Curtains

Well we have lived here for almost a year and a half already and I just got my new curtains up!  When we bought the house there were some curtains left.  We had Dutch lace in the living room, above the sink, and at the front door.  We also had some white/cream sheer curtains in the dinning room and a sheer white swag in the downstairs family room.  I took everything down to wash it when we moved in and never put the family room swag back up.  The rest of the curtains did get put back up but I knew I wanted to replace them.  I don't have a lot of experience in the window covering department so I didn't want to rush into anything especially since I wasn't sure what I really wanted and curtains can be VERY expensive!
We did buy zebra valances for Aubrey's room right away since I knew what I wanted and hung a valance in the upstairs bath that we already had from our old house.
About a month ago I washed all the windows in the house - inside and out - and took down every curtain and washed them.  I only put back up the ones I liked and we had been living without curtains in the rooms that needed replaced.  As I have already blogged about we painted our family room over Labor day so I was finally ready to start looking for window covering.  I found something I liked at Target but they didn't have anything other than the display and online it said it was not available online or in stores??  Through pintrest I found a site called Curtainworks.com that has affordable window coverings.  I looked around a little and found something I liked for each of the three rooms I was wanting to work on - and my total with shipping was just over $150!  All of the windows I needed curtains for were either double or triple wide windows so I was needing wider curtains.  After showing my choices to Jeremy he gave the OK to order and they came less than a week later!!  They are all washable which is a big plus and I am very happy with them. As you can probably tell from the pictures they could use a good steaming to get the package wrinkle out but other than that I love them!  I hung the dining and living room curtains up right away Saturday night.  The only curtain rod I had to buy was the one for our family room.  Our Wal-Mart didn't have much selection for the width I needed but I am happy with what I picked out.  Thanks to my wonderful, handy dad we got those hung today!

living room - they are not wide enough to cover all of the windows but these
 windows face the back of the house so we wont close them much

dinning room curtains - love the color

another view of the dinning room curtains

family room curtains - the gold with our gray wall
and black furniture looks great

these are the windows we haven't had curtains on for over a
 year so we have nicer shades that we can still use as well

Fall comfort foods

Well the weather here has been nothing short of crazy.  It will be chilly and windy one day and then 80 degrees and sunny the next.  I guess it is just summer not ready to let go and fall not quite here.  With the cooler weather I have enjoyed being able to use the oven more without the guilt of heating up the house when it is so hot out.  Last Thursday Aubrey and I made strawberry cupcakes with purple frosting.  And we had a new pintrest recipe for scalloped potatoes and ham.  Mine turned out more like mashed potatoes and ham but it was still delicious!  One of my fave meals for sure!  I have been using the crock-pot a lot since meal planning and it works great for the summer and all year round!

dinner

dessert

my helper - she did not want her picture taken and
she is too fast for me, and yes she is wearing her jammies

This weekend we are having our first fall Van Wyk camp-out and I was in-charge of the menu.  Looking forward to lots of yummy food and fun!

Kinnick Stadium

This past Saturday we had an extra ticket for the Iowa game so I got to go along.  The weather was perfect and the game was a blow out in Iowa's favor.  All in all it was a great day!  

new video boards

Nile's namesake

Aubrey's namesake

Student section flag

cool duel screen 

Hawkeye love!!!

final score 59 - 3 !!

Aubrey

Here is a picture of my sweet little girl all ready for church and Sunday school this week.  She has been dying to wear this outfit since we bought it, which was earlier this summer!  She is not really a fan of pictures right now but was willing to take a quick one Sunday morning.  She is a very girly girl and only wants to wear pretty things, this is a problem some days when her favorites are not clean.  I have decided to stop buying things without showing them to her first since she doesn't like half of it anyways!  Hopefully this is a stage and she will start wearing some of her other clothes again.  Luckily I got a lot of clothes from garage sales in the past so if she didn't wear it much we weren't out a lot.  Oh the joys of having a girl!!

Iowa/Iowa State football game

This year we had our second annual neighborhood tailgate party for the big game.  Last year Jeremy was at the Iowa game so he missed it and the final results of the game were less than desirable.  But moving on to this year we had the party in a neighbor backyard across the street from our house.  There were less people this year but the crowd we had was much more fun.

Nile had a soccer game in the morning and Hayden was invited to a birthday party so we had a busy morning but then settled down to get ready for the party.

Good food, drinks, friends, and fun were had by all - maybe with the exception of our neighbor Jason who is a State fan. :)

Nile is not in the wooden shoe pictures because he was at home when Aubrey and I went to pick up Hayden.

