Relax, it took our parents years!

While looking at our front yard the other day, I realized that it was time to revamp something we had done previously. It was time to do something outside anyway because it's the time of year when it's not too hot and not too cold, and you can stand to be outside for lenghthy periods of time without being uncomfortable. I also have a rule about alternating inside and outside improvements to the house to keep everything on an even keel. Here's what we had done previously in the yard. Just after we moved in, I purchased two boxes of landscape lights because I wanted some and they were on sale. They were the wired, plug in type because sometimes it's not sunny and your solar lights don't charge and when you come in at night the lights have about the wattage of a lightning bug and you trip on the sidewalk trying to get to the front door. We had these lights for about a year and a half. In the box. In the shed. That's a good place for them, right? No, I didn't think so either. So we decided to do a late fall project last year and put the lights in the yard. We plotted where we'd want our eventual flower bed to go, and installed the lights according to what were envisioning for the future so that we wouldn't have to redo the lights. To cover the cords for the lights, we bought several bags of mulch and made a fake flowerbed. Classy, huh? It actually didn't look too bad until this spring when the grass started growing. You can't mow or weedeat in mulch, at least not without significant risk of injury to yourself and anything in the general vicinity, from flying pieces of bark. The grass that was growing in the mulch was some of our "real and good grass" (with very hearty roots which makes it very hard to pull up) that apparently the previous homeowner kinda sorta seeded with in hopes that it would eventually spread and cover the yard. This has not worked to date. In fact, it makes the yard look stupid because we have a patch of actual grass in the front yard near the house, and then the typical mixed grass consisting mostly of clover and dandelions in the rest of the yard. This real grass takes forever to get green and causes us to have green grass in the typical areas, and a dead lawn in the real area until way late in spring. The real grass, however, is incredibly resilient, and hard to kill. If only it were nice to walk on like our neighbor's lawn (which really deserves the title lawn and not yard). Henry has a goal to someday have a super nice "lawn" with thick soft pretty grass that's nice to walk on. So given that we had this mulched, grassy, well lit area in our yard, I decided that now was the time to re-do it right. I thought about all those yards I've seen where people start things and either do them wrong or don't finish them, and the home owners had such good intentions and the projects had such potential, but in the end the yard looks like crap. I didn't want to be one of those people. I wanted to take care of the project and make it an assett, not a liability. I choose to think that when I make positive improvements to my house, it elevates the standards and standings of my entire neighborhood. I mean c'mon, you've seen the pictures, you know what it looked like before. My neighbors were actually honking and cheering while we cut down trees and painted the house! No joke! Anyway, I have spent the last two days altering this project so that my neighbors won't drive by and think "if only they had... it could have been so nice". I plucked the lights from the grass, raked out the mulch, and started digging scraping. I used my shovel like a sod cutter (which I seriously wished I had) and peeled the grass from the dirt like the rind from an orange. If you have ever done this, you know that it is very hard work. After I removed the grass and most of its roots, I put down a layer of plastic (haha grass, grow through that!) I also installed some of that black plastic edging stuff to provide a barrier between the mulch and the grass- mulch in, grass out, no cross contamination. I had to dig a trench so that I could put it in correctly, and I'll be honest and say that I misused the claw of a hammer for this purpose. To make matters worse for myself, I decided to expand the flower bed and make it go across the front of the house under the big windows. I envision pretty flowers blooming there next year. Henry was kind enough to help me with the last little bit of the project when he got home. I even found a purpose for the grass and dirt that I removed from the flower beds. I used them to fill in weird areas of the yard that don't grow grass for whatever reason. Win win! I have a sunburn because even though I bought two new bottles of sunblock, I neglected to use either of them to mist my exposed body parts. I also have a blister on the palm of my hand (yes I wore gloves, but in the end it did not matter) that I'm nursing by holding the margaritta that Henry made me for a job well done. We were going to get some free mulch from a guy on craigslist but he lived too far away, so tomorrow we will just go buy some. We would have spent the money in gas anyway, and had to shovel the mulch twice on top of that. Next week I will go to a friends house, shovel in hand, to collect some of her monkey grass that I will then transplant into my flowerless flower beds. She says she has too much and doesn't really like it so it helps us both out. I view monkey (and mondo) grass like a ponytail, it doesn't really have much of a wow factor, but it at least looks like you tried. In the midst of all this work, I glanced at some of my neighbor's yards. They are perfectly manacured, with pretty flowers beds with little chotchkies sprinkled in them, and their houses are all well cared for and they have nice mailboxes and lawnboys who do most of the work because they are old now. *sigh* Anyway, I thought about my parents' house and how they always seemed to have everything and I who was just starting out, had seemingly nothing. I borrowed their stuff constantly to help me out in my endeavors. Sometimes, I even returned what I borrowed before they had to ask for it back. I used to think about how they had everything, and it seemed like magic. I felt that I had to do something magical so that I could acquire duplicates of what they had really fast. I heard people say "you're just starting out, you'll get there", but it didn't matter because I wanted it all yesterday. Today it really sunk in what they were saying, even though I knew it all along. It took our parents years of hard work and collecting to get what they have. It didn't happen overnight, it just seemed that way because by the time I was old enough to notice, it was already there. I felt relaxed by this ephiphony. Our neighbor's kid was in their front yard with her prom date, our kids were running around in the yard covered in dirt and grass, and I told Henry that by the time our kids were big enough to go to prom, maybe our yard would look nice enough to take cool pictures in. His response was "well if not, at least the house will be paid for". That wasn't really what I had in mind, but the then thought did occur to me that if we didn't have a mortgage payment, we'd have alot of money each month to invest in things like... relandscaping the yard before the kids go to prom. I'm no longer in a hurry to have a great house or yard immediately. Some people buy one that's great, and that's great for them. Personally, we wanted to put our own stamp on things, and that takes time to both earn the money, and then to complete the projects. We have years to fix up what we have and make it our own, and by then we will be old enough to have it and be able to fully appreciate the satisfaction that our hardwork brings.

