Before and After...Oh, and Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. I have had a nice Mother's Day. Jenna made me a card. Kevin made me a card, a really cool bowl filled with kisses (mmm....), a flower, and a little flower clip to hold papers or pictures or whatever. I got a rose at church. It was just a nice relaxing day. After being gone for the last three days, it was really nice to spend the day with my family. Derek didn't have any meetings today, and was actually able to ride to church with us (often when he doesn't have meetings, he still takes the missionaries, so he doesn't ride with us). What a great day!

Jenna's Mother's Day Card (she made it at school...it took her two days)


The flower from Kevin


The card from Kevin:

The Outside


The Inside (He wrote the Lyrics to the song "I Often Go Walking")


The flower clip


The bowl with kisses






The rose from church


Now, for the pictures you've all been waiting for...the Before and After pictures of my house! It isn't on the market quite yet, but I only have a few small things left to do, so hopefully I will be done in a couple of days. At least all of the painting is done!

The outside of the house (no before and after here...just nice spring pictures). Most of the flowers are gone now. So sad.




The kids' rooms (again, no before, only after, sorry) - These took a couple of days just to move people into the right room and organize all their stuff.

Jenna's Room (I painted the walls, trim, ceiling, and closet, put up the boarder and stickers (all easily removable) and put up her new bed (my old bed):






The boys' room (This room was already red and orange, so I decided to play it up. I re-painted the walls to make them fresh, and added the boarder and stickers. Sorry about the unmade beds, the boys were getting ready to hop into bed for the night):






The Dining Room

Before (Unfortunately I didn't take before shots, but you can see the dining room in the background of these pictures):






After (We painted the walls and trim and replaced the curtains and blinds):






The family room and stairwell

Before:










After (We painted the walls and trim, including all of the doors and window frames):










The Master Bathroom

Before (I know you all love this bathroom. Isn't it a beauty? :) ):








After (we painted the cabinets, walls, trim (including the door, window, and towel holders), and laid new flooring):






The kitchen - This room took me the longest, by far.

Before:








This one is to see the old countertop better


After (We painted the cabinets (1 coat of primer and 3 coats of paint!), changed the hardware, added crown molding to the cabinets, painted the countertops (using a countertop painting system I found at Lowe's), and painted the walls and trim (including the windows and doors). We redid the flooring in here shortly after we moved in, so that was already done.):










A close up of the new countertop


Not pictured - We painted the upstairs bathroom (the kids' bathroom). It was a bright green. It's tan now. We painted the upstairs hallway and trim, including all the doors. We also painted the front porch, fixed and painted the railing, painted the front and back doors, painted the trim around the outside windows and doors, hung new blinds in several of the rooms, planted flowers (which the deer ate), and cleaned the windows (which all have to be re-cleaned thanks to my children). We have also done a lot of organizing.

All I have left is to organize the Master Bedroom, clean up the dining room (it has acted as my painting supply room), clean the windows, wipe up some finger and foot prints on my freshly painted walls (lovely, I know), and give the house an overall clean. We will need to re-organize the walk-in attics and put down new mulch, but we can do that after the house is on the market.

Needless to say, I am exhausted. I am ready to be done with the whole thing. Let's pray this house sells quickly, and we can move as a family to NC.

On a completely different note, I want to say Happy 30th Birthday to my best friend, Stephanie! Her birthday is this coming Tuesday. She is six days older than me. :) We used to tell people that we were twins born six days apart. We are sisters born to different mothers. :) I was blessed to celebrate with her in Utah this past weekend. She is so awesome. I cannot think of a better friend. She is so kind, loving, generous, smart, funny, beautiful, spiritual, musical, charitable...(well, you get the picture). I cannot say enough good about her. Unfortunately she lives in Utah, so I don't get to see her very often anymore. That is the only thing I hate about living in the east. I cried on Friday night knowing that I had to leave on Saturday. (Don't get me wrong, I was excited to see my family, but I don't know when I will get to see Steph again). I love you Steph and I miss you tons. Have a great birthday!

Amanda and Stephanie