Jack challenged me to a duel. Or needed to see that mommies can do anything daddies can do... Please note my leveled perfection:
Jack's new closet is finished and awesome and spacious. I am Mommy, hear me use power tools.
I taught myself to knit this week so this weekend I started making a woolie. (Which is a wool diaper cover and is waterproof. It's also fuzzy and precious.)
I celebrated International Handstand Day on Sunday, June 26th. 
Fortunately, now we have a choice. While it's impractical to wash my car from my rain barrel I can water the veggies and fill the kiddie pool with rain water. We put it right next to the garden to make it even easier to get the water where it needs to go.
The tomato plant likes it.
The garden likes it.
The radishes like to be rinsed in it.
I love that this change is more eco friendly. I love that we're saving money (even if it's just a little bit). But I really love that this makes caring for the veggie garden even easier. No more lugging the hose out there and then needing to wind it neatly back up when I'm done. This is one of those "Why didn't we do this before?!" type of projects. It's genius!
Candle holder.
Deconstructed.
Becomes a light.
Tuesday we made an early run to Lowes for some mulch.
It's not that I wish my husband ill health, but while he was home sick he managed to build a gate for the deck. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this! It's going to make lazy summer afternoons relaxing on the deck much more relaxing! 
I didn't have a particular rug in mind, but I knew I wanted it to continue our warm and neutral decor. I liked that the pattern was large and graphic, and I liked that the chocolate brown background would match the chocolate brown curtains. I also liked that the other color was similar to the color of the floors, I love those floors and I didn't want a rug to out shine them. 
You might notice the pattern on the rug speaks to the pattern on the comforter. Genius!! I tell you! 
We have these floating stairs that lead from the main level to the second floor. It was one of the features that attracted us to the house. When we removed the carpeting upstairs and down and put in bamboo it was painfully clear the carpeted stairs had to go. Carpeting on stairs feels wrong to me, which is silly because it's very common. But I grew up in a house with wood stairs so maybe there's something familiar about that.
Turned out the wood was totally something we could work with! The grain of the wood and the integrity of the facades were undamaged although they were covered in drips of paint and stain and other construction-type products. We had to work pretty hard to clean the paint and drips of glue and stain off the stairs (you can still see the paint smeared all over the riser). Each stair required quite a bit of TLC but eventually we cleaned off the treads and they looked pretty good.
We went to the store and picked up a stain that matched the wood on the railings. It's called Early American. One coat of stain and two coats of polyurethane and voila! the treads were looking great the riser needed major priming and painting but that was no biggie. We just used the same glossy white that we have on all the trim.
This project required quite a bit of sweat equity but didn't cost much money at all.
We had our reasons....
All the cuts to the boards were made in the house, no matter how diligent my mom may have been with the shop vac there was a dusting on all three floors that had to be cleaned every night before bed.
Hard wood looks so much better against that wood railing... and it's much better for allergies too!
Before: (This was the earliest version of Jack's big boy room, circa Oct. 2009)
After:
Before: (vintage nursery- this pic was taken pre-Jack)
After:
Before: (This is from our real estate listing- hence the fancy color balancing and wide angle camera. Photo credit: Husband)
After: (This was taken by me, nothing fancy tonight, before we have our new rug and before the new wall art goes up... more on that soon!)
It's finished, and it's fabulous!!
I've been wanting to try a Video Blog so here is my Vlog debut. A day in the life of a DIY home renovation. I have play by play photos but what people really want to know is what it is like to live in it when it's all happening.
The Husband's parents and my parents were crucial to making this while thing happen. His parents helped with demo and my parents helped with construction. I feel like I didn't help much but I was benched from the project last week... but more on that later. Uncle Tom's girlfriend Alba and her parents provided a pleasant respite between demo and construction. Before and after photos and other stuff to come. So much to tell....
So here's some cuteness to brighten your sunny, warm, flip-flop wearin' Valentines Day. The boys spent part of the morning geeking out to Daddy's computer. See-through sides and flashing lights = happy boys. 
This coming weekend we're going to be putting hardwood floors upstairs (we already put them in on the main level). To tie it together we're taking the carpet off the stairs and then sanding and staining the wood to match. 
This was how I was doing laundry. Dark room, dingy carpet, no storage, no fun! I was paranoid about dropping anything on the rug when i mived it from the washer to the dryer. It just felt unsanitary. (Yes, I'm a clean freak so my definition of unsanitary is.... picky.) But ugh! What domestic goddess wants to work in these conditions?!
Since we're not ready to grow things yet the least we can do is make the soil rich. Instead of ordering one of those super cute composter bins on amazon (which is really tempting, BTW) I'm using something I already have. This is both green and frugal. Go me!
I recognized my limitations when it came to handcrafted spice racks. Limit reached. Amazon ordered. Very cheap, so points for frugality. And now instead of searching for what seems like ever for the friggin' garlic powder, every spice we have (which is many) is now in plain sight!
In order to streamline our lives we're putting most of our DVDs on our hard drive and storing them in the attic. We don't need the cases sitting around taking up space and honestly with those fancy new pull-down stairs putting things in the attic is kinda fun!
Finally our fourth new project so far this year has been to give some love to the storage room. We used to just stack things on top of the washer and dryer, and then when they ran they would vibrate and whatever was on them would fall crashing to the floor. Not good.
The living room & entry, view from above.
Entry... clearly we need new glass in the door...
The living room.
The dining room with painted white brick hearth meant for a free standing wood stove.
1. I put on my pre-pregnancy jeans Sunday- and they FIT! (Comfortably, with only minimal muffin top.)
2. Despite my daily snuggles with Henry, Jack isn't jealous he just wants to participate. Which means double the snuggles! Also in spite my frequent tummy-to-tummy cat naps with Henry he's still sleeping 5 hours at a time, alone in his pack n play every night.
3. We replaced the bushes in the front yard for the third spring in a row. I'm going to move before I have to do this again, it's driving me nuts!
An hour after breakfast we had this.
A hyacinth-squishing incident leads to indoor spring-smellyness.
At about lunchtime we had this.
In the afternoon Uncle Tom graced us with his silliness. (also seen below.)
At 5pm we had this. Sweet!