More Before and Afters- Let's start with the bathrooms

If you read my post "want vs. get" you saw some the things we have done to the house. We have rehabbed other rooms in the house besides the kitchen, and I started with the bathrooms because they were the most offensive to my decorating taste. 

I think the first room that I did after we moved in was the boys' bathroom. It was covered in this awful wallpaper that looked like an 80 year old woman picked it out, and I just couldn't do that to them.

Here's the before on the boys' bathroom

Here are the "Afters"

 I left the brass on the light fixture and the towel holder. It went more with my "nautical" theme.

This is the ceiling. It doesn't seem very impressive until you consider that it started off with "popcorn" texturing. I hate that junk, so it had to come off.

Now, if you have ever tried to remove popcorn from the ceiling, you know that it's messy work. Here's my method. First, I lightly sprayed sections of the ceiling with a garden sprayer filled with plain water. The garden sprayer saves you a lot of time and pain from hand cramps that occur from repeatedly squeezing a trigger sprayer. You can pump it up and then use the wand to create the mist of your choosing since the tip is adjustable. By the time I had sprayed my section, it was time to scrape. I contstructed this scraping thing to aid me in my efforts. I think there is actually a commercially made thing like this, but I didn't know that at the time. Besides, this was free and I already had everything I needed to make it.  The knife is taped to the bowl at an angle that allows you to scrape without scrubbing the ceiling. The bowl catches about 95% of the stuff you scrape from the ceiling. I had a trash can near by, and I scraped a time or two and then dumped the bowl into the trash can. It really did make things alot easier. You should know that after you remove popcorn from the ceiling, you will probably have to mud the nail/screw divets and possibly the tape joints. You will also have to lightly sand the ceiling with a drywall screen. After that you are ready to prime, which is very important, and paint.

We have 2 other bathrooms in our house, and the half bath downstairs was the next one to go. Get ready for a laugh when you see the before picture.

Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you, that really is shiny marbled wallpaper. There was also a fruit patterned border at the top of the wall. You should also know that the builders of this house were kind enough to put the wallpaper directly on the unprimed, unpainted drywall. They did this in all 3 bathrooms and the kitchen, and I made the mistake of trying to remove in the boys' bathroom. The result was a huge mess that took 5 times longer to deal with than it could/should have. In the remaining two bathrooms, eventhough it's not a great solution, I applied mud to the joints in the wallpaper and sanded them to make them a little more smooth, then I painted right over the wallpaper. It worked in this application because the wallpaper really adheres to the raw drywall and didn't attempt to peel or bubble. If the wallpaper were not adhered to the drywall in this way, I would have removed it as applying paint to wallpaper adhered to a primed or painted wall frequently results in the wallpaper peeling off the wall as the paint is absorbed into the paper and reactivates the adhesive holding the wallpaper to the wall.

