What Matters Most To Me

The Gallery Wall

I finally finished the gallery wall in the living room. By finished, I mean actually putting pictures in the frames. I've had the frames hanging for almost four weeks now and just haven't had the time to sit down and go through all of our pictures, edit them in black and white and order. I really didn't have time this past week either, but I made time for it. And it feels wonderful to look at the gallery wall and see our wonderful memories smiling back at me (instead of the preprinted pictures (that come with the frames when you buy them)  of someone else's kids smiling back at me).

So here it is, our gallery wall.....

And here is a more detailed look at all of the pictures......

{A picture of mine and Jerome's shadow at Coronado Beach in California. It was a trip he planned and surprised me with when he returned home from Afghanistan. It was a wonderful trip. San Diego, California is where we lived at when we were first married, he was in A-school. We loved it there but we missed family back home and picked moving back to the east coast when he was stationed.}

From left to right -

{At the airport when Jerome came home for Christmas. Katie wouldn't leave his side.}

{Jerome surprised the kids at school with a visit from him after being gone for weeks. He had been in training at Ft. Bragg getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan.}

{At the Memorial Day Parade in Ironton, he usually marches in. He walked over to us during the parade and gave the kids a quick hug...he was reaching for Katie who was sitting down playing with her flag.}

{Katie on our front porch before her patriotic play at school. She was so cute singing the national anthem (belting it out) weeks before the play....the sweetest part was the words she mixed up and sang with all her heart.}

{Jerome holding Katie's hand at Ft. Bragg before leaving.}

{Jerome returning home from Afghanistan for Christmas. He was hugging Spencer here and Katie was running up to him with her sign she had made for him. It had been 8 months since we had seen him.}

{I think this is both mine and Jerome's favorite picture. It is very representative of our life. How many times we have walked through airport doors to say our sad goodbyes but also to welcome him home again.This time we were welcoming him home. He was on his two week leave from Afghanistan, coming home for Christmas. I listened to "I'll Be Home for Christmas" by Josh Groban, so many times that year. They ended up using this picture over there as a support type of poster that said, "Remember What You Are Fighting For."}

{A favorite of us. He has always, since the day we started dating in high school, kissed me on the cheek or forehead.}

{Spencer playing on the monkey bars on a camping trip}

{A favorite of the girls at the beach}

{Natalie learning how to jump rope. She was showing her daddy here how she could jump rope. It was the day he had surprised them at school after being gone at Ft. Bragg for weeks.}

{Katie and her cherished tricycle. We used to laugh watching her peddle, she looked like the wicked witch of the west peddling so fast and intense, we would always say. She was really into Wizard of Oz at this time.}

{Natalie always loved horses, even when she was a baby.}

{Jerome and Katie in the ocean. She was our water baby. We used to call her our little fish.}

{At the beach not long after Jerome left for Afghanistan. It was our first vacation without him. Thank goodness for friends. My friend Missy mentioned us all going to the beach with the kids to help take our minds off of Jerome being gone.}

Thank you Missy.

{One of my very most favorites of Katie. I loved this little sailor outfit on her (I still have it, its tucked away in her keepsake box).}

{Natalie playing in the water hose in the front yard with her brother and sister.}

{Our kids at the beach. Katie wasn't in the mood to have a picture....she wanted to get back in the ocean.}

And for the bottom middle collage frame....the picture was accidentally deleted with it's detail....so here are the pictures in that frame (with description)...

{Spencer playing football. This was a tough game but he played very well.}

{Our kids on the water slide that Grann surprised them with for their birthdays.}

{A favorite of Natalie. I think she looks a little like me here when I was little.}

{Molly, our dog, "kissing" Katie.}

{Katie on the tire swing on the sycamore tree in our front yard.}

{The girls at the county fair.}

And to the runners up.....(the ones that didn't make it to the wall)....

 

The project we started back in January to the living room is almost finished....thank goodness. I just have a few little things left to do. Here is the bookshelf in the living room that I have organized all of our pictures and priceless moments on....

All of our memories are stored in these little brown boxes on the bookshelf. It was quite a job organizing ALL of our pictures....but it was well worth it. I also put the video tapes of our high school memories, our wedding, our kids sonograms, their birth, their baby years, toddler years, ballet recitals, football games.....and so on and so on.....all in these boxes (there are more shelves with them but I just photographed these two shelves).

More to come of the living room project later, once I finish it....which hopefully won't be that much longer.

