Hunting....Easter Eggs, Florida Style

Sew Little Time

Dads shirt to lounge pants. I read this blog a while back that made me want to try this - and then I came across it again the other day. I was just lucky enough that Jon has ruined yet another shirt - so I had materials! In about 2 hours I whipped these up from the Kid Pant Tutorial at MADE. They don't fit perfectly and are way too long, but the pattern was for HER son. My task now is to figure out how to refine the pattern to fit Os measurements more precisely.

And Little Red Riding Hood from Oliver + S from Little Things to Sew (little is good). They have the greatest advertising that gets you to fall in love with the patterns. This is helping me learn the basics.

Get ready grandma...here we come!

Rumpelstiltskin

I finally finished 'doll bed with bed linens'. We have one in our house and gave one to a neighbor ....not sure how long it will take to find one of these at a garage sale...my house or theirs!

I did all the sewing and was the creative muscle behind this initiative; however I did require assistance. I basically made one bed - it didn't quite work (my hands were cold) and so I just quit{cue garage door slamming behind me}. Someone in my house can't stand to see materials put in the trash. He pulled out all the crooked air nails and had enough materials to make 2 beds... So like Rumpelstiltskin, I had gold in the morning. Then I made the mattress, pillows, fitted sheet, top sheet, pillow case and comforter.

Next I'm thinking about building (having him build) a highchair so we can have 'yunch' with the babies.

Round and Round we go

I swear I was just at Christina's bday party....has it already been a year? This year we were treated to unlimited carousel rides, popcorn cupcakes, pirates booty and pizza. Truthfully...I don't think I ate as much pizza in college as I have with kids....and its still BAD pizza! We gifted Mary Poppin's DVD to Christina in honor of the Carousel ride at her party.

See any traffic out there?

'Yunch'

Team Sport

Sittin' around in my jump suit and rollers all day.

Valentine

Peas be my Valentine!

Super Bowl

Its the wrong team and all - but at least the same sport and besides its a great pic!

Taking Turns

Life teaches us many things every day. Olivia is learning to share and take turns. Sometimes she'll share some things and other times not. Food is typically something not easily shared. We hypothesize this is the result of group eating she experiences daily with some very sneaky stealers. At dinner time under no circumstances do you take a 'bite' from her plate. If you do - our tattle tale will expose the thief and wince until apologies and hugs and kisses are administered. Recently she's been very accommodating with toys as long as 'turns' are taken. At a birthday party I was pleasantly surprised to witness sharing of a necessity (water). Back and forth the bottle went...probably not the last time we'll be seeing (or hearing) about this from these two.

Traveler Advisory

We have a long list of guests traveling to our house this year so I wanted to be sure we updated you on the latest home improvement project... So the good news - 1. I heart my Roku device (and Amazon on demand, Netflix and Pandora). This little box turned our television into an on demand device. I watch the NBC nightly news when I want to - without commercials. Shoot...once I even watched it at 5:30 and its not even broadcast until 6! Sometimes I'll just watch the today show and skip Bryan Williams all together. No more do I need to stay home glued to the television living my life according to the schedule of television executives (because I won't pay a subscription charge for a DVR). We have converted our Comcast cable bill into a $9.99 Netflix subscription (which I might drop to $4.99) and get Amazon Video On Demand for Free, and Pandora radio for free and a slew of other channels. It also turned our television into a huge digital picture frame - scrolling through our Picasa Albums. The Roku is wireless and works perfectly - get yours now and call your cable company and break those chains! The bad news....I'm guessing you figured out. We no longer have broadcast television. So if you can't survive a weekend without seeing a commercial for Empire Floors you might want to make alternative arrangements. Oh...and in case you need that constant talking head spewing what Rupert Murdock wants you to hear...the only one of those we get now is Al Jazeera - its free!

I think she likes it

We barely made it to the month of December before breaking out a xmas (or was it a bday) gift early. She seems pretty happy. I'm not sure if her smile reflects the excitement of knowing at 2 she's in charge of the household (and a lifetime of getting presents early) - or the train is just that cool.

The microwave has left the countertop...

Over cinnamon toast crunch it was decided to move the microwave. I had been dying to take a saber saw to the cabinet myself - but was told no construction was allowed until all the pieces were in hand (we need a new custom size door/drawer). I don't know what effect vacation had - but he must have missed his saber saw. Today at 9:30AM he thought it would be a good idea to just jump into the project. And now at 4:30 the project is complete (minus the door) and he's vacuuming my car. Somethings up, stuff just doesn't work like this in my universe. Our help was even helpful. I only heard a couple complaints about tools walking away...the level seemed to have grown legs and walked away (in Olivia's hand no doubt). Kitchen remodel of 2006 is almost complete, just need to finalize the refrigerator. I'm almost beaten down to accept a 38" standard depth rather than the 42" which will require drywall work. I hate cleaning up drywall dust.

Pretty Girls....

Know how to get dirty too! Big brothers birthday party was a Mighty Machine theme complete with chocolate cake. We made them put on their super soaker stain resistant wear for the cake eating ceremony.

