Since I finally put away our Christmas things, I feel as though I need to write out everything we want to get done around here while it’s fresh in my mind. If I could have tackled all of this tonight, I would have. I am so anxious to finally organize this house and make some progress on projects that were put on the back burner when I was busy with school.

Oh, and we have a baby coming in May so many of these items are marked urgent. Some are just marked as “they are bothering us and we’d like to do them ASAP”. Since we realize we have to prioritize (I’m approaching the third trimester here, eek), I’m putting them in the order we’d like to do them.

1. Finish built-in bench in new office

We scratched our heads and shopped for wood this weekend, but hit a standstill when we realized we need to buy a table saw or something. And we’re cheap a–es. Solution pending.

2. Move office furniture in

Mike needs this room to work in and be organized and our goal was to get him somewhat settled in the new office before the baby comes. We’re going to use the furniture we currently have with some potential hacks.

3. Remove wire rack from the baby’s closet, paint, stencil and add closet system

(from Roomzaar via Pinterest)

I put this as first in the baby’s room progress because the closet is the most needed to start to organize some of the stuff we already have. Hanging tiny little clothes in a huge closet is killllling me. Must. Make. Closet. Pretty.

4. Add board and batten to the baby’s room

(via Decorchick)

We plan to add molding high and all the way around the room, like Emily’s living room. Pattern to be determined 🙂

5. Add crown molding to the baby’s room, paint, add furniture, etc.

I know this category is huge and can probably be another to-do ist in itself, but we kinda have to wait until we get through other stages to work this part out. We have furniture in mind and a general idea of where we’re going, so we’ll share as much of it as we can as we go along (being sure not to spill any gender specific details :))

6. Replace playroom carpet

We originally planned to do this before Christmas but that didn’t happen. Since it’s not a space we’ll be using right away, we put the new office and the baby’s room first. But this carpet has got to go. If carpet wasn’t so expensive, we probably would have committed to this already.

7. Add bookcases to playroom

(via Centsational Girl)

We want to add some Ikea bookcases to the wall where the shelving is in the picture above and make them look built-in, like Kate did with hers.

8. Finish up the molding in our entryway

We need to add the box portion underneath our chair rail in the entryway and upstairs hallway. Mike is itching to finish this one but we reeeally need to do the baby’s room first. We’re just dying to get to number 8…

9. Start our gallery wall(s)

(via Sawdust and Paper Scraps)

I’ve shared this inspiration picture from Sandra before and we’ve been slowly accumulating frames to hang all the way throughout our entryway. We haven’t hung any yet because we figured we’d have to take them down to nail into the wall to finish the molding, so we wanted to do #7 first.

10. Build outdoor kitchen

Despite the fact that we’ll have a newborn, we’re hoping to make some progress in our backyard this year. We seeded back there in the fall and we hope to do something with the landscaping and start working on the built-in grill we’ve been dreaming of (and drawing in Paint :))

Um anyone else overwhelmed by this list? I’m about to have a Jessie Spano freak out moment and start screaming “there’s never enough time!!!”….

2011 is over already, can you believe it? Since this year was our first full year of blogging (and living in the house), we figured we’d jump on the end of year list bandwagon! So without further adieu, here is a list of our top 5 favorite projects that we completed around the house this year…

5. Powder Room Paint Job

Though painting is nothing all that special, we took a flying leap out of our comfort zones with this near-black paint choice. I think it paid off 🙂

4. Pencil Eraser Art

This was another project that didn’t take me long, but had a big impact. I still love looking at this thing and I’m thinking of ways to use some pencil eraser art in the future.

3. Entryway Chair Rail

This was our first molding adventure and we got a serious high off of conquering those funny angles. Therefore, we loved it this year.

2. Stamped Concrete Patio

While we did not attempt this one ourselves, we definitely did not expect to have an awesome patio this year. It’s a reader favorite so our wood plank stamped patio gets the runner up position on our 2011 list!

1. Office stripes

Measure once, measure twice, okay measure 5 times then level, remeasure… 18 hours later peel off tape and have clean stripes! The amount of blood, sweat and tears that went into taping this room and the almost perfect finished product (we needed a few touch ups) make this our favorite project of 2011. Plus looking at the stripes through our french doors everyday makes it even better!

Honorable Mention:

The Baby.

Look at the little chin chin! I couldn’t resist the baby bomb 🙂

Hopefully 2012 will bring even bigger and better projects. We’re really surprised at how many things we’ve checked off our to-do list this year. We have a bunch of things to get started on for 2012 ASAP! What should we tackle first?!

Back when I wrote my 100th post almost a year ago, I mentioned that someday we would like to have a more personal blog to chronicle our adventures as parents. Before we even found out I was pregnant, we were scheming as to what we would call it. We decided on….

And it’s now up and running! We hope to use the space to write about our lives as a family- with the baby, Macky, Mowie and Darwin (Diggy as he’s called around here). Other than that, we don’t know what the new blog will evolve into… text? pictures? weekly baby photos? Time will tell. For now, Mike has written most of the posts and it will give you a glimpse into our personal lives unrelated to the house. This blog here will remain house central (as well as my first love :))

Macky & Company is accessible via macky.co or mackyandco.com, hope you stop by 🙂

ps- I just posted a little bit about the reasoning behind our decision to find out the gender of our baby, but keep it a secret!

