Lucy wears another bow.
I know. She’s adorable.
I would also like to say that this was the most impossible picture to get because she was purposely playing hard to photograph. She thought it was the funniest game ever but I won.
Eventually.
After about 72 pictures.
I painted my kitchen table again.
I have actually been planning to spontaneously paint my kitchen table for about 6 months now and then we decided we’d just buy a new kitchen table but then decided to wait another year and save a little more money so I figured I’d just go ahead and paint the table while Rabbit is gone to sea to give it a little face lift. He left on Monday for two weeks to go fly around over the Atlantic so I figured a good project would help time go by faster and got to painting.
It’s not really working to make the time go faster like I had planned and that’s kind of a drag but Kait and I worked hard painting it this vintage-y green color, a great shade of sea foam that has been called blue by some people who are apparently color blind, because it’s so beach-y. We had three hours to get the painting done because that is how long Lucy sleeps at nap time.
And we finished it because we’re winners.
I super like the way it’s turned out.
It’s quite a different look from the last paint job, meaning it looks a little less like my 4 year old did it because I was much more patient and went with brushes instead of spray paint. It also helps that it’s not 40 degrees outside, but instead a nice and warm 80.
I still have to polyurethane it really good before we can bring it back into the house and I’ll work on that tomorrow if my arm holds up until then. Apparently when you paint nine chairs and a table with three leaves 3 times over with a paint brush it can make your hand and arm ache a little. At least it did mine because I guess I’m weak or something. Plus, I have something like carpel tunnel syndrome but not exactly carpal tunnel syndrome that’s been undetermined. I’m an enigma.
This has made typing a little bit more challenging as well so I should stop now.
Hope you had a happy Pi day.
Go 3.14!
My husband bought me this mug last weekend at World Market because he knows me so well. It supposed to be a kids mug, apparently, but that is a horrible idea because they’ll just break it and everybody will feel sad and that feels totally wrong to me.
Dope Zebra in mug = totally brilliant and now drinking my coffee out of a normal mug is so bitterly disappointing.
Tuesday, after I was finished with the master, which I way underestimated, I hit Lucy’s room. I had to clean Lucy’s room while she was awake so that made everything more challenging and fun. Kait took a break from working on her own room and entertained Lu for me for a bit so I could move along a little quicker so thanks Kait!
When I do one of these declutter marathons I try to make sure and actually clean as I go, too. I keep a magic eraser and some Windex handy and try to wipe baseboards, walls, doors, blinds, fans, and windows as I go through each room. That way everything gets a thorough cleaning.
We are just getting Lucy set up in this room and her clothes, blankets, bedding, and pretty much everything sat in a heap all over the floor. Plus, the little boys’ things were also still in there because it had been their room since we moved into this house 8 months ago. I got it all cleaned out in a couple of hours, moving the doesn’t belong in this room pile that I talked about in the last post into the boys’ room and am pretty happy with the final result.
The butterfly bedding is from my friend, Brandy. She gave it to Lucy just after she was born and I think it’s so perfect. We haven’t been able to use it yet because I don’t keep a crib. It fits adorably on her toddler bed, however, and I’m sure Lucy is going to love it.
The mobile isn’t going to stay on the bed like that because Lucy would destroy it. We’re going to hang it from the ceiling so that I can reach it but Lucy can’t.
Lucy isn’t using the toddler bed quite yet because she can’t figure out how to get down without going head first. But that’s okay because she has three beds in there right now which is completely ridiculous…
…her pack and play (which is blue and I don’t want to talk about it), which she’ll sleep in until she’s ready for the toddler bed in a month or two, which she’ll sleep in until she’s ready for the loft bed. The big bed really doesn’t need to be set up in there right now but as soon as she’s in her toddler bed I’m going to create for her a little princess area under the loft bed because she must have one. I’ll pull that dresser out, push the little shelving unit all the way back under the bed, and put up little pink curtains so that under the loft is like a little princess tent and we’ll keep her toys in here instead of allowing them to mingle inappropriately with the boys’ toys in the playroom. It’s going to be deliciously girly and will give the extra bed a purpose until she’s ready to sleep in it.
And her closet:
Okay. I know this seems like a simple thing but I am just eating up all this girly-ness. I LOVE her closet. Love it. Just look at all the pink!
The room still needs curtains, which I have because the bedding Brandy gave me came with curtains, and some wall decor. I’m usually not into that because we move around so much and it just becomes a pain in the tush but I think some modest decorations are called for here because, seriously people, I HAVE A BABY GIRL AGAIN.
And Lucy’s room is now decluttered and organized and yesterday we moved onto the bunk room. I’ll share pictures of that room later on.
Despite what you all must be thinking because I haven’t blogged about it since first mentioning it, I have been keeping up with my CLEAN ALL THE THINGS challenge for 4 days and counting. My yearly declutter and clean marathons are just about the only things I do follow through with anymore. That and remembering to drink my coffee.
When I do a spring clean up I work methodically, starting at one end and moving along as quickly as I can because Lucy is napping and I only have 2 to 3 hours before I’ll have the added challenge of working to clean while she works to unclean behind me.
I usually have 4 paper bags or laundry baskets for sorting.
The doesn’t go in this room basket moves along with me and gets put in the next room to be cleaned, and when we’re done with that room we move the pile to the next room, and so on. I don’t know how or why, but this makes the work much quicker and it helps me to not feel overwhelmed. Also, because we recently changed the sleeping arrangements in our house we had a lot of things in the wrong rooms.
