Extreme Home Makeover

I feel like I am not in my house. I must be someplace else. My house doesn't have smooth, freshly painted walls. It has beat up, old walls that weren't painted well. My house doesn't have nice, simple, clean floors. It has old green carpet that smells like things I won't even mention, and disgusting linoleum that never seems clean. My house doesn't have a beautifully sponge painted blue bathroom with a new toilet and sink. It has an old, cracked toilet seat that you sit on while staring at this country wallpaper that I would have never chosen for myself. But WAIT! This IS my house! Yippee! I get to LIVE here! We are no longer the Disgustingtons!

Yes, we are finally done. Well, I say that knowing that we will never be TOTALLY done, as there are ALWAYS little things we can work on. But we are FINISHED with the big projects and all the chaos and mayhem that went with them. The endless trips to Lowe's. The waking up and working all day, being hot and sweaty and not taking a shower until bedtime. The eating takeout food on the go. DONE. By the way, a cute picture of Alex helping his dad hang our new ceiling fan . . .
So, I was thinking it would be fun to do a little before and after. I still have pictures from when we came to look at this house 3 years ago. Now, mind you, we had redecorated everything once before, but had just done a quick job of things. But I KNOW you want to see what the house looked like for its previous owners. Of course, they had very different tastes than we do. So, you will see the old picture of each room, followed by the new picture.






So that is the transformation of our first floor! Hope you like it! We are thrilled but exhausted. There are only about 35 more things on our list that we want to get to, SOMEDAY . . .

And that's what's up on Boomerang Drive this week!

-- Holly

Funny Man

Alexander is such a little ham. I mean, he is just SO FUNNY. We are cracking up every day. Here are some of his new quirky behaviors. First of all, he does a fake laugh. He just decides he wants to laugh at something, so he forces out this crazy laugh, for no particular reason. It's hysterical (and hard to describe, I guess you need to be here to see it!). Let's see, what else? He learned to wave, but he turns his hand the wrong way, so he waves at himself. He drops things and then holds his hands up in the air, as if to say, "Where did it go?" He can also imitate the sound of Pledge being sprayed as I am dusting the furniture. He makes the spraying sound. It's a riot.

He is also babbling away nonstop. He does say "dada" directed to Erik. So maybe that's his first word? Although he also says "What's that?" and I'm not sure if he said that or "dada" first. So, does he say "mama"? Well, when he is tired, he clings to me and WHINES "mom, mom, mom, mom". He also does this when I am feeding him. He has never said "mama" in a nice way, only in this whining voice. But oh well, you take what you can get, right?

Alex has been enjoying the summer, getting in some pool time at Grandmom and Grandpop Schlosser's house, as well as at his weekly Aquababies class. He spends the rest of his days playing in our newly organized basement play area, chasing around the puppies, and of course being carted back and forth to Lowe's, Walmart, etc. as we work on our projects. Which leads us into our other news . . .

We are FINALLY seeing a light at the end of the tunnel with our home repairs. We have put new floors in the entire first floor, with the exception of our bathroom. We are waiting on a plumber to get back to us with an estimate for replacing our toilet and sink, as well as replacing some low-quality piping that needs to be upgraded. So, we need to tear down wallpaper, paint, and do the floors in the bathroom. That's pretty much it! This entire project has taken longer, and been more expensive, than we thought. We are hoping that we can sit back soon and relax in our nice new house, because we really haven't had the chance to do that yet! It has just been work, work, work.

We celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary yesterday. How did we celebrate it? With a trip to Taco Bell, because it happened to be between the paint store and the wallpaper store. Seriously. But I love a good taco . . .

And that's what's happening on Boomerang Drive this week!

-- Holly