So excited!

I know that I have already posted this week, but I am so excited to show you what I have been working on that I decided to show things off a little early.

So to start off, a certain little girl has a birthday that is quickly approaching.  Lucky for me when we stopped by our friends' yard sale a few weeks ago we founda doll stroller.  Problem was there was no seat.  So I looked online and found a really easy tutorial and spent nap time the other day cutting and sewing.  I still need the clips for the belt, but since Hannah doesn't know how to use them yet I think I am okay.

   

Before                              After   

Then the big event of the week was finishing the painting in the living room!  So here is a reminder of what it looked like after we removed the popcorn ceiling and moved all of the furniture in.

This is after we primed the walls.  It was a huge difference in the amount of light that seemed to be in the room.

AND NOW... Here it is all painted!  I decided that I liked the brightness of the room and do not want to clutter it back up with the second couch and child death trap of a media tower so they are now listed on Craig's List and will hopefully help pay for the desperately needed drapes and rug.  I will keep you updated with the changes as they come.

Yard Work is Fun

We have been hard at work lately trying to ready our house for the up coming first birthday party for a certain someone we know.  I thought that I would share some of the changes that the work has brought about.  My favorite dramatic change was a result of my attack on the front bushes.  This is how they looked when we got home from the store with our new shears and bow saw.

After about a half an hour of hacking and whacking it looked like this.

 

We learned that a little work can make a huge difference and that you should not trim bushes outside a baby's bedroom if you want her to sleep.  She decided that it was more fun to play peak-a-boo through the window.

Here is the evolution of our garden plot (at least to this point).  Here is the location that we scouted right in front of the compost bin.  Don't mind the weird grass pattern it occurred when our friends mower fell apart on Josh for the second time before we got our own.  We chose this spot because it gets the best sun, being off to the side of the house and the furthest from the trees in the yard.  Sadly that criteria also made it one of the best areas for grass in the entire yard.

 Here is our box built and in place.  It is upside down so we could trace the area to dig which you can see we did in white paint around the sides.

 This the after we dug up the grass, made the post holes, and tested the fit.  It sat this way for a few weeks until the weather got a little cooler and dryer and we had a little more time.

 Here we are back to work.  Since we noticed some burrowing holes around the yard we decided to protect our plants by attaching mesh to the bottom of the box.  This meant we had to dig the entire area out and bury the mesh under it.  So we dug up a ton of dirt (it at least felt like it) and leveled the entire plot out.

After leveling we placed the box in place.

 We then got to move all the dirt back from the tarp and pavers to the inside of the box.  We sifted the dirt through the mesh to bury the posts and then also buried the edges of the box as well.  Then we added a bunch of free dirt that Josh brought home from work after they were done running tests on it in the lab.  We still need to add some topsoil and hopefully some compost before we plant in the spring (February--we do live in southern Louisiana).

 And now for some Hannah cuteness.  Here she is drinking her "joo" (juice) with a straw.  She likes to be like Mommy, but actually prefers Mommy's cup and straw.  Maybe her favorite color is blue?  Sorry for the grimace.  She doesn't like the flash, but Josh did point out that is about the face she makes when asking for her "joo".

And now Hannah has a circus performance for you all.

Catch up

So I have no excuses.  I have been very neglectful and haven't posted in a few weeks.  I think it is because I made a goal to post every week and that is proof of how good I am at keeping goals.  But anyways I thought a good way to catch up is to see lots of cute pictures of the baby girl who is growing too fast.

Josh snapped this of Hannah playing during my early morning meeting before church a few weeks ago.  I wasn't there but from my experience I am guessing that she was talking to her pacifier.

 Hannah has found this to be the most effective way to eat her corn.

Hannah with cousin Addyson dressed in their Disney outfits mostly supplied by Auntie Kathy who happened to be visiting the same weekend that we were.  And unfortunately no they aren't glowing, we just didn't realize that little fingers got on the lens until after this photo shoot.

