Must Add Fabric Softener

Family night

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

I had planned on doing some crafting tonight, but instead we went to Culver's for my nephew's third birthday. Then, even though we were ridiculously full of ice cream, we decided to take Kojak to the park for a run. See them way out there?

She also got lots of chances to practice not reacting to barking dogs. It seems that she could care less about them.

Baby Girl had no shoes, so no playing in the gravel for her.

The boys had a great time, though.

I foresee lots of trips to the park this summer.

Woof

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Meet Kojak.

Kojak is a girl with a boy's name. And yes, I'm constantly calling her "he" and "boy." I'm getting better. She's a four-month-old boxer/springer spaniel mix and other than that we really don't know much about her. The cats hate her, although Bill is warming to her much faster than Poppy.

She's named after the dog from The Stand, also known as Big Steve. We're doing lots of teaching her that we (including the children) are the ones in charge and she'll be taking a training class soon. Because there's nothing worse than a big dog that's disobedient and poorly trained.

She likes the kids and is handling them very well, especially Baby Girl (as you can see). That was something we really were watching out for since our last shelter dog hated the kids. I think since she's only four months old we've caught her before she developed too many bad habits. She's not housetrained, of course, and thinks that being alone is the worst thing ever. The only place for her kennel is in the back part of the basement, so she's learning to get over that fast.

Skinny baby

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Baby Girl went for her fifteen month checkup a few days ago. The appointment went well, we talked about her lack of walking (verdict: she'll do it sooner or later), her speech, etc etc. Then when I got home I was looking over her papers and noticed that her weight was 18 lbs 4 oz, which is the fourth percentile. Our pediatrician gives you a few pages about what to expect at this age, usually with the height and weight and percentiles written on the front, but the paper had changed format and this time her numbers were on the back, where neither the doctor nor I saw them. I save all of these sheets and I know her twelve month is around here somewhere, but so are a billion other papers. Even though I couldn't find it, I know she wasn't in the fourth percentile then. The one I could find, which was her four month, had her in the 68th percentile for weight. I called and found out that her twelve month weight was 19 lbs 6 oz, which means she's lost 1 lb 2 oz in three months.

No wonder she still fits into this twelve month romper.

So now she has to go back in four weeks to be weighed and I am on a mission to fatten her up. Bring on the butter!

Here she is eating bacon for dinner. Except not really; she chewed it up, got all the delicious bacon flavor, then spit it out. She does that a lot lately and I'm sure it's not helping her pack on the ounces. Lately even getting a quarter of a sandwich in her can be tricky, and that's assuming she doesn't throw a bunch of it on the floor or down around her legs in the high chair.

We'll be trying this tomorrow.

It's pudding made from avocados. Obviously it would be easy to get some weight on her if I just fed her macaroni and cheese and ice cream and chicken nuggets, but I'd rather she put it on from whole foods and good fats. So we won't just be slathering her meals in butter. Some of them will be slathered in coconut oil.

More gardening

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Ugh. You guys. I lost my garden plan. I mean, I mostly remember what it was since it was only the back bed--shade plants in the middle, part shades next to them, suns at the edges--but still. I like to have a plan.

Yaya and I went outside to water, but the columbines (unplanted) were looking pretty toasty so we decided to get those in. It took maybe ten minutes since there were only three.

They're in front of the (still single) peony, which maybe looks less sad? I can't tell. It's not out and out dead, anyway.

I will eventually clear out the grass and make this a real bed. I wasn't sure if we were actually going to do this bed this year, and transplanting the peony the other day was kind an impulse decision.

I still can't tell about this geranium. The other one looks pretty good.

I hate this area.

Why is there not concrete here? Or dirt? Why rocks? Why an absolutely useless space? I'm thinking of filling it with hostas, maybe. Or hostas and heucheras. Whatever goes there has to be able to tolerate lots of shade, since I'm pretty sure the only light this spot gets is when the sun is almost set. But I want it to serve some sort of purpose. I've thought of building a pallet potting table and putting potted plants around it, but I want something I'll definitely finish. If we do move next year (this year's looking out) I don't want to have to scramble to get something in here. What do you think? Potting station? Hosta bed? Both?

