Not quite sleeping

The last few nights, R.Soup has not exactly been sleeping.  I'm pretty sure she's in the middle of a growth spurt because the only way to comfort her when she wakes up is to feed her.  I know this is a fact, because I had D.Soup take her for a little while at 3 am on Monday night, and she just stared in my direction and screamed the entire 15 minutes until I gave in and took her back.  The little angel.

The last two nights were poorly placed (for me) since I'm still trying to recover from last weeks 5:30 every day wake up call culminating with Friday's no-sleepathon.

Let me start over.

D.Soup went away for work last week.  So while he was gone, instead of trying to get the girls and the dog into the car every morning on my own and still make it to work before 10 am, I stayed on my parents couch.  Each day I got up at 5:30 and snuck out before anyone was awake. 

(Side note, is snuck not a word?  I'm getting yelled at by spell check)

The problem with this is that I would still stay up until 11 or later each night, so I wasn't getting much sleep to begin with.  Then the last day we were there, L.Soup decided she didn't want to go to bed, and laid in her bed singing the ABCs until about 11:15.  I waited a little while, and went to bed around 11:45.

At midnight I heard R.Soup.  Of course.  And OF COURSE, every time I tried to put her back down, she would wake up and cry again.  So she and I ended up snuggling the rest of the night morning.  When I went to tell my mom I was leaving, I noticed L.Soup wasn't in her bed.  I had a moment of panic, before I found her snuggled down in between my parents in THEIR bed.

So it wasn't a good sleeping night for anyone.  

I got a little reprieve Friday and Saturday nights, and some extra time in bed both mornings while D.Soup handled the girls downstairs and made breakfast.  But I was finally coming back out of my haze when Sunday night hit and she woke up every 2 hours on the dot.  And then Monday night was basically the same.  I was in the middle of staining a crate in the basement when I heard her.  I had D.Soup go try to rock her back to sleep, and it worked for a while.  Just long enough in fact for me to get the stain off my hands (more on that later).

I pretty much spent the whole night sitting up in our brand new bed.  Until that 3 am situation, and I just couldn't muster the energy to sit up anymore.  So then I woke up to this:

I sleep great when I'm right next to mom.

And when its time to get up for the day.

Last night I didn't have the energy to even think about anything but sleeping by the time the girls were in bed.  I managed to make my way back downstairs, only to trudge right back upstairs and pass out.

At least she's cute.

I need a system

The biggest thing I forgot about having an infant is how much time you have to dedicate to just being with them.  Between feedings, diaper changes, playing, and just holding them in between activities, there's no time for me to get anything done until she's in bed.  I love playing and spending time with her so I'm not really complaining, there's just a ton of things that I need to get done around the house. 

The few times I'm not holding her during the day, I don't really want to work on cleaning up the house.  I either want to relax for a few minutes, or more often, play with L.Soup. 

Needless to say, any amount of housework either gets done by D.Soup, by me one-handedly (always entertaining) or in minimal amounts after the girls are asleep. 

I've tried to make a daily to do list of things to accomplish on the cleaning front each day, but I always end up behind.  Or distracted.

I did a little googling, and I found Todoist.  This site allows me to build to do lists, set due dates and even recurring due dates so I can set up a cleaning schedule for myself each week.  There's even an app so I can look at and check off action items on my phone as I'm doing them. 

I've transferred my regular document full of things to do over, and I'm going to test it out for the next few weeks to see if it actually helps me stay on track.  Its nice to be able to assign specific dates to everything, so I only have to focus on what's up that day when I look at the list in "calendar" format.

I've also scheduled in those "once in a while" tasks, like adding a cleaning tab into the water tank of the toilets and running a cleaning cycle in the washing machine once a month.  Those are things that I always think about doing at the absolute inopportune time.  So hopefully this will help me to be better about actually keeping up with them.

D.Soup is coming home today from a work trip.  So I'm going to really start keeping up with it tomorrow.  I've been trying to do some stuff here and there this week, but we'll see how it actually works out starting tomorrow.

In addition to a cleaning list, I've created a "Projects" list.  I've listed out all the steps I need to complete for all the different crafting projects I've got planned out currently.  I'm hoping this will force me to actually finish (or start) the projects I currently have going before I decided to start working on something else.

For example, I currently have 31 steps listed out in the Projects list.  

 Reel yourself in MzSoup, just stop.

She's here!

Yeesh, I've been gone for months.  In that time span I got my house spectacularly cleaned in preparation for the baby.  Then I had the baby (more on that momentarily).  Then I watched as my house quickly degraded back to and then worse than its former self.  We're slowly getting back on our feet, but it is a painful process.

Anywho, on to the important things.  BABY!

Little Ms. R.Soup entered the world at 1:47 pm on April 9th.

8 lbs. 7.5 oz
19.5 inches long

Exactly one week before her sister's 2nd birthday.  L.Soup is an AWESOME big sister.  She's super sweet and so good with the baby.  I'm actually really impressed.

