Kentucky Storm

Although I already posted a few pictures of the Kentucky storm damage on Facebook, I recently found some more pictures on another camera that I thought I'd share.

In case you missed the details, here is the story of the infamous ceiling collapse.

On one of our last nights in Kentucky before our move to North Carolina, meteorologists were forecasting strong storms with possible tornadoes for later that night.  We lived in a townhouse and the safest place for us to be was on the first floor so we basically planned on spending the night in the living room until the storm passed.  Maddox had fallen asleep on the couch and we brought Hadley downstairs with us as soon as the storm got close.  

Right as the storm hit, the winds picked up and we heard shingles fly off our roof.  Less than 30 minutes later our smoke detectors began going off and we couldn't determine why.  After a little investigation, we discovered water pouring out of the smoke detectors in Hadley and Maddox's bedrooms. We called the property manager's emergency line and they told us there was nothing they could do about it until the morning.  In the meantime, we took as many of the things out of the kiddos' bedrooms that we could to prevent anything from being damaged by water.  We also placed buckets and large bowls under the smoke detectors to catch as much of the water as possible.

About 30 minutes after that, we heard water coming from somewhere downstairs.  Again after investigation, we found water coming out of an electrical outlet and the circuit breaker box.  We called maintenance AGAIN and a man came and turned the power off at our house.  Right as he did, Hadley went running through the hallway where the water had been leaking and slipped on a puddle of water, falling and hitting her head on the hard floor.  She immediately started vomiting, which made me think that she may have had a concussion.

I took her to the emergency room at 2:00 in the morning.  After they determined that she was fine, we came back home by about 4:00.  Right after Hadley and I got home, J went upstairs for some reason and discovered that the ceiling in her bedroom had collapsed.  I refused to go look at it because by that time, I was exhausted and just needed to sleep.  After a few hours of sleep, I finally went upstairs and this is what I saw...

We have been in North Carolina two months and we are still finding pieces of pink insulation in the most random places.

The last two pictures are of Maddox's room.  His ceiling didn't collapse but they did eventually cut a hole in it to let the water drain out.  Thankfully the property managers had people at our house by 8:00 to get it cleaned up.  What a mess!

Projects I've Been Working On

Since moving into our house, I have been spending a lot of time working on a variety of DIY projects.  I have gotten bored with many of my old decorations (does the seven-year itch apply to home decor?) and have been inspired by so many great things on Pinterest so I thought I'd get some projects going to help this place feel a little more like home. Here are a few highlights of what I've been working on:

Although this was originally for the Fourth of July, I still have the pinwheel garland hanging on my mantle.  Every day is Independence Day in the home of a G.I. Joe, right?

I cut the letter T out of cardboard and used hot glue to attach moss to it.  The background is an old screen I got from an antique shop while on one of my many shopping sprees with my sister.  I wish Iowa and North Carolina weren't so far apart!  I got my inspiration for the letter from a great blog called Dear Lillie.

I knew I wanted a chevron table runner but couldn't find one anywhere.  I thought about buying some fabric and having someone sew something for me but I didn't want to bother anyone else with my projects so I bought a bought a white window valance from Target and painted it myself.  It was the best thing I could come up with since I have no sewing skills and I actually like the way it turned out.  To top it off, it fits nicely on my table :)

   

Another leftover 4th of July decoration.  This one involved spray paint, burlap, straight pins, and hot glue.  It is not on my list of all time favorite projects but for lack of something better, it remains on our front door.

Maddox is an artsy child and when I saw this post on Meg's blog, I knew that he would love it.  Or at least I thought I knew.  The truth is, Maddox was into it about a quarter of the time and the rest was up to me.  Aside from chasing Hadley away from the hot glue gun numerous times, I had fun working on this picture.

I have to be honest.... the only thing I did for this project was pick out some spray paint from Lowe's and tell Jason what to do.  He {grumpily happily} handled the rest.  We got this frame at Ikea and I wish we had about 10 more so I could have one in every color.


At this time, there are two more projects in the works.  One of them has been taking up my parking space in the garage for a month and the other one involves some really fancy materials....

I'll let you know how this one turns out because I'm a little skeptical myself.

{Unfinished} House Tour

In keeping up with yesterday's commitment, I am giving you a tour of our house as it looks right now.  Keep in mind there are very few pictures on the walls and there are some rooms that I purposely omitted from the tour because they still aren't anything worth taking pictures of.  Also, for some reason the previous tenants thought it would be a good idea to touch up huge spots on the walls with leftover paint they found in the garage.  In many rooms, you can see big spots on the walls that don't blend well with the rest of the wall.  Hopefully they will send painters soon!

Here it is... the good, the bad, and the ugly...

The front of our house courtesy of Instagram on G.I. Joe's iPhone. {Instagram is one of my new favorite things but I'll save that for another post.  It will probably be entitled "Favorite Things."}

Our screened-in back porch. On any given night, G.I. Joe and I can be found out here drinking ice water and playing an intense game of Yahtzee after we put the kids to bed.  Yep, we're that cool.  And it is okay to be jealous of our fancy patio furniture.  Our coolness factor just keeps going up.

The living room.  I love that the fire place was built with the intention of placing the TV on top of it.  That is one less thing for little miss busy body to get her hands on.  And another perk... no more fingerprints on the TV!  Don't look too closely though because you might see some leftover fingerprints from Kentucky that still haven't been cleaned off.




Not trying to be captain obvious here but this is the kitchen.  I am in. love. with the built-in ice and water in the door.  It doesn't take much to humor me. What I am not in love with is cleaning the flat-top stove and all of that stainless steel.

Our dining area.  Please imagine a large bouquet of pretty flowers in that vase.  And for those of you who have G.I. Joe's phone number, send him a nice little text reminding him that it is nice to get his wife large bouquets of pretty flowers.  Don't tell him I put you up to it.

Our bedroom.  With a creeper peeping over the side of the bed.  I love that creeper.

Hadley's room.  The painting above her bed was a gift from one of my all time favorite people. And... she's creeping again :)

The bonus room.  The space is divided into play space/mom space.  I drew an imaginary line where the kid space ends and the mom space begins but apparently nobody can see it but me.

Tomorrow I will show you some of the fun things I've been working on to spruce this place up a bit.  Yep. Tomorrow.