Craftiness in progress

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Nothing really interesting to share today. It hit 101 here, so obviously I spent as little time outside as possible. I cut latch hook canvas and sewed batting on it for a project, but I didn't get it done so I don't have anything to show for my work yet. The rest of the day was the usual: two loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, and an hour trying to get the baby to sleep. A pretty boring day, basically. Oh, and my little stinker is so proud that she can do this now.

Yeah, we see you up on that chair. Quit growing up. Unless you're going to decide to walk. I'm fine with that.

Finally outside

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

It's warm! It's past Mother's Day weekend! I can plant stuff! Can you tell I'm excited?

I had big plans to spend lots of time outside this year, getting my garden to be, if not perfect, at least better than now. We bought Baby Girl a giant play yard so she could be outside with me. I was ready. Then I found a tick on my arm after I had not left the house all day. I do not do bugs, you guys. Especially biting or stinging bugs. I mean, I can handle ticks although they're disgusting and occasionally diseased, but I will run away from a wasp or even a honeybee. And I do mean run. So I'm not totally sure about taking her outside; there's really no spot in our yard that isn't under trees and she won't leave a hat on.

Anyway, Baby Girl stayed inside with B while Mr. Man, Yaya and I went out and played in the dirt.

I got two big pots planted.

This was super easy; just pop a hanging basket out of its pot, loosen the roots a little, and put it in a planter. I'm pretty sure the big planter has foam or something in the bottom half so it can actually be moved. These look pretty sad because I accidentally forgot a lot of my plants outside over the weekend and we had a freeze warning Saturday night. I'm not sure if it actually froze, but it couldn't have been good for them either way. The one in the smaller pot looks pretty iffy; hopefully it'll come through.

This giant hole was formerly the home of a peony. It's now home to one elephant ear bulb.

The peony lives here now, where there's more light. Fingers crossed that it perks up. You can see the beginnings of a second hole for one of the remaining two peonies.

My hostas are alive!

I actually weeded that bed a week and a half ago. Definitely needs mulch. I mean, that wont help with the weeds. But it'll look better.

I got in a few alyssum (I haven't seen any reseeding from the ones I had last year, but it's only just warmed up) and still have three columbine, some Dusty Miller, my new burning bush, a few hundred bulbs and a little bit more alyssum to get in. That's not counting all the perennials I need to go up and split from my mom's yard. I should probably try and get it all done this month so things have time to get settled in before it gets super hot. Of course, it's supposed to be in the 90s tomorrow so that ship may already have sailed.

Sewing room progress

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Mon, 13 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Happy belated Mother's Day! I hope everyone had a good weekend and a good Mother's Day. I spent mine doing not a whole lot. I did do a little sewing room rearranging in the late evening, but it wasn't terribly productive. Otherwise we watched movies for most of the day and B and Yaya went to the park to play baseball for a little bit.

I had hoped to get the dresser completely stripped Saturday but, of course, that did not happen. It was an ambitious thought to begin with, and I knew B was having people over so I would probably have a lot of Baby Girl wrangling. Which is exactly what happened. This was most of my Saturday.

I put a coat of stripper on most of it Friday night and I did get that taken off Saturday morning, so there was a tiny bit of progress. The Citristrip is not really touching the original finish. Scrubbing it with steel wool and mineral spirits is doing something, but it's far from down to bare wood. Here the dresser is now.

The color on these is a little misleading. It looks like a nice honey tone, but in reality it's a dull brown, and not just because I've been scrubbing off the shiny part. And you can see that the original finish is still basically intact. I could probably put on another few coats of Citristrip and get it a little better, but that sounds like a waste to me. I'll stick with scrubbing it with 4-0 steel wool and mineral spirits, then stain and either wax or poly it. Poly will be tricky because when I primed it I found cat prints on it, and when I stripped it I found cat prints in the stripper on the top. Under the plastic wrap, of course. I'm glad I put that on, and I hope the cats are, too.

I guess I'm stripping a dresser

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Fri, 10 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

In my eternal quest to finish the sewing room, I was trying to finalize my dresser prep so painting could begin. I pulled out the sander and was getting ready to start on a drawer when I noticed this.

