Bathroom update

Welp, we've finished another project: the downstairs 1/2 bath. I say, "we" but I really mean Vance. . . after all the bathroom is really "his" -- he is a plumber after all! If you don't remember, the original bathroom was a weird blue shade, with tiles ON THE WALL. Once we started taking tiles off, we noticed that the paint/paper on the wall started peeling off and we were horrified to see that it was actually some weird type of WALLPAPER that needed to be scraped off the entire bathroom from floor to ceiling... eek.

A hard day's work of scraping .. and scraping ... and scraping. I felt like I was going crazy.

Some of the beautiful tile designs that graced the wall:

Patching holes and installing new flooring:

I love this tile:

Are you ready for the new and improved bathroom??

Taaaaaa-daaaaaaa! I am so freaking thrilled and excited for this project to be finished. My hubby did an amazing job!


Mirror is a cheapy from Ross (woohoo)

From Target

Table is pretty much an antique-- it's my great-grandmother's and is distressed simply because it's so freaking old!

I adore that we have a chandelier in the bathroom... if it were up to me, every single room would have a chandelier in it! (We got this on sale a few years back from Walmart)

We've been busy...

it's so hard to believe that march is right around the corner (hello, 3 more days). we have been so entrenched fixing up the house (i say we, but i mean vance) that we haven't had a proper family weekend for, well, forever. this past week, albeit a short one, was a crazy one.

my parents left for vegas and left us with this punk:

who is super adorable and a huge PITA ;) The same night they left us with her, we tented our house overnight and returned to a carport of 15 (count em!) dead geckos ... upon seeing and realizing what they were, I almost vomitted. Yuck.

It's no secret that my girl is quite the character when she's not acting shy. Here she is, hamming it up on instagram (my username is lorieiko ... find me, I'm totally obsessed with it!)




Hopefully I'll be back with some real house updates :)

Baby names?

So, there's an interesting topic of conversation that I love to hear other's opinions on. It's a back-and-forth on the babynames board (via thebump) and I have had various conversations with different people about this...

My question is: if/when you choose a baby name for your little one, do (would) you share it? do you worry that others will "steal" your baby name?

jess recently tweeted that a friend stole her future baby name, which was posted on her blog a few months ago. of course, she's got great taste & style so truth be told, i'm not entirely surprised (sorry jess), but it's an interesting concept. i wonder if people look at other's blogs and say 'i really like that name, i'm going to add it to my list!"

my friend christine chose to keep her baby name a secret, only to be dismayed that a friend (or cousin?) named her dog the very same name. well, i know a few kids named zoe (our dog's name) and have met a sadie, bailey, and lola in both dog and human forms, so this seems common to me. my point being that i wonder if she had told everyone her baby name, the problem would have been avoided? then again, you risk the chance of someone 'stealing' your baby name.

since we didn't name brooke until she was born, i never faced this problem. it also doesn't (& never did) bother me if people decided to name their kids brooke or jillian (her middle name) since they are both fairly common names. however this is ONE girls' name that i really like and i go back and forth between telling people when they ask me "what names do you like?" so far i haven't said anything since this name is not common at all -- i've only met ONE other person with this name and she's my age- - & i'm not even sure if we'll ever have another girl!

so what do you think? do you share your baby names? does it bother you when people steal the names that you've loved for so long?

House Pictures

Well... I finally found my camera cable and am able to upload a few pictures!

This is just a little peek into what we've been doing, I have a lot more to upload and show you all...

"The crew" that came to help us the first week we moved in... scraping the floors, patching the mirrored wall, painting...


Tada! Mirrored wall being patched, floors are in! The hubs and my dad did an excellent job, if you couldn't tell...

TV is mounted!

BEFORE: Mirrored cabinets on top and bottom of our kitchen

During: Taking out the top cabinets

AFTER: top cabinets ripped out. Still to do: hang pendant lights, patch hole in wall and paint!

BEFORE: Ripping old carpet out upstairs & on the stairs

AFTER: NEW CARPET! Love, love, love. In the process of moving all of our crap in!

thoughts on moving and fixing a house

first things first: moving sucks. it really does. you just never quite realize how much CRAP you accumulate over the years until you have to move it all. vance and i had some help from my aunties this weekend (thank the Lord) and box after box kept coming to our new place and we looked at each other like, "when did we get all of this STUFF?!" i guess it's just another sign that we Americans buy too much crap and have to pay for storage space to keep it all. sad.

next: fixing up a house that you are currently living in sucks. i think (think) we Vance could flip houses if he were paid to do this. But we're not being paid since it's our own house! we've got a ton left to do, including gutting the bottom and top bathroom (we have two full baths and one half bath), fixing our stair way, putting in lights in the kitchen (which sounds easy, but involves cutting walls), planting more grass (again, sounds easy, but involves taking out tiles and lots o' digging). blah. we've also got to reorganize, organize and finish moving things in.


