The bookshelf was on sale at Target for only $120.

You can't really see the crate on the floor next to the book case (it's holding the pillows) but it was $25 at Home Goods.  I realize I could have saved $15 or so by buying a rustic one at a craft store and staining it myself but I'm not quite so crafty.  

All in all I think it looks fantastic!  I was pretty amazed what a few little touches and moving things around can do for the room.  I think the only other thing we might do is replace the red curtains with some wooden blinds since they hit the couch in a weird spot.  I'm pretty inspired now to do some more rooms!