She is 4 months old, and I still haven't gotten birth announcements out yet.  The saddest part is I have all the pieces, just no time to put them together.  Who has time to do anything when there's teeny babies around??

...not us.


Everyone is adjusting to being a family of four.  I forgot how difficult it is to do anything when you are attached to a small person for a large majority of the day, so there was a bit of a learning curve there for me.  Especially when dealing with L.Soups needs while I was home on maternity leave.  We got it figured out though.

She is perfect and beautiful and we love her.

All the crap that needs to get done

We have a LOT of things that needs to happen before the baby gets here.  Well, technically before the baby is ready to move out of the co-sleeper.  So that buys us a few more months.  Luckily.

The plan is to move L.Soup into what is currently the computer/craft room.  Preferably before we are ready to move the baby into the nursery.  That means we have to move all the of disastrous mess stuff from that room into the other spare room above the garage. 

I wish that we could just move her into that room, and not have to shift all the rooms around, but I'm worried that if one of us has to run out after L.Soup is already in bed for the night, the noise from the garage door opening is going to wake her up.  Its fairly loud when you're in that room and the garage door is moving.  So that idea got nixed.

THAT room is currently full of about 8 million baby clothes.  I wish I was exaggerating.  My dearest sister dumped gifted all of her kids clothes to us when they were done with them.  I've spent the last few months slowly going through the 22 trash bags that arrived at our house and organizing them into large storage boxes.  I'm almost done.  Once I found out we were having a girl, I focused more on finishing up that stuff so it was well organized and mixed with what I had from L.Soup.  The boy stuff has kind of been brushed to the side and I need to focus back on finishing that up.

Once all the clothes are actually organized, they need to be moved up to the attic.  At least all the boy stuff.  Some of the girl stuff can stay down and get put out in prep for our new girls arrival in April.  Before anything can go up into the attic, we need stairs to the attic.  The builder grade attic access (which is in our closet) is a joke.  Even if the floor of our closet wasn't covered in shoes (whoops) the hole is just big enough for an adult to shimmy through, there's absolutely no way any kind of storage box is fitting through it.

We are looking into something like this.  D.Soup still has to get up in the attic and make sure it's possible place everything where we want, but if so we will have ladder access in the hallway heading into the laundry room.

Let's recap:

1. Cut gaping hole in ceiling.
2. Replace gaping hole with attic stairs.
3. Create flooring in attic.
4. Finish organizing 8 million baby clothes.
5. Move boxes of baby clothes into attic.
6. Clean out room over garage completely.
7. Move computer/craft room into newly cleaned out room.
8. Create awesome new room for L.Soup.
9. Move L.Soup into awesome new room.
10. Move baby into nursery.

All before October (ish)?  With a 2 year old and a newborn.  Cake.

Ha.

So obviously, once the shelves are finished in the laundry room, that project is getting put on hold for a little while so we can focus on some of these steps.

Help.

8 months later

We were cleaning up for having people over during the holidays.  I figured this would be a good time to remove the last of the decorations from L.Soup's first birthday party.  In April.

....It was only 2 things.  The Happy Birthday sign I had made as part of the decorations, and a small section of our living room wall dedicated to pictures of her from each month of her first year.

I had been fighting taking them down.

I mean, who doesn't want a wall shrine dedicated to their infant baby who is now a walking, talking, almost 2 year old machine?  That was the hardest part.

Before

After

I gently removed all the pictures from the wall and folded the tape over so that it was not visible.  Just incase I wanted to save them.  Forget about the fact that they were just printed on regular paper.  Or the fact that the pictures are all saved on my computer and I can easily print them again whenever I want.

Before

After

I had D.Soup pull the sign down.  Because I'm short and shouldn't be climbing on the couch trying desperately to reach the little Command hooks that were holding the sign up.  (PS.  Those things are awesome for party decorating!)  I carefully folded it up and put it with the pictures to be stored away somewhere.

So the walls are clear.  I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad about that fact.  The first night was definitely a sad moment for me.  But mid takedown I turned to D.Soup and said "I'm thinking..."

D. Soup:  You're thinking you want to paint what?

Me: How did you know I was going to say that??

D.Soup: You always want to paint something.

Me:  Well I'm thinking about chalkboard for this little section of wall.

So there might be another project looming in my future.  After Christmas.  And New Years.  And everything else that I've already got on my list.

Aka Never

Our new foyer!

1. Find antique TV stand and refinish it.
2. Build bed frame.
3. Build matching night stands.
4. Refinish dining room table.
5. Refinish bedroom furniture to match bed and night stands.
6. Build computer desk for D.Soup.
7. Refinish wing back chair.
8. Build floating shelves.
9. Build outdoor planters.
10. Install cabinets with clothes folding space into laundry room, with cat door.
11. Paint L.Soup's bedroom.
12. Paint foyer.
13. Sew pillow for L.Soup's bedroom. 

