Hooks and Tile

A couple more projects brought to you by the Stellar B Team. :)  Here's what the back entry looks like when the kids are at school.  Lots of hooks and lots of shoe shelving!  This project, along with the pantry, were far above and beyond what we were thinking was going to happen over the two days.  Dave had offered to do some tiling.  Trichelle wanted to have something to do as well.  So, I mentioned I was stuck for ideas to finish off the back entry and she went to town.  Literally :) She came up with a plan and then helped motivate Steve and Dave to think big.  Big as in a couple more projects on top of the tiling :)  Let me tell you, I love that girl for that!!  :) We actually had most of the shelving and all the hooks and trim needed so our trip to town wasn't that scary.  (The pantry also came about because of her encouragement!)

And quite a bit more full once everyone's coats and book bags are hanging up :) Thankful for the space to hang it all, seeing as until Dave and Trichelle showed up it was all either hanging over the railing or stacked on the shelf that was used to help form the pantry.  I do have some great pictures of them working but that brings up that computer again.... :(

Dave's big project and the one that started all this development was the tiling of the bathtub.  My pictures do not do justice to this lovely space.  We picked the tile by going to Home Depot, hemming and hawing, attracting the attention of a kind, eager Home Depot employee.  Once we had finally made up our minds she suddenly left and reappeared with the tiles you see hanging here.  She mentioned how our paint color had brought this clearance tile to mind. When she told us she would reduce the clearance price of $1.16/sq. ft. by half it was a done deal.  $0.58 compared to $3.08? Well, no comparison!! 
The color itself changed a lot when Dave first started hanging it but it was for the better not the worse!  Now we have a classy looking bath that still needs to be caulked - much to Dave's chagrin :)  Famous last words... I thought about getting to it today but something else came up.
No diy project is complete without a few hiccups. This one had a couple.  A wave or dent or something in the wall left Dave dodging a rebel tile intent on denting in his head.  Thankfully it was a bottom row one and not from the top!  The top row was sketchy enough seeing as the adhesive distribution was slightly heavier on the bottom two thirds than top third.  Home Depot closed earlier than expected and so Dave's "make do with one"(bucket of adhesive) mantra left him a little nervous finishing up!  Thankfully we slept through the night without hearing any tiles sliding out of place... aka crashing into the tub.
The tub itself was a craigslist purchase so poor Dave was a little surprised the next day to find a great big chip of porcelain missing when he cleaned the grout (and actually still drywall mud) out of the tub.  The friendly gent who was so happy to clear the tub out of his garage somehow forgot to mention he had patched over a few dings with porcelain paint.  Thankfully, hopefully it will be easy to do the same thing and have it good as new with a bit more paint.

So thankful for everything they helped us do over those two afternoon/evenings!  Huge impact projects that would have been pushed off if not for Dave and Trichelle's company, encouragement and sets of hands.

A few things done

Stellar Dave and his Super Stellar wife Trichelle spent some time at our house this past holiday. Between Dave and Steve working hard and Trichelle thinking, planning, encouraging and doing, we got a few more things done. The pantry, hand framed around the furnace ducting :). Very, very thankful!!  Thanks also to Shelly for her painting expertise once again!

And yes, the top of the doors are glass so all my holiday pictures have a display place for now.  I'm not a pantry on display kind  of person :)

And for now the blog posts are brought to you by way of a courtesy iPhone because our computer hard drive crashed and it still remains to be seen if we will be able to revive or retrieve anything at all! :(

The Gingerbread House

Teaching children to share and be patient is a tough job in any circumstance... but it seems to get even a little tougher when there's one gingerbread house to decorate and 5 willing  eager exterior designers. 

And we don't even want to talk about what happens when you first build the house and then the house falls apart when ONE child accidently cracks, pushes, leans, drools, knocks etc a piece of said house. We try to control our tongues and disappointment... but we aren't always successful!

