the childcare saga continues

After discovering at 6 pm last night that our sitter had quit, I started calling the other candidates we had interviewed a few weeks ago.  I didn't have high hopes, but I figured I'd start there--to post another ad and interview people is going to take at least a week.  So, luckily, one of the women that I had liked was still available.

Here is where alarm bells should be going off.

We discuss the job again, how many kids and the rate and I would pay at the end of the week and what I expect (I am pretty firm on this this time around. Its not "babysitting", whatever THAT means.)

She came this afternoon at 12.  She got along well with the kids, I liked the way she interacted with them, she seemed pretty active and engaged. A few things happened that in retrospect were red flags, but otherwise, until 5 pm, I was thinking that although she wasn't the most awesome candidate in the world, this might work.

At 5 pm, I told her I would pay her tomorrow as we discussed (end of the week, she's not coming on Friday), and she says "No, I really need to be paid today. I'm broke."

Uh....luckily I have the appropriate amount in my purse, all the while she's chattering about how she's sure that I need cash at this time and she's sorry but she has things to do and she really needs to be paid. So I paid her.

"And tolls and gas?"

Pardon me?

"You're going to pay my tolls and gas. Its expensive to get here."

We didn't agree on that when we discussed the job. That was not even brought up.

"Well, its expensive to get here."

So your teaching job during the year pays you to drive to work?

"Ok, fine, just tolls. I'll do you a favor and not charge you gas."

"You'll do me a favor???"

"Yes, I won't charge you gas."

You might be missing the point that I am not going to pay you for gas mileage.

And.....9:40 pm....I get an email from her stating that she is leaving for Atlantic City for the weekend earlier than she had thought, and thus cannot come tomorrow (the reason behind "you must pay me today" suddenly becomes clear), but she'll see me on Tuesday.

Oh no she won't.

I am having serious doubts about my interviewing abilities these days.

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next, a plague of locusts.

SO.

As if this week did not have enough excitement, my summer nanny quit after two days on the job.  Over email.  She said "see you tomorrow!", went home, and broke up with me over email. "This job is more of a nanny position, and I thought it would be more babysitting, so I'm not coming back. Sorry for the inconvenience."

The job I posted on sittercity was titled "summer nanny."  She came to my house for an interview a few weeks ago, met all three of my children, who are 5, 3 and 2, and played with them for forty minutes.  I stressed the active nature of the job.  I specifically inquired as to how she felt about playing with multiple children who like long hours out doors.  My five year was a bit of a sassy-pants at the interview, as he always is, so that aspect of the job was not a surprise.  In fact, I don't particularly understand how ANY part of the job was not as described in the job position.

I want to write a raging, flaming email ("well, yes actually, you quitting without notice is RATHER INCONVENIENT"), but that would serve no purpose.  Instead I sincerely hope that one day she has kids, and has a childcare provider quit without notice.  Also, may her as-yet-unconceived children's socks ALWAYS FALL DOWN.

GAH.  

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we will never be finished packing

We have hit the "oh my heavens this WILL NEVER BE ALL PACKED" stage of packing.  As in, I've been packing for weeks and yet there is STILL SO MUCH CRAP left to be packed. Gone are the days when I everything was packed in shoe boxes and crammed into the back of my Dodge Neon.

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We have a general contractor, a plumber and a cabinet maker doing work in the kitchen, and the general contractor and the cabinet maker are like an old, crotchety married couple.  They bicker all day long.
"Why are you doing it that way? That looks terrible!"
 "You don't tell me what to do, I been doin' this for forty years, this is the right way, you shut your mouth."
"You don't know what you  are talking about, this is all wrong, why didn't you put it over there?"
"Only my wife gets to talk to me like that."

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Conversations you don't want to overhear when your kitchen is ripped apart:
"What the hell is this?  You built it an inch too small, you moron."

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While packing, I came across this gem, given to me by my mother in law nearly a year ago (possibly TWO years ago) for my birthday or mother's day or I don't remember when, but BWAHAHAHAH I certainly intend to cash that puppy in, preferably THIS VERY WEEKEND.

BWAHAHAHAHA.....

sorry, its the packing, it has finally sent me over the edge.

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Sarah's dining room moodboard

I've drawn up a moodboard for Sarah's dining room.  She has a dark stained table and chairs....and that's about it.  I don't have a place for my large Marimekko kaiku birch print in the next house, so I'm giving it to her for the moment, and that is the inspiration for this room.

Her dining set has dark chairs that match the table.  For some contrast we'll paint the chairs.  I'd like to paint them citron, Sarah prefers turquoise.  

Breezy white curtains will go on either side of sliding doors leading to the backyard. 

