Most of you know that we had to change our home office into the nursery. We have a three bedroom house with no finished basement at this time and it was more inportant to us that the children have their own rooms, than it was for us to have a full on office space. So in making the room, we have taken down our main computer in the house. A few months back, we got rid of Time Warner Cable's cable service. We couldn't justify spending $70+ a month on cable that we hardly watched. All of the main broadcasted channels are free over the airways (and are in HD with an HD antenna). Plus, with television access to Netflix and so many channels airing their shows online (and lets not forget HuLu)... what's the point of having cable?

We have mounted our 32 in flat screen above the fireplace and hidden the cords within the wall. Paul then set us up with Windows Media Center, an interactive database of all the broadcasted AND online shows nicely put together in one program system. The cost to set this program up (a video card for your computer) was about $200. When saving $70 a month on a cable bill - it was paid off in a matter of three months! We can watch the normal main channels (ABC< CBS< FOX etc.) in HD, along with the online shows of HBO and HuLu, listen to the radio, play DVDs and access our Netflix from this program.

Now, since our computer was taken down from the office, Paul went a step further to hook up our PCs out in the living room as well... and we use the 32 inch flat screen tv as our monitor for the computers. We are able to easily switch from his PC to mine with a click of a button. We can also watch the BluRays from the player and allow Jax to use his V-Tech video system from the tv as well. I do prefer to use the laptop (and wirelessly remote to my PC through our network system) to do my blogging/surfing because sitting back on the couch with a wireless keyboard and mouse puts me too far away from the screen to see as clearly as I would like.

Anyways.....

Here are the latest projects I have been working on:

Unfinished wooden stool from JoAnns - 40% off $14.99

Two coats of white spray paint

medium pink acrylic paint

scrapbook paper for the flower

Mod Podge to adhere

Polyurathane/Varnish to finish, protect and add gloss

Three frames that were chipped and on clearance for $1.50 each! Great find from my mother in law. I spray painted them all white then decided to only use 2 of them (will show them finished later).

I had this basket (sans fabric) in the bathroom holding guest towel. I took a large scrap of the left over fabric I used for Jaelyn's window treatments/ bedding to make an elastic lining for the basket. This will go in her room as well. Wait until I show you what I put in the bathroom - it place of the basket!!

Here's my monkey man! Please excuse the complete misuse of White Balance and the horrendous flash effect. Sometimes you just don't have the time to change the settings on the camera when you're literally RUNNING after a toddler to get a photo of his silliness!

A New View / A GIVEAWAY

So we finally decided to just get rid of all the trees in our back yard. Neighbors told us they were jealous of the shade we have, living in a new subdivision - mature trees are pretty scarce. However! Our trees were the byproduct of an old farm field's tree line. So not only were they messy and mangey - half of them were dying and dropping huge branches every time the rain came. The other half the trees were Box Elder Maple and with those - come the box elder bugs... horribly ugly - juicy red colonizing pests that infested our backyard. We don't have a deck built yet and I knew we never would if it meant we were sharing our relaxation time with the bugs. No Thanks!

So we finally got them torn down. Our neighbors will be taking their share of firewood and I am pretty share they will be set for about 5 years!

I love the openness of our yard now! These trees literally cut our yard in half (our lot line extends to the electrical box) which made the it very difficult for us to visualize how we were going to design our deck and landscaping.

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Yes and Yes - Rummage Saleing AGAIN!

Here's the GIVEAWAY

(finally, another one right?!)

Here are my deals/finds from the citywide sale

then guess how much I spent!! I will give a few helpful hints...

I am pretty set for Jackson on summer clothes this year and am collecting some clearance items for fall already. So today I decided on our new comer.

... what can I say? The two on the left = $1.00. The tennies have never been worn = $3.00

Guess who will be a LADYBUG this Halloween?!? - $2.00

A MaryKay consultant was getting rid of her old packaging and discontinued products. Each for $1.00

 Yes, it is in serious need of ironing :)

So, can you guess who much I spent?

5 - 2 or 3 piece outfits

2 - blanket sleepers

5 - play and sleepers

3 - sweater / zip ups

1 - Baby Gap jacket

1 - demin skirt jumper with bloomers

3 - pair of tights

1 - pair of jeans

3 - pairs of shorts

2 - tops

3 - pairs of shoes

1 - Halloween Costume

1 - mascara

2 - eye shadows

1 - maternity top

The person who guesses the closest to my total

will receive this!

Beaded and linking chained necklace with a aqua marble/stone pendant.

Good Luck!! I will be in Chicago visiting my brother and sister in law - baby free! So you have until Monday evening to place your guesses!

Side Note: It's my goal to have April Accents back open for business by the END OF MAY!

Wednesday's Walk - Our First Home / Give away Winner

First of all...

