big step in the bathroom redo!

I love the way the bathroom is shaping up! The new granite countertop is gorgeous and these pictures don't really do it justice. What a huge change from the previous ugliness that was the old bathroom. And just in case you all don't remember what it used to look like, see below.

under construction

So it's been spring break this past week and Greg and I decided it was time to undertake the total bathroom redo. Here is a before picture of what the bathroom looked like before everything started.

Then the demo started and this it what things looked like.

The first project that we finished was the new tile for the floor. We picked the small hexagon tiles, for a vintage feel. I think we did a pretty good job.

Today we will be tackling the plumbing for the shower. The existing plumbing didn't have a shower, or at least it didn't when we bought the house. When we ripped into the wall we found that there was once plumbing for a shower but the owners had capped it off. We purchased pretty copper pipes to replace the old steel ones. Greg had a crash course in soldering from my dad and successfully soldered all of the pieces together, now we just have to connect them to the existing pipes and solder them on. Everyone cross their fingers for us, we are a little worried about burning the house down, with the torch so close to beams and dry wall. Below is a picture of the original plumbing and then the new pipes ready to go.

shoe lover

I guess I'm raising my little girl right, she loves shoes. Anytime she sees shoes or boots, she runs over and puts them on and walks around. This is especially funny when she puts on Greg's snow boots or the other day she put on one of my cowboy boots. But last night was the icing on the cake, she came walking out of our bedroom with this shoe on:

There really isn't anything like a metallic silver peep toe high heel.

She did pretty well walking in the shoe considering it was on the wrong foot.

sick baby girl

Mary Jane has finally caught her first cold. We were hoping to avoid the whole sick baby thing. She is so miserable and I don't think she understands why she feels so crappy. All she wants to do is curl up and sleep. And now, both Greg and I are getting sick. I am currently sitting in class, trying to pay attention, but my nose is runny, my throat is itchy, and I have an all over ache. I just can't resist kissing my baby, even though I know she's sick. When all of the sudden she feels better and comes running across the room with her lips pursed together, how can you refuse a kiss. Mary Jane woke up looking a little less puffy and I am hoping that she is finally getting over her first cold.

growing up fast

Mary Jane did the cutest thing last night. She put her baby bears into her highchair, then put the bib on them, and proceeded to pretend feed them with her spoon. It was so cute! She is growing up so fast. She amazes us everyday with new words and phrases, like "come on, lets go" and "that tastes good." She seems to be saying more complex phrases, but not very many understandable words. She talks constantly but we can't understand what she is saying most of the time. I think her brain is saying stuff, but her mouth hasn't quite caught up yet.

On another note, a didn't ride the train today into work. Since I will only be here for a few hours, I hope. It was really fun! Don't get me wrong, I love riding the train because I can sleep, read, surf the web, do homework, or whatever. But today I got to sing along to my ipod. So, I am a horrible singer, so the only time I can sing, and no one can hear me, is in the car. It was fun!

whole new world

Life has drastically changed at the Schoenwolf house. Mary Jane can now climb out of her crib. She has only done it once so far, but now we are having a dilemma about what to do. We decided it is probably best to convert her crib to the day bed by removing the front rail. However, when we tried to put MJ to bed Saturday night in her "big girl bed" she, of course, got out of bed and ended up getting disoriented in her dark room while asking, "Mom wherjago?" She got scared and started crying. Greg and I immediately rescued her and decided that she is just too little to understand what's going on. Now, we are taking our chances with her climbing out of the crib. We can no longer put her in her crib to go take a shower or shovel the driveway, its no longer a safe place. Like I said, its a whole new world at our house now.

Christmas decorating

Last year while tirelessly winding the lights onto the tree, I decided that I wanted to buy a new tree that would stay pre-lit so I wouldn't have to put the lights on every year (its the worst part of decorating). Greg said that when we bought a house we could then get a new pre-lit tree. Well, we bought our house in April, so this Thanksgiving weekend we were on the hunt for the perfect pre-lit tree. One of the criteria was that the lights be LEDs, so we could save tons of energy. Well, come to find out, most places don't have pre-lit LED trees, and if they do, they are really expensive. So we decided that we would buy a plain tree and pre-light it ourselves with LEDs. The best price we found for LEDs was about $8 for a strand with 60 lights. So looking at how many lights were on the other pre-lit trees we estimated that we needed about 7 strands to light our tree.

Well we got home and started wrapping the lights on, and we figured out that in order to be able to fold the tree back up and keep the lights on we needed to string the lights up and down every branch. We only made it half way up the tree with our 7 strands. Off we went to buy 7 more, and of course the store we bought the first set at didn't have anymore so we had to drive to the farther store to find them. We get back home, its now pretty late, and MJ is hungry, cranky and sleepy, so off to bed she goes. Meanwhile, Greg is diligently string the rest of the lights on the tree and he gets to the end, and we need ONE more strand. We didn't get the final strand until the next day, but after 15 total strands, 900 lights total, (keep in mind that LEDs only take about 4.6 watts per strand, so you can string together 43 strands and not overload the circuit), we have a super bright, sparkly, pre-lit LED Christmas tree. Note the beam of light projected onto the ceiling. The picture doesn't quite do it justice and when we crack the curtains, a beam of light spills out of the front of the house. It's awesome!