Thank you all for your comments on the post revealing our big announcement! It has been rough juggling a full-time job, 2 graduate courses, writing posts and doing projects for posts… while being ridiculously tired and usually nauseous around 9pm. Today has been one of my worst days…strangely, considering I’m out of the first trimester. Maybe that flu shot I got yesterday me the sleepies? But I always manage to find a little extra time and energy to blog because well, I love doing this 🙂

One of the hardest part of keeping up with the blog while being pregnant hasn’t been the exhaustion or sickness… it’s been the fact that I could not share all of the plans we’ve been working on! We have 3 rooms that will be directly affected by this baby… THREE. And I could not really talk about everything we’ve been working on which was even more challenging.

But I finally can, so here are the preliminary changes that will be going on around here in the next 6 months 🙂

1. Remove carpet in 3 upstairs bedrooms and have hardwood installed

Last year we removed this carpeting from our bedroom and upstairs hallway. We waited on the other three bedrooms to save us some money since we weren’t using them. Now with the baby taking one room and the office being moved to another, we figured it’s time to remove this beast. This is necessary not only because hardwood looks pretty, but well, we have a cat who is fighting a form of kidney cancer and carpeting is our worst enemy these days (besides cancer). Plus Macky loves to shred this particular type of carpet (it’s the less expensive carpet that some moron decided would make a great scratching post material), so we figured we’d start ahead of the game this time and nip any issues in the bud before they come up. Oh and I have a horrible fear of our child being allergic to cats (both Mike and I were as children), so any dander collectors are out! Right now we’re scheduled for flooring install November 21-22 so our hardwoods will be nice and seamless upstairs 🙂

2. Move current office furniture upstairs to make room for playroom

We discussed moving the office and some preliminary plans a few times because that was the only room we could really talk about! The truth is, ever since we bought this house we knew that the downstairs office would one day be a playroom. That is why we never attempted built-ins in this room and instead went for removable Ikea furniture. It is entirely true that this office was no longer working for us, which is why we were moving it upstairs. Several people asked us what would become of the room with the pretty stripes and the answer is now obvious, it will be a playroom and the stripes will of course stay 🙂 The future of the room was indeed considered when we painted the stripes and we knew that it would one day make for a fun playroom.

3. Replace current office/future playroom carpet

This is the carpeting we currently have in the office. We added a bright green area rug, which will be likely moving upstairs with the office furniture to protect our soon to be new hardwoods from our rolling chairs. While we chose this carpet before our house was even built, we had no idea what it would look like in the room and had no idea that we would be painting gray stripes. But that’s not the reason why we have to replace it. The reason is that little orange guy in that picture. It’s one of those things a lot of people don’t talk about but hey! I’m saying it twice in one post! My poor kitty was sick and couldn’t make it to the bathroom at his worst and this carpet took the brunt of it. Anyone who has struggled with animal accidents (especially under heartbreaking circumstances) knows that they are not easy to resolve. I don’t think we can get this carpet back to it’s former glory so we plan to replace it with something more gray, fluffier and hopefully eco-friendly. We have a $200 giftcard to Home Depot that we’re hoping helps us a lot with the cost since this room is relatively small (11×11). No Darwin, we’re not mad at you, we’re happy that you’re still here with us and that you get to be a big brother 🙂 Now it’s time to get a job…

4. Choose a room for the nursery.

No picture here, we have no clue what room to choose of the remaining two. I’ll keep you posted 🙂

5. Decorate!!

Once all of the logistics are done, we can get around to all of the projects we have in mind for the 3 new rooms. We’ve talked a little bit about the new office (which is still very much up in the air), but we also have some built-in solutions for the new playroom including a storage bench and bookcases. The nursery is still a giant question mark but I have begun the epic search for an environmentally friendly crib and will of course keep you all posted on my progress!

I think this is the first time we’ve done anything in this house with a deadline. Though of course, the baby won’t mind if the playroom isn’t completely decorated in time for his/her May arrival (let’s face it, the baby won’t be doing much playing at that point…) But we’re hoping to have all of the new flooring down by the end of the year, then we can clear out the current office and the priority will probably be the baby’s room. I would like to get the built-ins done in the playroom to store the mass amounts of stuff that comes with a baby. The rest of the playroom will probably be evolving as we get used to this new gig we’re taking on 🙂

So that’s the overall, shortened version of what will be going on around here. Now I’m off to Pinterest to find some inspiration. Wait I’m lying… I’m off to go back to bed… 🙂

I’ve been keeping a secret from all of you. Though I have indeed been overwhelmed with work and grad school, I’ve been working on another project lately.

First! Some inspiration pictures…

This one has great rolls around the elbows and we personally like the partial boo-boo lip for added effect.

We like this one because of the humorous smile and chubby little cheeks. The soaking wet ‘do makes it even more adorable.

But! You’ll have to wait until May to see our final reveal. For now our project is coming along wonderfully and is incredibly cute (complete with mini chicken leg and foot!!)

Now I can finally talk about all of the big plans we have for the house in the next 6 months! Stay tuned, it’s going to be a fun ride 🙂