Three Kids, Three Birthdays

So, I have this neat little thing, that I like to call my magic 3. I have 3 children and all of their birthday's fall within a month and 2 days of each other.  Their birthdays are 10, 11 and 12. I've always thought that was a little special as well.  My daughter turned 12 on the 10th of March, and she decided on a small sleepover, followed by taking her shopping. And, that she did. My feet hurt afterwards, but she had fun and it made it worth it.  Of course, being the pre teen she is, she decided she didn't want me to take photos of everything.  And, so I respectfully followed behind her. You know, us mama bears can be embarrassing and all.

Ethan turned 8 on the 11th. My sweet boy doesn't have any close friends and so we took him out with the family to an arcade, lazer tag and bumper cars.  He picked Waffle House for his lunch date and he received a few gifts.

The story behind this Five Nights at Freddy's Cake? Well, he requested a home made cake. I tried to warn the poor fella, that his mother is not a cake connoisseur. I mean, cupcakes are my thing. I can make a cute cupcake. Cakes? No. Just, NO.  So I had this all planned out, and then I went to write his name in red cookie icing that I had left over from Christmas.  Well, it spilled. To my horror, I was left to improvise. So what's a mom to do?  I had to make Freddy a little morbid.  Luckily for me, he was impressed.

My sweet middle child? He also broke his arm. Or should I say, one of his friends broke his arm. Boys...(sigh).

Danny, turned 1 on the 12th and same scenario. I literally don't know anyone here, and I opted out of a 1st birthday celebration after my parents declined to come out.  We aren't too fancy anyway, so he doesn't know any better.  He enjoyed a giant cupcake and opened some presents.

Danny also received his first haircut at a really cute kids place. I am a fan :)

I literally can't believe a year has come and gone. A year.  Wait, yes, yes I can believe it.  It has been a very long year for me. Perhaps I will get into that another time.  There really is just so much going on these days that it's hard to keep track of everything.

One thing I know for sure is that I love my three amazing children, more than anything.

Oh time, be still.

Let me watch the weeds feed the garden that turns into long tall flowers and a forest of tall strong trees.

Be blessed, dear readers!

Photos and Life

It's been a while, as usual.  So much has gone on, yet so little time to actually type things out.  I wish I could find a way to blog from the tablet, it would make blog life much easier.

Expect MAJOR DIY renovation updates within the next few months.  I am converting a garage into a bedroom, painting my kitchen cabinets white, along with a list of other things that I can't wait to reveal. This should be good.  I finally took more photos of my children, so I'll share those.  Danny is now 10 months old, he's still in his DOC BAND, and I am loving the results!

Only two more weeks left and then it's a thing of the past.  He has 3 teeth, crawls and drools on everything. MiMi broke her wrist skating with a friend, and Ethan, well, he's a typical little almost 8 year old boy. He loves gaming and getting dirty.

(12 in March)

 (8 in April)

Baby's First Easter...10 months at time of photo.

Broken Wrist

Danny visited Kure Beach for all of 10 minutes.

I some how still find time to put on makeup when I leave the house.

My little Doc Band baby

Ethan continually gets A honor roll, and acts shy for a photo op

But, he still likes transformers..

 Danny tries to get into everything.

Danny's first snow was at a Cranial Technologies 

appointment - Stephen held him so I could snap a photo.

Stephen and I have yet to kill each other.

The kids stay busy, and I stay sane.  With Stephen's firefight schedule, most nights I am alone while he works.  The truth is, it's a good day if I actually put on my makeup or take my hair out of a bun. I'm sure the days I get done up, Stephen appreciates it, because the rest of the time I'm rocking the "tired mama bags under the eyes".  We went ahead and bought this shed, and we are waiting on the company to contact us to build it on site.

They told us it could take up to 3 weeks. Once that's done, we can move all the garage contents into it and begin on the garage room conversion and I can share with you all a cheap way to do it on a budget. Wish us luck!

