I hate being sick. Like this weekend. I spent a lot of it on the couch with a horrible headache and achy muscles. More than not feeling good though, I hate falling behind around the house. What a mess!
I’m glad to be feeling better, but I’ve been playing catch up in my cleaning, so forgive my lack of blogging.
I’m going to go finish washing the dishes and then I’m going to do this:
Nighty, night!
I loved the shoes I wore on my wedding day.
They were cute, comfortable, inexpensive and best of all, they were the perfect shade of ivory to match my antique-white dress.
Since that day, I’ve happily worn them many times, despite the fact that I’ve had to give them occasional hair cuts to remove all the loose threads that were sprouting out of them.
Then today, I took a long hard look at them and decided that they were past a simple trim job.
They looked tired. They looked done.
So despite the happy memories and in defiance of my ‘keep anything sentimental’ genetics, in the garbage they went.
Fare thee well, my wedding shoes! You were great, perfect even, and I’m sorry to see you go!
Happy fifth anniversary, Peter!
Can you believe it’s been half a decade already?
You are the best thing that ever happened to me!
I love you!
XOXOX,
Me
Peter always dreads it when I say those words. Like when I found this chair on Craigslist for $30.
“It’s sooo perfect for Alethea’s room!” I said.
“But it’s orange!” Peter replied.
“I’ll just reupholster it,” I told him. “It’s just the seat. How hard could it really be?”
First I popped off the gold nail head trim. Piece of cake!
Then I did some measuring and bought a yard of some gorgeous teal velvet.
I showed my mom the fabric.
“You’re planning on taking off the orange leather for a pattern?” she asked.
“No,” I told her, “I think I’ll just wrap the velvet over the other fabric. The velvet is a bit thin, so it might be good to have another layer. I mean, it can’t be that hard, right?”
Turns out thin velvet rips when it’s stretched too tight. Also turns out it is hard to cut fabric for a seat without a pattern.
Lessons learned. Always listen to your mother! I purchased new fabric (a pink brushed twill) from the upholstery section of the fabric store. Then I pulled off the orange leather for a pattern.
While the chair was already pretty comfortable, I took the opportunity to add some additional foam to the front edge for a touch more padding.
Then I closed her up…
… and cut out the fabric for the new seat.
After I cut the fabric out using my *ahem* pattern, I stretched, stapled, smoothed, trimmed, stapled, stretched and stapled some more. After several hours (yup, even with a pattern, it was harder than I thought it would be) I had this:
Then I nailed in a couple hundred upholstery nails, which actually wasn’t that bad. (Finally, something goes smoothly!) And here is the ‘new’ chair in Alethea’s room:
And fabric lovers, never fear. I salvaged a big chunk of the teal velvet and finished the bottom of the chair. I wasn’t originally planning on doing the chair’s underside, but with fabric already in hand and the thought that Alethea is as likely to end up under the chair as she is to be sitting on it, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do.
So, it was harder than I thought it would be, but I think the results were totally worth it!
I almost want to tackle another upholstery project again soon. But not quite.
Today Alethea and I decided to try a few new things.
THING 1
Since I grew up living in a townhouse, there are many yard related tasks that I didn’t do as a child. For example, I’ve never mowed a lawn and I don’t recall ever having jumped into an enormous pile of leaves. Today wasn’t a lawn mowing day, but the leaf thing seemed like a possibility. However, instead of trying it myself, I was content to let Alethea have this first for her own.
Here are a few pics from Alethea’s inaugural leaf pile jumping:
THING 2
Alethea has been really into reading the Frances books lately, especially Bread and Jam for Frances. I started noticing how in several of the books the characters mention cream cheese sandwiches: cream cheese and chive, cream cheese and jam, cream cheese, cucumber and tomato on rye, etc. Cream cheese isn’t something that I’ve ever eaten as a main sandwich ingredient, but it didn’t sound too bad, so today we gave it a whirl. For lunch, Alethea and I had cream cheese and tomatoes on whole wheat bread with a sprinkling of dill for zip. Turns out cream cheese and tomatoes make for a pretty tasty sandwich. I enjoyed mine and Alethea liked hers so well, she requested and was given a second serving! I can see cream cheese becoming a staple around here.
THING 3
Has anyone else noticed how crazy expensive chicken is getting? I’ve gotten to the point that I’m doing my weekly meal planning after I go to the grocery store, just because I can’t bring myself to buy chicken if it’s not on sale. Boneless skinless breasts haven’t been marked down lately, but whole chickens were, which is how I ended up with a bird that needed roasting. Never roasted a whole chicken before, but I’m always up for a culinary adventure. So armed with some advice and a recipe that I sort of followed, I whipped up this beauty for dinner tonight:
I think I did reasonably well for my first attempt. The meat was incredibly tender, practically falling off the bone. The flavor was good too, but not anything to write home about. Alethea gave it two thumbs up though and it’s hard to get her to eat chicken that’s not in a nugget form, so I will definitely need to try this again.