MONTHS ago (literally, months.  JUNE.  ugh), I decided to finally start working on some of the ideas I dreamed up for our new house.  I got all the supplies together, taped up the wall in the foyer, and started painting.  And then I ran out of paint.  So we went and bought more.  That next day.  Because I was motivated.

And then I got caught up in some other projects.  And we went on vacation.  And the dog's leg got busted.  You see where I'm going with this.  So our entryway has been in this awful messy limbo state ever since.  And because its a disgusting mess, we just keep adding to it.  Because that's the type of people we are.  Not the "oh I see a mess, I should probably fix it" people.  No, we are the "oh, well this is already messy so it won't really matter if I drop these other 54 things here too".  *sigh*



Well it got old.  And I got motivated.  AGAIN.

I didn't think there was much more to do to the base layer.  Just some sections that didn't have enough of a coating the first time around.  But I ended up doing an entire coat on the wall, because I kept finding sections that were just not quite covered.

Once again I realize how terrible a painter I truly am.  I don't know why I enjoy painting so much.  I actually dripped paint all over the floor this time around.  Lucky for me they are hardwood.  Had to do an emergency stop and run to get cleaner and paper towels to deal with THAT.  On top of that I hit the connecting walls a few times.  I used a magic eraser to clean up the mess, and it seems to have done a fairly good job.  I've never been a real fan of them, but it saved my butt this time around.

I also used D.Soup's recommendation and covered my paint tray with some plastic wrap before I poured the paint in, for "easy cleanup".  It was HORRIBLE.  I don't know if I didn't use enough plastic wrap.  Or if I'm just an idiot.  Or if it's just a terrible idea (I vote this one).  But the plastic wrap ended up balled up in the bottom of the tray, after I fought to get it to stay while I was getting paint onto the roller.  I was very bitter towards it, and ended up abandoning the idea all together.

After that debacle, I finished painting and let it sit overnight to dry.

Once the base layer was dry, I started taping over it in 9 inch horizontal stripes.  I had to get D.Soup to help me, since my arms are only so long.  We tried a few manners of getting the lines straight:

1. When I was working alone, I marked ever foot or so with a pen down the wall, and then taped.
2. D.Soup decided that was an epic waste of time and brought out the laser level to get an estimate of where to put the tape, and then we double checked it before we stuck it down completely with a regular level.  
3. Then we got completely tired of re-sticking the tape when the lines ended up 100% not straight.  So we dug out the chalk line and things progressed much faster after that.

In between steps 2 and 3 is about 1-3 months of ZERO activity.  We attempted to get some progress made on the stripes one Saturday while L.Soup was napping, and ended up waking her up from her nap and dealing with a crankosaurus the rest of the day.  So that got nixed fairly quickly.  THEN, I spent at least a month of that time as a semi-permanent feature on the couch because of fetus induced exhaustion and nausea.

Well, I'm out of my pregnancy coma now, and ready for action!  Tuesday, I took advantage of a snow day and a toddler that's more interested in helping than destroying at the moment and we finished up the taping!  I then marked which stripes I was NOT going to paint so I wouldn't get completely confused in the process.  Because let's be honest... that would happen.

All taped up!

I've always had a hard time with paint seeping underneath the tape, and I wanted to make these lines as perfect as possible.  I started off with burnishing the the tape so that it was nicely stuck to the wall.  But I wanted to do more.  I read a really great post once about how to prevent the paint from seeping, and I wanted to give that a try.

After you tape, paint (on the side you intend to paint the new color) the SAME color as the wall.  This first round of paint creates a barrier with the tape.  If any paint ends up running, it's the same color as the wall, so you won't see it!

In my case, the paints were the same color, but different sheens.  I used a bristle brush and put a thin coat of the flat paint over the side of the tape where the high gloss paint would be.  I fully intended on taking a picture of it, but my cell phone battery was way low and I plugged it in to charge and completely forgot about pictures until it was too late.  Of course. 

Allow that to dry, THEN paint the new color.  

For this round I used a roller, and carefully painted each stripe with the high gloss.  I had D.Soup help me with this part, mostly because the high gloss paint isn't no VOC, and it was stinky.  I was worried about being in the room with that smell for too long, so he did the first round of stripes for me.

At this point I started looking at the tape and getting really nervous because it looked bubbly.  After all the work on taping the lines, and then all the effort I put in to NOT have the other color seep through, I was starting to panic.  I gave the paint a little time to dry and then ran over and started tearing at it like a mad woman.  Of course by this time, it was 11 pm, and D.Soup was like "we're not removing all of this tape, are we?"  But then he realized I meant business and got to work.  We had a few mishaps with the tape pulling up paint around the edges of the wall, but what do you expect from something that's been sitting in the same position for 6 months?

So finally.  Finally, Finally, FINALLY!  Here it is:

Subtle

Finally putting the hallway back together!

A little Christmas decoration.