Living Room To Do List

Curtains

Family Picture for mantle

Paint mantle and table

Add more color by couch throw pillows

Truly White

I took a break from working on the living room, which is so close to being finished, to working on the "new" dining room. I managed to get everything hung, priced and tagged for the consignment sale and out of the dining room. With that finished I felt the room needed a fresh coat of paint. I didn't want to paint it, but it needed it. You see, last year when we painted the living room (which is now the dining room) I didn't like the color paint I had picked out, I wanted a soft, creamy color....almost white. I did the first wall and it was more yellow than anything.....Jerome came home from work and hated it, lol. So trying to keep from having to buy another gallon of paint, I used the other gallon of Lemon Pearl (I should have taken a hint it would have a yellow hue to it seeing the word Lemon was in the name) and a gallon of the mocha color paint from the kitchen. I held my breath, mixed the two gallons together and just hoped it would look good. It ended up looking wonderful. I loved the color, Jerome loved the color....everyone loved the color. But.....we had just enough to do most of the living room, we were scraping the bottom of the bucket to have just enough paint to paint the areas that were visible where the entertainment center was. Anyway, to make a looong story short, the dining room we have now NEEDED a new coat of paint (the wall we had just enough paint for....was now two different colors and looked awful).

Yesterday I decided to take on the task of painting it. I L.O.V.E. it!! It is so bright and cheery in the dining room now....

the before of the dining room

 
after painting the dining room white(it's still a work in progress though)

Notice the difference? I LOVE the light that bounces off of the walls in this room now. I still have work to do on the dining room and just a few things left to do to the living room.

When the kids got off the school bus, Natalie walked in the dining room and kept telling me how much she loved it. I couldn't believe the light that was bouncing around the room and onto her beautiful face. I grabbed my camera, I wanted to test and see just how much of a difference painting the room white made. The difference is very, very clear. Normally this room is really to dark to even attempt to get a good picture in (the dark paint) and I had absolutely no problem getting one of Natalie in it with the walls painted white and the light filling the room....

I was amazed! I couldn't believe the difference in the light in the room. I LOVE the white in this room.

And what I love even more is my mom offered to trade me tables. I absolutely love my farmhouse table but it doesn't match the mahogany hutch I refinished, the two just don't look good together at all. My mom told me if I wanted to she would trade me my farmhouse table for my Granny Saunders table she had. I was excited to hear that, I have always loved my Granny's table but knew my mom loved it too. It needs a little work done to it, just a little bit of elbow grease and it will be as good as new. I love the idea of having something in our home with some sentimental meaning to it.....my Granny Saunder's table. I can't wait to see it in our home.

I've been searching design blogs (my sis has a lot of wonderful links on her site) looking for ideas for the dining room. I love the white, and the feel of how clean and crisp it feels. Here is a picture of inspiration I found....

We have a long wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room. I knew I wanted an old church pew to put on that wall, but when I came across this picture, I loved the look of it. The shelf with the antique looking hooks, the frames on the shelf, the cushion on the bench/pew. This is what I am hoping to do on that particular wall in the dining room (the one shown above).

Well, the washer finally finished the load of jeans the kids need for in the morning. Jerome finished his homework. I'm putting the jeans in the dryer and going to bed....it has been a very long day for me today. Night....

Define....normal

Our home has been anything but normal lately. We've been getting ready for the carpet installation scheduled for today. Since we've started this project in January it has taken much longer that we had planned, but we are coming to the end of it and are seeing the wonderful difference it is making. Until then we've just adapted to a "new normal". Like walking through what feels like a maze in the dining room, that is full of the furniture that goes into the living room. Or the TV in the middle of the kitchen.

After taking a class at the YMCA last night, I came home to help Jerome finish tucking the kids in bed and then we started moving everything. He kept telling me, "Just remember it is only for a little bit". He knows that I am ready for this project to be finished. We finally finished moving everything out around 11:30 last night, and after moving it all we realized we had barricaded ourselves in and had to rearrange things to make a walkway to get from one end of the house to the other. 

Our new "normal", but only for a bit....

The living room prepped and ready for new carpet....

And when I think the chaos of everything being everywhere is about to drive me insane, all I have to do is look at this picture.....the drywall dust....and remember how far we've come.

My dad and Jerome building the wall....

Thank you dad very, very much for helping us build the wall.....needless to say we couldn't have done it without you.

Thank you very, very much Brad for doing the drywall for us, we greatly appreciate it! It looks great!

