« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »
Almost. We had a power surge the other day which the SMUD guy said could have shorted and destroyed our dishwasher. For about 30 minutes I sat hopefully waiting, but no dice. All was as it should be when the power was fixed (note to us: Trim your tree branches in the backyard so they don't rub against your 50 year old powerline and cause a surge).
It was quite a show, obviously. 
We are still at it. We'll be done by the time we move. For fun Aaron and I last night talked about someday moving out for a month and letting someone come in and give the house a facelift. Refinish the floors, paint, replace all the doors and trim throughout, get built-in closets, re-do the bathroom (again), etc etc. We should start playing the lottery...
This is basically the progress I made in the kitchen. Filling up my china cabinent. It was like Christmas to finally pull out my fine china and arrange it all pretty. Notice the pretty yellow walls. Aaron's parents came down a few weeks ago and helped around the house and Aaron's mom painted the kitchen for us. SO NICE! She's officially our home improvement angel. Who knows when we would have done it left to our own devices.
These are my Granny's dishes. They were the dishes that my father and aunts and my brothers and I grew up using at Granny's house. For some reason I have always loved them. Maybe it was because they are supposed to be unbreakable (always a plus in my klutzy world), maybe it was because they were what my dad ate on as a kid. Whatever it was, I thought they were super cool.
Imagine my suprise when a few days after commenting to Granny that if she ever wanted to replace them I'd gladly take them she called to say I could have them.
While I am thrilled with the aquisition, Aaron is less than impressed.
"They are scuffed." He said.
"So?" (Me)
"They look old and used." (Him)
"They are old and used." (Moi)
At this point he gave me a look that only he is capaple of giving, that I cannot describe, but anyone who knows us knows the look. (It is a bizzare mixture of disgust-my wife is nuts-resignation-I really hate these dishes-there is probably nothing I can do about this situation. Seriously. If you know us, you have seen the look, right Faith?)
"They are vintage." I said. The look only intensified.
"Alright. Look. I really like these dishes. I don't know why, but I always wanted some just like them when I was a kid. If Granny hadn't given them to us for free, I would have eventually purchased them peice by peice on ebay. Eventually we would have owned these dishes."
After that he brightened up. The thought of the money I would have doled out vs getting them for free perked him right up and he slurped his soup without another complaint.
Men.
Cuz dudes don't want dollhouses. 
We made this one from some of the gazillions of cardboard boxes left over from the kitchen remodel. He told me where to put the windows and doors and even made sure that his little sister had her own room and door. Whatta guy!
Tonight after sister goes to bed we are going to do the second coat of paint and add some dudely details. I'll post the finished product next week!
I've been busy, embroidering little girls and flowers and other fun things. Embroidery is by far my favorite craft to date. It used to be crochet for its portability, but now embroidery has become my new portable craft. I like that I can finish something in an evening. Of course that tells you how simple my projects are. No fancy pants stitches here. I forced myself to learn to do the fancy pants stuff via Primrose, but I choose to take the quick and easy backstitch route. Shocking isn't it? No, it really isn't.
If only we had left 10 minutes earlier. My friend Faith invited us to dinner tonight. Aaron couldn't make it because he had to work late, but I thought "What the hey. I'll go on my own, the kids can't be that bad, right?"
hahahahahahahahaha. ha.
I think for the most part they were fine. A little wired, a tad mouthy, but their cute factor outweighed their stinker factor. Maybe not by much, but by enough that the possibility of doing it again flitted through our minds. If we had left, then crisis would have been averted.
In the last 10 minutes Peanut managed to get her fingers caught in a door, screaming her little head off and Monkey managed to flush 1/3 of a roll of toilet paper in their toilet, thus flooding their bathroom. And we aren't talking your run of the mill clogged toilet here, it was a levee break. What made it worse is that he ran away and hid (who wouldn't?), then tried to blame his sister and when it was determined that he was, in fact, the perpetrator he refused to say sorry. He did say thanks for dinner, though.
So here we are, me holding Peanut who is screaming like she is going to die, Monkey running away from the scene of the crime claiming he'd been framed by his sister, and my two childless friends (who will likely remain that way after tonight) running for towels and mops grabbing everything off the floor and throwing it into the tub as quick as they can. It was a pretty picture.
To their credit they handled it quite well, but I know that I did nothing to convince them that having kids is for them. Oh well.
