Some little boy learned the Purdue fight song this morning—and loved it! I wish we had a video camera…he smiled through the whole thing (possibly because I was clapping his little hands together, and he loves that…but more probably because Boilermaker runs through his blood).
Here he is—ready for the start of football season tomorrow (also—a nap)!
He also wants to say—Thanks Miss Lauren for my awesome outfit! I love it!
First off, Andy and I are having a disagreement about my zero dollars claim. I claim that since all materials for these projects were located inside our house and purchased at some point for something, the cost is associated with the previous project or use…and I am simply using what I have to make things for free. He says that with my logic, if he went today and bought all the materials to make a house, then let them sit for a while and then made something else, the something else still isn’t free. Then I threw a pillow at him.
But back to the real reason….I have been pinning inspiration images on Pinterest for a while now, and I hadn’t made any of my projects. Since Liam started napping on Tuesday, I have had some time to get some things done. I got the house cleaned and the laundry done, and then decided to do something that would make me feel more like a human and less like a person who changes diapers and feeds and sings silly songs for all of her waking hours (which I love…truly, but I needed something that would make my brain work a bit). So I have four projects I have completed based on my Pinterest inspirations…and here they are! (Actually two of them were done before this week….I just got them hung up this week)
Project 1:
Project #1:
I just used Paint and typed out the words to fit the frame…changed the green to go in the kitchen and I was all done. This has actually been sitting in the house since April, waiting to be hung…I just did it this week.
Inspiration #2:
Source: justagirlblog.com via Julie on Pinterest
Project #2:
That canvas was hanging in our garage, covered with a piece of fabric. I bought it when we first moved in, and hadn’t used it in a long time…So I painted it green. The flowers are toilet paper rolls cut into fourths and hot glued on in that pattern. It took maybe a month of collecting rolls to get enough…and the top right only has three petals because someone named Oliver reached up on the table, pulled one down, and ate it while I was changing his brother’s diaper. Same kid stole a green bean yesterday when I was snapping them…and got into the trash and ate part of a bacon wrapper…then threw up the bacon wrapper all over the carpet. But enough about my bad dog :)
Inspiration #3:
Source: kimboscrafts.blogspot.com via Alea on Pinterest
Project #3
Yup…it’s a diaper box turned book storage container. Mine isn’t as pretty as hers…I just hot glued it on so it looked sort of okay, and went with it. It’s holding Liam’s most commonly read stories on a shelf in the living room (it also has my Bible study books) Oliver kept getting into hot glue and had strings of it hanging from his beard.
Inspiration #4
Source: frominspirationtoreality.blogspot.com via Tina on Pinterest
Project #4
The canvas I had was one that I bought at Target a few years ago. It’s brown with white dandelion silhouettes on it, and I still like it, and may want to use it someday in future, so I knew I didn’t want to paint over it. I had a lot of that fabric (it’s from Liam’s crib skirt), so I just hot glued some onto the canvas, so I could cover it and remove it in the future if I wanted. Then I found an outline of the state of Indiana and printed it out. I traced it on cardstock, cut it out, and painted it green. When it was dry, I used spray adhesive and glued it onto the canvas. You’ll see this in a future project I’m working on right now.
It was four years ago this week that we purchased our first house. We didn’t get the keys until Labor Day weekend, but the house became ours. It’s crazy to think about it, and to see the ways it has changed and grown in that time. I thought I might do a retrospective…sort of a before, in progress, and the current state of things post. Our house is still by no means finished, but we are making progress. We have the bathroom and bedroom updates planned for this fall, and hopefully we will get through them with little Liam in tow. Liam’s room and the kitchen are the only real “afters” so I’ll do those today (the kitchen…I did Liam’s room pretty recently)….and then our room and the bathroom with the planned updates. And Andy’s office will just be left out for now because it’s a disgusting pit and I try to avoid it at all costs :)
The kitchen when we moved in:
And now (you are of course ignoring the things on the counter and the dishes in the sink, thankssomuch):
It’s taken a lot of time and a lot of work to get the kitchen to where it is. It’s not perfect, but it’s ours, and it suits us. And I like looking at it and remembering each project.
We painted the cabinets one weekend in January a few years ago. I showed Andy a blog that had painted kitchen cabinets black, and we both liked the look, so we went to Lowes and bought the supplies and did that day. We were priming and painting until 2AM, and we left a space heater running in our garage to help them dry out.
