Sweet November: Tate's 31st Birthday & Jace's New Room

This weekend we celebrated Tate turning 31 on Saturday. It was a pretty big change from the way we celebrated his 30th last year with a huge surprise party and 50 of his friends. This year it was just the three of us spending the day together, since there really weren't any other options! Tate wasn't feeling all that well when he woke up in the morning so he stayed in bed for a while while I baked blueberry muffins and made eggs and bacon for breakfast. Jace was loving his first muffin experience!

That afternoon Tate wanted to get some work done on his office since he desk (and our couch) finally arrived the day before. We considered going out to the Charleston Aquarium but decided to save that for next weekend when his sister is in town. Since it was raining there wasn't much to do that was family friendly. That evening we headed out for an early dinner at Tate's favorite taco place in town. We always have amazing meals there, and they're super affordable and right around the corner. After dinner we headed home and put Jace to bed. Since it was Tate's birthday he got to pick what we did that night. Sigh... I knew he was waiting for this day to make me finally watch the movie "Strangers". He bought it when we first moved in and has been begging me to watch it with him ever since. I hate horror movies. HATE. I'm that person who literally has the blanket pulled in front of their eyes for half of the movie.

So anyways, we watched "Strangers" in our pitch black house, and all in all it was actually a pretty disappointing movie. It was a little bit scary because it's most people worst nightmare of someone showing up at your door in the middle of the night, but it wasn't all that exciting... at least I didn't think. I much prefered the last movie I was forced to watch "The Last House on the Left", now THAT was a good movie. And it takes alot for me to say that about a horror film. I know it wasn't all that eventful of a birthday for Tate, but hopefully by the time he turns 32 we'll have some good friends around town.

Despite the rain ruining our weekend plans of staining the patio furniture and installing storm doors, I was determined not to let it stop me from painting Jace's bedroom. I kept Jace up as late as I could before his nap on Sunday, hoping he would be completely exhausted and sleep for hours so that I could paint uninterrupted. We picked up Buzz Blaster Blue from the Behr Disney collection at Home Depot and as soon as Jace went down for a nap in our room I started moving furniture and taping away. I figured that all I would have time to do was maybe one coat before he woke up, but one coat came and went and still no peep from the bedroom, so I kept going. While Jace slept I was able to: move furniture, unscrew and remove blinds and curtains, cut in and roll two coats of paint, and paint the window sill back to white. Finally Tate went in and woke Jace up because he'd been napping for three and a half hours. Can you believe that?? Amazing, perfect timing for him to do that. I just had a little more work to do on the window repairing what the previous tenants messed up, so Tate hung out with Jace for a bit.

The window sill and the wall surrounding the window had been painted dark purple instead of their original white color. The people who painted it purple didn't tape anything off and appear to have just slathered purple paint on everything, including most of the window. Lovely. It took me about three coats of white paint to cover the purple, but it was pretty easy and I enjoyed listening to Tate and Jace outside the door playing together. I had to laugh when Tate knocked to tell me that Jace had just pooped for the second time in a row and what should he do. Umm... well probably change him and hope that's the end of it. Haha, welcome to motherhood!

After that I had to let the walls dry for a few hours before I tackled painting the ceiling back to white. (The previous tenants painted an uneven pink stripe along the edge.) During that time we got superbowl ready and started preparing food. Jace and I baked some sugar cookies. We do this every few days it seems because we have premade dough in the freezer so that we can make mini-batches whenever we want. As the super bowl started we made a feast of junk food and vegged out, but by half time I was bored and ready to tackle the ceiling.

The ceiling was an awful project. I gently put tape all around the walls to protect the blue, but was careful not to press too hard in case it was not fully dry yet. Then I started painting the strip of pink on the ceiling, realizing that the white was way too bright to match the somewhat yellowed ceiling. I stopped what I was doing and found a different flat white paint in the garage that was a pure white instead of ultra white. I was NOT going to paint the entire ceiling and buy the equiptment to do so, so I wanted it to just match as well as possible, without putting too much effort in. The pure white seemed to be a better match, but was still a little "fresher" looking than the rest of the white ceiling which hasn't been painted since the house was built four years ago. Oh well, after two coats I didn't care much how it looked and just wanted to be done. By the end of the project my hands were cramping up, but I was proud to say I'd started and finished a project completely solo. I really really like the blue color that the walls ended up. It's not too baby-ish, but still fun and young looking.

Today Jace and I spent our morning at Storytime and then went out to lunch with Tate. It's been raining here for more than a week and we all felt the need to get out for a bit. There is a chinese buffet around the corner from us that is huge and looked really clean so we checked it out. It was probably the biggest chinese buffet I'd ever seen and all of the food was fresh. There was a mongolian barbecue as well so that you could have your food made fresh in front of you. It was the best $5.99 we've ever spent. I love how cheap it is to eat out in South Carolina. Jace didn't have any buffet because I question what type of ingredients are used in those places... (which I know is kinda gross that I don't care when it comes to me, but I won't let him eat it) but he did try some jello squares for the first time and couldn't stop inhaling them, literally. He actually inhaled a big chunk of jello and had to gag it out, haha. That didn't slow him down though... he was instantly obsessed.

When we got home from the buffet I put him down for a nap and tackled the last painting projects for his bedroom. I re-painted the "J-A-C-E" letters that were on his wall red, instead of the baby blue color they were in his nursery. Originally they were just wooden letters from Michael's and at the time the pastel color seemed to fit his baby personality, but I wanted to make them a little more fun now. I also painted a few wooden wall cubes the same red color. I thought the red would contrast nicely with the blue wall colors and I never really liked the wood color of the cubes (which I got for a free at a garage sale a while back).

I think I am a little too excited about his new bedroom, but we've lived here exactly one month today and his room has been that weird pink shade that entire time. (Picture a rasperry milk shake, that's the exact shade it was... because everytime I was in there I wanted one...) Now it finally feels like his bedroom, and not just somewhere he's sleeping for now. He slept in our room last night and today because of the fumes (even though I got a low-VOC paint, I still am cautious) but he's been in there briefly and seemed to notice the walls right away and like them. Or maybe that was just my imagination and he could care less...

Here are some before pictures of Jace's bedroom... and one sneak peak of the color it is now. I will be taking pictures of his entire room now that it's all put together just as soon as his freshly painted red things are dry enough to hang. :)