All in a Day

These are not mine, although that is an impressive collection.  They actually come from here.

On any given workday around 1:45 p.m. my manager makes the rounds down to our cubes to check and see if we need to make a last minute run to the cafeteria before they close at 2.  This “last call” is what generally prompts the very unnecessary purchase of some kind of king size candy bar or some other such thing that I definitely don't need.  Today, I got water.  Not only am I trying to undo a little damage brought on by one too many sandwiches (and candy bars apparently), but, water is good for you.  Me.  I mean everyone.

Standing up, my manager makes a comment about my being very tall today.  As he looks at my shoes in one of those “how does she walk in those things” looks, I say something about a summer in flip flops making my feet wussies and it’s not that the shoes are hard to walk in, my feet just don’t like anything touching the tops of them because they’ve gotten used to flip flops.

Check out my fellow Blogger!

Meet my childhood friend Jesse over at Buckhouse!  She's brilliant, witty, charming, beautiful and exceedingly talented. Who would have ever known at the ripe old age of 14 (her) & 16 (me) that we'd both be bitten by the reno bug and take on projects of massive scale and actually conquer them.

There's just something about getting your hands dirty and creating something amazing that you never knew you could that gives you an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.  It kind of makes you feel like you could take on the world.

Check her out, bookmark her, she's got lots of great ideas and great stories written in a way that you can easily imagine sitting with her at her very own Trestle Table sharing a bottle of wine, a few laughs and some great conversation.

Adventures in Remodeling - This is Gonna Get Ugly

So when you buy an ugly house, it can only get uglier before it gets better right?  Right?  Ok, so maybe not in all cases but certainly in mine.  This is what my super ugly house looked like when I bought it.

The photo is from the Spokane County website, taken in 2004, not much had changed in appearance when I bought it.

I’m not entirely sure why out of the many many potential homes I looked at, I settled on this.  But, one reason is that I had owned it when I was married and had lost it when I divorced because I simply couldn’t afford to keep it on my own.  It was a sad day, I had so many plans for my home then and now it looked like I was getting another chance.

I sealed the deal in February of 2007 and with keys in hand, started making plans without a clue as to how to do ANY of it or how much it would cost.  I had planned to live there for a very long time so I wanted it to be to my liking but still remodel in a way that would be appealing to a lot of people if I ever had to sell it.  So, with what I wanted and what I thought of as “timeless”, I opened the front door.

After working on some pretty major projects indoors, I thought it was time to move outdoors, sort of backwards, but I needed a place to come home to that was comfortable and functional.  Once I came home from work/school and shut the front door behind me, I cared very little what the outside looked like.  I had my little oasis behind the ugly exterior.

Paint colors.  Oh. My. God.  How I can make something so difficult or why I feel the need to obsess over the PERFECT color, I’ll never know.  I tend to choose colors in shades of green and gray.  And yes, I obsessed about the perfect grayish/greenish color for what seemed like and probably was months.  Every weekend I’d bring home a new sample to try out so I could stare at it for a while and decide if I liked it.

Adventures in Remodeling - Bathroom #2

The arbitrary bathroom numbering system is based on the order in which the rooms were remodeled.  Number 2 & number 3 kind of got torn apart at the same time because of, well, read on...  Number 3 didn’t get finished until almost the last week or two that I lived in the house.

So, on to bathroom number two!

The Elvis Sink after I painted it so I could deal with it for a while

When I purchased the house, lovely bathroom number two was fitted with what I called “The Elvis Sink”.  I called that because of its likeness to the era in which fat Elvis would have lived.  It was awful.  Awful is an understatement.  It sparkled and had swirls that were supposed to look like marble I think, but really just looked pitiful.  Not only was the lovely Elvis sink attached to the wall, the walls themselves looked like exterior stucco and since it’s small, these little stucco fingers would reach out and grab you every time you turned around.  Stucco Fingers got sanded down and the walls painted until I could come up with the money to do anything else.  It just had to be usable.  Bathroom number two also had a pocket door that didn't work, or worked sometimes but then came off the track and was impossible to get back on so it eventually just stayed off the track and we proceeded to tear it and the wall apart every time we opened or closed the door.  Oh yeah, it was also a hallow apartment style door that was fitted to a pocket door so never even right to begin with.

The day finally came when I’d had enough of bathroom number two and decided it was its best interest to be torn out.  In order to get the bathtub out, part of the wall had to come out but before that the toilet had to come out.  Since the toilet was fairly new I decided to keep it, clean it and reuse it.  After all, anything that can be reused in a whole home remodel is valuable.

There has to be SOME modesty in remodeling!  That grate looking thing was a "vent" that opened to the downstairs bathroom and was more of a "intercom" than anything of actual use.  It was weird.

Adventures in Remodeling - Kitchen

So, while refinishing floors and tearing out a bathroom I also decided to go ahead and take the kitchen apart because, well, it just needed it.  And I wanted it.  I figured if it wasn't there, I'd have to do something new rather than just dealing with it until god knows when.

So this was the kitchen, in all it's splendor and glory, completely unchanged from when I had owned the house 10 or so years before.  Oh yeah, I owned the house when I was married and it was foreclosed on and I lost in in the divorce.

From the lovely dropped ceiling to the doorway that you could barley fit through because the stove stuck out into it, the particle board cabinets that were falling apart and had things in them that were indescribable and the darling blue, again with the blue, linoleum flooring.  There was also a sliding glass door that didn't work and the whole thing was just UGLY.  To be nice about it.

