Maybe Alethea doesn’t know Sesame Street as well as I thought she did.  Today she was looking at the Sponge Bob towel that was laying on the floor with clothes drying on it.  She pointed at Patrick (the starfish) and said “Emo!”  I tried telling her that it was Patrick, but she was very insistent that it was Elmo.  Oh well.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

I went to Sherwin Williams and bought paint for Alethea’s big girl room.  Instead of going with any of the pre-mixed options, I took my multitude of paint samples and whipped up my own color.  It only took me 8 or so tries and several hours to finally get the “perfect” gray.  Not too light, not too dark, not too blue, not too tan.  I think it’s all for the best, but the rule follower in me feels weird using an “unofficial” color.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

The baby has been moving around a lot more lately.  It seems to me that her movements are a bit less forceful than Alethea’s were at about the same age, but maybe that’s just me hoping not to have two very assertive children who are only 20 months apart.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

I know everyone says Alethea looks like Peter, and she does.  But the other day my sister-in-law Julie over at TheAnticsoftheThree22nds posted pictures of her youngest three at around 5-6 months.  I still think that the person Alethea looks most like is her cousin Roman.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m super excited about our Labor Day Block Party this weekend.  We are hosting it at our house.  I told Peter that I was going to do red, white and blue for the paper goods and decorations.  He said that Labor Day isn’t a red, white and blue kind of holiday.  What color is it then?

___________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m trying to score a cheap dresser and nightstand off craigslist for Alethea’s room.  Only problem is I think I need a really narrow dresser.  The wall seemed long enough for bunk beds and a dresser, but when I actually measured it out I ended up with about 27 inches for the dresser.  I really want to keep my room arrangement how I have it planned out though, so I think I’ll keep hunting for a narrow-but-tall dresser.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

A scene from lessons tonight…

Me to Piano Student: “This next piece is by Jacques
Offenbach.  Can you read the name of the piece?”

PS: “The Can-can.  Why does it say ‘Orpheus and the
Underworld’ under the title?”

Me: “Because ‘The Can-can’ is just one part of the
opera ‘Orpheus and the Underworld’.”

PS: “Who is Orpheus?”

Me: “He’s the main character.”

PS: “And ‘The Underworld’ is his band?”

Me: (Choking from laughter) “Um, not so much.”

Three weekends ago Peter and I tackled a home improvement project that has been ‘in process’ for quite some time.  (’Stalled out’ would be another way to put it.)  See, I found this cool idea online a while ago for how to make simple floating shelves using a hollow-core door.  Months before now, we bought the door, sawed it in half and then did nothing further.  At last I can say that after almost a year in our basement, the door halves have reappeared, been painted and are presently hanging as shelves in my piano studio/office.

Now that this last project has been completed, I am very pleased to announce that my office is finally done!  I have no further plans for improvements/decor, other than to someday replace the metal mini-blinds with something more attractive and maybe throw in a few more pictures or accessories (you didn’t honestly think I meant I was DONE done, did you?)

But since I am at least done for now, I thought I would mark this auspicious occasion by posting another before and after.  So, here is my office before we moved in:

And here is my office currently:

I am extremely pleased with how the room turned out, but I am very frustrated with my lack of ability to capture the room in a picture.  I think the room is well designed, cozy (it’s 10×10) and has a lot of visual interest, but after taking about 30 pictures, I still don’t have one that really feels like you’re in the room when you look at it.  How do you make a 2D image feel 3D?  I see it in magazines all the time, but I just can’t do it myself.  I’ve got some photography books on order from the library.  We’ll see if this problem is something a little ‘how-to’ help can fix.

So this past weekend I had a depressing project to work on.  Not really super depressing, but sort of…

See, when we moved into our house, I was already pregnant with Alethea, so we knew one bedroom upstairs was going to be the nursery and one is of course our master bedroom.  The third upstairs bedroom was designated as the “When we have more than one child, the oldest will move into this room” room.

Since our house has an office (for Peter) and an office/studio (for me), plus a guest room in the basement, I told myself before we moved in, “There is no reason anything needs to be put in the extra room.  I vow that when it is time to turn it into a ‘big kid’ room, it will be empty, with no clearing out to do!”

I’m sure you can all see where this is going…

First it was the blankets: “After all, we don’t really have a linen closet,” I told myself, “I’ll just keep these here for the time being.”  Then it was the laundry drying rack: “There really isn’t another good place for it.”  Of course it wasn’t a stretch then to start a pile for mending next to the drying rack.  After that came a folding table so I could work on my scrapbooking, which was naturally followed by a pile of scrapbooking stuff.  And once we got that far, there didn’t seem to be any point in pretending to have an ‘empty room’, so more papers and clothes and clutter followed.

Now we need a big kid room, now I regret not following through on my original plan, now I spent all of Saturday morning and most of the afternoon attempting to dig out of the mess I created and now I still have more cleaning to look forward to, because I couldn’t get through it all in one day.  Sigh…

The silver lining of it all is that while I was working on Alethea’s big girl room, Peter was cleaning out his office and between us, we managed to eliminate two paper grocery bags of paper from our home in one day.  Go us!

