quick question

Our house is quite a disaster right now. Here's the dining room

kitchen


Do you think it went well when Dave invited some work friends over for dinner this weekend?

Um, probably not.

quick update: As luck would have it when I made him un-invite them they invited us over!!

more house stuff

I'm sure ya'll will get tired of hearing about my house over the next couple of weeks .. .but that's what we're up to. Well, you know how one thing leads to another in home repairs so we're having some other work done in our kitchen that has needed to be done for years. We start getting the floors torn out tomorrow. That'll take 2-3 days, then we'll tear out this sun room type area in the kichen and get it fixed since it is worn out and starting to leak into the drywall and cause it to get moldy. That'll take a week or two....THEN we'll get the floors put in and then the finishing work like baseboards and paint. I am hoping for one month to have it all done. Meanwhile we also have a plumbing issue in the garage that'll start today and finish up on Friday. I'll take lots of pics for the before and after.
Well, here's the before of the sun room area.


The kids have been doing lots of entertaining themselves while I've been on the phone and meeting with people in the house. At one point I went out to find clare playing with her doll. Then Calvin and Alexey joined her.





I tried to get one of all three but it never works. This is Alexey's life ...always with hands all over her but always soooo happy, and I love how you can see Calvin's sweet smile in the corner.

quick update on house

The drywall dried in 4 days...the floors didn't dry at all so the insurance people are giving us new floors in most of the upstairs areas (once you pull 1/2 the floor you have to pull it all if it's continuous flooring which we have in our house)! Should be an interesting journey ... we will be under construction for the next couple of weeks but it will be lovely to have everything brand new. If only the oven got ruined too (I could really use a new oven).... hopefully things go smoothly. We've had wood in the kitchen area and I will most likely replace it with some kind of tile or stone that will not be so sensitive to water. Wood is warped by water so easily it is not a good choice for us in the laundry room and kitchen -- especially for us since the laundry room is just off the kitchen area. We'll replace the rest of the wood floor in the other upstairs areas with the same wood that has been there. Wood is softer and warmer than tile and it'll match the other areas of the house that have the wood already. Or, I might just tile the laundry room and leave kitchen wood. We'll see. What are your thoughts? Do you like your flooring? If any of you are familiar with flooring I'd love to hear your opinion about tiles of all kinds (ceramic or porcelain or stone). Tasha, what are you putting in your new house?

Hope everyone has a nice weekend and good Sunday.

Which do you want first?

Good news:Calvin is super cute (he wanted me to take his picture pretending to sleep)


Bad news: we had a flood in the laundry room monday

Good news: I was at home and was able to stop it within a few minutes. If I had not been here it would have been horrible. It was like a hose running full blast.

Bad news: still some major damage to the wood floors in the kitchen, dining room, pantry and laundry room

Good news: it was a lovely day

Bad news: 6 fans and 3 dehumidifiers, (all of them heaters and all of them sound like jet engines) have taken over the kitchen, dining room, pantry and laundry room. They will be here all week.


Good news: ....hmmmm..thinking.....at least we have running water --unlike last time we had a household catastrophe which (in March).

Culprit: tear in the hose connecting the washing machine to the faucet. Apparently there is a law suit (insurance companies are suing) against the makers of this hose because it is often the cause of water damage in homes. . Our hose was rubber. It is recommended that you get mesh instead of rubber.


Word of advice - learn how to turn off the water to your house. Practice it sometime. Maybe while your spouse is in the shower if you want some real fun!! I could have saved a couple of minutes of water if I knew right where the water line was and how to turn it off. It took me a minute to find it and to get it turned off because it was pretty stiff.

my birthday wish

Happy Birthday to me today!

My wish is to know YOUR birthday! Leave it in the comment section. Month and day please (year is optional)!! :)

Even if you think I know your birthday or think I don't care to know it, leave it anyway. I may have remembered the day wrong or it might have dropped off my calendar sometime so EVERYONE participate please! Remember, it is my birthday wish so you can't say no!

kid rooms

Here's clare's room all done (mostly). Clare loves the curtains as much as I do. The crib is for Alexey and Clare has a bed in there as well.


She has been sleeping in there for several days! Her bed is actually a top bunk from a bunk bed on the floor. It's a nice first bed because it is on the floor and with the bars she won't fall out!


While we're doing pics, here's calvin's room. We haven't changed it at all since we moved in but I don't think I ever got around to posting pics of it before.


We painted some letters for him so that he wouldn't feel left out of the painting projects we've been doing for clare's room. He picked the colors (yellow, red, purple, green, blue) and the polka dots.

