Clean clothes

Six people in a family = massive amounts of laundry

Thankfully, we have had very understanding family and friends who have let us do laundry at their house for the last 7 or 8 months during our 'homeless' stage and then once we got back into our house but didn't have the washer and dryer hooked up. A BIG thanks to Mom & Dad, the JoMos, and Dawn for letting us crash your laundry rooms from time to time.

So, why didn't we hook up our washer and dryer the instant we moved back into our house? Well...it's a little complicated.

We got rid of the staircase that went to the basement from our kitchen...and it also just-so-happened to be the only way to get the washer and dryer into the space where the hookups were. Woops!

We have a little nook area off the finished basement room that we had planned on becoming a new laundry room...but...we couldn't find a layout that made sense since the washer/dryer combo was too big for the space.

So...what do you do when you can't get your appliances to where they need to go? You break into the wall (or at least widen the existing doorway)!

We have big plans for the laundry area now that everything is hooked up. Someday our extra kitchen cabinets will be put next to the washer and dryer and we'll finish off the area to be light and bright (and not look like a storage room). It will all happen in time...but the laundry refinish is quite a ways down the project list.
Oh well. For now, no complaints because at least we can wash the mountains of laundry we create...and we can wash it in our own house!!

As a side note...the area you see in the picture on the left above is the little nook that used to be a kitchenette - complete with gold/crackly mirrored back-splash and a wood hinged countertop like you'd see in a bar in the Old West. Here are a couple pictures of the beauty it once was.

And you should really thank me for not getting pictures of all the dead mice we found in the cabinets you see here. (they were a nice little housewarming present we found when we moved in) Trust me...the bare concrete and wood studs is an improvement! :)

 

Balloons that POP

It's a little past Valentine's Day but I just had to do a quick post about some fun Valentines! This was our first experience needing to have Valentine's for a child's whole class. Elliott needed to give some out to his little friends at preschool and so the big decision was...to make...or buy?

Only one person in his class made their own - the rest were all store-bought. So were Elliott's. BUT his were just so fun I couldn't resist them!

I was at the Dollar Store in early January trying to buy some little gifts to put in the kids' mailboxes while we were in Hawaii. The Valentine's Day stuff had just been put out and I saw these crazy looking V-day pouches that said they held self-inflating balloons. I bought one set to try out...and sure enough...they were cool!

So, I went back and bought enough for his whole class. Here's what they do...
First you take one of these little pouches and put it flat on the table. Then you hit it...really hard with your fist!

The bag starts to puff up and you hear the sound of the wrapper tearing.

The balloon inside the package is filled with baking soda and citric acid that mix together and 'explode' when you hit it.
Then...poof...a balloon comes flying (like...almost to the ceiling) out! How fun is that?

All you can see in the picture above is the empty wrapper - while the balloon had shot across the room. I tried half a dozen times to get a picture of one popping but it caught me off guard every time. (and I may or may not have screamed every time it popped)

To our family...we wanted to send you some Valentines in the mail but didn't think these would travel well. I think they'd pop in the mailbag and give a poor mail carrier quite a shock! Plus, being that they were from the very high-quality experts from the Dollar Store...a quarter of them were duds and didn't pop through the wrapper. Boo.

Fun nonetheless.

In other randomness...Henry loves his sisters. :)

That's a lot of fabric

We finally have window coverings up on every window in the house! I bought half of them and made half of them. Phew...it feels good to be done with this part and be moving onto other projects...and now we can work without the neighbors seeing us through our un-covered windows. :)

When we moved back in we made the decision to go cord-free. We used to have blinds in every window that were controlled by cords. But after a friend tragically lost her 2 year old son to a cord accident, and knowing that we would be on a different floor to sleep than our children are, we nixed the cords and had to start over in thinking through window coverings.

Cordless blind systems and shutters can get really expensive, really quickly. We got custom shutters for two of our bathrooms and the rest of the house has curtains.

The entire first floor has white curtains (with the exception of the kitchen - they're blue) in different fabrics depending on the room. I love printed and bold-colored curtains but I also know myself too well. I like to redecorate and having a neutral curtain lets me change colors as much as I want at a lower expense.

I had to modify several of the curtains to make them the right length...but on the main level there was only one curtain I had to make from scratch...and it was a B.I.G. one. I procrastinated as long as I could and finally got started.

