Hiking {Schenk Six}

What do we do with a free Saturday in September (thanks to a Thursday night game)?
We visit our 1st Oklahoma state park and embark on our 1st family of 6 hike!

We visited Roman Nose State Park and started off on a nice, leisurely hike with a stroller. We quickly found a fun rock/mountain for the kids to climb. Then we came upon a natural spring that was beautiful! Nora kept exclaiming "This is amazing! The most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" The whole floor was covered in shells! This was certainly our favorite part of the hike.

But from there it turned into a 2 1/2 hour trek through unkempt trails, tons of RED mud, lots of rough terrain and intense heat! We kept seeing signs for inspiration point so we made that our destination...the only problem was we either never found it and/or it was not very inspirational!

The kids also liked climbing the rock formations! Evy did great bouncing along in the stroller! She even took a nap along the trail. The one wildlife sighting we had was a huge porcupine climbing a tree!

The ordeal ended with a walk through a prohibited part of the park, 1 very hangry kid, lots of sweat and a stop at a random campground where I waited with the kid while daddy ran to find the van and come rescue us.

This kid was in his element with all the space to roam and explore.

Considering the length of the hike and the rough terrain the kids amazing! They were such troopers! I was so proud of all of them, but especially Kolter. He is the smallest but he kept up with the big kids and was even able to lead for portions of the hike. By the end he was DONE, but his endurance on his short legs really surprised me!

We learned some valuable lessons and will probably plan our route a bit more next time, but the good news is there will be a next time!

One Year Later...guest room & bath

Continuing our house series today we're going to look at the guest bedroom and bathroom. Originally the room featured discolored carpet and country blue walls with popcorn ceilings. We removed the popcorn and carpet and painted the walls. We also patched a few holes (see picture below)

After: we painted the walls a pretty blue/green color, installed new carpet and painted the closet doors. Once I added the fun bird pillows (I made them for our house in OH) I knew I wanted this room to be colorful and fun. We also added pictures of our family.

While this room serves as our guest room its primary job is storing all the Legos ;)

The guest bathroom also known as the kids bathroom has not been touched. Besides a few more rubber duckies and hooded towels it looks the same as the day we moved in. Hopefully we'll be able to tackle this space in the upcoming year!

Before:

After:

One Year Later...laundry, mudroom, half bath

Our laundry/mud room/half bath is a tiny portion of the house, but it gets a ton of abuse! I'm so glad we took the time to renovate it so it fits our life! Here's a look of the baby blue room before...

After: the improvements included a fresh coat of gray paint to match the adjoining kitchen. The trim, cabinets and doors also got white washed. Kyle built a custom bench with 6 shoe compartments (1 for each member of the family). We also hung hooks for each person. The 2 closets in the room were reconfigured to house the tall cleaning supplies (i.e. brooms), our paint supply, swimming gear and winter accessories. This is the best use of space in our whole house!

On the other side of the room we hung the chore chart and a mail collector (this is where I put the kids papers I want to keep). We also a drying rack on the far wall.

This room is so functional. We lived in the house for 6 months before we tackled this space and I'm so glad we did. When we moved in we bought a set of lockers that I thought I wanted to use in this space. We quickly realized that wasn't the best use of space. Then I spent several months figuring out exactly what we needed in this small space and how to accomplish it while looking cohesive with the rest of the house.

Connected to the mudroom/laundry room is a powder room that is very small...I can't even get a good picture because it's so tiny. Before the room featured puke brown walls with pretty standard toilet, window and sink.

After: I had been wanting to do a bold color and since this room was small, but with good lighting I decided to take the plunge and painted it navy blue! All of the fixtures remained the same I simply painted the wall and gave the trim and door a fresh coat of white paint. In each house we like to have a travel bathroom where we hang memories from our travels. We decided to make this space our travel bathroom and I had fun creating a gallery wall of many memories! Everywhere from China to Greece, to California to Branson is represented on these walls!

I love how it turned out!

Brown Eyed Girl

with some painted toes

She is so adorable, but this is what usually happens when I turn the camera in her direction...

One Year Later...Kitchen

Where do I begin with the kitchen? This was probably the worst room of the house and it's had the greatest transformation. I don't really think the "before" pictures do it justice, but here you go:

Before: pink tile everywhere, bright baby blue walls, ovens from the '70's, old cabinetry that wouldn't close, a sink light that was drilled through the cabinets, just bad and ugly and gross!

the eat-in part of the kitchen also had the baby blue walls and pink tile. It included a desk and bookcase that just took up too much space.

The day we got the keys the kitchen was demolished down to the studs! Kyle and my Dad put in a lot of work to install a brand new kitchen before we moved in!

We installed drywall, new cabinets, a stove/oven range, microwave, all new appliances, crown molding, new countertops, an awesome sink, subway tile backsplash and floating shelves. We did everything ourselves except installing the countertops. It was a long process (the floating shelves were just installed last month ;) but we love the result! The only thing I still want to change is the light above the sink then it will be complete!

Kitchen After:

We also custom built this island/table. I designed the piece, my dad made/welded the bottom, we purchased the butcher block top from Ikea and voila a beautiful and special table that can be moved around to serve as an island or a serving buffet at parties!

Real life: high chair, kids magnets and Johnny jump up ;) But I really love the finished product!