"oooooo, he's in BIG trouble"

When I went to home depot to buy my paint I tried to leave the kids home with dave knowing it would take me a long time and it'd be hard to concentrate on paint while trying to keep the kids from tearing the store apart.... but he thought it'd be a fun family outing. so, we all went. Dave took the kids shopping for a new faucet for the kitchen sink, which we needed and I went looking at paint. After a while I called to check on him and see if he was ready to go. He said he thought he could install the faucet instead of paying $100 for someone from home depot to come do it. I said that would be fine as long as he didn't do it that night (I needed to clean and the next day was sunday and company coming over). After talking a couple of minutes he said, "oh wait, the kids just left. I need to go get them." click. Then about 2 minutes later I heard an overhead page "Denise, will you come to the return desk, please." Anyone want to guess what I found there?????

Yep, you guessed right. It was the kids. But not dave. There was a nice lady who brought them over to the return desk. I thanked her for turning them in and told her that they had been shopping with their Father. She said, "oooooo, he's in BIG trouble."

Now back to the sink. Of course he decided to start fixing it at 5pm sat night. Just before I was going to make sat night dinner. I scrounged up some leftovers for the kids and decided that he would definitely get no dinner since he wasn't a good listener. We'll skip all the details of my hysteria and doubt over the next several hours (including a trip to home depot for a forgotten part) until it was fixed. I then told dave he was amazing and did a great job and we went out for ice cream. Now, fast forward to sunday morning. 7am I go into the kitchen and there is a LARGE puddle. More hysteria. (our church is at 9am) Dave tightened a screw and it was all better. Dave is a superhero. And, to celebrate his saving us $100 I bought the pottery barn curtains I wanted. :) They are perfect. I love them and I'll post a pic. later.

But for now, here are some pics of Alexey. She is super smiley. Sometimes I am busy cooking or talking to the other kids and I'll look down and she will give a huge smile. She is just waiting to smile at somebody :) She loves Clare and will giggle at her, even though clare is the most likely to squish her, sit on her or jump on her.




PS. Dave never heard them page me over the loud speaker at home depot.

straight lines

I used a couple of web sites to get started and they have some good suggestions. Here are the links here and here.

They both recommend a laser level but I didn't want to get one. My lines were 12 in apart. I thought it was fine. I'd probably do them closer together next time. Maybe 8-10 in.

I ended up using a quilters ruler (shown below) to make my lines. Since it is see through I could make sure my lines were lined up with everything (other tape, ceiling, baseboards, floor or whatever it was closest to) and also that the lines continued to be straight as I went along. I used a pencil to mark off spots. I taped one line at a time and then used that line as one of the references for the next line. Hopefully that makes some sense! one friend used just a regular yard stick to make lines in her room.

If I had a helper I might have done it another way (suggested by both dave and his mom). Drop a weighted string from the ceiling to the floor and then make marks along the way down. Then tape! Would be a lot faster than making lots of measurements.

coming soon.

how to paint straight lines
how to get hubby into big trouble during and after a trip to home depot
how to get back into clothes after baby #3

painting done...

Thursday night I had a soccer game from 9-10. When I got home I was dirty nd wide awake so I decided to finish my painting while the kids were asleep. As luck would have it, Calvin woke up around midnight as I was finishing and came to see it. He thinks it is great and wants purple stripes in his room too. :)

Before: the room is kind of a yellowish color. the little spots on the wall are spackeling (white) filling all the holes in the wall. I filled 49 holes. Some small, others a bit bigger.


One of the reasons I've wanted to paint Clare's room is because there were 2 colors of paint in there. Either someone painted around the furniture or the sun faded the paint and left another color where the furniture was hiding the paint. Here is the best shot I have of the 2 colors of paint (in the bottom center of the wall).


Here is Clare's bed since I started this project (July 3rd). She likes to sleep with the big blanket (the one on the floor) over the pack n play so that it is dark. She is used to a dark room as she has a room darkening shade in there.


This is what took forever! I decided to paint stripes in the room. Taping for the stripes was a nuisance but I did eventually get into a groove and it wasn't so bad. I'd do it again.


I alternated flat and glossy paint of the same color. First you paint the entire room with flat paint and then paint only glossy paint in the appropriate spots. Here are a couple of tips for good clean lines. 1. take the tape off while the paint is wet. Then the lines don't bleed under the tape ( I had read this and it worked for me. Speaking to other people who didn't do this had trouble with paint bleeding. It wouldn't have mattered that much since I'm using the same color paint.). Don't leave the tape up for long or it will tear off the paint as you pull the tape off. It took me 3 or 4 days to do my taping and when I took it off as I painted it did tear off some paint but only on one strip that I had done the first day.



