House projects, pumpkins, and candy

October 2023

Even though I already summarized it, this was the month of putting our house on the market, having open houses and showings, and accepting an offer. That's probably why there are pictures from Michael's birthday, Halloween, and not much else.

Here are the promised pictures of the transformation the house went through during the almost 7 years we lived there. The old-looking pictures with lots of stuff in them are the listing pictures. We actually saw this pictures and thought, "we should definitely try to buy this house". It makes me laugh and feel stressed at the same time to look back and remember. The pictures with less stuff but still looking old and dirty are pictures I took as we were starting to clean up and repair things. And then I think it's pretty easy to guess which are the listing pictures.

I wanted to paint the front door navy the whole time we lived her, but thought it just wouldn't be worth it since the door needed to be replaced. I'm here to say it would have been worth it! I loved the couple of months I got to have with the blue door and thought it made such a difference!

What this really teaches me is that decluttering and hiring a professional photographer make a huge difference! But we did a lot of work too- scraping ceilings, painting everything, installing a new curtain rod (and higher up), putting up baseboards, installing overhead lighting(!), cleaning...

The kitchen was the same as the front door for me for so long: it all needs to be replaced, so why bother painting it? In 2020 I was inspired by my SIL (and bored) and decided to just go for it and I'm so glad I did. The in-between projects are worth it! We also replaced the light fixture about the eating area, painted the grout, and did a ton of cleaning.

In this room, we removed the chair rail and wallpaper, replaced carpet, installed a new fan, painted, cleaned the window, sill, and closet, and put in another shelf and rod in the closet.

Our room wasn't too bad. It got new carpet, new ceiling fan, paint, re-textured ceilings, and new baseboards.

This bathroom had quite the transformation! It all started one day when the toilet seat broke off and I thought, "I'll just replace the toilet with the new one we have in the garage". A few cracked floor tiles, and we had gutted the entire bathroom. It took a couple years to fully get everything re-done, but at least we had a lot of time to enjoy the updates.

In Adaline's room we peeled off stickers, painted over the red wall, replaced the outlets that were also painted red (what?!), and put in new carpet.

This bathroom was one of the more recent upgrades we did, and I'm just a little sad we didn't get to enjoy it longer. This time we hired out, and the whole process was finished in about a week. It's amazing what professionals can do.

And the backyard! It was definitely more green when we moved in (April) versus when we sold (October), but we had a lot to clean up, bushes and trees to trim, and a peach tree to take care of and watch grow like crazy. We repainted the deck, benches, and railings, took out the "stage"/deck thing in the corner, added garden boxes, and created a mulch circle for the trampoline (which our realtor made us get rid of, haha).

Perhaps the biggest transformation of all was within our own family...I didn't get a picture of us in front of the house after we sold it (I know, huge mistake), but our family pictures were taken right around the time we accepted the offer that went through. We moved in with a 3 year old, 2 year old, and 5 month old (yes, that was a stressful time) and moved out with a 10 year old, 9 year old, 7 year old, and 5 year old. We learned a ton about taking care of a house and how to work together as a family.

Whew! Okay, now that we have all of the house stuff out of the way, let's see what else was going on in October.

The two might be able to convince you otherwise, but they are besties. I love seeing them work together on things and help each other figure out new things.

We took family pictures at the beach and had the BEST time! (More about this in the next post, I promise)

I couldn't fork out the money to take any of the kids to the Taylor Swift concert with me (not even Andrew came), but you better believe Adaline and I went to the movie together on October 13! I love having a fellow Swiftie in the family and we had a fabulous time singing and dancing from our seats.

Michael turned 7!!This kid is a blast to have around. He loves all the sports, is apparently the fastest kid at his school, and is fantastic at making creations out of cardboard or anything else he can commandeer. He eats like a teenage boy and is never full. He gives the tightest, best hugs and never goes to bed without coming out of his room just before falling asleep to give me one more hug. He is a good friend to his siblings, and impressively independent. I couldn't possibly love him more.

For halloween this year, we had Jasmin, a triceratops, and two ninjas. I can barely even remember the days when I used to make costumes.

Their collaborative pretend play melts my heart.

Adaline's first school project of the year was all about Julius Caesar. This was her timeline, but she also made a sword, memorized a brief biography, wrote a paper about his life, and put together a costume to wear while presenting all she had learned.

Our second field trip of the school year was to the pumpkin patch!

Soccer wrapped up and the 'team manager' for Matthew's team organized a lovely team dinner and awards ceremony to end the season. Andrew talked about each of the boys and handed out their medals, and the team manager said some very nice things about Andrew and how nice it was to have him as a coach this year.

Thanks to the absolute chaos that was October, we had Michael's birthday cake quite a few days after his actually birthday. Thanks to the good sport that he is, he was very flexible and understanding with us and just happy to enjoy the cake when we finally had it. I thought Andrew did a fantastic job with yet another well-decorated cake.

carving pumpkins in the nick of time!

Her Julius Caesar presentation was on the same day as Halloween, so she was Julius for the first half of the school day, and Jasmine for the second half. I wasn't planning to dress up, but then got fomo (as always) and made this shirt the night before so that I could dress up as Taylor Swift.