I thought it was a fair enough suggestion to split up the pieces and the candy and let everyone have at their own section.  It worked well.  We still had to practice patience and sharing - the icing bag went round and round the table as everyone dabbed dots and lines of icing where they thought it looked the best.

BUT everyone had their OWN space!! :)

As for the house itself?  It will probably stay in it's prefab state until it's devoured. I'm thinking those heavy wall and roof slabs would need something along the lines of the hot glue gun to keep them together.  Might as well just let each child eat their beautiful designs!

 Mid decorating I pinterest-ed "gingerbread houses" just to inspire them.
Cruel or encouraging?  :)

Maybe the best thing to come out of this was the little lego table with the two eager children creating their own gingerbread house.

And please, if you know me at all, I have no desire to be encouraged to let each child make their own house out of graham crackers.  Do you know how much patience is required for the Mom to talk each child through sliding graham crackers that refuse to stay in place????  I do!! Tried it once.  It required much more patience than I have.

Beautiful Grin

Our last baby to lose a first tooth!

Room by Room

And square foot by square foot.  

Last September the playroom was sadly covered with water and rot.

 Everything got packed up and put away as we (with the help of many!!!) chipped away at fixing the drainage.  We knew we still hadn't solved it when spring rains led to this....

 For months this area was the catch all for tools and building supplies and also all the boxes of packed up toys, clothes, crafting supplies etc.  You can't even see the half of the mess and apparently I didn't take any pictures of it either :)

 But last night, after BIG help and encouragement from Wieska and Shelly over the last couple of months, and signigicant hours by Steve, the playroom looks like this.  MUCH better than ever!

 Not quite done...we still have to work on this half.  We'll get to it, even if it's a square inch at a time :)

But our house? After unpacking all the toys they've talked about for the last 1 1/4year? It was better than the proverbial Christmas morning!!

The Most Wonderful Time of Year

Maybe... maybe not.  Maybe "certainly not a wonderful time of year" on the afternoon everyone wants to write their friends a Christmas card!!!!

Now, it was certainly better than the same activity last year.  I probably still had some remaining hives and trauma from THAT.  But, it's a crazy afternoon for sure!

With 2 kids begging to do cards - while I had a friend over visiting

+

mom giving permission even though she's too busy to supervise

+

a ridiculous amount of rifling and mess making to find just the right kind and amount of cards

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2 more kids adding into the "please can we write cards" mix

+

supper to be made

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tears because he/she stole/touched/looked at my cards or envelopes

+

one unsuspecting husband walking through the door and being greeted with 12" deep pile of paper on the table he's hoping to be served supper on post haste, as well as wailing and snot because of aforementioned tears

+

"I wrote all my names on my envelopes but they must be the wrong ones because the cards don't fit in these ones"

well... let's just say I'll be glad when they either a) don't care about giving cards b) are completely independent in their list making and printing and c) furthermore have their own means to go to the store and pick out exactly what they want!

All that being said, after supper I went through their stacks and was blown away by the differences in the cards and what the differences said about the kids, some to my surprise, some not.

1 child took no care in penmanship but made sure to include the "dear" and "from".

1 child did ok for neatness but was sure to choose the quickest route of "from... " on the inside with only the friends' names on the envelope.  The reasoning was that way he knew which card was for who but only had to write the names once.

1 child took time to add an extra message to each card.

1 child hasn't yet bothered to write out cards.

But this child????? He sorta surprised me and he sorta didn't.  I was sorta surprised that he took as much time to write as neatly as he did.  I was sorta surprised that he was willing to take as much time as it did to write an extra sentence.  But I WASN'T at all surprised that his extra sentence made me laugh out loud!!! 

That Cody!  He's quite the boy.

It's amazing to me how we adjust.  For the first few hours having no bathroom door for a 7 person family felt a little uncomfortable and odd.... but in no time at all we forgot we ever had one!  That was a couple of days ago :S

Renos mess with my mind.