In the midst of this project I decided to start a project of my own (to distract myself from all the chaos around me here at home). After the first day I was ready to quit, but after two and a half days from the time the kids climbed on the school bus until time to start dinner, I diligently worked on this project and  I am very happy to say.....I finished it!

What you are looking at is boxes full of our pictures, neatly organized by year, month and event. I also managed to organize and count the negatives (to make it easier when I am ready to send them off to make them digital) by year as well. The first box is of  mine and Jerome's pictures, from the time we started dating,1994, up to the end of his first 6 month deployment, May 1997. It seems after that pictures of him and I are few and far between, most of the pictures from the time we had Spencer to now are of the kids. Something I want to change, we need more pictures of us to have and to remember moments someday. The rest of the boxes are 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 (the end of 2004 is when most everything for us became digital).

It was a tedious project to complete.....

But seeing this.....

                                                                .....it made it even more worth the effort.

It was nice seeing the kids stopping at the table and looking at pictures, asking how old we (or they) were, where it was and the story about the pictures. Jerome and I also reminisced a bit too. It seems like only yesterday we were looking at each other and saying our wedding vows. We can both honestly say it does not feel like it has been fifteen years. 

Speaking of fifteen years, does anyone know what fifteen years is suppose to be (paper...)? Not that we've ever stuck to it, except our first year of marriage, but we were both just wondering. We will be celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary soon.....it just sounds unreal to say.....15th wedding anniversary. Saying it makes us sound old, but living it everyday, makes us feel young and in love, more in love with each other than the day we said, "I do".

I know our first anniversary, seeing that it was paper, Jerome made little notes for me and hid them all over our first apartment for me. I wrote him a poem, on paper.

OK, enough reminiscing, back to the project. The carpet installers left about an hour ago. After they laid the carpet down and did the seams but hadn't finished the sides. They had us come in the room and see what we thought. Natalie and Katie without hesitation threw themselves down on the carpet and started to make "carpet snow angels"(Spencer hadn't made it home from school at this time yet).

They kept laughing and saying over and over, "It's so soft!". I agree, it feels wonderful and looks wonderful. Then they asked to camp out on the carpet tonight to, "try it out for sleepovers".

I now have dinner going, Jerome just made it in from work and the kids are all three in the empty new carpeted living room doing this.....

Enjoying a good book on our new soft floor....

From Jerome, myself, Spencer, Natalie and Katie.......

Thank you very, very much Grann! WE LOVE IT!

Oh, and P.S. - the quiet reading time didn't last very long.....

Just keep showing those muscles Spencer.....it means you get to help us move everything back in the room:)

Pictures

We are getting close to being finished with this project in our home. We are gearing up for moving furniture out of the living room this weekend to get ready for the carpet to be installed......hopefully soon. I am beyond ready to have our home back to normal.

With all of the decluttering and organizing of every single inch of space in our home, I found a few things that I didn't even know we had that was tucked away in a drawer. I found a roll of film and two waterproof disposeable cameras. I had absolutlely no idea what was on the roll of film, I haven't had a film camera in ages. I knew the waterproof cameras would have summertime pictures on them, but I wasn't sure from what year they were even used.

This morning we had a two hour delay again and I ended up just taking the girls in to school and then made a trip to Walmart to pick up a few things we needed. I remembered to grab the rolls of film before leaving and I couldn't wait to get them developed. I haven't had to wait on film developing in a long time, not since the kids were little. I would always drop off the rolls of film and do whatever shopping needed to be done, and considering I was shopping with three little kids it always took me a long time and the film was always ready to be picked up long before I was ever ready. This time though, it was just me, I only had a few things to pick up, but I was to anxious to see the pictures that I waited, and waited and waited. I think I probably walked through every aisle out of boredom waiting for the film to be finished. It was finally ready and as the woman at the Walmart photo lab handed me my pictures, I felt like a kid at Christmas anxiously waiting to see what was inside. I stood at the counter looking at them, I'm sure the woman behind the counter was wondering why I was smiling so big looking at them and why my eyes were swelling up with tears. The pictures weren't anything spectacular, just snapshots really, but snapshots of when the kids were so very little.

