Apparently I needed some time off from blogging and the internet world! But I’m back. :)

An update on Peter - He’s doing wonderfully! His stay in the hospital was 29 days - VERY long and hard on the family. BUT, he is now home and doing really well! He’s running around like a normal little kid and starting to talk MUCH more than before, and in more fluid sentences! Here is a family photograph I took of the family the week or so after they got home from the hospital:

Also, I wanted to share with you guys a few before and after images from our house and the link to my flickr album that shows a LOT more pictures. We have been working really hard over the last month or so to get our house more pulled together. We have been doing LOTS of hanging of art and photos, painting of some furniture pieces, and cleaning and organizing!

LIVING ROOM BEFORE:

LIVING ROOM AFTER: (The living room was set up for a meeting of a prayer shawl ministry - why there are books and yarn and shawls all over the place :) )

DINING ROOM BEFORE:

DINING ROOM AFTER:

KITCHEN BEFORE:

KITCHEN AFTER:

DEN BEFORE:

DEN AFTER:

HALL BATHROOM BEFORE:

HALL BATHROOM AFTER:

And here is a link to the Flickr Gallery where you can view a slideshow of larger images!:

OUR FLICKR BEFORE AND AFTER GALLERY OF OUR HOUSE

My husband and my best friends just found out that their 2 year old son, Peter, has a golf ball sized tumor in his brain. He just had a 3 hour long MRI done and we are waiting for word on what the next plan of action is. We do not know much at this point, but should know more by later this evening. Please say prayers for healing, strength, and grace.

Here is a picture of him and his adorable self:

On the holidays have come and gone! I’m sad because that means we have to take down the decorations that I love so much!

The Christmas season was so wonderful! It snowed for the first time in our town in years! We live in southern Louisiana and snow is not common! Here are some photographs of our house and neighborhood before all the snow had fallen! A few hours later we had almost 4 inches at our house! :)

It was magical and so special for it to happen for the first Christmas in our house! We will always remember it! :D

Tomorrow (Monday, Sept 29th, 2007) my husband and I will close on our first house at 3:00 pm in the afternoon! We are SO excited and can’t wait to share the whole process of making this home our own with you guys! The entire house buying process was extremely trying for us, as we have been in negotiations with the seller for the last two months! Not to mention our house inspections and appraisals being derailed by not one but two hurricanes and extremely long power outages. We are so happy to see this day come and feel so blessed that everything fell into place. Honestly, God is rocking in our life and we can’t wait to share it all with everyone!

If anyone is out there still reading this blog, thank you for sticking by during my extreme droughts of writing. We have just been so busy with all of the house stuff, not to mention it’s hard to find cool things to blog about when all you are doing is thinking about the things you WANT to do in your hope to be new home and have no pictures to share of projects yet!

More to come soon - I promise! :)

ok….after a really long break from Wednesday Wants I’ve decided it’s time to start them again! We finally have electricity and internet back at home and I’m able to enjoy life and not feel like we are in a 3rd world country! I have such respect for people who can live without. Honestly I felt like I was loosing my mind for the last two weeks. Everyone has been on edge and it was so frustrating to not be able to do the work you need to do becuase you don’t have the ability to get to the information you need!

So…without further adieu, here are a few things to add to my list of things I want! :)

First on the list is OUR HOUSE!!! We are still in the process of buying it. It’s been long and nerve wracking. We are trying to be very patient, but things that should only take a day or so are taking weeks. We finally have an appraisal and we have had to change the closing date for the 3rd time. This time it’s set at Sept 29th, so please pray that this time it works out!!!!! We are so excited and really hoping nothing happens to take this away from us.

I adore this clock!!! However, instead of buying it I think my husband and I are going to try and make our own using some thrifted old books. :) We shall see how it turns out!

This table I love. We are going to have a place in our kitchen/dining area that I think this would fit perfectly. We plan on painting the kitchen walls a medium gray color, with white cabinets, and eventually black granite countertops. For the time being the countertops will have to stay the wood-look laminate as they are in good condition and we can’t afford to replace them at the moment. Or rather, we have other things we need to work on before those are at the top of the list for our money! LOL

As you can see todays wants focus around the house and the things that will decorate it. :) Sorry but I have a one track mind these days. *laugh*

Here is the sofa we plan on buying, with the white slipcover. We love it. It fits us perfectly. It’s comfortable. The cover is washable. It’s stylish. And more than anything, it’s in our price range. :)

Thats it for today…I promise to post more in the coming weeks. Not to mention, once we finally have signed for the house and have the keys the entire rehabbing and redecorating of the house will be documented on this blog!!! Oh I can’t WAIT! :D

Hey! I’m at work finally this morning and am enjoying a/c and have the internet. It’s such a respite from the insanity going on around me.

