I love my house

When I first saw this house I was in love. The builder was Taylor Woodrow. This house is about 2500 sq ft. We have 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a family room upstairs. There is enough space for everyone. We all have a place of our own. A place we can go to when we just need some time to ourselves. Todd thinks it's to big but I think it's just right.
We have owned 3 houses. Our first house was 783 sq ft. It was like being in an apartment. It was perfect for us at the time. We were just married and didn't have any kids. Todd was in law school and I was the only one working full time. After we sold that house we moved to Lake Havasu for a year. The house we rented there was only one year old. It was nice and clean. Perfect for a family with a new born.
After we left Lake Havasu we moved to Cottonwood. Nasty...Nasty....Nasty. There wasn't a clean rental to be found in the whole town. I was so upset. I wasn't sure what we were going to do. We did find an apartment complex that was about 2 years old. We decided to move into the apartment and continue to search for a house that we were not afraid to walk around barefoot in. We stayed in the apartment for 9 months. We finally settled on a house to rent. It was old and funky but the cleanest thing we had seen since we got to town. We stayed there for 18 months.
When we came back to the valley we moved to Surprise. We were surprise how much the town had grown when we moved back. We bought a 3 bedroom 2 bath house. It was a good floor plan but we really needed a family room. We stayed there for 2 years. We sold when the market was just starting to boom. We sold for 70,000 more than we paid two years prior. It was like hitting the lottery. We were able to buy a bigger house and pay off all our debt. We even had some left over to do the back yard and get some new furniture.
I still love this house as much as the first day I saw it. It was fun to watch it be built. Our old house was only a mile away. That allowed us to drive by all the time and watch the progress. We would even ride our bikes over and watch the construction workers. Now the only thing we need is a pool. We are hoping to build one next spring. This is the place that I see myself in for a long time. Or at least until I get old and cant make it up the stairs any more.
I loved painting and decorating the inside of the house. It's so fun to make it your own. I am a very cheap and thrifty bargain hunter. Many of my things were bought on sale or clearance. Some things were bought at antique stores. I also got a lot of my knick knacks (or junk as Todd calls it) at Goodwill. I like to buy a piece of furniture and redo it. It's amazing what a little paint and sanding can do. When it's all done you have something that you love even more because of all the hard work you put into it. Plus it's cheaper than buying new.
August will be three years that we have been in this house. I have been getting the urge to change a few things. That's why we redid Tyler's room and I made a scrapbook room. I think once I add some color to my master I will be satisfied. I don't know. Anyways below are some pics of the house . If you have some pics of your house post them on your blogg. I love to see what other people have done in their houses.

This is our family room upstairs. We are huge Disney fans so we decided because this is the room where we spend most of our time it should be decorated so the whole family would enjoy it.





























This is the downstairs. Its one big room Behind the kitchen is another bedroom. We turned it into a poker / exercise room.

This is our guest room / office.













This is the master bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom is the next room that will be getting a new color. The furniture just gets lost against that tan wall.

Our back yard. Don't you think a pool would look great?

The upstairs bathroom. Disney of course

My new favorite room. This is my scrapbook room I am thinking of painting my master these colors.





















Tyler's room












Our front porch.

YUMMY!!!!

I am having a recipe party tomorrow night. When I pulled out some of my recipes I wanted to share this one. It is so good. Not cheap to make but a good appetizer to bring to a party.

Spicy Artichoke Dip Recipe

2 8.5oz cans of artichoke hearts drained
1 cup of sour cream
1 cup of mayonnaise
2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1 4oz can of diced jalapenos drained

First chop up the artichokes. Next mix all ingredients together. Bake in the oven at 350 for 40 minutes. Serve with thin crackers or thin sliced bread.

