School and Tables

Well we started school this week.

I’ve been pretty nervous about facing home schooling with a newborn in our house. But to be fair, I was nervous thinking about any kind of school with a newborn around. Long ago when we started talking about adding another family member, and we also were weighing out our schooling options for our family -- any and all options of having a five year old and a baby sounded way too hard to me. I didn’t think I’d have it in me to get us all dressed and to school on time, and I didn’t think I’d have it in me to teach. I initially thought we should time having a baby with either our oldest being four or six just so that I didn’t have this particular combination. I was really scared of it.

And well, not counting that attempt we made to start school a while ago while I was pregnant and sick (I stayed too sick to keep up with teaching then), we’ve only done 3 days of school so far. But I gotta say I’m pleasantly surprised at how well it’s gone.

Internet disclaimer: I’m pro-school no matter which way you chose to implement it. I’ve attended school at home, public, and private schools and I think they all have pros and cons, but overall are all good things. So... as I share my happy thoughts on how it’s gone so far in our house, I’m not sneakily implying anything about any other family’s schooling choices -- just sharing my thoughts on ours the last three days. :)  I also know I’m in for harder days, and three days are by no means a big sample size.

Anyway, right now I’m really happy we chose to homeschool this year. (We are taking it one year/one day at a time.) After I got over my first day jitters (why I had those again, even after attempting to start school a while ago, I have no idea) I’ve actually really enjoyed our school time so far. This curriculum seems really good. I haven’t been bored and Jasmine has really seemed to take to it. (We went with My Father’s World. Which is Charlotte Mason based, but a bit more standardized-school-like. It seemed like a nice middle ground to me. And I liked that I didn’t have to try and put the curriculum together myself -- I didn’t feel ready for that.)

I’ve been surprised at how fun it feels to me to watch Jasmine learn. I kinda thought I’d be bored and rushing things. But so far, I’ve actually been quite entertained watching her gears turn.

Ruby naturally wants to play along for story time, song time, and craft time. The rest of the time she heads off to play dolls on her own. Which I think is great.

And I’ve been seriously pleased to learn that (at least for now) Bronson will take an awesome morning nap in the swing giving us plenty of time to learn without baby multi-tasking.

 

This week we are learning about leaves and the letter L.

My favorite perks so far about homeschooling are:

• Jasmine and I are both very happy to keep our time together at home going.
• No rushing out the door to class.
• Getting to keep our baby-moon cocoon intact 
• Siblings get included
• No dress code -- I don’t have to worry about postpartum clothes and getting out the door. Bronson can spit up all over himself, and/or me, anytime he likes and it won’t trip us up. Ruby can keep her princess jammies on 24/7 (her clothing option of choice). AND Jasmine takes full advantage of this, as she has so far done school in her underwear (This kid -- clothes just fall off her body at a moments notice.) (Thankfully I do know she will keep them on in public -- she’s just taking the home team advantage here.)
• Pillow forts in the class room
• The ability to not worry about missing class. My grandpa is very sick right now, and yesterday we were able to just head out of town to see him, without thinking school thoughts.  We were up WAAAY past bedtime to accomplish this, and I didn’t have to think about how that would affect our next day. I was so happy we had the chance to go see him while we can.

Here’s our class room. 

I was gonna clean it all nice for you, but felt bad to take apart the girl’s newest pillow fort. (I had already taken one apart today for story time. I didn’t think it’d be cool to do it twice.)

Here’s the new shelf in action.

 

If you are curious what’s on here, read this, if not, scroll down.

Top row: I have some pencils and markers, some alphabet stuff in the blue box. The white box has a few boxes of puzzles in it. And then our weekly stash of libary books on the subject matter. (The curriculum gives you a large list of books you can implement this way -- you just have to go check them out from your local library. So far my library has had every one on these lists.)

Second row: The big basket is full of craft supplies.
The file folder is where I keep some extra ideas to keep Ruby busy if she wants to hang out with us more. (Do-a-dot coloring and what have you.) The rest is just kinda stuff I set there today. But it’s my teachers manual, and our alphabet cards.

Bottom Row:Some books for me. Our 100 jars. We add straws each day to count to 100. And the small basket has construction paper and a bunch of extra workbooks (that we had from random grabs at Target etc) incase we wanna throw in some extra work.

Inside the cabinet: my main file box of our worksheets for the year and a few magazines we can use to cut up. And our Cuisenaire rods.

Across the room I kinda just have this spot set up like this for now. It’s just some random craft stuff, coloring books and crayons. I intended this spot to be for them to get out stuff any time of day they’d like.

Here’s our couch where we read for story time. (I got it for $25 on craigslist! And it’s seriously amazingly comfortable. And I like having a crazy flower couch. I really do.)
(The cushions propped up that way are “creating a pool inside there for the mermaids.”)

And Jasmine had been gifted that easel, so I figured it’d be great in the space.

The girls spent reading time as “mermaids” with their tails on that I had made them for Christmas. (Those were a major success! They play in them SO MUCH.)

So that’s that, about school.

Now I wanna show you my living room again.

