"Nap" Time

Mom, why are you dressed like that?

"Because I'm going to the gym after I drop you off at school, Jonah."
"Oh. You look like a babysitter."
"I look like a babysitter? Why?"
"Because of your clothes. You look like a babysitter."
"Oh! That must mean you think I look YOUNG?"
"Well...ummm....sort of."

(For the record...I had on a fleece and cropped sweatpants. And I never made it to the gym...got too sidetracked at thrift stores along the way. But I did score some great deals, and I found some cool Danish sidechairs that I'm wanting. Bad.)

Apartment Therapy

Those of you who know me well, or even know me a little bit, will know that I spend quite a bit of time perusing design blogs. One of my favorites is Apartment Therapy, so imagine my gushing glee when one of the editors asked me if they could feature my kitchen bulletin board wall on their site. Of Course! Please click over and share in my 15 minutes of design blog fame.

Kitchen Tour

What began on August 11 is now pretty much done. I say "pretty much" because there are still minor details to tend to, like refinishing the floors, but MOST of the kitchen is done. Here is a little tour.These photos are "pretty much" the same, except for one little detail...can you tell what it is? The top photo has my dish towel curtains in it, and the bottom photo doesn't. I like it both ways. What do you think? Curtains or No Curtains?

The breakfast area. The french door leads to the pantry, utility room, and desk area. My next project is organizing and making the desk area functional and cute. Right now it looks like a junk drawer gone wrong.

This wall is my very handy bulletin board. I covered cork squares in fabric and hung them on the wall for a cheap and easy catch all for important school papers and projects.

So there you have it. If I had to do it over again, there are definitely things I would do differently. I love my granite countertops, but I would maybe go for a lighter color instead of the black. I would have looked into IKEA cabinets as well, just to price whether or not it would have been cheaper. I also would have looked into more of a full wall pantry type cabinet over in the breakfast area. As it stands, I got really lucky because I changed the entire design AFTER ordering the cabinets, and they just happened to all work in this scheme. Whew. Our new kitchen was completely gutted and refurbished for under 10K, which I think is pretty good considering. On to the next project...

Bangs

Per Carol's request, I am posting a picture of the last time I had bangs. All of my childhood pictures reside at my parent's house, but now with the advent of Facebook and horrifying lovely pictures from the past suddenly creeping up everywhere, this is available right here on my very own pc. Lucky me. Note from the previous post that both of my sisters have advised me to forgo the bangs. Can't imagine why?! I mean, look at those babies. My dad referred to them as the "thingy," and would ask me each day how they were doing as he pulled a piece up checking for hairspray effectiveness. And why are my friend and I (who both had extremely naturally curly hair and were known to actually iron our hair straight. With a real iron on a real ironing board.) sporting the squishy curler things? I have no explanation, other than it was 1988 and the bigger the better.

Here's one more bang for your buck. Ahem. Again, thanks Facebook. Can you spot me?

Yeah, that's me. Right in the front. I was in seventh grade, and so was the boy standing next to me. And that, my friends, is why no one has good memories of seventh grade.

Jonah-isms

Our five year old never ceases to crack us up. I have to write these down, mainly for my own brain because if I don't...well, you know what happens. Gone.

Looking at a book...
"Mom, that animal is a male."
"How do you know that Jonah?"
"Because he has horns, and male animals have horns. Wait...why doesn't Charles (our guinea pig) have horns?"
"Not all animals have horns. Jonah, what am I? Am I male or female?"
"You're female."
"Right. What are you? Male or female?"
"Female."
"No, you're male. Male means boy."
[with indignation in his voice] "What?! Then where are my horns?!?!"

To Uncle Marky at Christmas...
"My favorite 3D shape is a rectangular prism."
"Wow, Jonah. What's your favorite flat shape?"
"hmmmm."
"I think mine is diamond. I like diamonds."
"Oh, Marky...some people call those rhombuses."

Discussing Martin Luther King at dinner...
"Mom! It's so cool because Maddie Rae is the first African American in our family!"

