My Real Life HGTV Experience

It was July. It was hot. Moving was not on our radar at all. My husband occasionally mentioned it. I dismissed it as if he was crazy. I had been asking for 5 years for better shelving in our laundry room. My husband finally caved. Here is what it used to look like:

From then on, it was like "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie." Because if you put new shelving in your laundry room,

You realize you probably need to paint it.

If you paint it, you realize you need to paint the trim. And the door. And get new hardware for the door:

Then your husband realizes it looks so amazing, you need to put your house on the market and start looking for another place. Farewell sweet laundry room. You were amazing from July-September. I will miss you.

So if you paint the trim and door to the laundry room, you have to do all the trim in the hallway and those doors too...

Then, you have to paint the hallway, the trim, the living room, the entryway, and the dining room too when you realize your trim used to be tan...

We hired most of this done (Just the high parts and the trim). So worth it! But, we'll talk more about that later.

The dining room before and after:

Even though I really liked the red dining room, we decided in the interest of selling the house quickly, to do something more neutral and something to lighten it up and make it feel as big as it really is.

My mom helped me sew some new curtains for the side lights.

Then I realized I needed to treat the hardwood floors with Bona.

Meanwhile, my poor children are running around the house trying to find the toys that I had packed up. We packed up 90% of our junk and stuck it in the garage while we were showing the house. Turns out that most people don't care about your garage or how much stuff you have in it. They just care how many cars would fit if they lived there.

Fixing everything that is wrong with your house to sell it is really bittersweet. My husband replaced almost half of the boards on the porch as well as the stairs and the railing and then we hired a painter to stain it all one color. It turned out so pretty! We got rid of our gross porch furniture and I power washed the rest of it to look new again.

I've said it before, but DEPERSONALIZE. DECLUTTER. REPAIR BROKEN STUFF. Always. Getting rid of bolder paint colors was one of the ways we depersonalized. We also took down pictures of people, monograms, and anything that would make certain people feel like they weren't at home.

I painted the door gray, found a neutral wreath, and a mat that said "Welcome" instead of my initial.

Now I'm just going to list the pictures that my friend, Elisabeth Eaton, took for the listing. You should definitely hire a photographer. Even if you think you know how to take good house pictures, you don't. Hire Elisabeth!

I made sure that I had pressure washed certain areas and that the lawn mowers had come the day before pictures were made.

Bought a cheap but new and neutral door mat.

 We only had two pictures hanging on the walls after we painted. Took away all of our clutter for clean lines.

Took away some of our dining chairs and the secretary desk to make the room feel larger and draw the eye upward. I cleaned my china cabinet and took out some of the clutter. I used my sparkliest dishes.

 Minimal mantel decor. Fresh paint.

 No counter clutter at all. 

 We took the leaf out of our table to make the room feel bigger.

 Switched out the lamps for a matching pair, hung less personalized art, and always made sure our bed was made.

 White towels. Matching hangers. No clutter.

 I hired a maid to come the day before the photographer and the showings. Completely worth it! I also painted all of the trim in here white instead of tan. I painted the doors white as well. It made a huge difference!

 The boys' rooms were the hardest to declutter.

 I made sure to take every #2 diaper to the outside trash right away! How a house smells is as important as it looks!

 Aww, the laundry room again! I'll miss you.

 I've talked about this before, but it really helps to help the home buyer envision how they could use this vast space.

 I steam cleaned the carpets throughout the house. Again, for the smell and the look of it!

 Rearranging the craft room added the feel of more space

Ok. So, here's the HGTV part of the story. We met with the realtor on August 5th to discuss price and what we needed to update. As soon as painting and pictures were done, we put the house on the market on Sept. 9th. We had 11 showings that weekend. We had an offer Saturday night, talk of another offer, and tons of interest. We thought we were under contract Saturday night when we went to bed with an all cash offer, 4,000 less than asking price. When we woke up Sunday morning, our realtor told us that the buyers never signed the counter offer. So then we had another offer. For full price, no closing costs. Then the realtors put out a notice to the potential buyers called a multiple offers notice where they say, bring your highest and best offer. We ended up getting over our asking price, no closing costs. It was a crazy 24 hours!

Of course we benefited from the current seller's housing market and the location of our home, but I really think if we hadn't listened to our realtors, things would have turned out very differently.

