A new bike is always a fun surprise on Christmas morning.  This was our year to say good-bye to training wheels!  Woot Woot!

Several of you have asked where I got my play kitchen from.  It is called the Kidkraft kitchen and we’ve had it for years.  I found the newest model on-line and it is really similar.  I love the fun pastel colors.  Every penny we spent on this play kitchen was well worth it!  (So were the hours we spent assembling this thing.  It is quite a project to assemble so if you buy it give yourself plenty of time!)

My kids all love these Boogie Board LCD writing tablets.  I only get them out when we are traveling so that they are a fun new thing to keep them entertained in the car.

They have played with these in the tub every night for YEARS.  I will be so sad when the day comes that they don’t want to play with them anymore.  I can’t tell you a favorite because they play with them all.  (And that’s saying a lot since we have collected an embarrassing amount of these over the years!)

Another fun toy my girls have played with a lot this year are their La La Loopsy dolls.  Kenny’s mom bought them each one last year for Christmas and the girls loved them so much that she bought them more for their birthdays.  (It seems both grandma’s love to spoil!)  :)  These dolls above aren’t in their original clothes by the way.  Another bonus is that they are skinny enough to fit in the barbie clothes.  My girls are all about switching up the outfits!  This crew was just settling in to watch the new Tinkerbell Secret of the Wings movie last weekend.  Another fun gift idea for little girls.  Of course Kenny and I couldn’t wait until Christmas.  The two of us were more excited to see it than Ellie and Addie were.  True story.  (It didn’t disappoint!)

Polly Pockets
Jenga
Lincoln Logs
Zhu Zhu Pets
Magnetic Dolls
Disney Figurines

A My First Set of Legos.  Sounds like from all of you “boy moms” I have a lot of legos in my future??

A simple set of stacking/nesting blocks.  Funny how the simplest toys are often the ones played with the most.  Kole has LOVED this basic set of blocks.  He stacks them, crashes them, lines them up, nests them back inside each other, and then does it all over again.

Gotta love the Fisher Price Cash Register.  Kole loves it and my girls still play “store” with it.  I bought it because it brought back so many fun memories for me.  I was “queen pay lady” in my hood growing up.   That’s right.  I had mad cash register skills and was proud of it.

Kole is getting too big for this now, but the Fisher Price Piano was beloved by all three of my kids at around age one.  It’s perfect for when little ones are just learning to pull themselves up.  My kids would “stand” at this and play music for over 10 minutes.  Which is huge at that age!  I’m keeping this one for the grand kids.  :)  (Again check around because Amazon’s price is high on this one.)

K – if you have a little boy age 1-2 this is my NUMBER ONE toy recommendation!  It’s the iPlay Fun Time Tractor and Kole LOVES it.  You push the orange thing in the front to make the tractor drive.  When you lift the farmer out it plays “Farmer in the Dell” and when you take out or put in each of the animals, it makes their sound.  A great toy for teaching animal sounds which is why I bought it for Kole.  He honestly played with it every day for over six months.  Such a fun toy!

My sweet Kole is obsessed with “choo choo’s” and this Melissa and Doug Wooden Farm Train is his current favorite.  It is such a cute train and comes with fun things that ride inside.  Who knows where they all were when I took this picture?  I’m sure the pieces will turn up under couch pillows or in the girls’ beds.

I know I mentioned this in a previous post, but I have to include my ALL – TIME favorite book for toddlers.  This Wheels on the Bus book with movable parts has been such a hit with all three of my kids.  It’s my go-to gift for baby showers because it is just such a fun book and all little ones love it.

And last but not least, our Little Tykes red toy car.  Supposed to be for the toddler but always ends up carrying an extra heavy load.  :)

Homework time at our house!  Not so bad when you’re surrounded by books doll houses.  On the bedroom carpet.  Eating a bagel.  Mom’s in a good mood today.

My girls are out of school early all week for parent teacher conferences.  I love it!  We can get homework done early while Kole is napping (SO much easier) and then play all afternoon.  We have decided this is officially “girls’ week” and are planning some fun things.  We may or may not be listening to Christmas music right now at this very minute.  I turned it on and said “what do you think girls… too early?”  They said “NO!  Can we turn on the Chipmunks!?”  

Most of these pics were taken with my iPhone so they aren’t great quality, but here I am with my builder and designer.  Love these two!  Which is a good thing because we have been spending a LOT of time together lately.

Kenny and my designer going over facts of some sort.  Kenny handles the not so fun stuff – budget and logistics.  While I handle all things design.  One morning I was dropping Kole off at a sitters and when I got to the house there was a group of six guys standing in a circle relieved to see me because they know they can’t move forward without my stamp of approval.  They call me “the boss” and I have to say, it’s not a bad thing to be called.  :)  I do my best to be a nice one.