So that was our day of new things. What about you? Have you done/tried anything new lately? A new food, a new hobby, a new route to work? Is there something that people would be surprised to learn that you’ve never done? Or have you ever based your menu choices off of a piece of children’s literature? Please, do tell!
Today Peter, Alethea, Lydia and I went to a farm for a little autumnal family fun. My friend Katie and her daughter Madelyn joined us and together we had an exhausting, but delightful morning.
First stop: The mobile chicken coop. Alethea and Madelyn both had fun making chicken noises, although at one point Madelyn was heard to say, “Rrrroooooar!” It was super cute!
Next up: The pedal cars. Daddy took Alethea for a spin! Then Mommy took a picture. (Can you tell someone has recently reached the ‘likes to make goofy faces for the camera’ phase?)
And then: Into the corn maze! Here’s Katie and Madelyn navigating the path. Amazing that we went through it with three kids under three years of age and didn’t lose anyone, huh?
A brief pit stop: Alethea was interested to discover that we were in fact walking through ‘corn on the cob’ and was happy to share her knowledge with Madelyn.
However: The novelty of walking through corn on the cob wore off quite a ways before we reached the exit. The scenery didn’t change much and the sun was beating down on us, which is a weird thing to write about an outdoor adventure in Minnesota in OCTOBER, but it was hot. And uncomfortable. So we cheated, looked at the map and got out in the most direct way we could. But, right outside the maze, the good times continued at the giant spider’s web.
Take two: After Peter got tired of bouncing Alethea in the web (which was definitely before Alethea was tired of being bounced!) Lydia took a seat and I snapped a picture of my girls sitting together (a rare occurrence, let me tell you!)
Sit down for a second: All of us together on a bright sunny day seemed to be the perfect opportunity to try and capture a family portrait. We have two little girls who don’t necessarily smile on cue, especially when they are hot and hungry. Fortunately, they do both like being tickled.
And then: We discovered the girls’ favorite fall activity, the corn box! ‘What’s a corn box?’ you ask. It’s like a sand box, but filled with feed corn. Alethea couldn’t get enough of the scooping, filling and digging. I told Peter I want one for our back yard. It was so much less messy than a sand box.
A jealous moment: We didn’t put Lydia in at first because we thought we’d spend the whole time fishing kernels out of her mouth, but she was clearly feeling left out of the corn box fun.
Still in the box: And who could blame Lydia for feeling grumpy about being excluded. Alethea was having a blast and Madelyn thought the corn box was pretty cool too.
One more in the box: So we let Lydia join us, and what do you know, she was pretty good about not putting the corn in her mouth (although all bets were off when it came to the buckets and scoops).
A wake up call: After Lydia almost fell asleep in the corn box, we decided we’d better finish up our farm tour before we reached the point of complete exhaustion.
Moving on: As we walked across to the barn yard to visit the animals, I tried to tactfully remove corn from places the good Lord never intended it to go (I bet we’ll be finding random kernels around the house for weeks after this). It turned out to be a good thing we had corn on us though because we visited the chickens, sheep, horses, ducks and geese, all of whom were looking for handouts. The funniest part of the visit was Alethea constantly talking to the animals as though they could understand her. “Hello, Mr. Donkey! How are you?”
And finally: No fall farm visit would be complete without a few pumpkins, so we purchased some little ones from the garden center and then took pictures on the big pile outside.
More pumpkins: Madelyn willingly took her turn on the pile of gourds.
Last, but not least: Alethea got her picture taken, but only after I told her she could have ice cream if she would sit on the pumpkins and smile for the camera. Perhaps I should have specified what kind of a smile was required to earn her reward.
Home again, home again: After devouring our well-deserved lunch at Dairy Queen, we headed home for naps all around! It was a glorious day!
Yeah, I know, my birthday party is old news, but I have a couple photos I’ve been meaning to post, so please bear with me as I one last time relive the turning 30 fun.
My best friend, Katie and I had fun dressing up
Alethea had the funniest expression on her face when everyone was singing Happy Birthday
Here's the guys at the bar
The chocolate covered strawberries were a hit, especially with Alethea
It was a great night!