David and I went to Houston this weekend to get away from it all and had such a wonderful time. We stayed with some of our best friends and it was so wonderful! I miss them and wish they didn’t live 4 -5 hours away. :( But, it was nice to have a place to go that was “normal” for the weekend. I’ll share more about that trip at another time, I promise. (I wanna share info about the things we did that were so much fun!)

I was really praying that by the time we came back from Houston that it would somehow be better here. However as David and I drove home last night the closer and closer we got to Baton Rouge, the more insane things got. People are driving over and hour away to Lafayette, LA to get gas because the lines and availability in Baton Rouge is still so bad. The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge (which is a 18 mile long bridge over the largest swamp in Louisiana) was so horrible. There’s not damage to the actual bridge but this storm did something BAD to the swamp. The smell driving over it is like death…of EVERYTHING. Dead fish, dead plants, dead animals, who knows what else. It was so horrid. I never speed on that bridge because it’s known to be quite dangerous but honestly last night I had to because I was gonna throw up if we didn’t get off of that bridge fast. However, we thought it would get better when we got into town…ha ha. Nope. It just stinks everywhere. Dead plants decaying, people with no a/c stinking, people putting spoiled food from their fridges and freezers out at the street. Omg seriously this is a little slice of hell.

We still don’t have electricity and no word on when we might get it at all. We haven’t seen any workers in our area and almost all of the power lines are down in our neighborhood and the one next to us, include the one that runs in our yard.

My Aunt Barbara was put in the hospital last night for issues related to heat and dehydration. She has Chrons and all of this has made it flair up horribly. Please pray for her!

The heat and the storm is bringing out the worst in a lot of people and making everyone on Edge. Specifically now that it’s been a week without power and we have another Hurricane possibly heading our way. Everyone is stressed out and just really having a hard time at it.

Anyways…just wanted to give a quick update.

OMG I AM SO EXCITED!!!! I’m at the church I work at and they have electricity AND internet!! That’s unheard of around here right now! God rocks! *laugh*

So yea, it’s pretty bad around here since Gustav hit. I have some pictures I’ll be uploading to flickr from here to show you guys. Our neighborhood was one of the harder hit. It’s a miracle that we don’t have a tree on our house or down in our yard. Seriously a miracle.

Can i just say that I am so disappointed with the national coverage of this storm and the damage? Sure, the levee’s didn’t fail in New Orleans, but hello Louisiana got hit HARD. There isn’t even a freakin headline on any major news website talking about the storm. What crap. almost half of the state is without power, and many places will take 4 - 6 weeks to get power back they are estimating. We have hospitals that are losing their generator power and having to transfer hundreds of critical patients to other hospitals, which are also only operating on generators. There are no hardly any stores open, only a handful of gas stations, therefore if you find those places you are in line for like 4 hours to get gas or food. This is freakin ridiculous that everyone else in the country seems to think like it wasn’t a big deal and we are just fine. It’ makes me mad.

Just to give you guys an idea of how many people are out of power. It’s insanity.

Red: 75% - 100% out of power
Yellow: 51% - 75% out of power
Dark Green: 25% - 50% out of power
Light Yellow: 1% - 25% out of power
White: Normal Operations

It really is frustrating. I know that these are “normal” things that happen during a storm, but this is so beyond regular storm damage. Much more widespread. Usually one small section of a state gets hit this hard. This is almost the entire state. Heck they are still getting rain and flooding in the northern part of our state from Gustav!

My issue is that New York City can have a blackout for 5 hours and it’s national news for a week, most of Louisiana won’t have electricity for 1 week to 4-6 weeks and it doesn’t even make the news. The only national news story I can find about us is talking about letting people return to New Orleans. Dude….there is a lot more to this state than New Orleans.

Here is an amazing picture. This is my sister in the picture. We wanted to show the size of this root and tree. My sister is 5′9”!

The state has been declared a major disaster by the President. He even came down here and looked at the damage yesterday …it wasn’t covered on the national news.

Our state government is kicking butt. Our new governor rocks. He’s so on board and on top of things. Our governor just made a purchase of 400 major generators to put at gas stations and stores so that people can have gas and food. This has never been done by any other state government. But, he feels like the price of them is worth it to get our state back with power. He says that it taking 9 days to 6 weeks for people to get power is “unacceptable” and that it MUST go faster and if the power companies need anything from the state to get their job done faster than they just have to ask him for it.