Adventures in Remodeling - Bathroom #1

While I was tearing out the carpet and refinishing the floor and annihilating the existing kitchen, I decided just one more thing was necessary prior to my moving in and that was rip out the main bathroom and give it an overhaul.

Lovely

Sadly, I didn't get actual intact before pics because well, I just wasn't there to do the picture taking.  Regardless of the beauty you see above, saying the main bath was ugly is a HUGE understatement.

Adventures in Remodeling - Hardwood Flooring

You buy a beat up old wreck of a house and what's the first thing a girl does when she gets the keys?  Well, pull up the carpet and see if there is hardwood underneath.

Yay! Wood floors!

The next thing you do, because you don't know any better, is rip the baseboard out in an effort to "update" not realizing how incredibly expensive it will be to replace it.  Lessons learned....

Sanded, stained and finished

Antique Doorknobs

It has come to my attention that I am a horrible blogger - no, not by anyone specifically, mostly just a "note to self" type thing.

Being a horrible blogger isn't due to the fact that I do nothing and therefore have nothing to blog about, it's more the opposite.  By the time I sit down, sit still and actually have time to compose a quick post, all I really want to do is lay in bed like a teenager (I'd say zombie, but judging from the movies I've seen, zombies are quite active and, judging from experience, teenagers are some of the laziest people on the planet) and flip through channels in the hope that something worth falling asleep to is on.

So here's a quick one that I've had sitting in the Drafts folder for quite some time.

After finishing remodeling my house a little over a year ago, and by "finishing" I actually mean running out of money and calling it good (will share Adventures in Remodeling at some point), I was left with a box of antique doorknobs from all the doors in the house that were refitted with doorknobs that actually work as opposed to pretty doorknobs that are over 100 years old and look awesome but, functionality has long since escaped them.  One of the first things I did after buying the house was remove all the doors, cover the flesh colored paint on them cuz it was super creepy and install functioning doorknobs, some even with locks.  Some of the doors themselves had to be replaced but I did manage to at least keep matching doors on each floor of the house.  Because I'm weird like that.

So I bought the house in February of 2007.  By 2012 I finally figured out what to do with all those extra doorknobs.

In case it's not clear what this contraption is, it's a coat rack!  This pic is kind of crappy, but I was playing with my new camera and clearly the figuring out of the settings is not going well.

So in my box of doorknobs that came out of my 100+ year old house, I managed to find 5 that all matched with key plates.  At first I tried an adhesive (read Superglue here) to attach them to each other and that just didn't work well at all.  I was ready to go get some JB Weld or some other epoxy I'd used before when lo and behold, the b/f's friend said he could weld them together.  Best idea ever.

Once I got the doorknob and key plate welded together to make a hook, I wanted to use the door pins themselves as hooks to put backpacks on so the "dropping of the stuff while walking through the door" after school could stop.  I told the b/f what I wanted to do with the door pins and he made it happen.  They are connected to the board in some way seems magical and works, so I'm happy.  Then I went and found the wooden letters to say home, painted them gold first, then black over the top and sanded the edges so they would look old and worn out but its really hard to tell that I even put any effort into that from the pic.

All that to say, it has worked out fabulously, the thing is ALWAYS full and only two of the letters have fallen off which I remedied with a compressor and brad nailer which is what I should have done to begin with.

Another terrible phone pic, but shown in use

I don't know that I'll ever make another one, but at least if I ever do, I'll know how to make it work the first time.

Now, to find a use for the hundreds of old chandelier pieces that also came down sometime  in February of 2007....

Never Underestimate the Power of Shoes

I left the house during a massive hail storm because the teenager had broken her glasses and they needed fixing.

When I left the house it wasn’t so bad. Yet.  By the time I was a mile away the van in front of me nearly slid into the street sign at a round about where the rounding was clearly not happening.  When I saw that I thought I should probably just turn around and go home before this gets worse.  But, I decided to press on, hail be damned.  Mind you, I’ve never actually seen hail like this.  It was borderline Biblical.  So I slipped and slid and spun out but finally made it to my destination.

Walking from the car to the building I got pelted with hail the size of chick peas and in the 30 or so seconds it took me to get in the door, one whole side of me was covered in melting ice.  Awesome.  At least I wasn’t trying to impress anyone…

I walk in, tell the receptionist what I needed, she instructs me to have a seat and a technician will be with me in a moment.  As I was sitting, another woman showed up with the same problem and was instructed to sit.  So there we sat, making small talk about how horrid the roads were and how stupid we were to actually be driving on them when really NOTHING was so important that it was worth risking your life in a massive hail storm for.

The technician, who had begun working on the glasses I brought, then started asking how bad the roads really were so the two of us started to fill her in.  Accidents everywhere, you’d be silly to go anywhere unless it was really important, etc, etc.

Technician says, “well that sucks! I have a pair of shoes on hold that I found last night that I need to go pick up”.  Then describes the shoe, something Jessica Simpson brand, huge heel, brightly colored, platform, pretty much everything you’d want in a shoe for spring.

The second woman that was waiting and I both look at each other and almost in unison say, “oh, well it’s not really THAT bad, I mean, if you drive slow you should be fine” and a plethora of reasons that it’s actually NOT that bad started flowing from our mouths.

Once we finished up making excuses for the weather and downplaying what we had just reported on road conditions all three of us started laughing because just like that, three women who had all just met, had formed a momentary bond over a pair of shoes.

