I told you I was bad at resolutions....

See why I don't make New Year's resolutions? :) 13 days later, I'm back. But the thing is, I'm at my blog every day. I use it as my gateway to the blogs that I read on a daily basis. So I have a daily reminder of being a slacker.

But, a few things I do have to blog about:
-Can It Forward (did you know today was National Can It Forward Day?)
-Our livingroom into a diningroom transition (It's in the works now)
-Table drama
-and all the things that come with the above topics.

I also need to get in gear with some baby projects. (side note, I failed my 1 hour glucose test this week... fantastic... so I get to go do the three hour this week, fun)

So, there are things happening around here! I even stopped biting my nails! I know, shocker! I count that as a victory even though it seems I can either bite my nails OR blog. Breaking nailbiting AND blog slacking at once may just be too much to handle :) No really, I'm just working a ton in order to take more time off and have less students in December. When I'm not working, I'm writing papers. I'm also planning to take a leave of absence on my doctoral work this fall. And, when I'm not doing that, I'm napping.

So, I make no promises. But, I am still plugging away on things and even take pictures of them alone the way :) So, one of these days....

Resolution, Procrastination, and Silhouette Imagination

 

August 1 is just as good as a time as any to make a resolution, right? I never make New Year’s Resolutions, so why not make one for August 1?

I’ve given up on not biting my nails. So, I’ve decided to get in gear and get back on the blogging routine. I started slowing down while I was sick during the first 3 months of this pregnancy. Then, I slept through the next 3 months. Now, we’re 6.5 months along (YAY) and I’m getting some energy back. I’m also starting a super busy month of work. But, I seem to do better when I’m super busy. When I have too much free time, I just seem to nap.

So, here’s to getting back into blogging. I have a lot of stuff to write about!

First up: my first project with my Silhouette…. that I bought in February. Yup, that’s right. I’m that much of a slacker. It didn’t just apply to blogging. It applied to everything including fun things (like the Silhouette) and important things (like cleaning).

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a project. It’s not that it was that intricate or difficult. Again, it’s because I’m a slacker.

(I should have realized this when Dustin asked me a few months ago, quite hopefully, “so, when are you going to start nesting?” We both laughed… me from the couch and him from the kitchen where he was fixing supper… he’s a keeper, that one)

So, I present: the project that took me a month and should have taken an hour.

Ok, so it’s kinda three projects. But still, it was an afternoon project, not the lengthy process that I drug it out to be. Hudson actually outgrew the onesie that I originally bought for this project while I was procrastinating.

Part of the reason for dragging this project out: I’m cheap. I wanted to avoid buying iron on transfer and tried cloth with iron on stuff on it first. Then bought print and cut iron on transfer stuff… then broke down and waited for my shipment from Silhouette. So, basically, these cost me at least triple what they should have. But, I’ve got supplies for days!

I never did figure out how to get my fabric to cut neatly. Here’s my first attempt:

Blah. That got promptly thrown away and caused my first break in productivity. Which, I guess was good since this started out saying “Hudson” and he would already not be able to wear the clothes with his moniker attached in blue fabric.

So I waited patiently (slackers can be very patient). And worked on my design while my shipment headed my way. Since I was working on something for 2 boys and one girl (nephews and a niece), I tried to find appropriate things to add to their names. Hudson is a farm baby and Hadley is obsessed with Thomas the Train. The green crane can pass as Cranky to a 2 year old, so it wasn’t all too difficult to fine what I wanted… and in one purchase!

Then, I just laid them out on the page. I wanted them to be a bit more than just a name with a picture, so I altered Hudson’s name a little to make it look like it was being pushed by the dozer. (Or at least that’s the look I was going for :))

It was super easy. Those Silhouette people created this for people like me. I just highlighted his name and then UNGROUPed it. I kept Hallie’s a bit simpler. Once I saw the butterfly, I thought it was cute enough with no ‘extra’ added to it.

Then I was able to rotate the ‘n’ until I thought it looked intentional and not just a sloppy, slacker accident. Once it was in the right place, I highlighted all the letters and the bulldozer and regrouped it all so it was easier to move around.

For Hadley’s, I just clicked his name and used the green ‘thing’ at the top that appeared and rotated it so it looked like the crane was picking it up… or putting it down.

Immediately before this step in the photo above. I got stuck though. I used the Silhouette to cut the images out (luckily, the iron on transfer reminded me that I needed to reverse the images!). But, I’m a nailbiter (in case you forgot since I mentioned it an hour ago when I started typing this massive post).Nailbiters have a difficult time getting the negative image off the clear sheet.

So, Mom came over to can some veggies and I used her nails to get them started. A step that was impossible for me to do alone took us about 5 minutes to accomplish. (Dustin is not very accepting of a nailbiter’s woes, so I waited on Mom instead of asking him and being told I shouldn’t bite my nails :))

Hudson and Hallie will get their shirts when I see them tonight (the main reason why I finally ironed them on… again, a 5 minute job that I put off) Hadley’s is going in the mail to head to California soon too.

