Showing posts with label extreme home makeover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extreme home makeover. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2011
More on the Big Reveal
Vanessa Brown is our sweet friend that nominated us for our makeover. She recently blogged here about the experience and included some more pictures and a fun video of the big reveal when the boys were shown their new room. I hope you take the time to check it out and leave her some comment love. She is amazing and we are so thankful for all she did to make it happen for us. She is a busy mom of three little ones and a pastor's wife so she sacrificed so much time and energy on our behalf and we are blessed!
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Big Reveal
We are so amazed and blown away about what God did in our home through our incredible friends this week. They so selflessly and tirelessly served us and the result is beautiful:) Lauren Mendenhall is the talented and wonderful designer that gave her time and talents to this project. She posted some of her thoughts and pictures of the before and after on her blog. So check out Amen Life + Style Inspired Design blog.
**I do have to add a slight addendum to Lauren's blog post. We do NOT have our referral yet. We have requested two children with the younger hopefully being a girl. The babies home from which we are adopting normally only takes children up to 3 years of age. So in planning the room Lauren did plan for an infant girl and a toddler boy. We do pray that we will have our referral by the end of the year but the timing is certainly the Lord's! But praise Jesus we are now ready, ready, ready for both of them:)**
I will post a link to Leading and Loving It when Vanessa posts about her perspective as well. And soon I will post more on our thoughts. I am pretty consumed with trying to move back into the two rooms. It is requiring lots of organizing, shifting, dumping and rearranging. It will be a process! I am also packing because while Mark is away in California for training, Mom, Dad and I are headed to Atlanta on Wednesday for Catalyst! I am super excited:) God is heaping some extra special blessings on my plate these days and I am thankful!
**I do have to add a slight addendum to Lauren's blog post. We do NOT have our referral yet. We have requested two children with the younger hopefully being a girl. The babies home from which we are adopting normally only takes children up to 3 years of age. So in planning the room Lauren did plan for an infant girl and a toddler boy. We do pray that we will have our referral by the end of the year but the timing is certainly the Lord's! But praise Jesus we are now ready, ready, ready for both of them:)**
I will post a link to Leading and Loving It when Vanessa posts about her perspective as well. And soon I will post more on our thoughts. I am pretty consumed with trying to move back into the two rooms. It is requiring lots of organizing, shifting, dumping and rearranging. It will be a process! I am also packing because while Mark is away in California for training, Mom, Dad and I are headed to Atlanta on Wednesday for Catalyst! I am super excited:) God is heaping some extra special blessings on my plate these days and I am thankful!
Friday, September 30, 2011
Is it Christmas?
I have SO much to say but I must keep it short...I am afraid I won't be able to sleep tonight because tomorrow may be one of the most exciting nights of my year! The past week has been big for us. Mark traveled to Atlanta for the week for training for his new job, praise the Lord! We are thankful:) Eli and Haig have been battling pneumonia, which meant 7 doctor visits in 12 days and one chest x-ray. McCall was sick too but not as badly. They are all on their second round of antibiotics. but we seem to be on the upswing.
Well, in the midst, of that semi-normal chaos....came an amazing blessing:) On Wed. Sept 21st, Vanessa Brown (our pastor's wife and dear friend) left me a message saying she had some exciting news.
When I finally talked to her she told me that she had nominated us on the website www.leadingandlovingit.com for an extreme home mini-makover...and WE WON!!! You can read the post here that announced we won and her wonderful nomination letter. Can you say oh my goodness?!?
So we were awarded $2,500 to prepare for the arrival of our new little ones. The plan is to make our playroom into a room for Haig and Eli, and make the current upstairs, boys room into a nursery. God has so beautifully orchestrated an amazing team of volunteers and so many little details to make this happen. Vanessa put on her foreman's hat and took the lead. She asked Lauren Mendenhall a designer from Charleston if she would help and we are so thankful she said yes! She came last Saturday and spent some time with us and the boys at the house talking about things we like and dislike and getting a feel for our needs and what we envision.
Vanessa asked if I would be willing to give them my preferences and then just let them go with it. I willingly agreed:) I'm a simple girl. I go naturally for function and comfort. I love pretty, and artistic and design but that doesn't come naturally to me. So decorating and the thought of ME having to make decisions like that makes my blood pressure go WAY up! What an amazing gift to have someone gifted and talented like Lauren come in and hear my heart and decorate based on that!! And then Vanessa with her incredible gifts of organization and leadership come in and organize my space and rally the troops! And as much as we are preparing for the little ones that will eventually come into our home...decorating for them and spending the money needed to truly redecorate or add on to a room...the funds for that just weren't available, honestly, nor the energy or vision. So this makeover is providing a miracle. It is turning what we have, water ....into wine!
