Analiese and I are out of town for a few days, so the second week is going to be a little short. But fear not, the project is continuing during our absence and the third week will make up for it.

You are all about helping wherever you can these days. This evening, you helped Daddy clean out the garage for tomorrow’s “Spring Cleaning” pick-up. We never tired of watching you delightfully bring each piece to the curb and run back to find more.

Today was another day of helping! We often hear an eager “Analiese help?” or “Analiese do it?” First you helped Daddy make coffee and fill the sugar bowl. Then, you assisted Daddy when he installed shelves in your closet. You are going to be such a great big sister!

Today is Mother’s Day and I’m reminded of how much joy you bring to my life, Analiese. We went for a walk downtown and had some ice cream in the park. After your cone fell to the ground, you played with the ball with Daddy.

Sometimes it’s hard for you to pull yourself away from whatever you’re playing with when we tell you it’s time to take a bath. But somewhere in the middle of your disappointment, you start undressing and remember how much fun you have in the bath. Cheese face!

This morning you accompanied Mama to the dentist and you were incredibly patient and very curious. You were excited to walk out with a new toothbrush for yourself! We brought our lunch outside and played with bubbles.

You are in Indiana with Daddy and Parker, visiting Gigi and Grandpa while Mama is at home for a girl’s weekend with Aunt Katie and Aunt Elisabeth. Today you had lunch with Baba, shopped at Sam’s Club, and celebrated Gigi’s birthday with presents and cake!

Pink milk is such a treat! It’s even better when you get to sit on the deck and look out at the lake. Today you put on your bathing suit and attempted to go in the lake. It was very cold, so you didn’t get very far. You also had fun rocking on Uncle Ryan’s old rocking horse.

You spent your last morning in Indiana playing with Play-doh outside with Gigi and Papa. Gotta love that tongue when you concentrate. You took a short nap on the drive home and greeted Mama with a big smile and hug. Mama missed you, Baby Girl!

Mondays are swim lesson days with Miss Erin and three other kiddos. You are a few months younger than the others and by far the most timid. But you overcome the challenge every week and we are very proud of you for learning something new.

Showers threatened the evening, but we managed to pull out our new grill for the first time and have a yummy chicken dinner. You snacked on raisins while Daddy grilled. Sometimes, your smiles are kind of crazy!

Your morning was spent with two sweet girls and their mama while your mama went to a new Bible study. We came home in time for your nap and then Miss Hailey came over to play since both Mama and Daddy had evening plans. What a great day with friends!

There is nothing like a warm spring Michigan afternoon–perfect for snacking on homemade chocolate chip cookies in the backyard. Clearly, you were getting some energy for intense bubble blowing and dancing with Daddy later in the evening.

If this pregnancy is at all similar to the first (Analiese was due on her due date), then I figure we have about 6-8 weeks to go for this one. At least, let’s hope we’re on the earlier end versus the later one. To remember our last days as a family of three, I’m starting a new project. The 6-8 Weeks Project. I will document each day with a photograph and a few sentences, and at the end I will compile them all into a keepsake book for Analiese. I’ll also share them with you here weekly.

To start out, here is the first one from May 3:

Today we are two months away from your little sister’s due date, and soon you will be a big sister. It was a beautifully warm and breezy day so we set up your bubbles on the grass in the backyard. You are very serious about bubble blowing.

Note: I am a big fat copy-cat and borrowed this idea from Nicole at Making It Lovely.

Another reason for our absence here could be chalked up to the fact that we have an impending deadline on when we want the basement to be finished. So, most weekends and week nights after Analiese goes to bed are spent trying to make that a reality. Which brings me to an update…

You may remember this unsightly view from our side entrance which leads directly to the basement:

Here’s another view:

How I don’t miss those blue walls one bit.

Once the plaster walls were removed and disposed of, we lived with bare studs for a while. They were waiting patiently for something fabulous. They deserved an amazing makeover and we planned to give it to them in the form of distressed pine boards.

We did the math–hello, high school algebra. I better relearn a few things before Analiese is doing this stuff for homework!–and purchased the right amount of 1×6 pine boards (Actually, I forgot to account for an entire section of the wall, so a second trip was needed, but we had enough to get started with). We made our selection based on the ones that had the most knots and natural imperfections because the next step was going to be beating them up anyway in an attempt to achieve an old, rustic look. We figured the more natural imperfections, the less we had to do to create them ourselves.