Life Lessons

Relationships are a learning process (understatement of the century).  For example:

All white fluffy bedding is completely impractical.

My bedroom used to look something like this.

In fact...

This is my actual room - not that you can see all the fluffy white bedding, but it's there AND you can see all the folded fluffy white bedding!

Buh bye big fluffy all white bedding.  Hellow dark colored everything.

Off to the store to buy black dye, for the now stained white duvet cover.

And the learning continues....

Time Management

How I manage to do all the stuff I cram into one day?

Simple - something suffers.  One person cannot accomplish everything all the time without cutting corners somewhere, somehow.  For example, at one time in my life I was a full time student, worked full time, was raising a teenager, remodeling a house (I once hung curtains at midnight in order to avoid homework) and was in a relationship with someone who also demanded my time.  Guess what got cut?  Yup! The relationship.  What can I say, something had to go!  No great loss either way it turns out. So, the squeaky wheel does not ALWAYS get the grease, sometimes it just gets replaced or we just go without out it. In my case it was the latter. Lesson to all.

You know that saying, not even sure who said it first but it could have been Moses, he seems like he was a busy guy; plagues, leading, the Ten Commandments, miracles, etc - anyway, the saying is, "If you want something done, ask a busy person."  I guess it makes sense that busy people are able to cram a lot into their lives so why not just one more thing?  Busy people also seem to have a hard time saying no, delegating and allowing someone else to do anything for them because honestly, half the reason they're so goddamned busy is because they're too freakin' anal and want things done the way they want them done.  Oh wait, is that just me?  Crap!

Ok, so how do I work full time, be a step mom, clean a house, get laundry done, do crafts, projects, remodel/paint, sew, cook, bake, write a blog, grocery shop, be a good girlfriend and all the endless other things that happen or need to happen to make my world go round every day?  Well, it's not easy and something always suffers.

First of all - the blog isn't going to self destruct if I don't write it.  My random thoughts do not require constant sharing (as much as I'd like to think they do) and luckily for me I can type about 80 wpm, not error free, but error free enough that I can get a lot of thoughts typed out in a very short amount of time.  I work on it a little at a time too. Also, I don't sleep much (something I've begun to remedy with over the counter meds cuz it was seriously to the point of crazy) so I think a lot.  When I think a lot, everything is kind of RIGHT THERE (points to head) waiting to be put into writing.  But if it doesn't happen, the blog writing that is, or anything else that has made its way to the "Low Priority" shelf, it's really not the end of the world.  The moral of the story: know what's important/pressing and what can wait.  If you're short on time rather than trying to do everything half assed, do the most important things the best you possibly can.

Second, I do a lot of things at once.  I guess it's multitasking, but it's more than that.  I have an order of things in my head that is constantly being revised and rerouted depending on who, what, where & why (DEFCON level....).  If Y & Z can be accomplished while waiting for X, then that is the order of things.  Usually it's much more complex than that, but that's the idea.  I'm constantly organizing in my head, perpetually scheming ways to get more done in less time and making actual lists.  It's much easier for me to keep my life organized when I have what needs to be done written down.  Writing on actual paper may seem archaic to some when I could easily make a note in my phone.  Here is the problem with the phone: I pick it up to make a note, note is made but I don't stop there. I suddenly need to check facebook, email, text someone, read this, look-up that, play Angry Birds, or Words With Friends/Word Feud, do some real estate stalking (a girls gotta know what property values are in the area!) and the latest and greatest time suck is Pinterest.  Dear lord I think I need an intervention!  Anyway, all those things are time sponges and if you're not aware of your tendency to fall down rabbit holes, you can waste hours before you even realize you did.

Buh-bye Alice!

Lists - yes I make them and yes I use them.  I make lists for things that need to be done, things I'd like to do (thank you Pinterest.com, I love you and I hate you at the same time!), things we need, listed by which store has them. For example, my WalMart list is certainly not mixed with my Lowes list! Heaven forbid! Unless there is a possibility of the item being in two places.... Sounds anal, but the reasoning is, if I don't make it there, I can ask the b/f.  Or if he is going to one of those places I can say, "can you pick up ____ "? Rather than, "hey, I'm going to Lowes, you need anything"? "uhhhhhhhhhhhh...........I did, but I don't remember what it was........if I think of it I'll call or text you" only to remember what the "thing" was about 20 seconds after he walks in the door. Fail. Guess who gets to make another trip to the store for what they forgot?  If I'm at work and I need to remember something when I get home, I send myself an email so I will have it on my phone.

Let the multitasking begin!

