One Time, a Tree Fell on My House

Have you seen Grease?  The movie?

There’s a lovely animated opening, where Olivia Newton-John’s character wakes up, blissfully lovely, birds chirping, and you just know she’s going to have a good hair day.

Earlier this month, I woke up and saw that a tree had fallen on our house.

I would have preferred the chirping birds…

I’m sharing the story over at Taming Insanity, where the irreverently hilarious KLZ is allowing me to visit for the day. 

Not only is she half responsible for the creation of uber-helpful Eli Rose Social Media, but she always writes in a way that makes me feel like I could run into her on the street and just hang out.  She’s honest, forthright, and bought her adorable son some bedding I might copy when it’s time for Dylan to give up his crib.  Did I mention hilarious?

If you're visiting from Taming Insanity, I’d love it if you looked around a bit.  I can tell you all about how much I depend on the rhythm of my runs (psst…KLZ likes that one,) how I desperately need a pedicure, why going to the beach with kids is fantastic, and what my Abbey wore on her first day of preschool.

 

Abbey concentrating on her puzzle

Dylan watched Daddy and Grandpa Ray work on the roof for quite some time

It Started With a Corner

For a long time, I blogged from my couch, laptop precariously balanced on a pillow teetering on my knees.

Inevitably, my eyes wandered to the television, DVR’d episodes of Gossip Girl, episodes of Law & Order I’d seen seventeen times, reality shows I should be embarrassed to admit to watching (Dance Moms, I’m talking about you.)

Idly, I clicked open a few blogs I meant to read earlier in the day. 

Checked my e-mail. 

Pinned pretties.  (And if you don’t know what that means, you’re better off.  Your to-do list will thank you for not opening a Pinterest account.) 

Finally made it back to my patiently waiting blog posts, my train of thought lost somewhere along my path of distraction.

I began to covet the immortalized necessity of Virgina Woolf – a room of one's own*.

I can see this room.  Cozy and feminine.  White furniture and frilly touches, peppered with optimistic shades of turquoise and yellow.  Delicate toile fabric. 

Absolutely unlike any of the rooms in my actual home, a home filled with vibrant, saturated colors, espresso wood, neutral décor.  A home I love.  A home filled with love and laughter and endless diversions.

A home that doesn’t have a spare room for Ryan and I to share an office, let alone for each of us to have our own, no matter how many ideas I might lust after on Pinterest.

Still, blogging on the couch was lulling me into a comforting vortex of wasting time. 

I needed something more.

As we discussed moving things around, creating a playroom space in the basement, I turned my eye to a corner in our living room, a corner housing a brightly colored dollhouse.  

Yet behind the dollhouse, I saw something more.  Built-in shelves.  The open staircase that snagged my heart the very first time we entered our house.

Potential.

Carefully, I purged and organized the toys so that they would fit into two of the four baskets remaining in our living room. 

Wistfully, I put aside my idea of an ideal writing space. 

Practically, I realized that I was building a for-now space, a stepping stone of sorts, a place to write towards my goals and my dreams.

Thanks to a particularly engaging episode of Sid the Science Kid, I managed to put together a sleek desk, the espresso color blending perfectly into our living room. 

Actually, it took an episode of Sid and the majority of Sesame Street.  Abbey and Dylan were in a state of television Nirvana.  There were four thousand and three parts in that one little box!

My dream room is tucked away, waiting for a day when I can paint and furnish and lose myself for more than the stolen moments when the kids are safely ensconced in their beds.

For now I have a corner.  

It still needs to be cultivated, decorated with small bits of me.  I need a chair, so that I don't have to drag my dining room chair over to my desk each night.  But for now I have a corner.

And it’s enough.

My room of my own.

For now…

 *I realize I have oversimplified Woolf's idea of a room of one's own.  I don't mean to disrespect her ideas or the struggles that women writers faced in her time, but I honestly think my little corner will be beneficial as I move down my writing path, wherever it may lead.

