Cute Card

Harrison wrote Olivia this birthday card, all by himself. We asked him where he got the "pur-fect" joke, and he said "I got it from a Spiderman story." I think it may be a catwoman joke in a Batman book, but maybe I don't know my superheros that well. He reads more than me, so ...

We Made our Bed

No, I don't mean that we put on sheets and spread a duvet.  We bought boards, screws, nails and paint, and actually built a bed.   Thanks to Ana White at Knock-off Wood who provided the plans.

The bed is a "knock-off" of this bed at Pottery Barn.  I loved the bed, but wasn't going to spend almost $1000 for it.  I thought a daybed would really help out our toy room, and make a great guest bed.  Our toy room previously had this:

A couch we got off craigslist when when we moved here.  We were able to sell it on craigslist for the same cost of the 3 plywood boards ($100).

We built this over the course of a couple months.  It was mostly built within a few weeks (working for an hour here and an hour there in the evenings) and then sat unfinished for several weeks.

 We finally painted it last Monday.

The kids love climbing into the boxes.

And before I could get the mattress on, Noah and Olivia decided it would also make a great playing space: 

This was a really fun project to work on.  Sam and I would build in the evenings after the kids were down for a night.  The bed consists of 3 boxes, which you then frame with 1X2's and 1X4's.  I think we built 1 box per evening, and then it took a couple evenings to frame the whole thing.  We got the plywood boards at Lowe's, where we got them cut to size.  We quickly learned that we had to measure their cuts, to make sure they were accurate, to save a trip back to the store.  The trim was all cut by yours truly. With a hand saw and a miter box.  Yes, my arm and shoulder were pretty sore the next day!  The plans call for a cubby divder in each box, to divide the space into 2 cubbies, but since the bed is going to be against a wall, we didn't want to loose that storage space, so we left it out. Now the whole space can be accessed from the front.

I found plans to make fabric covered boxes.  I just increased the size of the pattern to the size of the cubby openings, and made them 20 inches deep.  I found some fun home dec fabric at Joann Fabric, and I just love how these turned out.  They were a bit tricky to sew, being so large.  The top edge is sewn through the cardboard, and it took both Sam and I trying to balance and feed the huge boxes through my machine to get them sewn together.  But it was definitely worth it.

Here's Sam working hard to nail on the trim.  There were moments when we really wished we had a nail gun. Maybe someday...

After sanding a bit by hand, we decided that a power sander would be a very good idea.  It made the sanding much easier and faster.  

I'm still working on making pillows for it.  I've made 3, but would like to make a few more,  Right now I just have a bunch of spare guest pillows on there.  The bedspread I got at home goods,and I based all the colors for pillows and the boxes from that.

Now for the cost.
3 Sheets of plywood = ~$100
Trim wood = ~$50
Screws = ~$10
Wood glue = ~$3
Nails = ~$3
Paint/rollers/brushes =~$45
Fabric for boxes = ~$40
Fabric for Pillows = ~$10
Bedspread/pillow Sham = ~$30
Mattress - Free
TOTAL: $281 (which includes all the bedding and the fabric boxes)

We also built this for our kitchen (also from Knock-Off Wood): 

It's a "recycling center" much like this one from Pottery Barn.  We use one side for trash, and one side for recycling.  It's been great having the extra counter space.  And it looks so much nicer than have a trash can out.  

This also sat unfinished, for even LONGER.  I just don't like the whole "finishing" part of building furniture.  

This was our first project, and we learned a lot as we went.  I'm excited to build some more things someday (Ana has SO many great plans - I have a long wish list of things I want to build!), but I think we'll be taking a little break for now.  

It's the 5th of July!

I don't know if it was a subconscious thing or what, but this morning I selected the "Eddie From Ohio" songs to play during my workout. They happen to have a song about the 5th of July. How appropriate.

We had a great 4th. And 3rd for that matter. And the 5th is turning out pretty good also.

On the 3rd we had some friends over to celebrate. Since we don't do outdoor BBQ's or party type things on Sunday, we decided to celebrate on Saturday. I found some cute print outs on the internet and had fun making some fans and water bottle labels to be festive.

I also found some great head-wear in the dollar spot section of target. The kids loved wearing the various hats and headbands. Everyone looked so patriotic! 

We had a water balloon fight

played at the park,

blew lots of bubbles,

and ate lots of yummy food!

Including this flag cake which a tried again this year.  I really should have outlined the flag before I decorated it - in the end the blue stars part was too small (there's only 40 stars) and there were 15 stripes.  Ah, well.

On the 4th, we got out our Sunday patriotic clothes (minus the hats...), and headed to church. 

After Church and naps, Sam lead a tickle fight.