I did get myself one well behaved young man for the rest of the night. As soon as we got home he dictated that note of apology and we colored on it a bit. then he cheeffully declared that maybe it was bedtime (ya think?) and went and got his pjs on. He then helped me get Peanut ready for bed and then politely said "good night, I love you mom." before climbing into his own bed. Maybe he'll clean his room tomorrow...
So anyway, Faith, I am so sorry. Dinner was really yummy, though. By the way, Faith has her own blog, I Pray to Gouda and will likely have her own telling of this evening. It shouldn't be as scathing as the accounting she'll give our friends in real life since she knows I read her blog. But check it out, she's never been one to mince words ;).
Is for Layout.
Once upon a time I was a scrapbooker. All my spare crafty time was spent scr apping our family photos. The good, the bad, the ugly- it all got scrapbooked. About the time our littles were born I got out the habit of scrapbooking every photo we took and out of the habit of taking photos at all, and more in the habit of taking care of the kids. I know my family would beg to differ about the takig pics part since I am rarely without camera, but I really do take less pictures. Till I started blogging that is. 
This week the kids have been pulling out my scrapbooks and for the first time they sat down and looked through them all, pointing out family members they knew, and then in their books and the vacation pictures, themselves. Watching my little ones get excited over seeing their parents, aunts and uncles, friends in scrapbooks made me realise that this is a habit I really need to take up again. If not for me definitely for them, which is who I had been telling myself I was scrapping for in the first place.
It's funny how digital cameras which were supposed to make scrapbooking easier for some only made it harder for me. Sure I could delete the crappy pictures, but that only left me with hundreds of good pictures. Cute pictures. Sweet pictures. Of the same thing. When Monkey was a baby I took about 10 pictures of him playing in the laundry basket. One was him playing in the baslet in the living room, one of him playing the basket in his room, one of him playing with the basket with a silly face. You get the idea.
If I was shooting in film I would have taken the one picture and then told the story that he would play in the basket all the time. For some reason digital made it possible for me to take that same picture everytime my kid did it and because each picture was cuter than the last I would not know which one to get rid of and since it didn't cost anything to store I just kept them all.
And so it went for every stage of Monkey's babyhood. I have 10 pictures of everything and couldn't seem to dump any of them. "Yes, honey, we need all 50 of those pictures of Monkey sucking on his socks, it shows that he did it everyday for a month." "No, don't delete those pictures of him with both legs on one leg of his footie pajamas, we need all of them.
Thankfully I did eventually go over it and weed out the repeats, (It was easy once I found a pic of Monkey chewing socks in the laundry basket. That probably allowed me to delete at least 80 pictures) but I still haven't scrapbooked any of it. I want to now that I know how much my kids like it. I probably have more picture weeding to do though. 
Quite often I embroider while watching tv or while the kids play outside or wgile having my morning coffee. Nine times out of 10 I have my embroidery with me when going to people's houses, to lunch to a meeting. The only times I am without is when I feel my company might be insulted by my multitasking. peanut must have noticed all the embroidery because last night when I settled down to work she climed up on my lap and promptly began taking the needle up and down through the fabric for me. I would place it in the right spot, get it started and she would push or pull the needle through happily declaring "I did it Mamma!" after each turn. 
It swelled my heart, both at hearing her sweet voice say those words (her vocab has exploded lately) and at the fact that my little girl, barely even two years old, helped me make something and is clearly proud of her work. I've hoped that she would want to create with me, but never did I think the interest would be now. She climbed to my lap again this morning and this afternoon to continue her craftiness, my interest in the "help" waning long before hers. I'm trying to be extra patient and enjoy the time since I know it is probably fleeting.
The longer we do this together the more she wants to put the needle where she wants it. I'm thinking that soon there will be Peanut-led embroideries to show you all. I can only imagine how proud she will be of herself then!
You can take your pick because I have both! I am making Naughty and Nice Notebooks for Handmade Parade. All my Naughtys sold out at my last show, so I need to stock up. Guess in this case the nice ones do finish last. 
I lucked out and managed to get my hands on a Fredericks of Hollywood Catalog from 1974. I must say it was worth every penny. The illustrations are priceless, not to mention completely hilarious. The nice notebooks are from 50's and 60's pattern catalogs. They are appropriately named, I think. 