I'll miss our house where we brought our boys home from the hospital and the only house where Henry ever lived. We'll always have memories there, but we're looking forward to creating new memories in our new house! One lesson I learned throughout this process is to go ahead and do the things you want to do to your house when you move in, that way you can actually enjoy it the whole time you're living there.

Teddy Bear Picnic 1st Birthday Party

We have had a busy year with our boys! I had so much much fun planning Paul's 1st birthday party which evolved into a Teddy Bear Picnic theme. Here are some of my favorite things about the party:

Teddy Bear cake with Pinterest inspiration. 

This cake was not that difficult to make. My mom helped a bunch! 

This is what it looked like in progress: One large spring form pan for the base. One 6 inch pan for the snout and one tiny spring form pan cut in half for the ears. The tiny pan bubbled over, so we cut the extra off of it and added it to the top of the medium pan to look more like a snout. I frosted the snout and ears with caramel icing. So good! The "fur" was made out of chocolate butter cream frosting piped on with a parchment cone. And the black accents are leftover royal icing I had.

I realize these cupcakes are not Pinterest worthy, but Teddy Grahams made good cupcake toppers for our theme

Putting those monthly pictures to good use! It's crazy how much a baby changes in their first year of life!

 My childhood high chair with a ribbon banner and a special teddy bear one year old bib for the baby!

My candle holder from my 1st birthday cake

The teddy bears guarding the goodie bags

Paul's first birthday was hard on big brother! It's hard for brother to get all of the attention for 2 days! (Actual birthday and party day)

 Found this blue and white checkered fabric at our sewing class. Nobody wanted to use it for their quilts since it was pretty thin. It made the perfect table covering after surging the edges!

 We had gummy bears, teddy grahams, honey comb cereal, popcorn bags, chips, and fruit for snacks.

 

 The whole family wore bear shirts! It was actually good that we ordered one for Mack because he would have been jealous of Paul's special shirt if we had not!

 Big boy standing up but not walking yet!

 

I love this bib so much! I can't believe our baby is 1!

Not sure if I made the ribbon banner correctly, I just tied several ribbons to the twine. 

That's all, folks!

Paul's Nursery

The other morning (at 3 AM) I was pretty tired. I looked down at this sweet face and I said a prayer of thankfulness that I have a baby that can nurse at 3 AM. These are two things that I was extremely worried about for the past few months. I didn't know if I would ever have a baby to live in this nursery again. After finding out about Paul's cleft lip, I didn't know if he would even be able to nurse. We had all of the special bottles cleaned and ready to go, just in case, but he nurses like a champ! We are incredibly thankful to have this sweet boy in our lives and to have a reason to redo this nursery that used to be a symbol of the emptiness that we felt after Henry's passing.


Since it was a symbol of emptiness and held so many sad feelings for us, we needed to revamp the room a bit to give it a fresh new feeling. I had based the old nursery on a blanket I found at Target that had navy blue, aqua, orange, and red in it. I put that blanket in our hope chest and took out all of the navy blue accents around the room. I decided that navy was Henry's color and Paul needed something different. I found a new blanket at Target that was white with different colored polka dots (gray, red, aqua, orange, and green). It also had a matching changing pad and crib sheet, so I snatched them up. I really wanted to keep the walls gray, so I liked that the blanket had gray too.

A more accurate picture of the wall color.

You might recognize the monogram idea from Henry's nursery. I bought all new letters and did them in orange instead of navy.

I really like my tool box diaper caddy. We did this for Mack (and for Henry). It has everything you need and you can carry it around the house if you decide to change a diaper in the living room.  

 This is Paul's adorable crib that he never sleeps in. We did a great job of getting Mack to sleep in his crib from early on. Paul loves to sleep in his Rock N' Play, which is at least in his room. The picture used to be in Mack's room above his changing table. The bumpers are what I ordered for Henry, but I paired it with a new sheet. The blanket is fleece fabric that I added satin trim to while I was pregnant with Paul.