See that little T pattern? I was intrigued. I mean, when it's just a midcentury dresser it's one thing. But if it has details, well, that's something else, isn't it?

So out came the Citristrip and plastic wrap.

I left it overnight and the next morning I had this.

Hmm. I need to get the original finish off, and I want to see what the top looks like, but...well, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? I think I'm stripping a dresser now.

I hate haircuts

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Whew. That was a close one, you guys. There was almost no post today because the card reader in my laptop has stopped working again and the cable for the camera was MIA. Luckily we have an external hard drive and a scanner that take the same type of USB cable, so we're good now.

Anyway, ever since the boys' first haircuts, I've avoided haircuts as much as possible because they look so much older without all their curls. However, it is getting on toward summer and Mr. Man hasn't had a haircut for most of the school year either, so it was time.

Before, in a messy basement.

After. I took after pictures right after, but he was trying to get away so they were blurry.

See? Where is my six-year-old?

I offered to cut Yaya's, too, but he declined. He wants a fauxhawk. I'm not sure how I feel about him having styling opinions now. My babies are growing up. Baby Girl is still a while from needing a haircut, although she has about ten times as much hair as the boys had when they were this age. I mentioned getting hers cut the other day, just to figure out some sort of bang situation because her hair is always falling in her eyes, and B forbade me. I have a feeling it'll be halfway down her back before he changes his mind.

Life maintenance day

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Wed, 08 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Today was one of those days where you have to do a bunch of piddly little things that have no visible effect. Baby Girl and I spent the morning running errands--groceries, Home Depot (I would like a week to go by where I don't have to go to Home Depot), prizes for Mr. Man's class store, doctor's office to sign a form. Etc etc. I spent approximately two hours trying to put Baby Girl to sleep, and that's just naptime. People tell me all the time "oh, she's such a happy baby! I bet she's always happy!" Not always.

Trust me, she was being a pouty pants there. She's a ham, too, so it's hard to get pictures of her crying because she starts smiling as soon as she sees the camera.

I spent two hours cooking and cleaning the kitchen. An hour doing laundry and picking up the house (you can't tell, of course). I tried to work on the entry floor but Baby Girl didn't want to be left in the living room and I'm pretty sure I was marking the tile backward. So I got exactly this far.

I'm pretty sure I delacquered some brass. I meant to just clean it, so oops. Delacquering is OK, too.

My Yaya.

At least it was reasonably nice outside. Here's Bill celebrating victory over Poppy in claiming the living room window.

Aww, kitties. Can't we all just get along?

Back to this

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

So the sewing room looks like this again.

All the stuff back in the middle of the room. But look, the walls are painted! It's so much nicer in there now.

I'm working on getting the dresser painted so I can store things in it. So far it's been lots of filling and priming, but I'm getting there. I'd like to get rid of that big metal bookcase, although I'm going to need the storage space unless I seriously pare down. I think we all know that a huge purge is not in the cards.

I'd kind of like to paint the ceiling, or at least the spaces between the floor joists, but I'm thinking that might be a bit more than I want to take on.

I'm hoping to be done with the dresser by the end of the week; I want a really good dry time so it doesn't chip. Then maybe this weekend I can get everything back where it belongs and actually have a usable space again.

Fire and chocolate

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Did you ever go to the store to get one thing and end up coming home with something completely different? This weekend we went to Home Depot to get screws for the dining room table and paint for the basement floor. I forgot the screws and decided to wait on the paint after we got this.

I've been looking at fire pit pictures and DIYs for a while. Some of them are too rich for my blood (Katie Bower's is beautiful, but $260 isn't in my budget) but then I saw one that was more in my wheel house.

Click the picture for the link. Theirs was $55, but ours was closer to $20 because we had pavers and rocks and I forgot to buy capstones. So basically we only bought 16 concrete blocks. Now, my dad swears that concrete block fire pits are bad and will explode, but according to the Lowes website (the post at the link says it and I checked too) the blocks are fire resistant. A backyard fire with just sticks and leaves isn't likely to get hot enough to do anything. B started a fire and let it burn for a while, and no explosions, so that's good enough for me. As always, keep a hose or pitcher of water nearby when you're playing with fire.

