House Tour - upstairs hallway and kids bathroom

Before

During. I love the yellow we picked for the walls. It is such a bright and cheery color and makes me happy!

After

Kids bathroom before

During - we put some tile that looks like hardwood on top of the existing ugly blue tile, but decided to leave the wall tile. 

After! We bought a console table from IKEA for the vanity. Joel had to cut it to make it fit between the wall and the shower, but I love how it turned out! I also bought some decals from an etsy shop to put over the blue border tile.

House Tour - entryway and main floor bathroom

The main floor bathroom already had tile (which I really don't care for, but for now it's okay). It just needed a LOT of cleaning and a sink and toilet put in.

Bathroom before

Bathroom after

Entryway before

Entryway after - I would like to eventually come up with a better system for all the stuff that needs stored here, there are just so many jackets, gloves, hats, etc that need to fit in such a small space and they mostly end up falling on the floor.

House Tour - kitchen

The KITCHEN! 

The kitchen was completely empty when we bought the house, except for the tile on the floor.

Before!

In progress. Yay for my blue wall!

We picked out two toned cabinets from IKEA. White upper cabinets and gray lower cabinets.

And butcher block for the counter tops. Except for the breakfast bar, we chose a white marble for that.

White subway tile for the backsplash, which Joel did himself. It was a lot of work since we did it the whole way to the ceiling on two walls. I also saw industrial pipe shelving on Fixer Upper and loved it, so I asked Joel if he could make me some for above the sink. I love how it turned out!

Our finished kitchen. We really love having the breakfast bar. We use it all the time and it is especially nice when we host guests, we very quickly run out of room at the table and it's great to have the extra space to sit here.

House Tour - living room and dining room

We have been living in our house since mid-August and I am finally getting around to posting some pictures of it. We bought the house unfinished on July 1st and did a ton of work in a month and a half to make it liveable. And slowly over the last few months we have tackled various other projects to make the house our home. And I love it!

In the beginning we weren't sure that we wanted to buy an unfinished house because we didn't know just how much work would be involved or how the fixing up process would go in Turkey. But in the end, I'm so thankful that we did. It was like a blank canvas and we could make it how we wanted it. Yes, it was hard, but we learned a lot, especially about Turkish culture :) 

And we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears (yes actual tears, a worker had a heart attack and died on our roof. True story, but for another day, perhaps) into this house and it truly was a labor of love. We all worked together (okay, really Joel did most of the work, there seriously is no project he can't do) and the kids were even a huge help, especially Yohanis and Colson. I love that they can appreciate and be proud of the hard work they did and so many fun family memories were created.

So without further ado, we will start off this house tour with some before and after pictures of our living room and dining room.

Living room before

Living room after

I love our rug. And we got it for free! A realtor friend told us about a family who had moved out of their house and left a bunch of stuff they didn't want, and that we could come and get what we wanted. So we were able to score this beautiful rug along with some other furniture.

Joel made this log holder and I love it. It looks so pretty and it holds so much wood for our wood burning stove. I love pretty and functional.

Joel made me the honeycomb shelves for Christmas.

One of the best places to sit when the fire is going. Love this spot!

The work for this room included cleaning (the house was so dirty after sitting unfinished for so long), painting (we hired some workers to paint the whole house), putting in laminate flooring (also hired out for the whole house) and putting up the travertine wall behind the wood burning stove (Joel did that).

Dining room before

Dining room after.

Dining room before

Dining room after.

More honeycomb shelves made by Joel. He also made this cute bench from the headboard and footboard of Yohanis and Colson's old beds. The baskets underneath have all the kids paper and art supplies, so they can easily pull out a basket and start creating at the table. My kids are always making pictures! I also keep a basket full of diapers and wipes here for Brooks :)

We turned the big bay window into a window seat and now it's another favorite spot in the house. The corner bookshelf we rescued from the dumpster a few years back. Joel painted it black, but I would love to paint it another fun color sometime.

Stay tuned for more of the house tour!

Christmas 2015

Living in a culture that doesn't celebrate Christmas can, in some ways, make me feel really lonely around the holidays. But instead of dwelling on all the ways the holidays feel different or strange overseas, I want to be thankful that it makes us slow down, keep things simple and focus on what Christmas is really about - celebrating the birth of our Savior!

 
 

Everyone excited for Brooks to open his present on Christmas Eve.

Isaiah's turn!

These boys LOVED snap circuits! Thanks, Mom-mom!

Some Christmas Eve caroling at our house. After everyone left, we let the kids stay up late and we watched Home Alone all snuggled up together on the couch in the basement.

Christmas morning. . .

Now he's ready to ride his bike!

She was pretty excited to have her very own umbrella

I made photobooks for the 3 oldest kids of all their artwork from the last year. I included a description of each of their pictures in their own words. They loved their books! I think I will make this a tradition, my kids color so many pictures and this way I don't have to feel bad about throwing them all out. I just take a picture of their artwork and upload it to a snapfish book.

I just love this picture from Christmas two years ago and now.

After we opened up some presents we headed next door to my sister's house for Christmas brunch all together. 

For Christmas dinner we decided we were done cooking, so we surprised the kids by ordering some Dominoes pizza and watching another movie together.

What are some of your favorite Christmas traditions? I would love to hear!