Phillip Rivers' 5k

This weekend, I walked with several of my coworkers in the Rivers of Hope 5k. Rivers of Hope is a non-profit organization founded by Phillip Rivers and his wife to raise support for the foster children I work with. They provide birthday gifts for every child in our adoption program and help fund recruitment events to find more foster families. So even though I am nine months pregnant, I felt I had to support them. And I needed some bragging rights :) So here I am looking very pregnant and ridiculous :) but I did it!

Making the yard pretty

Jeff spent all day Saturday working in the yard. Pulling weeds, mowing the lawn, scoopin doggie doo doo, the usual. But then he got a spark of creativity and decided to place these stones in the front yard to make it a bit more welcoming. Previously we only had the two rectangle cement blocks there, so adding the stones really connected that landing to our sidewalk. Best part of this story is that Jeff scored the stones for free! And I think it turned out great.









And do you see our amazing fence? Jeff designed and built that too (with my help of course :)).

Oh and never mind our brown grass. We are just trying to be eco friendly and save water...right.

Shower Doors!

What a surprise, Jeff installed glass shower doors this weekend! They are just the cherry on top for our new tile job. They totally open up the bathroom and I love that you can see the beautiful tile job that Jeff did. Check it out:

Better Bathroom

We finally got around to taking pictures of Jeff's latest project...the bathroom. More specifically the shower and tub surround. Our bathroom is now much better although I wouldn't say its complete by any means. You'll notice in the pictures that the tub wasn't re-glazed. We discovered that it will take 5 days to cure and we just aren't ready to part with our only shower for that long. And we plan to put in glass shower doors, hopefully in the not too distant future. But it is MUCH better with the subway tiles. Jeff did a great job...and a big shout out to my dad who helped A LOT and our friend Brent. They were both tile-cutting machines! So click here to remember what our bathroom looked like before...and here are some after pics of the shower now.









A close up of the tiles.






and new clean hardware!


Didn't Jeff do a great job. And don't you wish you had one of him around your house to bust out projects like this in a weekend! Too bad, he's mine!

Chalk it up

The chalkboard. Once a classroom staple, has made its way out of schools and into the home. Seriously, show me a chalkboard that's still in a classroom, seems like all schools are using whiteboards now...such a shame. But look online at home decor and you'll find design inspiration chalk full of chalkboards :) They are showing up in all areas of the home including nurseries and kitchens. You will find entire walls painted with chalkboard paint, or just small details. I even found tons of chalkboards showing up in wedding decor and pictures.







So, I can't lie, I'm jumping on the trendy chalkboard bandwagon too. I decided to use it in our nursery so we can write little messages to the Wesley baby. I really didn't want to paint again...remember the stripes? I was kinda burnt out of painting, so lucky for me, my mom found me some chalkboard contact paper. yay! Where o where did you find this mother? She told me but I can't remember.

So with my chalkboard contact paper in hand and several small green frames that I wasn't sure what to do with, I created this "chalkboard wall."


This is a really bad picture, but you get the gist, right?
The chalkboard frames are the first thing you see when you walk into the room. The perfect place for a little note. (Just need to buy some chalk now).

But I still had some chalkboard contact paper left and a few boxes that needed a makeover. My friend and neighbor gave me these cute boxes that just didn't match the nursery theme. I was planning on painting them (but you know how I feel about painting), then I got the brilliant idea to cover them with the chalkboard contact paper. This is how it went down...


This is what I started with. I was able to just pop off the little star.


Then I just started wrapping until all the sides were covered.



And this is how it turned out. Not perfect, but the lid will hide the imperfections. It was so much easier than painting.

Now I just need to decorate them in chalk!

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