Our new house!!!

We closed on our house you guys!!! Our closing was delayed 10 days due to the bank messing up some paperwork. When our Realtor realized how upset we were, she wrote up a contract to allow us to come in and paint the house like we had planned. Here are some before and after pictures of the work we did. We had a lot of help from my parents!

 Here's the front of the house before. It was pretty cute as is, but I wanted to add my personal touches and some color.

 This is what would be the girls' room. The sellers went with brown and orange for some reason. We let the girls pick out their own colors and they were so excited!

 We left the kitchen red, but Aaron didn't like the light finish on the wood floors. 

 This room is the school/play room. It was purple with a dark purple border all the way around.

This is the master. They had the walls a beige color which was also all down the hallway. They also had an orange accent wall. The sellers even painted the backs of the doors to match the rooms, so we had to paint all the doors too.

 Our first (of many) big purchases from Lowe's. 

 The girls were so excited to paint! They worked really hard and actually did a lot of painting. I'm sure their little arms were super tired at the end of the weekend :) We chose a nice gray color for the school/play room, hall, and the master. I love the look of the gray with the white trim.

 Hensley's favorite color is dark blue, so of course that's what she picked. Tae picked pink with glitter. We did two walls of each color. I thought their color choices really look great together.

 Hensley was zonked from painting! This is the living room. We left it the green color, I really like it!

 This is the school/play room looking out into the hall towards the master.

 The finished girls room, minus the white trim pieces we are doing in the corners.

 The finished master with fresh white paint on the closet doors.

 Finished school/play room.

 This is the hall from the master looking towards the front door. We also painted all the ceilings. They had a semi-gloss paint on them and we decided to do a flat white. They look so much better, it's amazing!

 Aaron worked super hard on the dining room floor. We had also planned to do the hall way since the whole house has the original hard wood, but we just didn't have the time. That will be another project for another day.

 The finished floor. We went with an ebony stain. It turned out great!

 Here's the finished front porch. We painted the trellises and the mailbox a peacock blue, We also painted the porch with an anti-skid porch paint in a gray color. We eventually want to add black shutters to either side of the windows.

 Here's our back yard and pool. We didn't do anything to it, but mow. 

Here's the fire pit. The girls are excited to roast marshmallows and hot dogs this weekend. We hope to have the pool up and running in a few weeks as well!

Spring has Sprung!

We've been enjoying some nice weather here lately! It seems we didn't actually have a winter. No snow and not very many cold days. It makes me a little scared of the summer to come. We went to the Myriad Gardens a couple weeks back and enjoyed all the spring blooms.

 My silly girls! 

 The girls' candy free Easter baskets. I was really happy I only spend $30 to fill both of their baskets!

 I bought some German Easter chocolates from Aldi's and that's what we hid in Easter eggs. The girls had a blast hunting for eggs and found them all in no time.

 Love my family!

 Aaron took a 4 day weekend for his birthday. We went to the zoo and went to dinner. It was a great weekend!

 We went by the new house to check on some repairs. The girls had fun playing in the back yard and sitting by the pool. They are ready to be swimming!

 Tae and our sweet Kona. He's such a sweet lovable kitty.

This is what it looks like in our house currently! Boxes everywhere! We were supposed to close this week, but there was a delay, so it looks like the beginning of next week. We wont move until the end of the month, so we still have some time to get the rest of our stuff packed. I'm so ready to live without the hectic mess!

All about the FOOD!

I love to cook! I love it even more so since I stay at home. I feel like I have all day to get things ready and decide what to make. I thought I'd share a few of our favorites from the last few months.

 When I make meatballs, I make a huge batch and freeze half. They make for an easy meal. They are also easy to make. I just take ground beef, homemade bread crumbs, a little bit of milk, an egg or two, garlic, onion, parsley, oregano, a little bit of ketchup or tomato sauce, a dash or worchestershire sauce, and S&P. On the meal above I baked the meatballs and served them with Simply Organic brand brown gravy. We also had smashed sweet potatoes and roasted okra and carrots.

