Family Photo Shoot and a Visit 2016

We had a wonderful visitor back in March. My stepmom flew in from Florida to spend a week with us. To see our home and explore our town and just spend time with us. We had a great time exploring our little town on the first day shopping for her summer rental properties in Montana finding cute antique wall decor, going to the train museum and having lunch. We spent our evenings snuggled under blankets and watching MMC and other kid friendly shows.

We went and had wings in tribute and tradition, laughed, reminisced and talked all about how big Emma is and how great living in our area is going to be for her. We went to the park and played with all the kiddos and even had a meal with my parents to celebrate her visit, and Daryl got a sewing tutorial and made some of her own wall hangings for the rental.

We also trekked out to our old stomping grounds to have a photoshoot with our favorite photographer. She took our family photos last year, that I inadvertently forgot to post here! OOPS! She moved out of state, but would be in town that weekend and I thought that it would be perfect timing to have a nice family shoot with Daryl since we have never gotten professional photo's done. She got some wonderful shots and too many to post so here is a snippet.

We always love spending time with Daryl and are always sad to see her go. I cant wait for our next adventure together!

Wedding Quilt!

Man. Didn't think that I would be back did ya? We'll I'm not going to share an excuse. I just got lazy and haven't wanted to sit at the computer. Do I have lots of things to blog about? DUH! But it's time and the desire to do so. I have missed this space and am excited to be back!

Last month my hubbies brother got married. As per tradition I, with the help of Emma and Darin made the couple a quilt. They didn't really have a home style that they described to me, so I went with a patriotic theme. Darin and Emma each sewed a seam in the quilt so it was a family project.

Darin and Emma were both in the wedding. I attempted to get Emma to nap early because the wedding was at 3pm, smack in the middle of her naptime. After and hour and a half of screaming she finally fell asleep for 45 minutes!!! AHHHHH! In my head this was going to be a disaster. She had never walked down an aisle before, nor had she done so in front of over 100 people she didn't know. I was praying that she wouldn't meltdown right there in the middle of the church! Once the ceremony started, the ring bearer grabbed her hand and she walked straight down that aisle and back up after the ceremony without any fear or tears. It was the CUTEST thing ever! Damn camera wouldn't focus and I missed the shot! Oh photographer I'd like to see these photos!!!!

Once at the reception she ate, and mingled with the rest of the family. Danced with mommy, daddy and grandma and even gave up some cash for the money dance and danced with her uncle Ryan. She made it through most of the reception and crashed out on my chest. She was such a champ and it was such a good day! I love going to weddings with my hubby. It reminds me of our wedding day and I just want to go back and celebrate that day all over!

I will be better about posting blogs from now on! I promise!!!! I have lots to recap over the last 5 months!!!!

Merry Christmas Eve

Hi all! I'm back! So crazy right! I'm just popping in to give you a little update on Christmas life. We have had lots of fun decorating, baking cookies, visiting Santa and family, and prepping for C-Day that the month flew by! It is crazy.

We took little miss back into town to visit Santa. The same one from last year. While we hoped for a good outcome, we even brought the photo of him and her with so she would look at it, we prepared ourselves mentally that she would scream and cry. We went and had lunch first and she had a mini nap on the drive over so she was in a relatively good mood because we let her run off a little energy through the mall on the walk over. Once inside Santa asked that we not show her his face and I just plopped her in his lap. I backed up and started making faces and being silly and we got a huge smile. She even looked at Santa with a big grin and shed not a single tear (the same could not be said for the poor, yet creepy, Easter Bunny.) We were in shock. He said "don't expect that next year," but we thought the same thing about this year. It was totally awesome!

We are getting to have Christmas Eve dinner at our house for the first time ever and D and I are SO EXCITED. We bought some nice dishes and some accessories so I cannot wait to set the table. Tonight is cleaning and making cranberry sauce in preparation, while tomorrow I will be cooking up a storm all day (with my mom's assistance since I have never made a turkey before.) There will be a fire, various liquors and wine, and of course family and opening of our Christmas Eve gift (pajama's.) I cannot wait to spend the first Christmas in our own home. Here is the menu:

Turkey
Cranberry Pear Sauce
Cranberry Apple Sausage Stuffing (My dear friends recipe)
Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Gravy
and of course Starlight Sugar Twists, Sugar, Scotcharoos and chocolate chip cookies.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends. This is a time for giving, for families, and for love. Merry Merry Christmas!

Love The Kimball's

Oh Hai!

Murray Farms Corn Maze

Well then. It seems like I have fallen off the face of the earth hasn't it? Well I haven't. Life has just completely got in the way and sitting at the slowest computer on the planet doesn't sound like something I am interested in doing these days.