Normally the roll of film I had developed, if I had developed it when it was taken I probably would have thought it was a waste of eight dollars seeing that it was a child that had obviously gotten ahold of the camera and went a little crazy taking pictures of everything. But this time it was different, the kids in the pictures were our kids and they were so little, the pictures were taken in June 2003. Spencer was five, Natalie was three and Katie was a few months away from turning two. In a few of the pictures, Spencer is sitting on the top bunk of his bed holding up a Rescue Hero figurine and he had a Spider Man temp tattoo on his upper arm. In another picture it is a close up (and I mean close up, a dead give away that it was a kid taking the pictures kind of close up) of Katie making a scrunchie face with her binky in her mouth. Then there is one with me sitting on the couch with both of the girls laughing and making crazy faces at the camera (I would guess that Spencer was the one taking that one....most of these actually). Then there is another of Spencer's school papers and drawings on the fridge with the kid magnets we used to have. It's funny because I am sure it was Spencer taking the picture of his artwork on the fridge, but looking at it from a height prospective the refrigerator looked very tall and he obviously was still short. Now he is every bit as tall as the refrigerator. There is quite a few others that are to blurry to even figure out what it even was (probably due to the EXTREME close up), and then there are quite a few more that Spencer took. Pictures of him holding up different things in his room, Katie toting around her doll by the arm and Natalie with her play curlers in her hair. Looking at these pictures, I feel like the time has gone so fast.

I did get a CD copy of all three rolls of film, and I would love to put them on here. But last night Jerome installed Windows 7 on here (we hated Vista) and now I have to redo everything on my computer, which we are working on this evening. So hopefully I'll have my computer back to normal tomorrow and I'll put some pictures on here from the waterproof cameras I had developed today.....they are my favorite of all the pictures printed from the three rolls. I won't tell you what they are of (but your probably right if you guessed its of the kids) but I will tell you they were so little.

I also finally ordered our 2007 family book from Blurb I have been working on FOREVER. It didn't help that Jerome crashed the computer twice and I had to redo the book each time. But all the effort and time was well worth it. I can't wait to receive it in the mail. Here is a picture of the front of the book.....

I had a time designing the front of the book. I knew I wanted to use a picture that shows what that year represented. To me I felt this picture was it. I also wanted it to be simple and easy to duplicate each year after (or before) when I make the rest of our books. I used to scrapbook and loved it but never had enough time for it, and to I felt like I was never going to be able to catch up to get all of our pictures out of their boxes and preserved in a way that we can look back and remember the days and moments from each of the pictures. Then I found Blurb, and was happy at how quickly I could go through a year of pictures (quickly I might add....ahem...without two computer crashes). I also love that I can go back through this blog and add all of our stories and moments that I have written about to these books. I really am very excited to get this in the mail......it ended up being 246 pages! If you want to take a peek at the book you can by clicking HERE . 

Finishing up this book has really made me want to make more of these books. To get all of our pictures organized (the non-digital ones....the digital ones are all neatly organized on my external hard drive by year, month and then event) and to somehow get the film negatives on a CD so that I can upload them to Blurb and make a book for that year. I asked at Walmart if they do any kind of service like this and they said "Sure, it isn't very much to do".... it would be as a reprint and basically to get all the pictures on CD I'd have to reprint ALL pictures for .29 cents each and then $2.50 for a CD copy PER ROLL. I about died when she told me I'd have to reprint them all......obviously the person behind the counter doesn't have an inkling of an idea how many pictures I have taken. I was disappointed that there wasn't more I could do other than reprint, which I knew I didn't want to do considering how many pictures I'd have to reprint and how many rolls of film I'd have to pay to have burned to a CD. So I accepted the fact that the pictures that I had before I had my digital camera were just going to have to stay tucked away and not put in a nice book with the rest of the other pictures from later years when we had a digital camera. I decided I was going to tuck them away neatly and organized (they are already somewhat organized but not like I would like them to be), so I made a trip to Hobby Lobby, purchased some pretty linen color picture boxes with the silver labeling tab on the front and decided to get all the years up to 2004 organized and tucked away neatly in these boxes.

After starting this project of getting all of these pictures organized neatly, and after asking around if anyone knew of a place that could put pictures on negatives on to a CD. I lucked out and found a place (I haven't tried yet but it came highly recommended) that does this. It is a company called Scan Cafe (www.scancafe.com). The man that recommended this sight to me also said that you don't have to get every single picture from each roll burned to CD either, that you can select which pictures to have scanned to CD. I was relieved to hear that (hence all the blurry, close up pictures that Spencer loved taking with my camera when he was little). I'm still going to organize what I have printed, in fact our dining room table is covered with pictures of me and Jerome from the time we started dating in high school up to the year we had Spencer. It has been nice looking at all of these pictures again. It has Jerome and I both walking by the table, looking at them and smiling. The kids love it too, they love looking at pictures of us and asking where each one was taken and how old we were. It puts you in a very sentimental mood.