Apparently this one has been going around at school too. His teacher asked me the other day if I knew that Jonah was telling everyone that his sister was African-American. When I try to tell him that no, she's Chinese-American, he is insistent that NO. She is also African-American. After all, she has brown skin. Alrighty then.

And one for Jack from tonight when we were watching "Swiss Family Robinson" at the scene where all the boys are swinging from vines and the mom is sitting in her Sunday best under her parasol relaxing in the sun...
"I would NOT want to be that mother."
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't want to just sit around under an umbrella. I don't like to relax."

And for any of you who know Jack, you will give a hearty Amen to that one.

Hair Issues

Kim, over at Celebrating Everyday Life, is hosting a giveaway for these adorable little hair clips. I am crossing my fingers that I can win one for Maddie Rae, but if not then I will head over to Etsy anyway and buy some because they are so darn cute! So if you have a little girl, go on over to Kim's blog and enter to win (and while you're there, check out Vivi Jo's room. It is adorable, and looks like it could be straight out of the pages of Domino...my very favorite design mag that is now sadly defunct due to the economy. Wah.)

And in other hair news, I'm considering cutting my hair something like the photo below. I haven't had bangs since the 80's, but I saw a girl the other night with a haircut like this and thought it was adorable. My sister says absolutely not. Don't do it. It will be the biggest mistake of your life. Of course, she also told me not to wallpaper my dining room and to paint it goldfinch instead. And that was a disaster. However, she may be right about the bangs...what do you think? I have until next Monday night to decide...

Hibernation

Where Have I BEEN?! I know I have been very absent from the bloggy world, but I assure you it is only because I have been very present in my own real world with ice storms, snow storms, freezing weather, 8 snow days, and a tornado drill that scared the you know what out of my 5 and 7 year olds (who were sequestered in the school for 30 minutes past dismissal in the tornado crouch on the floor. Jack was praying to God the entire time to please just make the tornado go away, and declared it was his "second scariest day of his life". Second only to nearly dying on the plane. The fact that there wasn't even a tornado warning in our county seemed to be lost on him.) If I would have actually updated my blog, you may have been more bored by reading about it than I actually was sequestered inside for days on end. However, today something happened that jolted me, quite literally, out of my blog hibernation. I spent the morning in the ER.

Really, what good is a trip to the ER if you can't blog about it, right? It all began with my Thursday excitement...Mom's Day Out! Woohoo! I headed straight to the gym after dropping off my little one and ran my 30 minutes on the treadmill. Feeling good, I decided it was time for a serious ab workout on the incline bench. You know the one...the bench that puts your feet higher than your head and allows you to be unable to stand up straight the next day because your stomach is so sore. Yeah, that's the one. Unfortunately, the bench was at the steepest incline. I knew I could have none of that, so I crouched down and pulled the pin out so that I could lower the bench. That's when the bench came CRASHING down. That shocked me, but it shocked me even more when I realized I couldn't get my hand out of the crashing bench. I was stuck. I tried to leverage the bench up with my shoulder, but it was locked in place. I couldn't get the pin out of the hole because my hand was jammed in right above the hole. I yelled to a trainer nearby and begged her to come help me. That's when I saw the blood flowing and I got a bit more urgent with the trainer yelling instructing her to come over and remove the pin. She did, and the rest is history. Another trainer drove me to the ER, and I am now the proud owner of 6 stitches in the little flap of skin between your thumb and index finger. I never really gave much thought to that little flap before, but now that mine is throbbing and mangled, I'm realizing just how much use that little guy gets. At least I got out of the ab workout, right?

Where have I BEEN?

Yes, I realize I have been a big blogger slacker over the last few weeks. Why? You might ask. Maybe it's due to the ice storm and power outages. Maybe it's due to 8 snow days and one early dismissal day. Maybe it's due to temperatures being in the negatives, and the car registering 7 when I got in to take the boys to school (when they finally had school). Maybe it's due to not having electricity on two or three different occassions over the past two weeks. Maybe it's due to our state being declared a federal disaster area. I'm blaming it on the cold and crediting hibernation for my lack of effort. But it was 64 degrees today, so you may be seeing a little more of me now...