Voilà!

Back?

So I maintained basic radio silence for the last few months.  I figured:

1. It was too early to tell anyone at the onset that I was growing a person...
2. All I really had to talk about was how horrible I was feeling. I'm one of those lucky women that apparently experiences constant morning sickness throughout the first trimester.  Yay.
3. How many people really want to hear about how I feel like I'm going to pass out or barf every day? 
4. Because of said morning sickness I generally did nothing all day.  I would stare at my computer and forced myself to complete tasks at work.  Once I got home from work all bets were off.  Other than attempting to mildly amuse L.Soup I was useless to everyone around me.  I tried to be useless to her too, but she wasn't having it.
5. This included any projects that I had been working on before I found out about the little person.

Well, it seems that I'm starting to come out of the haze.  Still a little tired, but generally excited about starting back up on some projects.  I'm currently working on some signs for my youngest nephew's 2nd birthday party this weekend.  Because I'm on a little bit of a time crunch, my mom is going to be super awesome and help with some of the gluing.  She's totally amazing because that is the.worst.part. I think, at least.

I'll try to remember to take some pictures of them at the party.  Here's some of the samples:

Obviously, it's Finding Nemo themed...

Cupcake Toppers

Banner

Also, thanks to my little mini vacation last week (aka, the furlough) I got everything set up and D.Soup to help me start taping the wall so I can FINALLY finish the foyer.  It's been killing me that it's not done, so hopefully SOON.

We also put up some Halloween decorations outside, and I took some terrible pictures.  Once I get some better ones, I'll try to post them here too.  I have every intention of doing some more Halloween related crafts, but it may very well end up just being L.Soup's costume.

I'm keeping my expectations of myself low so I don't get too disappointed.

Week wrap-up

This week has been so busy!  We haven't had made a real dinner at home the entire week.  One night we had time to make grilled cheese, but that's it!  Hopefully tonight we'll have a real dinner, in our own home.  Next week is going to be just as busy.  Everything always happens at the same time.  I never have time to do any crafting!  <insert foot stomp here>

Since I have no crafting to talk about, I'll just recap the week.  Because I know you all are soooo interested.

Sunday - We went to a party at a nearby bouncy play place for our very good friend's daughter's 3rd birthday.  L.Soup (despite only getting a 30 minute nap in the car because she REFUSED to sleep) had a blast.  She hasn't quite figured out the idea of jumping yet.  So she just marched around in the bounce houses all wobbly while the other kids bounced around her.  She also made D.Soup take her down the big slide about 40 times.  It was cute.  I'm glad it was him and not me, because we probably would have died.  I don't have enough balance to pull myself up the little ledge stairs, let along drag her along with me.

Monday - This was grilled cheese day.  That's all I remember from that day, and I only remember that because D.Soup reminded me about it this morning.  Pretty sure I laid on the couch most of the afternoon.

Tuesday - Dinner with some great friends that we don't get to see very often anymore.  They have a little boy that's just over a month younger than L.Soup.  They are finally getting to an age where they acknowledge each others existence, so it's really great to see them play "together".  L.Soup chased him around the house and handed him back anything that he dropped like "dude, stop making a mess".  She's becoming a mild neat freak.  I don't know where she gets that from.  Definitely not from her parents.

Wednesday - We had surprise dentist appointments.  I say surprise because when I got the "reminder" call on Monday, it was the first time I had ever heard about it.  I'm the one that makes the appointments, so I had to have done it the last time we were there.  But I have NO recollection of that AT ALL.  Glad to report that I am cavity free, as is D.Soup.  So that's awesome.  I signed L.Soup up for her first dentist appointment, but promptly had to reschedule when I realized that I'm an idiot and only added her to my medical health insurance and not dental or vision.  They should give a mother more than a month to get that stuff situated.  My brain was in NO place to think about all that stuff within a month of having her. 

So now I have to wait until December to add her during "open access" with my company.  So I scheduled our next appointments for February.  That should be fine.  Its not like she needs anything actually done to her teeth anyway.

Wednesday was also a big day for us because it was L.Soup's first time having Maryland Crab Soup!  As a Maryland girl, I'm proud of her for eating every drop.  It was homemade (by my momma) too.  Delicious.  L.Soup and I had dinner at my parents house while D.Soup was working on (conveniently enough) a crabbing boat that he's planning on buying off his friend next year.  He wants to make sure its in working condition before he acquires it though.  So hopefully there will be more crabs for more soup in the future!  Yummo.

Thursday -  Family dinner!  My sister has an au pair to help take care of her kids.  She's (the au pair) moving to a new family this weekend, and my sister's family welcomed a new girl into their house.  We went over her house to have a welcome/goodbye get together.  We had pizza and salad and fruit, and played with the kids and hung out.  It was super fun.  L.Soup got to go "shopping" and get a new toy from Aunt Sissy's house.  Since her kids don't play with it anymore, it's moved to our house.