Here is the after of the half bath. The color isn't ideal, but I hated that wallpaper and I was out of money in the budget at the time and had this paint color left over from a previous project. I also painted the vanity with left over paint, and added handles to the doors. I also switched out the faucet and added the frame to the mirror. I constructed the frame from all the chair rail we took down in the kitchen.

 

The completion of that project brings me the last bathroom in our house, the master bath.

Here's the before.

 

And here's the after

This is a little project that I had to do in order to not clash.The tile in the master bath is this weird beige-ish color. It has a hint of pink in it that you don't realize is there until you put a paint swatch next to it. It looked awful with every single swatch I tried. Finally, a friend made the comment that if only the baseboard tile and the bullnose on the shower surround could be replaced (because a complete tile job was NOT in the budget) it could make a huge difference and allow for a divide between the existing tile and the new wall color. I didn't have the money to replace the baseboard tile, but I did have the money for spray paint. I got some epoxy spray paint, cleaned the tile to be painted really well with a degreaser and a scotchbrite pad, put paper over the tile I didn't want to paint, and carefully taped it down with painter's tape in a straight line along the grout line. Tada, a divide between the tile color and the wall color.

Well there ya have it, our bathrooms looking a little less crappy than before. :)



Dodging the droplets

It's been raining off and on for days. I'm kinda sick of it as it makes the grass grow faster and need mowing which you can't do because it's either too wet or still raining. In addition to that, it makes the house dark and the sound of rain is so lulling that it makes me want to be seriously unproductive. I'm fighting the urge to spend yet another day on the couch in my pajamas watching tv, so I got up this morning, took a shower, and put on real clothes. That's a start, right? I also realized that we were out of food and therefore, a trip to the grocery was in order. I made my list, and when it looked like the morning storms had passed, I grabbed the baby and headed out. The sun was shining when I went into the store. About 3/4 of the way through, I heard this noise... I was seriously hoping that it was the air conditioning kicking on, but alas it was not. I checked out, pondering how I was going to get to the car in the pouring rain. I knew that if I could just make it there, by opening the trunk on my minivan I would be under a canopy of sorts, and could unload the cart in the dry. Luckily, it was only normal raining by the time I headed out to the door. Here are a few issues that I had while at the store, and while leaving the store:
1. Kinsley is teething and she cried in the store. I consoled her by opening a box of vanilla wafers and letting her eat them while I shopped.
2. I forgot to print coupons, and when the cashier told me how much it was I almost passed out. I am SO watching that couponing show on TLC tonight. Maybe I will get motivated?
3. When getting dressed this morning, I put on my cotton cargo pants and ballet slippers. That would have been fine except that the pants are a little long which I thought "no problem, I'll just roll them up a little", and the rolling up wouldn't stay.
4. Since my pants wouldn't stay rolled up, when I ran out to the car I walked all over them making them a soggy mess.
5. While doing said running with a full cart+ my too long and soggy pants that I was stepping on+ my semi slippery bottomed ballet shoes+ the wet pavement with puddles, I almost couldn't stop my cart when I got to my car.
6. While I did have the foresight to park right next to the buggy return, which I try to do so that I don't have to leave my kids in the car while I return the cart, I didn't think (since it was sunny when I got there) about the fact that I had also parked on a slope and that my left front  tire was almost on the huge drainage grate. This made #5 all the more interesting, and when a car came by it caused a wake in the rushing water going to the grate right under my car. Luckily I was able to jump back out of the way and save my shoes from filling with water.
7. I also realized after opening the trunk, that I had the cargo area filled with baseball junk and the boxes that I needed to take to Goodwill. This forced me to fold down the back seat and try to stack the groceries in such a way that they would not spill onto the floor or crush my bread. Tetris anyone?
After my ordeal with loading the car, I slipped my cart into the return and slammed the trunk. I was thankful that we had a van and I could open the side door and jump in with the baby, thereby staying dry as I buckled her in. By the time I got home, the rain had all but stopped and I was able to unload the car in the dry. There you have it, my failed attempt at shopping between the storms. :-P