The process was a mixture of Bower Power's and The Dirty Loft's. Clear an area of grass, level it, lay pavers down, level them, stack pavers, fill pavers with gravel (or river rock, in our case), put a layer of river rock inside the fire pit, light something on fire. If I'd remembered to pick up construction adhesive I would have had B use it between the blocks, but I didn't. The rocks are keeping everything weighted and together instead. Brian at The Dirty Loft said he used one row of blocks, but we preferred two. Hopefully when I remember to get the capstones on it won't be too tall.

And, of course, we made s'mores.

Hope you had a fun weekend, too!

Happy weekend!

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Fri, 03 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

I don't have much to blog about today. My plan was to work my way through at least some of the garage sale stuff we've got sitting around. For reference, this table is eight feet wide.

Baby Girl accepted that for about fifteen minutes and then demanded bed time, so I spent the rest of the evening trying to sync up my Bloglovin' and Google Reader unread posts. I'm thinking I'll switch over early.

We're going to finish painting the toy room this weekend, and I hope to get the sewing room done, too. Then there's the enormous pile of garage sale stuff to price. What are your plans for this weekend? Anything fun? I hope the weather is good for everybody. I'm not expecting much here.

What happened?

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Thu, 02 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

It was beautiful out this past weekend. We spent most of it outside. The kids were in heaven. I weeded our front bed to get ready for new plants. Baby Girl had to go out in her baby jail, but she was fine with it.

The cats were loving having the windows open. Bill found the one sunny window in the house.

And now, we are supposed to get snow. It's supposed to be cold and rainy the rest of this week. Then we'll have a short break and it'll rain again for a few days next week. What happened? Where did spring go? We're a good two weeks into it and it's snowing. SNOWING. I am annoyed, to say the least. I don't have any pressing plans for things to do outside; I just don't want to deal with snow in May. There will be a lot of pouting (mine) if the boys have a snow day today. Come back, spring!

Happy ninth!

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Whew! B and I have been married for nine years. Seems like both forever and no time at all. We will be celebrating by painting the basement and sorting toys--we do like to do it up right. OK, we'll also be going out for sushi this weekend. I hope at some point there will be cake.

Happy ninth, B!

I actually found a good oops paint color

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

I didn't want to spend $35 a gallon to paint the basement, but I also didn't want to deal with crappy watery paint. Miraculously I came across two gallons of decent neutral oops paint at Home Depot. Usually all they have are neon greens or various shades of mauve. I had to wait three or four trips for this color to show up, but it was worth it.

This is where we left the sewing room/craft studio/whatever I'm calling it this week.

I will admit, I was a little disappointed when I opened the can because it looked like a nice neutral yellow on the label, but it was definitely greenish in the can and on the wall.

I see a spot I missed.

When I moved over to the main part of the basement, where there's better lighting, it looked much more like the label. To me it looks kind of a wheat-colored.

I'm sure it's also a little darker than usual because it's dark outside and the paint is still wet.

I have two gallons, and I'm thinking that'll be just about enough. Painting these three walls (of eight total) took approximately 2/3 of a gallon, so I'll probably be scraping at the end. Two of the walls are drywall so maybe that'll make things easier.

I want to get it done so we can go through the toys to purge for our garage sale but I probably won't be able to get back to this until Wednesday. I'd like to finish it up this week, but there's a lot of moving around to do in the sewing room so maybe, maybe not.

Pinterest meh

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

I won't call this a fail, because it did produce yummy cookies, but they certainly didn't look like the ones in the picture. The taste was good, but not as great as I expected.

I pinned this recipe not too long ago and posted about it here. I decided to make it for Teacher Appreciation Week. Then I made them a week early because I misread the dates for Teacher Appreciation Week. Anyway, I gathered materials, and let me tell you, keeping my children from devouring the pretzels was no small task. But I got it done and we mixed up the dough, chilling it overnight as directed.

The next day, I started baking. The dough was incredibly hard; there is, after all, a lot of butter in each batch. I came close to knocking the cookie sheet off the counter more than once when the scoop skipped across the nearly-rock-solid dough.

This is what the cookies are supposed to look like.

Unfortunately, my cookies looked like this.

