A prehistoric party!

Grady's been obsessed with dinosaurs for a while now, so it wasn't hard to come up with a theme for his birthday party this year.

He was so excited for all of his friends to come over that he literally waited by the window for a solid hour.  Then he waited on the front steps for another half hour.  :)  I love him so much.

We had originally planned to have the party outside, but the forecast threatened rain, so my mom & I scrambled to get the attic cleaned up, floor painted, & closets curtained over two LATE nights.

We drug a table & our dining room benches up to the bedroom (since it wasn't yet furnished), & set up food & games in there.

We only played a couple of games (the attention span of 3-8 year olds varies!)...one of which was a version of "pin the tail on the donkey" using running Grady's and a T-Rex.

I googled "T-Rex drawing" & sketched out one of the images that popped up in an old frame we had lying around.

Getting ready to make his birthday wish while his friends sing to him!  He's the sweetest boy.  He'll make the best boyfriend someday - no lie!

We got the dinosaur hats at a dollar store in Nebraska.  I searched EVERYWHERE for them.  They were a hit!
 

Rawr!

I said..."RRRRRAAAAAAWWWWRRRRRRRRRRR!"

The party was a blast, but exhausting!  Good thing birthdays only come once a year...

Happy birthday sweet boy.  I'm SO lucky to be your mama.

5 years...

5 years since this little man was born...we began the morning by opening a few presents on the porch.

His "big" gift was a basketball hoop.  It took his dad & I 4 hours to assemble.

I think he played with it for more than four hours that day, though...so it was worth it!

That afternoon, my parents & brother came over for pizza & cake.

It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this little guy is five & will be going to kindergarten in a couple of months.  In. Sanity.

A few days later, we had 10 of his friends over.  To say he was excited was an understatement.

I'll post some pictures from that party next!

Two Things...

We had Grady's 5th birthday party at our house this weekend & it looked like rain was in the forecast...resulting in us scrambling to get the attic floor painted (& dry enough to handle 11 kids) in a matter of two nights.  Plus get all of the tools, furniture, & misc stuff cleared out of the space, as well as hang curtains.  Spoiler: we did it!  (Somehow)

I'll post about Grady's party later.  For right now I'll share a few snaps of the attic in all of it's empty glory!  Here's a view of the landing area from inside the bedroom.  The area to the left of the stairs will be my office, the bunk/reading nook is on the right.

Here's a view of the bedroom from the exact spot I took the previous picture from (just rotated 180 around).

And here's a shot of what it looks like looking back toward the stairs from the opposite side of the bedroom.

The floor color is called "Linen" by Eddie Bauer.  I had it color-matched at Menards in Dutch Boy's Porch & Floor paint.  It's a little bit cooler on the floor than on the paint chip, but I really like it...a LOT.

Second thing...

The stairs up to the attic are steep...& when they built the house in 1945, they put a door literally AT the bottom step.  That means the height of the opening was really short.  I had to duck at 5'9...& there's NO WAY we were going to be able to get a queen box spring through that doorway.  Sooo...out it goes!

Here's what we started with...I took the door off a few weeks ago.

I tore off all of the old trim, & dad brought his Sawzall over to cut out the door frame as well as some of the wall above the door...

 ...and a couple of studs.  Until we were left with over a foot more headspace!  You wouldn't believe how much more light comes down the stairwell either.  Bonus!

Just so you can get an idea of how much head room was gained, I photoshopped my Sawzall wielding dad into the before & after picture...to scale.  Hopefully we'll get the raw edges finished off this week!

(I just hope after all of that I can get my box spring up there...)

A (very) quick attic update...

We've been busy with birthdays, spring cleaning, & general summer fun in the past couple weeks as the weather has been beautiful.  FINALLY!

In between all of that, I've squeezed in a little bit of work on the attic.  Thought I'd share a few quick snaps of the progress!

I added some white pom trim to the bunk curtains.  Love it.  Can't ever go wrong with pom poms.  (Well...pom pom trim anyway.)

Dad working hard hanging up the stair rails.  $20 on Craig's List...a lot of elbow grease...& the satisfaction of reusing something that would have ended up in a landfill.  (The railings are spray-primed in the picture below.  Mom & I spent the better part of the weekend brushing them by hand.  Not a fun task.)

