Where I blog

Kate at Centsational Girl is having a blog linkup of "where you blog".  Centsational Girl is a fantastic decor blog with lots of DIY stuff.  If you aren't reading it, you should :-) 

I blog in one of two places, usually.  Either at my desk, which is tucked under an eave in the living room:

or on the sofa at night after the kids go to bed (me and Buzz Lightyear).

The pic of my desk above is cleaned up for the camera.  Here is what my desk looked like before I cleaned it off for the picture:

When its clean, its one of my favorite areas in the house. I love having the pictures of the kids hanging over the desk. Sadly, it frequently looks messy like that--library books, hats, half-eaten peach, only one lamp works despite having been fixed twice, the digital frame I got for Christmas I still haven't put pictures in, and of course, the 400 cords under the desk.

I have some plans to make my desk area a bit nicer.  The cords below are driving me crazy, and its now the Princess's favorite area to hide under and suck on my computer power cords, so something needs to be done about it toot sweet.  I'd really like a small cabinet with three drawers that I could cut out the back of the bottom drawer and hide all the cords in, and the upper two drawers could be used to store stuff that always ends up on top of the desk, like camera SD cards, checkbooks, etc.


I'm considering this from Ikea,

but would like something a bit cheaper (esp since I plan to hack up the back of it), and an inch shorter if possible.  But, since Princess is making the electrical outlet wires her playground, I don't have months to search for the right piece, and may just buy it this week if I can't find something cheaper. 


I'd like a new pair of chairs for my desk, because the desk is pretty long, and the kids like to sit beside me and play with their toys, or read books, etc. After my desk chair re-do debacle, now I'm using some old dining chairs that I'm not overly fond of.  I''m considering sanding them down and painting them red...but I'm really sick of painting chairs.  Or painting anything, for that matter.  And these chairs have all the square spindles on the back that would be annoying to paint.  But they are free!  And I already have red paint!  Ugh. So not in the mood.  But I'm also not in the mood to spend money on two new chairs when I have all these dumb free chairs in my attic.


I've considered these chairs from Target, because they are bright and cheerful and cheap and come as a pair.  Unfortunately, I'd like turquoise or red, and they don't come in either of those colors.

The hunt for chairs continues.

*****Update: the desk chairs I redid can be seen here, and the cords were hidden away here.

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Get down!

Princess has a new skill set: climbing.  She climbs up on anything available...stools, chairs, sofas, countertops.  This new skill set does not include getting down.  She gets up, then yells deh-duh, deh-duh!!!  (Get down, get down!) 

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Pretty new header!

Looky, looky, I got a new header!  Isn't it pretty?? Click on through and tell me what you think!  Unless you don't like it, in which case I don't want to hear what you think and you can keep that to yourself, thankyouverymuch. 


Nap Warden did it, and she was very patient with my endless demands. It looks lovely, no? 

Yay, pretty new blog!

Yes, there is a new categories navigation bar, but I have yet to put anything under them yet, I am just entranced by my beautiful header.

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Design FAIL

The beach at Santa Maria di Castellabate had its fair share of rocks.  I picked up a few small ones to bring home as reminders of where we've been.  That night I thought to myself, oooh, I'll pick up A WHOLE BUNCH and put them in one of my apothecary jars at home...every time I look at them I will think of Italy!

Here is a picture of the rocks I picked up:

The next day I ended up staying home so Princess could nap, and the Mister took the boys to the beach.  I told him my plan, and asked him to have the boys pick some pretty rocks for our collection.  I showed him the rocks I had chosen, and asked for them to similar in size. 

Here are the boulders they brought back:

Okayyyyyyyy....I will work with what I got, I suppose. We were at the beach in Long Island this weekend, so I picked up some small pretty rocks, and mixed those in with the giant boulders. 

Here are the apothecary jars that live on the shelf above the tv:

I took the orange stuff out, transferred the blue stuff in, and used the apothecary jar with the widest mouth to put in my Italian rocks.

There is a flaw in my plan, however.  The Mister is uncomfortable with so much crap living on a shelf above the preshus television.  The Mister will have a cow if I put a container of rocks up there.

Ok...apothecary jar now living on the sideboard under the tv.

Where it has already been molested by little hands. And....its sentimental, but its a wee bit boring. 

Meh.

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I feel pretty, oh so pretty!

 My hair is fixed!  Praise the baby Jesus, because my hair was a hot mess. 

