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Routines and Such

I have another craft that we did over the past couple of weeks to share with you all, but right now I just want to take a minute to reflect on how nice it’s been to just be home with my family. Matt snapped this picture on Saturday morning (my expression reflects my general 7 AM stupor and has nothing to do with my mood as I was super-elated to be snuggling my kiddos). The kids had just gotten up and they were thrilled to be able to hang around the house with us. We made breakfast and just hung out together.

I love all of our travels. We made amazing memories in NYC and Nashville (and definitely on the way HOME from Nashville) and on our camping trips, but they are no less wonderful than the ones we make at home over Saturday morning cartoons and pancakes. Or listening to music in the evenings while we make dinner and eat pickles (the designated pre-dinner snack at my house).

So it’s been my goal this week to have a nice normal, routine sort of week. We’ve planned nice healthy at-home dinners for each evening. We’re doing laundry and small projects. Last night I purged a ton of Tabby’s size 3T (and some lingering 2T) clothes with her help. We spent some time contemplating the evolution of Ben’s room – he can now climb INTO his crib, but uncharacteristically refuses to climb OUT (yay!). It was definitely nice.

But of course, we’ve been at home two weekends in a row now, so I’m pretty sure we’re going camping this weekend.  You know … one last hurrah. Seriously. We can’t help ourselves.

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Tshirt Dresses

That girl child of mine … she LOVES her dresses. She would probably wear dresses all the time if she could. Well dresses and jeans … she does love her jeans. Anyhow, while we were in NYC I wanted to get her a cute souvenir t’shirt, but I couldn’t find ANY that weren’t A) ugly B) cheesy C) ridiculously priced D) made from terribly coarse fabric. But somewhere rattling around upstairs was the notion that I’d seen on the internets somewhere that one can make an adult’s t’shirt into a dress. So on this leap of memory faith, I purchased a hot pink ladies I ♥ NY t’shirt for Miss Tabby. The exchange with the Indian (Syrian???) guy at the booth was hilarious. He saw me holding it up to her to see how it would fit and kept insisting he had ones that would fit her better (they had child-esque drawings of NYC on them and were the SCRATCHIEST fabric I’ve ever handled) and I could not communicate that I didn’t WANT them to fit her but finally he let the crazy lady have her way. $8/each and they’re soft, so good bargain IMHO.

So I looked up on the internets how to make the t’shirt into a dress and came across this great instructable tutorial on the matter. I followed it to the best of my rather suspect sewing abilities and produced a fairly decent dress for Tabby. Bolstered my some sewing success (this is rare for me) I decided to dig out an old t’shirt of mine from our “t’shirt quilt” (that I will never actually get around to making) box of discarded shirts and make her a second dress. This one had a much larger logo that would have been cut off by the previous method, so I made a modification. My interpretations for both follow.

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There’s No Place Like Home There’s No Place Like Home

I am so incredibly glad to be back in Denver. I mean how can you not be when you have those two sweet faces to come back to, right? Not to mention my handsome sweet hubby and my slobbery mutt. Home also has my bed (with 10 tons of stuffed animals on it) and my treadmill and my tivo and and and. What can I say? I’m a bit of a homebody. Coming home and seeing everyone is so nice. The kids were ecstatic and Matt even more so. Loki? Rather indifferent.

Portland was great. I really enjoyed my conference all things said and done. I will bring back a lot of good ideas and new things to look at when I go back on Monday. I didn’t see a lot of Portland but most of what I did I liked. It was pretty nice to just chill in the evenings and get to sleep early. Possibly I’m deluding myself but I may have beaten my rotten cold. Or maybe not. The worst bit of the trip was that I didn’t get to meet up with my cousin who lives in Portland. Her little boy was sick and her husband out of town so it just didn’t work out. The dinner I had with my coworkers instead was really enjoyable. The second bad bit of the trip was the opening night welcoming event where they had 4 inches of HAY on the ground and HORSES. My allergies were not amused.

Now it’s back to my routine … but first … Half Marathon #6. I’m Rocking and Rolling on Sunday!

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Powder Room

Remember when we repainted our bathroom? It used to look like this. But when we had hardwood floors installed to replace the nas-asty carpet, the wallpaper in the powder room had to go because the sink moved down a bit and there would have been a less-than-attractive strip of plain drywall above it. So we stripped the wallpaper (yay for wall-paper steamers!) and Matt textured it and we did that accent wall. I was a bit hesitant on the color (a bit darker than the photo shows) but love it now. BTW, if you love it too, give me a call because we WAAAY overbought on paint and you can have a whole (unopened) gallon of the stuff FREE OF CHARGE. We even have half a gallon more than that.

Anyhow that was like 18 months ago. Ever since then it’s been sitting there just quietly doing its bathroom thing. For my b’day I put this cute print on my wishlist. I don’t think I specified a color but my mom bought it for me and chose blue. I didn’t have a spot in mind for it when I put it on my wishlist but after it arrived all blue and cute, I knew where it had to go … my blue bathroom!! So last weekend I finally got around to getting a frame for it ($6 IKEA special) and there it is.

Makes me happy every time I look at it. Now all I need to do is replace the old black hand towels with some new ones … raspberry red maybe?

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NYC The Wrap Up

Well unfortunately, I got a bit behind in my recaps. I got some little stomach bug on Sat evening and while it didn’t wreck me, I spent most of my down time sleeping as opposed to internetting. It didn’t last long, but I never got caught up.

It will take way too long and be way too boring if I recap EVERYTHING we did day by day, so I won’t. So here are some highlights:

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