This took place during potty training week. It was a perfect way to de-stress (which I needed) until it became really uncomfortable to sit like this with my growing baby belly. We eventually set up a table to do the remaining sanding, beating, and cutting.

As I finished a batch, Ross and I switched our basement/Analiese duties and he started hanging them.

Evenutally he ran into the future location of some recessed lighting and had to do some measuring…

and cutting of his own.

And soon, after many many hours of this back and forth, we had this:

At this point, we had to decide how we wanted to finish the wood. I had lots of ideas that would have required tracking down a few unknown products and many steps. This was originally the route I wanted to take:

{ via }

The blogger who posted the tutorial on how to achieve this yummy chippy paint look even emailed me back to let me in on a must have product for achieving an authentic chippy paint look without actually painting something and chipping it away: Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. But that stuff is expensive and I know all of the other steps in the tutorial would be very time consuming. It may not seem so at times, but I do have the ability to keep things realistic and within budget.

And so…we decided to go the classic stain route, which still had its fair share of steps involved–stain, poly, sand (220), poly, sand (220), poly, sand (600)–but it was a manageable process that Ross and I could do together to save time. I guess this is what dating looks like for us these days.

A few nice days allowed for windows to be opened to allow for better air flow during the staining process. And we opted for a water-based, low-odor polycrylic satin finish. And…tada!

The color is Minwax’s Special Walnut. Knowing that I didn’t want it to be too dark, I literally wiped off the stain immediately after applying it to a very small section. I found it was best to get into the cracks, dents, holes, etc. first and then do a clean swipe across the boards before wiping away the excess. It still looked pretty dark once it dried, but after the first phase of sanding, it looked much more like the color I was hoping for. It goes great with the chocolate ceiling and exposed steel beam which is painted the same color.

We also made some progress with the trim around the doors. I opted to paint them before putting them up to attain a really clean line between the stained wood and painted trim. Of course, I’ll need to go back and do some touch up now that there are a good amount of nail holes in them.

Here’s a close-up of the walls:

And once the final phase of sanding was done we could finally put the trim around the lights. Gotta love these finishing touches.

Depending on the light, the ceiling and walls tend to take on a different color, but I assure you, they are the same. Same wood. Same stain.

Ross did a great job with the trim, too. It had to go through the same stain, poly, sand, etc. process as the rest of the wood and then cut to the right angles to fit just right. And for the record, our stairwell was not originally constructed with right angles, which was an added challenge in the whole endeavor.

Once we realized that we could officially finish part of the basement, I ran out to Lowe’s to pick up switch plate covers. I slapped them on, waved my hand around the small area and told Ross, “we are done with this spot.”

It’s the little things that keep us going on this one!

We decided to stick with family names again. If you recall, Analiese is named after her great-grandmother, Annaliese, and her Nana, Christine.

Hayden is actually named after her dad, whose first name is Hayden. Ross’s great grandfather was also named Hayden Ross, but went by “Ross”. We love the name Hayden and are so happy to call our second daughter by that name. Sadly, though, there isn’t a great meaning behind the name Hayden. In German, it means “heathen” (yikes!) and in English it literally means “valley with hay“. Sorry about that, sweet girl. At least it sounds cool.

The first Hayden Ross’s wife’s name was Catherine, but went by “Kate”. We think the two names sound great together and plan to call her by both. Thankfully, the meaning of Kate is something we do like: pure.

Analiese is starting to grasp this whole baby-in-mama’s-belly thing and even refers to her by her name. So cute! She also thinks everyone has a baby in their belly, including Daddy and random ladies we meet in airports and grocery stores.

We are all very excited to meet Hayden Kate in July!

We have been outside as much as possible. We all love the change. I am praying that this spring weather is here to stay.

Warm weather rocks my socks off. Literally. I could wear flip flops every day.

This girl, not so much…she’s still getting used to that thing between her toes and refuses to just relax her feet for a few seconds to realize that it is not that bad and actually kind of wonderful instead.

My feet are ready for the beach. Color: Feeling Hot Hot Hot by OPI

I love spending my days with this one. Milk mustache and all.

We attended a 2 year old birthday tea party the other day. It was so sweet and A has been singing “Happy  Birthday to Elyse” randomly for the past three days.

