All is Well

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! I just wanted to pop in and tell you that we're all still breathing (in case you were wondering). Sorry for the long stretch without a post - we had an impromptu trip to St. Louis :) "Impromptu" meaning that last Sunday night, Sam and I were discussing his upcoming business trip and we wound up deciding that the kiddos and I would just come along. We left the next day at 2pm.

Impromptu.



I also wanted to let you know... brace yourselves... we're painting. Finally. We knew that this ridiculous room would take forever if we didn't get it done at the beginning of the month. Well, we got sick, didn't finish the room at the beginning of the month, and guess what?

It's

taking

forever.

But, today, we're painting. Well, Sam's painting. I'm cooking. Sissy and her little family are coming over to grill out in an hour or so.

Hoping for a few photos and a Bedroom 2 update coming later this week :)



Happy Memorial Day!!!

FYI: Totally unrelated photos are from Summer 2007 - because, who wants to read a post without pictures? :)

Michelle Adams Etched In My Psyche?

A few weeks back, after we finished up the first layer in Bedroom 3, I was brainstorming about how to work a boy/girl bedroom with a bluish gray backdrop. I came up with a combo of lots of white with red and black accents, incorporating bits of many other colors. You can see the inspiration images that sort of brought this plan about here, but the main "ah ha!" moment came with this gorgeous room from Domino Magazine...

I've saved quite a few images onto my trusty ol' puter within the last year and a half. Many of them I haven't looked at for a while. This afternoon, as I was trying to come up with something for a friend who is choosing paint colors, I stumbled across another Domino image that I was really, really drawn toward. Pretty much everyone on blogosphere was drawn toward it, too, so it's nothing new to anyone. But it did make me wonder something...



I tend to have a pretty good visual memory, and I'm wondering if maybe I had the colors of this room sort of subconsciously hanging out in my mind, just waiting for a chance to come back out and be useful somewhere. Like Punkin and Little Dude's bedroom, for instance.



I definitely think it's possible. I also think it's totally weird that I've kept thinking about a dose of chevron stripes in that room, too. Coincidence? Hmm? Now that I think of it, I was just googling chevron fabric a few weeks back and actually looked at this very Rubie Green fabric (Adams is the mastermind behind Rubie Green).



So, I suppose I have Michelle Adams' apartment etched into my psyche or something. Strange, huh?

Really, though, there are worse things.

Sick Week

Hopefully, we'll be back after the weekend. Hope you all are well and enjoying your days :)

'round here

The weather seems to have freaked out this week and concluded that it's March all over again instead of a few short weeks to Memorial Day. Brrr. Maybe it's for the best, though, because the near-summer weather we had in the last part of April was really making it difficult for me to buckle down on school work.

Spring fever isn't just for third graders in public school, you know.

My mom and dad gave us a wonderful family gift for Christmas this year - a membership to a local pool. Our previous house was in a subdivision that had a pool just a block from our house, and we have definitely missed it. So, this is really exciting for all of us. Everyone keeps asking, "Mama, how many days until the pool opens?".

But, we started our school year a little on the late side and we still have quite a lot to do in several of our subjects. As in, we won't wrap up until around the 4th. Yes, of July. About half of them, though, we're closing in on. We were hoping to finish up math, grammar, spelling, and a few other things by the end of this month. I told our two eldest girls this week that if we really buckled down and crammed a bunch in each day, we could finish about four of our books by Friday. I even told them they could do the extra work in their beds if they wanted to :) See, it's perfect because it's chilly and stormy out this week, but next week... sun and no morning school to do. If we stick with it, that is.



The girls were totally game. We'll see if they're still totally game by Thursday, but so far so good. They worked really hard today, and we're getting there. Bedroom 2 is coming along, too, by the way. Did you read in my sidebar Twitter thingy? Yeah, we got a tummy bug last week and our Mother's Day deadline hopes and dreams came crashing to the ground. But, we're still moving along... finishing up painting the trim.


They really are hard workers. And pretty cute, too. This little gal is finishing up 2nd grade...

... and this one is finishing 3rd. They're so sweet to humor their shutter happy Mama.

Punkin's school picture. Seriously, though - doesn't this look like she's posed for a school portrait? Purple beads and everything. Year book material, man.

Speaking of man... I couldn't leave Little Dude out of the post. He was napping when I snapped these photos of the girls, but he definitely got his share of the spotlight when he woke up. I haven't edited his photos up, yet, but he was in top form. He's three. Can you tell?

My Poor Guinea Pig

Well, I went to bed satisfied last night that I had posted Elisa's Q&A and hadn't found any typos. I failed, however, to check the links I provided. I always check my links. Guess what. I linked to the WRONG blog!!! So, for those of you who tried to visit Elisa and Nick's blog via my links in last night's post - please try again. This time, promise - it's the right link!

Poor guinea pigs.

More Brother/Sister Shared Bedroom Inspiration

"In a sunny corner haven that will eventually be sleeping quarters
for both for her boys, Putnam infuses balance with a pair of matching
four-poster twin beds. Here, she weaves in elements from other parts of the
house (colors, spheres, and bamboo texture) to create a cohesive feeling."
- Lonny

This room is just perfect in helping me visualize a mixed bedroom for Punkin and Little Dude to share (bedroom 3). It has blue walls with a hint of gray, plenty of white, and red and black accents. And I love that the homeowner was able to keep it feeling reasonably cohesive with the rest of the house. In a smallish house, I think that's important. Children's bedrooms make up nealry 1/4 of our space! This is a bedroom for two little brothers, but with the addition of a girly toss pillow on one bed and a wall rack for all of my 5 year old little girl's many, many bags - maybe a doll bed for good measure... this room could easily go gender neutral. It's all styled for a photoshoot here and lacking some in the personality department, but with all the little personal touches that naturally come from children actually using a room, this space would be just right.

I love ticking stripes, by the way. They're classic, nostalgic, and stylish all rolled into one.

Since several of you have shared that you're also wading through inspiration photos, looking for ideas for boy/girl rooms, I thought I'd share this one.

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Green

I'm kind of obsessed with green right now. It's not the most flattering color with my hair and skin tone (unless it's juuust right), so I have to use it creatively. Target had yet to put out flats in a really great green this year, but they totally came through in the bag department. I picked this little gal up for just 10 beans.

I may not be accessorizing my house, yet, but I can still accessorize ME!

And my children.

Shug picked out that t-shirt a few weeks ago, and she loves it so. It's nice, and very her. Sunny. My green is bluer. More like my purse. With our dark hair and hazel eyes, my best green is more like SweetP's green...



My favorite color with green right now is gray.



Those two colors are just a fabulous combination. If I were in the accessorizing stage right now, you'd be seeing some green and white striped pillows on my gray sofa.

I'm not sure, but I think this is where the whole thing really began (second photo down). Makes me wonder if maybe I can work some green into Bedroom 3 somehow.

What about you guys? Does green say spring for you, too? What accent color has you smitten these days?

Bedroom 2 Update (with lots of pointless pictures)

It's incredible to me how long a little thing like a closet can take. It sounds like removing an old closet system, replacing the closet door, putting up new shelving, and painting everything should be pretty simple to accomplish lickety split, doesn't it? But there's this little thing called Life that has a say in where our time goes, too, and I need to step back and look at the big picture... and be thankful for all we've gotten done! I can be so driven inside my head. I really need to (prayerfully!) rein myself in to keep balance.



I made a little goal for myself to have everything in this room, except for the overhead lighting, done by Mother's Day. Is it going to happen? The verdict isn't in on that one, yet. Goodness knows I gave it my all today :) And Sam is upstairs working on more baseboards at this very moment. We're going to be cutting it close on that self-inflicted deadline... it's a maybe. The doors may not get painted by then, for instance, but I think we may be able to get the rest done if we really push it.

"If we really push it", I said. What was that about balance, again?

************************************************************************

Okay, so I wrote that first part a little while ago. I realized I had just about nothing in the way of photos for you, so I went up and took a few. I should warn you that I'm feeling very stream-of-consciousness-chatty-like, so if you've ever wondered what Sam and my friends have to put up with in the real life world when I'm all hyped up on Coke Zero, wonder no more ;)



Here's where we stand with the closet. Hmmm... sorry, I did a quick edit of the photos, but this guy is still a little green. I went crazy working in here today - painting the second coat on the walls, priming, and painting a first coat on the trim. I'm not sure if you can tell from the photos, but it is not a large closet. And I am not a small woman. It was a bit challenging at times. I also got a coat of primer on one of the two shelves and a coat of paint on both of them.



As you can see, the lowest shelf supports are actually quite low. My idea was to have baby clothes hanging on a rod beneath the top shelf, but no clothes hanging below the second one. I wanted the second shelf to be low enough to leave room to put baskets or tote bins on it without the upper clothes getting in the way. So, that's why the supports for the lower shelf are so very, very low.



This photo might show the placement better. This reminds me - was it you, Chelsea? or Rebecca? (nope... I checked! It was Renae) - someone asked how we paint our baseboard with that shaggy carpet around. Nothing fancy, we just use extra wide painter's tape.



Like, this wide.



And we try to get the edge of the tape a little bit under the baseboards. Sam got these closet baseboards so snug, I had to use a flathead screwdriver a few times to sort of gently encourage the tape into place.




By getting under the baseboard, the tape keeps all of the carpet out of the way. When we first begin placing it, we sort of leave 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch folded up onto the baseboard. That extra part is the part we shove beneath. Make sense? Hope so.



Here's the basecap Sam just put on. It's on the wall beneath the window. I wonder how much of the trim he'll be able to get up tonight? The wall with the closet door on it doesn't have any baseboards or basecap, yet. That register cover is getting switched out, by the way. We're thinking maybe next month (?). The beige outlets might get changed out for white ones this weekend.



You all have seen these nifty Handy Pail things, right? There in the red? They're just what they say they are... handy... pails. They have these great little plastic liners that make clean up super fast, and the handle on the pail is very kind to your wrist when you're cutting in or brush painting for long stretches of time. I first saw them at Sherwin Williams, but since then I've seen them at the big box stores, too. Both of 'em. Orange and blue. Somewhere along the line, I think it was in an old MS "Living", I learned about wrapping brushes and rollers in plastic wrap to keep them fresh between coats. I wouldn't leave them like that for days and days, but for the 4 hours that you're waiting between coats, it's a great way to avoid cleaning up several times a day. I hate not having a brush dry when I need it, and this way my brush is always ready for the next coat.

***********************************************************************

I just checked on Sam's progress. He's working on the baseboards for the walls by the closet door now. A check mark on this room would make a fantastic Mother's Day gift! Woo hoo!



Peace out, homies :)