That table I had bought from target (showed you last week) --- I decided it wasn’t working. So it got returned.

And I moved another table we had to that spot and I love it there.

This is a table from my grandpa who’s so sick right now. So I’m feeling very sentimental over it. I also genuinely think it’s a really pretty table.

I’ve basically been playing musical tables at our house lately. (That one you saw in our homeschool room was acting as our family room coffee table. But I wanted it for a kid writing space. And that started a whole domino effect for all our tables.) As we get the house in order, I keep rearranging side/coffee tables. I hadn’t thought to use this one here -- but it’s perfect!

I told you last week I had binge watched a ton of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” -- and I really fell in love with Joanna’s use of greens in all her designs. So I jumped on that band wagon.

I went to Goodwill and bought some pretty containers. And then I went to Hobby Lobby and bought some of their floral stems of just greenery (while it was on 50% off sale of course!) Bronson tried to be patient with my indecisive self while I figured out which “plants” to buy. (We were both exhausted by the end of that day. But it was worth it -- the greens add so much to the room.)

On the side table I found this black container, which is actually plastic! Kid level + pretty plastic = winning. And for inside it, I bought this pre-made plant blob made for setting into containers at Hobby Lobby. I’m in love with it!

The horse is a $3 goodwill statue spray painted with flat white paint. It’s breakable -- but cheap. So I call that winning as well. (It will probably move when Bronson is bigger, but the girls are great with it.)

The rest of the greens are for over the fire place.

We still haven’t hung that wood carving. So after that I will actually get these containers and plants styled. For now they are just plopped up there. But I still love looking at them, even unstyled.

Side note: I’m not sold on that lamp -- but I forgot we had it (it was hiding in the sunroom’s mess), and it looks infinitely better than the bare toped sliver stick I had in there before -- so for now it’s an improvement that I’m happy about.

I also totally forgot to show you the floor cushions I made at the end of my pregnancy.

Here they are.

Here’s their story:

I had bought another $20 couch off craigslist that I wound up not keeping. But before it was shipped off to the farm (literally -- we burned it at my parents farm) I kept it’s cushions. This actually turned out to be a pretty cool thing as cushion foam inserts cost more than $20. Probably close to $20 per cushion?

To make these I used a cotton woven blanket that I thrifted. And sewed it to an old curtain that came with the house that I didn’t like (I thought the blanket needed something stiff and not stretchy behind it.) I decided to stitch it on with a flower shape. So I drew it with a pencil onto the back and then zig-zag stitched it with navy thread.

It was kinda just a random artistic moment for me spurred on by desperately waiting to be done being pregnant. 

Then I just used three different home decor fabrics I liked that coordinated, to make the edges.

I took apart the old couch cushion covers to make a pattern, and figure out how to make these.

I’m keeping them in the back of the room here. (But YOU KNOW they wind up all over the house, due to pillow forts.)

(I plan to recover that pink bean bag chair -- but I haven’t figured out what direction to go there.)

This room is feeling GOOD!

And moving onto our family room decor events of late….

While looking for inspiration for my bookshelf, I came across this lovely space.

The couch is the same color as our family room couch. (Ours is another craigslist find... $300 for a nice sectional.)

I’ve kinda had a hard time with the color of this couch. (Its tan but can give off a green look in these iphone photos -- the closer up of the arm in the second photo shows the color best.) 

(I promise that someday I intend to take nice-camera photos of my house. Get all pinteresty up in here.) 

I painted the walls in here before we bought this couch and I feel like they don’t quite sync up. But I really like the wall color, and really don’t feel like painting it again.

So when I saw this lady’s room I was so excited. Her walls seem similar to mine (hard to tell, it looks a bit different in every photo.) And her space is so pretty!

I LOVE the black and white on her couch. It totally changes everything. Her living room is also a lot of black and white furniture.

It gives me so much inspiration for our room.

(This space is gonna be covered in toys for the forseeable future, but I still enjoy having a space look good underneath that.)

(Also we are getting better at cleaning up our toys each night -- mostly due to Blake encouraging them, he’s so great. But I took this photo midday while rocking a baby -- hence the mess and lame angle.)

Since I had taken away our coffee table (to use for school) I needed a new one. After a bunch of craigslist shopping and finding nothing. I ran into ReStore on Saturday. (Poor Bronson -- I shopped a TON that day.) And I saw these two end tables and knew I wanted to use them as our coffee table.

They are in need of paint. But I really like them.

They are "ming style” or “chow style” or “kang tables” with those curved legs. (Mine are very likely a crazy 1980’s, maybe 90’s(?)  non-accurate version of them, but who cares, I’m excited about them.)

Normally the legs are more open than these -- but there’s variations around.

Here is some proof that I’m not crazy to think these are cool.

via

Via

I got mine for $30 a piece. Which to be honest, is slightly pricey in my book. (Since it’s $30 times 2.) I like to go big AND go inexpensive with my stuff.  But I went for them at a slightly higher price point because:

• I have a hard time finding a table that is a nice size for us. I don’t want one that is a typical size -- I want more floor room for the kids. These give me that.
• I like that there is two -- it gives us more options both for layout, as well as for kid playing surfaces.
• And these are REALLY sturdy. (Surprisingly so.) The kids (or adults) can sit on them, or whatever to them, and they won’t budge.
• Also, if I ever wanted to, they would really easily turn into ottomans if I added a cushion to the top. So they can grow with us, if they need to.