The unfinished wood of the Ikea sideboard is a nice complement to the cool aqua walls.  Under the sideboard these two ikat baskets can hold table linens and other supplies.  Over the sideboard will be a round white mirror.  The one in the board is a discontinued one from Ballard, but I'm hopeful that we can thrift one inexpensively.

On top of the sideboard I put this wire mouse from CB2, because its whimsical, and Sarah has forbidden me to put birds in her house.  So, 2 foot high rats instead!

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Greg's last day of kindergarten

Today is Greg's last day of school.  Remember the first day?

Dammit, woman, I said I'm not going! 

Woman, FOR THE LOVE, stop taking my picture or I'm never coming out of these bushes!

He has grown so much this year.  And he's not hiding in the bushes.

Sniffle, sob.
 

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Sarah's bedroom moodboard

I made up a moodboard for Sarah's bedroom. We started with the bedding she already owns, which is the Paint Box quilt from Crate and Barrel about five years ago. Its got a ton of great colors in it; lots of blues and reds and yellows.

(Looking a wee bit wrinkled from a four year visit to my attic.)

The walls will be a slate blue color.   The Ikea Henny curtains are white with blue crosshatch circle-ish shapes and will really pop against the wall color.

Sarah will be getting white Malm dressers from Ikea, and possibly the night tables as well, although we hope to thrift a second hand pair instead .  I also hope to thrift some lamps as well, since pretty lamps are expensive.  Homegoods is a good source for lamps so we'll look there too.

She has the white overlapping square headboard from West Elm.  Above the bed will be a blown-up photo on canvas of one of Sarah's vacations--the frontrunner is the beach near my inlaws' home in Costa Rica.  At the foot of the bed will be a rattan blanket trunk for storing linens.

This mirror from Ballard is out of our price range, but I think we can DIY something similar with paint sticks and a mirror.  We are going to give it a try, anyways.

The yellow trellis rug is a warm and happy complement to the cooler blue on the walls, and the bedding ties both the blue and the yellow together.

To be honest, I really pushed Sarah to try this kilim rug instead of the yellow trellis, but she put her foot down.

I've also tried to get her to paint her bathroom pink, but she said no, just like the Mister.  No one will let me paint a bathroom pink. Grr.

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my sister Sarah's living room

My sister Sarah will be moving into an apartment this fall.  She has a little bit of furniture in storage, but for the most part, needs to furnish almost an entire apartment from scratch.  She asked me to pull together some moodboards for her.  Of course I jumped at the chance!

She has a preference for modern furniture, but since we are furnishing an entire apartment all at once, she is also very fond of "free", even if its not modern in style.  For her living room, she owns a red sofa, and the walls are already painted a dark beige, so that was our starting point.

Here is the layout for the room:

If you're standing in the middle of the living room and looking towards the far wall with the tv:

(Pretend the sofa is facing the tv.)

The red, purple and green floral curtains will go on the front window. The Expedit units will go along the wall under the staircase, and will house books and items Sarah has collected on her travels.

Along the far wall will be the tv, on top of a midcentury credenza that we hope to find on craigslist.  Around the tv will be a gallery wall, using Ikea Ribba frames.  Instead of pictures, there will be quotes from song lyrics (inspired by this picture I saw on Pinterest). Maybe the entire wall will be the lyrics of Baby Got Back?  (Oh. My. God. Becky. Will you look at her....)  If Sarah can't come up with 10+ lyrics she likes, I will turn the wall into a shrine to her nieces and nephews, because we have plenty of pictures of them.

She is looking for a steamer trunk on craigslist to use as a coffee table.

I have a rug similar to this one that I am donating to this living room.

She bought the aqua chair on craigslist for $5.  We will attempt to recover or slipcover it. Eventually.

The back view of the room, towards the front door:

When you walk in the front door, this Ikea console will be along the side wall, with the Kandinsky print above it.  The console will be a nice place to put keys and purse, etc when entering the house, and there will probably be two storage ottomans or baskets beneath it for shoes and dog leashes.  The Kandinsky print was previously mine, and since it goes well with her sofa, I'm donating it to the cause.

She already owns a red sofa, and the pillows are from here, here and here.  Since its not a huge room, this table that tucks over the sofa will provide a place to put drinks but won't take up lots of additional floor space.

UPDATE: Feel free to leave your favorite song lyric in the comments.  Mine: "you ain't a beauty, but hey, you're alright" (Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road.)

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the musical fruit: our meals before moving

A few months ago those crazy kids over at Young House Love did a post on what they ate before they moved when selling their house.  They frugally ate down everything in their cupboard, including creative meals like Laughing Cow cheese on wasa crackers.  (What is a wasa cracker?)

In that vein, we will apparently be eating be beans for every meal from now till moving day.  And beyond.