She wasn’t too sure about the hat.

But thought it was the best thing in the world to drink actual water from dainty little tea cups. She was “very careful” and used “both hands”, but still managed to be the only one who spilled it all over the table. Silly.

We made it out to a park on this nice spring-like day, and Parker enjoyed it.

In the midst of working on the basement, potty training (a topic for a different post), traveling and the daily stuff, I’ve been picking away at a few things here at home. I’ve been inspired by J&S’s self-imposed challenge to take care of some of those projects around the house that have been on the to-do list for way too long.

Here’s a snippet of what I’ve been able to check off lately:

Caulked bathroom vanity. 2 years. 2 years! We’ve ignored the fact that the unevenly applied, clear, silicone caulk around the top of our vanity has been slowly turning yellow. Gross. I finally grabbed the caulk gun and took care of it. Hello, straight, white line!

So much better.

Gallery “Us” Wall. We’ve had a stash of framed art, keepsakes and photos that we’ve been collecting behind a chair in our bedroom since we had a bedroom to store them all in. They all have special meaning–art from places we’ve traveled to, our wedding “guest book”, my pressed wedding bouquet, photos from our wedding day and of Analiese, a photo of us when I was pregnant with Analiese, a “C” for Chasey. And I finally put it all to use. An “us” wall as I like to refer to it.

{ Framed cork board – wedding gift, wedding guest book frame }

{ Blue and white painting of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence Italy – purchased from a street artist during my 6 week mission trip to Florence in college, wedding photos, “C” from Urban Outfitters, watercolor print of the Mayan Ruins in Tulum, Mexico – originally painted by Ross’s dad’s cousin while on a yoga trip and also a memory of our honeymoon }

{ Our baby girl growing up in photos, acrylic painting purchased at the Plymouth Art in the Park two years ago, maternity photo, my wedding bouquet }

I love the mixture of color and black white, as well as photos and non-photos. And somehow they all tied into our subtle blue and turquoise color scheme in our bedroom.

(Not too) high and wide curtains. I was a little ambitious with the whole “high and wide” philosophy when I hung our living room curtains the first time. For months, I’ve been wanting to bring them in just a few inches, but the entire process of taking the rod down, removing the brackets, drilling holes for new ones, filling the old ones, sanding and painting was always so daunting. Until one day, during nap time, I decided to just do it. What a difference!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

I am always changing things around in our house, but don’t always capture them here. I am not a very good blogger, but when I get to check off things that I’ve been meaning to do for months and months, I have to share it!

Lights are being installed in the basement today and Ross is picking up our doors from Lowe’s as I write this. Things are happening! More basement updates to come soon.

Recently, Love You Forever has been one of Analiese’s favorite books, and my Mom captured her and Heather reading the book before bedtime. Analiese fondly calls the book Back and Forth.

It’s a good thing we took that preventative measure because this was the aftermath of said paint:

Doesn’t it look like a scene right out of 24? I think it’s scary and I’m thankful Analiese and I hit the road for the weekend while Ross went to town with this baby:

He rented it from Home Depot and soon learned that there was a bit of a learning curve in how to use it well. We also learned that we needed a LOT more paint than we anticipated. We calculated the square footage of the ceiling earlier in the week and headed to Lowe’s to have Restoration Hardware’s “Chocolate” color matched to Valspar’s Signature paint in a flat finish. We got three gallons. Ross picked up an additional 5 gallons the next day! Apparently all of those joists add up in square footage, too.

He also got a sweet painting suit of which he failed to take a picture of himself in. Boo.

Ross called me while I was in the car en route to Cincinnati when he was about halfway done and said, “It’s really drippy.” Looking through this pictures, I see what he means!

Thankfully, though, the wood soaked up a lot of the extra paint.

Some drips can be seen on the pipes and duct work that are metal, but we can go back and sand some of those down and do some touching up with a brush:

This pipe decided it was too good for the paint, but it will eventually be covered with some nice crown molding:

Ross was a little more conservative with the paint towards the end, which created a few less drips. However, it also left a few spots that will need some touching up so the bare wood underneath is not as visible:

Overall, it looks great. SO much time was spent cleaning the ceiling up as much as possible–moving wires out of the line of sight, sanding joists, rerouting pipes and duct work, dusting–so that the final step of painting it would be that much more rewarding. Rewarding, it was!