The battle of the clothing sizes

I was checking out a friend's blog and she had posted about "vanity sizing" in women's clothing, and I have some stuff to report on this clothing phenomenon. First of all, this mis-sizing issue seems to, for the most part, affect only pants (I don't shop for dresses much so I don't know about them) and not shirts. This is odd to me because people have to (or in most cases should) cover their complete torso somehow, so it seems like you'd notice the shift if you wore a 10 in jeans and an XXL in shirts. I have also found that most pants are so low cut  that they cause what I'm titling "mommy crack" which is similar to "plumbers crack" in that when you bend or squat down to pick up Jr. your too low rise jeans show your backside. It seems that when buying jeans, you have the choice of a 2 inch zipper or a 12 inch zipper which is present in "mom jeans" (think about that "Saturday Night Live" skit) that are so high waisted (and frequently without back pockets) that they touch your bra and make your butt look like it's mishapen, flat, and incredibly long and droopy. While nobody wants to show their crack, they also do not want a butt that looks like a bassett hound.
I find it irritating that I have to buy jeans that have a "waist" sized for my hips. I also hate it when I find a pair of jeans that fit great in the length ,hips, and butt, and then have a huge gap in the waist band that is like a skylight for my underwear. I'm not sure who "designers" are making pants for, but it's not for normal women who have given birth at least once and or have curves greater than the speed bump at Sonic. I find it disturbing and hard to believe that I wear a smaller size in pants now than I did in college given the fact that I weigh about 15 pounds more and have had 3 kids. Maybe I should have kept that cool pair of pants I begged my then boyfriend for at Christmas one year. Speaking of being young, I hate the fact that they make "plus size jrs" pants. Really? If your bottom is big enough to need a 16 plus in pants, maybe you should accept the fact that you are probaly old enough to shop in "womens". Now I realize that there are some young girls out there who are heavy, and that they make these sizes in part so that they don't get their self esteem crushed when they shop for pants, but I think it's also so that older girls can boast about being able to shop in the "little girl's/ jr" section of the store. I'm not boasting, but I am admitting that I have shopped in the girls section of Old Navy because that is sadly one of the only places that I can find pants that fit without having the 2 or 12 inch zipper. The zipper on those pants is at least a solid 4 inches, the rise is to the lower waist, and they have an adjustable waist so that I was able to get pants that fit in the non adjustable parts and adjust the rest without looking stupid or wearing a belt.
So enough about women's pants, let's talk about guys pants for a second. Most people assume that the vanity sizing only applies to women's clothing, but that's not true. Henry and I actually saw a show that was talking about this topic and it reported that men's pants that were labeled 36 actually varied by manufacturer by up to 6 inches. SIX inches people. That was an extreme difference, but they said that most were varied by at least 2-4 inches. I think that's an outrage, especially since men's clothing is supposedly sized and labeled by the actual number of inches around the waistband. They confronted one of the "over-sized" manufacturers about the size difference and they replied that the size difference was there because the style of the jeans required them to be worn around the hips and not the waist. It's bad enough that women have that ridiculous sizing thing that no one understands, but now men have to know if the size is for around their hips or waist? I think that's ridiculous and probably leads to alot of returns because we all know men don't try on pants when they buy them. Crap who am I kidding? Men wouldn't return the pants, they would just wear them anyway and accept the fact that they drooped in the butt.  At least maybe some of the men would wear a belt so that their crack didn't show. *shaking my head*

Different doesn't necessarily mean better

As you know, I have been spiffing up my den/office/work space. I have most things like I want them, but I have been pondering a better storage solution for my fabric. I looked online to see what other people were doing, and strangely enough, most people are just doing what I have already done. That both impressed me that I had a solution that was normal good enough for other people too, and depressed me because I was looking for something cooler. I wanted some sort of specifically designed thing that was awesome yet simple enough that I could rip it off and create my own. I have a plan for the future, but I'm still working out the details... I should also mention that most of what I saw when I googled "fabric organization" was other people's blogs. Again, disappointing.

So here we have what I had originally on the left, compared to what I found online on the right. Pretty similar really...



Photo on the right courtesty of http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/flickr-finds/craft-room-fabric-organization-flickr-find-105839

I also found a few pieces online about managing the individual pieces of fabric.

