Our "New, Old" House

The scary before pictures...

 This is the living room, with nasty mauve carpet, a crooked ceiling fan, falling down blinds (that some moron installed about 3 inches below where they should have been), and a lovely broken window.



This is the front corner of the living room, where our bedroom door is.  The front door is the original door from the house, but was obscured by the nasty pink fabric :)

This is the back side of our bedroom, and the bathroom door.  You can't tell really well from the picure, but the wallpaper is seafoam green and peach.  Even for the early 90's when it was remodeled this was a BAD color combo.  Also, the ceiling was green, along with the entire bathroom!

You can see the green pretty clearly in this picture - our closet is behind the double doors, it has a built in chest and shoe shelves, which I'm pretty excited about :)  A big jetted tub, seperate shower, and a little room off the the right where the toilet is.

This is the front wall of our room.  I loved the original doors that were left in the house, but there were only 3 of them, and the back of this one was painted, along with all the original trim, but it was too hard to strip and restore.



Also, I love the windows surrounding the tub!  Within the next several months they'll all be replaced for energy efficient windows, but they'll be made to look the same with the 3 wooden bars across the top.

Breakfast nook - The door to the right that's open leads into what will be the mudroom in about two more weeks and the door straight ahead goes into Jack's room.  It will be our office once he isn't waking up with his teeth in the night any more.

We absolutely hated the rooster border, and green cabinets, but our countertops are wood from the original house, and they're really pretty.  We're replacing the sink and faucet though, they were pretty disgusting!

More kitchen.....

This is looking down into the room that will be the mudroom - and eventually the laundry room - the little piece of door you see in the far left is the smokehouse (where they smoked meat) from the original property that's over 100 years old.  The couple we bought the house from built this room to connect the main house with the smokehouse.  It's getting two new doors, and new flooring once my Dad has the time to do it. 

This is the inside of the smokehouse, the door leads into the future mudroom, and the other door past the mudroom leads into the kitchen.  The door to the right goes onto the back deck. We're really not sure why someone decided to paint half the trim hot pink, but it's pretty ugly.

This got misplaced...it's the ceiling of the living room.  I love, love, love the beams and they're in the dining room too.  All the dark trim is original from 1913 and it's the biggest part of why I loved this house so much.

This is one side of the dining room, right above the border is a plate rail that runs around the entire room.

And this is looking into the formal dining from the living room.  The floors aren't old, probably only about 20 years, and we're going to recover them with the dark distressed looking flooring, maybe next year.  Tim says I have to pace myself!

 These stairs are to the left of the breakfast nook, and were covered in what has to be the dirtiest carpet, pretty much ever.

 This is Riley's room, he loves it!  The door to the left has a Jack and Jill bath that connects to the other room that's upstairs.  I love all the storage in the closets!

 Sorry this one is so dark...this is looking into his room from the head of the stairs.

 And this will eventually be Jack's room, but for now it's the office.  That lovely border you see was covered in baseball stuff, with striped wallpaper behind it.

And that is the closet :) To the right is the door that goes into the bath from this room.  I love that both their rooms have two big windows, Jacks looks into the backyard, which is pretty big, and Rileys looks onto the driveway, but there are two huge crepe myrtle trees, so he has a pretty view.

I forgot to upload the pics of the office downstairs, which is Jack's room for now, but it has a closet in it where they washer/dryer go for now, and a half bath.  The closet had rickety bifold doors on it, that were pretty much falling apart, and the bath was more recently redone, with a little cabinet and almost brand new toilet.  Once the flooring is in the the half bath, and Rileys bath upstairs (next week!) I'll post the pics of how it looks now.  Which is much better than it looks in these pictures!  I know some of our friends here that looked inside it thought we were nuts :)

Just Jack (and one of my neglected first child)

 I love my teeth, I eat yummy stuff with them :)

                                                                         Boxes are fun...

                                                                 ...and baskets are too!

 

                                              Especially when they're on top of someone else!

                                              I slobber.  A lot.  My Mommy gets tired of it.



Ms. Morris...

Is Riley's new teacher - and she's fabulous!  She's a first year teacher, she student taught at Commerce Elementary, and she's a May 2010 graduate of A&M-Commerce (magna cum laude, no less).  She is very energetic, and she said herself that she doesn't like being bored and still, and she knows the kids don't either!  I'm going to LOVE her, I can already tell!  She just found out Friday that she got the job, and her classroom already looked wonderful.  Her mom was a teacher, so she pitched in to help get her room ready.  I signed up to be a room parent...we'll see how that goes :)  I'm just so thrilled that he's got a young, friendly, kid-loving teacher.  It's going to be a much better year than last year!