Things have just been a whirlwind these days. The first month of living in our home we were commuting and hour and a half and two hours respectively. Once we started our new jobs things settled down, but our new schedules are a little hectic with both of us working Saturdays, and split days off seem to be having us running a little harried. We try to spend lots of time with Emma on the days we have with her. We have taken her to the Pumpkin patch, she's experienced her first snowfall and are just settling into our home with all the holiday decor up. We are loving life in our new home and just trying to find the balance finding time for everything. It's hard, but we are making it work.

The house is coming together. If you follow me on Instagram (lil_birdie_emma0701) then you will get a weekly, sometimes daily update of what life looks like around these parts. I am going to try and get a weekly post up over here. That way your all not missing out on things over here, but still can get a taste into our lives. Lil miss is transitioning into a one nap lady, and it tends to be pretty short so getting in a post while she sleeps will be hard. Lol.

Were slowly decorating and fixing little issues around the house, It's a good thing I work in a home improvement store.....and get a discount. My goodness there's lots of things you need when you own a home! We bought an island and a credenza for our kitchen, some shelving and a new rug. We still need to figure out how to make the office/guest room function as an office/guest room before my step mom makes the trip in March. I have ideas so I hope they work out and I hope to do a post when its finished.

New credenza and shelving for the dining room

Were hosting Christmas eve with my parents this year so I am off to research new and easy recipes to make for that. The hubby requested turkey.....so I guess I will me making my first ever Turkey. Wish me luck! Well I think that's all I can think of for this ramble post. Here's a couple of photos!

My beauty watching the bubbles!

His happy place.

Our first snowfall!

The Kitchen Island

Two posts in two days! Ya'll I'm feeling a little crazy over here! Hehe. Yesterday I posted the home improvement list and I wanted to take the time to share a couple of little things that we have already done to improve on our living space! We bought a mobile island and the handy hubby put it together! I'm kinda really excited to finally have an island. Having a functional work space in your kitchen is crucial to cooking effectively. If you have ever lived in apartments, you know that they are never effective use of space. In our last apartment the kitchen was coupled with the laundry room, so our hamper was constantly in the way of either the fridge or the the pantry. It was so frustrating. Having an open concept kitchen is nice, but we needed something to be able to make it function better and also more storage space.

Initially I wanted this island (this post is not sponsored by Wayfair) because of the closed cabinet storage and the knife rack in the island. But when I went to order it, the price went up about $60. Boo, of course the price is back down now. So I went perusing and I found the one we actually purchased. It has open storage in the middle so we can't put anything breakable in there because of small fingers, but I thought that it looked very similar to our existing cabinets and the hardware, even though its similar, can be changed out to match. I also like the look of the "butcher block" counter top. I'm considering tying that color wood with these shelves from Ikea on the dining room wall.

Please excuse the mess! Where still moving. Baxton Studio Meryland Modern Kitchen Cart from Wayfair.

Another thing we took on was replacing the lighting in the kitchen. The can lights are new, but I just couldn't understand why when they were on why it felt so HOT in there. Last weekend the hubby pulled a bulb out to see and low and behold Halogen bulbs. No wonder. Halogen bulbs are more cost effective than incandescent but they are twice as hot! UGH! Off to the home improvement store we went to buy some LED bulbs for our cans. Of course they only had one in a Par 30 size so we went with compact fluorescent instead. Then I had the discussion with the hubby about color temperatures. All the existing bulbs in the house are a soft warm light....similar to an incandescent bulb. I hate that pink glow that it casts so I asked him which kind of light he preferred. Soft warm, or a daylight. The smart man chose daylight, I knew I married him for his brains, and off we went with new 5000K CFL bulbs. I don't have a great comparison shot but here's a photo when we bought the house:

See the pink cast that is all over the cabinets and floor? Warm (2700K) bulbs. And I mean warm in both the literal and visual sense. When we installed the new bulbs, it was instantly cooler and just felt better.

Problem is now, that PINK paint! That's next on the to do list! What little home improvements can you all suggest for a big impact?

The Inevitable House List

With an older home comes an inevitable list of improvements that need to be done. I know I went over things that needed to be done in our last post, but the hubby keeps adding things to do, so I figured I would put together a list that we could add to and I could reference back and link up if I actually do a DIY or room tour post! So here's what were thinking, and remember that this is a dream list also:

Front Exterior/Entry:

• Replace Front Door
• Replace Door Handle & add deadbolt
• Replace Exterior lighting
• Add a flagpole
• Update planters and walkway 

Dining Room:

• Re-paint walls
• Replace light bulbs in ceiling fan and entry light
• New sideboard
• New rug
• Update blinds
• Provide storage for entry

Kitchen:

• Re-paint walls
• Update backspash
• Add shelf over window
• New window curtains/valance 
• Remove French doors and move into the play room, frame out opening
• Update glides on cabinet drawers
• Hook up waterline to refrigerator
• Build mobile island 
• Remove existing phone jack and patch
• Update lighting/bulbs (existing are halogen and its ridiculously hot)

Playroom:

• Re-paint walls
• Update slider/add French doors
• Update window
• Update lighting and add additional lighting
• Provide new storage cabinets
• Update sprinkler system pad

Living Room:

• Re-paint walls
• Add down lights
• Check wood burning stove for functionality
• Add Built-in storage
• Add wainscot or picture rail
• Add blinds to slider
• Possibly convert slider to French doors

Emma's/Guest Bath:

• Re-Paint walls
• Update exhaust fan
• Re-paint cabinet
• Replace medicine cabinet
• Install new toilet paper holder
• Update glides on cabinet drawers

Office/Guest Bedroom:

• Re-paint walls
• New desk layout
• New Twin bed with storage

Emma's Room:

• Re-paint walls
• Finish decorating
• Add another hanging rail and more closet organization

Master Bedroom:

• Re-Paint walls
• Re-organize closet storage
• Add additional down lights
• Possibly convert slider to French doors

Master Bath:

• Re-paint walls
• Re-do closet storage
• Update glides on cabinet drawers
• Replace medicine cabinet
• Replace pocket door, new hardware
• Install towel rod and toilet paper holder
• Install shelving in toilet room
• Replace window

Backyard (The big dream):

• Re-do planters
• Level ground
• Seed for grass
• Re-paint decking
• Create pergola's over all exterior doors
• Add overhead hanging bulb lights
• Built in BBQ
• Swingset
• Dog house
• Sand and refinish existing benches

This is the dream list. By no means do we think that all this will happen, but I forsee the DIY stuff coming along nicely. But first, finish unpacking!

We took a little break!

Hi all! It's been a little while since I've updated the blog and there's been lots of good reasons! No I'm not preggers. We had a whirlwind July and August and really I have just been trying to work through it all. The hubby lost two family members between Father's Day and 4th of July so we had grief and funerals to deal with. It was rough and trying to stay positive was all I could do for him. Losing family is always hard, especially when they are so young.

Right in the middle of all of this we had some happy news! We bought a home! It's been so surreal and I feel like we are now #adulting! It's so silly. We have a baby and have lived on our own for 8 years and have been married for 8 years, but until you sock in cold hard cash on a piece of land and a little property you don't really feel like an adult! We are so excited for our little 3 bed, 2 bath on a 1/4 acre! Land in CA is sparse so when you have a decent amount for your kiddos and pets you scream and jump for joy!

Do I have some plans. Mostly for the landscaping! (Please excuse the photo's a lot are from the listing)

The front yard had sod recently laid and in the main photo it looks bad, however it has greened up nicely. The rock garden next to the bridge needs to be cleaned out and re-established because its pretty over grown. The planter next to the house needs ground cover because its mostly just a dirt pile that washes into the front doorway. The trees along the roof line were trimmed because the roof needed a little repair, so that was already done! Yay!

In the backyard.....oy! It needs help. We have beautiful pine trees and they give lots of shade, but they also have left lots of droppings in the yard and over the deck. First off is sweeping and clearing out of oddities, IE the random fire hydrant, pole for nothing, parking curb in the yard. The gate needs repair because our pooch already figured out how to escape the yard. Sigh. Next up, see the large rock pile in the 3rd photo? That's going to be our new flowerbed liners along the back retaining wall. Leveling of the yard and grass seed. Cleaning out existing planters and sanding and painting the benches is on the list also. We also see a swing and maybe built in bbq later. Dreams.

The main living area has been updated. New paint and carpet. I will definitely be re-painting! It's so pink with grey carpet! WHAT!?! The wood trim around the fireplace will be removed and a large mantle will replace it. Maybe some wainscoting. Maybe a built in? We shall see what the future holds.

Kitchen and dining. The owner replaced the counters, fixtures and lighting so for right now all that we are doing in here is the backsplash and of course painting out the pink. The backsplash doesn't match AT ALL! They also cut into the existing beadboard so that may have to be replaced. We shall see. We are also planning to put a decor shelf over the sink in the kitchen and some drapes.

Master and guest bath. They were updated finish wise, but we need to replace the exhaust fans and I plan on tiling behind the mirror in the master and putting a framed one up in its place.

And finally this room off the kitchen is going to be so fun! This is Emma's future play room! I already have plans to make it a vintage inspired kids room because of all the things she has that are new, but vintage inspired but don't fit the theme of her bedroom.

There she is. What has been occupying our minds and time for the last 6 weeks. I'll do another post on packing and moving with a toddler because UGH! It was interesting! Happy Tuesday!