Christmas Photos

As someone who does photography on the side, I have to once again admit, my own children are possibly the most difficult to photograph. Never the less, I am cheap and kept up with the tradition of doing my own photos. Again. I'm just glad my editing has gotten better over the years. I will try to take more of Danny in the hopes that he will actually look at the camera, but if not, I love these regardless. :)

I've finished my holiday shopping with out even purchasing a single thing in the stores. THANK YOU to, amazon, kohl's and toys r us. I'm just not the kind of woman that enjoys shopping in public, unless it MUST be done. Wrangling a fussy baby is not my forte.

I'm pleased with the photos. :) I only wish I had the patience to take more. (haha)...

Birthday Portraits; My babies aren't babies anymore :(

I try not to make my blog too personal, and shy away from posts about my children, however, I just don't have the energy or time to invest in a "family based" blog, and so I am going to just keep to my original blogging platform and include my children in here as well. Besides, what fun is a blog with out a little bit of personality to it?

It has probably been a good while since I've posted photos of my children. MiMi turned 8 in March and Ethan turned 4 in April.  Both have grown so much since I started this blog venture.

I typically like to do outdoor photos, but decided I would have a hand at some indoor ones and since I was lazy, and didn't want to invest too much time into doing my own images, I stuck with my itty bitty studio kit and made the images simple with nothing more than a white backdrop, a number from Hobby Lobby and a bundle of balloons for the little misses.

Children grow FAST, enjoy it! :)) God has certainly blessed me.

                                             

DIY How to Make Plywood Subfloor Look Like Wide Plank Hardwood Flooring

I've known for sometime (literally years). That I would rip up my ugly paint stained Den carpet, and attempt to recreate the plywood sub floor into something special. Thankfully my plywood sub floor, was wood grade, while not perfect by any means; it was stained heavily with both previous owner's pet stains, old paint from years past and a bazillion staples etc. I knew I would take on this project one way or another and love it.

Since my lovely 65 rancher had the a/c unit die last summer and we were hit with a hefty 7k loan for a new one, I knew that new floors would DEFINITELY not be in my budget. So after the old nasty paint stained builder grade carpet was ripped up, it revealed the disastrous gross view below. I knew I had my work cut out for me. 

I didn't have any real plan, just to wing it as I went.

I had seen on google that a few people had used a sharpie marker to draw plank lines on the plywood.

My first task however (and I did many steps backwards, but it worked out in the end), was to remove the staples; all 300 or more of them (blah).

Next I swept and decided to follow the pre existing Vertical lines in the plywood as to not be too off when I drew my new plank lines.  Typically I had a few smaller boards due to original plywood seem lines, and then after that I measured each plank line to be 9 inches wide.

I took on the daunting task of drawing vertical lines down the entire length of the room.

When I had finished, I realized the thin lines just weren't going to cut it for me. I wanted THICK JUICY bulky old barn/farmhouse aged gappy lines. And so I took my yard stick and drew a parallel line beside each thin line, and YES, I seriously had to COLOR in each and every line (even with a bulkier Sharpie) ergh!!

This took forever - so if you take on this task yourself, maybe start with a FAT sharpie and not the thin ones.

Once my vertical sharpie faux plank wood lines were drawn, I decided I would sand it. (typically you can rent a sander and sand the floor before drawing all these lines, however, I am far too broke to even rent a sander, then buy the paper; and so I decided I'd take my handheld sander with the 60 grit sandpaper I had left over and just sit on the floor and painstakingly go up and down each faux plank (avoiding the sharpie lines). On areas with heavy staining I'd go over a little more than others.) I did not remove ALL paint splotches (because I did not realize the stain wouldn't take to them - so if you take on this project, sand them down ALL the way, although it's not bad and gives it character.

Once I sanded down every bit of flooring, it was looking good.

I almost didn't want to stain it.

The week prior I was set on buying minwax stain, but they did not have the paint stain at Lowe's I had wanted. So not wanting to go home empty handed, I chose Rustoleum's Kona wood stain instead.

