emily's photo blog: January 2015

Audrey is coming up on her 100th day of kindergarten! She still has some anxiety about school, but for the most part, she is doing a great job. She is very careful to listen and follow every direction and rule, so that she is always doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing. (now we need to convince her to have this same level of obedience at home with us!!) Last week, she was chosen as a Super Student in her class!

Audrey is learning a lot at school. She is starting to read more and more on her own. I am eager and a little impatient for the day when she will just pick up a book and read it all to herself for fun. I have the greatest hope that my girls will like to read as much as I do! She is also doing a good job in math, learning to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s as well as adding and subtracting.

I'm grateful that her school and teacher take lots of pictures! I love being able to have all these pictures of her and the fun activities she does at her school. She has a big class, with 29 students right now! But we love her teachers and are excited about all that she is learning.

This was a unit they did on the five sense, and they played a lot of games where they had to use their different senses to guess what an object was.

Before Halloween, Audrey's class got to carve a pumpkin for a local Jack O Lantern event. I love this picture of Audrey (with her two best buddies in her class) getting ready to stick her hand inside the pumpkin!

In class one day, they made a witches brew using letters and sounds.

Around Thanksgiving, we had a family project to disguise a turkey so that he wouldn't be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner. We turned our turkey into Ariel, so he could swim under the sea and be safe.

At the Thanksgiving Day feast with an assistant in her classroom. Audrey, who has not yet been brave enough to try school cafeteria food, chose to bring her own feast from home.

This was our table for Family Trivia Night, a fundraiser for the school.

Every two weeks, students who have received stars in their folders every day get to have a Good Citizen party. Daniel joined Audrey for her Good Citizen Nacho Party!

For the past year, our master bath has been a work in progress. We didn't do any major renovation in there, but very slowly, I have been working at painting and redecorating the room when we have time and money. I actually blogged a little about starting this project last year. (And I did finish the gallery wall and Audrey's room in that blog post too...time for some updates I think!)

Finally, the bathroom project is finished! I'm so excited. Even though no one ever sees or uses this room except for us. It looks so much better now, and it makes me happy.

Before, the walls were a yellow-ish color. I was just using the same shower curtain and rug and towels that we had in our old house. In the old house, I thought the shower curtain and color combo looked great. In the new house, they didn't looks great. The walls and the shower curtain and the rug were all just about the same color, and it was very drab and boring.

First I bought the shower curtain which was the inspiration for the rest of the room. It is the Mosaic Shower Curtain from World Market. I also got the Gray Oval Crochet Bath Mat for the floor.

After that, I painted the walls. Usually Daniel does the painting around here (he's better at it), but I tackled this one by myself. While watching a lot of Veronica Mars. Picking paint colors is always the hardest decision for me to make. I decided on Valspar's Foggy Mist for this room, and it is a really nice blue/gray color.

At this point in time, we made the decision to plan a trip to Disney World last year. So all extra spending money went towards our vacation fund, and we stopped doing anything in the bathroom. I still wanted to put some shelves over the toilet and buy new towels.

With the Disney trip over and a little Christmas money in my pocket, I was able to get back to the bathroom this month. First, I got Daniel to make me shelves to go over the toilet. I wanted something visually interesting here, just to give the bathroom an interesting focal point. I was leaning towards hanging baskets on the wall to hold towels and toilet paper. Until I found these shelves on Pinterest. They are DIY knock offs of these shelves from Restoration Hardware. I really love the look of them, and I thought they would work well to tie in the wood cabinet and the shower curtain together.

So Daniel went to Lowes and bought all the stuff needed to make two shelves, and the final bill was over $90. That was more than I was planning to spend! I almost told him to take it all back and I would just go get two $20 shelves from Target or somewhere. But then I looked at the Restoration Hardware website, and it would cost over $250 just to buy one shelf from them for a total of over $500 for both. Hmm...suddenly our DIY project didn't seem so expensive!

He followed the tutorial here almost exactly, and only ran into a few little problems. The first was trying to spray paint outside in subzero temps. That's not really recommended, but we were impatient to get it done. Then when it came time to hang the shelves, which are super heavy with the wood and pipes, he couldn't drill into a stud. So it took a little work, but he was able to anchor and get them securely fastened. He says they aren't going anywhere!

Once I had shelves, I needed something to put on them! Again, my budget was about gone. I managed to scrounge a few things for cheap. I already had the basket, then I got a $2 picture frame at target and a few cheap little things to go with it. I may someday add to this or change things, but for now, I like the clean simple look.

In the frame, I printed a free printable from here. I love using printable quotes as decor, both using ones that other people have made and making my own. It's a cheap easy way to get art around the house, and it is easy to change if you get tired of it. However, sometimes I'm afraid that I am turning into Gus' parents from The Fault in Our Stars with all of their "encouragements" displayed around the house!

And now for the best part of the bathroom remodel: new towels!! Our old towels were cheap and smelly and in need of replacement. I decided to go with solid white towels. I like the fresh look of white towels, and I think they will be easier to keep looking new and clean. These towels are a little higher quality than what I have bought in the past. The first day we had them, it was such a treat to use a nice fluffy towel!!