Birthday Girl

All Moved In...

This is Matthew's new office!

Doesn't it look like a much nicer place to work than his old office?


And now we get to organize! My favorite.

Trim!

The last step was trim.

And finally, in Home Depot, we got a little testy.

See, here's Matthew on the drive home. It wasn't too bad.

We stained and cut and I painted the doors...

Two happy kids, all done. Notice Matthew's sweating and I'm all bundled up.

I feel very proud of us.

Here's Anna spinning with delight!

And here's one of my favorite things-the tools all sorted and ready for the next project!

Carpet

Now that the painting was all done, it was time for carpet!

First we went to pick out a remnant. Anna was very patient.

We were very happy that the room was narrow enough that we didn't need to do any seams.

And that we could just glue down the tack strip and not have to drill into the concrete.

And that we could rent tools.

Carpet was a great step. Lots of worry-not much trouble at all!

Texture, Prime and Paint

Ready for the next installment?

We thought it would be a good idea to texture the walls a little bit, because we really didn't know how they were going to look with paint on them. So one morning while I was at school,

Anna sanded

and Matthew textured.

We figured it was a way to hedge our bets a little bit.

Then two coats of primer (stinky stuff!)

And finally paint!

We used Benjamin Moore #318 Little Angel. If you think it looks familiar-that's because I managed to choose the exact same color of yellow that I painted the bedroom last year, though they were a year apart, in different stores, from different companies (Behr Cheerful Hue 330B-4). I guess I like that color.

"That is not a good project"

Anna wandered in as I was starting my project and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was going to try to make bowls out of rope and fabric. She did not think it was a good idea.

I tried it anyway.

Here's the tutorial I used.

To make these you wrap strips of fabric about 1/2" wide around rope and then stitch it into a coil with a zigzag. Pretty easy, really.

I had some orange-ish rope in my stash from a period when I was crocheting with unorthodox materials. It's fun to crochet with rope-I made a little rug and a basket-but it's hard on your hands and I used up all of the fun colors that I found on clearance and was left with the not-so-fun. Perfect for covering up with fabric!

I also love it because it uses up the bits of fabric that are too small to use in anything else but that I still have trouble throwing away.

I have lots of ideas for expanding on this-trivets, platters, I haven't tried handles yet but I think there are some neat flower shape-y possibilities there.

After I was done with the first one I showed Anna and she was impressed. :)

Snow Day!

We lucky kids got a snow day last week and had a wonderful time together.

I had the chance to do lots of little things that I've been wanting to do for a long time. Like clean the refrigerator.

I really had a good time. Anna was at the sink washing dishes, we were listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary, singing loudly and chatting.

Every time I open the door I sigh with happiness. All gleaming and tidy. Ahhh...

I even had time to reorganize the magnets, a "job" which never makes it to the top of the list, but is awfully fun. We have a travel section, a photo section, a funny section, and an Anna section. And now I know I need more photos-see all those empty magnet frames?

Then I filled out the little phone number magnet thing I've had hanging on the fridge, though empty, for over a year.

It kind of makes me feel like a grown up.

Then Anna was happily listening to books on tape so I had time to work on a project! Details to come.

On Saturday afternoon Anna and her Poppa Marion and I built a couple of snowmen. It was beautiful, 40+ degrees, and the snow was perfect for fun.

Fernando!

I'm headed to Denver today for an amazing fantastic birthday treat.

Katrina is taking me to see Fernando Ortega!



The pictures are a little cheesy, but you can just play it to hear the music while you pop over to another window.

I'm awfully excited. He's been such an important part of my life these past few years.

Geography

It shouldn't be this hard.

Dad sent me this quiz. It took me a long time and I made a lot of mistakes. Who knew I knew so little?

Anyone fare better?

Time Waster

I found this on How about Orange, a pretty craft blog.

What a Lovely Name

is a fun few minutes. You can put in the adjectives you like, and it'll spit out a name for you. Anna and I thought we'd like to know a girl who was happy, curious, and quirky. Her name would be Nedda.

Anna also thought that Abby should have been a name choice for all of the adjectives.

Personality Shift

Didn't we all take the personality tests in High School? I was always an ESFJ.

For my homework a couple of weeks ago, we had to take a couple of personality profiles and analyze them in light of language teaching and learning.

I was surprised to find that both tests now call me an ISTJ.

I thought personality was supposed to be a constant. I like my old description better. She sounds like a lot more fun.

Here are the two tests we took.

Keirsey.com

Humanmetrics.com

Anyone else change?

Cereal Boxes

We gave in and bought the cute cereal from Target with the old-timey boxes and the free t-shirt offer. Anna's delighted with all of the sugary options. I had to think of something to do with the boxes.



A gift bag! That smells fruity!

We've got 4 more cute boxes. Anyone have an idea?

Thank You Kitten

Thank you to all of our helpers!

More on the continuing room work to come-but I think it's time for a break.

Spring Break Day 7, 8, 9

Finally we were ready to mud. I was worried about this part. I suppose we'll know when we're all done how it went. I keep reminding myself that it is just the first room and that there are lots of lessons to learn and this part is all cosmetic anyway.

We didn't quite finish before Spring Break was over, but we did do good work, and it was fun to do something so big together.

Spring Break Day 6

On this day (Thursday) we FINALLY finished hanging all of the drywall. It went much faster once we got a new bit for the drill.

Old bit:

I don't understand why, but there was some problem, and things were a zillion times faster with the new bit.

New bit:
Construction-y types: Any answers for me?

Also I remembered that Matthew forgets to breathe when he is concentrating so I was able to remind him to. That helped a bit.

The tiny pieces took soooo looong. I thought we were almost done for hours.

All done!

Spring Break Day 5

We spent all of this day hanging drywall.

And doing some farm work-stuck sprinklers, etc.

Spring Break Day 4

On Tuesday morning we passed our inspection and started hanging insulation! This was my favorite step because it went so fast. Lickety split!

Happy Workers.

We had lots of help. Michael got very itchy.

After that we eventually started hanging drywall on the ceiling, which was taking FOREVER. We also discovered that I can only carry 6 sheets of drywall into the basement before I am too tired to carry any more. Hmph.

Spring Break Day 3

On Monday we were ready for inspection, but found out our permits had expired. This turned out to be a good thing, because while we were renewing them, we found out about some new code. No untreated wood can touch concrete. So before they came out on Tuesday morning, we put some plastic shims in to fix that.

We also hung doors. That is really really hard. Super hard.

And we went to Home Depot AGAIN.

I was feeling a little discouraged.

You can tell because there are no pictures.

Our Spring Break Day 1 & 2

This year for Lent we decided to give up leisure in exchange for work. Ideally, that meant we'd work outside some every day, but other work kept getting in the way.

For Spring Break, instead of taking a vacation, we decided to try to finish that room in the basement once and for all.

Our good friend Daniel came to help the first weekend. We didn't know, back in 7th grade, what a wonderful friend we were making.

Here they are at the beginning.

While Daniel was here they finished the framing and all of the electrical.

Fortune Cookie

For my last project of the week I whipped out this little fortune cookie. The pattern came from the crochet daily calendar I had last year.

What should the fortune say?

This has been a fun, hectic, week.



Stay tuned for pictures of our progress on the room!