I plan to paint them semi-gloss white. I just have to find the time. (Which I feel the urge to SOON!)

In other room news:

I’m also shopping for fabric to try and make our couch cooler with our throw pillows. (You can see my endless rabbit trails I’m going down here.) 

I wanna do something spunky with mix and match. (I also wanna get that black and white in somehow.)

via

(It probably won’t be AS spunky as this picture. But I really like this picture!)

As far as pattern mixing goes...

I thought this was helpful.

So,

we'll see what I come up with!

I’m excited to get this space moving towards done.

I still wanna paint the china cabinet. Likely white.

And a few other tables (side and random other table against the wall) likely black.

And the buffet the TV sits on -- I go back and forth on if I could paint it or not. 

Normally I’m brave about paint -- but this piece is so fancy I just don’t know if I could make that first move. We will see. I mostly want the furniture to stay black and white -- and it’s almost black so, once everything else is painted it might look perfect to me and I won’t need to worry if I should paint it or not.

Goings On

So I just thought I’d kinda give you an update on what I’ve been up to and how things are going.

Baby stuff is going really well. So well in fact I don’t feel like I have much to say about it.
     My little guy is already close to 12 pounds! And I’m really extra mushy gooshy over him. I regularly tear up when I’m looking at him -- just really soaking in how much work it took to get him here, and how much I love him.

    I was talking to a lady at church, who also had similar pregnancies and I was telling her that (the mushy gooshy-ness) and her response was to smile with heartfelt eyes, and a nod saying, “things of great price…”
  I tear up just thinking that thought. It’s so true. When you pay a lot for something, it means a lot. (This is not to imply anything negative about any parent-child relationship after an easy pregnancy. I have a couple girls I love like crazy, that I met after easy pregnancies.) But it got me thinking…if my experience of hardship and sacrifice gives me such a deep feeling of love, how much must God love us, after all the hardship and sacrifice he made for us. (What a lovely gift I have to comprehend that more now.)

I do feel like I’m coming to a lot more sound place emotionally on the whole experience. While pregnant, I really did start to lose it. My sanity was seriously on the brink, and I questioned a lot about life and God. Getting some time and perspective is really helping a lot.

The only real hard thing emotionally I’m fighting these days is the pull I feel to rush myself. I want to rush myself back into shape. I want to rush myself back into being on top of life. I want to rush myself into being better at everything I wish I was better at. I do this to myself on a normal basis. I can drive myself too hard on the whole. But I think what’s making it so tempting to do right now is the fact that I feel like I missed a whole year of life while I was pregnant. So I just kinda want things to snap right back into place ASAP, so I can kinda pretend that didn’t happen and I can get on with life. It’s not really a disappointment in myself. (Like getting into shape isn’t really so I can look fantastic. Or because I think I look gross. I really don’t feel that way.) It’s just kind of a defense mechanism against the disappointment of missing out on so much. (I want to look like I used to, so I can pretend I didn’t suffer. So I can say, “See I’m fine.”)
I keep having to reign myself back in. I keep having to remind myself that it did happen. That I was actually physically incapacitated for a whole year -- I need to respect myself enough to ease back into “normal” without hurting myself. When I want to jump head long into a calorie watching diet, I have to tell myself I need time to reacquaint with food in a regular way. When I want to finish my house (in every single way), be on top of our family meals, and rock homeschool lessons, all while nursing my newborn without breaking a sweat, I have to tell myself “You have a newborn. You are gonna be sitting in a rocking chair most the time. (Not doing all that stuff.) That’s ok."

Anyway, life with three.
I was able to take all three kids to Target the other day. First time out with three. (I don’t believe in rushing myself with this stuff. I’m really lucky that Blake will run for groceries and things, or stay home with the girls while I run out with Bronson. So I don’t actually have to do stuff with all three unless I want to thus far.)

I felt happy with the outfit I threw together for my postpartum self. 

My outfit is hardly pinterest worthy. And the evidence that I was just pregnant is still visible. But I just felt good in this. I like the tie on the oversized tee I feel like tying it right there is the prefect balance of kind of camouflaging the pooch, as well as giving it kind of a nod of respect.  I don’t always want to make it invisible. I earned that bad boy. (The shirt is just one from a pack of Men’s Hanes V Necks -- it’s nice having a whole lot of cotton shirts that can get soaked in many ways and not really care.) 

I also enjoyed the wide headband as something cute to hide messy hair and draw the eye up. 

(Sorry the picture quality is so terrible.)

Anyway -- The girls were amazing during the shopping. And somehow, I seriously lucked out that Bronson slept through the entire shopping trip. (He also gifted me in that he didn’t fill his diaper until the moment we walked through our front door once we were done -- how perfect of timing is that!?) So that day really boosted my confidence.

