JESSIKA REED

Hip & Simple Creativity

Pregnancy Glory

This is my current view and I am loving it! Pregnancy has not been what I expected at all. There have been some tough moments but really overall it has been much easier than I expected. I really thought I would miscarry early on. It took a long time to get pregnant so it was hard to really accept it was happening and let go of that fear. Anything is possible and I am sure I will have fears of anything happening to this kid when he gets here but so far I am grateful things have been going our way.

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Basement Update – Carpet Installed

The basement is practically finished. We had the carpet installed today and it is so nice to see it all coming together.

The carpet is perfect. I ordered dark carpet when we bought our house and they installed the wrong color. It’s a long story and something I have never let go of – just ask Stephen – so to finally get what I wanted is great. Plus we upgraded the carpet pad and you can instantly tell a difference compared to the rest of the house. 

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No use in crying over spilled cheese.

On Saturday, Stephen and I had a date morning on accident. It was nice to spend time together unplanned and I hope to get more time like that before the baby comes. I am grateful to have had nearly 4 years of marriage just the two of us, of course we are excited and solely focused on this baby and the life we want to provide for our future family but I believe that our marriage and keeping that a major priority will create a great foundation for this little man that is entering our lives. Speaking of focusing on this baby, he is moving a ton the last couple of days and especially while I type this – I absolutely love that feeling. Stephen even felt him on Friday night, it was a cool experience to share together.

Back to our date morning – we decided to try Kneader’s french toast since I have heard such great things about it in the past. It did not disappoint. We had to make a stop at Home Depot to find a solution to our clean out valves that are sticking out of the wall in the basement – I know super steamy stuff! Then we decided to see People Like Us at Thanksgiving Point. First, that new theater is amazing, I love that they updated it. Second, the movie was great, I highly recommend it. There was a perfect blend of story, humor, interest, drama, etc. I was impressed. [Read more…]

Emotional Hot Mess

I have been relatively lucky with pregnancy symptoms. I haven’t been too sick and despite a few little things, it has been overall pretty easy. That changed recently. Stephen describes it as a switch being flipped. I am an emotional mess. By emotion – I mean any emotion, one moment I am happy, the next I am crying, the next I might yell at someone. You never know what you are going to get and I honestly don’t know what I am going to give! I have for sure been more emotional during the pregnancy but now I am having a hard time controlling my emotions. I feel kind of like a crazy person. Having heard this is common, I am glad Stephen and I have 5 + years under our belts so he knows this isn’t the normal me. Also, it is good my employer knows me in case things slip there. It has been an interesting struggle so I am trying to eliminate and reduce stress where I can to try to limit the craziness. We will see how this goes!

My sweet coworker, Happy, brought me flowers today from her garden, aren’t they gorgeous? They made my day!

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Dresser Turned to Entertainment Center

The basement is going well but we are at the point of waiting for things to be installed like cable and carpet so we will show the finished products soon.

In the mean time I have been meaning to show our new entertainment center.

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Basement p.5

It looks like the contractors are all done with their work. The contractor boss man will be stopping by to do final walk through of the work, replace the electrical outlet that not only got drilled through, but also blew up, and finish the clean up. It is hard to get the entire picture but the texturing and work will really be shown off when we do the painting – which we hope to start tonight if it is all dry!

I wish I would have done this at the beginning. I took pictures of the entire space and merged them to get a better idea of the whole space. Of course it is slightly distorted but you get the idea. [Read more…]

Basement p.3 & 4 – Drywall and Mudding Day 1

Coming home to the basement progress today and yesterday has been exciting and I haven’t really known what to expect. I have never worked with contractors and the experience so far has been… interesting. Talking to other people, my experience is not unique so it must be the industry. Really at the end of the day as long as we are getting the product we want, in the timeline we were promised, that is all that matters.

I will admit coming home to the drywall yesterday was shocking. Of course I expected it to be hung but I have never seen just drywall. I called my dad and said it looked like crap. Things weren’t lined up, holes for vents were cut too large, chunks were missing in areas, etc. He reassured me that was normal and that was why they did mudding and the texture and it will hide the “crapiness” I was seeing. I felt better hearing that.

I wanted to get some pictures but I was tired and couldn’t find my memory card for my camera so Stephen just snapped a few with his phone and that is what we get!

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Basement p.2

Today was the first day we had a contractor in to work on the basement. We have never worked with a contractor or hired anyone to come in for work so we weren’t sure what to expect. So far, so good. There was some framing that needed to be finished up. Mostly around vents where the ceiling will need to drop down to cover those. They seemed to wrap most of that up to get it ready for drywall.

We have a lovely gas line running alongside the vents that the builder didn’t put in the ceiling. The metal frame addresses that issue.

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