I need a new beauty routine.  Here is my current one, in all its complicated glory:
I brush my teeth.  I shower on a near-daily basis.  I use Neutrogena facial moisturizer with 50 spf. 

That's it. 

I don't wear makeup. I may have mentioned before that at my fifteen year high school reunion, I thought hmm, maybe I should put on some makeup....but I couldn't find the bag of makeup.  Which tells you how often I wear it. Occasionally if we go to a fancy event, like someone's wedding, I may put on blush, and if I'm feeling crazy, eyeliner. Mascara now drives me crazy and I avoid it like the plague.  Foundation? Eh.  I know I have freckles, why bother covering them up.


I'm tempting fate here, but for the majority of my life, I have had rather nice skin.  In my early twenties I even heard comments along the lines of "you have the skin of a porcelain doll."  I get the occasional zit (omg, I am so tempting fate here---actually, what usually happens to me is that I think to myself, you know, I haven't had a zit in a while, and voila! One shows up that afternoon.) but nothing too bad.  I did have fairly sensitive and dry skin, but frequent moisturizing kept it in check.

A few years ago....I honestly can't remember how long....it was probably around the same time I gave up wearing makeup....I stopped washing my face at night.  This must have been around the time my oldest was born and I gave up all pretense at looking good.

One benefit to not washing my face?  I no longer had dry skin.

Fast forward five or six years.  I still don't wash my face.  However, now I notice that THERE IS GUNK IN MY PORES. Like, lots of gunk.  Washing my face does not get rid of the gunk.

I would like to get rid of the gunk in my pores.  Wth, is this a part of aging?  Along with that one hair that sprouts in the middle of my forehead? But I am OVERWHELMED AND ADRIFT at the massive amount of beauty products in the "get gunk out of your pores" aisle.  What do I use?????  I tried those Biore strips and they didn't work. I still have gunk. 

I am not 19 anymore, I have no need of a zit regimen, and I know that any product with salycic acid is going to irritate my skin.  I am getting wee wrinkles and oh, maybe an liver spot or fifteen (they are FRECKLES, yes, FRECKLES.) 

I am considering getting my first facial.  I've never had a facial.  Know how in those bridal magazines they tell you to get your facial at least a week before your wedding because you might get zits?  I don't want zits.  Those magazines have forever given me the fear of zit-producing facials.

A friend of mine got a facial once, and afterward, her face was all red and pinchy looking where the tech had squeezed the stuff out of her pores.  Don't they say DONT SQUEEZE your zits in all those beauty mags?? Why is it ok to pay a lady to do it, but not squeeze them yourself?

If I were to get a facial, I have a gift certificate given to me by my mother in law to a popular day spa.  I went to get a pedicure with someone at that spa, and there may or may not have been an incident in which people were yelled at, not by me although I was standing right there, and I may or may not be waiting for the popular day spa to forget what I look like, although they may have flagged our names in the event that we ever return.  So if I were to get a facial there they could totally screw up my face on purpose, although I would not know that they did until a few hours later. 

Help me. I need recommendations on de-gunking your pores.  And perhaps a skin regimen for an old lady. Am I right to be afeared of the facial?  Should I just go get a facial?

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a little piece of heaven

Alone at a bookstore, a stack of magazines, a tasty treat. 

*********************

In case anyone is wondering how the potty-training is going, Peter peed on my foot.  On purpose. 

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Sans pants brigade

I had high hopes of sending Peter to preschool in September.  The school where Greg went last year is fantastic, and I think that Peter could really benefit from having his horizons broadened a bit. (I was going to start with two mornings a week.)

Sadly, the school has a strict "must be potty-trained" rule.  Not a "its ok if he's in pull-ups" rule, or even a "we just won't change him for the hour and forty-five minutes he's here" rule.

Of course....this kid has ZERO interest in being potty-trained.  In fact, one might say he has gone solidly in the other direction of "I'm never giving up my diaper."   Or as he says with much hand-flapping, "No thanks! No thanks! I too big for potty!  Potty not my favorite!"

I have been playing up the potty for months now, how totally awesome it is, we read hundreds of potty books.  All very low key, of course.  Every time I change his diaper we run to the potty, sit on it for 2 seconds, ok all done! Lets go put our diaper back on!

My oldest took to the potty fairly easily....it took about 3 days, and he got the concept.  I had to let him run around naked from the waist down for over a year before he was totally on board with it, but as long as he was naked he never had an accident. (He wore leg warmers in the winter.  I wish I had taken pictures of that.)  Its not a great method if you insist on taking your child out in public, but it worked for us.