Not long after we moved in to our house the first time...our living room looked like this:

See the window to the left of the Christmas tree? That's the window I'm talking about in this post.

Not long after the picture above was taken we started ripping into this room. The picture below is taken from the same angle and you can see the beginnings of our stairs to the basement. The door to the 3-seasons porch was moved and you can see the frame of the new wall with the window-in-question behind it.

Here's another picture (taken from the same angle) when it was closer to being finished (before the water damage). You can see that we also re-faced the fireplace (the mantel wasn't on yet in this picture).

This room has changed quite a bit again...since we did some re-arranging when the water damage was fixed. Sadly, we were close to being done with our entire finished basement project including the staircase when we found out the extent of the water damage and knew we had to move. We have had the wallpaper for the back wall for 3 or 4 years and it's still not up. We also had carpet chosen and ready to go for the stairs and basement but it's still not installed. We're getting there, though.

And the curtains are a big part of making it feel more finished.

I used 5 yards of linen-like fabric (hey, it looks the same as linen but is way cheaper and doesn't wrinkle) for this curtain. F.I.V.E. Y.A.R.D.S! I had never sewn anything that long before and it was tricky to work with that much fabric and keep the sides and hems straight. Not only that, but I wanted it lined so we're actually looking at almost 10 total yards of fabric in this one curtain. (I double-lined all of the other curtains I made for the house - but only single-lined this one.)

The other big challenge with this curtain is that the hem had to be at a diagonal so it would brush the tops of the stairs. Tricky...for me with my lack of sewing skills.
I stared at the fabric and tried to pin it for about an hour before I got something to work. It looked like this:

To hang the curtain, the hubs had to build a little platform. Scary.
The upper window is the one you originally could see by the Christmas tree in the first picture of this post. The lower window is an egress window in our basement. The pink stuff is insulation that we keep there since it's a thin single-pane window.

Finally we were done and here is the curtain. Keep in mind that the rest of this area is unfinished - and I hope to post progress on this in the coming months!

There is another egress window in the basement and I made a matching curtain for it as well. Yay for progress...and diy. I can't even imagine how much a curtain like this would have cost if I hired someone to make it for me. I think the total for this one including the fabric and everything...was about $65 and it took a total of about 4 hours to do.

A Valentine's Party

We've been having lots of fun with Valentine's Day coming up. The kids look forward to little gifts in their mailboxes. Their most recent present was a funny sucker I found that makes your mouth look like this: he he he

Yesterday, Pottery Barn Kids hosted a Valentine's Tea for girls and their dolls. I heard about it several weeks ago and promised Emma we could go. You'd think I would have learned my lesson by now: Don't promise things to your kids until you have a reservation!! Sadly, when I tried to register...they were completely full! (it filled up the minute they announced it)
So...plan B was to host our own tea at home. I invited Emma and Isa but, of course, Elliott didn't want to be left out so he helped plan it too.

First we made some tea. The hubs and I drink tea all the time (having a huge tea stash is one of the pluses of owning your own tea company), but the kids never get to have any so they were excited!! I made pots of Earl Grey and this special Rooibos tea that has pink candy hearts in it. (in the picture below I'm putting the loose tea into a 'make-your-own' teabag)

Next I had to dig out my Valentine's decorations. I've had an entire plastic bin full of heart shaped lights, doilies, plates, and decorations for years...and never used them! So...it was time to go all out and I tried to use most of what I have.
I set everything up in the girls' bedroom. The kids (okay...and me too) LOVED how it turned out. They felt so special to get to have all this food and pretty setting for them.

The girls wanted to wear pink and Elliott got to wear one of Daddy's ties.

The lights in the background were a mixture of two strands of heart lights (one was all white and one was a red and white combo) and two sets of smaller light strands (a red and white strand and a hot pink strand that I put in a glass container).
I hung the lights using my favorite little Command Strips that are supposed to be used for keeping cords straight (after realizing tape wasn't keeping them on the wall). I also stuck one of these handy-dandy strips on the ceiling to hang the pink and orange shade (from Ikea).