In food news. I’m pretty much normal now on how I feel about food. And wanted to get us as a family more on a normal food page. (Food was total survival mode while I was pregnant. We had no semblance of family meal times and eating the same things.) My hardest customer is Jasmine. She has the bulk of the allergies and, I think based on that (kind of as a survival instinct maybe,) she has a lot of specific food preferences, strong aversions, texture issues. She really is trying to not be picky or defiant, she’s able to talk about it rather clearly, it’s just really hard for her. Anyway. When you add that into the mix of so many foods being allergens figuring out what she can eat is exhausting.
    She doesn’t like a lot of foods. But she has one favorite. Macaroni and “cheese.”  (I make a gluten free, vegan mac and cheese she is obsessed with.) Only problem is, it has a lot of spices involved. So for about the first half of my pregnancy I just couldn’t bare for her to eat it -- the smell almost killed me (and it lingers on her for like a day and a half -- especially to a pregnant nose) so it had to be outlawed. I felt really bad about that, but I had to. After I got used to how sick I felt I was able to say she could eat it once a week on Friday night. So she has fallen in love with Fridays, counting down to it and rejoicing as we get closer to it.
   So, with her love of knowing Mac and Cheese comes on Friday, I thought she would enjoy knowing each day had a specific meal. And boy was a right. As soon as I told her I would have this system going on, she was immediately excited about dinner. (Which in the past as been more like torture.) It was actually quite shocking how fast she was on board with it all.
    I had kind of a hard time thinking of 5 different meals that we all would enjoy (I’m just shooting for weekdays for now.) But I tried. We just made it through the rotation.  And I have three winners ( 1. whole roasted chicken and roasted veggies, 2. Gluten free Spaghetti, 3. Mac and “cheese”) one acceptable meal (Tacos), and one total fail (Meatloaf -- Jasmine threw up after a sincere effort. Sadly the other three of us loved it. Ruby was gobbling it up.) And as much as I want to be disappointed by that fail -- I should be celebrating the other victories -- it’s a pretty big deal for us to have 4 meals go as awesomely as they did. So we are moving in the right direction.
     So once I figure out five meals we can consistently eat. My plan is to just stick to those for a good long while while we all get used to “normal” -- eating at a table together, all the same foods. (We have a LOT of ground to make up for after my pregnancy.) And after we get used to all that, I plan to try and expand Jasmine’s food horizons inside the realm of her safe foods. I think we are all really happy with the prospect of this course of action. I can already see it improving things for us. I’m pretty excited.


In house news. I finished reading that book I mentioned “Clutter Free With Kids.” And I loved it. It’s so inspiring and covers so much more than I thought it would -- I totally recommend it. It has me all sorts of fired up to clear up our stuff and live with less. The only problem is -- I have to pace myself, due to the fact I’m rather busy at the moment with a newborn.
    The cool thing is, this has me doing something unusual for myself. I’m such an all or nothing person. So my natural inclination is to tackle a whole room or closet at once. Get burned out, keep pressing through, feel crabby, make it work anyway. Get it done. Feel like I need to do it all over again with the next space until I am done. BUT….right now, that’s not even close to an option. So what I have been doing is using my five mins here, and my five mins there to tackle small stuff that’s been bugging me. For example: I have a bunch of raggedy washcloths mixed in with my new washcloths. So while Bronson was asleep, I went and grabbed them and removed them. I’ve been doing this all over the house as I get time and think of it. And I think it might be an entirely more effective way of doing things, rather than tearing up a whole space and hitting a brickwall before it’s done. So I’m kinda excited. I’ve actually made some decent headway in about a weeks time. Here’s the stuff headed to goodwill.

 (I still have TONS I want to get too -- but I’m positive thinking instead of panicking.)

With that going on I’ve been listing our big stuff on craigslist -- Our old green couch (we got when we lived in Iowa), our old kitchen table, some chairs, a lamp… I feel like the queen of craigslist. I feel especially good because I wound up having a bidding war for our old table (it was midcentry -- so hot right now) 

(I still loved it, it just wasn’t right for our current kitchen) and got more money for it than I listed it for -- and... more than I paid for it originally! (And that’s even with us having beat it up pretty bad, and even got pen on it -- which I disclosed.)

I love making good buys on used stuff -- you can almost always sell it again later for something around what you paid for it, making it almost free. And in this case, I made money!


So my house is clearing up (most of it’s been in the sunroom -- which we don’t really use yet -- as it’s still under construction -- but still clearing space is awesome!) And I’m making money! All around awesome.
I’ve used some of the money to get a few more cute-nesses for the living room. And wow is it suddenly seeming marvelous.

I saw this median thing at Target when I went there with the kids and couldn’t get it out of my mind. So I decided it would be the perfect thing to go over our living room fireplace.

We haven’t gotten it hung yet -- but I’m so in love with it. Blake likes it a lot too! 

I also got this side table from Target.

I was able to use a few discounts at once and get a really good deal.

I’m kinda half in love with it,  and half trying to get used to it.