Aside from laying out the kitchen and cabinets in other rooms we also started looking at floor samples.  These are a few carpet samples my designer brought.  Kenny sometimes gets frustrated when my designer and I get together.  We tend to get sidetracked easily.  We’ll start out talking about the bathroom layout and the next thing you know we’re going on and on about tufted headboards with silver nail heads.  Kenny is always trying to rein us in.  But I can’t help it!  I’m so ready to be done with the building and onto the decorating so seeing things like this carpet that make it feel more real is so fun for me.

 We are putting in wood floors for most of the main level so we’ll need a big carpet-like rug for the family room.  I loved the one above.  It’s hard to see the true color, but it has a lot of grey strands in it.  Most of my cabinetry is white or grey.  Plus this sample was just SO soft.  It said come and take a nap on me!  But I might go with something more simple like plain grey.

We made a lot of decisions for the outside of the house.  The style of the home is ‘Nantucket’ so there will be a lot of grey siding, white molding, and some rock.  These two spent a couple of hours walking around measuring everywhere we are putting rock so we can start getting quotes.

Our siding guy stopped by and brought samples.  This isn’t painted yet, but is one style to choose from.  We are putting the short shake shingles on the peaks of the house and I need to decide if I want this staggered pattern or a straight, even one.  I like the one above, but our roof tiles are going to be staggered and I don’t want to over do it and make things look too “gingerbready.”  Kenny loves it when I use that word.  (I’m kidding.  It drives him crazy.  But how else do you explain something looking too gingerbready?)  I thought the decision for the rest of the straight siding that will be on most of the house would be made for us, but nope.  I can choose between smooth or grained, 7 inches apart or 8 inches apart…  The big decisions are easy, it’s these little decisions that really won’t matter much one way or another that are killing me!  SO many decisions.  I can’t even think straight anymore.

The back of my car today — groceries, cabinet samples (not the exact style or knobs I’m using, but samples of the white and grey finish), a stroller, wood floor planks, some quartz squares…  all in a day.

I’m so looking forward to the weekend.  I need to take a break from the new house and spend some time cleaning our current house.  I’m anxious to take down all things Halloween and start planning for my favorite time of year!  I’m also anxious to sleep more than 5 hours at a time.  That’s always a bonus.

 And he certainly doesn’t care for holding still long enough for mom to get a holly jolly picture.

The fam on “walk to school day.”  Although Kenny and I were the only ones walking since the girls decided to ride their scooters.  They were so excited to ride all the way to school.  Right up until we started going up all of the big hills and they realized just how long of a hike it was.  Then they wore out and decided maybe driving to school each day wasn’t so bad after all.

Addison went to a birthday party and brought home these glittered beauties she made.  I said “oh how beautiful!  I love them!”  But was thinking now what in the world am I supposed to do with those?  Gear up for glitter all over the house.

Plus, as you know, there is a certain little buddy of mine who has made it his mission to un-do everything I’ve done in this space.  :)

As soon as I get a chance I need to spend a few hours cleaning things up again, but the main problem with my current garage is that I never completely organized it to begin with.  We did a few things that help keep our garage in order…

 The rest of the garage is a lot of storage sort of lined up along one wall.  “Semi organized clutter” I like to call it.  Boxes hold holiday decor but they aren’t labeled.  Kids’ toys are tossed around randomly.  There isn’t a set place for a lot of the stuff we have along this wall.  (I was going to take a picture of my garage mess today and then before I knew it, it was dark, but trust me – it’s not pretty.)  :)

“Semi organized clutter” is NOT going to happen in my next garage!  Every time I’m at the new house I spend some time hanging out in the garages visioning how I’m going to organize everything.  I can’t wait!  We are going to “lose” a lot of stuff in the move, let me tell you.  It will be a great opportunity to simplify.  If I wasn’t moving, I would pick a day and completely re-do my current garage.  There are so many effective ways to store garage items in an organized way.  Here are a few of my favorite organized garages on Pinterest that have given me some great inspiration…

Peg boards are perfect for organizing tools.  I’ve seen so many fun peg boards on-line lately.  Such an easy, in-expensive way to corral odds and ends.

Painting your peg board is a cheap and easy way to bring even more color to your garage space.  Who says garages have to be dark?  Love this idea.  

