A new place for the Clutter{s}

Sarah, this one's for you. 😍 After a blogging sabbatical of 5 years I've decided I should try to document the transformation of our new home. Two months ago we moved into an English Tudor built in 1928. It has a ton of character! Eventually we plan to paint every room and renovate the kitchen and bathrooms but this will take place over years. I'm not making any promises on keeping up with the blog regularly, but so far we have painted three bedrooms (actually my dad has painted them--thanks dad!) and we just started the kitchen renovation, so hopefully I'll at least get those posted. 

This first post is about Charlotte and Isabelle's room. Unfortunately the day we moved in was super crazy and I didn't get any "before" pictures of what the rooms looked like without our things in them. For some of the spaces I do have some pictures from when we looked at the house, so they have the previous owner's furniture, but it'll give you an idea of what the rooms looked like. 

Here is what Charlotte and Isabelle's room looked like when we looked at the house:

And here is a panoramic:

The pano makes the room look a little skewed and smaller than it actually is. Oh well ;)

A while back I had pinned a picture on Pinterest that I wanted to do in the girls' room at the old house but I never did it. So I decided to do it in their room at the new house. 

Here's the inspiration picture:

I went searching for just the right pink. Pink is really hard (let's be honest, I'm finding that most colors are hard when you have something really specific in mind)! Some were too dark, others had too much blue or too much orange. I wanted something a little salmon but not too peach. I ended up with Newborn Baby by Benjamin Moore. I think the name is deceiving because I think of a pale pink when I think of newborn baby and this isn't a pale pink. Okay, now for what you've been waiting for 😀

That pano gives you an idea of where things are placed in the room. 

The mirrors above the girls' beds were Cory's grandparents. I had vinyl decals made of the girls' initials to put on them. The circle vinyl decals are from Amazon. 

If you notice in the before pictures there was rust orange carpet throughout the upstairs when we moved in. We spent the first couple weeks camped out in the old maid's quarters above the garage while we had the hardwood floors refinished. I think they turned out beautiful!

My sister-in-law Mackenzie made the artwork of the girls' birth stats and the meaning of their names. Then I spray painted some frames gold and put them in. Isn't Kenzie talented?!?

Found this artwork at Michaels and thought it described Charlotte 😍

The other side of this wall is the Jack and Jill bathroom between the girls' room and Jacob's room. That panel on the left is the access to the shower. I think it's a little odd that it sticks out from the wall, and there's really no way to hide it, so I decided to decorate it and put a mirror at Charlotte's height. She loves it! The dressing table was in my dad's family and was given to me back in my single days. I painted it green back then and I think it works in their room. I'd love to paint it white and "dip" it with gold paint on the legs, but not sure that's going to happen any time soon. 

I'm really happy with how the room turned out! As for the other two rooms that have been painted, one is Jacob's and the other is our master. I have just a couple things to do in Jacob's before I post to the blog. And I need to hang artwork on the walls before I take pics of the master. Hopefully I'll get motivated to do those things soon. 😃

Thanks for reading! 😘

~Katherine

Macy Sue

The weekend before last we had our second home football game. It's always fun to tailgate with family and friends and then watch K-State win! This last weekend we had some family over to our house to watch K-State beat Miami. What a great game! Cory broke out his early birthday present, the King Kooker fryer, to make onion rings, popcorn shrimp, chicken wings, chicken fingers and fried catfish! Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the frying festivities, but here are some pics from the weekend before last.

 Cory and John wore their matching jackets

 John, Mackenzie, Katherine and Cory

We took Ezugo and Jacob to the game too

Cory's aunt visited this week and brought us a very fun gift for Charlotte from Cory's cousin Kirstin. She even personalized it for us! Thanks, Kirstin!!!

 A purple Bumbo

And customized for K-State!

Last Friday we picked up our new boxer puppy, Macy Sue! She loves to sleep and cuddle, but when she's not relaxing she is a ball of fire! We have to keep lots of chew toys around to keep her entertained! Here are some pictures of our first weekend with her.

 Playing in the yard with Macy Sue

 Cory with his two boxer girls

 Sadie's still not sure what to think about her new sister

Macy even helped me write this blog post :)

Cluttered Results

Well, it's been an interesting week in the Clutter household! As you know, we posted almost three weeks ago that we'd gotten a sonogram and that we were having a BOY. We spent the next two-and-a-half weeks getting cute boy outfits (which you can see in a previous post), picturing a "little Cory," and in general, bonding with "Jacob." So when we went to the doctor for our anatomy scan this last Tuesday, we asked if they would confirm that we were having a boy and maybe get a good picture of his boy parts. Well, the baby wasn't cooperating and the sonographer had a lot of measurements to take, so at the end of our appointment she couldn't confirm that we were having a boy. But what she did say is that if she were to guess based on what she'd seen, that we were actually having a girl! WHAT?! We were a little shocked, confused and frustrated.