I think once we have a rug, it will feel better to me.

(I have to figure out the rug still -- I don’t feel like I know how to shop rugs yet.)

And --- You should know this lamp is still on the “maybe” list.

It was free. And I like the size, but I hate the long metal pole that makes the lightbulb really high up above the base. It really makes it dated. (And makes shopping for a shade nearly impossible -- because that size is just generally out of style.)

So we are gonna attempt to take that pole out of the equation and see how it looks.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll shop for something else tall.

Please enjoy our ever-always-on-the-floor couch cushions -- the girls made a “bridge."

Oh yeah -- and -- in our kitchen -- we are working on finding a new light fixture.
It wasn’t in my game plan for now -- but our house had other ideas.
Blake and I were in bed and we hear this loud scary sound.
 I checked on the girls, he looked downstairs (I tried to keep from imaging a bunch of terrifying things.) He came up and said he couldn’t figure it out.
In the morning, I walked past the kitchen and noticed our florescent light was only halfway attached to our ceiling. One half was just hanging down loose. (Wish I took a picture.)
So we just took it down. I’m not sure how well it would have stayed in place now that the screw’s spot striped out. And neither of us liked the light. It was just time to remove it…. It did half the work. (Wow am I glad it didn’t fall down on any of our heads!)
We wound up putting an old fixture up in the space so we can have light to work with, while I figure out what to buy. 

It looks pretty wonky in there right now, with the gross green that was under the florescent light, and the round bulbs in this fixture. 

It’s pretty unsettling to my nerves. 

(Every time I walk in there I imagine trying to mud the ceiling, sand, mud again, prime, and paint it, all while taking 58 nursing breaks over the course of…. eternity. It won’t be that bad -- but the green rectangle whispers such awfulness to me.)

But at least I can see in there with this light up, so I have time to shop for something I actually want, instead of rushing the decision just so I can see.

It’s never easy looking for good light options for 8’ ceilings. Hopefully I succeed. Those florescent lights are ugly -- but they sure do provide a lot of light -- I’m not sure I’m gonna find something to fit the bill of pretty, not too big, and still bright enough. We will see.

Bookcase Makeover

I wanted to show you my bookcase makeover that I just finished. (Well, almost finished…)

We are gonna home school this year (kindergarten and “play along” kinda preschool), so I got the itch to make a space functional for that.

I needed something I could get my hands on right away. And I didn’t want too spend much money at all because in the long run we plan to build-in bookshelfs in this room. (We are calling it the Reading Room.) So this is kinda just a stand in for now.

After looking at all the thrift stores around (Grandma was in town so she was playing with the girls, making this a lot easier for me. But it’s still not so fast and easy with a baby in tow) and coming up with nothing even close. I saw this bookcase on craigslist for $20. To be honest with you, I wasn’t super sure about it. But the price was right and the dimensions were too. So I jumped on it.

Before

(Please enjoy our “pillow fort”-- aka pillows laying on the floor.)

This isn’t the most well made piece of furniture, it’s particle board, and the “fancy” squares are plastic. It’s kinda chipped up at the bottom. But I repeat -- $20, for a temporary solution.

So I got out the bonding primer and coated everything.

I wish I had given it a second coat to hide the brown fully -- it would have made the painting go faster. (I wound up needing three coats of paint to hide it.)
 Live and learn.

This was one of those projects I assumed would go fast. 

I do that with small stuff. 

Like closets and bathrooms.

I think, “Oh that will be a snap to paint, it’s so small.”

And then WAAAAYYY later I’m still cutting in around ALLTHESTUFF, and cursing myself for my idealism. Small stuff can be some of the most time consuming things to paint. When will I learn?

(I’d still be painting it, I’d just be less annoyed when I’m paced for a long haul than a sprint that’s never ending.)

So I thought I’d get this done on a Saturday.

But I wound up working on it Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday! 

ha!

I mean, yeah having a newborn slows me down. But it was also a lot of letting the paint dry. Latex paint doesn’t cure as well as oil, and if you coat too much too fast it will never actually cure through and always stay tacky. Which is not what I want on a bookshelf.

(Oil based paint would have been ideal -- but that stuff is too fumey, and the clean up is too much, for me to deal with in the newborn stage. (Normally I just throw away cheap brushes or rollers if I use oil based paint. But for all the breaks I needed to take to nurse the baby or rock him or whatnot -- I’d have thrown away like 20 brushes, because the paint dries fast -- not worth it right now.)

After painting on the white (would have been smart to do this first -- but it doesn’t really matter) I went and caulked around the shelves with white caulk. The backing was separated from the shelf just enough that I couldn’t fully hide the brown in the cracks. So this sealed that space shut and made the shelves look more pristine. I also caulked any spaces that could use some more precision on how it met up with the other pieces. It helped a lot to make the piece seem newer and nicer. After that dried I painted the back with the accent color.

This project took me way longer than I thought. But I love how it turned out. It was worth it.

I painted the whole thing with Valspar’s Satin paint in Swiss Coffee (our house's trim color.)