Courtesy of the following website:

http://funnyfarm-maywehelpyou.blogspot.com/2008/10/wfmw-fabric-organization.html

Her article was very good and you should go check it out.

I also found some similar information on this website:

http://featheredfibers.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/fabric-stash-organization-and-tutorial/

and though I did not follow it (but thought really hard about it), the idea has merit. You just have to see the website to appreciate it. I believe that one of them (or both) made mention of using comic book boards whatever those are. I found that cut up cardboard boxes worked well, but I thought about getting a stack of 8x11 chipboard sheets. I used what I had on hand and it was free and I needed to do something with the boxes anyway. Whatever you use just has to be sturdy enough to stand up when wrapped with fabric.

So after visiting those websites, I came up with this:

I found fabric that I didn't remember I had because it was folded neatly in a box that was on the shelf. Needing this shelf also forced me to sort and cull other things that I had hanging around. Think back to what I said about not needing every single scrap... Doh! Anyway, several handfuls of scraps went into the trash, and all those coardboard boxes that I emptied (and there were alot)? Well, they got cut up to make mini bolt boards to roll the fabric on. I was also able to use up some of my excess of straight pins by using them to secure said fabric to the newly created mini bolts. Since I already had all this organization basically going on already, I have to say that I don't really find that I have much more space. This is where different doesn't necessarily mean better. The space that I freed up was due mostly to the culling and reorganization of things other than fabric. I will say that most things are more visible now, and the fabric on the shelf looks better than the diaper and girl scount cookie boxes that lived on the shelf previously. I even got rid of some of the stuff that was living under my craft table and discovered that once Kinsley is using the big car seat that lives on top of my storage cabinet, I will be able to put almost all of the the remaining items under the table on top of the cabinet.

Sometimes the answer to over diversification is farming out your ideas

I admittedly think about too many things at once all the time. I suppose that's why I like for the house to be quiet, because that's one more thought that I don't have to have all at once. It's a curse sometimes to not be able to turn off my mind. It makes me lose sleep and get in over my head. I've had some really great ideas lately, but I've had to face the fact that it is possible for one to over diversify. Just because I can  doesn't mean that I should. It's been a struggle for me what with the creativity and such. So I've come up with the plan that if I farm out the good ideas that I don't have time for to friends, I get to both help them out and reap the satisfaction that I had a good idea. Sometimes I get fringe benefits from those friends, like free products or services since I hatched the idea in the first place. This farming out of ideas has helped me to focus on the things that I am truly interested in and improve upon those things without the thought that I'm wasting other good ideas. This is a ridiculous notion I suppose, but it makes me feel better so I'm going with it.

Recent "work" projects

As you know, I have an Etsy store that I peddle my wares on. In addition to that, I also make some things for friends and acquaintances. Here are a few of my recent projects. Some I got paid for and some were gifts.

Here are a few burp cloths and a "big sister" bag I did as gifts.

I plan on adding items like this to my Etsy store, and you readers can certainly request anything that I post. :)

 

My nephew's birthday was the other day and he is way into super heroes, so I whipped him up these capes and mask.

The mask is foam with elastic and velcro straps so that it's comfortable, and the capes are twill so they are light but sturdy. The "S" is an embroidered applique. The capes (which I made myself) feature ties sewn to elastic that go around the neck. The elastic provides some give in case he wants to take off the cape but can't untie it, or in case he steps on it or something. I also added mitten clips to the cape in case he doesn't like the string around his neck.

I also got a paid gig doing a few shirts for some ladies in Henry's fire academy group.

I have to admit that I am somewhat impressed by my own work. I applaud my own creativity and talent and I don't mean that in a cocky egotistical way, I am merely acknowledging my skills. I guess some would say that's pride in one's work.

