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4/29/10

No Title...

...because I haven't got the brain power right now to think of a witty one.  My allergy medicine has made my head a little fuzzy.

So, if nothing in this post makes any sense, it's because I'm drugged up.  

On antihistamines.

It has been soooo boring around here.  Absolutely nothing has happened in the past, what, month

Okay, S did go to Cali and her co-ed cheer squad won the National Championships, and she had her final dance concert last week (it was awesome!).

But the rest of us? 

What have we done? 

Nothing. 

School, work, laundry, vacuuming, dishes, the same ol' same ol' we do day in and day out.

We are not an exciting, adventurous family!

Oh!  I did play LIFE with R and D last night.  They hate it that when I play I never choose to go to college.  I like to risk it and see how much I can make without a degree.  Last night I was a police officer, making 70K and living in a mobile home with my husband and son (I always choose to have a son in the game of LIFE.  I have enough girls in my real life, thank you very much!).  Then I had a midlife crisis, changed jobs and became an entertainer.  I also got a raise (switched salaries with another player) and started making 100K.  Plus, I always buy as much stock as possible.  That's pretty much how I make all my money.

In the game of LIFE that is.

This weekend (well, tomorrow, Saturday & Sunday) I'm working the home show again for Allied Gate at the state fair grounds. Levi said there aren't many exhibitors, they have one or two buildings that are empty, which is unusual.   I won't be working the whole show with Levi, which is a bummer, but it won't be all bad.  They hired a new salesman who just happens to be a good friend of mine that I worked with at Distinctive!

Hopefully it'll be a good show and we get a bunch of leads/appointments.

Right now I'm gonna to go read, and possible take a nap, but I will leave you with a couple of pics ~

see the rest of R's pics here


see the rest of D's pics here

4/21/10

Thinking

I kinda miss 'Pop Up Video'.

4/20/10

Neglectful

I haven't paid much attention to this wee little blog here the past week.  It's not that I've been so busy.  

No, it's because I don't really have much to say!

Not a whole lot has been going on since Savvy & the cheer squad won Nationals.  They go to school, Sean goes to work & I putter around the house.

I did open an Etsy shop (LollyPogs) with some really adorable handmade dresses.  I'm working on adding more & I hope there are others out there who like cute & unique clothing for their little girl.  

Back in the day, before they had a strong opinion on fashion, I could make clothes & dresses for the girls that were more my taste.  

Then they turned 2 & had to have it their way!

Anyway, I was just stopping in to let anyone who reads any of this that I'm still alive & kicking and will return.

Hopefully with something more exciting to talk about.

4/13/10

We are the Champions, my friend....

Savvy was in Anaheim, CA this past weekend for the National Cheer-leading Competition.  Her high school has a co-ed varsity team and they performed well enough at Regionals to make to Nationals.

Saturday, they competed against 10 other teams and place first!  Which put them in the competition for Sunday against all top 10 winners.

And they WON!!  

Savvy and her squad are now National Cheer Champions.  They are the only athletic team at their high school to be National Champions.  All the hard work and many hours of practice really paid off.

They each got a garment bag, jacket and medal for coming in first.  And more recognition that cheer-leading is a sport.

Despite what her father may think!

It's really quite an accomplishment.  The boys on the squad are not full time cheerleaders, they are active in other sports (wrestling, volleyball, football, etc) so they probably had to work even harder than the girls;  many who have been in cheer for 2 or more years.

Savvy is a flier, she gets tossed in the air & caught by they guys, and was all bummed that in Sunday's competition they did not toss her as high as they did on Saturday.  (I've seen their tosses ~ she goes scary high!)  Her coach told her not to sweat it, and showed her the score card from Saturday.  In the margin, a judge wrote that Coach has her best flier in the back.  Then drew a little sketch with the flier circled.

That flier was Savvy!  

Awesome!!!

Sunday, the squad let loose and went to Disneyland (win or loose, they planned on going) and all I could think of were those old Super Bowl commercials ~

"Savvy, you and your squad just won Nationals,  how do you plan on celebrating?"
"WE'RE ALL GOING TO DISNEYLAND!"
LOL

She said Disneyland was okay, but felt it was definitely geared more towards the younger kids.

