now that’s what I call pampered!

I don’t usually buy a lot of bath products.  As a Mom of two small children, I just don’t have time to take a lot of baths, ya know?  But on the rare occasion that I do take a bath, I like to have something really nice.  It’s one of the few self-indulgent things I do.  I like to leave the bath feeling super pampered!

So I tried something new last night and I must share, incase any of you other Moms (or heck, Dads too) like to indulge in the occassional nice bath too.

This?  It’s a bottle of lavender heaven.  I’m not kidding, my favorite bubble bath ever.  It was perfect in every way.  More perfect than any LUSH product I ever tried, by far.  Coupled with some of this luxury soap (in lemon verbena) on a bath poof?  OMG.

I know I sound like a commercial.  I swear I don’t work for either of those companies, and I’m not getting paid for posting about them.  I just really really love them, and I tend to blab a lot about things I love.  (I also like to hear other people blab about things they love - it’s good to share!)

and now she has curtains. sorta.

Another step towards finishing Kat’s room.  Curtain rods!

I had a bit of a hard time finding exactly what I wanted.  It didn’t seem like I was asking for much… white, wooden, double rods, with the main rod having some girth, and finials that were pretty and yet simple (but not too simple!), and still substantial in size (I wanted them to stand out a good bit against the darker paint).  As it turns out, I’m lucky to find double rods at all locally, forget about white wooden ones fit for a little girl’s room.

So I stumbled upon the JCPenney website and found these on sale.  I had some issues with JCP customer service (rude responses, not answering my questions, etc)… but the rods finally arrived, in one piece and they’re perfect.  Yay!  (Still undecided as to whether I’ll shop JCP again.)

The curtains are Pottery Barn Kids chambray curtains that used to hang in Jag’s room a few years ago.  We’ve changed the colors of his room since then and they no longer matched, so I’d packed them away hoping to reuse them.  While they aren’t exactly what I wanted for Kat’s room, they’re close enough that I’m not going to bother spending money on something new.

As you can see, some of the panels are a lot shorter than others.  I bought 4 panels in all originally, but only ended up using 2 in Jag’s room.  I bought the extra long panels because they were on clearance, so I had to shorten them for his room.  So the other 2 panels are still extra long.  I can’t let out the hem on the shorter ones because even with a wide hem, there’s still not enough fabric to reach the floor, so I think I’ve decided to cut the long panels down to match the short ones, then sew a wide white eyelet ruffle to the bottom of all 4 panels so that they reach the floor.  (I recently saw some wide eyelet ruffle sold by the yard at Joann’s - it will match Kat’s crib skirt perfectly!)

I realized after taking this picture, that after I get the curtains hemmed and trimmed, all I’ll have left is to paint the dresser and hang wall art!  Not that those are especially small jobs, but they’re not huge either so I feel like I’m almost done!  Yay!

wait! before you buy!

Got my usual Sensational Beginnings catalog in the mail yesterday, and I was flipping through it when I noticed this neat Wigglin’ Water Hose.  Cool.  And hey!  That’s the EXACT Wigglin’ Water Hose I bought at Walmart on Monday for $8.95!  Less than half the price! 

(I know Walmart is the root of all evil… I know.  But when my choice is between shopping at Walmart that’s 5 minutes away, or Target that is 25 minutes away, and especially with gas prices what they are, I can’t justify a boycott.  Sorry.)

As for the sprinkler, we haven’t tried it yet, but I will update if it’s a hit.  I picked this one over others because it looks like several kids could play at once without too much of getting in each other’s way.

that “green” toy camera i mentioned?

We love it!  All the pieces and parts really move, it’s bigger than I expected and it even smells good!

I highly recommend it!

PS.  Took this with the Canon 35mm f/1.4 L.  I’m renting it just to try it on for size.  I really love it!  I’m thinking I’ll probably be upgrading to a full frame camera this spring or summer, so I’m not ready to buy.  I need to get the feel of full frame first.  But this is the 2nd L prime I’ve tried and fallen in love with.  Seriously thinking of trading in 2 of my 3 L zooms for L primes.

tgif!

Long time no post, eh?  I thought I’d brush the cobwebs off the blog and post a few random things while Kat eats her breakfast.