Aubrey telling Jason why it is better to be a Hawkeye fan than a Cyclown fan

Nile - soccer

This is Nile's first year playing soccer.  Hayden played when he was in Kindergarten and liked it but didn't love it.  I was hoping we would not be a soccer family for the following reasons: Jeremy is gone for most of the games since they are Saturdays, I have terrible fall allergies, and I was hoping to just be able to ease back into school without having practice and games all the times.
Well Nile LOVES soccer so I finally agreed to let him play this fall, he just started 1st grade.  It has been very hot for his first two games and all the boys are sweaty and red faced when they are done but he still loves it.  Hopefully the cool down that is supposed to start tomorrow will stick around and we wont be sweating our butts off at anymore soccer games this year.  Nile's team is a strange color, it is kind of brown, tan, and olive green mixed together.  We can up with the name The Dusty Rhinos and it has stuck.
With Hayden starting football this year and Aubrey just starting dance I think it is easy to say that my idea of a nice non busy fall is gone - for at least a few years!  Oh well, they are only young once and I want them to try different activities and find out what they like.  One top of school and their fall sports the boys also have church on Wednesday nights.  I am so thankful that I am here when they get home from school and Jeremy is off earlier than most dads so we are able to make sure they get their homework done and we can eat dinner together.

Aubrey - dance class

Aubrey had her first dance class last night!  It was just about the cutest thing I have ever seen!  I absolutely love my boys but having a girl is so fun too.  I am so blessed that God gave us these little, or not so little anymore, ones! 
Aubrey has been looking forward to class starting for weeks.  She was a little apprehensive at breakfast about going but she warmed up to the idea and was good to go.  Class is only 30 mins so I stayed and took lots of pictures and did a little reading for school.  She has quite a few other little girls in her class but they all looked like they were having a good time and Miss Marcia is wonderful!  Our pastor's daughter also helps with the class and Aubrey just loves Rebecca!
I am looking forward to watching their dance recitals coming up twice this year!  I do have to confess that I am not a dance mom - I kept thinking Aubrey's eurotard was not fitting right and it seemed so low cut in the front.  When we got to class I was looking at a few of the other girls and realized that I had Aubrey's on backwards!!  I quickly stripped her down and got it fixed before class started!  Guess that was an amateur mistake!  So you may notice that she looks a little different in the first picture than the rest!  Live and learn!!

ready to go to her first class

eurotard fixed and dance shoes on!

Hayden - flag football

This is Hayden's first year of flag football.  Last night he had his second game.  The team is improving and he like getting to play quarterback part of the time.  I brought my camera to the first game but of course the battery died before I could get any pictures.  I took some last night to make up.  It was around 95 degrees out and they still had the game but at least there was a breeze and some shade by 6 PM.  Hayden's team is the Packers.  He is learning a lot about football and different plays and such.  Soon he will know more about it than me, but that really doesn't take much!  This is a busy fall for us with Nile in soccer, Hayden in flag football, and Aubrey just starting dance class!  We are looking forward to the weather cooling down!  My fall allergies are also making it difficult to enjoy watching the boys' games! 

Labor day 2013

Jeremy and I have been talking about painting the family room for quite a while we just didn't have the energy to actually do it.  I had picked up paint samples several times at Wal-Mart we just weren't quite sure what we wanted.  The family room is in the basement by our bedroom and the only natural light comes from the three windows along the south side of the house. Because of this we didn't want to pick a color that would make the room dark.  I knew I wanted a gray color but finding the right one was another story.  Nothing too dark but nothing too light either.  The I decided we needed to do one wall a shade darker for a focal wall, or whatever it is called.  We needed to figure out which wall that would be as well.  A little while back I finally decided on two colors we just hadn't taken the time to actually buy the paint and do it.  Earlier this weekend I asked Jeremy if we were doing anything special for the extra day off, for him, and he didn't know of anything so I suggested painting!  I check with my parents to see if they would be available to help paint and watch children and they were.  The had just gotten home from a week in the WI and MI areas.  No better way to welcome them home than painting right? 
Sunday night we bought the paint and Monday we got it done!  I LOVE the results!  The "before" wasn't anything terrible but I am very happy with how the color we picked turned out.  The wall that is a shade darker is hard to tell in pictures.  Now we just need to replace the carpet and figure out what to do with the "broken" fireplace.  I know I will be spending more time in this room now and it works great since the playroom is right next door and the laundry is too!
I love how this turned out so much that it makes me wonder what to work on next!! :)

before

before

after, wall with the door is one shade darker than the rest

LOVE how it turned out

corner of darker wall and lighter wall again

now to work on a little rearranging and hang some things back up!