Okay, so a few months back when I started to think about what I wanted to do for my 30th birthday, I decided that there was no better way to celebrate a milestone birthday than to throw a big cocktail party. Maybe I’ve just watched a few too many design shows on HGTV, but I felt like in planning the decor for my birthday bash, I ought to find some object to inspire me. And what is more sophisticated and fabulous than a peacock feather?
Using the turquoise and chartreuse as my color palate, I decorated the main floor of our house, turning the dining room into an appetizer buffet, the living room into a bar and the kitchen table into a display of delicious desserts:
For a simple, yet striking, cake topper, I spray painted wooden numbers in a hammered gold, had Peter attach them to barbeque skewers and stuck them in the top cake along with a peacock feather floral pick I found at Michaels.
My good friend Deb, who is a genius with flowers helped me make arrangements for the high-top tables in the living room. This one was my favorite:
To make the decor more personal, Deb and I scattered photographs of me through the years around the room. My sister ran this one over from my parent’s house and I can’t believe how much it looks like my sweet little Lydia!
We mixed a lot of silver-dollar eucalyptus into all the arrangements, which not only looked great, but gave the whole house a wonderful, but subtle, fragrance.
And of course, no party would be complete without a great favor, so I ordered truffles from a friend who makes the most amazing chocolates and wrapped them up with a pretty green ribbon. They were just the right send off!
I was so happy with how everything turned out and the best part is that now I have all of these beautiful decorations around my house to enjoy!
To view more BobbleHeadBaby celebrations, visit my Parties Page!
On Saturday we had my 30th birthday party at our house. It was a super fun evening and I personally thought it was absolutely perfect. Just what I wanted it to be!
Saturday night after the party, we just managed to get the left-over food put away before we crashed. So, Sunday was spent cleaning up the house, since not only did we host a party, we also hauled all of our living room furniture to the garage and set up cocktail tables and a bar in our house. Needless to say, it was a delightful, but extremely exhausting weekend.
So this morning, after Lydia, Alethea and I drove the rentals back to the party store, we came home and decided to kick back and have an alfresco lunch under the pop-up tent that is still set up on the back deck, and enjoy the centerpiece left from the party:
After checking out the food situation in the fridge, I ended up filling my plate with an oddly satisfying combination of one mini egg roll, one peanut-satay chicken skewer, a nice helping of apple pecan lettuce cups and a slice of carrot cake.
I didn’t have enough chocolate to dip all of the strawberries I bought for the party, so Lydia got to eat some of the undipped extras along with her puffs and pureed carrots:
Alethea had reheated chicken nuggets left from the kids party in the basement along with veggies from the crudites platter and two cream-cheese and cucumber finger sandwiches. The later of which she completely devoured:
While I can’t say I’m dying to throw another cocktail party in the very near future, I will say that it’s not such a bad thing to have a beautifully decorated house, yummy (I just almost typed yuppy, but that might apply too) food in the fridge and a plate of chocolate truffles to keep you company while blogging.
So if the smell of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting comes wafting through the computer, don’t mind me, I’m just reveling in the the post-party spoils!
Today is my 30th birthday.
Yikes! There I said it. I’m 30.
I didn’t have a major emotional breakdown today or anything dramatic like that, but it does feel weird to think that I’m not in my 20s anymore. My 20s were good. I liked them.
In my 20s I…
Got a Bachelors Degree in Philosophy and Sacred Music
Spent a year after college wondering what in the world I should do with my life
Moved to Philadelphia and had two fantastic years to learn and grow in a variety of roles
Realized over the course of the two years that if I didn’t marry Peter, I’d live to regret it
Moved back to Minnesota and got married
Lived in a 900 sq ft log cabin infested with lady bugs
Got pregnant
Bought a house (thankfully NOT infested with lady bugs)
Had a baby
Got pregnant again
Had another baby
Got back to my pre-children weight
And here we are now…
I changed a lot in my 20s and my life did too. I lived in a total of 8 different places, got married and had two children.
I almost feel weird to think that my 30s will probably be a lot more predictable. The plan is to hit 40 living in this same house with these same people (minus our friend Jacob who lives in our basement, he should be gone by then). Maybe there will be another baby in the mix… we’ll see… and I suppose children keep things interesting, but over all, the next decade will likely be much more… what’s the right word… ‘domestic’ than my 20s.
I’m rambling now, sorry. I probably should have come up with some fabulous list of 30 great things I plan to do while I’m in my 30s or something inspirational like that, but 30th birthday or not, it’s still Monday and the mental energy isn’t there at the moment. (Are other people’s kids always cranky on Monday, because mine sure are!)
Anyway, those are my honest, but very random thoughts about turning 30.
Happy Monday to you all!