Hi guys, what’s up. Anybody still here? I know it’s been awfully quiet on this blog lately and that’s mainly because you know why. Time. Who has time anymore for this stuff? Actually, it’s mostly because I have successfully met my goal last year to relax more and do less. Instead of doing home projects, I’ve drastically upped my TV watching and book reading and going out going. That was a nice change, but this year I’m ready to turn the creative juices back on and hopefully get a good mix of everything going. For a start, here are some of the conversations you’ve missed:

The other day I discovered my first white hair and showed it to Milo. His first immediate reaction: “I’ll be really sad when you die.” Later on: “Can I see your old hair again?”

One night I was trying to motivate the kids to put their PJs on as fast as possible so that we would have more time to read. Usually that works by making it a race. So I started putting my PJs on and said to Milo: “Come on, Milo, faster or I’m gonna win.”

Milo: “It’s not a race mom.”

Me: “Really? But what if it is a race and I’m winning?”

Milo: “But it’s not a race.”

Me: “How do you know it’s not a race?” (Fully expecting to win this argument)

Milo: “Well, because you didn’t say ready-set-go and started without me.” (Can’t argue with that)

One night while doing homework, Milo decided that he could connect all the individual letters in a word to each other, so he was practically spontaneously writing in cursive. Lincoln said:” Wow, Milo, how did you learn that? You are writing in cursive, that’s a dying form of writing.”

Later on Felix asked Milo what he was writing and Milo replied: “This is how the old people write before they are almost dead.”

Even later Milo asked me: “Mommy, can you show me how to write a dead b again.”

So, Felix’s language brain area must have just expanded exponentially, because all of a sudden he is talking in full sentences and is now an official contributor to this popular blog category.

Felix sees a QR code and asks: “Is this minecraft?”

Felix sees a little duckling: “Aww, so cute!” Then he sees two ducklings: “Aww, two so cutes.”

Milo comes in from school: “Mom, you have to come out and see this. Felix is leaking chicken nuggets out of his mouth.” What I did see when I looked, was a Felix covered in his vomit.

This year was supposed to be the year of all years, when I was finally gonna be able to rip out the discolored old carpet in our living room and install wood floors. But then the furnace started acting up and that’s where the money went. So, next year it’s gonna be.

Foyer

Before:

Between:

Now:

Alright, the perspective is not the same, but this area is still mid makeover (since April) and I’ll show more details soon. So far I got to re-paint the walls, molding, install a board with coat hooks, and shuffle some storage solutions around. And these things are gonna get done before the end of this year:

• Finish wall of board and batten on the left. Like this.
• Install new pendant light fixture

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It’s been over 3 years that we lived in our beloved home. Much has changed, much will still change, and we are happy to be in this cozy place that has become truly ours. It is still constantly transforming and adapting to our ever changing needs. At this point we are planning to stay in this house roughly until Milo is done with elementary school, so another 5-6 years. The neighborhood and the community is just too great to leave and the elementary school is right across the street. Eventually however, we would like to move into a single family house with a garage and our own yard. With that in mind we are trying to make mostly cosmetic changes that take the house from old country to fresh contemporary on a low budget, so that it will sell easily and hopefully for a profit.

Some of the updates we are making throughout the house are:

• Paint all trim bright white instead of cream color
• Change all brass light fixtures to white, black, or silver
• Swap out all brassy wobbly door hardware to brushed nickel
• Remove nasty old carpet from main level and basement and replace with wood floors and new darker carpet
• Repaint rooms to a more gray based coordinated palette instead of tan and red.

Other than that it’s really just some major decorating. Look at this evolution of a home.

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Holy crap, it’s been a while since anyone’s been seen on this lonely old blog. Aside from busy life, I have been trying to be more lazy on my evenings and have taken on reading books again and going to bed early. Not such a bad thing I have to say. But every now and then I should still try to throw in a few of these shorties. Here is an example of Milo’s logic.

“Mommy, Felix wants to take my money, but I don’t want him to have it because he will put it in his mouth and die. And that would be sad, then we wouldn’t have any baby anymore. Like my friend, he doesn’t have any baby brothers. Maybe they all died.”

After I explained to him that sometimes people stop making babies and babies all grow up to be big kids he suggested: “So maybe when Felix is 10 you can put him back in your belly and have a big baby.”

So, about 3 months ago I had written up that long post about how I made over our old dining room buffet and then it didn’t save and all was lost and I never wanted to write again. Not really. But then I decided to start on our staircase renovation, so instead of typing everything up again I started scraping off caulk hours and hours on end. A full post on that coming soon. Maybe.

So now without any patience to go into the buffet details again, let me just throw these picture at you:

I know, I know, doesn’t look too bad from far. But when you look closer it was really obvious cheap laminate, not actual wood. And said plastic foil started to peel off on one side, so it had to be done.

I used chalk paint (color “French Linen”) for the first time and while it’s not as magical as some DIY people out there make it look like (you still need to sand and multiple coats), it really creates a thick solid cover that should last for another couple of decades.

And then it was Christmas.

Happy Spring!

Hello again. As Milo is approaching the big 4, his language skills and reasoning improves drastically, so these gems are getting rarer and are replaced with amazingly logical and knowledgeable statements. We’ll get to those too. In the mean time, here are some of the recent out takes:

Imagine this with Milo singing in the bath tub: “I don’t have a car wash. But I will. Have one. I will have a car wash. Yahoo.”

Nic: “Milo, don’t pull that shower hose out of the wall.”

Milo: “But please can I do it? I will say sorry.”

Milo: “This is my pillow store.”

Linc” “How much does this pillow cost?”

Milo: “5 million Dollars.”

Linc: “I don’t have that much money. How much is the other one?”

Milo: “This one costs 1 inches.”