I have recently instituted the sans pants method with Peter.  Here's how its going:

Peter: 1, Mommy: 0. 

I can't find the Febreeze.  The pee is on the Mister's side of the bed, do I have to wash it?

*********Update:  He peed in the potty!!!!!! Yay!!!

Unfortunately, 20 minutes later he pooped on a Thomas the Train smelting shed. 

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camp pics of cousin Denise

I gave Denise a separate post, because she is sooooo adorable. 

The default facial expression when being held by persons not her parents:

With her mama:

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C.A.M.P.

And now, the long-awaited post about camp.  

Every year my family has a family reunion between the East Coast branch and the Midwest branch.  We meet in the middle, at a YMCA camp in outside of Somerset, Pennsylvania.  Its a LONG drive from NYC, peeps.  Like 8 hours.  And three hours of that on Route 78 does not have any rest stops, so you have to get off the highway and frantically search for a Wendy's that will let your jiggling five year old pee before making you buy something.  Or you could just let him pee in the parking lot. I won't tell.

 My grandmother had 11 kids.  My great-aunt had 8.  My great-uncle only had two.   Thus, having a family reunion at camp became C.A.M.P.....the Cousins Aquaintance Maintenance Program, where both sides could meet and mingle and renew their friendship on a yearly basis.

Sadly, I am not much of a camper.  I like to be within 10 feet of concrete at all times.  I can't live without my industrial strength hair dryer. And I could do without the Pigpen-like cloud of gnats that was my constant companion whenever I set foot outside.  But! I like my family so we go.  And the kids have a blast.

The cabins have bunk beds:

Or, if you are a hardcore camper like my sister, you sleep in a tent.  With a newborn!

There are tons of activities; rock-wall climbing, rope courses, softball games, treasure hunts, campfires, swimming, walking up and down that hill a gazillion times because your kids think its fun.

Here's the four year old climbing up the rock wall.  He got pretty far up!  I was beside and told him I was so proud of him, he was doing great, reach up and grab the next one....and he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and said "You know, THIS IS NOT THAT EASY FOR ME."  Um, ok, sorry, still proud of you, yay! 

 Proud of himself!

A race between Uncle Mark and Uncle JP.  Some smack was talked.  The smackee handed the smack back to the smack-talker.  OH MAN. 

Walking to the mess hall:

The Jedi Master club practice session:

 At the lake:

In 1980(ish), 10 years before the family reunions at camp started, we had a family reunion in New Jersey, and my dad drove us all from Illinois to the Jersey shore.  I'm actually close in age to my younger aunts and uncles (remember, there are 11 of them and my dad is the oldest!), and now our kids are not that far apart either.   I remember at that reunion, my one uncle was probably about 14 or 15, and he kept throwing me into the waves, much to my six-year old delight.

And now, 30 years later, here at camp, he's throwing my (and his and everyone else's) kids in the water, and they are loving it.  In this picture he's yelling "don't wake the sleeping ogre!"  while the kids all jump on him and he then becomes a giant ogre and throws them in the water.

There may have been an archery related accident in which the Mister suffered a gash to the forehead. 

Trying to get nice pictures of me with my kids is an exercise in futility.

Note the clenched fist in the 4 yr old's shirt to keep him from running away.

And there you have it.  I don't have pictures of the little guy doing the zip line, so if anyone else does, please send them to me? Thanks.  Oh, and I'll take the lyrics to Do Your Thang, if anyone has those....because MY BACK ACHES, MY BOOTY SHAKES, FROM THE LEFT, TO THE RIGHT, TO THE LEFT....my kids have been singing this song for the last week.  Unfortunately that's the only line we remember. 

I have some pics of cousin Denise at camp, which I will be posting a separate post, because she is just so darn cute. 

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mismatched tables and chairs linky

If you're interested in looking at other people's dining room sets with mismatched tables and chairs, all of which are pretty cool (including mine!), head on over to the link-up at Nesting Place.  Check out her living room, while you're at it.  I think its beautiful. If only I could rock the white slipcover. 

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These chairs are going out to the curb.

I am an idiot.

Case in point:

I've had these chairs for years now; they belonged to our old dining set. I've painted the rest and they live in various places around the house, like our foyer. 

Previously, these chairs looked like this:

then they were pale blue with a greek key fabric, but apparently I didn't take a picture of them.

then I changed the seat cushion to the Robert Allan Kiki Pinata fabric I used in the bookshelves on the other side of the room. 