And then I painted the back with "Sea Glass". I had thought I was gonna go with a navy blue. But that wound up feeling heavy handed for a kids learning space. I liked how this green was happy, clean and modern. (It photographs more pale than real life.) And it plays nicely with the walls. And bonus -- I had some of this color left over from painting our laundry room cabinet. (I chose it before I remembered that -- so it was my actual choice, not a money saver choice.) So the paint on this thing wasn’t even an investment -- it was all on hand. Awesome.

Before / After

 

I’m loving it.

I think it looks wonderful in the room now. 

It makes the room feel bigger, and like the room has real function instead of “random room right there?"

(Ignore the green couch back through the doorway-- it’s listed on craigslist right now -- hoping it sells fast. I’m in purge mode.
Also ignore the weirdness of the floral couch set up-- the girls were building cushion towers.)

Here’s how it looks from our Living Room into the Reading Room. 

I can’t leave anything on the shelves yet (I left this basket for 30 secs for the pic) they will start to sink in and mar the paint -- it takes a week to cure. And at that point  I wanna add at least one coat of water based poly to just the shelf part --to help protect the paint.

So they are ALMOST done.

I’ll have to show it to you again, and maybe our whole little school space once it’s alls set up (But don’t expect too much it’s fairly basic.)

What do you think?
Pretty nice for $20, right?

One Month In! (With Three Kids)

Well Bronson is one month old today.
I can’t decide if that feels impossible (wasn’t he born a week ago?), or totally completely exactly right, or maybe even he’s older than a month (hasn’t he always been a part of our family?). Baby-time is confusing like that.

We are still all getting along super well. The girls adjusted so seamlessly. (I really do attribute that to how sick I’d been and how used to me being vaguely unavailable they had gotten.)
(By the way. My instagram feed has been ALL Bronson this month. It’s not that I’ve forgotten about my other two -- it’s just that they seriously strip down to their skivvies nonstop, I can’t keep them in clothes for the life of me (“I’m too hot” they claim -- not so sure it’s true…) so anyway, I’m not posting pics of them online till I get some with clothes on! lol.)

I’m having that postpartum “What do I do with the blog now?” thing. I felt that way after blogging my pregnancy with Ruby -- once she was born I felt really lost for, well a lot of things, but definitely what the point of my blog was. Having a baby just really changes a lot, and makes me question stuff.

So that’s kinda why I’ve not written for a bit.
That and, it’s hard to find the time to get both hands free.

But also, I haven’t felt like writing much on here because I'm just feeling really content in my head.
My head space was so terrible while pregnant and so sick, so blogging was a chance to kinda put some of that in order. Now that my head feels like me (which happened at maybe 3.5 weeks postpartum) I’m enjoying processing stuff just for me, without an audience.

I feel like I’m at the gate of some really nice clarity and I don’t really wanna miss the window of opportunity to work with it. I feel like putting some of my thoughts on the internet would jumble it up.

That sounds crazy and vague. But here’s an example of what I’m getting at.
You know social media -- always full of “ways to do things.” And my Facebook feed seems to always be shouting at me “raise your kid like this.” (Sometimes Pinterest too, but I’ve tried to tame that beast down to just pretty house stuff because that makes me peaceful.) For the first couple weeks of being a mom of three (regardless of social media, likely just straight up from hormones and major life shift) I felt like I was just bound to fail all things mothering. But once my hormones settled down a bit, my stomach started accepting food, and life generally felt a bit more “ok” I had this light bulb go off. It was something of a wordless sensation that equated to this:

“I get to raise my kids with what I think is important.”
The rest of what’s important to other people doesn’t need to affect that.
I’m a responsible adult and I’m not picking and choosing to be lazy. I’m just being a sane person who knows there are limits to what you can do in life, and I’m not gonna feel guilty about it.

So I’m working internally on a list of what I value. And that list something I don’t wanna blog about. It’s personal and doesn’t need to be validated. It’s personal and doesn’t need to put pressure on anyone else. And it’s a working list that will ever be shifting. But I’m nearly giddy at the realization that it’s a list I get to make. I feel so much lighter putting down all the other lists out there and just claiming my own.

I’m feeling rather like cocooning in again. Not in the way pregnancy does that to me. But mostly from outside voices. Not like friendships. But from just pressure from all around. I don’t feel like giving it my time. Facebook might need to be limited again. Certain blogs avoided for a while.
I just feel like finding my rhythm based on what comes naturally to me.

One thing that I’m very clearly noticing that comes naturally to me (at least in recent years), or matters a lot to me, is a more minimalistic environment.
The influx of baby things, mixed with birthday gifts for the girls (everyone’s birthday is right next to the other), really pressed on that idea for me.
Having more stuff than we need ups my stress level drastically.
Our house has been in flux since we moved here and started renovating it. So I’ve not been able to get rid of much decor stuff because I wasn’t sure if I would need a couch for this space or that space, or a picture or a mirror or a candle stick… but we are finally getting to a place in the house progress where I’m able to make that call now. So I’ve started to craigslist purge. Nowhere near as fast as I’d like. But I’m getting there.