 These orange cinnamon rolls from Sally's Baking Addiction were so very good! We enjoyed having the for Sunday breakfast.

 We eat a lot of sweet potatoes around here! I love that you can get organic local sweet potatoes for super cheap! One way we love them is stuffed. Above is Italian stuffed with chicken, mozzarella, spinach, and Italian seasoning. The ones below are BBQ stuffed with chicken, BBQ sauce, cheddar, and green onions. Oh my gosh, they are so good!

 I made these black bean brownies and they ended up tasty like the best fudge brownies ever. All you need is 1 1/1 cups canned black beans (drained and rinsed), 2 T cocoa powder, 1/2 cup oats, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/3 cup maple syrup (or honey), 2 T sugar, 1/4 cup coconut oil, 2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 2/3 cup chocolate chips. Blend everything but the chocolate chips in a blender until smooth. Mix in all but a few T of the chips and pour into a baking dish. Sprinkle the top with the remaining chips and bake on 350 for 15-20 minutes. They are delicious and don't taste like beans at all :)

 Pizza is another favorite around here! I always double my dough recipe and make breadsticks to go along with it.

 Here's another meatball dish. This time I made an Ikea hack swedish meatball gravy and they were delish!

 Nothing like good old onion sliders and grilled asparagus, yum!

 Corn chowder with homemade kale chips!

 Fried rice is another super easy meal. I just use leftover grilled pork and frozen mixed veggies. Easy peasy!

I'm sure most people know of Taco Bell's Mexican pizzas. We don't eat them anymore, but we remake them and they are even better! Homemade black bean refried beans between two fried tortillas. Topped with enchilada sauce and cheese and then green onions and tomatoes. So good and so easy!

Catching up...

I can't believe I haven't updated since Christmas! Things have been mega busy and my blog got pushed to the side burner. I'll try to catch up the last few months!

 Tae's pediatrician said they thought she might need glasses, so we made her an eye doctor appointment and sure enough, she is near sighted just like her momma. Aaron, Tae and I all got new glasses and I think she just looks so adorable in them. She was told she didn't have to wear them all the time yet, but she does wear them frequently.

 My sister-in-law had a new baby and we went and visited. She is pretty adorable and both girls enjoyed holding her.

 My nephew Mavy is over in Germany and he sent the girls some of his favorite German treats for Valentine's day. We've been enjoying tasting the treats!

 We love spring and have been enjoying many outings to the zoo and parks. 

 Hensley is my brave girl and isn't scared of much. She loved feeding the birds!

 I made a yummy chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting for Valentine's day. It was quite yummy!

 Here are the girls Valentine treats. All the cousins stayed the night at my parent's, so Aaron and I had a nice Valentine's date and the girls had fun with their cousins.

 Every day in February I hung a heart on Tae's door with something I loved about her. She really enjoyed reading the hearts!

 I've been coming up with things to keep Hensley busy during Tae's school time. She really loved doing this activity!

 I told you on my last post that we decided to buy a house! We had been actively house hunting and looked at 7 or 8 houses before we decided on THE ONE, It's a cute house in a quiet neighborhood about 3 minutes from Aaron's work. It even has a POOL! The girls are most excited about that part :) We close in 2 weeks and will be taking the whole month to do some painting and updating and then we will move the end of April. We are so excited and a little nervous about this huge step! It will be nice to own our own home and be closer to Aaron's work. We've been busy packing and purging. It's been an emotional ride, that's for sure. I didn't realize how hard it would be to leave a place you've lived for the last 8 years. I know this is the path God has chosen for us and we are so excited to start our new lives in our new house!

 Hensley loves helping me make breakfast on the weekends and has become quite the expert at making pancakes.

 Once of our trips to the lake to feed the birds.

 We also love being so close to the Myriad Gardens and spend a lot of time down there.

 Tae participated in the annual Egg Drop at her homeschool coop. She was successful for the second year in a row. Even though we are moving farther away from her coop, we are still going to be attending. She would be so sad to leave her friends!

We've been gearing up for the very last Easter in this house. Next year we will have a HUGE yard to hunt eggs in.