 Didi's new puppy, Jake, playing with Josie.  They adopted him while we were visiting and we had a blast.  Hannah was in love with him, but didn't know what to do with him so the weekend involved a lot of pointing, oooing, and just tracking him constantly.

 Hannah taking Daddy for a walk around the restaurant on a break during our drive home.  She likes to hold our hand so that she can go really fast without falling as much.

This is a shot that we capture to show Hannah's new development in her love for shoes.  This scenario starts in one of two ways either she has two shoes on and takes on off to play with it or she brings a shoe that she found to Mommy or Daddy hands it to us and then gives us her foot.  Either way she walks around with one shoe a lot.  There is also a pretty good chance that there is a few toys in whatever little bag she has found and is carrying around.

I am working on a little more int he catch-up and it includes some home improvement that we have been working on.

Life with a Mouse

So we have been busy with life again. We have been working on our garden plot, which I have been trying to document. The problem is it is 100 degrees out side like everyday and so the digging and has come to a halt until we have built the courage back up to go outside and do manual labor in that circumstance. So we will have more on that soon.

Other big events. We HAD a mouse. After several instances of a creature eating our bananas (and probably other things) and Josh not telling me because he didn't want me to freak out I saw it for myself and freaked out even more when I realized that we had been living with some creature for weeks or months and I was totally clueless.

So we bought traps and when it ate the peanut butter off two traps with no consequence we bought different traps and added a chocolate chip to the peanut butter as suggested on a website. That night just as we walked out of Hannah's room we heard a snap (it sounded like a toaster popping). And Josh took the manly responsibility of disposing of the remains. With Josh out of town the following week I kept all of the traps set and never had to deal with any more furry friends.

If it hasn't been conveyed well previously Hannah is a mega Daddy's girl. She had a really rough week with him gone for work so we try to ease the pain by video chatting before bedtime at least a few times. She likes it, but is still very sad. Here is a little part that I video taped.

Hannah is also walking almost constantly now. Her interest ad determination increased a lot the last few weeks because I have started to watch our 2 year friend Halle once a week and Hannah wants to keep up with her. So I got this video the other morning of her walking and showing off some of her other skills.

And to end our week on a safe note we finally bit the bullet and shelled out the cash for a big girl car seat that Hannah probably should have gotten a month ago.

Feeling Crafty

With the need for a little more beauty in our home we have been working on project after project. Inspired by all the expert craft women and designers in my life I decided that I needed to start making our new house a home in the most inexpensive way possible.

It started with the beautiful built-ins in that we have in our dining area and the lack of storage space anywhere else in our kitchen. I have been collecting (and stealing a few from my mom's surplus) gallon sized pickle jars and using them as dry goods storage. I decided to create a dual purpose and pretty them up a little. They start looking a little something like this.


A few dozen pickles, a good washing, and de-labeling later they looked a little bland. I spray painted the lids a oil rubbed bronze. Still looking a little dull.

After a lot of searching on-line and a few test ideas I decided on making chalkboard labels on the front. I quickly learned that latex paint does not like to live on glass so I made myself chalkboard stickers from full page labels and a couple coats of paint. Cut out my fun design and presto chango.


They now flank the stained glass art of our surname I made a few years ago. It is just the start to the beautification of the built-ins.

I liked the chalkboard rather than etching because I like to change things up and I figure I can always change the contents of the jars or simply the color and style of the text whenever I feel like it.

Our Little Mover

This week has been crazy busy with one activity after another. As a nice break we had the first Sunday that we have been able to spend just us in months. Because of this we had some fun playing and even got a few cute shots of Hannah to share.
This is a great picture of a few of Hannah's favorite activities. She is practicing walking, has something around her neck (she really likes it to be the vacuum cord), and being girly with Mommy's purse.

And here is a video that we finally got of her strutting her stuff. she has been hard at work trying to walk more after hanging out with a bunch of the bigger kids that we are friends with lately.