I'm not sure if I would make this recipe again. The cookies taste good; the brown butter really does add something, and the butterscotch, pretzels and chocolate chips were as good as I knew they would be. And they were chewy, as promised, the way you want cookies to be chewy. This recipe is based on Alton Brown's chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe, so no surprise that they were good. However, I had two problems with them: they were flat and they were greasy. Actually, make that three. It was also pretty difficult to get the pretzels and chips evenly distributed when scooping the dough. I did my best, but sometimes I'd come across a cookie missing one or two of those ingredients completely.

Let's go back to the first two issues: flat and greasy. They actually didn't come out of the oven flat or greasy.

But they ended up that way. At first glance, I want to take blame for this because I used all purpose flour instead of bread flour, but these specific issues are things I've come across lately with more than one recipe, and none of the other recipes called for bread flour. So I don't know.

According to Alton Brown and Chowhound, bread flour is used in some cookie recipes because it helps to create a chewy texture (as does the brown sugar in this recipe; that's why there's so much more of it than white sugar) but I didn't have any problems there. It also absorbs slightly more moisture than all purpose flour, and I could see that being the source of my issue with the greasiness, too. Like I said, though, this is a problem I've had with other recipes. I need to get an oven thermometer because it occurred to me that it's a problem I've only had at this house. My cookies used to come out exactly how I expected them to, but not since we moved here. If the oven is running low that could explain both problems--the dough isn't cooking fast enough to keep the butter in the dough from melting and letting the cookie spread too much, and in turn that doesn't let the butter get absorbed completely before the cooking time is up. I don't know. I'm no chemist and I'm no chef, but I do try and understand why ingredients do what they do when I bake.

So. I'm not sure if I would make this recipe again. I am willing to try it with bread flour and see what happens, but my bigger problem is with the uneven distribution of chips and pretzels. It's a good idea, but I just don't know if it would be worth trying again. If I could get my cookies to be as chock full of chips and pretzels as the ones pictured then yeah, I'm all for it. But it just felt like instead of getting the expected mixture of chocolate, butterscotch and salty pretzel, I was getting individual ingredients. Pretzels or chocolate chips. Butterscotch or pretzel. It never seemed to coalesce into one whole.

One of the suggestions I read for substituting all purpose flour for bread flour was to measure your AP flour, then remove 2-3 tablespoons of flour and add in the same amount of cornstarch. Cornstarch was also suggested as something that would stop cookies from spreading, so I think if I were to try this recipe again I would add some cornstarch. For this batch, however, I just put them on paper towels to absorb the extra grease (and there was a lot) and called it good.

I also think that 20-24 cookies is a conservative estimate. Which is not a bad thing, especially considering how much we like to taste test both the unfinished and finished cookie product.

EDIT: I haven't bought an oven thermometer yet, but I baked more of these today with the oven temp at 400. The baking time was ten minutes and they turned out fantastic, just how I wanted them. So obviously my oven is running low, now I just have to figure out how low.

Whew

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

No pictures tonight; I didn't get the chance to take any before Baby Girl started crying to be put to sleep. I did get most of the priming in the basement done; I just have a wall and a half of edging to do. I bought a roller cover meant for stucco, which did speed things up considerably but did not cut down on the amount of primer used. Even a brush wasn't really getting into all the crevices, so I'm not going to worry about it. It's an unfinished basement; it is what it is and paint is only going to make it look a little bit better.

This weekend is going to be a busy one. I need to finish the kitchen (lower cabinet paint touch ups, tiling in the pantry, wall touch ups, trim touch ups, caulking the trim), the bathroom (paint the trim, finish painting the walls, install the trim, install the last three tiles, grout) and the entry (finish installing the floor, grout the floor, reinstall the quarter round, paint the trim). I'd also like to weed the front bed, which shouldn't take long since it's completely empty. It's a lot. I'm not sure I can get it all done, especially if the kids won't cooperate. I'm going to be exhausted. But that's a huge chunk of stuff that will be done and I'm ready for that. Beyond ready.

I called and set an appointment with our real estate agent for Thursday. Six days, thirty-five things left on the to do list. We'll call it Get Stuff Done Week Part 2.

