We did it! Here's our virtual tour.

Our house officially goes on the market this weekend. We've owned this home for four years and have put a lot of work in maintaining and updating it, so it's well-cared for! We've replaced all of the flooring in the whole house, replaced all of the bathroom sinks & vanities, replaced all the lighting, freshly painted all the walls, and replaced a number of appliances (furnace, refrigerator, and washer & dryer).

It's in a beautiful location, right on the Bear Creek Open Space with easy access to the Bear Creek Trail (just walk down the block, and you're there!). We have great neighbors, and our HOA takes good care of maintenance and updates, too (our exterior is actually being repainted this week!). They handle all the yard work, including watering, mowing, and shoveling. Whew!

Lakewood is just west of Denver. This home is in Jefferson County, which is nicknamed the "Gateway to the Rocky Mountains." We're a short drive (or bike ride!) away from Bear Creek Lake State Park. We're just a 15 minute drive from Red Rocks Amphitheater & Park and Mount Falcon State Park, and we're less than half an hour's drive from Lookout Mountain Park and Lair 'O the Bear State Park! This house is perfect for a nature lover and someone who wants quick access to the state's beautiful parks and mountains.

You can check out the virtual tour of the house here:

http://tours.tourfactory.com/tours/tour.asp?t=1005184

If you're in the market, then please stop by the open house this Saturday & Sunday afternoon. You'll find more details in the virtual tour I linked above.

Thanks for checking it out!

Home Improvement: Living Room

Here is our finished living room.

Almost everything in this room has been replaced since we moved in nearly four years ago. The front door was really old and rotten, and parts were held together with packing tape! We replaced it a couple of years ago, a generous gift from Andrew's parents. I painted the room a natural green color called "Witch Hazel." We pulled out all of the old, icky carpeting from this room, and Andrew and my parents replaced it with laminate wood flooring. The floor was a housewarming gift from my parents, so we really lucked out in some of these expenses. My mom helped me install new baseboards to replace the old, fake-wood ones. We hung new curtains, and I bought a new floor lamp from IKEA.

Here's a before and after photo that shows the old room color, old door, and old carpet.

Planter Gardening

Our HOA replaced our front lawn with a xeriscape. Because the climate is so dry in Colorado, it's impossible to maintain a lush lawn without daily watering. Many people have replaced their front lawns with xeriscaping, which is basically done with decorative patterns of rocks and drought-resistant shrubs and plants. Xeriscaping always looks very naked when it's first placed, but, when it grows in, it can be quite beautiful. It takes time to get used to it, but people are starting to appreciate it more because it's so much better for our state and our scarce water resources. You can see some examples of xeriscapes here.

Well, ours is so new that the plants haven't fully grown in yet, and it looks bare. I added a few planters of flowers and borrowed a bench from my mother-in-law to help fill the space. I filled my oak barrel planter with petunias and snapdragons, and then I bought an already-filled planter from the Home Depot to fill the corner by our stoop. It makes a big difference, and hopefully it will be more appealing to potential buyers! This is their first impression of our home, after all.

Here's my little garden helper:

Home Improvement: Stairwell

Andrew's an outdoorsy kind of person, and we like having a little "nature" in the house. You can't really see the detail very well, but the glass in our new light has a light leaf design in it.

We also chose this wall sconce from Lowe's with the leaf design.

Here's the finished stairwell! All of the changes we did included replacing the outlets and outlet covers from brass to white, painting the walls, putting on new handrails, putting in new flooring (including the carpet), adding new trim, scraping off the popcorn ceilings, and updating the light fixtures.

Mother's Day 2013: Lookout Mountain

For Mother's Day, I requested breakfast in bed. Our little chef, Oliver, helped Dad mix pancake batter, and they whipped up some pancakes, scrambled eggs, and veggie "sausage" patties. The kids decided to climb into bed to eat with me, and Oliver declared it was a picnic. This was the best way to wake up!

This photo is pretty much my favorite photo ever. I just woke up, had hair everywhere, and couldn't keep my eyes open. Oliver decided to help Jo eat by feeding her pancakes. <3>

After breakfast, I asked to go hiking. I looked up some family-friendly trails nearby, and we decided to head to Lookout Mountain. There are numerous bike paths and trails throughout the area, but they have a pretty flat, 0.6 mile hiking trail from the Nature Center. On the drive up, we saw dozens of cyclists and joggers. At the Nature Center, the crowd changed, and we saw lots of families with small children.

Andrew put Jo in the hiking backpack. It's the first time we've used it since last summer, and she didn't remember it. She freaked out and started to scream at first. Once Andrew started walking, she calmed down and really enjoyed the ride. Here she is with her lovie, Tod the fox. Her Uncle Andy & Aunt Erin sent it to her for her birthday, and it is a very loved little animal.

As soon as we stepped out onto the trail, we spotted deer!

DEER POOP!

 

After the hike, we went into the Lookout Mountain Nature Center. Oliver loved exploring the poop molds they had. He got to compare elk scat with deer scat, which was very interesting to him.