Happy 9 Months Jackson!!

Born 10.22.2008

His 8th month was a big one! He started to repeat "Mama" and has begun crawling!!

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Wednesday's Walk - Hosted by Lynnette Kraft

While I was looking through my photos (because you know I can't post with at least ONE photo!) I came across January 2008, we purchased our first home. We were aware in December of 07 that Paul was offered a job position almost 2 hours north of where we currently lived, Milwaukee. So our search began in Neenah and Appleton, WI. Of course we were in love with a house in Neenah, but someone got to the bid before us. So we kept looking until we found something we liked even more.

Yes, we moved in the freezing winter!

We discovered a new construction home in a subdivison just outside of Grand Chute. The neighborhood was still developing at the time (and still is). We couldn't believe what we could afford up here compared to Milwaukee and the Metropolitan area. Our dollar sure went A LOT further here. We were in a time crunch to purchase a home because Paul had already started his new job in the beginning of the year and for the whole month of January, he commuted the distance! We only had Sundays to make the trip up to Appleton to search for homes because I worked at the salon Tuesdays - Saturdays and Paul of course worked on Mondays. Our Realtor was great and made wonderful accommodations for us - like showing us several homes in the worst blizzard Appleton had seen in a long time. And like I said, we only had Sundays to search and Paul needed to stop driving back and forth!

Our kitchen roughly staged. This was the final walk through, so we didn't move it yet much less paint or decorate :) This is the bare bones my firends!!

The house we purchased is about 1520 sq. ft. Its a 3 bedroom (split bedroom style) ranch home. It has vaulted ceilings in the living room that carry over to the kitchen area. We have a patio off the kitchen that leads to a future deck. The living room is a bit on the smaller size that features a gas fireplace - our future plans is to built out the basement for a family room (move the tv down there). The lawn was not established when we moved in, so we had that planted in August 2008. We had to finish the rest of the concrete driveway which the builders leave half undone to keep housing prices down.

Final walk through - roughly staged

We have been here for 1.5 years and we love the neighborhood and have settled into our home. We have many plans for the future and try to put our money to good use. A new construction home is great because for the most part, our money is going to new things that we want, not old things that need to be fixed! And that if wonderful for a single family on one income!

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And now for the Give Away Winner!!

Congratulations to...

KT

I invite you to peek at this Sneaker Teacher's Blog. Katie is a motivated school teacher with great ideas that moms and teachers alike can take advantage of!

She has received this bracelet that I handmade. Thank you to all the participants who entered!

Show Us Where You Live - Master Bedroom

Brought to us by Kelly - this week is Master Bedrooms!

We have only been living in our house for 1.5 years. We painted a bit when we moved in and bought some new furniture. We by no means had a lot of money to fully furnish and decorate, hence the sparseness of our bedroom! It's not the biggest, so our bed pretty much takes up the majority of the space. But I am willing to live with that, because I would not downsize for our king bed!

The features I adore are the trayed elevated ceiling, our king sized bed with the draperies that can closed and the paint color. Everything is quite deep in color tones because we like our bedroom to be cozy and cave-like. We plan to add crown molding to both the lower and upper perimeters of the ceiling. It has a master bathroom with his/her sinks and a shower unit. Our closet has great usable storage as well!

Bags of Fury - A Shameful Reprise

So - have you read this yet?? Our Bags of Fury fiasco! Well - if you don't have the time to enjoy a hilarious disaster, please at least scan to the bottom of that post to look at the result of our ignorance. It is now a few weeks later and the burns to our ego are almost as shameful as the burns in the lawn itself...

It looks horrendously awful! The only thing we can be happy about is how well the lawn grew in this year, having only been seeded in August 2008. It's not even a year old and it is quite thick and full already. See what it looked like only 10 months ago. We would have been real proud of our yard, considering we are first time homeowners of a brand new construction home. But, no matter how well we keep the lawn up ourselves - we are sandwiched between two retired neighbors that use lawncare services. We have been set up for failure!!

Bags of Fury

I have a pretty humorous story of how our weekend began last week. If you have the time, I invite you to sit and have a little laugh at our expense!

We kicked off our weekend by scrambling around the house Friday morning desperately trying to get everything ready for few days away from home. Paul had a laundry list of things to accomplish before leaving town (which we had initially planned to be around 10am). After he did his workout he needed to fertilize the lawn. Well, the sun had already dried the morning dew and Paul proceeded to spray the lawn roughly with the hose to insure that the fertilizer would stick better. Side note: We are new home owners and didn't realize the 1st fertilizing app should have been laid before the middle of May. So - here we are a good month behind sprinkling on the early spring weed killing Scott brand fertilizer.

