New lights

We have had these lights for several years now, we got them from Ikea and they work great.  We are going to use them in the basement and we thought it was time for some new lighting in the living room.

We found these wall sconces on sale and ordered two!

I'm a big fan of the glass pendant and the cloth cord.  We got some filament bulbs to complete the "vintage" look.

They installed fairly quickly and I think add a nice look to the room.

The finished product.

Balloon Party!

To ring in the new year, I stopped by the Dollar Store and bought some party favors, in that mix was a bag of balloons.  We blew up 6 to celebrate and Trigg loved them! 

6 balloons + 2 year old boy = hours of fun!

...and lots of running and dancing with the balloons!

Even now, we are well past halfway through January, the balloons are still bouncing around our living room!  We will crank up the music and play soccer, jump around and throw the balloons in the air!

Trigg looking a little like Mom!

Bag of balloons...best dollar that I've spent in a long time!

Christmas!

We love Christmas at our house and this year was filled with fun, family, trains and tents!

All dressed up to celebrate Christmas!

This little man was pretty excited for Christmas looking dapper in his bow tie!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas morning was filled with lots of fun and surprises for one little guy!

He was pretty excited to pull some new toys out of his stocking!

Trains stole the show this year, I picked up some more track when I went up to Ikea for our bookshelves and Heather found this James train at TJ Maxx, Trigg was excited...(Riley on the other hand just buried her face in the couch)

The one thing on Trigg's Christmas list was a "sleeping bag to go camping with Dad".  Pull on my heart strings and you will get what you ask for!

Nice and cozy!

Riley perked up a little when Trigg got down her stocking to show her she got a new candy cane shaped bone!

After the gifts were open...back to trains.  Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, down the track!

Grandma and Grandpa Comfort got Trigg a tent for Christmas...a tent the connects via a tunnel to a teepee

Merry Christmas and keep "chugging" down the tracks into the New Year!

Pre-Christmas Party

Heather's family has had an annual tradition of going on a sleigh ride at Jester Park.  This year it was scheduled for the Friday before Christmas but the rain/ice storm that came through on Thursday cancelled the sleigh ride.  We had planned on having everyone over after the sleigh ride for supper but we improvised and started the party earlier!

Heather and I came up with a few "Minute to Win It" games.  The first one was tossing marshmallows through a Christmas wreath into a cinnamon roll pan...Nathan set the record at 11 marshmallows!
The next game was eating cookies that hung from a string off the table but you can't use your hands!  Gracie and Nathan did a great job eating their cookies!

Next up was Aaron Paul and Addy...

They both had their own style but in the end they both got their cookies eaten!

Then the little kids, Trigg...

Toby and Camille, all were successful...

...with a little help from their hands!

Next competition...stacking cups one handed.

Toby played a little music to cheer the competitors on!

Nathan had intense concentration while stacking his cups!

Aaron Paul made a good sized tower!

Uncle Chad showed us all how it is done...stacking 32 cups in one minute!

Uncle Rob came in a close second stacking 30 cups

Grandma Great took her tun stacking cups too!

Nathan ended up winning in the "kiddo" division and taking home the mustache mason jar cup!

We had a lot of fun hosting supper and the "competition"...the games were a big hit, they may become apart of our pre-Christmas tradition!

Nursery

With Baby Boy/Baby Brother on the way, it was time to put the nursery together.  There was a lot of work o do and a quickly approaching deadline to get it done!  Here is what the room looked like when we moved in, very blue.

Walls primed and new white trim installed.

Crib and room are both in pieces...time to assemble

First I painted the upper section of the wall 1 shade darker gray than Trigg's room.  Then I tacked up sheets of masonite hardboard cut at 5 feet tall.  That wrapped around the room.  Then I added the top board, 1x4 leftover trim, pre-primed mdf board.

I then primed the masonite boards and tacked up the "batten" or the vertical boards.  For those I used 1x3 mdf pre-primed boards.

I spaced them at every 16 inches to make sure I covered my seems of masonite board.

Then I sealed all my seams where the boards meet the wall and painted everything with a fresh coat of white, I used Valspar Swiss Coffee.

Assembled the crib with a little help from Trigg, brought in the chair...

Hung some curtains...

We hung some small floating shelves on the wall to hold pictures and books, got out the Nap Nanny

Added some splashes of orange and blue, hung up a magnet board

A few more floating shelves on the other side of the room...

And we've got ourselves a nursery.

Now Baby Brother has a place to sleep when he arrives!