Gymnastics

Turns out the best part of gymnastics is the sticker and cookies presentation at the end of each class. Hmmm...thats a farily expensive set of 5 cookies. Oh well - Olivia is progressing very nicely learning to do pizza's on the uneven bars, jumps in the hot-tub, donkey kicks, somersalts and back-rollovers - not to mention the climbing happening all over our house now. Whose idea was this again?

Waddler

We waddled up for a visit with Mr. Wadlow this past weekend.

MORE

Amazon Prime puked toys into my backyard and all Olivia has to say about it is MORE MORE! When I knew I was having a baby there were a few things I could not wait to purchase. The first was a play kitchen and somewhere on the list was a parachute. The kids are not quite old enough to get the parachute game, but they totally love 'kid popcorn' and the magic carpet ride. The adults are getting the work out with these games!

Moooooovies

Movie night is back! And this year we've set up dual amplifiers in the TV room - I mean MEDIA room. One controls the inside the other controls the BOSE and rock speakers outside. We've also discovered what 'monitor out' means and have a 75ft cord running from inside out through the sinus cavity direct to the projector. Its awesome. Jon still has to "get in the hole" to get it routed properly - for now its running through the window - but I don't care - I'm watching movies! We debuted the new system with an on demand showing of Greenberg. The movie was pretty bad and we're not sold that component video is high enough quality. I cannot even believe I can tell a difference, but after watching on HDMI you actually can. Ridiculous.

Summer finally has arrived in Seattle. Sweet! Only 3 more weeks 'till Fall.

crown

I've always known things just look better wearing a crown. I don't leave home without mine. We finally got the crown installed in the kitchen and wow does it make a statement. The cove lighting and under cabinet lighting don't hurt either. We have rope lighting LEDs in the cove and xenon spot lights under the cabinet. We also have digital dimming switches that have two switches in one gang plate. These were extra special not carried at either Lowe's or the Dep...but they were PRIME from the Zon. There is still some trim and putty work, but set one is complete.

We've learned alot in this project so far and the second set of cabinets is currently under construction. Some of the lessons learned:

1. Shoot straight for crown on cabinets (angle on ceiling)

2. Don't cut an electrical box out with a saber saw (you get to re-wire the entire circuit as a bonus project)

3. Light bulbs can give off a different color (change the bulb not the fixture...)

4. Fish tape is your friend

BBQ Weather

Good thing it wasn't BBQ weather this July 4th cause the new grill was delivered with two forklift holes in the box. Sucks. The grill head survived the trip but the cart wasn't so lucky. We perched the grill on a folding table until we get the cart. I thought I found such a great deal and even skipped the eBay mark-up buying off the grid. I'm convinced this eBay authorized seller is pimping rejects of some sort. I can't figure how he's got this gig working from HI shipping from CA....hmmm but I want to join him! The grill worked remarkably well on the folding table. Now its time to experiment with the smoker box, flavor bars and rotisserie. Our last grill was converted from propane to natural gas. The conversion didn't go as planned so we drilled the holes a little bigger...that was a big mistake. The orifice allowed so much fuel through we melted two of the three burner knobs and flames would shoot out the sides. Only the center burner was NSF approved for cooking. It was Fred Flintstone style grilling at our house. Finally we are approved for general audiences once again.

Date

The word date hasn't been in my vocabulary for a long time - a very long time... We've entered a new 'date-ing' arena, the "PLAY Date". And you may as well do it up right we had toys, wine, coffee, cookies, a princess (big sister joined us), gossip, dancing and a couple of biters! It seems Olivia and her friend CAS are among the strong personalities in the classroom. Its been reported it is necessary to keep these little love-birds separated.

We decided maybe a little one-on-one time might help tame the teeth. So we made a 'date' to get the families together at 10AM on a Sunday. This is certainly the earliest start time of a date I've ever had, I think a few ended at this time, but never started.

The future class clown and most likely to succeed will hopefully be friends for a long long time (despite the scars!).

Second time's a Charm

It seems we always do things twice around here. In this episode we finally bit the bullet and got a range hood. I searched and searched learning about 3 1/4" X 10" vs. 9" round; internal vs. external blowers; sones - more than I ever really wanted to know about air blowers. The prices for these hunks of petroleum are unbelievable. I was dead set against ordering the one that matched the stove due to the location of the 'branding'. Shopping around I found them for $1500 but then you also had to buy the blower! Oh my - so when our local discount warehouse showed me a beautiful Italian brand for $250 I jumped on it. It arrived, we installed (with the normal fanfare) and on the low setting...it squeaked and not to mention 1:00pm was 13:00 on this fine Italian stallion. I couldn't handled the time change and I certainly was not going to listen to what sounded like a bad serpentine belt. Not to mention since the removal of the microwave I'd been running into the garage to cook - you have no idea how many times a day you use that little electron exciter. I was getting desperate. So - my longtime best friend Overstock.com had something that appeared to be sufficient. It arrived - we did the install dance again and its beautiful. Now to finish the crown, under/over cabinet lighting and find a place to install that new microwave. I can't have it on the counter but can't find a cabinet I'm willing to sacrifice either. We'll see how long it sits on the counter I can't have it on.