One week down!

It's hard to believe we've only been here a week. We sure have gotten a lot done in just a few days. Poor Brett has been doing his work during the day amidst all of the madness, then working on projects into the wee hours of the morning. I am so proud of him and feel so blessed to call him mine! 

Our shower is finally starting to look like a shower and I love it! Terry customized a seat for me and put in a soap niche. I also found glass panels online for a decent price and got those ordered today. It's not pretty yet, but here is what the frame of it looks like:

 They also got the door that went into the living room/kitchen covered up. Yes! Privacy at last! 😍

My big project for the day was to make curtain toppers. Unfortunately, as Brett said "It looked a lot easier on Pinterest." Haha I need to make seven toppers, and in about three hours I managed to complete one! Now, I would consider myself a crafty person, so I can't even imagine how long a project like this would take my mom. 😂😂😂 Here is the one I managed to finish. I love how it turned out so I am going to keep going with it.

In case you're wondering, the base is made out of foam that is hot glued and pinned together. The fabric is just pinned on so I can change it if I get bored with this fabric.

On our way back from the storage unit we decided to stop at the park that is nearby. 

The park is down off of the highway and right on the river. We found this sign, which made the boys REALLY excited!

 There is also a nice playground area and lots of picnic tables. I envision lots of picnics here in the near future!

That's all for tonight but I cannot WAIT to show you some pictures tomorrow because we have finally started to empty out our storage unit and decorate a little bit. It's really starting to feel like home now! 😍

On Our Own

Randy and Diana left this morning, so we are officially on our own! I had to wake the kids up to say goodbye and this is what I found:

What lazies! I don't know how I'm ever going to get them up for school in a few weeks. They love their sleep! It feels different now that Randy and Diana have left. It feels more like we have really moved!

Janae and I spent most of the day picking up things in Sevierville. We bought things to start a curtain project tomorrow. I hope they turn out so I can show you! 😁 I was also able to get some clearanced out plants for my deck. I'm really excited to decorate it, but it's not a priority right now.

When we got home, Isaac and his workers were there, but I'm not even sure what they were doing. I went straight to sleep and when I woke up they were gone. My sleep pattern is so messed up! I haven't been going to sleep until around 2, then I wake up early, and then I need a nap! I'm going to try and fix that tonight and go to bed early because I have been pretty worthless in the afternoons and I feel really bad about that!

One of the benefits of living in Sevier county is that residents often get some pretty nice discounts on things. This week we could go to any of the Ripley's attractions for just $5 apiece. Since we have been so busy, we haven't been able to take advantage of that offer until tonight. We decided to walk down to the Ripley's Aquarium tonight. 

 Here's what our house looks like from down below. It's very well hidden!

 The aquarium is really pretty on the outside. It's one of the first things you see when you are driving into Gatlinburg. I figured that it would have cost us $111 if we had paid full price, so we really got a great deal!

 Here's some pictures of us just hanging out inside the aquarium. It was nice and cool in there after the hot walk there! It's only a fifteen minute walk from our house but man was it hot and humid today!

 This was a cool tube thing you could get inside of. The kids had a blast taking photos inside it. 

 And for tonight's finale is my favorite selfie of the day. 😂😂😂

We decided that we would have felt ripped off if we had paid full price for the tickets, as there was only about two hours worth of things to look at, but for $25, it was a great break from working on the house. 

Knox Rail Salvage

Today was the day I have been looking forward to since before we even moved down here. We finally got to go to Knox Rail Salvage and purchase all of the tile for our bathroom floor and shower, and vanities and tops. I am so excited about this project! Unfortunately it is costing us a lot more than we originally thought because of water damage, but it will be worth it in the end!  We left our house early to go to Knox Rail to meet Terry and get everything purchased. Here is Gatlinburg at 7am. 

No traffic! It takes us about an hour to get to Knoxville, where Knox Rail Salvage is.

Knox Rail is the coolest place I have ever been. It started because cargo would fall off of trains,  and the owner's grandfather would collect it and sell it because the property no longer belonged to anyone. The owner now is Joel. He is a super nice Christian man who had very nice things to say about Isaac, our contractor. He gave us 10% off of our entire order since we are friends with Isaac. What a nice gesture!

I'm going to wait and show you the tile when some of it's up, since it doesn't look too exciting the box! Here are the entry doors we picked out:

 The first one is our "front" door that you see when you pull up the driveway and the second door will be upstairs and open up into the kitchen/living room. I'm not sure what color to paint them to look good with our green house and brown deck. I'm open to suggestions! 😀

I couldn't help but snap another picture on the way through Pigeon Forge. You can only see the bottom layers of the mountains because the tops are so smokey today. And look at those clouds! 😍

The kids were just getting up when we got home at 10:30. They were zonked after their day at Wonderworks yesterday! I wanted to go to Ace to get some spray paint for a project, so I took the boys with me and went for a scenic drive out of town towards Pittman Center where the school is. Talan snapped some pictures along the way.

