Whiny Baby

This is a before shot of half of the kitchen. Looking through the before pictures gives me some needed perspective tonight. We have come a long way. We are so close. And I am a whiny baby. I so wanted to bake cookies tonight. I wanted to see if the gas oven (we switched from electric) was going to bake up my famous chocolate chip cookies as well as the old oven. Thankfully it did. I have a reputation to protect. I will say though that having to work in a half finished kitchen is starting to grate on my nerves. We have plywood counters, a huge deep old utility sink while we wait for the real one. It is so deep you practically have to climb inside to wash the dishes. In the midst of all of my internal griping tonight, I realized what a whiny baby I am. First I thought about the Little House on the Prarie books. How Ma had to make do with nothing and how the easiest thing today would have taken a whole day to do back then. Need clean underwear? No problem, throw a load in. Not Ma, she would have had to first sew the underwear, go down, get water, bring out the washing board, wash all the clothes by hand and hang them to dry. Then my son and I read a fantastic article about this lovely local couple who, once a month every month, go down to a local park and make hot food for the hungry people there. Homeless folks and folks who just need something to eat. They told of one man who has a job but just can't stretch those ends to meet. They always head to the park at the end of the month when foodstamps have run out. It was a great article and a nice reminder of ways we can help. I also needed a reminder to be thankful. So thankful. The couple also mentioned how the started out their food sharing by going to local parks with food boxes. Who says we can't take this new kitchen and make a whole ton of sandwichs (and famous chocolate chip cookies!) and take them to a park to share.

New friends!

The kids have been wanting more pets. We have our dog and he is the best but you know how kids are. My husband was steering them towards fish and we went to look at fish one day and they saw the mice and it was love at first sight.

Here they are playing in the (pink!) bathtub while there cage gets cleaned. We have a glass aquarium which provides a good view on their goings on. They are not strictly nocturnal as they have several active periods through the day which are really fun to watch. The brown one is my diaghters and she named him Maple.

This little white one is my son's and he named her nibbles. Thankfully she doesn't nibble on us. They are surprisingly tame and holdable given their place on the food chain- you would think they would be more cautious!

They are very very active though- tough to get a good picture of! Look at those tiny feet. I have to say I am also really enjoying the new pets.

I can't believe spring break is over today. Off to school and work tomorrow. Ack! I am excited though because the countertops for the kitchen come thursday. With any luck the backsplash will get tiled soon and then we will finally have a kitchen put back together and usable! And pretty! I can't wait to show you pictures! Have a happy week!

What do you think?

We came home from dinner on friday night and it was pouring. Big fat raindrops. We ran inside and evidently we were not the only ones who hurried in doors. This chubby fella was just sitting in the entry way. He must have hopped in after me. I am so glad none of us stepped on him. We are a very froggy neighborhood and once spring hits we will see frogs every single day. The kid played with him for awhile and he hopped all around and they, of course, loved it. My husband and kids wanted to keep him so they put him in a deep glass jar. Here is my question: Do you think we should keep critters like that? I have no problem with the kids enjoying them outside and, like I said, we will have plenty to play with outside in a month's time, but this guys got all sorts of hair and fluff stuck to him and I just really feel like if I were a frog, I would so much more want to be outside than in a jar for some kids to occasionally play with. I was out voted so he stayed. Until he outsmarted the rest of my family and started making such a racket chirping in his vase that he was set free. Am I being silly? It's spring- don't you think he has a lady friend to find? How do you handle these types of things? I was further reinforced in my thinking when my daughter exclaimed yesterday, while looking at the slugs she had been keeping in a jar, "Mom! They shrunk!". No honey, they dried out and died. That would make me sad if that happened to that frog.
On another note, we had an all school fundraiser at the roller rink the other night. ROLLER SKATING IS AWESOME! I had completely forgotten. I could go again tonight. Though I do hurt where I fell but I had friends there to pick me up off the floor. And it really was so much fun. I used to spend hours in my garage skating in cirlces with Grease on my light blue record player. And Xanadu. Good times. May be time to really ressurect that past time!
On one more note, how good is the Liberty stuff at Target?! My daughter is going to be looking good because those dresses are so cute I could hardly stand it. She got lots of Liberty and is now a convert. I loved it all and bought too much. I did not get the bike though.

THREE MORE DAYS!!