This is a picture of Kole’s room upstairs and you can see the outline of a door framed.  We discovered some empty space next to his room because the roof is pitched behind it so we are going to create a cool little addition.  We’re thinking of putting in a bookcase and making it a secret door that opens into a little hang out for him.  I love the idea of a secret door!  It’s so… secretive.  Although now that I’ve shared it with everyone reading this blog maybe it’s not so secretive after all.  :)  I’m picturing a fun space for all of his trains.

And this is a picture from last weekend.  We have half of our roof!  Very exciting.  Now it’s finally starting to look like the house that has been in my head for years just waiting to come to life.  :)

It’s a bit surreal seeing this house take shape and several times when I have been walking through it I start to feel emotional.  Partly because I’m sleep deprived (which always results in easy flowing tears!), and partly because I see our future in this house.  I see Christmas morning in the family room.  I see birthday parties in the back yard.  I see friends over for dinner – preferably prepared by Kenny at the grill so that I don’t have to mess up my kitchen.  ;)  I see my girls walking down the stairs all dressed up for their first date.  I see all three of my kids growing up and Kenny and I growing older together.  I see good times and bad times and every time in between in this house.  And sometimes it makes me want to cry.  Happy tears, but tears just the same.  I am a visual person and I love picking out cabinets and fixtures and paint colors and picturing what this house will look like when it’s finished.  But even more than that, I love picturing all of the memories that will be made in this house and how over the years this house will become a home.

And I am going to stop writing now because Kenny so enjoys teasing me when I get sappy and I have just given him an abundance of material for weeks to come.  :)

Despite the crazy week, I am so excited about the house progress!  The upstairs is all framed and they are working on the roof.  The picture above is me with Ellie in her room.  It feels so real now that I can walk through the whole house and picture what day to day life will be like living there.  I’ll share more pics next week when I find the energy and time to sort through them.  :)

On another note – I have to share the charts my girls made that crack me up!  Ellie loves donuts so every once in a while during homework when we are struggling with her not wanting to stay focused I make a little deal with her.  (Homework is a necessary evil to my El – there are always too many things she would rather be doing!)  We can go buy a donut at the grocery store if she will buckle down and get her homework done WITH a positive attitude.  Yes. I often occasionally bribe my children.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  I was upstairs with Kole last week and told the girls to go get started on their homework and I’d be down to help soon.  When I walked downstairs I was immediately greeted by colorful paper taped to the wall.

First up is Ellie’s chart.  She went into great detail explaining it to me.  She added her name taped to the side so that I could move it up and down depending on how she is doing with her homework.

HA!  I had a hard time keeping a straight face.  Then I saw Addison’s chart and absolutely could not keep a straight face.  Let me translate…

I was going to make a fun “Fall to-do list.”  Something similar to my Summer to-do list:

Only of course it would say things like – visit a pumpkin patch, go to a Charger game, make apple cider, carve pumpkins, make a leaf banner, etc. etc. etc.  

BUT then I had a reality check.

My 2012 Fall to-do list: choose roof tile, last walk through for windows/doors, final decisions on which cabinets will be face frame, finalize all cabinet sketches (getting close to not being able to tweak things – yikes!), order fireplaces, go over solar panel bids, start looking at exterior rock, choose door hardware, start looking at bathroom tile and counter tops, meet with electricians to decide locations of plug outlets and light switches, etc. etc. etc.

Anyway.  You get the picture.  :)  All things fun for Fall will have to wait until next year.  I’m ok with that.  Especially since it was over 90 degrees on the coast today.

I haven’t had much time to decorate for Fall but I thought I’d share a few things I’ve done (even though they are pretty much the same as last year).  I’m so anxious to get into my new house and start mixing up my decor!  Patience!  Trying to be patient.  :)

And because his past Halloween costumes are both Christmas themed.  These pictures will be making an appearance in December instead.  I’m still trying to figure out what he should be for Halloween this year.  (Santa Claus keeps coming to mind – HA!)  I’m looking for a costume that he will actually keep on.  It’s such a bummer when they grow out of the “put me in anything and I’ll just sit and smile” stage.  We are SO past that stage and are currently in the “if it will make mom’s life difficult I’m gonna go for it” stage.

I didn’t have time to get too creative with my hutch, so it looks pretty similar to last year too.  Still loving the mini white pumpkins!

The next two pictures have more to do with my peace of mind vs. Fall Decor, but here is a before and after of my “junk drawer.”

Much improved!  It took a whole 10 minutes.  I can’t believe I let it stay messy for as long as I did.  I am constantly in and out of this drawer during the day for pens, sticky notes, chapstick, or a screwdriver to change batteries in a toy.  Sometimes the smallest organized spaces have the biggest impact in putting a smile on your face, don’t they?  :)