Example Saturday

Woke up around 11:00 a.m. cuz MAN I WAS TIRED! Before I've even made it down the stairs I already have a mental list of what I want/need to do or get done and I'm calculating how to best get all that done - I walk through the kitchen, turn on the oven to make muffins because it has to pre-heat, start coffee because it takes a minute or two, make my way to the laundry room, sort the laundry, start a load of laundry because I have to wait for the coffee anyway, go back to the kitchen, wash the dishes from the night before that the dish fairies left for me, mix up the muffins (coffee still making), throw them in the oven, set the timer which gives me anxiety because now I only have 14 minutes til they are done and having a time limit seems to make time go by faster - weird.  Pour coffee, clean up the muffin making dishes, dry them, put all of the dishes away, sweep the kitchen floor, decide it doesn't need mopped just yet - cuz you know, my coffee is cooling and I NEED to be doing something while I wait for that, look around the dining room/living room for stuff that needs to be picked up, put away, cleaned etc.  Check the fridge, do we need anything? Coffee is still cooling......its a HUGE cup, more of a trough I think. If we need anything, which we always do, I start making a grocery/stuff list.  Ahhh coffee..... check email, check facebook (it's Saturday!! Some time wasting is allowed!), get the muffins out of the oven, let them cool for a minute or two, transfer to container and take some upstairs for the b/f who is still sleeping but will wake up wanting muffins and milk knowing I made muffins, notice that there is more laundry in the basket that I missed, take that downstairs, sort it into remaining piles, clean something else, research something online, switch the laundry to the dryer, start another load, pour another cup of coffee, clean the muffin tin, grab lists (the usuals are Winco, Walmart & Lowes), switch coffee to car mug, ahhhhh coffee, decide which project I'm going to tackle today, make sure I have everything I need to do it, if not add it to "the list".  Oh crap....feeling queasy, forgot to eat!  I even made muffins, and now they're all gone!!  Look for something appealing but now I have "coffee tummy" and nothing is appealing except maybe a cracker, decide to eat later and vow not to drink any more coffee (today, just today). An entire pot is probably enough....maybe... And that's just within a couple hours or so of being awake.

Standing at the door coffee in hand (it was already in the cup, no more after THIS) ready to take on the world, I remembered that the girls have a daddy daughter dance at 6:30 this evening and I have an appointment with my hairdresser at 4, it's now 1 p.m. I go wake up b/f (he works at night so asleep at 1 in the afternoon is normal folks!) to find out if I need to pick up the youngest who's at her moms, yes indeed I do, oh and take her to get a dress she has picked out at the mall which ended up being so expensive that I would have had to trade the kid for the dress but then I'd have no kid to put in the dress soooooooo we had to go find another dress which caused an epic tantrum of disappointment and attitude beyond her years which caused me to circle the mall pretending to look for another store but really letting her calm down and get over it, oh and get some accessories & shoes and order a couple corsages on the way home for pickup on the way to the dance, get home at 3:30 just in time to turn right back around to get to my appointment that's 30 minutes away at 4:00, make it to the appointment on time, hairdresser was super speedy, stop for gas on the way back lest I run out of fuel AND time, get home by 5:45 to get the girls hair done, thankfully the teenager was helping with one girls hair, get them fed and out the door to be at their dance at 6:30.  Girls leave with their dad only to show up a couple minutes later with an extra little girl (one of the girls friends who's dad couldn't go) running into the house with a dress and shoes in hand.  B/f takes off to pick up corsages while extra girl changes and I fix her hair, throw a necklace on her and then out the door they all go (perfectly coordinated too by some stroke of luck).  They were only a little bit late.  And they were all completely adorable.

Once they were gone I started sewing something, or taking something apart for repurposing or upcycling, whatever the cool term is these days that I'd dyed red the night before (what a mess!! but omg it's such a pretty color of red!), cooked a piece of metal, yep - metal, in the oven for some project the b/f was working on, took the teenage stepdaughter to the store, cleaned up the kitchen so it was all clean in the morning, a weird pet peeve I have and had just sat down in bed to watch some TV around 9:15 when the b/f and the girls came thundering into the house.  And now, the house is alive with the sound of girl screeches and squeals and other random noises that I was completely unaware that girls made.  I raised a boy.  Girls are a whole different story.  Completely. Totally. Zero comparison.

So, Saturday was a success, at least in my head and a mellow day compared to what a Saturday looked like just over a year ago - I didn't get done exactly what I wanted to get done, but I also figured out early enough that I had to get stuff done for the Daddy/Daughter dance so it didn't throw my brain into an overdrive frenzy of detouring, rerouting and catching up.  My b/f's brain does not work this way and it doesn't make me crazy only because I know I'm "special".  And that's why we work.

I guess to summarize my time management skills I would say the most important thing to me is lists.  There is no possible way to remember everything that floats through my head that needs to get done or ideas I have and it seems like if I write it down, then I never forget - if I assume I'll remember, chances are the thought will be gone, replaced by another thought and now the overlapping thought that I can't remember what I was just thinking about 5 seconds ago.  Its a very frustrating busy space in my head.  If only I had the ability to turn all that off every once in a while. Lists, yes lists - not only helpful to organize the thoughts, it's also a weird feeling of accomplishment just being able to scratch something off your list.  A visualization of accomplishments.  I do it at work, I get a lot done, I'm very efficient.

The other thing is that something will always suffer, be incomplete or hastily done - no one is superhuman.  I try to be, but I'm just not. In the school/work/teenager/remodeling days it seemed like I never ever stopped.  I was one of those people who got more done by noon than most people did in an entire week.  I always had a plan, and a contingency plan and a contingency plan B, and so on.  My little brothers lived with me for a while and would beg me to JUST SIT STILL!  It was actually impossible for me to do, sadly.

I think it has something to do with my childhood, that I can't sit still, I feel like the world is passing me by, like I need to cram as much as I can into the time I have because I missed so much (18 years!!) and now I have to make up for it.  I've always had an obsession with time though, ever since I can remember - it was always very very important for me to know what time it was.  I never went to school so I wasn't waiting for the bell, I just needed to know what time it was all the time.  If I didn't have a watch, I had to find a clock. But I always had a watch.  And I love clocks! Now I have my phone and the clock in the corner of my monitor, the watch on my wrist, the clock in my car, the clock on the wall at home, on the microwave, the stove, the coffeemaker, the clock in the bathroom, the clock on my nightstand, I would have a wall of clocks that served as art if I really wanted people to think/know I was crazy - I ALWAYS need to know what time it is.  Always. And, even if I'm wearing a watch, I have to also look at my phone, or my monitor, or the wall, etc, as if one might be lying to me...