I have a feeling the beans will be moving with us, and the pizza guy will be sorry to see us leave.

Anyone want to guess on how old the oldest expired item of food in our cabinets was? Anyone?

If you guessed FOUR YEARS ago, you'd be right.  You know this means that TWO years ago when we moved in here, we moved in with food that had already expired nearly two years prior.  (I had 3 kids under 4 the last time we moved, one of whom was 3 weeks old....purging before packing wasn't high on my list for that move.)

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Friday night entertainment: painting furniture!

Years ago, when I was young and pretty and employed, on Friday nights the Mister and I would go out to dinner.  We would sometimes meet friends for dinner on these social Friday nights, and wine was frequently imbibed.

Flash forward ten years, and the last five Friday nights have involved me and a gallon of paint and an unsuspecting piece of furniture.  Sadly, there isn't any wine involved.

I repainted my dressers.  For the 400th time.  The high gloss black was too shiny, and the black made the dressers look too heavy.  I painted the dressers Benjamin Moore Camouflage, which despite these pictures, is actually a soft, neutral greenish beige-ish sort of color.  The pictures make it look sorta washed out white, especially against the warm beige walls, but the next house will have white walls and you will all love it then.  It looks very klassy.

I also painted two lamps and my jewelry box navy blue, and the mirror orange. (You can see how everything used to look here. And yes, I know, the bedroom looked much more put together in that post, but bear with me, I'm moving in two weeks, and I haven't gotten everything together for this design yet.)

This mirror will be going in Princess's room, and I wanted the mirror to have a pinkish orange hue.  I attempted that with thin layers of spray paint, but the Mister gave it the thumbs down (see the upper quadrant in the picture below).  I also tried some Krylon Celery spray paint, but it looked terrible. (See the whitish patch on the upper right?) So I painted it orange.

This Friday night I'll be packing!  Next Friday night I'll be moving! Who says I don't know how to have a good time?

I really hope the lighting is better in the next house.  That or I finally figure out how to adjust the aperture.

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feature, Denise's 1st birthday

Saved By Suzy featured my ombre dresser on Friday!  Suzy takes vintage furniture and gives it a makeover--you should check out her blog, she has a ton of great projects, like this desk and this buffet. Thanks Suzy!

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Yesterday was Denise's 1st birthday party.  The boys had their end of baseball season celebration, so the Princess and I drove down to Delaware for the party.  It was a great time and the food was delicious.  All of my sister's friends have had babies in the last year or two, so it was great to see how much all the kids have grown.  

My sister made a little rainbow cake for Denise.    

Princess thought the flagstones in the backyard were a hopscotch:

She sang songs for an adoring audience of aunties and great-grandma:

Rare pics of me and the Princess--I always seem to be behind the camera instead of in front of it:

Three generations:

Mah sisters:

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pics of the kids

Nonno has bought himself a scooter so he can go scootering with the kids.  

It was not the easiest picture to take.  Children kept riding out of the picture.

It only took two years, but Princess will now (occasionally, begrudgingly) let me put a bow in her hair.  (And with this sort of placement, you can see why its begrudgingly.)

This one is a bit better, but she was running away from having her picture taken. 

Stop taking my picture!!!

Peter has shot up a foot in the last week, I swear. 

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bedroom progress, of a sort

My bedroom is going in a very direction from the original moodboard.

I'm not the only this happens to, right?  You all make up 9 moodboards (ahem) for your bedroom and then go with the one you couldn't figure out curtains for, right?

No, no, me neither! (coughcough)

Ok, so maybe I did.  If anyone has seen the most awesome coral fabric in the world that happens to be under $10 that would make great curtains to go with the chiang mai pattern, feel free to send them along.  

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Blue and orange rooms

I've been working on a moodboard for my sister's bedroom.  She's thinking of adding some orange to her blue and brown bedroom.  I've pulled some orange and blue rooms for inspiration:

Source: houzz.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: housebeautiful.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: farm6.static.flickr.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: brightboldbeautiful.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: russetstreetreno.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: homeinteriorszone.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Source: theletteredcottage.net via Lisa on Pinterest

I absolutely love the simplicity of the last picture--it looks like a fun summer cottage, doesn't it?

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Epic fail on so many fronts: new bed, chiang mai

This weekend was incredibly busy, what with painting Princess's dresser,  packing up my house, and various projects that crashed and burned.

Epic fail #1:

About two weeks ago I bought a headboard off craigslist.  I went to pick it up, and found myself at this veritable barn of furniture.  The woman selling it was a realtor and had an industrial storage space full of stuff she used to stage houses. I bought the headboard, but also wandered around the barn looking at her other stuff.  Back in a far room, I found the bedframe that matched the headboard.  

