A New Additon

Before anyone gets excited, when I say New Addition, I mean that literally. We are remodeling our garage attic to have a completed space in our house. I know, I apologize if my title was bit misleading! But it got your here, didn't it?

We have a lovely, albeit small, space above our garage with a full staircase. We have gone back and forth about whether or not to finish this space. In the end, we decided to turn our attic into a "mother-in-law suite". We have a family friend who does great work and has a good eye for finishing detail and he has worked his tail off on our new attic efficiency. It was also fun choosing all of the elements that go with it.

I am really into gray currently and want to paint all of my house in shades of grey. But for now, I will settle for my attic space. We bought a few items to complement the space and even put in a nice sized full bathroom. I also spent a weekend brown paper bagging the staircase using this tutorial and I must say, it turned out rather nice!

This was my inspiration:


This was the "before" picture


Just a regular ole garage from the outside

But now....ta da!

A Pittsburgh Stay-cation

We decided to do a mini "stay-cation" with the girls over Presidents Day weekend. I had read that Pittsburgh, a mere three hours from home, was a great place for kids, so we made some plans and off we went! The kids were excited to get out of the routine and so were we!

Conrad and I pricelined a hotel and ended up at the beautiful Embassy Suites (and apparently we were only one of a thousand other families with the same thoughts and a wifi access to Priceline!) It was perfect for our family, with a suite of rooms, an indoor pool, a made to order free breakfast, and an awesome atrium complete with waterfall and large colorful fish to wow the kids!

Our first day we visited the Pittsburgh Children's Museum and had the best time watching the kids enjoy the great exhibits and hands on play. Our highlights here was the wierd gravity room and the art studio, where the girls got to make thier own paper!


Our second day we went to the Carnige Science Center and that was cool too! The highlight for Conrad was the real life retired submarine that we got to tour. The highlight for Isabelle was getting to jump on the trampolene, tethered to a bungee cord in the SportsWorks. (The lowlight for Grace was missing this because she just didn't have the patience to stand in the long line! Oh the wailing!)




We ended that day at the Duquesne Incline. Which is this old historical trolley that takes you up and down the mountain with a great view of Pittsburgh!

Thanks to my Aunt Brenda, who buys our family a COSI membership every year for Christmas, we got in FREE to all of the museums/science centers with the reciprical membership! It would have cost us upwards of $160! Thanks Aunt Brenda!

We ended the trip with a stop at Mommy's favorite store, Ikea, and even had to put down the last seat in the van to fit all of our purchases in. We bought a ton of stuff for our new addition (info and pictures coming soon!) And, on our way home we stopped at Cabella's in West Virginia. I call it my brother-in-law, Eric's version of Ikea. All of those stuffed animals are pretty cool. But I can honestly say, there is nothing there that remotely tempts me to spend money. Nothing at all!