Becoming Parents

A lot has happened since our last blog update in March!

Since that post, we closed on the house, moved in, got pregnant, and life has stayed in a constant whirlwind of adventure.

We have plans of doing a home tour for you with pictures (mostly for us to document the progress, but also for those interested in the Sugarberry Cottage house plans), and we also want to continue to document important parts of our life, because the online journaling is a fun way to look back on our lives and remember how events unfolded. 

So, that brings us to today's topic-WE ARE PARENTS!

World--meet Bellamie Dale Cooper. 

Our beautiful girl was born on 12/21/17 at 12:14am.  6 lbs. 3oz. and 18 inches long. She was three weeks early, and her timing was amazing. She's perfect. We are in love, and we had no idea what we were missing out on until she joined our family. Her middle name is in honor and memory of my grandmother. Dale was her first name. She was such a beautiful woman who inspired me and supported me, and I can think of no better way to tell her how much I still love her and miss her than by naming my daughter after her. 

Our delivery experience was super calm and uneventful (which I am so grateful for). A teacher by profession, I was so worried about missing out on time with my kiddos or having to abruptly leave them hanging, so I jokingly said I just wanted to make it to Christmas Break. With her due date being Jan. 11th, I even wanted to go back to work for a few days after the break. But, our sweet baby girl had other plans. 

We had a half day for our last day before break. I said bye to my students, cleaned up the classroom, laid everything out like I wasn't going to be back after the break(I just had that feeling), and then headed home. I had been feeling super tired and icky all morning. I felt off and just wanted to take a nap when I got home. I managed to sleep for about an hour, because I was having very sporadic cramps. I called the doctors and they told me to monitor it, so I did but they ranged from 3 minutes apart to 20 minutes apart so I really didn't know what to do. I was hungry, so I got up to take make something for lunch. When I stood up, my water broke. I called my husband(who is a firefighter and was at work), and then I called my mother-in-law(who lives next door). Both got to our house speedy quick! I called the doctors, and they told me to come by the office so I could get checked. 

Everyone says that when your water breaks it is NOT like you see in the movie, BUT I feel like mine totally was! It was a hot mess! We got to the doctors, and I was only 1cm, but with my water broken; they sent me straight on to the hospital. We DID have to register which took forever, because I hadn't had my registration appointment yet. 

We were checked in and in a delivery room by 3:30pm. I progressed way quicker than what anyone expected, and I had to keep asking them to check me because I kept feeling a lot of pressure. When we first got there, the Hubs had asked them when they thought we might expect to have a baby and was told 6:00ish am the next day. Apparently, Bellamie didn't like that answer! She came much quicker than that! I am grateful for a successful epidural, minimal pushing, a husband who was perfect, and a nursing staff of literally the sweetest ladies. 

Our life has changed forever, and we are so excited about this new adventure. Little Miss has lots of sass already, is a great snuggler, and has touched our hearts in ways that I know neither of us could have ever imagined. 

2014 was the year of the engagement, 

2015 was the year of the wedding,

2016 was the year of the house,

2017 was the year of our pregnancy,

2018 is going to be the year of the baby. 

Here we go!!

Happy New Year! 

March House Update #1

Ready for picture overload? We have had SO much happen over  the last few weeks that it might be best to just show you in pictures so here we go!

Countertops go in on Tuesday of this week. We had a super tight budget yet we really wanted granite countertops. So, we were extremely fortunate when we stumbled across this white/grey/black color! It is as close to my "dream white" as we could get, and we can't wait to see what it looks like with the rest of the kitchen!

Finding a farmhouse sink was NOT as easy as I thought it would be. Thanks to the internet, lots of research and Wayfair, we were able to find an apron front, fireclay sink that looks amazing in the kitchen!! You can find the exact sink here. 

The count down to peeling off the protective plastic for our cabinets is ON!

Before our wallpaper attempt......

This gorgeous wallpaper was worth every penny!!! We bought it through Anthropologie. 

I can't even! The light shining through the window hits the wall just right!

After our wallpaper attempt.....

I am on the hunt for a big, chunky, oval-shaped, bronze mirror! 

The shower heads and tub faucets are going in soon as soon as the plumbing gets finished. 

The stair treads have been stained and installed along with the iron posts and railings. The fireplace was grouted this week as well. Eventually, we will do the same subway tile and black grout for the kitchen backsplash. 

