Crazy Month

It is remarkable to me that Christmas was just barely over a month ago.  And my internet is finally consistently on.  Doesn't take much rain for cable to go out - last week was a long frustrating week, internet wise.  We have been busy this past month!

• Moved the kids into one room
• Created sewing room (not quite done-have to finish kitchen before I can finish sewing room as we are currently storing our kitchen on the shelves I will be using in the garage)
• Had Christmas
• Had New Years
• Snow trip
• Began Kitchen redo
• Kitchen redo set-back (cry)
• Kitchen redo progress (pictures coming soon)
• and one month went by

February consists of much travel.  Before we know it it is going to be summer time.  I need to get my garden in, but I just might run out of steam if we keep this pace up!

Help From the Big Guy

How soon is too soon to bust out the "Elf on the Shelf"?

And work it for all it is worth?

I am seeking reinforcements.

Call Off The Search Party

Some of you may remember this post where I chonicled the missing loves of my daughter and the follow-up strip search of my house. It is with great relief and honest-to-goodness shock that I am able to report to you that three favorites have indeed been found. All together. By my daughter. In her brother's room. Inside this fabulous little gift box.

Do you want to know many times I have moved that box?

Too many times.

And not once did it feel like there was anything in it.

Damn Beanie Babies.

Now we are a family of twins.

Some cleaner than others.

If anyone placed bets on how long it would take to find them, 11 months would have been the winning bet. ELEVEN MONTHS.

Before and After

OK...I guess I was a little too anxious to start my project, as I do not have any proper BEFORE pictures showing the entire area. But those of you who have been here, know what a cramped space the kids and I shared for my office and their community play area. But below are a few pictures to give you an idea of the space and the color before the make over.

This picture is what the area looked like when we bought the house, taken on our inspection day. The large bookcase stayed and we filled it to the brim with photo albums, kids books, files and stuff.

Here you can see my mini desk in the background (behind the beautiful family!). With the printer on it, leaving me not much work space.

And another shot of the "toy closet" and book shelf, my desk chair and the kids table.

So, a brief run down of what I did...

1. Husband left town early Monday morning and I decided to complete a project while he was gone. So the first day I purchased everything I would need: paint and rollers. We like to paint, so we have all the tarps and pans, etc., etc...I am all about instant gratification and painting a room gives it to me!

Prior to him leaving though, I moved the majority of toys out of the "toy closet" and into their bedrooms. The toy explosion fallout seemed to be growing exponentially everyday, so I decided to minimize the fallout by moving ground zero to their rooms. The "toy closet" is now my sewing closet :)

2. Started to do a little bit while the kids napped, moved most of the books outside and started clearing out junk.

3. Put the kids to bed and got to work. The first night I painted the dining room area of the room. I got two coats on and one coat of cutting in. Whew. Time to go bed.

4. The next day I finished clearing off the book shelf while the kiddos were napping. But ran into a problem getting the humongous bookcase out into the back yard. (My plan was to cut this bookcase in half...putting the lower two shelves into SO room and then mounting the top three shelves to the wall above my desk.) Well it was bigger than the door going out to the backyard, so I had to call my dad for help. I thought I was going to have to cut it in half to get it out the door, and was afraid to use the circular saw on our dining room floor - I knew it would not end well. Fortunately my dad was thinking more clearly than I was at the moment and suggested we turn it on to its side. WOW, why didn't I think of that! - and to think I care for two children on a regular basis - scary!

5. Put the kiddos to bed and began the arduous task of priming the other side of the room. I primed because of the backside of the fireplace and the stucco, I wanted to make sure the interior paint I was using would cover up the terra cota color. I got the fireplace covered in the primer and the two coats of black paint on the "work space" walls. Yes, that's right, I said black paint!

6. The next day I dropped my kids at preschool and Papa's house and made the 2.5 hour drive one way to the Palo Alto Ikea to get the items I needed for my project. (Yes, tj and crew, THAT Ikea.) The nice thing about IKEA's website is that it can tell you exactly where in the get-it-yourself-warehouse the items that you want are! So you don't have to waste any time going through the showroom. So, I spent about 45 minutes in Ikea getting my items, checked out and drove 2.5 hours back home. But this night I took off. We went to the beach to spend the night with Gabrielle. It was fun and a nice break from painting until 11pm! And, yes, the next day was as freezing as it looks, but it was still the beach and we were there with friends!

7.Thursday night I cut in with primer around the fireplace and wall area and got the first coat of the off-white paint on.