The truck stop in my house

When you have kids, you get alot of advice and warnings such as what what diapers are good and "just wait until..." respectively, but there are some things that people don't tell you. For example, Magic Erasers are a must for crayon marks and grimey fingerprints, and boys are just gross. I realize that last one may depend on the individual child and varies with age, but at some point your son (if you have one) will be gross. They will burp or pass gas at the dinner table and then talk about it and the three dead worms they saw at recess, forcing you to end the conversation if you are to be able to continue eating. They will wipe their noses on their sleeves until it looks like they were attacked by a mob of angry slugs. They will step in something gross and then smell their shoe. While all of those things are gross and disgusting, the thing that they do that grosses me out most is whatever it is that they do in the bathroom to make it smell that way. No other room in our house has the near constant stench that the boys bathroom does. I swear to you, it's like a truck stop. I may have actually been in truck stops that are cleaner. Their room has this funny "boy" smell, but that bathroom, yuck! Now I realize that it seems that this problem could be solved with more cleaning. I am here to tell you that the amount of cleaning that I do to that room is irrelevant and makes little to no difference in the air quality. So in my attempt to deoderize the offending room, I scrubbed every surface in there and replaced the old "laminated" toilet seat with a nice new solid plastic one. It even has a twist lock hinge feature so that when cleaning the toilet you can flip these little things and take the seat off to clean under it. Trust me, after seeing what was living under the old hinges...  Anyway, I also added a plug in scented oil thing to help combat the "boy smell". Here's hopin' that the truck stop will truck on outta here.

Electric Billing

Wouldn't it be great if everything were billed like your electric bill? This thought occurred to me as I was thinking about how much better our family is doing without t.v. The boys got grounded and Henry has a new "no media in the morning" thing going on, and I'm too busy with life so we haven't really watched it in a week. The thought of cutting it off has crossed my mind, but I do like to watch it occasionally so I won't. Then it hit me, why can't everything just be billed like the electric bill? I mean, charge some super low fee like $5/month for the service, then just get billed a reasonable amount for however much you actually watched after that. Of course they'd have an unlimited plan for those t.v. junkies who leave it on all the time, but the rest of us could opt for a pay by usage plan. I think the same pay by usage plan should be applied to internet and home and cell phone service, and I'm sure there are plenty of other applications as well. I don't mind paying a small fee to have the option of using something, but I don't want to pay for alot of something that I'm not going to use every month. I realize that they will never do that, just like they will never offer true a la carte service.What if I really do only watch 5 channels, shouldn't I be able to have like a "sampler" package like the Olive Garden appetizers? Ah that'd be the life, eh?

Lego blocks and Super Glue

The boys are always wanting the elaborate Lego kits that have buildings or cars or space ships and the like. That's fine because they play with them alot, and it's a quiet toy though it has a million pieces. We have a rule that they must keep Legos upstairs in their room due to the choking hazard for the baby and the puppy. Jonas just got some Harry Potter Lego kits for his birthday. Now we have had Spongebob and the Krusty Krab and we have had numerous sets of Star Wars ships and some Indiana Jones sets, and they have all ended up the same way. I spend 30 minutes or more building this thing (because they are too small to decipher the directions exactly) and they play with it like a solid toy until someone drops it or they "crash" or something. That makes us all sad. I don't mind rebuilding a few times, but it gets old after a while. That's when I got an idea with the new birthday Lego sets, why not super glue them together? The boys like them because they are Lego, not because they want to build with them. They have tubs of basic Lego blocks that they can build with, but they really want the sets to stay together. I am not sad that I "ruined" the new sets. The boys will play with them much more that way than if they fell apart. As a matter of fact, I'm going to the store to get more glue and we're going to have a reconstruct and glue fest after they get out of school. All of the Lego sets will stay together, and because they have been apart for so long it will be like brand new toys. As bad as it sounds, I might even be able to play with my children without getting angry.

My family is like a herd of deer.

I say that because we have so many Spring babies. The birthdays have seemed endless, and there haven't even been parties for some of them. Let's do a run down of the ones who have had parties. Henry's niece Olivia starts it off with her February birthday, which isn't really Spring yet, but it's close enough. Then we're done until March when Kinsley picks it back up. My niece's birthday just a week later, then my nephew's a week after that, then a double slam a week later with my mother and Jonas on the same day! It literally has been a birthday party every weekend for a month, and I'm sick of cake. I'm sick of making cake, I'm definitely sick of icing cake, and I may even be a little sick of eating cake. I didn't even lick the mixer, the bowl, or the spatula this last round. I made 2 boxes of cake mix for Kinsley's birthday, 1 box for Jonas' class cupcakes (ugh, more cupcakes) and 3, yes 3 boxes of cake mix for his birthday party! I am just thankful that Betty Crocker makes it easy, as I am not putting forth the effort for from scratch cake for kid birthdays. I will post pics of his birthday cake(s) after the party tomorrow, and you will see why it took so many boxes of cake mix. I'm not even sure the cake will taste good because of my baking pan choice, but the real point is that it looks cool! Seriously, that's my main goal here. I wanna continue to be the "cool" mom, that is if I currently hold that title. Honestly, I'm just glad that I don't have to make any more birthday cake until Colin's birthday in August, followed by Henry's birthday less than 2 weeks later. I look very forward to MY birthday which is a week before Colin's because my mom will bake ME my favorite cake that I do not know how to make. I suppose I could learn, but that would kill the splendor. Just for the record, it's a 3 layer coconut cake with filling between the layers, and this fluffy sugary frosting with coconut sprinkled on it. Mmmm, I usually eat so much of it I get sick. It's a good thing that I have all summer to prepare, as it will probably take me until then to be in the mood for more cake.