One plus ~ Peter Pan was HAWT!  (Her words!!)

When they got back home to the airport, many of the student body and facility were there to greet them with a huge congratulatory banner; that almost everyone signed, balloons and roses for the squad.  I thought that was real nice of the school to come together like that.  And to meet them all at the airport, rather than wait until this morning at school, was really awesome.

So now we have a National Champion in the family. 

And it just might go to her head!

4/8/10

My new work space

So, I've been doing some painting the past few days.  One end of our dining room has a fireplace in the corner and I think is set up to be like a family room.

Except we don't use it as a family room.  I'm not at all a big fan of having a TV in the kitchen and/or dining area, and besides I needed a place for my huge desk.  

This is how the space looked when we moved in:


Very bland.  Very white. 

Here is how it looked after I put my desk and bookshelf in:


Not much different and pretty much how it's been the past 8 months.

Except for the printer on my desk.  I moved that to the kids' desk.  And I cleaned up the junk on the hearth.

When we moved in, the Land Lord told us he didn't care if we painted, and since then I've had an idea for the long wall the bookshelf is on.  Just before the bookshelf (which is not in the picture) is our arcadia door, but the area I had the idea for was that whole wall the shelf is on.

First step was to remove the cheap, crappy leftover hardware from curtains a previous tenant had hung, then patch all the holes.  Once that was done, it was time to PAINT!

I wanted to do something in the brown family on the wall to go with the floor tiles, but not like a chocolate brown, which would be too dark.  Lucky for me Mom had a gallon of "oops paint" (if your not familiar with what "oops paint" is, it's paint, usually custom colored, customers have returned.) in a brown that could best be described as maybe Desert Moss from the Behr website.  I used it for the wall behind the stove top; adding some white to lighten it.


I used it straight from the can on the long wall with the arcadia door.  Although the decorating idea I had was just for the area past the door into my work space, I had to paint the whole wall in order for it to look good.

Now, this wall isn't very long; about 25', with about 9' of it the door, so not a huge paint job.  But when you're not quite 5' tall, have 8' ceilings and no ladder, that wall can take much longer than usual to paint.  Especially when I wanted to tape off the baseboard and ceiling molding so they remained white before I slapped on the brown.

Anyway, that took me the good part of a day and a half, and while I waited for the paint on the walls to dry, I painted some empty frames I had.  I never knew how many until we moved here and unpacked boxes that were in storage!  Simple white.  I wanted them all uniform in color for a clean look.


Once the wall was dry, and all my frames painted, I did this:


I saw this on HGTV, except is was on a smaller wall.  When I saw it, I thought it was so cool, but what would make it even cooler is if just a few frames had frames in them.

You know, a framed frame.

I had no real plan on how I was going to place them.  I had an idea of how I wanted it to look ~ planned, but not.  And none of the frames "even", but that was the extent of it.  I started in the corner with the first 4 frames and basically picked the next one I thought was the right size and orientation.  I would hold it up where I thought I wanted it, stand as far back as my short arms would allow to get a good look, then go from there.

It turned out exactly how I visioned it.

When I got the frames all hung, then stepped back to get a good look, I noticed some scuffs and dinginess on the baseboards.  I was almost tempted to leave it because most of it will be covered by furniture.  But the obsessive compulsive in me just couldn't let it be.  What if I decide to one day re-arrange things?  And all that  dirty, dingy baseboard is now showing?  I just couldn't sleep with it left like that.

I found 2 - 5 gallon buckets of white paint that was used on all the other walls, and spruced up the baseboard.  The wall look so much better.   (The ceiling, however, could use a fresh coat of white as well.  But I have no ladder & refuse to tackle that job without one!)

I was going to carry the brown all the way to the very back wall with the shuttered window, but ran out of paint.  But that was okay because the brown made the room look just a bit darker, and painting that wall the same color would really darken my corner of the house.

