Sugar and spice and everything nice.
W taking a picture of O (making a heart with her hands)
Sometimes they play so good and look so freaking cute I could imagine having 100 of them running around.
HAHAHHAHA. Then reality hit’s and I’m all like, THAT was the WINE talking.
Remember how I said I went through a psychotic pregnancy paint spree?
Well, I wasn’t kidding. I wanted to do something really wild with the baby nursery. This was the first of the projects I stared and I must have been about 5 months preg because I wanted it gender neutral.
I wanted to use stuff I already had on hand and since this room was very jungle-ish already I decided to go with it. This room was really just a catch-all for all the misfit furniture that did’t belong anywhere else in the house.
We had 2 large artificial palm trees, huge Pier 1 metal mother and baby giraffe statues and a queen size bed.
Jungle it is. I went with animal prints. Giraffe’s – obviously and Zebra.
My little helper.I taped and painted the walls a base color for my animal prints.
always in our underwear in this house, except me. I wear clothes all the time.
Boom. That is trippy, right? I freehand taped all the spots. C said it doesn;t look like Giraffe colors but I thought it did.
Got this little guy at a Kids Nearly New sale for $15! Sometimes it does pay to be late to everything! Nobody wants to pack this back up in their car after a long day at the yard sale!
so niiiiice.
we went back and forth with baby W’s name forevvvveeeeer. I got antsy and started painting random names anyway.
Got all the letters from Michael’s. I was so freaking mad too because I went like three different times for the letter E. I hand painted all the letters too. I liked the Carters sheet and blanket set Jungle Jill – or something, I can’t remember the name exactly but pretty sure it was that. I don’t buy the whole bedding shebang since babies aren’t supposed to have anything in the crib. But I got the sheet, the baby blanket (the super soft one not the quilt) and a wall sticker and plaque. The plaque was dumb and it was a total waste and the sticker was kind of lame too but oh well. I ended up coordinating the baby name, letters to the sticker.
Oh, yea – in case you didn’t notice we went with a different name. No matter! I love painting apparently!
I made like 60 thousand holes in the wall trying to get these letters hung. Thanks to my handy laser level the look pretty damn close to level. I had them on the giraffe wall but was scared they would fall off the wall in the middle of the night and hit the baby so I relocated them to above the window.
Here is the zebra wall. This was so annoying. Can you see the face? You either do or you don’t. If you don’t just say you do okay? Never painting this room again EVER.
I had the white crib against the zebra side but my mother said it would scare the baby. And I had bought hot pink frames and wanted to hang them on that side specifically so I moved everything all around and put the crib in the giraffe side.
Hopefully W stays in the crib until she is like 5. But I bought her a bed anyway and put it in O’s room. Once she moves out of here this will be a guest room. Cuz we have guests over like all the time. NOT.
I love stories about the funny shit kids do.
Yesterday one of my co-workers was showing me a video of his grandkids singing him happy birthday. Three pretty girls cute as buttons singing away, I don’t recall exact ages but an infant, a four year old and maybe it was a seven year old. Anyway they sing happy birthday and the four year old leans over to the baby and just blows in her face! Of course I busted out laughing and said “what did she do that for??” and my co-worker responds with “oh, she’s breath feeding her”. Apparently she blows in the babies face and thinks she is breast feeding! I love it!. That poor baby is probably like WTF?!
Funny thing is, this story jogged my ever foggy brain and I recalled a similar situation. I searched my computer and found the video I had of O just a couple months over two and her interpretation of me pumping.
I don’t want to post the video because, well let’s face it – she will probably be super-mega famous one day and I don’t want her to hate me for the paparazzi getting a hold of a video of her in the bath as a toddler with her business all showing. So here is a harmless pic of her “pumping”.
What the H E double hockey sticks, right? Probably better that I didn’t post the video because I’m all snorting and laughing like “What are you doing?” and she’s all cool like, “duhhhh mommy – I’m pumping with my bungee.”
HAH. Kids.
W is so cool. Not gonna lie, she’s a little bit too much edgy right now (sweet Miss USA quote btw!). She’s got teeth busting through every which way and a diaper rash that just won’t quit. Between a lactose intolerance and creeping up on the terrible two’s she’s basically a ticking time bomb. I’m like scared of her. Not scared of her, so much as scared to leave the house with her.
She is the wild one; no patience, table dancing, talking back, all the normal terrible two aspects. Here is her and the dog sitting on the kitchen table watching TV. Because that’s normal.
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.
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.
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.
Then I painted the black frames yellow.
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.
It did not come with that smallish child inside.
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/
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.
And that’s how we got our cozy playroom. I really like it, it’s functional and gets lots of hours.
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.
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.
just your typical Sunday night where we spend 15 minutes taking pictures of the kids in C’s work boots before he heads off to work. I’m not sure what is funnier, the fact W’s feet aren’t touching the ground … Continue reading
O just wrapped her first episodic. She’s on fire! She got cast about a week ago to play the leads 5yo daughter. Super sweet! The show is Who the Bleep Did I Marry on Investigation Discovery.
She rocked too, obviously.
I can’t give any details until the show airs but she had a blast! Well, I never know if she has fun or not. Guess anything is better than sitting at home – but it’s actually work. We keep asking her if she likes doing “acting” and she says YES. So she’s the boss!
That’s O and her fake big sister Kelly. That’s W too running around like a child that hadn’t napped. She even has crazy hair.
I will let everyone know once the show airs!!
This is where it all goes down. The great room. I don’t know specifically why some rooms are great and some are called family or living rooms but I like the way you can say GREAT so many different ways.
At least in my head I say it different ways and it’s funny – in my head.
The little people are in all the pictures. They see a camera come out and it’s “CHEESE” and “CHEESEBEEEERGER” the entire time. All the furniture in here is mix matched. Originally we had glass tables that all matched and looked lovely but they were evicted once the kids started running around. I try to avoid unnecessary accidents as much as possible.
The black side table is actually my kitchen table with the glass top removed. Hopefully we can use that again one day once the kids are taller.
The TV looks a little sideways…
My – uh, I mean the girls Anywhere Pottery Barn chairs. I love them.
This surprisingly and extremely comfortable rocking chair came as a set with our camper! I know, so lame to use recreational furniture in your home but it just happened okay. None of us saw it coming. It has more than earned it’s keep rocking babies over the past four years. And I made those pillow cases myself thank you. It took lots of fabric because I messed up the measurements somehow but it all worked out in the end. The fabric was called Waverly – how ironic, right?
No, it’s not me and it’s not a stripper. It’s a painting of a scene from Dancing with the Stars. A painter at our gym did it. He’s super amazing.
remember when I was saying O likes to dress herself these days?
I love it.