However FEMA once again sucks. They didn’t have any tarps, ice, water, or MRE’s positioned to where they weren’t more than 2 days away. They were supposed to have them staged in Shreveport so they could be in south LA within a day…that didn’t happen. Not to mention they have been extremely unorganized and bad with giving information out.

of course, everything takes time! We are under a curfew in the baton Rouge area from dusk till dawn because there is still so much damage and debris and without street lights and heck, just lights in general, it makes the roads very dangerous. Of course this makes it hard because it gives less time during the day that people have to do things and get stuff accomplished. They are arresting people nightly and sending them to the city jail for breaking the curfew. It’s so depressing. Once it gets dark outside you look out the window and it’s pitch black. No lights anywhere. BLAH!

The house we are trying to buy looks like it came through fine. However, I really don’t know if we are going to be able to get the house now. The loan that we have is for a rural development property. This house only qualifies until Sept 30th. It’s very unlikely that we will be able to get the power turned on and have the house inspected and the appraisal in time to get it all done by then. I’m trying not to be distraught over this. I know things happen for a reason. And honestly I can’t worry about that now there’s so much more to worry about. We are running out of Gas and food at this point. There are so few gas stations open that when there is one you sit in line for 3-4 hours and run out of gas in the process. Yesterday there was a 1 hour wait to just go INTO wal-mart to shop, much less then shop and stand in line to check out.

This entire thing is so frustrating and life disrupting.

Just wanted to let everyone know that we are hunkering down for Hurricane Gustav. We are pretty much in it’s direct path, but not on the coast. We are in the capitol of Louisiana and it’s just a tad frantic here. Just going through Katrina three years ago was life changing. It’s hard to describe to someone who didn’t live through it. While we didn’t have any direct damage, our city changed in so many ways and our lives were so interrupted, it’s hard to describe. I can’t even imagine the people who lived in New Orleans. I am just praying that this hurricane somehow just goes POOF and disappears! Or at least weakens significantly before landfall. I don’t wish a major hurricane on anyone.

I will update as soon as possible. After Katrina we didn’t have power for over a week. With Hurricane Andrew we were out of power for two weeks.

Please pray for our families safety, all of Louisiana, the entire gulf coast, and that lives are spared.

I think my husband and I must be the only people in the world that remember the Cheese Croissants at La Madeline’s (The cafe/restaurant). David and I were thinking about old times and remember us going there after special occasions to purchase one cheese croissant (we were really poor then hahaha) and sharing it! It was always cheaper than having dessert in a fancy restaurant and omg it was heavenly. Divine even!

Ohh…but much to our dismay La Madeline’s took these off of their menu! We have been searching for years for something as tasty. Heck, even something that could come close - to no avail!

Does anyone else remember these or have any idea how they were made? I was even thinking of trying to find a recipe and try to make our own. *laugh* They were sweet/but not overly. They were rich and creamy, yet the croissant was buttery and flaky. Yes they were sinful, but thats ok for special occasions. :)

No picture for this post becuase I can’t even find a picture of what they looked like. I’ve even emailed La Madeline’s corporate, but they won’t share their recipes! Booo! LOL :) Oh well! Maybe we have to go to Paris sometime to experience this sweet memory again. :)

Well…all of the good thoughts and prayers helped!!! Thank you! We are officially under contract with the house in my last post. :) We are so excited! Closing is set for Sept 19th!!! :) I know that there are still things that could go wrong..but I feel very positive about this. :) And I’m just going to keep a positive attitude. :)

I’ve been playing with ideas on how to arrange furniture in the back room of the house. We are calling it the Den. It’s a somewhat long and narrow room with two doors and one window and one cutout into the kitchen. So, it’s an awkward space to layout. This is the room where we will have the TV so it needs to be comfy and casual, but yet good looking.

Here are some pictures as it looked in our walk through before we put in the offer. Be warned….it’s a foreclosure so there is stuff everywhere and it needs some help. We plan on painting the built in cabinets/shelves white and adding some molding to dress it up a bit. Also, we will be putting in new dark wood flooring in all the main living areas and keeping carpet in the bedrooms. So here are the pictures of that space: (Sorry the pictures aren’t better - my sister and mom were taking these while we were looking around. Because it’s a foreclosure there was no electricity so everything is really dark!)

Here is looking into the den from the dining area…

So below are room layouts we are considering. Some key points - we really would love a sofa facing the tv so that we can veg together and watch movies and be comfy. This is hard in this tight space. We will be buying or finding the furniture for this room after we decide on the layout we’d like, so we are open to suggestions and ideas!!!

Do you have any ideas or examples of ways that you have organized your small, long, narrow living space? :) Share them please!!!