When I moved in with my b/f he made one request: Bring it down a notch (or ten). He would bring it up a few. I have made significant progress in this area and do manage to sit still now for longer than five minutes at a time and even promised to make a valid effort to stay in bed on the weekends til 10 a.m, or maybe it was 9:30, even if it meant that I was just laying in bed watching TV.  I accomplish it every now and again, waking up at 11 for example.  There is a good chance that I need to be medicated (or just drink more) and at the very least should probably see a good shrink (or just drink more).  Until then, I'll just call myself "productive".

Hellow World

I'm alive, I am well, I am busy!

I have stuff to share and pics of stuff to share stuck on my new camera that is proving more difficult than I thought to master.

I wrote up a little thing on Time Management and then said screw it, I have no idea what I'm talking about - as if I'm one to offer advice....the only thing I know about time management is that I seem to be good at juggling multiple tasks oh, and I don't sleep as much as people should.  Oh, and I don't take much time to just do nothing, in fact, I'm not even sure what that term means.

Just for shits and giggles, this is me playing with a new app my b/f's daughter downloaded - kind of does all sorts of fun stuff...  But that is one of my upcoming goals - to master my new camera AND to learn Photoshop - both are classes I'm taking to finish up the 9 credits I need to complete my BA.  Hey, if I gotta have 9 credits, they might as well be fun ones, right?

Update: went ahead and posted what I had on Time Management after a quick edit - so, forgive any typos or worse than usual writing skillz

Fuck Cancer!

Cancer - she's a bitch, I dislike her greatly to the point of hatred and I really don't "hate" a lot of things.  Sometimes she comes, sometimes she goes and sometimes she stays and wears out her welcome, eats all your food, fucks up your house and irreparably trashes your life.

Too many people I have known and loved have been effected by cancer, some have only been visited, others have taken it on as a short term lifelong companion.

All I can do is hope that peace will come to those left behind knowing that their loved ones are in a better place.

My friend Judy lost her mother yesterday to the bitch named cancer.  By the time it was discovered, there was nothing that could be done.  She was able to spend the last few months with her mom, having moved in with her.

Lena was one of those women you meet and never forget.  One of the sweetest most caring individuals I've had the opportunity to know.  And, she gave great hugs, the kind you imagine a mom would give.  The kind that make you feel loved and protected and cared about.  Judy is a very lucky women to have had her as a mom.

I don't believe that those that leave us suffer any longer, its those that are left behind.  It's just so hard to say good by rather than, "until next time".  Its easy to leave a friends or loved ones house when you know you'll see them again.  If you knew it would be the last time, you'd linger in the doorway for as long as possible getting those last hugs and last thoughts out.

I hope my friend Judy and her family can find peace and heal.  I could not be more sorry for her loss as I know what a unique woman her mom was.

Peace and healing. In time.

Rest peacefully Lena.

Update: Kitchen

Ok, its been a while since I said I'd finish up the kitchen and post a pic.

The kitchen has been done for a while but I was waiting to take pictures when it was clean. I decided that was an impossibility because never, ever is the kitchen entirely clean. I was also kind of hoping a shiny new camera would appear out of nowhere and my blog photos would be that much more interesting.  Yeah, that didn't happen either.

Without further ado, here is is, mostly finished.

Cloth panels attached with Velcro so they can come down to be washed.

The picture is fuzzy but the shelves are full of usable stuff for baking.  I need to get the power strip attached to the wall but other than that and this side is done.

Change Microwave Location (and yes, that is a VERY large bottle of Vodka - its a little  gross, so I'm slowly using it to make Vanilla)

The first day this was up on the wall it had a deeper shelf for the microwave to sit on.  It was awesome, got it out of the way but was also at grownup only height.  The girls have a step stool that allowed them to reach it just fine, but because it was still slightly too high, I was afraid that the littlest one would pull the whole thing down trying to open the door.  Aside from that, they were using the shelf itself to pull themselves up to the microwave and I just saw that being a massive future disaster.  I sill need some baskets & containers for this side to store things in.

Where the Microwave Landed

This is the new location of the microwave, kids definitely can't pull it down on their heads but it's still out of the way since this was an area of counter that didn't get used for much but stacking mail and paperwork on.  I'll probably change the shelves so the cereal shelf is just above the microwave and get more bins/baskets/containers to store things on the shelves above.  As you can see, always some last stronghold of crap that needs to be cleaned up.  Namely, my pile of crap that I'm "working on". The project in the cardboard box will be posted soon.

It may not be perfect, or my dream kitchen but it's an economical fix to make a functional space.  All I have to do is look back at the before, smile and know that it's a huge improvement.

PS: a shiny new camera has shown up out of nowhere and as soon as I figure it out, pics will be THAT much better :)

Thursday Linx

I couldn't have said it better

Not that there is anything wrong with being a mom....

The crap I read that ensures I will never have any sort of faith in humanity

Cool site I came across today

Resolutions vs. Goals

Well, 2012 has come.  Almost two weeks ago, but who's counting?

I don't make new years resolutions, haven't since I was forced to, and this year will be no different.  But, I do set goals.  Goals are different from resolutions in that there is a lesser guilt factor in not completing a goal as opposed to "breaking" a resolution.