They say a good chair is hard to find. Or maybe that's a man. Well, a good man will buy you a good chair while you're pregnant or nursing! This chair is so stinking comfortable. It's a charcoal gray microfiber. It rocks, swivels, and reclines. I have actually already slept the whole night in this chair and it wasn't bad at all. We had a super cute orange chair for Mack and Henry's nursery that had belonged to my husband's grandmother. I ended up selling it because I needed something designed for a 6 foot tall person instead of a teeny person. I really like that when we're finished with needing a rocker in the nursery, this chair will blend with our living room and we can replace one of our older chairs with this one.

These are Paul's give, save, spend jars. I used my cricut this time and I liked how they turned out! I especially love the piggy bank.

We had tons of Mack's old baby toys. Even though Paul isn't quite ready to play with these, it turned out to be a great idea to put them in the nursery. Mack likes to play in this corner while I'm nursing Paul or changing a diaper. He shows little brother how to play with the different toys and I think it makes him feel like the big man on campus that he has mastered every toy! 

A $5 Walmart bucket, transformed with some vinyl, holds Paul's stuffed animals nicely. We love this little lamb chair. It was recommended by another cleft lip mom to use during the day for the post-op period since the baby needs to be kept in an inclined position for about 2 weeks.

Paul's closet and the door to the hallway. It is so nice to have a clock where you can see it when you're nursing. The clock was hanging in Henry's nursery, but I had never put a battery in it. It's crazy how emotional it can be to put a battery in a silly clock! Sometimes it was difficult to allow myself to anticipate a live birth and to actually prepare real things like putting batteries in, putting the Rock N' Play together, or putting wipes in the wipes box. I learned after we lost Henry that memories of preparation and anticipation are very important, even if something happens that you never could have anticipated. I am so thankful for those memories with Henry of preparing his room, and I'm thankful that I allowed myself to actually prepare a room for Paul instead of waiting for his birth. I think it was important for the healing and transition processes.

We are so thankful to God for blessing us with a healthy baby boy who got to come home to his nursery!

Cleft Lip and Long Femurs

We have been seeing the high risk doctors with this pregnancy due to our previous stillbirth. They're calling it "increased surveillance." On Monday I had a routine ultrasound just for the increased surveillance of it, and they discovered that baby Paul has a cleft lip. Paul is like his daddy and doesn't look at the camera when you're trying to take a picture of him, so it made it hard for the ultrasound tech to collect good images of his lips and palate. They tried for a very long time to verify that he did have cleft lip, but in the end, he never turned his head around and we had to leave with only a 90% chance that he had it. They told us to come back Wednesday for another scan and they would check again.

Today, we went back for another scan and he actually looked at the camera! We confirmed that he does have cleft lip on one side but we could not get good images of his palate.  We're thankful that it's only on one side and we're hoping it won't extend very far into his palate, although the doctor said there is usually palate involvement in cases like this.

Of course nobody wants to learn that something is wrong with their child, especially after losing another child. We were kind of shocked that we hadn't discovered it until 28 weeks (he always hid his face and had his hand by his chin). But, as far as physical problems with a fetus go, this is a pretty good one to have because you can generally repair the problem with surgeries after birth. We know it's probably going to be a long road of surgery, consults with a variety of specialists, and nursing/feeding problems, but we are just so thankful to have a road to go down with our little boy!

We are incredibly thankful to live in the Chattanooga area where we have a great craniofacial team that is known all over the country/world. We are also thankful to have some friends as resources who have gone down similar roads with their children.

Just in case you were wondering, I have never smoked, had alcohol, done drugs, or failed to take my prenatal vitamins, folic acid, or go to regular OB visits. I guess you could say I've done everything "by the book." From what I've read, the baby's lip/palate is already formed between weeks 3-9 of pregnancy. Since we were planning this pregnancy, I was doing everything "right" even back then! Sometimes you can do all the right things and the lips and palate still don't meet in the middle. Sometimes you can do all the right things, and your baby is stillborn.

In other baby news, baby Paul's growth percentile was 97%! His abdominal circumference was only in the 67th%. They said it went all the way from 67-97% after they measured his crazy long femurs! So, at least he'll be able to round-house kick people in the face if they make fun of his lip. And even if he can't, his momma can kick them with her crazy long femurs :)

<-femurs

Please keep us in your prayers still. We are so thankful for the people who have already been praying!

Isaiah 41:10

"So do not fear, for I am with you;

  do not be dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you;

  I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."