Projects

We've got lots of projects going on in the Kinley house! Some of these projects are to get ready for Joel, and others are to finish before Joel gets here. We have a feeling he'll occupy most of our free time.

One of the projects, now completed, is a brick patio in the back. We received a fire pit for my birthday, and needed a surface for it, other than our wood deck. After lots of digging, hauling sand bags (during which Travis injured his back), and placing bricks, it's done! We just enjoyed our first bonfire and yummy s'mores. (Which, if I'm honest, is the main reason I wanted a fire pit in the first place. My family knows me too well: When my brother-in-law heard that we were getting a fire pit, he told Travis not to let me make s'mores. He asked how they would get me to go camping without the bribe of s'mores!)

Another project is Joel's room. When we bought our house, this room was nursery ready. It had pale yellow walls with a Winnie the Pooh border and matching curtains. We're not huge fans of Winnie the Pooh so that came down. We also had to spackle the hundreds of tiny holes in the walls (what did the previous child do in that room anyway!), sand those spots, paint all the trim, the closet, paneling on the lower half of the walls, and upper half of the walls.

We're now done with all of that, but unsure of the paint color choice. It's quite a bit brighter than we anticipated. However, Travis says if I don't like it I have to do the repainting. I'm not sure if he's serious or not, but I don't really want to find out!

I could not find a bedding set for Joel that we both loved. There were a lot that were cute, but none that were just perfect, which is what I was looking for. (Not that I am a perfectionist or anything.) I finally found a quilt at Pottery Barn kids, and then discovered it was no longer available. So, I decided to make a rag quilt and matching curtains and crib bumper. It's a fun project that will hopefully turn out well! I love all the fabrics:

The final project is...new carpeting upstairs! My parents thought new carpet would be nice for Joel as he crawls around, so they generously offered to carpet most of our upstairs. We were worried about the VOCs (volatile organic compounds), so we chose a carpet and padding with low VOCs. We just found out that the carpet is on back order and should come in about two weeks. Then we can set up Joel's room with his new furniture.

It's so fun getting ready for Joel! And it takes our minds off the fact that our immigration paperwork is not here yet! It's been about three weeks, and they estimated two to four. So we definitely don't have anything to complain about. We just have little patience when it comes to our son living 6,000 miles away from us! Hopefully one of these days when we run to the mailbox and sort quickly through the pile of junk mail and bills we will find our approval!