The first night that the electric was hooked up was so fun! We may have run all over the house(for real...we ran we were so excited) and turned off and on the lights. 

And since we always try to end with one of our sunset pictures that we are so in awe of...here is the latest! The sunsets from our cove have been on POINT the last few weeks! We are ready for Spring. 

January House Update

Things have been moving quickly at Cooper's Cottage the last few weeks. I wish that we had paused for a moment to take better pictures, but I am excited to share some of the progress that has occurred! 

We are so excited about our kitchen. Our kitchen, dining room, and living room are all one open-concept space. We are thrilled that adding the cabinets does not close off the space, and we can't wait for appliances to go in and for counter tops to be added.  

We are obsessed with the hardwood floors. We went with floors that had a ton of character. It is going to be fun keeping them clean! :)

They started working on doors and trim as well. They will be painted white to match the trim soon. 

This is our master shower and David's project. The shower will have two wall shower heads and a rain down shower head. We will add grout as soon as we can decide on a color! 

The sunrises and sunsets are just gorgeous out at the house. I can't wait to watch them from our porch one day! 

Spray Foam Insulation

When building (and reading about building) a house, there seem to be two main things that are always listed as the two most important parts of the building process---windows and insulation. After a lot of research, we decided to go with a method called "flash and batt" for our insulation in our Cooper Cottage. Flash and batt insulation is where they go through the house and spray closed cell foam everywhere that you would normally put insulation. Then, they cover the spray foam with a layer of conventional R13/19/23 batt.  

I discovered that spray foam is still a controversial topic. I ran across a lot different opinions when researching it on the Internet and taking to builders.  Because of the mixed reviews, I really did my homework on this one.  Everyone honestly had different feelings about it, both for and against.  Builders and home owners either seem to love it or hate it. Here are some pros and cons that we would like to share with those also curious about the spray foam process:

*Saves you money on your energy bills

*Spray foam is strong and will make your house stronger

*Does not allow water and moisture infiltration

*Helps reduce dust and pollen infliltration

  

*Spray foam MUST be installed properly. 

*Some have reported that air leaks have caused wood to rot

*More expensive

The installers sprayed a cardboard box before the walls to set their spray gun and once dry, I could jump up and down on this box and it would not budge.  Multiple YouTube videos also show how much force it takes to pull boards apart when sprayed with closed cell foam.  This foam has made our house extremely strong. With our house built on a hill, we get a lot of wind. We have stood in the house during heavy wind and can barely hear it thanks to the spray foam. 

This is our master bath, and you can see how it covered around the water pipes.

In the upstairs bedroom, you may be able to notice that there is part of the roof line that will be  part of the ceiling in the bedrooms. In these areas, we used open cell foam in order to get the most insulation possible against that black metal roof!

If it was a wood area, I had them spray it.  This was to help with any small holes that may have been left from the framing stage. 

Here you can see them putting in the "batt" part after the spray foam, they used different levels of R-value insulation depending on where it was going in the house. 

Here is the open cell foam I mentioned earlier.  

At the end of the day, we are really happy with how it turned out!

-David 

Cooper Cottage Room Inspirations

Now that the drywall is up, kitchen cabinets are to be delivered soon, appliances have been ordered, and our contractors are ready; we have been working hard to piece together the flooring, paint colors, and other room components. 

Here is a peek at some of our inspiration boards that we used to help us match up our flooring and paint choices with our overall room themes. 

 This was hard, y'all! David and I were NOT born with the gene to "see" or just "know" this stuff so we are relying on our gut instincts to see us through! If it feels right then we go with it. 

We settled on a color palette that was full of varying shades of soft gray, rich whites, and calming accent colors such as the sea salt. Our flooring is a solid hardwood hand scraped oak. 

 Our lighting resembles a hodgepodge of "industrial" meets "farmhouse" meets "we liked it so let's go with it"! :) After all, you have to pick what makes you happy. YOU are the one living in the house all day and night.

 I(Sarah) am currently obsessed with anything gold, black and vintage school house. So dreamy. Deer antlers, big calligraphy, and flowers are all mixed in there as well. I am sure there is a poor designer and interior decorator out there that would freak out if they read this. Hehe.

The wallpaper I would like for our guest bath makes me DROOL! Like I can't even tell you how obsessed I am with it. You can check it out here. I would love to put the wallpaper on the wall where the sink will be with a wood planked wall on the toilet side of the room.