Jo's favorite part was the animal pelts.

The kiddos fell asleep on the drive home. I was sleepy from the hike, too, so we made a stop at Starbucks. I bet they were busy today! When Jo woke up to a chocolate milk and cake pop, she was so excited that she squealed, "Yay!"

Once again, I had a very happy Mother's Day! Thanks for all of your hard work, Andrew! I feel incredibly lucky, and I look forward to seeing my mom this afternoon and Andrew's mom this evening. Happy Mother's Day!

New Carpet!

We finally, finally got new carpet yesterday! When we moved into our house, there was a powder blue carpet that wound from the entry way, through the living room, up the stairs, and into both bedrooms. It was a outdated, but that wasn't the big problem. It had a faint smell of dog pee (better than cat pee!). It also had numerous stains and large bleach stains in places.

We removed it entirely from the downstairs when we put in our laminate wood floors. Of course, it had to be replaced everywhere else, but we kept putting it off. What's the point in getting new carpet when we were about to have a baby? Babies spit up and poop everywhere! So we waited. And waited.

I cleaned the carpet a number of times with a carpet cleaner. It helped with the smell, but, on rainy days, you could get a whiff in the air. It was so unsightly that we almost never had anyone go upstairs.

Now that we're planning on putting our home on the market, we couldn't put it off any more. Carpet was more expensive than we'd thought, but it had to be done. We went with the second estimate (Carpet Exchange). They did a really good job with the install, and I love the new carpet. I only wish we'd done it a little sooner so we could have lived in the house long enough to get some use out of it!

Here's a photo of our room looking very spiffy with the new carpeting. There's something else new in our bedroom, too. My friends Aminta and Olivia went with me to Whimsy Paint & Sip yesterday with some vouchers from Living Social. We had a blast, and I got a new piece of artwork for the house!

My painting:

Rainy Day Painting!

I discovered this fun idea from Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957068769139/. 
It comes from the Little Page Turners blog.

I've been waiting for a rainy day to give the project a chance because it looks promising. Today, once the hail stopped, I jumped on the chance to get outside to "paint." It was going to be a toddler activity until the last minute when I realized Jo is too little to do drops of food coloring.

Oliver was very excited to do the drops. I have all of our craft supplies packed up, so I improvised and used sandpaper instead of card stock. Oliver made a few drops of yellow and blue on the sandpaper.

He was a little reluctant to go outside, so he held his out to catch the rain drops. It wasn't really getting wet, so I coaxed him outside to lay it down on the porch (It's cluttered out there because we're cleaning out the storage shed! The worst of the mess isn't even in the photo...).

A few drops hit the paper, and then the rain stopped.

It was too slow of a transformation to keep Oliver interested. He definitely wanted to do more drops, though. He went outside and added a little red. We didn't get any more rain, but the colors slowly leaked from the paper getting a little damp.

I guess we had the opposite problem from Little Page Turners. She said their paintings only took 1-2 seconds to run together. She wished it had been longer! Here in the dry West, I guess it takes more like 20 minutes. Ha!

It didn't end up being the fun activity I'd hoped for, but I want to try it again one day. We usually get a week of good rain at the end of July, so we'll attempt this activity again then!

Almost Funfetti Cake Pops

Oliver was nice to all the kids at the park a few days ago, so Dad took him to the store and bought him cake pop kit! These poor kids have had it rough the last couple weeks. There have been many long hours of us working while the kids are left to play in their room. I feel awful about it, but the work is almost done (now we just need to get carpet installed...).

This morning, I told Oliver it was time to make them. He got so excited!

Oliver got to do the mixing. There's not that much cake, so it only bakes about 12 minutes. As it baked, Jo checked out the batter in the bowl. She even got a little taste and let me know it was pretty good stuff.

After it came out of the oven, we let it cool. Oliver then broke up all the cake with his fingers.

He mixed it with the frosting, and then I formed it into tight balls. We dipped the cake pop sticks in the melted chocolate and stuck them into the cake balls. Most of the cake balls held up for this part. Two broke a bit, and I had to use my hands to really mash them together over the stick.

After the cake pops cooled for a full half hour, we pulled them out of the fridge. I told Oliver that I'd dip them in the melted white chocolate, and he could put the sprinkles on. The cake pops did not hold up to dipping. Not even a little bit. After the second one bit the dust, I just spooned the melted white chocolate on. That ended up using too much white chocolate, and we started to run out near the end. I only lightly topped the last few with chocolate to stretch it out.

Of the 12 cake pops we made, four broke off. I used white chocolate to sort of mash them back together. They look like turds.

I poked holes into the box to hold up our pops. Pillsbury should totally do this as part of their kit.

It was still fun. I would definitely make these again with Oliver. He loved it!

The down-side to these were 1) they make a huge mess, 2) they take a long time, and 3) are very unpredictable. I would never make them for a birthday party or gathering just because there would be so much waste to get a few good quality ones. When we make them again, I might try freezing the cake pops solid before dipping.