8. Friday night was a long night...Hubby was coming home late Saturday night, so I had a lot to get done. The final coat on the fireplace and adjacent walls (that fireplace was bitch to paint because the surfaces were all so uneven. But I bought my new favorite paint rollers at OSH, they are sponges that were sliced so that they could get into the grooves. I didn't realize I was buying them at the time, I thought I was just getting the regular thick nap roller. But I am extremely happy with my purchase - they rocked!) Anyway, this night was a late one (1am) but the painting was completed!

9. Saturday morning was the day to assemble all of the Ikea items. I put the two desks together and they looked great. So exciting! Then I got the Billy bookcases together. I decided to stop before mounting anything on the walls. I had to make some changes to my list while in Ikea and now everything didn't fit exactly how I had envisioned. So, I decide to wait for EO and to get his opinion on everything thing else. And, I was exhausted! I could barely lift my arms, so there was no way me and the screwdriver were going to be getting along!

EO got home (finally, no thanks to the storm in Chicago) and was happy with the painting (and more happy that he didn't have to do any of it!) He was maybe a little less happy with the fact that I had decided to save us money (happy about that part!) by reusing the existing bookcase, but to cut it down (less happy because project for him!) But he embraced the vision and we got it done and mounted on the wall this week. Plus SO is VERY happy with her new book shelf in her room. And in full disclosure, I did break the garage door in the process of all of this (because I was stupid!), but fortunately for me it was not as bad as I thought it was and EO fixed in a few minutes. Damn, he is handy! Gotta love a man in a tool belt! (but it had made a really loud BANG, so I thought I was screwed!)

So with out further adieu...the AFTER:

I must say, I could not be happier with how it turned out. Even with two of the walls painted black, the area is so much lighter. EO thought it extremely out of character for me to be painting walls white (I am usually the anti-white), but after three years of not being able to decide what color to paint the room, white was the best I could come up with.

The kids have a bigger table now to sit at so they are not on top of each other. And I love sitting at my desk doing WORK! So it could not have turned out much better! Now all I need is a new chair...

Really, C'mon

Really? Over a month since anyone last posted? What is the matter with us? Is it because we have the winter blahs, your entire family is sick with the stupid cold that is going around, you're depressed about the nations (not to mention your own) financial situation?

I don't know about you, but for me the answer YES...to all three.

But the end is in sight...SPRING, HERE WE COME! I am. Officially. Over winter. It is my least favorite season. Sure, I like to take the kiddos up to the snow, dress them up in their snowsuits (that they freaking grow out of EVERY year) and take some seasonal photos. But really, that is enough of winter for for me...so around January 15th, I'm done. But the sun is shining, it is in the 60's to 70's and my kids played outside in the backyard for HOURS this weekend. I am starting to be one happy mommy. I will be a little happier when the last of this snot-monster-barking-cough-bitch-of-a-cold has finally left my house. I went on an exorcism mission yesterday, me and the disinfectant...and the box of Kleenex that I can't seem to stay too far away from!

But I feel better today, SO feels better today and I think VO feels better today. Of course, EO woke up with a sore throat this morning...I thought he was going to escape, but it does not appear likely. That's ok, he is the last one and then we are DONE. Because the sun is shining and the air is warming and all germs will be banished from our house by the anti-bacterial gods.

As far as the last thing, I have come to the conclusion that I have a sickness that cannot be treated with anti-bacterial wipes, zicam or tylenol (narcotics, maybe could work but...I don't think we want a TOO happy mommy). I want to open another business. I had this same obsession last year at this time...but it went away when I convinced myself that I was crazy. But now it is back and I am starting to think it is a good idea...AGAIN. Hopefully the sun will come out and warm things up and melt this crazy idea out of my head. We can only hope.

VIVA LA SPRING!

The First Birthday

SIGH.

It is with a little bit of both happiness and sadness that I must report that we have celebrated our last first birthday! There has been drama at each first birthday party...which makes me happy that we will not have to do any more and sad that we will not have the opportunity to redeem ourselves and have a drama-free first birthday.

At SO's first (a big blow out mind you, where we invited everyone we had ever met!), we didn't think about handing a one year old a cupcake, that was essentially, on fire, with a big ol' number one candle. Of course she reached for the flame, and of course her dad grabbed her hand so that she did not get burned. But she got scared, started screaming and did not recover until after her nap. It was still fun and memorable - but that is what we remember, vividly, from that one.

Which brings us to yesterday...VO's first birthday extravaganza. This one was MUCH smaller than the first...just family. Which was probably a good thing in hind sight. It was sort of monkey themed...we had monkey invitations, banana cake (he LOVES banana) with yellow swiss buttercream frosting topped with blue monkeys from a barrel. As I was making the frosting, I definitely recognized the amount of egg whites going into the frosting. SO had a sensitivity to egg whites when she was a baby and only recently started being able to eat them without her chin turning red - she is now three. It always cleared up really fast on her, but I still had not tried to give VO eggs yet, at all (my first mistake). So, I took this into consideration when putting the frosting on VO's little cupcake, I just smeared a very thin layer on top (my second mistake), then topped it with the big number 1 candle and a little monkey. This is what his little cupcake looked like.