The kids begged to make special Valentine's cookies or a cake...but I couldn't get very fancy with the food because we still don't have a working oven. Emma went grocery shopping with me and picked out a cute little cake for the tea. Then we had Girl Scout cookies, crackers and cheese (Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits are kind of my new obsession), strawberries and the best red anjou pear I've ever had. (I planned on bruleeing the pears...but someone used my kitchen torch for a house project and now I can't find it.) They were delish anyway!
I also made a cheese dip using the most random recipe but it sounded (and was) good. It was from a cookbook sent as a campaign piece from one of our State Senators. I guess it was an effective piece because I've kept it for years...and I voted for him. :)

I had a couple different styles of hearts and I used white electrical tape to hang them from the chairs for a fun little 'loving' touch.

The kids each liked one of the teas...but if you ask them what their favorite part of our party was they'll all say it was the cake!

It was so fun making them feel special and...even though it was a lot of work...it was well worth it. How are you celebrating Valentine's Day?

Give me a deal

I love browsing through some of the daily deal sites, don't you?
Zulily has lots of cute kids' stuff.
The Foundary has mostly home decor...and I've purchased a couple random items from them.
Joss & Main has a lot of cool home stuff too.
Even Target has a daily deal email with a bunch of sales. (They text coupons now to you too...which is great! No more clipping!)

But there's a new site with a cool twist. On LuxeYard you can actually suggest products you want to get a deal on and others can vote. If enough people want the item...they'll try to create a sale. They also have some cool things for sale and with some of them...the more people who buy...the cheaper the item gets. When the sale is over everyone who purchased gets the cheapest price. Cool!

Here are a couple things I love on their site right now.
This first one I would l.o.v.e to have! I've seen them around and I think it would be such a fun way to listen to my ipod! It's on the Concierge part of the site.

Blue is a main accent in our house right now and this little guy would be so cute on our new mantle...that isn't built yet...but I can picture it done and this would be great on it. :)

And this one is pricey but I really like it. Too bad I don't need any more lights. I wonder if I could DIY something like this??

What are the daily deal sites you like?

Lock em up

I love my new pantry-style cabinets and all the organization they bring to my kitchen. So after all the time I took to clean and arrange my pantry...why do I keep finding my cabinets looking like this?

 That doesn't look very organized! Oh wait...there's the little culprit!

 And here are his accomplices...

Seriously, why is it so much fun to pull everything out of the cabinets? Maybe I'd be more ok with this if I didn't have baskets full of toys for them to play with instead.

It took us a while, but we finally got a very important package delivered filled with the kill-joy cabinet locks.

My favorite cabinet locks are from One Step Ahead and they are seriously the only ones I will use. (although I had to get a different kind too because these don't fit inset cabinet doors - bummer)

Why are they so great?
Because the kids can't even budge the cabinet doors. There's no 'tease' factor like you have with other types of locks where the child can open the cabinet just enough to get frustrated and mad that they can't get in all the way. Plus their little fingers are still safe since they can't jam those tiny digits into a slightly open cabinet.

The other thing I love about these (besides the fact they're 'no-drill') is that you can just flip a little switch and the doors will open freely. So if you're in between the age where kids need these locks, you don't have to uninstall them.
They're on the pricey side - but SO worth it. My mixing bowls, spices and cans have been saved! And my kids have been saved from all the icky cleaning products.

Sorry Henry...but I'm sure you'll find another area of the house to mess up...err...I mean...play in.

Custom Cars

For Christmas Elliott was given a couple more sets of Hot Wheels Wall Tracks by us and my parents. He still loves them and now (mostly thanks to another Christmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa C) he has almost 30 cars to play with on them!
The cool thing about these tracks is that you can reconfigure them in endless combinations because the distance to each wall anchor is the same...making the pieces interchangeable. (Man, I wish I had thought of that! Genius!)

Here is the current set up...

And here is an exciting addition to Elliott's car collection...a custom Hot Wheels car with his own picture on it! Another genius at Hot Wheels figured out a way to put a picture and custom wording on a car for a crazy-cheap price! This one was actually free because one of the Wall Tracks boxes had a code in it for a free one. But it's sssssooooo worth the money to bring joy to this sweet little face.
If you have a little car-lover in your life, go make one of these. I think it will be our favorite birthday gift for his little friends too. (although the down-side is that it takes almost 6 weeks to get your custom car)

Of course...since Elliott got to pick the wording he wanted on the sides of his new truck he naturally chose 'Elliott's Awesome!' :) I agree, little buddy.