And I don't have any video evidence, but the last few days Hannah has started saying Mama, which makes me really excited. She isn't using it to talk to me or about me the way she does when she says Dad, but it is still a start and I am happy to be included in her vocabulary.

Aunt Laura's Wedding

We had a great time in Southern California last week! The excuse was Laura getting married which was awesome and way fun. We also got to meet Aspen and the girls had a blast playing together. Here are a couple of pictures from the wedding.

The cute couple.

All the Pruett kids together again.

Hannah (with a bow actually in her hair) with Daddy.

The cousins stealing each others plugs during pictures.

We also had some fun around the hotel. Here is Hannah and Daddy spying on everybody down below.

And Hannah's favorite new game after breakfast was to take her stroller for a walk.

And then we had a blast at the beach. Here are a couple cute videos of our water loving baby. Now keep in mind that it was in the 70s, but horribly windy and it is the Freezing Pacific.

So Josh pulled her out of the water because she was shivering so bad we thought that she might want to warm up. He thought that he would let her crawl on the warm sand and this was the result.

This act earned her the nickname "sea turtle" from Grandpa. We finally pulled her out when her lips started to turn purple and she complained through shivers until she got distracted by playing with Aspen and the SAND.
She loved the sand also, but the camera did not so we didn't get any pictures of her sand bath. She acted like the sand was one of those sugar dips. She kept licking her finger and rubbing it in the sand and then licking it again and again. It was disgusting, but she seemed content. Then she had fun putting it in her hair and all over her face which caked on her runny nose. But there is no doubt in our minds that she had a blast.
We are excited for Didi and Grandad to officially move to the beach so that she can play without the fear of hypothermia.

Our Growing Girl

So now that you have seen some of our house it is time for us to show off our beautiful baby girl. As she is approaching ten months she is starting to much more actively explore the world around her by getting into everything that she can. Here is some video of her escapades.
Some of the proof that we thing Hannah is a true girls' girl is her love of shoes. Really any shoes whether they are her own, Dad's, but always her favorite seem to be her Mommy's. Luckily she isn't putting them in her mouth as much but instead she is already learning to play dress-up.

We had the great pleasure of taking the piano that I grew up with off my parents' hands. So far Hannah is making the best use of it. Since she can hardly reach from the floor I usually help her by pulling her high chair up. Here she is to perform for you all.

And now just a cute video to show a few more thing that she is up to these days.

She has been doing a little bit of walking these days, but never for the camera. I think we have counted 6 step in a row so far.
But to continue to show her off here are a few pictures.
After lots of tickles and coaxing we finally got a picture of her first tooth. If you look really close you might be able to see the white shadow of her second that is just breaking the gums next to it.

Here she is inspecting the window washing that Dad did in her room to make sure it was up to her standards.

And just a cute shot of her favorite way to watch TV whether it is Sid the Science Kid or the Ellen Degeneres Show. (Yes, she is straddling Walnut, her favorite teddy bear from Auntie Kathy.)

The Internet is Back!

So after our big move and several weeks of waiting we have finally gotten the internet up and running and the House at least functional so here is a little introduction.
So I know I showed the front of the house already, but here is a picture that I feel better captures the tree that is our front yard (and most of our neighbors too).

Our living room, which comfortably holds 5 teenage girls and two adult chaperones for a slumber party. And Hannah has already had some practice on the new piano.

The kitchen and my computer desk.

The beautiful built-in (clutter holder) and the rest of the Dining Room.

The future Playroom, which we use as a box holding room until we need something or are ready to unpack another.

The future Guest/Music room, which we are still working out the placement of thing.

Hannah's awesome room. Her room is the most complete, though we have not yet hung any artwork.

And finally the master. A little bare, but it is slowly taking shape.

We will have a little more family update to come, but I have been crazy busy this week with all the youth I get to work with at church.