Just a few more days until Liberty hits Target! I am so jonesing that Beach Crusier in this print. Should I ? Shouldn't I? I just can't decide. Wouldn't it be so fun to ride around town on your own Liberty of London beach crusier? With a big wicker basket on the front of it? I am hoping they have table linens. That would be the best. Because even though it is cold and pouring today the sun will come out soon and I will want to eat outside as much as possible. And eating outside on Liberty linens would make it even that much better.

Measure twice order once

I looooove this fireplace. It is covered in beautiful hakatai ashland e recycled glass tile. (find it here: http://www.hakatai.com/) and pretty soon our backsplash in the kitchen will be covered in it too. Only a green version. Palmetto Green which is a beautiful springy translucent green. It was up to me to measure the space we needed to cover. It shouldn't have been difficult but somehow I ordered twice the tile I need. That was a costly mistake. I felt better though when my husband came home from the tile floor with about 100 extra square feet of bathroom floor tile. So what we learned was we should measure twice (or three times...) and then order. Did I mention that my son is in the special math class at school? He is wicked smart- a mathlete. Not sure where that came from. Next time I will make him measure for the tile. Thankfully the floor tile can go back and we will probably be able to use the excess glass tile in the laundry room. That is going to be a nice fancy laundry room. Here are some other things I have learned during this remodel.
1. It really does cost more than you think it will. We got an asbestos surprise, had to replace cabinets we hadn't counted on, and the "scope creep" is dangerous. Well if we are going to change that door, we might as well do them all... That type of crap.
2. It is hard to have someone in your house every day. Even if the are the nicest people (which they really are) it still cramps my style when I can't ,say, sing out loud (and I mean loud) to the dog whenever I feel like it. Though you would think I would have stopped that after the day I was screaming, I mean singing "Born Free" (which I do not know the words too) to the dog and walked by the front door where two Jehova's witnesses were peering in to see what that horrible noise was. Nope. Still like to sing loud. Plus they have been working on the bathroom under our bathroom upstairs and I feel like they can hear every single thing that goes on above their heads. If you *ahem* know what I mean. Akward!
3.You can do fine with a microwave and toaster oven but if you don't have a sink, you are screwed. Those first couple of weeks I put the random dishes we needed to use in the bathtub to await the day we would have a place to wash them. It looks horrible and makes me a little nervous that if child protective services dropped by they might decide this is not a house fit for kids. The mess is crazy!
4. I have really nice friends. Really nice friends who are really good cooks. We have had several nice nights out at friend's homes and one friend showed up at Dodgeball with a bag full of burrito fixins. My friends are the best!
5.When you remodel, odds are good that you will get some of the most awesome cardboard boxes. We got a particularly large one and my daughter and her friend were gussie-ing it up and playing inside. I commented what a great fort they were making and was corrected and told it was not a fort but a British Tea House. Awesome.
6. Dry rot spreads a lot slower than you might think.
7.It really is worth it when it is all done. We had the ickiest bath/laundryroom downstairs that had fallen prey to a leaking shower (that leaked for some time into the wall without being detected) and the dry rot and accompanying musty smell were icky. Plus nothing had been done since 1962. It looks and smells worlds better now and the nightmares where the house implodes from the rot have all but gone away. I can hardly wait to have the kitchen finished (though we are a few weeks off yet). I am excited to bake again!

So before you know it I am going to be posting before and after photos. Can't wait!!
Edit: to clarify, the gorgeous fireplace does not live in my house though I would love it if it did! It is a photo from Hakatai of the tile we are going to use in our kitchen.

I could get used to this

Here is a picture of our summer hidey hole in the bamboo (complete with the newly added hole trap to catch who knows what). We put art supplies in there and it is a marvelous place to while the day away. Well our hidey hole is getting some early season use because the early spring we are having is amazing! It is March 4th and I am out in a short sleeved shirt pulling weeds. The trees are in bloom- the garage is covered in evergreen clematis and it smells amazing. I could get used to this. Typically February is my least favorite month but not this year.
I also wanted to share that I have just finished my second fabric collection and it looks like it is a go! I am very excited. The first one was so exciting to me but something about having the second one in the works just feels really nice. I should have my Party Dress yardage sometime next month and I have ants in my pants because I just want to see it so badly! I have some fun projects planned and I think sewing with it is going to be great. Mostly though, I can't wait to see what other people make with it. I will keep you posted and try to share something as soon as I can.
I hope everyone is having a peaceful start to March.