Basementing

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

I thought that I was at the point in my fix ups where I was out of things that I could do with Baby Girl around. But then I remembered we bought this play yard and we were back on track. She spent a good chunk of time in there last night while I got started on priming the main part of the basement.

I don't have a before picture, but look at the opposite wall to see the color difference. Definitely a good change.

It took two hours and tons of primer just to do that one wall. And since the wall is textured it could really use another coat to get in all the nooks and crannies, but I don't wanna. I think a big problem was that I was using a foam roller instead of a rough texture roller. There's no school the rest of the week so it would mean a terrible whine-filled trip, but I may risk taking all the children to Home Depot tomorrow. Or Wal-Mart; their rollers are half the price and I don't care about the quality for basement walls. Baby Girl should be happy with a different roller since it will mean less time in baby jail.

I also worked on getting things away from the other wall I have to paint in the sewing room. I got three boxes packed up and almost one trash bag filled, but I'm not that much closer to the wall.

I'm going back and forth on painting the floor. Pros: there's lots of spray paint marks and I'm sure covering them up would make things look nicer. Cons: I will have to buy paint (I have two partial gallons but I'd probably need one more) and move stuff around. A lot. And also keep the cats from tracking paint everywhere. My cats aren't very smart so they would have paw prints on every flat surface in the house.

As for the rest of the week, I hope to have a working bathroom sink, get the new bathroom and living room trim painted (it's been too cold so far and now I have to wait until Friday evening), finish painting the kitchen cabinets, paint the kitchen walls, finish laying the entry tile and get the last two bathroom tiles cut and laid. Whew. That's not counting all the things I want to get done this weekend. I hope I can do it. Baby jail will help.

I got distracted

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

FYI: this post is basically useless, so if you want to skip it, feel free.

I was going to make Baby Girl some bow barrettes and post about that, but then she was taking forever to go to sleep and I started looking at food on Pinterest. It shouldn't be hard to guess what happened next. (Click the images to go to the pin.)

Malted chocolate cake with toasted marshamllow filling

Almond poppyseed bread

Ricotta cookies

Cake batter cheesecake

Tagalong brownie cookie bars

Strawberry lemonade cookies

Chocolate chip pretzel butterscotch cookies

Cherry pie bars

I'm trying to think of a reason to make each of these. The almond poppyseed bread and the chocolate chip pretzel butterscotch cookies are going to be teacher appreciation gifts, I think, and of course I will need to do some quality control taste testing. And do I really need a reason to make the tagalong brownie cookie bars? Or strawberry lemonade cookies? Cherries are healthy, so I'm good there. I have some ricotta cheese in the fridge that needs to be used, so really I have to make the ricotta cookies. That leaves the malted chocolate cake with toasted marshmallow filling. Oh, I know, our ninth anniversary is May 1--why not celebrate with cake? I forgot the cake batter cheesecake, though. We'll just have to celebrate our anniversary with both. We'll celebrate our tenth anniversary with diabetes.

Moving on to the entry

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

I worked on the kitchen floor last night--I got a little crazy with taking out old tiles so I have to learn to pace myself--and I decided to go ahead and start on the entry floor, too. You can see what Baby Girl thought of this decision.

But I pushed ahead.

This seriously took half an hour, mostly because of the spacing. It's the groutable peel and stick tile and I love it so much. I would say "why did I wait three years to do this" but I don't know if this was available three years ago. I do wish I had used this tile in the bathroom; it would have been a lot easier and cheaper. The color looks a little tan here, but it's actually pretty gray so it's more or less the same as what's in the bathroom now, except the pain in the ass factor is significantly lower. It's at least twice as thick as regular peel and stick tile, so I don't know how easy cutting it with a utility knife (like the box suggests) would be; I'm thinking tin snips might be a better choice.

So far Get Stuff Done week is going well. Tomorrow I have to run three billion errands, but I want to get some painting done in the kitchen. My goal for calling our agent is May 6, so there's no time to waste. Believe me, we'll need every second. We'll probably need a week for cleaning alone.