Okay, so as most of you know, I love shopping and I love interior design (generally an expensive combination).  The other day out of curiosity I visited the blog  www.withtwocats.com.  (The blogger, Lauren, had one of the finalist nurseries on the contest I entered and I was checking out more pictures of her baby’s room.)  One of the main things she does on her blog is post “idea boards” where she takes a theme/color scheme/idea and then applies it to a room (bedroom/living room/etc) thus creating a picture collage of furniture and accessories.

It seemed like something I might enjoy doing, so I gave it a try.  Here is my very first idea board, which I put together for our Master Bedroom:

I’m not going to admit how long this took me, but I will say I had a blast doing it.  It’s like decorating a room for free, without any commitments or manual labor and you get to go “shopping” for stuff at any store and any price range you’d like!

We’re not actually going to be decorating the master bedroom any time soon, but now when it’s time I’ll be ready!

Well, at least not this time.  The top 5 nurseries have been posted, and mine is not among them.  (You can click here to view the finalists.)  Sure, I am a little bummed, especially since one of the top 5 looks more like a Victoria’s Secret store than a nursery, but over all, I’d say it was fun and I got some good ideas on how to spruce up the nursery for the next baby.

Thanks everyone for voting and for all the encouragement and positive comments!  I think that we were really close to winning!

Sorry for the yelling, but I entered our nursery in a contest on thebump.com and I can’t win without you!  There are a lot of cute nurseries on there and I really would love to win… the highest voted nursery gets a trip for 4 to Beaches Jamaica and a $500 Sherwin Williams gift card… not too bad, huh?

Here’s how you can help:

1) Go to: http://www.thebump.com/contests/our-real-nursery/story/153461/a-room-for-baby

2) Type in the confirmation words and then click on the “submit and vote” button to cast your vote for me

3) Vote once per day from July 14th to the 20th on every computer you own or have access to

4) Tell your friends/neighbors/family/people standing on street corners to vote for me too!  (Seriously, feel free to pass on the link…)

If you vote for me, I can’t promise to take you to Jamaica, but I will promise that if you ever need me to vote for you in something, I will certainly make that happen.

Thanks everyone!!!!

We had a relaxing, if not terribly interesting 4th of July.  After going to church in the morning, it was nap time for me and Alethea while Peter watched the Twins game.  Then we played in the yard for a while, had dinner and Alethea went to bed.  We decided not to keep her up for fireworks, since she was likely to be scared of them anyway.  Later, Peter and I tried to have a fire in the backyard, but we gave up after the mosquitoes drove us inside.  Like I said, relaxing, though not that interesting.

I did get a kick out of seeing Alethea dressed up in her 4th of July outfit though:

Alethea had fun taking off the outfit and running around in her Splash and Play mat:

And Peter and I both cracked up over the mat’s warning label:

“No Diving”… Is that really necessary on a toy that has 1 inch of water at its deepest point?  Apparently someone in the Fisher Price legal department thought so.

These are the things I would officially ‘like’ right now:

Miracle Gro Miracid (for Acid Loving Plants)
Why? Because with two applications over three weeks time my Azaleas went from looking like they were on death’s door to being full and green and gorgeous!

Mustard Lime Salad Dressing
Why? Even though it sounds like a weird flavor combination, Peter and I have been eating salads non stop since I got this fantastic recipe from my Grandmother Ruth.  It’s yummy!

Mederma Stretch Marks Therapy Lotion
Why? Because it works!

Front Porches with Rocking Chairs
Why? Simply put, there is no finer way to spend a lazy summer hour in the afternoon than rocking away with your baby girl.

Breyer’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Ice Cream
Why? Real Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup chunks in peanut butter ice cream with a fudge swirl… need I say more?

I promised a 4 week update on my Mederma Stretch Marks Therapy experiment and it has now been 5 weeks, so even though it’s a bit late, here’s what’s up:

Pros:
Just one pro I was really looking for… results!  And I am happy to report that I’ve got them!  I actually started to see results after just two weeks.  My stretch marks have improved drastically in color (they are much lighter than they were).  They have also smoothed out a bit, although the change in texture isn’t as noticeable as the change in color.  But I’ve still got 7 more weeks before I hit the 12 week “full results” mark, so hopefully there is more change coming.

Cons:
1) I stand by what I said in my first review about it being expensive, but you can save yourself a couple bucks if you buy it on amazon.com.  Or if you’re bolder than I am, go the the drug store and open the box before you buy it.  There is a coupon inside.

2) The information inside the box says that a tube is only supposed to last 4 weeks, so they expect you to buy 3 tubes to complete your treatment.  I’m on week 5 and there still seems to be quite a bit in my tube, but just know that they don’t intend for you to make it all the way through treatment with one purchase.

3) In my first review I told you how bad it smells, and it does, but I think at least I figured out why.  The second ingredient (after water) is onion bulb extract.  Perhaps perfumey fragrance is better than smelling like an onion… maybe…

I’ll write another review at 12 weeks or when my tube of lotion runs out, whichever comes first.  Stay tuned.