But now, like that baseboard, the wall looked dirty and dingy next to the fresh coat of brown paint.  I wanted to leave it a light color ~ the white looked okay and brightened the corner ~ but I had ALL THIS PAINT to play with.  Ten gallons of white, plus 1/4 gallon or so of leftover brown I just couldn't NOT use it.  So, I poured some white into an old coffee can and added a bit of brown, and voila!  The perfect tan to keep the corner light and still coordinate with the brown.

This wall took less time, and by 2:00 yesterday I had it done and my corner complete.

Well, almost.  I still had to put everything back in place and vacuum the floor!







 I'm pretty proud of myself!

Wonder what room is next??

4/5/10

On the Way to School This Morning

R: I can smell your banana.

S: No you can't.  Bananas have no smell.

Me, R & D: Yes they do!!

S: No, they don't.


A few minutes later...

S: Mom do you have a piece of gum?  I don't want to go into school with banana breath.

D: Bananas don't smell!

Me:  That's right.  So you can't have banana breath.

R: Yeah.  You said they don't smell, so no way you can have banana breath.

S: Shut up!

4/2/10

Today's home improvement project

At the beginning of March I had Tweeted that the tiles behind our stove top had ALL fallen down.  All 4 16" X 16" tiles. Plus 5 smaller ones.

I've left the wall as is, not quite sure what to do with it.  I didn't have the supplies to put the tile back up, plus a couple of them broke and I had no extras to replace them.

So for the past month we've been living with a wall that looked like this:




 Lovely, huh?  Very dirty and probably why the tiles fell off. 

Sean suggested I paint the wall, which I thought was a good idea since I already had the paint.

But before I could do anything, it had to be cleaned.  (Why I didn't just clean it before, I'm going to chalk up to laziness.)  So I took a trip to the Wal-Marts to get some cleaner.  I needed something that would tackle the dirt as well as the grease.  (Another reason the tiles probably didn't stay put.)  I was going to get some good ol' Clorox All Purpose cleaner, but for just 20 cents more I could get some Clorox Green Works.  I figured since it's environmentally friendly, I'd try it.  Let me tell you, this stuff works great!  

So last night I scrubbed the wall clean.  Between the dirt, grease and stuff the tiles are stuck to the wall with, (that was still stuck on the wall) it was a workout!


Under all that dirt and grime was a piece of Formica board.  It was very ugly.  And very 60's.


When Sean saw it he said it was pretty and we should just leave it.  Ummm.  No.  I'll paint it.  Thank you very much.

This morning was painting day.  The paint I had was too dark for under the cabinets, so I had to mix up the color I wanted.  R calls it Vanilla Moca Chino.  

Because if you watch any HGTV,  you'd notice that all the colors seem to be named after food.

It didn't take long.  Maybe an hour and took only one coat.  Now we have a snappy looking wall behind the stove top.


Okay.  Maybe saying the color is snappy is a bit far fetched.  But it sure looks better than the dirt. Or Formica!

After I got it all painted, I stood back to admire my work and noticed something I never noticed before.  The same dirt that was on the wall was also above the cabinets, only not as dark.  When I looked even closer, I could see it was also on the cabinets themselves and someone did a poor job of wiping it off.  So, it looks like maybe a previous tenant had a stove fire and didn't clean it all up.  

I just wonder if it somehow got behind the tiles, or the tiles were put up right over the soot? 

I may never know.

I had some extra paint I was itching to use.  I was tempted to paint above the cabinets, but I don't have a step ladder to reach.  Plus, I wasn't all too sure I wanted more Vanilla Moca Chino in the kitchen.  Especially above the cabinets.  Unless I painted them another color, I felt it would make the kitchen look really bland.  Like I was cooking in a Starbucks Plenta cup of Vanilla Moca Chino!

So, to satisfy my painting itch and use up more of my leftover paint, I painted the back door!  I think it looks pretty good:


I have just a bit more leftover and am racking my brain as to what else I could paint.

Because I really love to paint.

And I really love the smell of paint.