B & A: Garage, Part II

It is grossly shallow and self-indulgent of me to make you look at pictures of how I cleaned out my garage.  But at least I know it, right?  Or does the fact that I know it and do it anyway make it that much more grievous?  Well regardless, thank you, because my self-imposed blogging deadline was just what I needed to finish up this project that I started 3 months ago.  Befores are on the left, afters on the right.

Not exactly Pin worthy.  Is it wrong that I kept imagining how much better it would look with all of Owen's toys spray painted white?  

See?  Shallow.  

But back to my garage.

I mostly used storage we already had, even though I did get these new stripey bins - some from The Container Store and some from Hobby Lobby.  And since we constantly have piles of things to donate out there, I made a little station under our newly hung bicycles.  Scott the accountant makes me keep an itemized list of everything we donate, and it's much easier to make the list as I go rather than all at once, hence the clipboard.

So that's it.  The garage is officially the cleanest, most organized room in our house.  Seriously.  I'm sitting here at the desk in our kitchen watching Greta nap on top of our cozy, warm external hard drive.  It is entirely possible that I could find more hair on our computer than on Don Draper's chest.  And from here I can also see the place on the wall where I ran out of primer a year-and-a-half ago and just stopped painting.  Clearly more of these shame-myself-into-working-on-stuff-because-I-have-to-blog-about-it posts are in order.

Owen is hosting me at his school today for a Mother's Tea.  He practiced for it at school yesterday and is soooo excited.  I bet I cry.  Back with pictures tomorrow!

O Versus the Volcano

We started with the small one he got in his Christmas stocking.  He'd seen a photo of a volcano with sulfur burning blue in it, so we did round two blue.

Then it was time to build the big guy from this kit he also got for Christmas.  There are no photos of the construction process because he refused to help.  Too messy, he said.

Once it dried for a few days, it was time to have a good buddy over to set up dinosaurs, create a few violent eruptions, and drive all prehistoric reptiles into extinction.

I'm off to finish organizing the garage.  I have to report back to you tomorrow with pictures, even if you don't care (wink).

Dear Humans

                                Dear Humans and other members of the Rebel Alliance,

                                You thought Darth Vader's dark side was rough?

                                Sincerely,

                                Greta

Makin' Dough

This month it was Owen's turn to make playdough for his class, so we cooked up some on Wednesday night.  I don't know if it's because Valentine's Day is this month or if they finally resigned themselves to the fact that there is no such thing as red playdough, but Owen was assigned the color pink.

I was warned to make it in three separate batches to keep the consistency right, but I made no effort at all to keep the shade of pink itself consistent since (1) I was lazy and (2) I thought a marbled look might be fun.  However, on the way home from school yesterday, I asked Owen if they all got to play with his playdough, and he said they did but was quick to add that the playdough his friends have brought before looked no-mull and he didn't understand why we couldn't have made normal looking playdough too.  Oops.

Nerdy Acquisition

We're having curl-up-by-the-fire-and-read-a-book kind of weather today, so I thought this would be a good time to share pics of one of the two card catalogs we recently found.  It has a matching unit on the other side of the dining entry, but as is sometimes the case with twins, nature smiled on one and frowned on the other.  No worries, a few repairs and the other will be fit for her close-up soon too.

I've looked for a card catalog for several years (I think I was subliminally affected by the one in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment on Big Bang Theory).  I even checked with schools and local libraries, but I was told more than once that librarians take obsolete card catalogs home like stray pets.  The ones I found online and in antique stores could get up near a thousand dollars, so I was really excited to find these two for way less than one usually costs.

These things are a compulsive organizer's dream.  Scott called home around lunchtime on the first day I had them to see if I'd labeled all the drawers already.  I'd done half, bidding farewell to our kitchen junk drawer in the process.  The furniture touch up paint, ticky tack and push pins (all 3 of them) each have their own designated drawers now.  You say batty.  I say Utopia.

3 little asides:

• The ceramic figure on the top of the top wall box is a hand-sculpted, armless & handless lady I found on the side of the road in Malawi when one of our vans had broken down for the 8th time.  I call her my African Venus de Milo.
• I bought the aloe vera plant because it made me think of my Papa.  In his opinion, every wound was treatable by one of three things: aloe vera, mercurochrome (monkey blood) or calamine lotion.
• Is it time to redo the dining room walls/let the wallpaper go?  I'm thinking plain white.  

How our days end

Some of my favorite moments with Owen are spent hanging out with him in his room at night before he goes to sleep.  I think the busy-ness of his days finally catches up with him by then and he's eager to just lounge and talk.  We'll read a book or two, and then he likes to sing "A Bushel and a Peck," always interrupting me in the same places to ask What's a barrel and a heap? and What's beat me all to heck?  (Probably should just stop singing that line altogether.)  And this is when he wants to talk about the heavier stuff too, like death and God and whether Boba Fett from Star Wars is a good guy or a bad guy.

I showed Owen this picture I took of him sleeping, and he said Dats funny... I usuwally sleep with my eyes open.

Conversations with O

Mommy, I don't jus' give you hugs because you buy me LEGOs and Oreos.  I hug you 'cause I love you too.

*Actually he only said that about the Oreos, but I needed the quote to work with the pictures he ASKED (!) me to take of him this morning.

Everyday Owen: Helping with Dinner

Safely Aboard

It's no news to you locals, but we had really bad weather in our area overnight.  The sirens started blaring around 3 AM.  I don't know if it's because we're on a ridge or near several schools, but we hear them.  Really well.

And to break it down for you Stealers Wheel style, by 3:00:45 AM, I had this one to the left of me

this one to the right

and there I was stuck in the middle with her.  All 14 pounds balanced on my hip.

Owen occasionally likes to play on our bed and pretend it's a pirate ship.  He'll walk the plank, but if things get too scary out there in the open water of discarded pillows, he quickly scrambles back 'aboard' our metal canopy bed and finds safe haven.

It felt like that to me last night too.  I was so unreasonably content, hearing the storm approaching, and knowing I had many of the creatures I love most (furry and otherwise) nestled around me. 

Side note:  During the storm, Owen  said, "Dat funder jus keeps running and running and knocking on our fwont door!"

B & A: Lamp

Snooze alert.  We've all got colds and I've had blogger's block, so I'm just going to break the ice with a scintillating post that involves a glue gun and ambient lighting.

Ignore the unattended baby on a changing table and focus on the lamp.  It was cute enough in Owen's nursery, but I have to admit nesting syndrome and the clearance aisle at Target really worked against me on this one.  Lime green?  And dangle beads?

It's been hanging out (and ruining the vibe) in the recently finished guest room.  Which reminds me, I don't think I ever followed up on this post, did I?  

Well, anyway, last night I got out a seam ripper and removed the beading and green fabric.  Then today I took some maple banding left over from our stair rail project and starting experimenting.

I struggled a little with how to finish the edges, but it's not too bad for a zero cost update.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

What I did in Hilton Head

• Wandered around the shops at Sea Pines and other places - including a day of antiquing in Savannah.

•  Hunted for starfish and sand dollars.  Amused slash annoyed my friends by making them return starfish that were still alive.  Had no idea how to determine viability of sand dollars, so they were on their own.

•  Practiced photography since I'll have to submit samples for the next class I take.

• Played fetch with other people's dogs.

• Had lots of affirming, soul-restoring conversation with incredible friends.  (Oh, and we talked a lot about hairstyles too.)

Conversations with O: Oedipal edition

I'm leaving this morning for a five-day girls' trip, and even though I know I'm going to have a ridiculously good time, I've got a little case of pre-homesickness.  So I'm going to be self-indulgent and reflect on sweet things Owen has said to me lately.

O:     Mommy, I love you five hundred!

Me:   Well I love you five hundred and five!!

O:     Well... I love you fourteen seven six nineteen eleventeen five hundred!!!

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Mommy, you are the girl in the world.  (Translation:  I'm the best girl in the world.)

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O:     Here Mommy, I picked you some flowers.  

Me:  Aww, thanks O!  Here, I'll put them in my hair... What do you think?  How do they look?

O:     Thaaat's... that's good.  'Cause... we'll need some for our wedding soon anyways.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Got a light?

We're cleaning out the playroom to make space for Owen's bumper crop of new toys, and I was amused to discover he owns no less than 15 flashlights.  I asked if there were any he would be willing to donate (he's pretty good about that), but he professed his love for every single one of them.

If, by chance, he'd chosen to part with the headlamp, I would have overruled him.  No way am I giving up this particular form of comic relief.

Tree-dition

I knocked it out of the park with that blog title.  Mmmhmm.  

After I saw a coffee table made from cross-sections of Christmas trees last year, I decided to start saving a little piece of each of our trees at the end of the holidays.  I'll put the date and a little memory from each Christmas on the back of them.  For the second year, our neighborly neighbor Chris donated his chainsaw skills and hacked up the trunk of our tree for us.  I hope to eventually have enough to do something like this.  If only I'd started 14 years ago.