I still have a little work -- moving furniture and hanging a few things on the wall but I'll give the paint a couple of days to dry first. Hopefully Clare will want to move back in as soon as we're done. I have a bucket of water in there to absorb the stinky smell (thanks for the tip, Deanne)! I'll change the background color to black so you can see the color of the paint. It's super light purplish blue and looks much better now that I have all the blue tape off the walls and doors!

I like the way it looks so far. I think part of why I have never done home improvements is that I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Hard to really believe since my house doesn't look perfect, but the reason I say that is becuase doing this project has killed me becuase I wish I could do more. I want to replace the carpet - it's 15 years old. I'd like to replace the window -- I can't open it (only dave can). There is only so much i can do on a limited budget and doing a little makes me want to do it all. I wish I could have the room just perfect.

It has been fun to do a little work though since it's helped me to see that I can do things in the house. I can find home depot and nagivate my way around. Oh, by the way I have a good story about a recent trip to home depot I'll have to add for my next post.

Starting off as a great day

Today Calvin woke up at 6:45am. This is amazing. I actually went down to check on him to make sure he wasn't dead becuase he never sleeps in like that. He is super chipper and so smiley. I love a happy Calvin. It was also so nice to wake up on my own and be first one up! (well, not counting dave who left at 4 this morning).

I am almost done with my painting. I am hoping to finish up tonight or maybe tomorrow. Then I can work on getting furniture in place and making it someplace Clare bear will call home. She has been sleeping in the pack-n-play for a week now. She loves it because she can climb in and out of bed on her own. When she gets moved back into her room she'll have a big girl bed so she will have the same freedom! She is a darling little girl.

This weekend Dave and I have a date. :)

Crockpot dinner means no cooking tonight!

Funny 4th

Dave is covering the hospital this weekend and so we didn't expect to see much of him but his chief called last night to say "hey, why don't you take the morning off and then come in later in the day." Woo hoo. This was especially good news for me as I was dreading dragging the kids to the 4th of july festivities. (I know. Party pooper. more party pooping to come...) We went to the community 4th of july activities. Clare liked the bouce house and otter pops. Other than that, it wasn't very kid oriented.




I finished painting Clare's room. Actually, I have a few little finishing effects I want to try next, but I do have the color in her room. I'll post pics when I'm all done. Last night Clare slept in another room in the pack-n-play so I could work in her room. I did one coat last night, one this morning and one later in the day. And in case you're wondering...my house is a wreck and we didn't have dinner tonight :)

Tonight Clare WOULD NOT sleep in her room. Through her tears she said, "Mom, it's all painty. I want to sleep in a different room." I fought with her for a while and then eventually put her in the pack n play where she slept last night. in a different room. She said "Thank you, mom" and went right to sleep. crazy child.

Fireworks have always been super fun, but not as much this year. Dave was gone and we had no plans with friends so I wasn't really excited about it. (It being taking the kids out to fireworks by myself.) Dave made me promise not to be lazy and put the kids to bed early so we went out to see some! Clare was super scared of the fire works --her little body was shaking the whole time and she kept asking to go back home to our house. Calvin feel asleep. Alexey watched most of them... :)

On a happier note ... I sure do love America and feel so blessed to be here at this time. What a truely wonderful life we have.

And another happy note....less than 2 months 'til football season. Can't wait. I already bought some chips and dip for our USC OSU game early in september.

180 degrees change of plans

After pestering dave for weeks (52 of them) about what color to pain Clare's room he finally decided to give his input. "If I were painting my Clare bear's room, I'd paint it a light purple color." I was sooooo happy to have some help that we went to home depot that morning and chose a paint called "cinderella's glass slipper." It is a super light purple with a tint of blue and it is completely across the color wheel from teh yellow I thought I wanted. But, we can still accent with yellow :) Anyway, I'll be working on that for the next couple of weeks and hopefully can finish it up before my b-day (finishing clare's room is my b-day present to myself. july 20th). That is the goal. I love blogging. thanks for all your nice comments all the time. You are great friends!

Today I decided we will probably starve for the rest of the summer becuase I cannot handle my 3 kids (well, mostly just the two older ones but the baby is trouble too b/c she takes up the entire cart with her carseat!) at the grocery store. only 6 weeks 'til school starts and we might have enough food in the pantry to make it to Aug 19th! Here are the three little dears that are the joy in my life and double as little troubles!