Friday - Today is Friday!  Hooray!  I'm so happy its almost the weekend!  My grandfather needs some help moving a heavy water tank in his basement.  So D.Soup is going to check that out today, and we'll probably go back over there tomorrow so he can help him get it moved.  That's really the only thing we have going on this afternoon.  It's beautiful out, so maybe we can go for a walk, or just spend some time outside this afternoon.  I'd like to get some more of the foyer wall worked on, but I'm not holding my breath.  We are such slackers. 

Today is also L.Soup's first "golden birthday."  She's 16 months today (the 16th)!  I know it doesn't really count since she's not 16 YEARS old.  But it's still her birthday.  So there.  She's so big.

Weekend - We have got some serious cleaning up to do around our house this weekend.  We are having my family over next weekend, and our week is so packed full that we aren't going to have time to work on the house much during the actual week.  We'll see how that actually goes.

Here's hoping that I can get some craftiness back into my life sometime soon.

A nice little weekend

First and foremost, we found this little guy on the back of the truck. I can't remember what day we found him, but I'm pretty sure it was this weekend at some point.

Sup?

A few months ago, my grandfather gave me two praying mantis nests to relocate to my house.  They are supposed to eat mosquitoes, so I happily took them.  I think they've finally hatched!  This is the only one we've seen so far, but I thought it was pretty cool.  Saturday we saw him again, on the garage door.  I moved him back to the safety of the flower bed.  I haven't seen him since.

Friday my parents kindly kept L.Soup and brought her home for bedtime so that we could do this:

Pretty sunset

Our friends have a boat, and asked us to go fishing with them after work. We had a great time and it was absolutely beautiful.

Saturday we cleaned up around the house in the morning. We all ended up napping when L.Soup was ready. That's one good part about her not taking naps in her crib, its an excuse for us to nap too!  After her nap, we went down to the beach in our neighborhood.  It was a beautiful day out, and the water was so warm. We walked around in the water and on the sand for about 45 minutes, and then we came back home.

L.Soup got a bath, and we changed our clothes and headed to Target!  I decided during the week that I needed 2 things in my life:

1.  A "recycle bin" trash can
2.  A basket for all L.Soup's dirty bibs and wash clothes.

I had a trash can I wanted to use already, problem was, it was being used in L.Soup's bedroom.  And it was definitely overkill for what we needed in there.  So we found a smaller, replacement trash can that fits perfectly in the space.  So we moved the bigger trash can downstairs next to our actual trash can.  I'm going to make some stickers with the little "recycling" symbol, so that its clearly marked for guests.  Now I just have to teach L.Soup the difference between the two!

The basket is actually working perfectly.  It's exactly what we needed to put her dirty stuff in.  When it fills up, we just carry it upstairs.  It's much easier than scooping it all up off the table and trying to fumble up the stairs with it as a pile in  your arms.  I already have enough problems going up the stairs.  On top of the fact that usually I'm not alone when I'm making the trip anymore.

We got back from Target later than we expected to, and L.Soup was HUNGRY.  We had dinner planned out already, but hadn't taken the chicken out of the freezer.  Luckily it thawed pretty fast in a bowl of hot water, and we were able to make a delicious version of Cajun Chicken Pasta.  We substituted asparagus for mushrooms because D.Soup does not like them, and we had asparagus in the fridge.

It was a delicious decision. A serving size is 1.5 cups. The meal itself makes 7.5 cups so we had a million left overs. It was so amazingly good. We've made it before but I had forgotten how yummy it was. Also, luckily it is really filling, so I didn't even eat over my serving size.

NOM NOM NOM.

Sunday we did some more cleaning, packed up a bunch of things that don't belong to us and took them over to my parent's house so they could be delivered to where they actually belong.  It was great to get more stuff moved out of the main level of our house.  The last thing we really need to do is switch around where the couch and loveseat are and the living room will be complete (for now).  D.Soup went out for a few hours with his brother, so L.Soup and I settled in for a nap.  Not soon after we woke up, D.Soup came back home.  So the timing worked out really well for us.

The rest of the afternoon we played, had leftovers of the deliciousness above, and watched Firefly because I had control of the remote it's awesome.  We all went upstairs when it was time for L.Soup to go to bed.  When I came out of her room D.Soup was asleep on the bed!  Rude.  I went in and took a bath in scalding hot water, and it was glorious.  He was still asleep when I got done.  So I went back downstairs and watched TWO (!) more hours of Firefly before I came upstairs and finally got in bed.

Then, it felt like someone was playing a cruel joke on me, because I couldn't fall asleep for almost an hour.  That was terrible.

I fully intend on finishing the foyer wall this week.  So I can finally stop talking about it and actually show it to you.  Other than that I don't have much planned for this week.

We'll see how that works out.

PS How many times did I say "delicious" when referring to my dinner.
Obviously I liked it.
Jeez.

Too much to do.