I found this video and thought it would be fitting to add here today.You will want to pause the music that plays here (the box on the right).

Home Improvements

I was working on making everyone's lunch yesterday while Jerome was working on figuring out how to build the wall (he's never built one in his life). He needed to find the stud in the ceiling to brace the wall to, we had a little conversation that went like this -

Me - (after hearing multiple "hmmphs") How are you going to find the stud in the ceiling?

Jerome - I don't know, every time I hold the stud finder it keeps beeping.

Me - (laughing) Funny honey, funny.

Yes, it's good to have a little laughter working on a project like this. Especially after hearing "We could have never built a house together" a million times in one day.

My wonderful hubby who will probably think twice next time about starting a new project with me.

A little later I heard him say "I'm about ready to make a hole in the ceiling to find the stud". Jokingly, I replied,"I'm not looking". He took that as the go ahead and before long I heard the sound of ceiling pieces dropping to the floor and looked to find this....

Yes, that is six big holes in the ceiling and five small ones. Luckily, because of the lighting he wants to put in, the ceiling won't show anyway. We will be putting up bead board for the ceiling in this closet/office space. As it turns out, the stud ended up being in the exact spot we were building the wall, it worked out perfect.

You see, he and I are different when it comes to projects.....detail. He is SO detailed sometimes that I think it will be FOREVER before a project is finished. I on the other hand have some of my Dad's qualities when it comes to things like this. I am detailed, but not so detailed that the project creeps along, I have more of the "I want to get this finished soon" where as he is more of the "I am going to take my time and do this right". Which is good, but not good when the two of us are trying to work on the same project:)

My hubby paying attention to detail....

My Dad came out to help Jerome with the wall today. They are hanging up drywall as we speak. He was going to come out yesterday but my Grandma had to do to the doctor. My Dad had to go stay with Grandpa while my Aunt Diane took Grandma to the doctor. They called to let us know yesterday that they weren't going to be able to make it. I told them it was fine, Jerome had plenty of help....me and Spencer. Only thing is Spencer is only good using one hand to work with, because his other hand is to busy texting his friends....

Spencer working hard helping Jerome.....

Just kidding. He did help out a lot. In fact I told Jerome how great it was having a son. He helped us carry in the drywall last night after our trip to Lowes. It would have busted if he hadn't have been there.

A little bit later Mom called to see how the project was coming along. We talked a few minutes and then I heard a loud thud, Spencer crying and Jerome hurrying to get off the stepladder and he sounded in a panic talking to Spencer asking him if he was OK. I ran over to see what had happened.  Spencer had calmed down and Jerome was checking his back out. As it turns out, one of the 2x4's had fallen and Spencer ended up being it's landing.....ouch!

We had Spencer sit out and put some ice on his back. Then I jumped in to help. It wasn't  long before I was crying too. Jerome was squaring off the wall (he was on a stepladder near the ceiling and I was in the step down living room below him), and the level slipped out of his hand and hit me in the head. The worst part is I didn't even know it was falling. I had my head down to the floor holding the tape measure exactly on the line he had drawn,while he was trying to measure and level at the same time.

It wasn't to long after that Mom called and as I answered I heard, "You never called me back!" (I guess I forgot about her being on the phone when I dropped it to go see what had happened to Spencer). She asked how Spencer was and why it sounded like I was crying. So I told her what happened to Spencer and then that I had just had a level fall on my head. Her reply......"You all had better put all those tools down until you get some help out there! (in a concerned tone)". I laughed, told her we were almost finished building the wall and we were fine......"Besides I have a hard head anyway, remember?"I told her.

Mom called early this morning to see if we needed any help today. I happily agreed. Not long after they showed up and Jerome and Dad got to work finishing up the wall. I am so thankful to have a Dad that is always here when we need him.

Later when they finish we are all going to Jim's Spaghetti House for dinner. My Mom has been wanting to go there for some time now. It sounds really good, and really nice considering there is a coating of dust on everything in here in the main rooms....including the kitchen.

To my Hubby (because I know you are reading this) -

Thank you so much for building the wall and putting so much time and effort into it. I love you baby!