Turn Off!

I'm thinking the phase we are going through with Katie right now is pretty typical for kids' her age.  At least, I hope it is.  Everything is going along fine, but the time comes when the fun is done and Katie needs to get ready for bed or out of the bath or some other undesirable task.  Last night, such an occasion arose.  Katie was taking a bath, but had been in there for about 30 minutes and it was time to get out.  So I started with my regular cajoles.  "Katie, let's go brush your teeth.  Katie, let's read a story.  Katie let's get your frog jammies."  And so on and so forth with no luck.  So then I went with my new tactic for getting her to pay attention to me.  I said, "Katie, you need to turn on your listening ears" and I pulled on my earlobes.  That got a glance, so I repeated myself.  Another glance, although this was more of a glare.  The third time I said it, she looked up at me and pulled her own earlobes and said "Turn off!"  Ooohhh, that made me mad!  So I said it again, and again she replied with, NO!  Turn off!"  So much for that technique.  It clearly has backfired on me.  In the end, I had to pick her up out of the empty tub all while she yelled at me about how she didn't want to take a bath.  Sigh...

post bath

Long Time, No Post!

Fall is here, the weather is gorgeous.  This is my favorite time of year.  Warm sunny days and cool nights-last night was kind of chilly though!  That's okay, I'm happy to get out my sweaters and jackets.  I put Katie in the cutest Halloween sweater this morning.  She got tons of compliments on it at the grocery store.

We've been pretty busy lately.  Doug's almost halfway through this semester.  It's just about crunch time for him, he's got papers due and midterms next week.  Fun.  Katie & I have been hanging out and doing our thing during this time.  We're having a great time making our "crafs" as Katie likes to call them.  Last night she and I headed over to LaLa's and made cheesecloth ghosts.  Well, she played with her play-doh and watched Clifford's Halloween while we made them.  Katie really loves Halloween this year!  It all started with this book she picked as her prize for the Summer Reading Program at the library.  It's kind of a scary book, so we mostly just talk about the pictures as we read it, but she loves it!  Everything Halloween she sees is "spooky Halloween."  Then we checked out It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown from the library.  I finally got to return it last week.  I was afraid I was going to have to sneak it out of the house, she loved it so much!  She loves all the decorations and she's having so much fun.  She's going to be a witch for Halloween and she's having the best time playing with that costume already.  So far, I only let her play with the hat, but she thinks that is pretty cool. 

 

She came up with that broom thing all on her own!

We've been working on getting us ready for when Doug's unemployment benefits run out next month.  We're still planning on him attending school full time until he's finished with his degree, but come January, he'll be getting a part-time job.  Anyone hiring?  We've pretty much cut out as many extras as we can.  Our last two little luxuries are internet (which Doug uses for school) and Netflix.  My focus has been whittling down our grocery bill.  I'm no extreme couponer, but I have started using coupons more often and I've been ad matching.  Two things that seemed like a pain the first few times I did them, but now if I don't do it, it feels weird!  Honestly, there's no reason, even if we had plenty of money to not try and save what you can here and there, right?  Today was not a good coupon day and a fair day for ad matching, but I saved about $14.50 overall and I think just looking everything over, we may only need milk and few fillers for next week. :)  It's these little things that hopefully keep adding up to getting us through these next 18 months or so with our sanity still in tact.

Insomnia

Inspired by a post I saw earlier and the fact that I was just not tired enough to go to bed (although I am now!), I started "editing" some pictures. I'm by no means a professional, just having a good time. I thought this turned out particularly cute though and wanted to share. Enjoy!

Together

The other day as I was blog hopping, I came upon this quote:  "We may not have it all together, but together we have it all."  Pretty cliche, right?  Yeah, that was my first thought too, but it stuck in my head.  And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how true it was.  We have a beautiful daughter who is the light of our lives, a warm home that is getting lovelier by the day and a supportive extended family & friends network.  That's quite alot in my book!  We definitely have it "all."  Remind me of this over the next couple of years, will you?  

As most of our readers know, we've had some tough stuff to deal with since the early days of our marriage and it definitely took it's toll.  These last few months Doug and I have really worked on some things and we are in a much better place these days.  That doesn't mean that things are going to get any easier anytime soon.  Quite the contrary.  In a couple of months, Doug's unemployment will run out.  We've been so blessed to have it all this time, but we knew it wouldn't last forever.  We still want to Doug to complete his degree though.  So our belts will get a little tighter, we'll eat more dinners at home, and a thousand other little changes to keep us afloat during these next couple years.  Doug will also have to get a part-time job during this time.  It's going to be hard, we know this, but we have a plan in place and hopefully it will be a successful one.  That's kind of why we've been scrambling to get projects done lately.  Like Doug said, if we have to sit at home the next couple of years, we need to have some nice things to look at.