I picked up the book “Clutter Free with Kids” from the library to see if it would help me figure out the toys in our life. I gotta say, I’m loving the book. The author is basically speaking my love language and totally solidifying that I firmly believe in the “less is more” idea. But as far as taming our toys, I’m not sure the book is gonna do much for me. Our toy situation is not created by us, it’s outside forces. Which the book doesn’t address at all. (It kinda assumes the reading-the-book-parents have bought the stuff.)  But I guess what the book is doing for me is really sealing in how much this concept matters to me (and solidifies the “whys” -- because it’s about way more than a clean house, or my stress level, I believe in the benefits it has for my kids too. There are actually a lot of them.) So in that way, it’s helping me take more ownership of our home (including the toys.) Giving me more of a sense of authority on it.

In other news I’ve accomplished some projects around the house this past week.

One day while my mom was here, hanging out with the kids, I closed up a hole in our Family Room. Right at the top of the brick wall has always been a gap between the brick and the ceiling.

 I figured it wasn’t a big deal. That was until we witnessed a mouse crawl out from there. (SO GROSS!) So to fix the problem,

 I first shoved a ton of steel wool into the crack (so they can’t chew through it) and then used some caulk backer (which is basically just foam to fill in a crack so the caulk has something to rest on), then caulked away. I think it took two or three applications to fill in the gap. 

It took me about a week to get used to how it looked. 

But zero time to appreciate it not being a mouse entry door.

But in more fun makeover news:

One of my makeovers was a quick little clock makeover. I’ve jokingly named it (in my internal conversations) my Magnolia clock, because I recently binge watched a bunch of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” and got majorly inspired by that lady. (I think the cleanness of her designs kinda helped me remember my minimalism ideals.) And it got my gears turning on finishing some of our spaces.
One thing I needed was a clock for our kitchen. After some online shopping for one and feeling really uninspired, I remembered I had a cheap $5 clock laying around from our last house.

I figured if nothing else it could be a good stand in for now. So I got out some craft paint and dry brushed it on there to give it a fresher look.

That was just the thing I needed at the moment -- a quick and easy, creatively satisfying project to feel like myself for a minute in the middle of a nap. I used a coat of light grey, followed by white on the more raise parts, followed by some light blue on some of the raised parts, followed by dark silver just messily thrown on all around.

The next thing I needed to accomplish was stools for our kitchen countertop we made. We had four stools that weren’t working. One was 30” tall and three were 24” and none had a back. We really wanted some stools with backs for the safety aspect. And since our countertop height was determined by the pass through already in our wall, it’s not a standard height, so both sizes of stools aren’t right.
After a ton of online shopping, and stress on my part (hormones mixed with my own general design obsessions didn’t mix too well this time) I finally found three awesome stools on craigslist. (Three is exactly how many we need. Three kids now. And that’s all the room there is at this counter.)

They were an hour and twenty mins from us. But even with gas money, paint and fabric they were cheaper than new and I liked these more than my new options. (The ones we were close to going with were gonna be $80 per stool.)

Blake likes drives. So last Saturday morning he went and picked them up while the rest the family stayed home.

They are wood, and it’s funny how that worked out because when I was looking at new stools I had been leaning towards metal ones. BUT having bought these wood ones was an entirely better outcome because we were able to customize the height ourselves.
These started out just over 30” and after some contemplating we cut them down to about 26” (I think.) Blake was able to take them out in the garage, do some magic with some sort of brace and get the legs cut to size all evenly. Amazing.

Blake sanded them. Then I was able to get two of them painted. (Third to come as time allows.)

And I recovered the seats with some indoor-outdoor fabric I got on 50% off sale at JoAnn Fabrics. 

The indoor-outdoor fabric is great for kids. It’s water repellant which also makes it pretty stain resistant. We already poured a cup of water on it last night and it didn’t soak in a bit.)

(I didn’t clean off the counter or the floors in these photos to prove I cannot do it all. I don’t clean much at the moment.)

And my next project is a bookshelf makeover. I was looking at “TheHandmadeHome"’s homeschool room again (soo pretty --- so up my alley) and I got to thinking I need a bookshelf -- to inspire me to actually get on the school wagon with a newborn around.
So some craigslist shopping got me this guy, for only $20. 

(And I had just made $20 after selling our baby bouncy seat that none of my kids liked.) So it was kinda free. (Love craigslist for that reason -- so many times I’ve been able to upgrade our space for nothing after selling what isn’t working for us any more.)

I plan it paint it white. And maybe add a color on the back for fun. I'm leaning towards an inky navy.
(I hope to that done this weekend.)
Our local schools start in two weeks, so I’m kinda aiming to get our stuff up and running by then too.


In "baby stuff that’s working for us" news:

• The Rock and Play is still working magical wonders for us. 

• I just discovered Mustela. Bronson came down with some epic baby acne.
  