I may actually be ready for Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Mr. Man and Yaya spent pretty much the entirety of Sunday afternoon and evening picking at each other. Thank God Yaya spent Saturday and most of Sunday at Grandma's house, or I may have gone insane. I love my kids, but I love not having to referee their every single interaction, too. Even Baby Girl was getting in on it.

We accomplished a few things this weekend. We may have found a house (although it's overpriced in my opinion, but I don't know how much weight "I have to redo all the crappy '70s trim upstairs" should carry when making an offer) so the heat is on to get things done. Some of the things don't need pictures. B cleaned the gutters, for instance, and we started going through the tools in the basement. I put the last pieces of laminate in our room and the living room. Yes, they were both missing a piece all this time. At least it was only one. Well, two total.

The kitchen floor is getting better. I know you can't really tell here, but I promise it is. Of course, I noticed four more tiles that should come up so I'm not really any closer to being done.

B and I installed a new kitchen light. My role was mostly supervisory. And yes, this is a work in progress. There will be a shade. And paint.

I wasn't going to replace the old light, but the bulbs burned out and it was so ugly I couldn't even think about replacing them. Plus the bulbs are expensive, so buying a new light was roughly the same price as replacing the bulbs on the old one.

Hmm, there was something else. What was it? Oh, yeah. I got the bathroom tile down.

As you can see, I didn't have the tile cut for around the vent, so I will need to get that done soon. I don't want to grout until the entry floor is done because they both use the same grout, so I don't want to mix up too much or too little or have non-matching colors or something. I'll probably recruit my mom to help with that so it doesn't dry out before I can get everything done. That basically limits me to next weekend since she's getting her knee replaced next Monday.

I know I've been big on theme weeks lately, but I don't really have one for this week. Get things done week? I want to get the entry floor done, the kitchen floor done, the kitchen cabinets painted, the new bathroom and living room trim painted and the kitchen walls painted. If I could get some existing trim painted or the bathroom and living room trim installed, that would be awesome, but I'll take things one day at a time.

What about you guys? Did you finish any projects this weekend?

Scrape, peel, repeat

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

More of the same today: scraping paper off the floor, peeling paper off the floor, spraying water on the floor, then starting the whole thing over. I think I cleared the space for four tiles. I'm hoping to get more done tomorrow and get all the floors finished this weekend. Once the paper is up from the kitchen floor and the floor patch (not yet applied) is dry, putting the actual tile down will take about ten minutes. The entry will take a little longer but not much, and the bathroom will probably take a few hours. Doable. B and I were also thinking about changing out the kitchen sink this weekend, but we'll see. We're going to the zoo with a friend Sunday (assuming it's not snowing, which isn't out of the realm of possibility), so that will eat up a few hours of DIY time. But getting out of the house is a good thing.

What do you have planned for the weekend? Projects? Fun? Both?

Lazy

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Today was rainy and gray, which meant I spent most of the day sleepy and hungry. The kids had early out, so my DIY time during the day was pretty limited. I mostly spent it scraping paper off the floor. Yippee.

This is what a book looks like after Baby Girl gets hold of it. There's a reason why we call her Goat.

This is Mr. Man's current favorite book, too. Thankfully only a few words were obliterated.

Baby Girl and Mr. Man fought over toys. They like some of the same toys, so this happens a lot.

I did get a little brass polishing done.

It's half done here; you can see where I've taken the first layer of grime off on the left. This gave me hope for my brass lamp that's by the desk in the living room. It's very tarnished and I thought I was going to have to repaint it or something. It'll probably take a lot of ketchup (isn't that how you polish your brass?), but it'll be worth it.

Tomorrow will probably be more floor scraping. Again, yippee.

Flooring week continues

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:30:00 +0000

I didn't accomplish as much today as I did yesterday, but I did make some progress. Baby Girl and I didn't do much all day except dishes, laundry and naps, but after the boys came home from school we did make a little progress.

I use the term "we" loosely; she mostly watched her brother play in the backyard and tried to eat her sock. I don't know why.

B doesn't have school tomorrow, so I'm hoping to finish the entry and kitchen floors. Maybe the bathroom floor, too--it could happen. It's early out so I doubt much will be accomplished until he gets home. I didn't finish Baby Girl's blanket today, so maybe that would be a good project to pass the afternoon and keep me sane.