O's favorite things

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.)

pottery barn inspo

I love Pottery Barn Kids. I don’t really know why. Some of the stuff is just so effing expensive it doesn’t even make sense. But all the bedrooms are super matchy-matchy and freaking adorable. I wanted that for my girls but at like a Walmart price point.

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So cute, right? It’s been finished for like 6 months and no one has slept in here yet!

Money well spent!!!

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So this was O’s room and had a lot of stuff in it originally. I made these little side lamps before O showed up. They were old Pier 1 side lamps and I just bought new shades and some boa’s and stuck them around the rims.

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When O got a little older I saw all these precious DIY dress-up cabinets on Pinterest and just had to have one.

I could totally see it, all the little dress-up clothes hanging on little tiny hangers and looking so freaking cute. Well guess what – as you can see from the image below we just shove all those pretty little outfits in the door and close it. O never hung her clothes up and so not only did I have clothes everywhere but she would be running around with hangers too – uhhhh helllo dangerous! 

This was my moms dresser as a baby so it had some sentimental value. I spray painted this since it wasn’t real wood and glued fabric to the door because it was cracked. I also got the butterfly knobs from Target.

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I got this bookshelf from my mom also. I painted it and backed it with the same fabric as the dresser.

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O’s room was Mauve but I repainted it this candy pink color to match the bedding I ordered from Pottery Barn. I got the cheap last season bedding but it worked out for me anyway because I really liked it and it coordinated with the monogrammed pillows I wanted.

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Always wanting to help, unless it cleaning up her own toys, clothes, etc, etc and then she wants nothing to do with it.

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Love Love Love this sign we got from a burnt down barn. It was a charity event and I just haaaaaaaad to have it.

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O’s aunt made that wreath from pink tissue paper for my front door when I had my baby shower. It’s soooo pretty!

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This toy box was my dads growing up and I sanded the weird sketchy clowns off it and painted it 6 million times with that Martha Stewart Glitter paint. You can’t even see the glitter, total waste of time.

It is also filled to the brim with small $5 bribes. It typically costs about $5 to peacefully grocery shop with O, and it is so worth it. I would gladly pay double that to peacefully do anything with W but we haven’t reached that bridge yet. Apparently her patience and cooperation is priceless.

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Found these two on Craig’s list. Luckily C went with me to pick them up for one because they weighed like a million pounds each and for two you never know what kind of sketch ball is waiting to chop you up into tiny little pieces off craigslist. SO always bring someone with you! 

And don’t be scared to turn the sale down either! Unlike me who bought  broken $10 packnplay with baby vomit inside and actually spent $20 because the crazy woman didn’t have any change. My fault for not bringing exact change, I will admit – but ewww so gross for not cleaning your baby puke up before you sold your packnplay! I mean seriously have some dignity people!!!!

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Anyway. I painted and distressed these two and I love how they turned out. I was too impatient to order that Annie Sloan chalk paint so I used the Americana from Home Depot. Boy that is some thick stuff. We shall see how it holds up. I guess the good part about them being distressed is that scratches won’t matter???

wild nursery

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.

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always in our underwear in this house, except me. I wear clothes all the time.

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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.

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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!

IMG_0808  so niiiiice.

we went back and forth with baby W’s name forevvvveeeeer. I got antsy and started painting random names anyway.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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home edition

I was cleaning and decided to snap some pictures for bloggy world. This is for you Rose, it will be a virtual tour of my house. But minus the virtual tour part. Okay so it will be more like strategic pictures taken at optimal angles to hide all the crap and junk and make me look like an amazing house keeper, cleaner, decorator, what-have you.

It’s basically an optical illusion. As is my entire life.

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HI! Come On In!

Chris randomly called me from Home Depot and said there was a really great door on clearance. Apparently the people who bought it measured wrong so it was an odd size. Being the craftsman as he is Chris made it fit our house by adding extravagant molding details around the frame. It’s so fancy. The old owners last name was “Fly” I think. I think of them often. Like way often. Whenever I open the front door I see FLY written on masking tape on the inside trim. I will pull it off one day.

That crazy thing on the door knob is a child lock to keep in grandparents, visitors and babies.