  
  (He got worse than this -- I kinda didn’t take pictures when he was really really bad.) Like I was sort of embarrassed to show him off, it was so bad, levels of acne. (Sorry baby, it’s not personal, it just hurt my heart to see your cuteness hiding under painful looking skin.) At the grocery store, when people asked to see him and I would turn him towards them, they were doing the thing where instead of saying he is cute, they would pause for a beat and say “aww how sweet” or “so little” (which is now turning into “so big!” as he packs on the pounds fast.) My theory on this terrible acne is just that Bronson and I have some pretty incompatible hormones. (He mades me super sick from inside for 10 months. I give him crazy terrible baby acne with my breast milk.) Anyway. I gave some Mustela lotion 

  

  Found this at Target. It’s not sold at many stores.

  a try because I saw it mentioned a bunch in a baby forum for baby acne and it’s highly recommend for eczema. Currently Jasmine’s skin is kinda freaking out. So I thought it would be worth a shot for both kids. So far I’m extremely impressed with the stuff. After one application to each, their skin seemed immediately soothed in a way I’ve never seen from any other product. After a day Bronson’s acne went down significantly. And his skin just looked so much calmer and more comfortable. They say baby acne isn’t painful for the baby, but his skin just looked uncomfortable all red and flakey and inflamed. Now it looks at peace and glowy. It’s not blemish free. But wow does my mommy heart feel better when he’s not looking inflamed and instead at peace.
  
  And Jasmine’s skin is definitely on the upswing as we keep applying it daily. I ordered a Mustela bath oil for her, and the cradle cap cure for him to attempt to help further. I have high hopes for them. I might wind up getting their shampoo too. But I’m pacing myself to make sure their stuff keeps working for us. It’s kinda pricey. But if it helps I’m for it. It’s better than wasting money looking for stuff that helps (but doesn’t.)

• Right before Bronson was born I sewed up four muslin swaddle blankets. (Got the fabric for 50% off at JoAnn Fabrics. So it was cheaper than buying premade blankets. And then they were plain white, which I liked more than baby prints.) It’s really easy to do. You buy cotton gauze fabric, cut it to size (something around 45”x45” give or take a few inches depending on the bolt size), and hem.  I LOVE these blankets. For a summer baby they are perfection. Just enough coverage to keep A/C chill off them, without over heating them. They are great swaddlers, with their larger size (but Bronson rejects the “babies love being swaddled” theory, so we don’t really use them that way.)  They make nice carseat covers if the sun is too bright. And they really do work wonderfully for a nursing cover. I just drape it over my shoulder on the nursing side and leave it down just enough to cover me up, without covering him up. Their texture gives them just enough grip to stay put on my shoulder. And they are light enough that they don’t get us extra sweaty. (Nursing hormones really up my internal temps. And it doesn’t help to be holding a cute tiny heater of a baby.) I’ve never been good at using those hooter hider kinda covers -- it just kinda gets in my way. This works well. If people are really watching closely they might catch a quick glimpse as we latch or unlatch, but usually I can get the blanket down over that really quickly (third kid skills.) Anyway, I’m super happy with these blankets. One of my favorite things. I’m not gonna wanna put them away when he grows -- I’m already questioning if I can use them as throw on my couch?? lol

Our borrowed Rock and Play, Swaddle Blanket and sock hands.

And that’s pretty much all I’m loving for baby right now. Oh…that and putting socks on his hands. Since he hates being swaddled, and loves keeping his hands by his face (but has no control over them yet) socks on hands equals less destroying of the face. Plus it’s somehow really cute.

Postpartum body image for me this time….

Not bad.

I think because I lived through this pregnancy I’m happy with my body. lol.

I can’t tell if I am just feeling the reprieve from that so strongly I’m delusional, or if I actually am recovering my belly size faster this time than last times. (Probably delusional -- but hey that’s not always a bad thing. lol.) Either way, I’m enjoying not worrying about it.

So far I’m not trying anything to get back in shape.

I’m just enjoying where I am.

I’m realizing I will recover and I will work out again, so I’m not so stressed over it as I was.

Getting dressed is kinda annoying though.

Strangely I feel totally please with my shape looking in the mirror undressed. It just makes sense to me. Yeah I’m rounder and untoned. But why wouldn’t I be? (Third time around, I think I’m getting it.) It feels naturally pretty to me --- like in a “how the world works” “God made cool stuff” kinda way.

But once I go to get dressed it’s trickier.

Part of me think’s its better to wear fitted stuff  -- like the ruched belly pregnancy stuff. Sure my belly is rounded out, but I don’t really mind it at all.

When I wear loose stuff to try and hide it, I feel like it adds 20 pounds that might be un-pregnancy-related.  It doesn’t help that my boobs are super huge -- adding to a overall hugeness look in loose clothes.

Either way, I’m not really caring much at all. I just observe visual stuff by default and think about it because I like to ponder it.

Most the time I’m wearing whatever feels good, regardles of what it looks like. And it’s nearly always sweaty and covered in milk, spit up, and occasionally poop (but I draw the line and change soon after that. lol)

Well I think I’ll leave it at that today.

Time to feed my ever calorie burning self. (Always hungry.)

(Starting to feel much more normal about food too -- so it’s working out. Slowly but surely. Phew.)