Unfortunately, the blue wasn't quite the color I wanted.  I really wanted red, but someone was tired of painting, wanted to return the paint sprayer to the store, and sweet-talked me into leaving them the blue color because they looked so lovely.  I grumpily acquiesced. 

They did look lovely.  Just not the lovely that I wanted.

So a few weeks later I grabbed some Killz primer, spraypainted it on, and then started painting them red.  The primer bubbled and was very rough, and even though I sanded it down it could still be seen through the red. 

I came up with the bright idea of stripping all eleventy-billion layers of paint off the chairs.

I will pause, while you all laugh at me. 

I didn't want to use harsh caustic chemicals, so I did some research on the interwebs and found Citrustrip, which is a goopy neon orange paint stripper that doesn't smell.  I will admit that it goes on nice and thick, not runny, and there is very little harsh chemical fumes.  I put some on the chairs and then left it to do its magic.  After about an hour, I came back out and started stripping.

Eh.  It was coming off, but kind of slowly.  I added another layer of Citrustrip, and left it out for a few hours. 

Btw, I did this out on our back patio, which is a fenced in area on top of the garage, which get blazing hot sunlight all day long, with no shade.

That's right, I baked the Citrustrip right onto my chairs.  Completely dried, clumpy, dusty layer of chemical peeler, completely adhered to my chairs. 

See all that orangy crap? That's the dried out citrustrip.

I put them in the garage for a while.  I was sick of working on them. 

I decided last week that since I wasn't going to get my eleventy-billion things on my list done before the babysitter goes back to school, I would make the chairs my one project to complete.  How to fix these things?  I have zero desire to try and strip them again.  I'll try sanding them.

I start sanding the chair.  The baked on Citrustrip sands off into a dusty, flaky chemical mess.  I'm sure this is great for my lungs.  Worse, however, I realize, is that the little tiny edge detailing and the curviness of the chair means that the hand sander is way too large for the job.  I can buy a dremel or a pointy sander or do it by hand.

And so, I am giving up on these chairs. They are going out to the curb. I is done.  I am beyond sick of painting these chairs, since they take for-EVAH to do the shield.  Done! Begone! Out damned spot!

Let the fun shopping of new chairs begin!

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lists, because I'm lazy

1.) I'm working on a post about camp....I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath for that one. Actually, since 99% of my readers are related to me, you probably are all waiting with bated breath.  Breathe, people, it may take me a few days since I took 932 pictures. 

2) My hair looks terrible.

3) No, really, it looks terrible.  And now I am rescheduling this weekend's planned cut and color (for the FOURTH TIME) because someone sprung a work event on me.  Had I known that I would be spending an entire day with fancy New York people who wear nice shoes and have nice hair, I might have tried a little harder to get my hair done BEFORE this event.  Sigh. 

4) I'm starting to look like this:

5) Like my deodorant, whenever I find a hairdresser I like, they somehow become unavailable.  Either we move far away, they go on a year long maternity leave, or they just stop cutting hair.  Since moving up here I had gotten a recommendation for a great hairdresser, Abby.  I really like Abby---she understood what I wanted with my hair and she did the best color I have ever gotten.  A beautiful, warm, rich golden brown with blonde highlights that looked very natural, and when it grew out, it only looked like the grey around my face was growing out----I never had that all-over roots look. 

Of course, as these things are wont (destined?) to do, she got a new job.  That's fine, I wasn't overly fond of the salon she worked at.  Except....she got a new job at a very upscale, VERY EXPENSIVE new salon. And she stopped cutting hair and only does color now. 

I called to schedule a partial highlight with her at the new place....and it turns out that a basic partial highlight, no glaze....starts at $175.

Um.....

I said to the Mister....um, so, the new place is maybe a wee bit more than $175 plus a glaze plus tip and um.....and he said "HELL NO."  (See how oppressed I am?)

Sigh. 

6) I spent a good portion of yesterday looking through haircut magazines and couldn't find a short haircut that I wanted.

7) I need to bake a birthday cake.  And wrap some birthday presents.  And take the boys into the city to have a birthday lunch with the Mister.  Who turns 36 today.  Closer to fifty than you are to twenty! Woohoo!

8) The incoming college freshman class of 2014 starts today. WTF, universe??? WHEN DID I GET THIS OLD???

9) My baby starts kindergarten in two weeks.  While on one hand, the school year cannot start soon enough, on the other hand, waaaaaah, my BABY is starting KINDERGARTEN.  Insert cliched "just yesterday we brought him home from the hospital" here.

WAAAAH. 

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