As a child, I was forced to sit down and come up with some fancy resolution for the year, write it down, share it with my parents who would then use it against me for the remainder of the year.  NYE was a ton o'fun and just another day that followed the huge disappointment that was Christmas.

I have always thought of rules as something meant to be broken and resolutions as setup for failure.  The pressure to keep a resolution, especially one that was forced upon you, is more than anyone can handle.  So, I set goals. My goals are the things I decide should be done by me, they don't include anyone else, and may or may not ever be "complete" but rather something that is worked on over time.  I have had a goal since I was a teenager: to avoid obesity at all cost.  This is a lifetime goal.  Now, had I set that as a resolution for a single year, would that mean that the year after I could say fuck-it and become obese? Or, fail all together and just say fuck-it that year and eat cookies? No.

I have set a new goal: I am going to learn to dress myself.  This may sound like a given to anyone else, but what I mean is that I am going to stop wishing I had some sense of style and just start having one.  The one I see in my head of me.  Every once in a while I make some effort to actually put a coordinated outfit together, I will even go as far as to add a piece of jewelry or two to complete the look.  This will happen for about three days and then I will run out of wardrobe choices, creativity, energy and focus.

My boyfriends eight year old daughter said to me not too long ago that I'm kind of like a tom-boy and plain while my friend "A" is more "fashioney" (I love eight year old words) and does her hair pretty and wears pretty outfits and shoes and jewelry. I don't remember exactly how she said it, but basically, it was in disapproval of the way I could be mistaken for wearing her dads clothes, which I am guilty of, the majority of the time.  Huh...thanks kid...  I love her to pieces for her brutal honesty.

Part of the problem is that my wardrobe is not very big, or very diverse.  I wear jeans and T-shirts, usually in shades of white, gray and black.  Thus, my entire wardrobe coordinates in a tom-boy sort of way.  Almost all my clothing can be worn with my ugly combat boots or my super awesome Harley boots, the two or three dresses I own included - and I like it that way.  I don't like to wear anything that is fussy, has too much pattern, color, color splotches, animals, animal patterns, etc.  And I'm weird about textures in fabric AND the fabric itself.  I also don't like anything touching my neck because it feels like I'm on the verge of being strangled all day.

I like shoes though.  Probably an understatement and maybe a little bit too much.  I have my favorite go to shoes for every day (boots) and I never seem to have a problem with shoes.  The only problem I have with shoes, if one could even consider this a problem, is where to store them all when I'm not wearing them and how to make them accessible enough that I can wear any of them at any given time.  Shoes are easy. And fun. And always fit.  The size of my foot doesn't fluctuate the way the rest of me seems to on a regular basis.

I do have some clothes that hang up, in the same basic color scheme with the addition of a couple purple and one orange shirt, but they don't get worn that often AND the moon, stars and planets have to align perfectly for me to be comfortable enough in them to actually leave the house without a hasty change in the closet itself leaving clothes strewn about for me to clean up later because now I'm running late because I feel like this orange shirt makes me stand out too much or my arms look especially fat it in today, etc.  If only everyone had my "problems". Right? (wink)

I have fat jeans, skinny jeans, jeans with cool back pockets, faded jeans, baggy jeans, jeans with holes in them, jeans to wear with heels, jeans to wear with flip flops, which are usually the same as the jeans I wear with heels thus the frayed hems on ALL my jeans (I'm short).  I have big T-shirts, small T-shirts, T-shirts with race logos, fitted T-shirts, V-neck T-shirts, scoop neck T-shirts, even a T-shirt with buttons down the back.  Out of the entire T-shirt collection, I believe 2 are olive green, one is tan, one is purple but it's about to hit the trash, one has a flower on it (twas a gift) and all are in some stage of "old" looking and have at least one hole in them giving the impression that I live in a nest of moths.  Really, I think my washing machine just gets very very hungry because I have no idea where these holes come from.  Or, it's full of razor-blades that only seem to touch my clothing.

I have on occasion, determined to make a change, gone out and actually purchased new clothing, something out of the norm, a color, a fabric other than 100% cotton and then immediately returned them all to the store for lack of ability to work them into my wardrobe or just felt that it wasn't me.  Stacy & Clinton would be appalled.

Disapproval is evident 

So, as a 37, soon to be 38 year old woman, my goal is to figure out how the hell to dress myself in some sort of adult fashion.  I do actually have lofty goals but am completely lost in how to achieve them and generally end up dressed like this.

$7 Lynyrd Skynyrd T, Jeans AND a watch, how creative!

when there is this stylish and perfectly accessorized person waiting to get out:

Still in Jeans and probably a T-shirt in there somewhere and awesome black fingernails - wishing I could see her feet though...

The problem with the stylish and perfectly accessorized me waiting to get out is that the layered look I love so much, requires more than one article of clothing for each body quadrant.

 

For example, the outfit below requires three tops! THREE! Well, two and a jacket.  That's three times the cost of just one shirt, and how on earth would I know that those items coordinate!?!  The top is sequined, the shirt is denim and the jacket is who knows what.  Am I really the only woman that just doesn't get this?

The boots (awesome BTW) and jeans are a no brainer, but the top half, and that fabulous ring, is a complete mystery to me!

So included in my goal is purchasing clothing. Not clothing from the $10 T-Shirt rack at Old Navy and loading up on two white, two black and a gray to get me through a season until they become too full of holes to be considered appropriate work attire, but actual womens clothing as opposed to the androgynous wardrobe I currently own.