Its been a few days since I've been here.  I've been so busy trying to get life back in order and get back to a healthy diet that I have gotten absolutely nothing done in the crafty part of my life.  Which makes me sad.

My sister dropped off a million bags of baby clothes for me about 2 weeks ago.  She's not having any more babies and she gave me everything that her kids have grown out of.  So we lugged about 10 bags and 4 large Rubbermaid containers into the house and sat the in front of the wall I'm trying to finish painting in the foyer.  So I didn't get a chance to work on that over the weekend because that would have involved actually moving all that stuff out of the way.  Slowly over the last few days we have been carrying it upstairs so that its out of the way.  My plan is to go through all of it, put it into Rubbermaid containers based on size and store it in the attic.  First I have to get a bunch of containers, oh, and find time.  Ha.

I have a new project in mind.  But I need to collect all the pieces that I need to make my own canvas.  For this project I need a 4 foot x 5 foot canvas, and those suckers are like $100.  No thank you! 

Today we go back to the vet to get Calli's staples removed.  I can't believe its already been two weeks.  10 more to go.  I think she's progressing really well, we shall see what the vet thinks.

We are also getting a gate for the main level of the house today.  That way we don't have to chase L.Soup to the stairs every 5 minutes.  She loves to climb them, look out the window, sit on them.  Really they are her favorite place to be right now.  She is NOT going to be happy with us when that gate goes up.

Tomorrow we are going out on a friends boat!  My parents are kind enough to watch L.Soup during the day tomorrow AND keep her tomorrow night.  Including driving her home and putting her to bed in her own crib, because she refuses to sleep anywhere else.  I'm really excited because its been a few years since I've been on a boat, so it will be super fun.

This weekend my intentions are to finish the foyer wall.  I'm tired of talking about it, so it needs to be finished.  That will also allow me to put everything back where it is supposed to be, and clean up.  Which needs to happen.  I'd also like to get started on the shelves for L.Soup's room, so that her room can be complete.  But I'm not holding my breath on both of those things happening this weekend. 

I really need to get some of my house cleaned up, so that might be a major focal point.  I'd like to get some of it done today after Calli's vet appointment.

We'll see how that goes.

End of June recap. I am really far behind.

I've been quite busy in the time since I last posted any crafty update... so busy that this post is all about stuff that happened in June!  But I'm starting to feel a little embarrassed in the amount of time it's taking me to finish these things I've started.  Let's recap:

1.  Foyer wall.  Got the new paint to finish the base layer for this wall.  Have not even thought about opening it.  I think now I need a new roller, since I was all "oh I'll be right back to this in a few days" and never cleaned off the old roller, just wrapped it in saran wrap.  *sigh*

2.  Boxes for the nursery.  I FINALLY FINISHED THEM.  If L.Soup wasn't already asleep I would march this last part up there right now and take pictures of all of them together.  Its taken so long to get these done.  I'll be happy when I don't have to look at them anymore.  For a "quick project" they've been misery.  Okay, that's an exaggeration.  I just didn't expect them to take this long.  They are looking super cute though, can't wait for them to be done so I can take pictures of them!  I put the two bookshelf boxes in her room already because I was sick of books all over.  I'll get some pictures tomorrow and post that right up.

3. A present for my mom.  I have been working on this for a while, and originally you all were supposed to see this post before the reveal of the surprise.  But I finished it and gave it to her yesterday.  So that post went up because I got excited about it.

4.  Sewing.  Just all general sewing projects.  Which have been on hold since I decided that I NEEDED the boxes to be done.  Most important was L.Soup's 4th of July outfit.  Well I actually did get this finished, the morning of the 4th (I'm totally not a procrastinator). I also made a pattern for some bibs that I'm going to make for her.  So, there's a step in the right direction.

Now let's move on to the reasons I haven't gotten anything done.

First, and most importantly: Saturday, June 22 was Girls Day Out.  There were cupcakes, and shopping, and day drinking, and more cupcakes, and BRUNO MARS.  And it was incredible!  It was one of my friend's birthdays, so we did an entire day of celebrating. I have a ton of pictures, but I didn't really dedicate a post to it, and now it's almost a month past and I feel I've missed the boat.  Whoops.

Then Sunday D.Soup went fishing in the morning, and we hung out with some OTHER friends for dinner and frozen yogurt.  Now, I'm not usually one to choose frozen yogurt over ice cream.  But I must say that Yolavie is actually really good.  We've been there twice in the last few days.  We've had other places that we really were not happy with, but I can be down with sometimes substituting.  Not all the time. No no no no.

In other (more disgusting, sorry) news.  Sunday morning I went to snuggle in with L.Soup on the couch for nap time.  And smelled something strange.  I started looking around, and found cat pee on my couch!  GAH!  I couldn't believe it.  I was so sad all the rest of the day.  I cleaned up as much of it as I could, but of course he peed right where the back of the couch meets the seat, so I was never 100% sure that I got it all.