VO enjoyed it very much. He enjoyed the singing, and mommy was on top of the burning candle this time blowing it out right about the time he noticed it. And he MOWED the cupcake. This is what he looked while enjoying his birthday.



And this is what he looked like after.



Holy CRAP. Can you say *alergic reaction*? There is nothing like giving your 1 year old a chemical shower (so to speak) to get the frosting off his face as soon as possible. And then having daddy rub his face down with hydrocortizone while mommy makes the call to the pediatrician to find out his benadryl dosage! Good times. Good times.

Bad mommy.

So it is with the O's and first birthdays: drama, crisis, medical emergencies...presents! All turned out fine and he even started to be himself and play with all of his new toys once the benadryl kicked in, and his sister let him.

My Barbie Dream House

So about 2 years ago my husband and I were (thankfully!) coming to the end of a nine month search for a new house. Long story short, we had sold our first house and did not have a new one to go to. We rented a house in, what I did not realize at the time, was the ghetto! Again with the short story...people carrying guns around nonchalantly outside, prostitutes propositioning my husband in our driveway, tenants leaving their homes in the middle of the night...all of these things happened, I am not even slightly exaggerating. All of this with a one year old in the house. THE-LONGEST-NINE-MONTHS-OF-MY-LIFE. Yes, longer than being preggo. So, right before we found (and purchased) the house we currently own, we came upon what I like to call "My 1970's Mansion" (aka My Barbie Dream House).


It was a spectacular mid-century modern home. Architecturally interesting with a pool and a WHOLE LOTTA POTENTIAL. And by potential, I mean a whole lotta work. We made an offer that was (thankfully) not accepted because I would have to still be working in order to pay my share of the mortgage that I happily agreed to pay in order to call this atomic ranch my own! As far as the work, I figure "No Problem." The hubby is handy and I am no slouch myself. We could get this done! Well, back to the part of our offer not being accepted. So we moved on, put an offer in our wonderful home and it was accepted. Of course while we were in escrow, we saw that the Barbie Dream house was re-listed at THE PRICE WE HAD OFFERED! Maddening, but we were in escrow by then, happy with our choice and my husband was not about to lose our substantial deposit on the house. So...moving on.

The 1970's Mansion was sold and we were happy in our new house, only wondering every once in awhile if the new owners were doing any of the fabulous things we had planned to do with the property. And then it went into foreclosure. I found it two nights ago on the internet - for $200,000.00 less than what we had originally offered!...(why was I looking a real estate online, you ask? Because I am obsessed with it. If I had the cash flow to support a couple of mortgages and pay construction crews I would be like that crazy Jeff Lewis guy on Flipping Out, except for the crazy coffee temperature thing - LOVE HIM!) And God bless my husband, when I showed him the treasure I had found on the interweb...he didn't call me crazy, he didn't say NO!, he jumped right on my Barbie Dream House bandwagon and we started to come up with ways to get out of our house without losing any money and remodeling My (ahem, I mean OUR) 1970's Mansion in our heads.

So to answer your questions, no the owners did not do anything fabulous to the house. Yes, calls have been made to the realtor - who I know has missed us the last two years. Yes, calls and emails have been sent to people who may or may not be interested in buying our house. Yes, calls have been made to the mortgage guy to see what we can do in light of the new difficulties placed on those of us who are self-employed and try to get a mortgage. And with all of the turmoil and roller-coasted riding in this thing we call life, we can't complain because the hubby and I DO-IT-TO-OURSELVES!

We made a list last night of everything that would eventually need to be done to the house...it is extensive. We prioritized:

1. what would have to be done right away (a.k.a. the SHORT list)
2. what we would just have to live with for awhile (a.k.a. the LONG list)

More to come on the possible uprooting of the O family from comfortableness to living in a construction zone...and if you know anyone who might want to buy a pretty cool house with a great backyard...send them my way :).

Semi-Retired

So, I am semi-retired. I worked the last couple of days prepping for the wedding I am helping with tomorrow. Needless to say, I am a little wiped out. So, the hubby was holding the infant who was being pretty fussy. I go and get the pacifier and walk over in my fog to put it in his mouth (the infant), but I seriously tried to put it in my husband's mouth. I am sure you can imagine the look on my husband's face. SORRY, I am tired! He told me I had to put this on the blog because he thinks I am crazy!