Outer Beauty

Remember this post about the exterior siding? Well...last week we had a whole crew of people here working to get it done! 'Done' is a relative term, though. The area around our front door is still just covered in house wrap and we don't have the new front overhang trimmed out yet...BUT it was great progress none-the-less.

Here's a little sneak peek of the outside. We'll have to wait until it's warmer to get everything painted but at least the primed hardie looks better than the peeling wood did!

Here comes the crew...our front yard started looking like a truck dealership. :)

We have a 3-seasons porch at the back of the house that we are hoping to convert to a fully conditioned space (a 4-seasons porch, I guess?) and the first step was to get rid of one whole wall of windows so we could get more insulation in there. Windows are now gone...

And wall is put up so it can be sided on the outside...

Here's what that looked like from the outside. Someday we'll have a different configuration for the windows you can still see as we replace them all.

Another view of the back of the house in progress.

And here's the front of the house. Under the old siding was this black papery stuff. Call me crazy...but I really liked the look of the house when this black stuff was exposed. Maybe a black painted house will be in our future???

 Here are the new little roof extensions we had built and the mix of shakes and flat siding.

And the back of the house again. We can't help but start planning out our new deck that will wrap around the back of the house from the kitchen door (the one you see near the center of the picture below) and extend to the end of the enclosed porch.

And just to give you a little perspective so you can visualize the layout of the inside...our master bedroom is where the double windows are on the lower level. (we've had many conversations about turning the windows into french doors so we can walk outside from the master) Then the girls' bedroom is the set of double windows you see on the upper level. The boys' bedroom is the smallest window you see right above the porch roof.

Now we 'just' have to get the outside painted, and get some gutters put on...as well as trim out the front. Every little step gets us closer to seeing the whole thing come together!

Pearl Harbor

This is the final post about our Hawaii trip and it's about an unexpected extension to our time there. The minute my conference was over we headed to the airport to hop on a plane from Maui to Honolulu on the island of O'ahu. We were supposed to then fly to Atlanta...but the flight was WAY over booked. There were several people who got bumped without any compensation at all. We decided that we didn't want them to force us to take a different flight so we volunteered to be rebooked.

That meant we got $400 each in vouchers and Delta picked up the tab for our hotel and food...while we got to stay an extra day in Honolulu and see Pearl Harbor and Waikiki! (two things we had wanted to do anyway but had decided not to spend the money on right now) Woohoo!

We were up early to catch a bus to Pearl Harbor and try to beat the big tours by getting there first. We walked around and looked at the museums, learning the history of what happened there. I honestly didn't know much about it and it's quite an amazing and tragic story.
This is a model of the way the visitor center sits over the wreckage of one of the ships. It was hard to really get a feel for what you were looking at once you were at the site...so this helped immensely.

 Here we are on the boat outside the memorial.

 

Inside the memorial. The building is really beautiful.

This is a wall at one end of the building that contains the names of everyone who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

Parts of the ship are still sticking up out of the water since the harbor is so shallow.

After seeing Pearl Harbor we decided to walk to a market we had heard about. There are vendors set up with tents and are literally lined up the entire way around the Aloha Stadium...where the Pro Bowl was played last weekend. (we missed all that fun by a week - bummer)

We picked up a few fun souvenirs for the kids and then caught another bus to Waikiki. We were expecting to see a spectacular beach with all that we've heard about Waikiki. But, to be honest, Waikiki is everything we dislike about beaches! It was BUSY! The natural beauty of the area is hidden by stacks of hotels and cheesy restaurant chains. We were glad to go see it...but don't know that we'll go back to vacation there. We've heard other parts of O'ahu are beautiful and much less built-up...that would be more our style.

We were only in O'ahu for about 24 hours before getting on our plane home. It was such a fun and unexpected mini-vacation, though. And the best part was that we didn't have to pay for it! :) Thanks Delta! You can overbook your flights anytime. And...of course...thanks Mom and Dad for being willing to watch the kids for a whole week...plus the extra day we got bumped! The kids had a blast!

Leaving Honolulu at sunset.

 This is Waikiki from the air. Bye, Hawaii. Hope we get to see you again soon!