Two falls ago, we were at Lowes buying new carpet when we discovered a hardwood floor that we had never seen before. It was a third the cost of the brand they usually carried, and we loved it. I went to the bank the next day to transfer money from our account, and we bought it that night. When it was delivered, it sat inside the back bedroom and the living room until Andy’s parents came down a week later to help us install it. The tile was down so crazy hard—Andy and I spent hours one Friday night using the back end of our hammers trying to get the concrete board up, and it was not working. The next day, Andy’s dad took one look at the floor and went to rent a jackhammer. They spent all day Saturday helping us lay that floor, and Andy’s dad came back the next weekend to help finish.
We did the countertop and sink and the door this past fall. The original door was an interior door that stuck really badly. Andy accidentally put his shoulder through it one day trying to get it open (also—we had a similar problem on the back door and I put my shoulder through a glass window)…he replaced it with the door the hall closet that was 2 inches two short…and we lived that way for a disturbingly long time. The day we put the countertop in, we had to go to Lowes…we had purchased a countertop before hoping to get it installed, but we didn’t…and it warped too badly to be used, so we had to go buy a new one…that was a lesson learned. And the sink….I knew that I wanted the granite composite, but we didn’t measure the current sink before we went to buy it. When we got there, Andy was sure ours was at least 8 inches deep, and we bought a 9 inch sink. When we got home, I measured our original sink—it was 6 inches deep. But I LOVE the BIG ONE. And the faucet—one day we were walking through Lowes (this was probably almost three years ago) and I saw that faucet on clearance for really cheap. So I convinced Andy we should buy it, realizing that we would use it at some point in the future…I held onto that faucet for nearly two years before it got installed.
And the IKEA cabinets—our kitchen is very lacking in storage space. I made the decision about the IKEA cabinets shortly after we finished the counter in October…and finally made it to Cincinnati to buy the cabinets the end of February with my mom and dad. Andy and my dad put them together, and you cannot even believe how happy I was that day :)
This morning it was chilly out, so I decided Liam needed some pants today. That’s when I discovered that Liam has 3 long sleeved onesies and one pair of pants in his current size—since we didn’t think it would start getting chilly for another month or so, we hadn’t really stocked up on those things. So I dressed him….in his navy top and brown bottoms. And then Andy asked me why I had dressed our child like Dexter (the titular character from the SHOtime drama about a serial killer). Here’s a comparison:
Liam (he’s holding Green Eggs and Ham and being licked by Ollie)
Dexter (in his kill outfit…and pixel-y)
So…yeah. Luckily, we got a Kohls coupon, a Target gift card, and a notice for Old Navy’s baby sale in the mail today….so we’ll remedy his clothing problem this weekend or next week :)
So. I have something to say. My child really stinks at sleeping during the day. In fact, he’s horrible at it. His nighttime sleep is fine, great even, but naps are another story. Naps are going to kill me. Because it’s not like he’s a weirdo who’s content without a nap….oh no, he needs one, he just won’t take one. Here’s a rundown of a normal day:
We wake up. We hang out. Liam starts to look tired, yawning and such. I put him in his crib and wrap him up, give him a blanket. He begins shrieking before I leave the room. He continues shrieking for 35 minutes, until I give up and go get him. He has crazy dark circles under his eyes at this point, and continues shrieking. I carry him up and down the hallway, I try to figure out how to calm him. He stays awake and stays mad. I pray up and down the hallway. He stays awake, but God gives me the grace to keep walking up and down the hallway.
Sometimes he falls asleep. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes we have to get a whole new feeding in before sleeping happens. He has also developed a radar, so that when I put him down, he wakes up instantly and shrieks…and we start the whole process over. And I’m exhausted. I think I need Liam to take a nap as much as he needs the nap.
Our small group is currently studying Desiring God by John Piper. Like all other Piper, it’s not light or easy reading, but it’s very convicting and very deep. We read the chapter on money last week, and we camped out awhile in1 Timothy chapter 6, talking a lot about money and contentment. We committed to memorizing that portion of Scripture together….so I chunked into easier segments for me to remember. Here’s my passage
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I really want Liam to be a reader. I don’t want him to be a television/video game junkie—I want him to read and to want to read. And so I try to read with him a little each day. He has a sweet little library, and we rotate through his books pretty regularly, but Mommy needed a few new books. As I was talking to my mom today (Grandma and Granddad and Aunt Lauren came to visit) I was reminded that I wanted to find a few new books for Liam. So here are Liam’s new books—and the best part is that I only spent about 25 dollars for all six books.
1. Green Eggs and Ham—this was Andy’s favorite as a child, and I wanted Liam to have his own copy
2. Dr. Suess’s ABC—He already has the other alphabet version of the Bright and Early Board books—and he loves hearing letter sounds sounded out
4.Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see?—I love Eric Carle…love him.
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