I debated about buying the frame, but one of the reasons I wanted a new bedframe was so that we could utilize some underbed storage in the new house.  (Our old bedframe was a platform style that did not allow for underbed storage.)  The bedframe seemed a bit low, so I passed them at the time.

Fast forward to this weekend, I sold our platform bed on craigslist.  The new headboard has a weird hinge for fastening to a bedframe, so I thought rather than mess around figuring out how to attach it to another frame, I will just contact that woman and buy the matching frame and put it up on risers or something.

You'll notice that nowhere in there did I mention measuring the bed. 

Dun dun dun.....

We pick up the bedframe for $50. We stop at a hardware store to get new hinge pins for $11.  We get home. We clean the bed and put it together.  It looks great!  We pull our never-used box springs out from behind the enormous pile of crap in the garage.  We are now super hot and sweaty.  We put the box springs on the bed....

and they don't fit.  The box spring is about three inches too long for the frame.  

We think, hmm, mabe this is supposed to rest on top of the frame, instead of being cradled inside the frame?  We attempt that. We put the mattress on top.  I sit on the mattress.  The mattress comes crashing down and things sound like they are breaking.  

Ok, that wasn't it.  We spent much time trying to figure out how we might easily and inexpensively rig the bedframe to fit, but essentially every fix involves cutting parts off and rebuilding, and ugh, forget it, we are not Ana White.  I will take the $61 loss and move on.  

It did not even occur to me that a vintage king size bed might not fit a modern king size box spring and mattress.  LESSON LEARNED.  

So, we will be buying another bedframe from west elm to go with the new headboard, but for the moment, since we are moving in two weeks, we are sleeping with the mattress on the floor like broke college students.  

Epic fail #2:

After talking about my chiang mai dragon inspired bedroom, I sat down and thought, what can I do to get that pattern in my bedroom?  I love how this painted chiang mai wall has such an oversize scale--I want that.  Just ordering a piece of fabric and framing it won't give me that big of a focal point, even though the pattern repeat is pretty large.  So I came up with the brilliant idea of painting it myself on canvas.

But Lisa--we didn't know you were an artiste!

I'm not.  I can't draw my way out of a paper bag.  

I spent much of last week running around to various art stores.  One day I bought a projector.  You can get pretty awesome projectors with large magnification areas for about $500.  Hahaha. Not in my budget. I bought a $50 projector.  The salesperson at the art store said "This projector is a piece of sh*t, by the way." 

Thanks! I'll let you know how it works out!

I took it home, it blew stuff up just fine.  Only problem was it could only blow up a 3x3 area at a time with 5x magnification, and I wanted to cover a 36x48 canvas.  So I copied the chiang mai pattern, isolated the part I wanted to replicate, printed it out, made a grid on the paper, and made a matching grid on the canvas.  

Unfortunately, I could not get the pictures to line up appropriately on the canvas.  The magnification of the picture was a few inches short of the size of the canvas.  If my canvas had been smaller it might have worked.  Perhaps someone who does not have to ask her sister to do the math for her might be able to make it work.

I gave up on that particular version.  I haven't given up on getting that pattern in my bedroom, and I have a different solution I'm hoping will work.  Hopefully in the next month or two I'll post that. If it works. But for now I have to stop wasting time and money on crap that isn't working and finish packing up our stuff.
   

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pink ombre dresser

Edited to add: I'm linking this post up to Young House Love's Second Pinterest Challenge.  If you want to see the dresser in Princess's room in our new house you can see it here.

Like everyone else in blogland, I saw this picture of an ombre dresser and thought hmm, what can I do that to?

Princess's dresser, of course!  Although I liked the dresser painted orange, I didn't particularly like it against the brown rug that would be in her room.  I thought about painting it pink, but for some reason it just seemed...eh.  Then I saw the ombre dresser picture and thought, ohh....that might work.

And here she is:

The light in the kids' room is terrible, I find it really difficult to take well-lit pictures in there. I feel like my photography does not adequately convey the awesomeness of my projects sometimes.

This was such as easy project.  I got a quart of Benjamin Moore's Autumn Red (yes, really, it was called Autum Red, even though Bubblegum Pink would have been more appropriate) and a quart of BM's Decorator White.  I started with the bottom shelf and painted it pure Autumn Red.  I added some white to the pan for the next shelf, and even more white for the next shelf, and so on.

I had three different containers of color going at the same time.  After I put the second coat on of those three colors, I added more white for the next two drawers and the body of the dresser.  The body of the dresser is painted the same lightest color as the top drawer.

I cannot WAIT to get into the next house so I can finally put Princess's room together.  Two and half more weeks!

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