Yesterday the heavy duty hard work started and volunteers were at our house from 7:30 a.m. until probably 1 a.m. the next day. They were back again at 7:45 a.m. this morning! We spent the night at our wonderful friends, the Franks house last night and this weekend we are bedding down with Grandma Pat. They want to surprise us as much as possible with the final product:)
Today when I would drive down Edisto Drive there were cars in every spot possible in the driveway and yard. There were anywhere between 15-20 volunteers at the house at any given time. People made lunch and snacks and brought food for the volunteers. I was planning to do that today but before I could finish the plan I was told it was taken care of. What amazes me is how God is preparing the way for Hope and whoever else He brings into our family. He is already writing their story through the sacrificial efforts and love of people...our friends, our church community....and we don't even have a picture of Hope yet! I get to share with our little ones some day that Mommy and Daddy didn't just pray for, work for, sacrifice for and prepare for them...a whole community made the way for them.
We are the recipients of unmerited favor...we are so thankful and overwhelmed at God's grace and goodness. Yesterday we also received the wonderful news that the first two families to apply for adoption from the Tender Hearts Babies Home, which is the home from which we are adopting, received a positive verdict from the judge. That means they are in Uganda now with their children and will be allowed to bring them home to the US next week. This is huge! Our process could not move past the paperwork and referral stage until these families came home. We are SO thankful!
So the mini-makeover plan is to be done sometime tomorrow so they can do the "reveal" to the family. We are truly thrilled. I just can't stop smiling:) Seriously!! So check back here tomorrow night or at the latest hopefully Monday for pics of before and AFTER!!! OH MY GOODNESS I CAN HARDLY WAIT!!! I feel like it is Christmas!!! Thank you Leading and Loving It!! Thank you Vanessa!! Thank you Jesus!!
Well, in the midst, of that semi-normal chaos....came an amazing blessing:) On Wed. Sept 21st, Vanessa Brown (our pastor's wife and dear friend) left me a message saying she had some exciting news.
When I finally talked to her she told me that she had nominated us on the website www.leadingandlovingit.com for an extreme home mini-makover...and WE WON!!! You can read the post here that announced we won and her wonderful nomination letter. Can you say oh my goodness?!?
So we were awarded $2,500 to prepare for the arrival of our new little ones. The plan is to make our playroom into a room for Haig and Eli, and make the current upstairs, boys room into a nursery. God has so beautifully orchestrated an amazing team of volunteers and so many little details to make this happen. Vanessa put on her foreman's hat and took the lead. She asked Lauren Mendenhall a designer from Charleston if she would help and we are so thankful she said yes! She came last Saturday and spent some time with us and the boys at the house talking about things we like and dislike and getting a feel for our needs and what we envision.
Vanessa asked if I would be willing to give them my preferences and then just let them go with it. I willingly agreed:) I'm a simple girl. I go naturally for function and comfort. I love pretty, and artistic and design but that doesn't come naturally to me. So decorating and the thought of ME having to make decisions like that makes my blood pressure go WAY up! What an amazing gift to have someone gifted and talented like Lauren come in and hear my heart and decorate based on that!! And then Vanessa with her incredible gifts of organization and leadership come in and organize my space and rally the troops! And as much as we are preparing for the little ones that will eventually come into our home...decorating for them and spending the money needed to truly redecorate or add on to a room...the funds for that just weren't available, honestly, nor the energy or vision. So this makeover is providing a miracle. It is turning what we have, water ....into wine!
Yesterday the heavy duty hard work started and volunteers were at our house from 7:30 a.m. until probably 1 a.m. the next day. They were back again at 7:45 a.m. this morning! We spent the night at our wonderful friends, the Franks house last night and this weekend we are bedding down with Grandma Pat. They want to surprise us as much as possible with the final product:)
Today when I would drive down Edisto Drive there were cars in every spot possible in the driveway and yard. There were anywhere between 15-20 volunteers at the house at any given time. People made lunch and snacks and brought food for the volunteers. I was planning to do that today but before I could finish the plan I was told it was taken care of. What amazes me is how God is preparing the way for Hope and whoever else He brings into our family. He is already writing their story through the sacrificial efforts and love of people...our friends, our church community....and we don't even have a picture of Hope yet! I get to share with our little ones some day that Mommy and Daddy didn't just pray for, work for, sacrifice for and prepare for them...a whole community made the way for them.
We are the recipients of unmerited favor...we are so thankful and overwhelmed at God's grace and goodness. Yesterday we also received the wonderful news that the first two families to apply for adoption from the Tender Hearts Babies Home, which is the home from which we are adopting, received a positive verdict from the judge. That means they are in Uganda now with their children and will be allowed to bring them home to the US next week. This is huge! Our process could not move past the paperwork and referral stage until these families came home. We are SO thankful!
So the mini-makeover plan is to be done sometime tomorrow so they can do the "reveal" to the family. We are truly thrilled. I just can't stop smiling:) Seriously!! So check back here tomorrow night or at the latest hopefully Monday for pics of before and AFTER!!! OH MY GOODNESS I CAN HARDLY WAIT!!! I feel like it is Christmas!!! Thank you Leading and Loving It!! Thank you Vanessa!! Thank you Jesus!!
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