How have YOU lived the Just Be Enough feeling this week?

Write a post, or link up a post you've already written, about how you felt comfortable, powerful, or content in your own skin recently.  

Just Be Enough is teaming up with Bellflower Books and Crickett's Answer for Cancer to bring beautiful memory books to women fighting breast cancer.  For every 20 linked stories, Bellflower Books will donate a $75 gift certificate to a woman and her family to create a twenty-page memory book.  The families will be chosen through Crickett's Answer for Cancer.  Our goal at Just Be Enough is to provide ten families with one of these books.  The campaign will continue for two more weeks, and we are currently very close to our third book!  

Please consider linking up, and if you read a post you think fits with the idea of being enough, send them over!

Operation Organization - Playroom Edition

There's an old saying: When the cat's away, the mice will play. 

Obviously, the mice never tried to cram a toy store's worth of goodies into a three bedroom house, because while our little kittens were with Grandma and Grandpa, there wasn't a lot of playing going on at home. 

The plan was to move a lot of their toys down to the basement, including two thirds of the heavy hitting trifecta (dollhouse, train table, kitchen), along with our dining room rug.  

And, oh, we had a little run in the morning, a 10K as part of our half marathon training. 

Easy peasy, right? 

So, run, move some toys, a leisurely dinner, maybe the midnight movie.  I had it all mapped out in my trusty planner.  What could go wrong? 

For starters, the 87% humidity during the run wiped us out, and I ended up laying down “for a few minutes” and not waking up for an hour. 

The dining room rug looked even more stained under the bright lights of the basement, so we hatched another plan, one involving moving the living room rug, a trip to IKEA, Elmer’s glue and copious amounts of glitter.  (Kidding about the glue and the glitter, but Abbey would have been thrilled to come home to a glittered house!) 

Sorting and tossing and categorizing and moving toys between the kids’ rooms and the basement meant countless trips up and down stairs, taking a few hours instead of “about an hour”. 

Late afternoon slid into evening, and we hurried through showers, driving past the movie theater in a rush, our chances of relaxing in the theater vanishing with each tick of the clock. 

We slid out of IKEA with ten minutes to spare, our leisurely dinner consisting of some casual fish tacos, sharing raised eyebrows and dissolving into laughter as our waiter bounced around the restaurant. 

After the drive home, we had neither the time nor energy to take advantage of our child-free night outside of the house. 

But by the time I brought the kids home the next day, their new little playroom was organized. 

Abbey did her silly little dance of joy. 

Dylan grinned and hugged us and wandered around happily. 

Maybe we’ll find time to play a little next time, but for now, I’m content to reclaim our living room from the multiplying-toy monster. 

What would you do with a child-free Saturday?

road map playmat from IKEA 

playing pom poms next to her dress-up stuff

hooks for dress up clothes from IKEA

toy box from IKEA

big rug from IKEA, via our living room

fabric bins from Target (courtesy of my mom!) 

he loves his trains

If It Has To Rain

We continue to meander through my bucket list, though there's still a bunch on there, and the Back to School ads are beginning to paper the walls.  We'll just have to step it up a notch!

run through sprinklers

truth be told, it was running through the hose set to "sprinkler"

I had to hose them off after the park; they were so sweaty and covered with wood chips!

cleaned off and cooled off, Dylan ran around in a diaper until bathtime

go to an outdoor concert

the concert was at a little stage at an outdoor mall

but the kids and some friends danced and ran and smiled for an entire set

for days, Abbey talked about the "girl singer with the half tambourine"

no pictures, because even I don't take my camera to the mall

go through Dylan's baby clothes

this 

became this

it's a work in progress, but the clothes are organized or donated!

splash in puddles with the kids after a summer rainstorm

it was still hot

and steamy

she dressed herself

Operation Organization

Yesterday, I complained a little about our house.  The post had been floating around during runs and in my writing notebook for a while, along with today's post, which is about how to work with what I've got.