Daylight & Dark

So I've been sleeping like crap lately. I wake up during the night sometimes and it's hard to fall back to sleep, or I just don't feel like I sleep soundly. Sometimes I just have projects on my mind and I can't seem to turn it off in order to go to sleep. We have a sound machine and that works great, but I recently started having more sleep issues. The other night I discovered the source of my problem. We got new windows and had to change our window treatments, so I no longer have the wooden blinds in my room. I made some curtains, which I like aesthetically, but they are not lined yet. That has become a priority now. We have this street light across the street and it stays perpetually "dusky" in our room at night. I gotta have it dark, so last night in an effort to sleep better I hung a beach towel over the curtain rod to create a more cave like feel. Aaahh, better sleep at last. Between that and the sound machine rain and the real rain, I slept like a normal human. I still feel a little sleep deprived, but I'm sure that I will catch up now that I have seemingly found the major source of my sleeplessness.

The "maybe" box should be banned

I guess I'm on a rant with my posts this week. I'm going to follow up my post from yesterday with my opinion on the "maybe" box on RSVPs. I hate it. I think it's useless. If you ask people to come to an event, you are already counting on "maybe". That's the point of an RSVP, to get a head count and know who is definitely planning on coming, and who definitely can't. Things change, and I get that, but really I think people should just be big enough to commit and say "yes" or "no". I get into the following situation all the time with my moms' group. Q: Are you attending this event? A: I get 3 maybes and 4 nos. Where does that leave me? Do I go and hope someone shows up, or do I stay home and do my own thing so that I'm not wasting my time? I stay home because I figure if people aren't going to commit, then I'm not either. When I know that I am not going, I immediately do the right thing by going to the RSVP and changing it from yes to no. I think people should be responsible enough to change their RSVP if their situation changes and they can or can't go. None of this maybe stuff, that just makes it hard for others to plan.

Failure to commit

I come from a long line of non-planners. It always drove me crazy as a child because no one would make a plan and that meant that everyone was running around confused at the last minute, making a casual event chaotic and very un fun especially in the "preparation stages". I think back to Christmases when I was little. Now, everyone knew that it was coming up, I mean you have 12 months to prepare, and everyone also knew what stops we had to make in order to visit all the grandparents ant get home for Santa, but NO ONE would set a time as to when to be where, thus leaving my mom scurrying around like a rat trying to get all the presents packed and every one ready while my dad sat around and "supervised" and made mom even more mad and stressed. That is why I didn't really like holidays as a child. It wasn't that I was a Scrooge or a Grinch, it was all the snapping and yelling and bickering that took place before each and every event. It didn't matter if it was Christmas or birthdays, it was always the same. I suppose those events are what led me to be very organized and planned. I like to know everything in advance, way advance. I like to have details planned out so that I know what's going on and needed, and so others know what to expect. I recently attended my niece's birthday party that was so poorly planned, they actually had to reschedule it. No kidding. I think that poor planners need to understand that when they fail to commit, it makes it hard for others to commit. When we had to go to that party, we didn't have an address and therefore no directions. We had to guess where exactly it was, and then my sister was late with the birthday girl by an hour and a half! Really? That's not just rude, it's ridiculous. We were all standing under a pavillion, but in the wind that entire time. When I got home after the party, I found the invitation in my mail box. I guess better late than never?

