The kitchen wasn't the only room to get a makeover...

The kitchen and living room weren't the only rooms in the house to get a face lift.  I also re-did the "much in need of a new look" play room.  The room was originally Meredith's nursery, which was super cute and super gender neutral, since we definitely weren't finding out. 

That lasted all of 17 weeks.

Then Noah came along and both of them were bumped upstairs and it was transformed into the play room, or the room of crap that we own way too much of!And since it is one of the most seen rooms in the house, aside from the gorgeous kitchen, it needed an overhaul.

So here is the before....

And here is the after.....

I have to say it is much improved.  I also got some new plantation shutters in the toy room as well as the bedrooms, I love these things.  Mom you were right.

My cute little "by order of the management" prints that I got from etsy.  As well as Meredith and Noah's ugly dolls I picked up in NYC.  Meredith was happy to put hers on the wall she thought it was special.  Noah was just happy the damn thing was out of his room.  He hates that ugly doll.  When I first brought it home he whined and threw him down the stairs.  I went and got it and brought it back up and he slapped me, screamed, grabbed it from me and threw it down the stairs again.  I got the message, but I love to aggravate him with it....I know cruel!  Anyway the first couple hours he wouldn't go in the playroom without screaming.  But fear not Internets, he got over his fear and now is back to destroying the play room in 2.4 seconds!

Close up of the signs, aren't they cute!

Bigger is better, right?

So for Christmas, I got my husband a grill. Or to be honest I was swamped with two kiddos and told my husband I had planned on getting him a new grill, since his other (3 year old) gas grill was broke. He in turn went to the store and got himself a new gas grill, from me for Christmas. Are you following?

We were going to put the grill together in January, but then we thought about moving, so the new grill sat in a box until last weekend.

Since the house was off the market we were free to live in it again and decided we wanted to eat some ribs off the grill. So Josh spent most of the morning putting it together so he could cook on it. We then marinated the meat and went to fire up the grill. No flame. The damn thing was either broke or not hooked up right. Josh went ahead and called my dad over who looked at it with Josh and it was apparent that it was connected correctly. So they literally threw it in the back of the truck and took it back to the store 6 months later and returned it.

After that Josh saw the error of his ways with a gas grill and decided to go after a Big Green Egg.

My dad has been having one for awhile and has always tried to sell my propane loving husband on them. However Josh was never convinced. But after having to very expensive gas grills break for no apparent reason - he decided charcoal and the egg were the way to go.

So one afternoon Josh took the kids to the local green egg store and bought a new egg. I asked which one he got, the large egg which can cook enough food for a large family or the extra-large egg which can cook enough for an entire neighborhood.

It looks like next week we will be feeding our entire neighborhood, come on by if you are in the area.



This was delivered to my garage. I tried to convince the 3 men it took to get it out of the truck and into my garage to get it to my back porch. Since I had no cash and the only way to get the 250+lb egg to the back porch was through my house on my very $$ wood floors, they opted not too. Oh well, now Josh needs to find someone to help him transport his egg..... wonder if our new neighbors want to come for dinner?

The egg and the table, yes we got a table too. It should be covered in 14karat gold in my opinion for what they charge.
The damn thing is massive!

Who is coming for dinner?

Start your engines....

The renovation begins tomorrow. But before they could start we needed brick......and low and behold look what showed up today.

This was a dream come true for a Noah, an 18 wheeler parked in front of his house with a tractor on it too!

Noah watched as the man unloaded the little tractor thing and he was amazed!

Then we watched as it drove the brick all the way up the driveway, we even walked over and peered around for a closer look.

At one point, Meredith came and squatted in front of Noah blocking his view of the "Vroom, Vroom!" He didn't fuss, he just got up and moved over for an unobstructed view.

Oh my beautiful Old Chicago brick.


Telling the truck "Baahh!" or bye....but if you use the Mississippi twang, it is more of a Baahh! This was a sad moment for Noah. It isn't everyday an 18 wheeler pulls up to your house. And for you Noah, I made sure I documented it!