Almost done painting in this picture.  Black posts & horizontal rails, white spindles.

Finished stair rails & old wood floor.

And last but not least...the icing on the cake...I started painting the floor late last night!  I'm in LOVE.  My office will soon be set up in that little nook.  Can. Hardly. Wait.

That's it for now!  I'll try to post some non-iphone shots later this week, but we've got a big 5th birthday party at our house this weekend that I'm busy prepping for, so I can't make any promises!

Thanks for hanging in there for this massive attic project.  It's taken us waaaaaaay longer than I ever expected...but I also love the space way more than I anticipated...so I suppose it's all worth it in the end!

Still on the list:

• Finish painting the floor
• Finish closets
• Under eave storage doors
• Knock out stairwell doorway & repair
• Random odds & ends

Eeek!

Things are moving along!

Just a quick pre-weekend update.  The attic is clear of tools!  The barn light is up!  I hung some curtains (that still need to be hemmed)!  And I'm hoping to con my dad into starting the stair railings this weekend.  It's progress peeps!

Trim & a "new" headboard...

I was lucky to have Good Friday off, making a long holiday weekend last week.  You know what happens on long weekends...projects!

This time it was a lot of painting, a few planks on the wall, barn light installation, & a start on trim.

Oh, & last night I kind of revamped my old upholstered headboard to fit the space & aesthetic of the attic bedroom!  But, more on that later...

Excuse the mess...we're still in a construction zone after all.  Here's a view of the landing from inside the bedroom.  (Yes, I shamelessly hung up the blinds - just couldn't wait!)

See that saw?  My grandpa gave it to me a few years ago & it weighs a million pounds.  I'm not lying.  If I had a scale that went up that high I'd prove it.  I'm waiting for it to crash through our makeshift work table & crush someone.

A close-up of the plank wall and some little details.

...and now for the sneak peek of the headboard that I mentioned earlier.  I'm not going to type up an entire post on it right now as my fingers are still raw & sore from all of those upholstery tacks.  Not easy, so worth it.  (It's not hung on the wall yet...that's just some of my bedding laying on the floor so I could see what it looked like.)  It's that patience thing again.  Could.Not.Wait.

My mental timeline says that we're supposed to accomplish the rest of the trim work on the landing this week.  We shall see!

A Quick Attic Update

I got everything primed late Sunday night...like 11:00pm late.  But it's done.  And it is glorious.

I'm going to attempt to get everything painted with the final coat this week.

Then we should be able to hang the light & get the planks up on the upper portion of the window wall.  After that comes the trim.  We've got a long holiday weekend coming up, so I'm hoping I can get most of the painting & trim finished - eek!

After that, my dad will be working his crazy carpenter wizardry to fit these $25 Craigslist stair rails around our stairwell.  Once the rails get fit into place, I can paint that darn floor & start doing the fun stuff...like decorating!

It's the final countdown!

Finally.

Spring finally came!

***Quick attic update***
You guys...we're almost done with drywall!  You can't imagine how excited I am about that.  This weekend I got the walls on the landing primed, but we still have a couple of touch up coats of mud to put on some spots on the ceiling.  Those sloped ceilings are tricky to mud!  I think we'll be ready to prime the ceiling & paint the whole room by Sunday.  Eek!

In other news, since I don't have enough going on already, I'm also taking Karen Russel's Snapshots of a Good Life photography class over the next couple of months.  I'm only a couple of weeks in, & I already highly recommend it!  No matter what level of your photography skills, you'll come away with something new. 

Our week 1 assignment had to do with composition.  So, I took Grady to the park...which proved to be challenging to say the least.  The kid doesn't stop moving to begin with, but get him outside, at a playground, after the longest, coldest, most cooped-up winter I can remember...& yeah...it was hard for this girl to visualize, much less get a shot with good composition before he was moving on (at warp speed) to something new.  I did manage to get a few shots that I liked though...

I'm really looking forward to the next 8 weeks of Karen's class & am anxious to see where it takes my photography! 

{I'm looking forward even more to spring...& more days at the park!}