Expensive but worth it

I know the last blog talked about cleaning but so does this one. Christmas 2006 Todd bought me a Dyson. I know many women would be upset if they got a vacuum for Christmas but I was EXCITED!!!!!. I love Dyson vacuums. They are the most awesome vacuum ever. I had a house cleaning business for a couple years and most of my clients had Dyson's. The few that didn't I hated vacuuming their house. I never felt that their carpet was truly clean. When you use one you will see what I mean. The stuff that it pulls out of the carpets is amazing and gross at the same time. The picture I added to this blog is actually the stuff that came from my carpet upstairs when I vacuumed it last week. Its gross. I also have a dog inside that sheds so when we bought our Dyson we bought the Animal Dyson. My carpets always look so good after I vacuum. If financially there is any way you can afford one you should. I noticed yesterday they were on clearance at Target. New models are coming in, old ones must go......

Blinds, baseboards and a new TV

It has been a long but productive week. Lots of housework. Cleaned the blinds, all 18 of them. Cleaned the lights, fans, baseboards and the banister. Pulled out the furniture and vacuumed under it. Wiped down walls and did touch up painting throughout the house. I cleaned out the fridge and microwave and organized the pantry. Those are the things that are so time consuming. I also spent one day doing the regular household chores. Sweeping, moping, vacuuming, laundry, dusting and all 3 bathrooms. Boring paragraph I know. But that is what was going on around here.

On Wednesday we went to the Surprise pool for 3 hours. We love to go there. Tyler always has a blast. I loaded up on the sunblock and stayed in the pool the whole time, it was hot!!!!!!

Thursday we went to the movies. We saw Fire House Dog. It was so cute. I had not seen it. Good family time movie. We took one of Tyler's friends to the movies with us. He ended up spending the day and night here. The kids played in the sprinklers, watched TV and played with the Lego's to keep busy. They also spent some time in the exercise room. Tyler loves to take his friends in there and "work out" (play) It's cute. They turn up the radio and you don't see them for an hour.

This weekend has been nice. Todd left Friday morning for a guys weekend. He goes to Laughlin a couple times a year with the guys. It's good for him. It's good for me. Tyler and I have hung out and watched movies all weekend. We went to the store on Friday and bought all the stuff to make ice cream sundaes and banana splits. We figured we would live off ice cream and Funyans this weekend.

When we were at the store I decided to get Tyler a TV for his room. He has always wanted one in his room but I have always told him he was to small. I don't think when kids are small they need a TV in their room. I know lots of kids have them but that is just my personal opinion. He will be 9 in a few months so I decided it was time. He is such a good kid and he does well in school. He had been going through so much with his mouth that I felt he deserved it. We got a good deal. It's a 19 inch digital LCD TV (what ever that means) with a DVD played built into it. It is one of those TVs that is super thin. It only weighs 11 1/2 pounds. I will not have to worry about it falling on his and squishing him.

When the cable guy came out a couple years ago and ran cable into the office we asked him to run it into Tyler's room as well. He went into the attic and said that there was no way to run the cable into his room because he couldn't get to the side of the house his room was on. He said there were to many beams running that way and something about the air conditioning unit that is in the attic. I think he just didn't want to try. Because he does not have a cable outlet I bought the stuff to run a splitter off the cable jack in the office. I drilled a hole in the wall and ran the cable through. So far the computer and his TV work fine. I wasn't sure if we would get the same reception since the cable is now split. So far so good. He is so excited. We have got up the last 2 mornings and laid in his bed and watched TV. He is such an awesome kid. He is so sweet and loving. I love to cuddle up with him. I am so lucky to be his mom.

We called Todd Friday afternoon and told him he should try to win a couple extra hundred dollars this weekend because we went shopping. He said he was feeling lucky, we shall see.

long, busy, productive week

The past week has been busy with projects. With all the projects going on I still managed to clean out and organize the garage. I wanted to make sure that both the car and truck can fit in there. Two reasons for that. The first reason is because it is getting hotter and the vehicles stay cooler in the garage. The second reason is that with the price of gas being so high I am afraid people are going to start stealing the gas out of cars at night. I am not kidding!!!!!