Now let me explain...  One of my cats is very particular about the cleanliness of his litter box.  We are normally really good about taking care of it, but sometimes it goes a little bit longer than it should before we clean it.  We have 2 boxes, but haven't really found a good place for the second one, so currently we're working with 1, which is not a good thing when you have 2 cats.  Anywho.   A few times in the past, he's used the couch as a litter box.  I don't know why he decided on the couch, but that's where he goes.  I guess its because he knows we are there all the time.  But never NEVER before has he peed.  It's always been poop...  Which sounds like it would be more disgusting than pee...  But in actuality I've always been grateful because cat pee is not something that you can get out of ANYTHING.  It always smells.  *sigh*

So immediately when D.Soup got home I demanded that we go to the furniture store and pick out a new couch.  We found one that we liked, but we were still looking around when a salesman came up and started talking to us.  We ended up asking him about getting animal urine smells out of the couch and he asked if we had gotten a warranty on the couch when we had purchased it.  And we had.  So we felt a little better about that.  AND we found the matching loveseat to the couch we currently have, which had been discontinued, and was on sale!  So we bought that and headed home happier with the news that we could have someone come clean the couch and get use out of our warranty...

WELL, come to find out.  Because there is no actual stain on the couch, and it's just smell, the warranty does not cover it!  Of course not!  How is a couch that's DARK BROWN going to get a stain on it EVER.  Answer?  IT'S NOT.  So what's the point of paying for a warranty (which we really only got BECAUSE of situations like this) if it's not going to cover the ONE TIME I need it.  I was so angry.  It does cover other things, like scratches and if its broken, things of that nature.  So I guess there's still a chance for me to need it.  But why INCLUDE "pet urine" and "pet feces" into the list, when you know the only REAL worry with those things is the SMELL. 

hurumph





Moving on...

On Tuesday's schedule was the delivery of a shed D.Soup bought with his bonus money.  The only problem is the delivery time was 9-5.  And someone needed to be there to sign for it.  Luckily my parents came over in the morning and watched L.Soup at our house and waited for the delivery. 

Wednesday was the pick up for our new loveseat.  D.Soup and one of our friends drove over to the furniture place and picked it up while I picked L.Soup up from my parents.  We got there about the same time.  I got everything together to pass the boat pads on to our friend while they put the few pieces.  When they finished putting the loveseat together, they plopped down onto it, reclined both their seats and started holding hands... I just about fell over.  I was laughing too hard to even think about getting my camera, and I'm really sad about that now.  Then we handed over the boat pads...
He was happy to have them (and to not have spent a million dollars on them) and I was happy to get them out of my house.  At least I got one thing completed.

I borrowed a wet vac and went to work on the couch.  I'm hoping that fixed all the issues.

After that we met D.Soup's family for dinner.  I got a salad because everything else on the menu at Friendly's is well over 900 calories, and that's a bit extreme.  By the time we got home and got Little Miss to bed, we were not in the mood to do anything.  So we sat on our new loveseat and watched the first episode of this season on Rizzoli and Isles! I was so excited that it was coming back on!

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That next weekend was filled with building the shed, laundry and preparing for vacation!

More on that later.

A surprise for mom!

A few posts back I mentioned that my mom has a shop on Etsy (here!)  Well she also does shows around the area a few times a year.  She's been talking about wanting a new display piece to put her bows on.  She's been looking for something like this:

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But recently decided to hold off on buying it until later when she really needs it.  Right about the same time that she found the triangle display above, I found something online that I just loved and immediately wanted to make it for her:

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I reused some of the paint from L.Soup's room, and got the mirror off Craigslist for $10.  So I'm doing fairly well in a price comparison for the two items.  And I think the refinished mirror has so much more character! 

I didn't have enough forethought to take a picture of the mirror all put together before I started, but here is the base (minus the one arm):

MESS... ugh.  Welcome to my basement

And here are the pieces after sanding:

I removed all the hardware: screws holding the mirror to the frame, bolts holding the mirror frame to the stand and the bolts holding the legs onto the stand.  I sat all the hardware to the side so they wouldn't get misplaced (with my multiple projects happening in the basement right now).

I used a fine sandpaper, because I didn't want any sanding lines to be noticeable once I was finished painting, and sanded all over the mirror frame, stand, and legs to rough up the wood a little so the paint would have a better time sticking.  I then went over everything with a paper towel to get all the sanding dust off.

And this is why you shouldn't do anything in your work clothes... Sand dust.

I had an assistant.

At this point I probably should have primered everything with a white base.  But because I'm stubborn and lazy I decided that the paint and primer in one that I had would be fine.  Well it took about 3, maybe 4 coats on each piece before I couldn't see darkness anymore through the very light yellow that I ended up using.  So much for lazy.  I moved back and forth between painting the pieces of this mirror and painting the box colors so that each individual piece has time to dry.  It worked out fairly well, there were times that I was sitting on the floor waiting for something, ANYTHING to be dry.