But we were desperate for the weed killer! So Paul starts to apply the fertilizer with that cheaply manufactured spreader and realizes he hadn't changed out of his new running shoes; so he ran to change into his junky pair of tennis shoes. Upon coming back to the spreader, he discovers that he forgot to close the dispenser and now we have an ant hill of fertilizer piled in one spot. He quickly closes the dispenser and frantically tries to spread the pile with his hands (again - remember this is the weed killer stuff and if it's applied too heavily, it will kill the lawn!). He almost clears the spots and on his last hand swipe - my novice lawnkeeper of a husband manages to get some of the fertilizer in his eye. All the while, I am outside in the driveway racing against the clock constructing a deluxe umbrella stroller for the week endeavors.

My husband is saying "April, go in the garbage and check the fertilizer bag for instruction on what to do if it gets in your eyes."

I am like... oh, you've got to be kidding me! But I figured this wasn't the time to be a smart ass wife, so I scurried over to check out the instructions which ingeniously said to "flush eyes for 15-20 mins."

I asked him if there was anything I could do while he used the garden hose to rinse his eyes (with the hands that he spread the pile fertilizer with). He told me to finish the spreading on the lawn..... so, now it's ME verses Fertilizer Spreader. Mind you, I have never worked this apparatus in my life. It had a lever on the left side, this twirling device in the center of the bucket and a loose handle.

I am shouting to my poor blind husband - "How in the H do I work this thing?" I also asked him what part of the front yard he's already done, what pattern he was doing... all the while he is trying to save his eye from the burning death of poison. So - I finally get rockin with this spreader and the neighbor lady walks across the street to ask me something. She just had an operation, so I stopoed to ask her how it went.

A few minutes later, my husband shouts from his fetal position "April - the fertilizer is piling up again!!" OPPS! It seems I also didn't realize that if you didn't close the dispenser, it would continue to drain out the of the bucket. So this is now 2 piles of collected weed killing fertilizer that has pooled up in our front yard. I quickly leave my neighbor and resume my walking laps around the front yard, trying to avoid my husband who is now hand spreading another ant hill of white granules with one hand, while covering his wounded eyes with the other.

I was making my victorious laps through the back yard when I realized that this mixture of annoying set backs was not going to spread through the whole lawn. Well, why would it when a good portion of the bag has been accidentally dumped in two places? So - I run out of the supply and walk back to the garage to find Paul pacing back and forth in the garage blinking his eyes several times.

"The burning has stopped" he says.

"Good" I answer, "I continued spreading until the whole thing was gone".

He just stares at me, "You mean it didn't cover the whole yard?"

"No, how could it when so much was lost?"

This is the point in my tale when I censor the profanity that spewed from my husband. Frustrated had gotten the best of him. He usually has a pretty clean mouth - but I think the neighbors got a pretty good glimpse of his rare side.

"Everything that could go wrong in the last 15 mins - DID!" He shouted between his swearing. I couldn't help but start laughing. His eye was better (and everything turned out fine with that by the way), we were under a time crunch because by now it already past 10am- the baby should have woken up from his nap about 20 mins AGO (we still can't believe that he didn't and that added time actually allowed us to straighten out the morning mess), I still had to feed the baby, pack the cooler of his frozen food, pack up the car - and Paul still had to take a shower and PACK FOR THE WEEKEND (because my husband is totally incapable of ever packing his clothes any sooner than right before we leave - ugh!)

So, here are both laughing. Realizing that we need to finish the yard because we can not leave half of it fertilized and ignore the other half. But we bought this early spring mixture on clearance, because the rest of the world has already applied this type of fertilizer. So - we had to take a chance that the store will even have another bag left. After we collected ourselves, Paul heads for the store.

While he is gone, I go back to my task at hand - the stroller! Piece of cake! What I didn't expect, was waving to my neighbor's 4 year old daughter across the street, only to watch has her grandmother comes out of the house behind her - and trips on the porch and face plants into the shrubs!! Poor grandma! I hustle and bustle across the street to make sure the woman didn't crack her head on the cement. She got away with a nasty scrape on her elbow and a bruised ego. I found out later that she messed up her ankle a bit too. Ouch!

The rest of the morning ironed itself out well. Menards did have 1 bag of the fiery left that Paul applied before showering and packing to leave. We didn't get on the freeway until after 12pm. We both figured the weekend could only go up from there... or could it?

...Stay tuned

Jam Packed Weekend

Friday evening swept through with a huge sigh from Paul, who has been through the ringer this week at work. Despite the four day week, several situations all blended together to create one frustrating and exhausting few days for Paul. He has also beganrestarted his workout program P90X. After hurting his back after the last attempt (pre-baby), Paul is wanted to get back in shape yet again and being more mindful of possible injuries this time around. He proudly came off the scale this morning and said "170 lbs... haven't been that low since 2007". Didn't take much either - only one week. He is dedicated this time and excited to see results (hopefully beaming with a nice golden tan this year).