Perhaps once I have not dressing myself like a toddler down, I'll move on to accessorizing.  I won't even talk about my hair right now, that's a later discussion.

Or, I'll just stay forever tom-boy with my ugly boots, leather belt & jacket that I've had since I was 19 and collection of drab T-shirts.  After all, it is just a goal...

Almost There!

So, I'm almost finished with the "little" kitchen project I started a over a week ago. I need to find a solution to the ugly trash/recycling situation and the blanket door. Yes, blanket door.

Fugg!! - old icky garbage can and laundry bin converted to recycling can.  Need to find an attractive inexpensive solution.

Blanket Door's purpose to to keep the cold air from the laundry room from infiltrating the kitchen.  The laundry room is like a meat locker in the winter.  If there ever was insulation in that part of the house, squirrels ate it.

Both have the requirement of being cost friendly so I need to get creative...

One Year, One Month and Ten Days

One year, one month and ten days! One year, one month and ten days we chanted as we rolled around the roller rink in the house that was actually the addition that hadn’t been finished yet. We were sure it was built just for us. We were nine and ten, roughly.

One year, one month and ten days was the distance in our ages. No matter how old I got, she would always be one year, one month and ten days older than me.

She, was my cousin Glenda, my first best friend.

Today is her birthday, January 4th, she was a Capricorn.

We had been separated when I was 12 when my family moved to Taiwan to pursue missionary work. Had that not occurred, I would have been banned from seeing her as the people that raised me would have thought her a bad influence.

We had a vague plan to meet up somewhere between Washington and New Mexico when I turned 18 and had escaped the oppression of what had been my life up to that point. We never got that far – I got a call shortly after I had moved out, just weeks after turning 18, and felt like my heart had been ripped out.

She was beautiful.

This year will mark 20 years that she has been gone, but never forgotten. I choose to acknowledge her birthday every year, to offer up a thought, as I do not pray.

Rest in peace my beautiful friend, rest in peace.

Afterthoughts

Not all posts will be as long as the first as not all days are as full of as much awesome as others.  Some days may just plain suck and those days I will try to keep to myself unless its extreme suckage, like BeBub has finally made off with a limb.

What I want vs. What I get

It all started with an awesome Christmas gift...

In May of 2011 I left the home that I had worked endlessly, it seemed, restoring, beautifying, and perfecting every little detail. My home was immaculate, aside from the dust – but I hate dusting and had hardwood floors with a forced air furnace and anyone who’s had a combination of those two things knows exactly how hard it is to keep a house dust free.

Back to my story, in May of last year, I left my granite and cherry and stainless appliance, brand new kitchen for this. Why you ask? Only a crazy person would do that! Well, let me tell you, love. Ah love. Love can make a sane person crazy and a crazy person absolutely certifiable. Love can make you leave polished granite and shiny stainless steel. Sometimes, I’d like to run Love over with a car, then back up and run it over again just for good measure.

I had been thinking for some time how I could possibly rehab this kitchen that love made me have, wondering how I could make it even remotely functional. It’s rather large and having just remodeled a kitchen not that long ago, I knew that a complete remodel was out of the question. Not only do I not have the money right now, I just don’t have the “testicular fortitude”, as my ever so eloquent older brother would put it, to pull off such a huge project at this time.

Kitchen Nightmare

Sitting in the living room, watching a movie, researching storage ideas on the web, facebooking, playing two different word games on my phone, drinking coffee and furiously brainstorming what I could possibly do to make the exceedingly unfortunate (unfortunate is a word I like to use for ugly, it just sounds so much nicer) kitchen at least functional, I had an epiphany.

Within minutes I had a list in hand and was off to my favorite store – Lowes. Home Depot is a close second, but I don’t like their orange vest/apron thingies, even though in my almost entirely black, gray and white wardrobe, orange is a color I will actually wear.

I’m odd, this will become more evident.

My trip to Lowes was immediately successful in that I found the hinge to the missing cupboard door. This bode well for the rest of my excursion and I held out hope as I walked to the “Storage” isle. I found what I was looking for right away but had to ask an “associate” for help when I couldn’t figure out how something went together and didn’t want to break it to make it work then be stuck with it. Figured I’d let her break it – luckily the first associate was able to call another associate to assist me in cutting shelving to the right length. And here I thought I’d be hunched over the front porch stairs with a hacksaw for hours. Awwwwwwe, bummer. As it was, I forgot to have Second Associate cut one of the top rails and ended up over the sink, hacksawing away for what seemed like a goddamned hour, when in reality it was only a couple of minutes. But, I hate the hacksaw, I feel as though it has something out for me and as such, never works as it should. It bends, it binds, it slides about and never cuts a straight line and usually ends up chewing some piece of my hand off in its ruthless fury for a blood sacrifice. I was too lazy to go to the garage, having already been there once to retrieve the drill, to get a metal blade for the Sawsall, and pulling out the Sawsall for a single one and a half inch rail seemed like a bit of overkill. But, the Sawsall loves me, and I it – we have history.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand back on topic. Left Lowes, made a bee line for the fabric store. When I left the house I had a theme in mind, bees, honey, country kitchen type thing. Why? Oh, cuz there is a Winnie the Poo cookie jar that my boyfriend keeps – not sure on the story, but it’s been glued back together a few times. Once at the fabric store I realized this was not going to be as successful as Adventures in Lowesland and decisions would need to be made. AAAHHHHH!!! I hate making decisions, well I do and I don’t, I suck at them and then I’m great at them. I’m a perpetual contradiction of myself. Like, I don’t wear color, black, white and gray it is – but I’ll make concessions for orange? What the hell is that about? If someone, like me, fears color in their wardrobe wouldn’t the logical choice to be to add a navy blue, or a deep purple (which I also allow, periodically)? But nooooOOOOoooo, orange it is. Weird. Then again, I just am.