I do have an older niece, but I thought she’d enjoy the tattoos more than a shirt. So, once I get those done (ok, and the tattoo material ordered… ) I’ll get started on those and inform you of all the nitty, gritty, boring details :)

 

*Anyone else notice a trend in the baby names in the family lately? I told Dustin I almost feel the need to find an H name for the unknown gender baby who is coming in 10 weeks or less*

Victory is (almost) mine: garden success

The zucchini is starting to bloom and produce!!!

The tomatoes are also starting to produce. These are about the size of dimes in this picture.

Knock on wood, the chickens have been kept out of these! I do have something eating leaves on my tomatoes. I'm on the hunt for him tomorrow.

All tiled out

 

Over the past two weeks or so, Dustin and his mom have been working on getting our downstairs (under the stairs, actually) bathroom put together.

We once had a foundation leak (as seen here) that led to use ripping the whole bathroom, purple and black mold, included. That link also includes all the fun we had with a backhoe in the backyard fixing the foundation leak, the masks we wore while we ripped out moldy drywall and bleached it all down, and flooding that was both IN and OUT of the house that summer… fun.

This wall is the back of the house and is MOSTLY underground. Dustin wants to replace the window and make it useable. (my vote is to just cover it up…) But, this is what we had after he drywalled (here), plumbed (here and here), and studded up a wall (here)… in the complete reverse order I have listed :)

So, after all that fun, Dustin and his mom primed the drywall and put a few coats of masonry sealer on the back wall. Minus the gross, old, boarded up window and the still nasty floor, it was so much cleaner in there just with paint.

Then, it all got a coat of Bay Oyster (a Valspar color we had matched in Behr semi gloss) and Porcini (another Valspar color in Behr, satin). The while is what the trim is in the bonus room. We bought enough to paint all the trim in the house with it. Porcini was going to be the floor color in the bonus room until we decided to stain the plywood instead.

Then, another evening, they tiled the floor using the Orchid Tile ceramic tiles that we won from the DIY Club in December. (the link to the plywood floor talks about that).

The light bulb in there is an awful “daylight” one hanging from a wire, but here is the “finished” tile job minus the grout.

The color in this next one is completely washed out, but it shows the back wall along with the beadboard wall next to it. We wanted to keep the block wall open for now. We know the leak is fixed, but we like to keep an eye on it. We would like to maybe tile the wall eventually.

Luckily, we won 25 sq feet of tile. We have about 6 inches square left over! Just enough to keep in case we need to get more or to match it to anything!

Now, we just need to grout, trim, touch up, and (oh yeah) bring in the toilet off the side porch….

But I”m SO HAPPY with the progress so far! As we get closer to being done, I’ll get together a really before and after post of this room. Although it’s small, the difference is already amazing. The mold may have been beautiful shades of purple, green, and black, but mold is mold… any shade and color scares us! So, this room is already a 100% improvement! And, it’s mold free!

“Pot” garden expansion

 

Yes, we joke and call our container garden our “pot” garden. But, hey, it is doing WELL!

 

We started with this…

And had to expand to this interim size….

I plant too thickly and have to transplant. My theory is that if I just plant a few seeds, they won’t germinate. If I plant the whole packet in one pot, my pot will runneth over.

I still haven’t thinned out MOST of this. I really only transplanted the basil, zucchini, and kohlrabi.

Basil earned three new pots (and is still technically too thick… but it also too small for me to be a good transplanter)

The zucchini, on the other hand, took over several pots and are growing strong. I went from one clump of 6 plants, to 4 pots.. some with one, some with two. I figured even if they are a little crowded, we’re still going to have more zucchinis than we know what to do with when they start coming.

Things also seem to be doing quite well in my shoe organizer turned planter.

This as taken with the camera held way over my head… not a bad job if I do say so myself! :) It’s also the only way I can tell if anything is sprouting in the top level!

When I first planted this, I watered it nightly. Then, I started backing off a little to every other evening. We’ve had about a week of DOWNPOURS daily, so I was given a break and it is doing great! I worried that it was raining so hard that it would break things off, but everything (even my cilantro!) is doing well.

Starting at the bottom, I have mixed lettuce, basil, kale, cilantro, romaine lettuce. Each type was given an entire row. The bottom row was the only row where I planted an entire seed packet in the 4. It is VERY THICK. I think once it gets a little bigger that I’ll pull them out and divide them up. I’m not sure how well it will do so crowded. Again, I needed some restraint and needed to follow the directions. (I did neither)

Hopefully, next year when I’m planning our pot garden, I’ll read this for reference and will take my own advice…

 

we’ll see….