Lots of little projects

So I've been M.I.A. on the blog scene all week. It's been a crazy string of projects and happenings. I've been tying up loose ends and marking things off my list. I started off the week with this:

Henry had a shirt that he didn't wear anymore. I have been reading a few blogs, thanks to a crafty friend who keeps pointing them out, and decided to take a chance on this shirt. Now, I don't have a good picture of the finished product yet, but I made it into this shirt dress:

I will post a better picture when I have a belt for it and am wearing it. I cut some of the shirt off to create a tapered effect since I'm going to cinch the waist anyway. Who wants all that excess fabric hanging out around their waist?

I also made this sleepsack for Kinsley. I got the fabric in the remnant bin, and it was just enough to make it.

Since my niece's first birthday is coming up, I whipped up a shirt for her to wear on the big day. It will go with the tutu that I made her last week. I also made her a birthday banner like Kinsley's.

I have also been wanting to try making a burp cloth, so I made this one for my pediatrician. I love the keepsake factor with this design.

Jonas has a birthday coming up so I made his invitations so I could put them in the mail. I love the way they came out. I'm putting copies on my Etsy site.

In addition, I also helped a friend with one of her projects, and I have another nearly finished project that I started working on with my crafty friend who shares all the blogs. I will post pics of that one as well when it's finished. I didn't have the material I needed at the time, but I found some stuff that will work in my scrap pile so it's on! I also participated in an Expo at Henry's office that showcased home businesses of some of the ladies. It was alot of fun and I got some great feedback on my stuff. :) If you want to see other past projects, you can visit my Etsy store ClaireBearBaby. Feel free to buy something while you're there. ;) So there you have it, all the stuff I did last week.

Don't be jealous, but...

Saturday was a busy day, with baseball and cleaning and all that other Saturday stuff. Henry mentioned last week that he thought he had some materials he could use for my last project in the den, the craft table. I figured that he'd get to it at some point, but I didn't think it would be this soon. We still have a few things to do to it, but here it is.

Yeah, yeah, there's still alot of junk under it, but most of that will go as soon as we have the rummage sale.

Better than 2 card tables, huh? This is my favorite feature of it.

Yep, that's a groove to put your scissors in when you cut fabric. I'm going to use my yard stick to mark measurements right on the table. The whole table is on hinges attached to a cleat on the wall. Eventually a fouton will live under the table and when we have guests, the table will simply fold up out of the way (the legs fold down too). The table is at a height just taller than my counter, I think it's at 37 1/2 inches. I wanted it at this height to avoid stooping when I work. I can't work sitting down, I have to be up over the project. If I ever decide I want to sit, we know how to build bar stools. :) The table is 29 inches deep with a 1 inch gap at the back to allow folding. It was originally deeper, but then I realized that I couldn't reach my tools on the wall above the table so he cut it a bit shorter. Unfortunately, when we have company I will have to take everything off the wall to allow the folding. We have an eventual plan to solve that problem, but that's another issue for another day. Until then, I'm thrilled with my new table.

Kinsley's First Birthday Bash Revealed!

So it's been a week since the party. The mess is finally cleaned up, and we have moved on. I have to say that everything turned out way better than I thought it might. I usually have results that don't live up to my high expectations, but this party was not one of those times. Everything turned out just as I pictured it in my mind.

First I made this dress

Then I made this diaper cover.

I made the appliques with my fancy new sewing machine. I also embroidered her a t-shirt and made her a tutu.

Here's the picture I took of Kinsley in her t-shirt and tutu.

It looks like she's in alot of flowers, but really she's just in a tiny patch. This is just an example that you don't have to have a huge perfect area to get a good shot.

Here's the center piece I made.



Here are the cookies that I made for the cupcakes.

Here's the cupcake display.

Cupcake close-up

Here's the banner I made.

It was kind of a last minute thought, but it turned out great.

Here's the birthday girl!

Last but not least, here's the toybox that Henry made her.

The toybox is an Ana White design. I'm glad that we found this open design because we won't have to worry about her slamming her fingers in it. It's not super wide, but it's fairly deep. The hutch unit on the top is great to make the most of the space in her room and to keep things that she doesn't need to access out of her reach. It was super easy to build, especially with the air tools that we bought. We had the wood cut at the Depot to make things easier. Painting it was a joint effort. The colors and the flowers were his idea, but I added the butterflies and the flower pot on the inside. There are flowers on the side facing the crib too.

Here's the toybox loaded up.

Happy First Birthday, Kinsley!