As Abbey and Dylan grow, our house shrinks.  Toys and crafts and books and shoes litter the floors and shelves and closets.  Unfortunately, not even Abbey's imagination can conjure up a Fairy Housemother to whip up a new house or even an addition to the one we have, so I'm going to have to work a little magic of my own.

Enter Operation Organization.

I'm not a physics genius, but it stands to reason that since I can't create more physical space in my house, I'm going to have to reorganize what's inside the space we do have, including eliminating some of the unnecessary clutter.

I've made resolutions.  I've scoured IKEA for ideas.  I've browsed Pinterest for even more ideas. 

I become overwhelmed by the possibilities and not knowing where to begin and get distracted by the shoes on Pinterest and wake up to find that my Fairy Housemother not only forgot to leave me a new house but didn't even wave her wand at the stuffed menagerie taking over Dylan's room.

I'm hoping that by putting my organizational plans out there for you to read, I'll feel compelled to keep up with my plan.  So hold me accountable, ok?

Basically, I hope to move a lot of the toys to the basement, organize Dylan's room, better organize Abbey's room, and carve out a little area I can use for writing. 

I'm going to start with Dylan's room and closet, because his mini-closet somehow ceased to be a clothes closet and became a hazardous catch-all for seasonal items, outgrown clothes, Halloween costumes, crib mobiles, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Dylan's room is on the first floor, meaning it's become a little bit of a playroom as well

this is what it normally looks like outside of his closet

because this is what it looks like inside his closet

I decided it was the best place to store our winter coats, snowsuits, and zebra costumes

See, it's not pretty in there.  If you don't hear from me for a few days, feel free to check our local IKEA store.  Or the neighborhood bar.

Hopefully I have a much neater and user-friendly closet to show you soon!

It All Began with a Vanity

It seemed so simple.

Pull out the outdated vanity in the bathroom, toss it in the trash, and install a pedestal sink.

Have you seen pedestal sinks?  They’re compact and don’t have many parts.  I couldn’t think of an easier first project to ease ourselves into home ownership.  HGTV figured prominently into my television viewing line-up, and pedestal sinks were so basic they didn’t even have their own show.

Looking back, I must have known it wasn’t going to be exactly painless, because I neglected to tell Ryan about my plan before enlisting my mom’s help to rid the bathroom of the offending vanity sink and cupboard.

Awkward and unwieldy, it protested only slightly as we pulled it into the hallway, making room for modern, streamlined bathroom décor.

Not wanting to sit on the curb alone, the vanity convinced parts of the plaster wall to come along on its next journey, leaving gaping holes in our bathroom wall.

Undeterred by the prospect of patching a wall, I stood by the decision to start remodeling before even deciding on a paint color.

My eyes drifted down, noticing that the tile border along the floor stopped where the vanity had once started.

We would have to find matching tile.

Inspired by the unique and quirky finds HGTV home designers manage to conjure from thin air, I traipsed out of the house to buy some tile.

Trips to several tile stores failed to find matching tile to continue the border.

Trips to several more tile stores failed to find anything remotely close to complementary tile to continue the border.

Discomfort began to set it as we pulled the rest of the tile away from the wall, planning to replace it with wood molding.

Projects always take a little detour, right?

More wall damage.

So we would need thick wood molding.

Perhaps we could paint it a funky color, like an HGTV home designer would.

Still more wall damage.

Make that extremely thick wood molding.

Maybe white molding would work.

We lacked any knowledge of miter saws and cutting on an angle and somehow making straight, extremely thick wood molding fit against the curved wall in our bathroom.

Ninety-seven trips to Home Depot, several panicked calls to my dad, and countless borrowed tools later, our bathroom was again presentable, complete with a gleaming white pedestal sink.

I turned off HGTV.

Lesson learned.

the prompt:

start or end with "lesson learned"

a little note: years later, when cleaning out our basement, we found an entire box of brand new tiles, obviously leftover from the bathroom project

curse words were spoken

giggles ensued