~H~O~M~E~ SWEET ~H~O~M~E~

We are heading HOME!  After two years in preaching school, and one year working in Jefferson, Tim has been hired as the new youth and family minister at the Commerce Church of Christ in Commerce, Texas.  This is the church we attended when we were dating, the church we were married at, and the church where my parents and brother go too!  It's been quite a few years since they've had a youth minister, so it's not only very exciting for us, but also for the church in Commerce.  A lot of changes are happening there in the next couple of month, their pulpit minister of 30 years is retiring, and their campus minister (he directs the Lions for Christ program with A&M Commerce) is taking over.  They have hired a new campus minister, and Tim, so it's going to a lot of fun being there as all these changes are taking place!  Their new campus minister has a boy that is one year older than Riley, a 4 year old boy, and a newborn baby girl, and there are a LOT of other kids there for Riley and Jack to play with.  Almost more exciting than the new job is the fact that we've bought a house!!!!  And even better than that, is that it's 2 minutes walking distance from my parents :)  Riley is beyond excited, his whole face lit up when we told him we were moving right by Mamaw and Papaw.  I'm going tomorrow to start cleaning (it hasn't been lived in for a few months, the man who owns it didn't put it on the market because he liked us :) and then my Mom and I are going to paint all the walls, then we're having new flooring put in at the end of next week so we can move in on the 16th!!!!  I'll take some before and after pictures and post them once we get in and start working, it's going to be so fun, we're all looking forward to being back home with our family and finally owning our own house :)

Jack's first hair cut....

There is a wonderful lady at our church named Jennifer, she is a hair stylist, and she's fantastic!  She cuts mine and Tim's hair, and has even trimmed my bangs in my very own living room before.  I asked her Sunday morning if she would give Jack his first hair cut, thinking it would be easier since he knows her, then she called that afternoon as said, "hey, what if we do it at your house, with him in his high chair?".  Well, that sounded great to me!  She said lots of babies freak out in a beauty shop from all the strangers and the weird booster seat and we got to avoid all of that.  We strapped him into his high chair and she gave him his first big boy hair cut right on our kitchen floor.  And, he looks adorable, if I do say so myself :)

Here he is getting all strapped in...

...and probably wondering why since he had already eaten dinner :)

He was VERY interested in the scissors and comb!

He was such a good boy, he didn't wiggle too much...

...but he did make some really weird faces.

I love this funny face!

I could tell he was trying to devise a way to get a hold of that comb

And here is the finished product...a very, very sweet big boy hair cut!

Jackson turns ONE!!!

Where in the world has the last year gone?!?!  My sweet, sweet baby boy turned one on Sunday and we all had so much fun.  We had church Sunday morning (where he fell and got a terrible red spot on his forehead - I swear, I've never seen a kids first birthday pics where they didn't have a booboo of some sort!), then lunch with a table full of friends at Los Mochis (the best mexican food EVER), and after that we went back to my parents house and had Jacks very first birthday party!  Lots of family came, my parents, brother and Memaw, of course, and also my Auntie, cousins Andi, Aaron and Robin, their girls Ava and Hannah, two of the sweetest girls from my parents church, Brandi and Tiffany, and then me, Tim and Jack :)  We celebrated with a "1" shaped birthday cake - yellow and dark chocolate layers, yum!, lemonade punch, and lots and lots of presents!  He especially loved Ava, who will turn 7 in December, she was a great helper and was a lot of fun.  After his party we went to Tims parents and he opened his presents from them, Uncle Matt and Aunt Lauren, and Meme, Tims grandma.  And I got to hold my sweet new niece Ally, and was quite happy about that!  Here are some of the pictures I took from that day, it seems like I have hundreds, so it's hard to choose!

The spread....

...the cake...

...the stinkin' adorable lion plates and monkey napkins....

...and the birthday banner I made for our sweet boy!

He loves this snuggly puppy from his Memaw, and he dived right into the bags to help Daddy out!

Riley was the BEST helper all day long!

He had a great time playing with all the boxes his toys came in :)

And he discovered that he loves to slide!

He really enjoyed his birthday cake too :)

And cake isn't the only thing that's good for chewing on!

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR SWEET JACKSON LEE CAMPBELL!

So, my Mom's been nagging me to post something.....

This has definitely been a laid back summer at the Campbell house!  But I have gotten to have lunch with a couple of my very most favorite girlfriends, spend a week at my parents, go to my sister in law's baby shower, hold my brand new baby niece, and spend lots of great time at home with Tim and the boys!  And in the space that Tim was back in Jefferson without us, Jack stopped crawling and started standing up without the assistance of anything else.  In the space of 3 days he was a full blown walker!  He started taking a few steps here and there at 10 months, then by 10 1/2 months he was taking several steps, and letting go of what he pulled up on to turn and walk, but then, he just decided one day "hmmm, this walking thing is easy...and WAY faster than crawling" and he's never looked back :)
Here are a few pictures from our first few weeks of summer!

Our sweet, sweet niece Allyson Renee Campbell, born June 25th, at 4:21 pm.  We got to see her about 7:30 that night and we both loved holding her, and can't wait to see her again!

One of the shots of the diaper cake I made for Lauren's (my SIL) shower - I loved getting to FINALLY do something pink after all the blue and brown!

Jack, after he crawled inside Rileys "toy cabinet" - he was SO pleased with himself :)

Riley being all cool with his drumsticks - I love how you can see them "moving" - another reason I love my new camera is things like this don't get blurred!

Sometimes playing is so hard, you just have to lay your head down for a little while......

Givin' me the stink eye for one thing or another :)