third: hgtv LIES. paint is not as cheap as they say it is and it cannot be completed in as little time as they say it can! argh!


oh well. . . someday it will all be worth it. here are some inspiration pictures i'm loving. unfortunately i can't upload pictures of our place because in the move i lost my camera cable. (eek!)

love these stairs. i can't wait until our stair project is finished!



a curtain covering washer/dryer? ingenius! (i always feel compelled to add an o in this word..)


i want a breakfast nook so badly. unfortunately this little project has been shelved until all of the bigger projects are finished!


looks so cozy! oh, and in love with the chandelier in the bedroom! i love all chandeliers... both tacky and non.


preeeetty sure vance will be re-creating a chalkboard something in our house for brooke. can't decide if this will encourage writing on the walls (which we have recently been battling) or encourage creativity.


i need to find a wall to do a chevron print on!

thoughts on returning to work

In June of 2011, I started working again for the first time since having Brooke. Prior to that, I was tutoring a student-- very short hours (think 1-2 hours a week). When I started working, my mom had just retired and I transitioned myself by working about 5-6 hours a week. Then I took another job, working about 10 hours a week. I started my new job in the beginning of January and am up to about 17 hours a week, which translates to approximately 20 hours a week including travel time.

I have to be honest. When I frst gave birth, I couldn't imagine leaving my precious little one with another human being. She was mine and I soaked up every single minute with her. People would tell me as she got older, "you can find a job now! She's getting older and you'll probably want some space..." I would nod and smile, but really just couldn't picture it.

Then I started feeling the *itch*. The itch that said I had a college degree-- nope, wait, two college degrees-- and yet I was staying at home with my daughter, who wasn't really a baby anymore. The itch that said I missed real adult company in which conversations didn't revolve around what your kid can do and what I should be working on with Brooke. The itch that told me Vance and I could be living a heck of a lot more comfortable if only we had two incomes instead of one.

Of course I shushed those feelings and instead felt guilty as heck for thinking those thoughts. Wasn't I lucky to be able to watch my babe grow? Shouldn't I be counting my lucky stars I had this opportunity to be with her?

Of course. But now that I have returned to work (part-time), I must say that I feel ... satisfied. I enjoy going to work, knowing that my girl is learning to be independent from me for a little while. Knowing that she will need these skills to start preschool. I enjoy talking to adults about work-related topics. And I ENJOY knowing that our bank account is not depleting because I am staying at home. Knowing that we have a teeny tiny more of a cushion so I won't feel awful treating myself to Starbucks or McDonald's iced coffee every day. (Teehee)

So being on both sides of the fence, here's my conclusion: do what is right for your family. Your situation. I loved being at home with Brooke while I was. I loved taking her to the park everyday, enrolling her in Tiny Tots, fully experiencing being a stay at home mom. I was able to exclusively nurse her for the first year of her life. I loved that she was comforted by, cared for and loved by me all day and night. And what's funny is that now that I'm working... she is STILL comforted by, cared for and loved by me all day and night. And what's funny, is that she doesn't even miss me when I'm gone! ♥

So you had a bad day...

So... I am currently having an awful day. It's just one of "those days" where nothing, and I mean, nothing is going right. It's not one of those tragic-awful days like someone passing away, or something TERRIBLE happens ... let me explain, shall I? Please take this as a blog-rant, or whatever but I refuse to pretend like all of my days in Hawaii are bright and sunny.

-Brooke drops her thermos/bottle of milk onto her toe, actually causing it to break skin and bleed. Inconsolable tears for about 15 minutes

- The E light on the car turns on just as I'm picking my mom up

- At the gas station filling up gas, I step on something sticky and liquidy. As I look down on my flip flops (slippers), I realize that what I have stepped on is NOT gum, but rather appears to be vomit

- Arriving home to our new townhouse, I realize that our dogs have yet again escaped from the backyard and are greeting my car. Like yesterday, Buddy's fur is caked & matted with chunks of mud, sticks and grass

- Upon letting B into the house, the dogs run in on our new (!) carpet

-Spent (more like waasted) half an hour bathing the dogs who received a bath yesterday!

As you can tell, I'm kind of a negative nelly at this point. But in an effort to see the good in every day, here are some good things that happened:

- It was my day off

- I was able to eat a rushed lunch with my parents on my dad's birthday :)

-I got to spend a little time in the morning cuddling with my girl

-Was able to go shopping with my mom, and B who took it upon herself to try some makeup on in Sephora: