Tag Archives: cleaning

O's favorite things

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I’m big into lists right now. I don’t know why. I actually take that back, I have always been big into lists. My entire life is like a giant, never-ending to-do or grocery list. But maybe because the school season is approaching I have started thinking in an even more structured and nonsensical way about everything in my life.

So to go with the theme of lists here are five of O’s favorite things in life right now;

  1. making messes. It doesn’t matter where, it’s just her thing. Dumping toy boxes, spilling drinks, getting anything and everything everywhere. All messes in my house were created by her. (or the dog. Unless O is shredding dirty diapers and eating sh*t out of the trash can and just blaming the dog but I doubt it.)
  2. scotch tape. Scotch tape is like the newest obsession in my house. She scotch tapes everything. She tries to make books and scotch tape them together, I keep trying to introduce staples as a much more efficient book making mechanism but she won’t stand for it. She even scotch tapes her barbies to stuff, like the kitchen cabinet knobs. It’s like these poor barbies are trapped in giant scotch tape spider web fiasco’s all over my house. It’s both weird and creepy – however may be appropriate to keep around as Halloween Decor.
    1. as a side note W is into that blue painter tape. C uses it to tape down drawings and plans to the drawing table and W likes to rip off 1 million smallish pieces and stick them all over her face and body.
  3. stickers. F stickers. I hate you stickers. I have like a sticker infestation in my house right now. There are stickers stuck to the hardwood floors, toilets, toys, my desk, the kitchen table, the windows… when W was a baby I saw this weird blue thing in her mouth and C and I had to hold her down and dig a blue circular sticker with a flower on it out of her mouth – it was stuck to the roof of her mouth! I kept that one for the baby book obviously. All others stickers get destroyed onsite. 
  4. signs. We have pictorial signs all over the place right now. There is a picture of a girl “scotch taped” (go figure) to the bathroom door because that’s the girls bathroom, sorry daddy you must go outside and do your business. There is a picture of W and another picture of O taped to either side of the family room, because that’s their respective sides of the room for playing. I also found about 8 random signs taped to the wall space above the couch in my office varying in images from flowers to unicorns.
  5. clothes. So she is super obsessed with clothes right now. I know, adorable right? No. It’s effing annoying. She is constantly changing, like “oh, I sneezed and got germs on this shirt – I must change 563 times and throw every article of clothing I own all over the room and for good measure I will also throw some over the upstairs railing down onto the couch in the family room. AND in case that doesn’t drive Mommy to hide in the pantry and drink copious amounts of wine I will THEN proceed to hide the most important articles of clothing, the staples mommy always picks for me to wear in hidden locations, like under the bed or at the bottom of the toy box….”

Listen to me complaining. Like I don’t think everything O does is the most absolutely adorable and hilarious thing ever ever ever. Keep doing your thing O, and I’ll just keep cleaning up after you, it’s my job – plus it gives me great material. (And interesting talking points when my neighbors come over. I doubt anybody else in the neighborhood has Barbies taped to their kitchen cabinets.)

playroom

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Once upon a time I had a fancy dining room.

It had beautiful beaded curtains and a wall with a bunch of lovely black and white photos and a pretty bar table that would collect large quantities of dust.

Then came baby O. I first relocated the beautiful beaded curtains because they posed a huge strangulation hazard. Then I had to move the bar table into the kitchen because our kitchen table was baby-face level and glass which posed a hole new set of lethal hazards.

Then my dining room sat empty. I discussed it’s playroom potential but C wasn’t convinced and we utilized our bedroom’s sitting room as the playroom. That was great until O’s second birthday when all the kids wanted to play in there and I was uncomfortable since it was technically my bedroom. That’s when I decided to hell with our fancy decor, our lives were over anyway. Might as well accept fate and be comfortable in our own house.

Then I stole C’s favorite couch from his office and convinced C’s mom (grandmom) to make pretty curtains.

Begin transformation playroom….

Oh, I mixed the steps up a bit – I did paint first. This awkward sea foam color. I had a lot left over from the upstairs hallway so I tried to use what I had without having to buy new.

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I didn’t like the way it looked like a kindercare so I painted over it wit another color I had – and I hate cutting in so I taped a trim line since I did like the sea foam color.

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These are the curtains from Joanne’s that Grandmom fixed up for us. I drove to two different Joanne’s for enough fabric but I really liked it. That’s the cozy couch I stole from C. That couch has seen better days. But it’s nice and low to the ground so when the girls fall off it’s no big deal.

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Then I painted the black frames yellow.

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I had some of those cubes with the girls toys in them but with all the bright colors I wanted something a bit more formal. I found this great armoir (<- I think I spelled that wrong) anyway, I found it on craigslist for like $100. But the guy wanted it gone asap so I got it for $50! It took forever for me to paint it.

I hate Pinterest BTW. It makes me think I can do all this crafty stuff. Then I buy all the stuff just to figure out I am not so crafty. From afar it looks good – and that is enough for me.

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It did not come with that smallish child inside.

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Here is the finished result. Not gonna lie – I kinda love it. I reclaimed that coffee table too. Lets see if I can insert that post – it was one of my earlier attempts at entertainment…

https://amberunraveled.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/reclaimed/

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I got a little silly and painted some shelves yellow too. And found this little canvas that matched, O sings the song all the time anyway so it had some sentimental value an all (but it mostly matched). I wrapped yarn all around that letter O and then said there was NO WAY I was going to do it again so W got the shaft, as per the norm and I painted her W.

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And that’s how we got our cozy playroom. I really like it, it’s functional and gets lots of hours.

teleworking

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It has been unfortunately snowing here off and on for the past few days (weeks – whatever). It sucks really bad. Traffic is already horrendous on a normal day – add snow and you might as well stay home. Like literally. We have a steep cliff for a driveway too so the littlest dusting calls for teleworking. Not only would I likely slide back down the driveway (hill) but I would slip off the back of the parking pad, which is a cliff down to certain doom.

Anyway, days I telework the girls just basically run wild throughout the house destroying stuff. Example – right now I have about 35 stickers stuck to the kitchen floor I have to eventually peel up at some point.

I’m not sure what drives children to just destroy but I feel as though they would be setting the curtains on fire and burning couches if I let them.

Figure 1 – playroom.

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I force myself not to look in there during the day. C gets so mad because I like to clean it all up at night before I go to bed. It looks so pretty all cleaned up.

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