Back on topic! The fabric store offers a wide variety of decision making dilemmas. I went with a plan, plan did not work out, on to Plan B – but I didn’t come with one. Going back to the country cute kitchen idea I thought I could pick two colors, make the fabrics look “quilty” adding to the country cute theme. I really really wanted to go black and white, it physically hurt me to look at other colors but, I picked two patterns of blues and whites that went together in a quilty way, set them on the cutting table, waited, cutter guy was helping someone else, more than 30 seconds elapsed so I was off looking at blacks and whites again. Found, brought THOSE back to the cutting table. Cutter guy was helping someone else again, this time a lady with really really badly lined lips and I wanted to tell her, but you know, that’s just not nice and she seemed like she was, but still – it was real bad. Lip Liner Lady distracted me enough that I was actually able to wait and make a solid decision on the fabric and I went with the blue and white because it seemed more “Country Cute” and the black and white were, well, modern and more me. But, this wasn’t about me. It is, but it’s not.

I ran home with my loot in tow and after several trips back and forth from car to house and house to car I had my work laid out for me. I wanted this to be a surprise to the boyfriend so I ran upstairs to see if he would be coming down any time soon, he was in fact getting ready to leave (perfect) so I asked him to wait while I covered my haul with a sheet lest he figure out exactly what I was up to. I asked how long he’d be gone, he said about 2 hours and asked if I would be done by then. I said that was an optimistic estimate, he said his was too – perfect again. I practically shoved him out the door, say Iloveyou, callbeforeyoucomehome. And got to work.

First order of business: find that pesky hacksaw. Actually, take photographic evidence because no one (that actually knows me) will believe the wreck that I’ve been living in for the past seven plus months. Then go find the hacksaw.

Hacksaw, I’m going to call him Beelzebub or BeBub for short, was in the basement, I hate the basement – earlier that morning I had to torch a spider that was hanging in the entryway blocking me and the Christmas decorations from going down the stairs. Going down my hands were full, if he’d have just moved while I was down there he would have been home free. But, forcing me to duck going down and on my way back up so I didn’t get spider in my hair was just too much. Sorry spidey, but this is my house.

Once BeBub had it’s blood sacrifice, and the boyfriend had made a trip back having forgot something, me having to run something outside to him so he wouldn’t come in and see what I was doing, I measured and leveled and attached and drilled and did all the fun stuff that I love to do. I really do love this sort of thing, as much as I love quilting, or making stained glass. See, perpetual contradiction.

I used all the parts I had, noted that I had some “extras” and was also short a few due to last minute change in the design and functionality. I need to run back to Lowes, but I also need to call the boyfriend and make sure he’s not on his way back. Ringing, ringing, ringing, to voicemail. Try again, same result. So I send a text saying I have to run to Lowes, please don’t be on your way home. I grab my extras for exchange, my list for additional items and take off. I get to Lowes, I don’t have my wallet – in my hurry to get out the door so I could get back so boyfriend wouldn’t see, I forgot to grab my wallet. Arrrrggggg. I’m driving the boyfriends truck because he took my car and the truck is on “E” with the fuel light blinking at me like a demon in the dashboard. Completely distracted and in a hurry, I overshot my street and ended up a block over, no worries, I’ll just put gas in the truck so the demon stops flirting with me, pull up, stop, oh crap - I don’t have my wallet. Drive back to the house, run in, grab wallet, head back to the gas station since Truck seems to be complaining rather obviously about its empty belly. Just feet from the gas station, literally a few truck lengths away, Truck stops. Just stops. A couple seconds later starts back up, as if to say SYKE!!! and I slowly, barely pushing the gas pedal work my way to the pump. Ahhhhh crisis averted.

Got to Lowes, exchanged my extras, picked up my additions and headed home. Got a call from the boyfriend saying he was on his way home and wanting to know if I was done. NO I say, NOT DONE! So he says he’ll try to find somewhere to go for a bit, but he’ll let me know. Not long afterward I send him a text saying, I’m missing two parts still so I am done for the night, he can come home – with the obligatory frownie face included to portray my unhappiness with the situation. He says he’ll be home shortly so I got to work on the sewing part of the project.

I still have some work to do, but I’m not that far from having a completely functional kitchen.

Did I mention that I started this at three in the afternoon? I was cleaned up and ready for bed by nine-thirty.

Before - not even room for my awesome Christmas present!

After - room for The Awesome and then some.  I still have some work to do to finish the lower cabinet drape, but this is an excellent start.

Where oh where did the microwave go? and the coffee maker?

Up - the microwave went up

Before - all kinds of Un-Awesome

After - "Coffee Station" in the corner

Ugh, seriously?

After - It's not "designer" by any means, but note the return of the Prodigal Cabinet Door...

So while my kitchen may not be this:

Want!

At least it is no longer this:

And while what I want and what I get are two VASTLY different things, at least my kitchen now functions as a kitchen.  I have a little work to do to finish up, but will probably get that done tonight and will post a final pic.