Manor Monday {Valentine Decor + Basement Update}

Hubby, Belle & Peanut are all home today so while they are off to see "The Nut Job" and the baby naps, I am going to capitalize on the moment and try to break down our basement progress. 

I figured first though, I would start off with some photos of our Valentine's decorations. This year I kept the pops of red to a minimal and went for a little more refined take on the sweetest day of the year.

Here is our kitchen chalkboard. I found a chalkboard marker in the dollar spot at Target and I love it! 

At times certain chalk would scratch the chalkboard surface and with the marker I don't have that concern. 

On the kitchen buffet, I used a trio of apothecary jars filled with Valentines straws, red hot jellies, and white chocolate covered pretzel sticks. To dress them up a tad I added 3D heart stickers to the top of each jar.

Here comes a shock, the paper straws and heart stickers came from the Target dollar spot as well.

And finally, our Valentine mailboxes have made a return this year. The littles love pouring though last year's letters and can not wait for new ones to arrive on February 1st. (You can read more about this tradition here and how I personalized the boxes for free here.)

So there you have it, our 2014 Valentine's tour….just enough to feel festive especially since it is all contained to one room. 

And now on to the basement. I am so happy to report we have made some major progress and are about 70% complete. But you know it is the details that really take the longest. 

Just as a refresher, here is what the finished portion of the basement looked like a large playroom and game room. 

It was the first project we checked off the box in 2013 (full reveal and addition photos here).  After a year of living with the space, we noticed that the seating in the playroom was impeding upon the flow of the room. We needed a wide open space where kiddies could ride trikes, kick balls & race cars. Hubby suggested that the game room would be better served as a media space where the kids could come with their friends and watch movies while the adults carry on upstairs. 

So after quite a bit of rearranging this is where the rooms are to date. 

The playroom is working out beautifully. There are still several bins of toys to purge and some broken trim to replace, but overall the space is 95% complete.

In the media room we decided to utilize the preexisting builtins as a media cabinet and like the look so far. This room is about 50% finished, but thankfully Hubby hooked up the media components so the room is fully functional.


As for the unfinished half of the basement, this is what we were dealing with folks; four year of accumulated stuff to phrase it nicely. Hubby started by sorting and reorganizing the entire crawl space and then moved on to swapping the areas that had housed our at home gym and workroom.

Meanwhile, I tackled the mess. Sorting, purging and boxing up as much as I could. In the end, this massive pile of trash along with an old rear projector big screen TV & archaic freezer (why didn't we think to have the old owners remove that beast) were all evicted from the basement. 

The basketball hoop and air hockey table were moved to the largest room in the unfinished section of the basement. The littles' collection of ride on toys along with an assortment of summer items (which will eventually find a home in the garage once we tackle that project) are all that reside in this large open playspace. We do hope to add a mirror under the spotlights on the right hand side for Belle's ballet barre and repaint the floor so this space is about 90% complete. 

To the left of the basketball game is our new home gym. When we moved in, this area was 2/3rd builtin  workbench. Hubby removed and repurposed a portion of it in our new workshop before moving the bow flex and treadmill into the space. This room is about 50% complete as we need to still purge some unused weights, deal with the mess of wires overhead and build a wall to close the space off from the littles. But like the media room it is fully functional.

The biggest change of all came in the space behind our new media room. It is 75% complete and mainly a storage heaven with rows and rows of bins grouped and soon to be labeled. 

 Hubby also has a small workbench area that will double as a craft space.

I am most excited about an entire shelving unit dedicated to Peanut's outgrown clothing. I spent hours pouring through it all and sorting it by size, type & season. I even had enough space to add a large bin full of clothing I would like to list for sale (when I actually get some downtime).

There you have it…..quite a bit of progress and quite a lot more work to go. For this week I would love to see us tackle the mess on top of the workbench, label the clear bins, add a gift wrap center & clean up the extraneous wires throughout the various spaces. Anyone else been up to their eyeballs in organization?

Valentine's Day Recap

Prepare yourself for a photo dump of our love day festivities. The party began on Wednesday with Peanut's combination 100 day & Valentine celebration. And can you think of any better way to celebrate than in your jammies!?! So Peanut donned a clean pair of PJs and grabbed his bag full of teacher goodies before heading off to school.

When he returned we sorted through Valentine cards & candy before YiaYia Terry & Papou Yianni brought more goodies.

 

On Valentine's Day, my little cupids woke up to the smell of cinnamon wafting through the house. Together we enjoyed a heart themed breakfast, opened gifts & loved on one another until Belle headed off to school.

Our Valentine mailboxes held one last special delivery. And much to my delight, the daily deliveries encouraged Belle to start writing love notes of her own to each one of us.

 

My littlest cupid celebrating his first Valentine's day.

After we saw Belle off to school and Hubby off to work, Peanut choose to spend the morning in his jammies (noticing a theme here?) playing board games by the fire; followed by a session of Valentine arts & crafts. 

Then there were more presents to unwrap and play with.

 
 

Afterwards we enjoyed lunch: heart shaped carrots, jelly bean cupcake & sandwich.

Then YiaYia and Bopi stopped over to deliver more gifts. Bear couldn't get enough of his frog balloon. Every year the 3 B boys get Belle and me roses. Love how Hubby is training them young…their future wives will thank him.

The older two cupids had swimming lessons that evening, but returned to a delish candlelight dinner.

This year marked the 15th Valentine's day Hubby & I have spent together! So amazingly blessed to have this man as my honey. And with that Valentine's day 2013 is officially in the books.

Class Valentines and Teacher Treats

Belle finished up her Valentines over the weekend. She took heart cutouts and inserted a pencil through a hole punch. We were both smitten with the results given how simple they were.

I love handwritten Valentines.

On holidays, I like to send special treats to school with the the kiddies. Their teachers work so hard and it is just a small way to let them know their efforts aren't taken for granted.  I remember seeing either a blog post or pinterest pin with the message: "Shooting for brownie points" attached to a brownie box. Pulling my inspiration from there, I designed these tags on picmonkey.com.



Then I set to work in the kitchen baking up  a double batch of brownies.



I let the brownies sit for several hours before cutting. This ensured nice crisp edges when I finally sliced into them. I placed two brownie squares inside a cupcake wrapper (doubled for thickness).



I then stacked two brownie sets inside cello wrap and tied with tulle.

The tags I made were attached by hole punching the corner and running through the ribbon.

And to further complete the look, when Peanut heads out to his Valentine's Day party today he will be toting both Mrs. S' & Mrs. H's  goodies in this festive heart bag.

Mrs. E's goodies are waiting to be delivered tomorrow when Belle celebrates with her class.

I also wanted to make a special package for our saint of a bus driver. Belle's official bus stop is 7 doors down. In our district, changing a bus stop requires an act of Congress. Mr. Willy took it upon himself to change her stop to our driveway so I wouldn't have to lug Bear & Peanut down to the stop. Thanks to Mr. Willy, the boys don't have to be woken up from their afternoon naps in a rush to make it down the street before the bus arrives. 

OK enough about my daily routine, back to the valentines.  I opted to skip the cello wrap and package these brownies in a mason jar for better protection on the bus. The top is covered in tissue paper & I adhered heart ribbon to the lid.

The big day is almost here. I'll be back later with the last minute dessert I promised. Hope your Wednesday is off to a great start!