As I mentioned, Monday and part of Tuesday I cleaned the master bathroom and bedroom, along with my closet and that was a BIG deal. All of Lucy’s clothes were in our room. The stuff that was too small, the stuff that fit her fine, and the stuff that was too big, along with her blankets and other things… I was storing it all neatly in piles in the master bath’s linen closet and in my closet. I couldn’t even see the carpet in there for all the clutter going on. I worked like a mad woman, sorting through all of her things and moving all of the stuff I chose to keep for her into her own room, just tossing it in piles on her floor until I was ready dedicate my time to cleaning her room. Now YAY because my closet looks like this:
The little white shelving unit will be removed soon. After I get the library done I’ll be able to file most of that stuff away.
And the linen closet now looks like this:
I really like empty shelves and empty drawers and empty cupboards. It feels so light and free.
My bathroom got a very thorough cleaning, too.
I also tackled Lucy’s room on day 2, which I’ll post about in a little bit. It turned out to not be as big a job as I had thought, which is good since the master ended up taking two days.
We have a nice sized pile of garage sale goodies to add to my husband’s already sorted stuff.
And now I just want to spend all my time in my bedroom.
Maybe I should have done that room last.
About a year ago, in our old house, one of my sons came running into the house saying that the Google car for Google Street View was driving by and they had chased it. I informed him that he shouldn’t be chasing cars and he responded how they just ran in the grass, and I said cool and didn’t think anymore of it because I figured they were probably confused or mistaken or one of the many friends they were outside with had told them something that wasn’t true because that happened a lot when we lived in that house.
Fast forward about a year…
This:
I’ve placed some labels for you for reference purposes.
5 of my children were actually caught by the Google Street View vehicle and now they’re going to be internet famous and they’re my kids so that makes me internet famous by default.
Here is another image to explain why my grass was dead because, people, we had a lot of kids at our house EVERY SINGLE DAY. It was like we were a neighborhood community center and it was my own fault because I kept a large stock of icy-pops in our garage freezer and we made hot chocolate for everybody on cooler days because I’m a glutton for punishment.
My old neighbor said the house took a long time to rent after we moved out and now I understand why. Would you rent a house when you saw that many children when you Googled the address?
No. Probably not.
Unless you’ve gone mad.
Lucy is sleeping about 12 hours straight through the night now and suddenly my insomnia is back wouldn’t ya know it. And do you know what that means?
No sleep-cleaning.
Dang.
And now I really need a nap so as the boys were finishing up their school work, I put Lucy down for her late morning nap I went straight to my bed.
Room.
Bedroom.
And I went right through it to the master bath and started scrubbing my bathtub because I like to punish myself.
So day one of my week long clean out my entire house project I scrubbed down the master bath, got rid of a giant pile of baby girl clothes, and partially cleaned out my master closet, which always seems to become a sort of catch all area in every house we live in. I still have more to do – the master is going to take me at least one more good hour of work because my closet still looks very angry. Although I have managed to get at least one big box of garage sale stuff out of it so far.
The master is the biggest, most time consuming place to declutter and clean, after the garage. And the garage is done and the master is almost done and everything else after this should be cake.
And do you want to see something completely ridiculous?
This is the pile of clothes I decided to keep for Lucy after sorting through them and getting rid of everything that doesn’t fit her anymore. It is much bigger than it looks in the picture because so many of my friends and family have been so generous and I seriously love you guys because too many adorable baby girl clothes is exactly the type of quandary I like to be in.
The blue duffle bag is stuff she doesn’t fit into yet but will in the next year or two and the box is shoes. Just shoes. Lots of shoes. Lucy should probably have her own shoe closet.
Actually, most of the shoes don’t even fit her. They’re either too big or too small, I just haven’t gone through them yet.
And now I’m going to go see if I can’t catch a little nap before the baby girl gets up because me sleepy.
So, Rabbit has decided that we are having a garage sale on Saturday. This coming Saturday.
He has spent many weekends cleaning out our garage and now that he has a good sized pile of stuff to get rid of he wants it gone RIGHTNOW because I have completely rubbed off on him and he’s becoming a little bit of a minimalist himself. And now it’s my job to go through the rest of the house and get everything organized and ready for Saturday so we can make the most out of sale day and get rich selling all our old junk really great gently used items that I’m sure you’d be happy to buy from us.
I usually do a deep decluttering about once a year but it’s been about 15 months since my last declutter project so it’s definitely about time. I really am not feeling the motivation I usually feel, however, so I’ve come up with a great idea that should make this project painless.
Sleep-clean.
This is kind of like sleep-walking but less unproductive and more useful and I’m planning on starting tonight.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
We went to the grocery store this past Thursday. Lucy is very happy to be at the grocery store for about 2 isles and then proceeds to inform me that she is no longer happy to be at the grocery store. During one exchange where I was trying to convince Lucy that the grocery store is a fun place and not a place to dislike, an older lady stopped to talk to her and see if she could convince Lucy that the canned soup isle is exciting. Lucy played shy but then smiled all cute like and the lady responded by oohing and aahing over her and telling me how precious she is and asking me if she’s my granddaughter.
And I thought, So, it has come to this.
[sigh]
I told her, No, she’s my youngest child, and the lady then gave me one of those high eyebrow looks of surprise, said Oh my!, then made on her way.
And as we continued down the isle I asked my 17 year old daughter: Kait, did you get the pasta?
Kait’s response: Yes, Granny.
Dear person who keeps asking Google if I’m “Blessed Arrow” on Facebook…
I’m not even ON Facebook.
You’re welcome.
Update:
Thanks to our friendly neighborhood troll, Trailer, for creating this visual:
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