Saturday we made a trip to Sams Club to pick up two shelving units for the garage. While we haven't accumulated much "clutter" yet, what we do have is just scattered with no rhyme or reason. When we got home, we Paul proceeded to clear out the garage to power wash the floor. It had 1/2 year of fine dust settling and left over construction mud in the concrete grooves. He did a great job and now our garage is organized, complete with a spare freezer/frig unit (my parent's old one) and Paul's own little self designed workout area. Yes - that is a tv screen/DVD player and clock radio you see there (things we had stored in the basement). He actually mentioned something about bringing our old microwave out there too. Are you kidding me?!? What is he trying to do?

Anyways - Jackson and I enjoyed the day outside while we watched Daddy hard at work!

The neighbors invited us to their daughter's graduation party of Sunday. The weather was great outside and we enjoyed the afternoon visiting and chasing after the children. Jackson went all afternoon without a nap (has a difficult time sleeping outside) and actually did great! He wasn't really fussy at all. Jax finally has a tooth just underneath the surfaces of his gummys. Yesterday, he was a bit ornery and he's been rubbing his tongue along the left side bottom gum area and I realized he had a white speck right there. Today, there's a bit a hole starting and I can imagine in the next few days - it will be cutting through. Big boy!!

I have decided to make Jackson a new baby blanket. This little boy (like many others) loves to suck/chew on the tags of his soft toys. So - I decided to make a blanket for him and make tags all along the border for him to chew on. This isn't my brilliant idea - there is a company called Taggies that makes them, but I thought I could take on the task myself. I picked out fabric from JoAnn fabrics (spent more than I admitted to Paul). I couldn't resist - the fabric is so adorable! I am going to use three different ribbons to fold over and sew all the perimeter as the tags. I think *hope* it will turn out nicely. The snag... is that I don't own (or know how to use) a sewing machine, so this little huge task will be done by hand! Hopefully I will have it done before my son turns 1! Wish me luck!!

Lawn Care / 31 Weeks

Our lawn has really begun to take this first week. I am pretty amazed in the growth just in the past two days! We are very excited that we finally have something to progressing outside to form us a yard! I water in the morning and by the mid afternoon watering... there's so much more grass already! Unfortunately, it hasn't completely gotten rid of our cricket infestation (ok, that's an exaggeration), but I hate crickets!



My 31 week appt was today and it was as routine as it gets. I didn't gain any more weight in the past two weeks. My belly is measuring right on target and his heart rate is about 148 bpm. That rate after my doctor grabbed my baby's head between her fingers through my belly and probably freaked him out! "There's definitely the head here". He's currently transverse (side to side) inside of me, which I figured because of where I always feel his kicks/punches. I am just praying to all that holy that this little darling dear of mine will turn downward in the next few weeks :).



I am getting very excited for my baby shower this weekend. I know that I will finally begin to feel prepared for my son after the shower. Kathy will be throwing me a shower for the Truttschel side next month and I am looking forward to seeing everyone from Paul's side of the family. I am sure there will be much more to post after this weekend!

Our House is becoming a Home

Well, there isn't much news to report with the baby at this point. I am starting a Prenatal Yoga Class on Monday nights. I have never done yoga before so I am alittle anxious, but I am very excited to be more active and get to know some people in town.
On another note, our house is coming along nicely. Finally, the window treatments were installed this past Tuesday. We now have privacy!! It feels like a different place already. We went to WG&R Furniture yesterday and were very happy with the selection of kitchen/dining room tables. We bought a nice dark cherry wood set with 6 chairs that are covered in a green/gray micro suede fabric (easy to clean with cats). For a table that will be more functional than decorative, we decided to save money and purchase the floor model at a great price. Having saved there, we also brought home a beautiful rocking chair for the baby's room. We both sat in the rocker and just melted. I'd rock myself to sleep in a chair like that!

I will write a follow up to my OB appointment on the 28th of April. Thanks for checking back!

Our House in Progress

These are a few photos of our home so far. It has come along way, but we still have a lot to do. This spring and summer will take us outside to finish cementing the driveway and seeding the lawn. Our yard consists now of muck and slop! One thing that attracted us to this house was the earthy tones through out the entire house. It's a modern style and made it easy for our current furniture to fit in nicely.

Photo 1 - Our master bathroom
Photo 2 - Living room, with tall cathedral ceilings extending into the kitchen
Photo 3 - Opposite view of the living with the gas fire place
Photo 4 - The kitchen has a patio leading to a "soon to be deck" off the left side of the photo
Photo 5 - A real dark angle of our bedroom. My project there will be getting wedding photos on the walls.