And then Sam and I decided that we wanted to see the fireworks downtown - but we didn't want to deal with any of the traffic. We saw them together when we were dating (I guess that was 9 years ago now), but we knew the craziness that exists downtown, and the high traffic every where - the metro, on foot, and especially on the roads.  So we thought we could pull off on on one of the scenic overlooks on the GW parkway, and watch from there, and then leave before the rest of the traffic caught up to us.  Sounds like a good idea, right?  So about 8 PM we headed down, kids in jammies.  But as we started down the parkway, we soon found out that the police had barricaded off all the lookouts.  I'm not sure why that seemed like a good idea to them.  So we thought, maybe we could watch from Roosevelt Island.  Well, a lot of other people had that very same idea.  The lots were full, and again, police had barricaded off the parking lot not letting anyone else in.  While we discussed various plans (pull off on the grass like we saw many other cars doing, back into one of the scenic lookouts, since only the entrances were blocked off, park at the airport parking lot....) we got lost a few times.  We drove around a lot, and pretty much decided we were going to give up and head back to home, where there were fireworks right near our house.  So, we headed from the airport back down the GW parkway.  We noticed traffic in the right lane was slowing down quite a bit, and I joked to Sam, "Hey, maybe we can just get stuck in traffic on the parkway, and be able to watch them."  So instead of passing people on the left, we got back in the slow right lane.  Where apparently a lot of other people were hoping to see some fireworks too.  Our lane came to a complete stop right at an opening in the trees, and the fireworks began!  We could see the Washington Monument, and Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, as well as the top of the Capital.  With an amazing fireworks show right in the middle, reflected in the Potomac as well.  I forgot my camera, but it looked something like this: 

The kids, who moments earlier were nagging why we had been in the car so long, were suddenly appeased.  We stayed and watched for 20 minutes or so, and then decided to head home before it got too late or the traffic got too bad.  On our way home we drove right under the Montgomery County fireworks - it was kind of crazy, people had pulled off on the side of the freeway all over.  But it was fun to see.  And we had no traffic.  The  kids were home and in bed just after 10 pm, which, according to Harrison, was way too late. 

And now it's the 5th.  Sam has the day off work, so we're getting some work done around here.  Namely, finally painting the bed we built - hopefully I'll have pictures to post really soon!

Big Bubbles

When my mom came to visit us, she did some grandma magic. Bubbles hold some sort of enchantment spell over children. Its amazing.  Kids love to blow bubbles, follow them in the wind, and pop them.  My boys love to stomp them if they fall on the grass.

Harrison: Me and Noah thought it would be fun to pretend to save the Star Wars galaxy by popping all the bubbles. Of course it was just a game. The big bubbles were more fun to pop.


She bought a variety of bubble wands, but the big attraction was definitely the massive wand.    Here, I managed to encase Olivia in a bubble, well from the camera's point of view. It reminds me of Glenda the good witch of the South traveling in a bubble.


The boys had taken some of their medium wands and used them as lightsabers to pop the bubbles (and save the galaxy).  After a little while, the neighbor kids noticed and joined in.  We soon had a very large crowd, which came back often on later days to ask us to start the huge bubbles.

Lincoln Logs

I'm going back through all of last year's photos to catch up on the blog, and make sure that some fun things we did go into the memory archive. This is a photo of Harrison and our neighbor across the street. We had a nice group of kids in MD and will miss them. I am also posting this just to make sure I remember that there are other toys beyond LEGOs. We spend a lot of time playing with legos, but occasionally we do branch out.

This was a rather intricate Log home (Grandma Margie would be proud).  The boys really liked doing landscaping, getting a few trees and bushes around the home.  I think there was also a stable for whatever animals we could whittle out of Lincoln Logs.

Everyone should play

So tonight Harrison was playing Monopoly by himself. As he passed around the board, he mentioned to me that there was the tax spot where you had to pay 10% or $200.

He said the the first time he passed it, he only had $1000, so he paid $100. But the next time he landed on it, he had a lot more money so he paid the $200 flat fee. He said that if you have a little money, it is probably best to pay 10%, and if you have a lot, it would be better to pay the $200. And "then there is some place where they are the same, and you can do either, but they are the same."

I asked him how much money you would need in order for them to be the same. After talking it out, he figured out that it would take $2000. That's my kindergartener.

Olivia's Room take II

Remember when I finally got Olivia's nursery finished?   Well, and then remember we moved?  Yeah, I still don't have it finished again.  But I made some progress on it, and wanted to share.  Her window faces west, so it's got great evening sun.  Not so great when your baby wants/needs to go to bed at 6:30.  And the blinds that came with the house were broken.  So I set out to fix it.  I had made curtains similar to these in the boys room in San Diego, so I knew they were simple.  This time I just lined them with sun blocking material, and actually installed them into the window (with a fabric covered board and screws) instead of using a tension rod.  Anyway, here's how they turned out: 

I love the fabric I found, and think it still works with the existing valance, so I'm leaving that up.  And they roll down to block out much of the light when its time to sleep.

Several months ago I painted an old bookshelf we had green to match her room.  I love how it turned out:

 

And this is a wall treatment I experimented with.  It's fabric attached to the wall with liquid starch (which you can make yourself with cornstarch and water.)  So easy.  And totally temporary, you can remove it any time, without any damage to the wall.  I'm not sure I love how this fabric looks - it turned out darker than I wanted, but I haven't felt like doing it over, so it's still there. 

I still have some things to hang on the walls, but it's getting closer!  Now if I could just get Olivia to keep it clean!