spaghetti dinner, year 14

This weekend was the Fourteenth Annual (My Maiden Name Here) Spaghetti Dinner.  For fourteen years now, all of the women in my family get together and have my Aunt P's spaghetti sauce, which is delicious.

Its a lovely time to stuff ourselves and sit around and chat with family.

Its also a fun time to do jumping jacks with Aunt P!

Or you could play with Denise.

These two crack me up.

Can't wait till next year!

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This round goes to the Princess

Princess lately has been saying "hell no, we won't go" when its bedtime.  Naptime, bedtime, whathaveyou, she wants no part of it.  She stays up till she passes out, basically.

One of the many drawbacks of having three kids in one bedroom is the difficulty of sleep training.  

I have been telling myself that both Greg and Peter started sleeping through the night by 2 years old--Greg at 23 months and Peter at 20 months.  Just keep trucking and she'll start sleeping eventually.  Princess is 22 months and there is no end in sight.

Blarg.
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Princess takes pushing Minnie around in her stroller very seriously.

Peter is taking pictures with his Buzz Lightyear cell phone.

Princess makes this face every time Peter tries to take her picture.

My little stinker preshus.

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sconces around mirror

I've been contemplating putting sconces on either side of my dining room mirror.

I'm not really a fan of plug-in sconces, with the wires hanging down, so that sort of limits things.  We're also in a rental, so I'm not really wanting to hardwire sconces in.  I'm not even wedded to the idea that sconces would have to be lighting--they could be purely decorative, or candle sconces.  I'd also like something....interesting.

This would qualify as interesting.

I love these wheat sconces in Candace Bushnell's house:

image via Dear Designer

A pineapple sconce would be cool:

This bubble crystal sconce is gorgeous, but a bit out of my price range:

This gorgeous Ravenna sconce from Ballard:

Vintage tole flowers:

Palm fronds:

This brass duck head is my favorite.  If there were two, I would get them. But there's only one.

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picture ledges in dining room

Remember my post about how I loved the picture ledges in India Hicks's dining room?

The day before I posted that, my grandmother put up picture ledges in her dining room. Great minds think alike! I saw it for the first time on Easter--doesn't it look fantastic? Its mostly pictures of all the grandkids (and great-grandkids---see some familiar faces in the top left corner?).

I can't wait to do this.  I must get a new house immediately.

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Easter at Grandma's

last round of Easter themed pics, I swear.

My girl does not like to wear dresses.  Ever.  There were protracted negotiations to get her into her Easter dress.  She was so angry she started chewing on the dress.  OFF!! OFF!! NO THIS ONE!!

She looked pretty cute, once we agreed to buy her a pony in exchange for wearing the dress.

Somehow we did not manage to take a picture of the five of us together in our Easter finery.

She decided she had had enough of that dumb dress and led us a merry chase:

Denise looked pretty cute in her Easter dress.

But eventually she decided to join Princess in the Easter dress rebellion.

There was an Easter egg hunt, and an egg toss.

Bunny ears were the fashion of the day.

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the egg toss

My family is full of engineers.  Engineers think building stuff is fun. Its not a holiday unless there's a physics lesson!  At our Easter celebration, we have an egg toss.

Using the materials provided by the management, all are welcome to construct a contraption that will allow an egg to survive a fall from a second story window.  The materials provided this year included foam, bubble wrap, pipe cleaners, paper towels, bath loofahs, fake grass, socks, gloves, tape, ziplock baggies, paper cups, and ribbon.  You are welcome to draw blueprints in advance. 

Peter and I constructing a contraption:

Our contraption:

Parachutes were a big trend this year:

Once everyone has constructed their contraption, all the contraptions are taken to the second floor, everyone gathers round, and the eggs are thrown one by one out the window.  

There is thrill of victory if your egg has survived unscathed!

Or the agony of defeat if your egg is cracked.  

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dyeing Easter eggs

We dyed our eggs on Friday:

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upholstered bed

If you read Little Green Notebook today, then you saw this featured DIY upholstered bed from Jen at Organized Design.

image via Little Green Notebook

I have been stalking craigslist for a pair of matching twin headboards  for the boys for months, figuring I would paint them, but I haven't seen any that I've liked.  This, however, seems pretty cool. I already have one Ikea bed and I think I could adapt this design.

The bedroom looks like this, and the bedding is a turquoise/navy/green/orange mix:

I'm thinking that a navy blue and white simple graphic would be nice for the boys' beds.  Ideally I'd like a white background with a navy pattern, but I haven't found much like that.  I'm considering these fabrics:

Vertical Stripe White/Navy

P. Kaufman Slick Navy

Mill Creek Oskar Sea

Dwell Studio Bella Porte Twilight

With the exception of the plain stripe, all of the patterns seem kind of busy paired with the bedding.

I love this one (I have a lampshade in a yellow/white colorway), but I wish it were reversed, so that the background was white and the trellis was blue:

Cadence Deep Blue

Or I could do a slightly larger scale chevron, but in turquoise:

Zippy True Turquoise

If anyone has run across a navy chevron, let me know, please.

And then the outlier:

Chipper Chartreuse

I love the Chipper pattern, but it doesn't come in navy, and there's already so much green in the room.

And, if I wanted to get REALLY CRAZY, because you know, I haven't learned my lesson that crafty stuff rarely works out in my favor, I could simply upholster the headboard in a plain dropcloth and paint the pattern on in navy, like this.

We all know how successful my painted shower curtains were.  Decisions, decisions.

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