I was hoping it would be the right shade, and honestly didn't care if it wasn't, because at this point, ANYTHING would have been better than the nasty plywood subfloor that had once spent YEARS under an ugly old carpet with no lovin' :)

That night I drew the horizontal lines, and I staggered them. I didn't want an obvious pattern, so I kind of just drew them randomly about the floor, Not too many, just 3-4 horizontal lines per each plank. I even drew little fake nail head marks.

I waited a week, because to be honest, this is such a time consuming energy sucking project when doing it on a budget.  FINALLY I decided I'd take on the task of sitting on my knees with my Rustoleum wood stain, a varathane paint brush and some old t shirts as rags.  I LITERALLY did a back and forth motion on EACH plank when painting the stain on. I IMMEDIATELY wiped it off right after application with an old t shirt.

Here is a video I took to show how to apply and wipe stain off. Sorry in advance it's shoddy (it's hard to video tape yourself applying stain with a cell phone camera). Link : https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=517530444977106

I was IMPRESSED. Rustoleum's wood stain is BEYOND amazing. It's RICH in color and dried SUPER fast. WOW! For only $8 a quart sized can, it covered the entire 300 sq. ft. room and I only needed ONE coat. *Rustoleum isn't affiliated with me or my blog in anyway, but if they should so desire to send me some product, in exchange for a blog DIY, I have a few projects up my sleeve - hint, hint * ;))

Anyway, it looked GREAT! And my crummy cellphone photos do it absolutely NO justice.

I waited a couple days (due to my children being rambunctious) and then I purchased Rustoleum's polyurethane in water based semi gloss for $33 at Lowe's. I also purchased a long wood stick applicator and a rectangular application pad (pads were only $5 each, and I did not want to reuse, so I did buy three for all 3 coats of polyurethane).

I'd never used polyurethane in my life (other than on furniture where it was already in the stain).

I was so absolutely nervous. I used an old paint pan, stirred it up and poured it in. I dipped the pad in and went up and down and worked in  sections going vertical.  after each plan was brushed on I'd finish it by going top to bottom ONE STROKE using JUST the weight of the applicator.

I was so nervous at first, it was a milky hazy color (I didn't put it on too thick, but just enough to where it left a haze). After 3 hours I'd say the haze disappeared and it was looking good. (sigh of relief).

I followed it up with a total of 2 more coats for a grand total of 3 coats of polyurethane.

It was beautiful. No photo I can or did attempt to take could ever do this floor justice. It looks so amazing, it has a nice smooth texture, and doesn't even look like plywood at all. It looks like legitimate wide plank hardwood flooring.

(Below: Detailed up close - notice the sharpie lines show up perfectly :)

- This is as close to the real color I could get of the flooring) :)

For less than $65 I have these amazingly beautiful floors that make me smile from ear to ear.

I NEVER in a million years imagined I could take an existing plywood sub floor and make it look the way I have.  Everyone that has come to see it in person has complimented me on how well it looks and how they can't believe it was plywood.

I won't lie to you and say it was easy, because it wasn't. It wasn't SUPER hard. But the only gripe I have is how much time it took to do.

When you're broke, and on a budget, you have to work with what you have. I have never done flooring before and I did a fantastic job, so I am pretty sure ANYONE can do it.

So, Rustoleum, if you're reading or happen upon my blog, I'd love to use your products on a few other projects I have up my sleeve and would love to exchange a photo tutorial type blog in exchange for use of your product. :) (Hey, I had to try) haha.

EDIT: June 2016:  I ended up using the area for my photography and computer.  The floors look just as good as they did when I first did them. I clean them with a little diluted pine sol and a mop, being careful not to over wet the floors. They hold up great to children and pets alike.

The photos are from a cell phone, so I apologize that they are not the best quality.

Feel free to ask any questions (girlxmom@yahoo.com) , dear readers, I'd love to save you all money as well :) God Bless <3>