It has been a busy week. Saturday My mom picked the grand kids up and took them to see Kung Fu Panda. Todd and I went to the grocery shopping with our free time. The rest of the day was spent doing nothing. We rented movies and vegged out. On Sunday we went to the resort for a birthday party. I got a nasty burn. I got a new suit. The straps are different so I have skin exposed in areas that I didn't have exposed before. On Tuesday Tyler and I went to see Iron Man. AWESOME movie. I loved it. On Wednesday we went bowling and then to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. On Thursday we went to the movies again. We saw Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium. I liked the movie. It made me cry. In between our activities I worked on projects.

A space of my own.....

In 1997 Shawnette introduced me to scrapbooking. She was a stay at home mom and was selling Creative Memories. I was never one for pictures. I think because growing up my mother never took photos of us. I have about 10 childhood photos. When she asked me to come to her "party" I went because she was my best friend and I wanted to be supportive. Heck I even bought a couple things. The more I looked at the stuff the more I liked the idea of making your memories look like a book. The problem was I didn't have anything to scrapbook. I told myself that I was going to take a gazillion photos of our kids when we had them. I was going to document everything for them. They were going to have their own personal library of books about their life, starring them. The scrapbooking didn't go anywhere for a couple years. Then December of 1999 Tyler was born. It was time to get busy. From minute one we were snapping photos. From that point scrapbooking was on. When I first started in 2000 there was very little to use for the scrapbooks. Creative Memories and Close to My Heart were the only companies that sold stuff. The stores were not wise yet to the scrapbooking empire that was in the near future. Scrapbooking was not as popular then as it is now. When I look at my earlier books they look so boring. I will not change them though. I think is shows how far I have come with my creativity and how far the scrapbooking world has come. Tyler loves to look at the books. I love to watch him look at them . He gets a big smile on his face as he turns the pages.

I finally decided to make myself a scrapbook room. I have always wanted one but we have never had the space in our other houses. It is such hassle to set it all up and then put it all away every time you want to scrapbook. August will be 3 years that we have been in this house. There are 5 bedrooms so why not a scrapbook room. I painted the room in March but went to work so it has just sat there. I have a couple more things I want to do in there but for the most part it is done!!!!! I am so excited to scrapbook in there. I went for a tropical look. Bright colors!! I am going to get one of those palm leaf looking ceiling fans to go in the room. I think it will finish it off nicely. Here are some of the pics. Look at the border in the room. It is ribbon. I used upholstery tacks to hold it up. I love how it turned out. The table was a $50 Craigslist find that I sanded down and painted. The tall wooden cabinet is one that Todd built in 2001 to hold our 25 inch 300 pound TV. It works perfect to hold my scrapbook stuff. The little white shelf is the first piece of new furniture that Todd and I bought together. That thing has been everywhere and now it is where it belongs.

Posters and big hangers

Tyler has had a camouflage/Army for almost three years now. When we moved into this house 8/05 he was 5 years old and Army soldiers were the coolest thing ever. So naturally he wanted an Army style room. Now he is 8 1/2 and he is ready to move on. He has a lot of his own ideas now. We painted his room and got new bedding. He loves some of the older movies. Terminator is his favorite. He asked if we could redo his room with some really super cool movie posters. I said yes! He picked them all our himself. Thank God for Ebay. I got 6 posters with shipping and insurance for $55. He helped me hang them and decide exactly where they would look best. We did it the old fashion way....with tacks!!!! I was not going to invest in movie poster frames. Even the cheap ones are about $12 bucks a piece and I would need 6 of them. Anyways here are the pictures of the room. I realized that I took them before I finished the trim around the ceiling.

I remember having posters when I was a kid. My best friend and I were HUGE wrestling fans. We would hang posters of wrestlers on the wall. Hulk Hogan was the best!!!! Do you remember that?? Shawnette would display all the wrestling dolls all over her room and I also believe at one time there was a Michael Jackson poster in her room.

I also had to change out all of Tyler's hangers. He is growing so fast that his clothes don't stay on his little guy hangers anymore. I had to buy the big ones. So now even his closet has a more grown up look.