We went home and got our previous sonogram picture and started comparing it to pictures we saw online. Unfortunately, based on what we gathered, our baby may not have been developed enough 3 weeks ago and had more of a gender-neutral look. (We're still not sure why we were told "boy" at that private sonogram, but there's nothing we can do now, and we still really enjoyed our appointment there and the chance to see our little one in action for an hour.) We called the private place we'd gone for that first sonogram and told them our doctor couldn't confirm that we were having a boy, so they said to come in Friday and they'd look again. Friday was going to be a long time away, especially when people are constantly asking us what we're having, referring to our "son," etc. Well thankfully we know an OBGYN and we took our sonogram pictures over to her Tuesday night and asked for her opinion. Unfortunately she couldn't tell us whether it was a boy or a girl, but she did take our pictures into her office on Wednesday. We got a phone call on Wednesday saying that the picture was pretty inconclusive (probably taken a little too early to determine the sex) but that they would lean towards thinking it was a girl. The sonographer at her office said we could come in that day and see if she could tell what we were having. So we went over lunch and got another sonogram and we were told that we are having a GIRL! The sonographer even printed out "standard" pictures of boys and girls so that we could compare ours and be more convinced as to what it was. Needless to say we were surprised! And also only about 98% convinced (not that we didn't trust the very good sonographer, but we'd been thinking "boy" for what seemed like more than two-and-a-half weeks and just couldn't make the switch that quickly). So we kept our Friday appointment at the private sonogram place and hoped that they would confirm that we were having a girl. Friday (today) finally came and we had our sonogram this evening. Sure enough, the sonographer said we are having a GIRL! (And of course she was extremely apologetic for being wrong the first time.) So, we're now switching gears and getting excited for our Charlotte Marie to arrive in about four months. Those cute boy clothes will have to be returned, but I'm sure they will soon be replaced with lots of pink girly things. :)

Katherine would like to add that even though Cory was excited about the possibility of having a boy, he has kept an even keel and is very excited to be having a girl!

Adding to the Clutter{s}

We know, we know. We've already posted about our expanding family in the way of a baby. But we're also adding a furry friend too. We've been talking for quite a while about getting a puppy, and finally decided that now was the time. We're hoping she's house-trained by the time the baby comes, and we're hoping she's more of a guard dog than Sadie (our nine-year-old boxer). We met her for the first time the other night and plan to bring her home in a couple weeks when she's weaned and when we've had time to figure out our fence situation. But we thought we'd share some pictures of our little baby boxer (we're still working on a name, so we'll post an update once she comes home and we've picked a name :).

 Isn't she cute with her daddy?

 She fell asleep in my arms

 She's a curious little pup!

 Here's a picture of us with Sadie and our cat Moses--they have no idea what they're in for with a little puppy about to enter their lives!

Half-baked

Today marks our halfway point! It's crazy to think that in just a few short months Jacob will be here and we'll have a baby in our house. We have a ways to go before our house is ready for him! But right now he's just a tiny little guy weighing in at about 10 oz and just 6 or 7 inches. As I type this I can feel some of his tiny kicks though! I thought I'd post some pictures of the cute little outfits we got him while shopping on Sunday. I also ordered him some K-State shoes that Payless is selling right now on-line (they have them for a lot of the college teams and come in infant sizes 1-4) for next football/basketball season. I'm also going to post some progress pictures on the nursery. It doesn't look good right now, but we've scraped off a layer of paint/wallpaper border and then two more layers of wallpaper to get down to the plaster walls. Next up: spackling all the cracks and then painting! We're hoping to be done by the end of Labor Day weekend, but you never know with projects in an old house.

 We'll love snuggling with Jacob in this in the middle of winter - thanks Nana Clutter!

 Cory has pants like this and is excited to dress alike!

 We're hoping Jacob loves the water since his grandparents have a pool

 Moses (our wild cat :) ) was curious about all these clothes; we hope he's not too jealous in a few months!

 As you can tell, Jacob is already a HUGE K-State fan!

 This is the only "before" picture of the nursery, but you can see the two colors of paint and the two borders

 And here's a wall after the paint, wallpaper border and two layers of wallpaper have been stripped

 Hopefully these walls will be a nice greeny-blue by the end of next weekend!

Our first post--Growing Clutters

In an attempt to keep these kind of pictures off facebook, but knowing that some family and friends would want to see some pics of the growing bump, our first attempt at a post will be to upload some pictures. Also, as you probably know by now, we found out yesterday that we're having a BOY! It was so fun to watch him moving around! We went out today and got him some cute outfits for next year, including a K-State sweatsuit. :) This little boy is not going to want for K-State clothes!

 12 weeks

 14 weeks

 16 weeks

 17 weeks

 18 weeks

19 weeks - Jacob Clutter

and just for fun...17 weeks (sucking in)