 Then Easton took over and won the award for best photo of the day! 

Apparently Easton spent some quality time with Missy later in the afternoon because I found these pictures on my phone:

More work continued in the bathroom today. The big project was cutting a hole in our bedroom wall. We are going to hang a sliding barn door over the opening and close up the door that goes into the living room. I have never had a master bathroom before so I pretty much insisted on doing this. 😂

 I found this hottie peeking through the new door. I love this man so much! 

After Isaac and Terry left, I heard glass outside my bedroom window. I had thrown a bag of trash onto the trailer because I thought they were taking it, and this mama bear smelled it and tore it open!

After that mess was cleaned up, Janae, Diana and I walked up town around 8pm. Traffic was heavier than this morning!

 There were some great places for photos. I can't believe how old Janae is looking! Hopefully one of these days she'll start acting her age. 😂

 And finally, Gatlinburg on our way home. It didn't take long for people to start heading out for the night. By 9pm it was pretty peaceful at our end of town.  In our "treehouse" you would never know how close we are to all of this.  I can't wait to get our house finished and start having visitors! 😘

Let the demolition begin!

Today our contractor Isaac got to work on the demolition of our bathroom, along with his worker Terry. Everything has fallen into place with our whole move, along with finding Isaac. Isaac is originally from Indiana and is friends with Brett's friend Matt from Wildman. When Brett told Matt that we were moving down here, Matt told him about Isaac. It has been so helpful having someone that we know we can trust to help us out! 

Here are some pictures of what went down today. This is Terry doing the work. He is hilarious. He told us that he wants to open a store where you pay to throw things like glass plates and hit appliances and things with baseball bats and axes. He was dead serious about this! He said they do this in other countries. I had no idea, but maybe some of you have heard of such a thing. 😁

We have found that people in Tennessee like to hang chairs on the walls. We're not really sure why exactly, but we had one in our stairwell that we could not reach. Isaac had a ladder and was able to get it down for us. Brett hung a sign on it with Isaac's name on it and said that was his assigned seat now. 😊

That space will soon be the new home of one of Brett's deer heads. Brett is currently painting the walls there, which totally freaks me out! The ding dong thought it was a good idea to stand at the top of the ladder in flip flops to paint. I put him in his place!😂

While all this work was being done inside the house, I ran a few errands. Our new bank is right down at the bottom of our hill. Quite handy!

Everyone there is so friendly. It really is true that people in the south are a special kind of friendly. Southern hospitality is really a thing! 

Also at the bottom of our hill is our new go-to place for fast and fairly cheap food. Unfortunately, I'm afraid to walk down there since we have seen that bear cub every day since we got here! 

After we are done with the majority of our renovations, we have vowed to get back to our healthy lifestyle. It's just so hard when you're working on every room of your house! Fast and easy is our friend right now.

One of the few areas that we aren't doing much with is what I call the family room. We got the curtains hung, which really makes it feel like home, and bought a rug . We will eventually hang the tv on the wall and get new furniture, but those things are on hold for a little while. Brett's little desk will be moved out of there too! 😊

We finished out tonight with another trip to Lowe's. It was our most expensive one so far, but we think we have just about everything now. As we were leaving, Brett said "Look, you can see the mountains from Lowe's. You don't see that every day!" You do down here though! 

It's a lot easier to appreciate God's  creation here for some reason. It's so beautiful and peaceful, even amidst all of the craziness down here. 😊 We have noticed that the traffic has died down a lot these past couple of days. I guess with schools starting back up, less people are vacationing. It sure makes trips to the store a lot faster!

For those of you who are thinking about coming down and visiting us, my in-laws and the kids highly recommend you visit a place called Wonderworks. They were there from 11:30-9:30 and didn't get to do everything. There were ropes courses, laser tag, a magic show, a simulated roller coaster and much more that I haven't heard about yet, I'm sure! I'm jealous I didn't get to go!

My house is a wreck...

More of the same today... Painting, painting, painting. The day wouldn't be complete without a $500 trip to Lowe's in the evening. Third one in a row! Brett called me at least twice while I was there to add to the list. I will be glad when the renovations are complete!

This is what I returned to after my trip to Lowe's:

Lazy cat! She is lucky she is pretty! The cats seem to think that since we have extra bunk beds, they each get their own bed now. If you know me at all, you know that I am not an animal person at all, and even I thought this was pretty cute. 😊

My in-laws must think I'm working them too hard, because this sign also appeared while I was gone:

All joking aside, they have been a HUGE help to us. Diana has painted closets and bedrooms and Randy has installed all of my lighting and fans. Along with many other things! I think they thought they were coming here for a vacation before school starts back up. Oops! 😂

Here was the list I started with today:

Not too bad! There are some other things that we finished that I didn't even write down, so I'm pretty excited about all of the progress we are making! Too bad my living room currently looks like this though!

Yikes! As we always say though, it has to get worse before it can get better. 😁