Speaking of Doug, he just got up and started talking to me and now I can't remember what I was going to say anymore...

Bathroom: After

Our bathroom is DONE!  And 2 days ahead of schedule.  :)  Doug did an awesome job, this was a huge undertaking.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to help more.  My jobs consisted of painting, clean up, food, & Katie wrangling.  Doug did everything else!  So without further ado: 

AFTER

Wallpaper was removed and the walls were painted a rather bright off-white.  Mirror previously hung in our living room, then in our bedroom and finally has found a home in the bathroom.

New flooring!  I'm so excited to walk in there and not look down and see yucky green.

This little cabinet was formerly orange with silver hardware.  Doug painted the cabinet with our wall color and spray painted the hardware.  Looks so much better!

This light fixture came out of my parents' house.  It had been sitting in the basement for a year or more, and I didn't even really know what it looked like.  What a happy surprise to find that it matched all our new stuff. 

A look into the bathroom-no I did not match the potty seat to the rug or vice versa!  Also, Doug (with a little help from my dad) pulled out the ugly door frame and put in this new lovely drywall.  SO MUCH BETTER!!

Our new pedestal sink with our newly placed hand towel holder (it used to be on the opposite wall by the bathtub) and our freshly painted medicine cabinet.

New toilet

Doug ended up reframing this window and painting it.  He also took out the screen on the other side, so now it doesn't open, but it is so tiny that that really isn't a concern.  It does make it alot brighter in there now.

Our repainted exhaust fan/light.  This really just took some cleaning up and some spray paint.

Remember that ugly light fixture from my last post?  Doug cleaned it up, repainted it and put on new globes.  I love it!  It's one of my favorite things about our bathroom now.

We decided we just did not have the wall space for a towel bar, so instead we hung up a hook to hang our towels on while in the shower.  It works great for us!

New shower curtain & rug (a better woman than me would have ironed this before hanging it up, but the wrinkles will steam out after a couple of showers, right?) Also, it is not really this yellow in here.  Just bad light.  I'll try to post a better one another time.

So there you go!  Please excuse my terrible photography, it was late and we were all tired.  I want to say thank you again to my wonderful husband for all his hard work and effort.  Katie & I are so proud of you and we appreciate everything you do for us!

Bathroom Makeover

 Things have been a little crazy at the Snider house the last couple of weeks.  Doug finished his summer classes, the truck broke down, Katie turned 2 and we started our bathroom renovations.  Like I said, it's been crazy. 

The bathroom has by far been the biggest undertaking of projects we've done in the house.  It's getting a head to toe makeover.  Last summer we replaced the tub and then that made the rest of the bathroom look pretty rundown.  So Doug decided to do the rest of it this summer while he's on break.  And well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Here's the lovely hallway that is part of the bathroom.  In an order to make it functional, previous owners put in a medicine cabinet & vanity light.  That didn't do much for us, so Doug took those out and patched the wall. 

Another shot of the wall.  The wallpaper has been removed and replaced with off-white paint.  It's so much brighter!  Although, the walls are in pretty terrible shape and we now understand why the wallpaper was up in the first place.  Oh well, we can live with it for awhile.

Our original toilet before Doug found out there was a leak under it and a view of the ugly green floor.

Original hunter green sink that matched the hunter green floor (we are slowly getting the green out of this house!) before Doug pulled it out and left us sink-less for going on 2 weeks.  Don't worry, I knew it was coming!  Thank goodness the kitchen is close!

After the sink was pulled out...see, even the old wallpaper was green!

Not so pretty light fixture, that has been repurposed.  You won't believe how awesome it looks now!

New toilet and a sneak peek of the tile.  

 Obviously these are mostly the before pictures.  I've been taking pictures as we go along and it's going to be awesome when we're done.  A few things we can't change, but we'll live with it.  Like I told Doug, anything is better than what it was before.  It already looks so much cleaner and brighter!

New Look

Like our new look?  We have a new title too!  Three Sniders was okay, but it really didn't mean anything.  I've been thinking for awhile we needed a new look, but nothing was coming to me.  Then the other day after a midday meltdown, I made the comment to Doug that it was about 2 minutes past naptime and it was like a lightbulb went on!  Right then I knew that was the new title for our blog, because lets face it, there are lots of 2 minutes past naptime moments around here these days.  And they aren't all Katie's...

Hope you enjoy our new look!