Obviously I'm not the best painter.

I had some other stuff going on, so I didn't get to do anything with this project for a few weeks.  But I finally got around to putting the chicken wire on and finishing it up.  I originally wanted to get the chicken wire tucked into where the mirror had been before, but I couldn't staple it in there, it wasn't wide enough.  So I settled for stapling the wire to the main back part, and I'm going to cover it with some fabric so the sharp edges don't cut anyone.  Also so it doesn't look ugly.

I went back and forth trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to finish it.  The yellow is very light, and I just wasn't sure when it was all apart if it was TOO light.  Do I want to paint the hardware so that it was a happier color than the dark brass?  Do I want to add "embellishment colors" on the wood? Do I want to paint the chicken wire?  Do I give it to mom as is and let her decide if she wants any changes?

I finally decided on this:

I left it plain and delivered it to mom today.  She LOVED it, and was happy that I didn't add any embellishments to the wood.  She thinks the bows will add enough color that it would have been too much to include it with the paint.  I left the hardware dark, and honestly it doesn't look bad.  I had one issue after painting, one side of the base arms comes off... and when I painted it (despite my best efforts) some paint got into the crevasses and I had a hard time getting the two pieces back together.  I had to sand down the paint inside of there and even after that the fit is a little off...  I think we are going to end up wood gluing those two pieces together anyway, so it won't be an issue.

This was my first refinishing project, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I learned that I need to be more patient with things, but I get so excited when I'm working on something that I just want to GOGOGO, and I can't always operate at that speed.  I have some more things to work on, so I'm going to try to focus on being more patient next time around.  We'll see how that works.

Let me know what you think!

A patriotic dress for L.Soup

I had a vision in my head for what I wanted L.Soup to wear for 4th of July this year.  I wasn't really able to find anything that matched it perfectly, so I looked into some patterns that mom and I had gotten on clearance on day while we were in JoAnn Fabrics.  Every once in a while they have some of their patterns on sale, for $1-2 per baggie.  It's awesome, and I usually have a hard time cutting myself off.  Some of those patterns are normally $10!

Luckily, one looked exactly what I had envisioned in my head:

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This is McCall's M6270, I made it in size 1.  Honestly that was a little big for L.Soup, who is almost 15 months old, so it would probably fit a child in 18 month clothes nicely.

I then set about looking for the fabrics that I wanted.  So we went BACK to JoAnn's... and I found some red, white and blue fabrics that I liked, but weren't exactly what I wanted. But I couldn't find the perfect match, so I picked them up. I was a little disappointed but figured I would make it work, since I didn't have any other options. Well then a few weeks later mom and I went to another fabric store in the area called Hancock Fabrics. As we were walking around I spotted a rack with red, white and blue. Magically they had exactly what I had envisioned! Blue fabric with white stars, and red and white stripe fabric!

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I knew I had to get it! L.Soup's going to be a little tiny ruffled flag! It's going to be so cute!

I had the pattern all cut out and ready to go, but decided that I needed to work on the boxes for her room instead.  Well, a few days ago I realized that it was crunch time... so I got in gear and started really focusing on it when L.Soup went to bed.

Well, I quickly realized that I had not purchased enough fabric for the ruffles.  I had also purchased white fabric, to make the lining and top section of the dress, so I supplemented two of the ruffles with white stripes mixed in with colored fabric.  It ended up looking really cute, so I wasn't too upset about that.  

The next road block was my inability to sew.  That's always a problem... I spent more time during this project removing stitches than I did putting stitches in.  That was unbelievably frustrating.

Also frustrating was the fact I didn't realize in advance that the pattern was designed so the first and fourth ruffles matched, and the third ruffle and the top piece matched.  You can see it in the picture at the top, which is directly from the packaging.  I didn't realize it until I already had all the pieces cut out.  My intention was to have the colors go blue, then red, then blue then red again... but it didn't work out that way because of how I followed the pattern.

I didn't finish sewing before we left for vacation, so I took the sewing machine with me.  I managed to remember almost all the pieces, except the lining part, somehow I left that at home (along with a bunch of other -- non sewing related -- things).  Luckily it wasn't absolutely necessary, and I made the dress work without.

All in all it was a good project, and it turned out really cute.  I will definitely try it again, with the right amount of fabric next time.   Here's pictures of the finished product:

Back

Front

And here are some action shots of L.Soup in the dress.  They are from my phone and she would.not.stand.still... so this is all I got.  She also had a really great bow in, courtesy of my momma... but of course I didn't take a single picture of her when she had it on.

Blatantly ignoring me.

Answering the remote phone

Mid-spin, and an nice shot of my toes.

Something else exciting with this dress:  I got to try out the KAM Snaps and pliers and that I bought earlier this month, which I plan on using to make bibs.  It was super easy and I'm pretty excited about it.  You can see the snap at the top of the neckline on the back of the dress!

Hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July!