• I logged into WordPress today to see that it looks completely different!  I wanted to update the look of the blog, I think it’ll have to wait a couple of days while I click through and explore.
• floor update - it’s taken longer than we thought.  Jason cut his thumb on a coping saw and it slowed him down considerably.  We’re in the home stretch though, only the laundry room left!
• after the laundry room floor is done, we’re going to take a break (a forced break, actually - Jason has business out of town and then we have family coming into town for Kat’s birthday), but then we’ll move on to tiling the bathrooms.
• speaking of Kat’s birthday, because we took on the flooring projects, her bedroom won’t be done by her birthday.  I feel terribly guilty about that.
• I got Jag a little fish tank for his room; he’s loving it so far!  He picked out all the decor… red gravel, a skull for the fish to swim through/hide in and a few little plants.  He’s got a reddish purplish male betta and 3 rasboras in there now, and we’re thinking of maybe adding a couple of cory cats soon.  He’s been good about feeding them everyday without me asking.
• I’ve been feeling yucky for a long time now, and finally found out this week it’s vertigo.  Not fun.
• Kat’s had a verbal explosion lately.  She’s singing, counting to 10 and pretty much saying everything she needs or wants to say.  It’s funny to finally understand what’s going on in that little mind of hers - she’s quite a character!
• I’m in a photography slump, one of those where I don’t feel like taking pictures, and the few pictures that I do take, I’m really unhappy with.  I know this is pretty typical for all photographers (this isn’t the first time I’ve been through it), but it’s always so painful for me.  I’m ready to get back into the swing of things and feel good about my work again!  I’m thinking of updating my version of Photoshop and investing in Lightroom in hopes of a fresh start.
• I’m addicted to the Packrat application on Facebook.  I’m too embarrassed to say how much time I’ve wasted playing at night after the kids are in bed.
• I bought this as part of Kat’s birthday gift, and it is just sooooo cute.  Seriously.  I almost hope she doesn’t like it so I can keep it for myself.  (also, I bought it from that very site and the transaction was flawless)

That’s all I’ve got for now - it took me over an hour to type just that with all the interruptions.  More later!  (and email replies as well, I’m WEEKS behind - I’m so sorry!)

new floors! - a home improvement project

This is going to be a loooooong, drawn-out project (like pretty much every project we do, ha!)  I’ll document with posts and photos as it progresses.

First, I have to tell you a secret.  The floors in my kitchen?  Not wood.  Nope.  It’s VINYL!  Vinyl that looks like wood.  Okay before you groan and say “ew,” I will tell you that I can’t count how many times someone has come into our house and said “beautiful wood floors!”  Granted, that’s before they actually walked on the floor.  But totally fooled, so it’s always made me feel a little better about it.  (The wood floor in my foyer is not vinyl however.  I love it, and it stays.)

A little back-story:  when we built the house 4.5 years ago, we asked for an estimate on putting wood floors throughout and actually didn’t think the number was that bad, but the real estate agent/builder’s rep (who was awful to deal with, just awful) told us it would be even cheaper to do it ourselves later.  We believed her and had them put in this wood-looking vinyl in the kitchen, breakfast nook and laundry room to hold us over until we got around to getting the nice floors in.  Welp, we never got around to it (ha, another typical story for us) and come to find out, it’s way more expensive for us to do than it was to have the builder do it.  She was on crack.  And we should have done our research.  So here we are.

Okay so with that out of the way, I’ll also say that we have decided to stay in this house a little longer (and by little, I mean more than a year, less than 4 - we don’t have an exact number).  Since we aren’t here for the long haul, we’ve decided now against the wood floors throughout.  It’s just not worth it to us (we’ve got another idea for that money now - more on that later).  So we’ve decided to replace vinyl floors with tile and replace our old, crappy builder’s carpet with new, pretty carpet.

Yay for new floors!

Um, except booo on picking out new floors!  I never realized how overwhelming, exhausting and just plain NOT FUN picking out tile is.  I’m not enjoying it.  I’ve got a stack of tiles too heavy for me to even pick up by myself and none of them look right to me.  We have different light in different parts of the room, so tiles that look good in the natural light of the breakfast nook look like junk in the artificial light of the kitchen, and vice versa.  Really frustrating.

I’ve gone from darker tiles to lighter tiles; from grayish tones to brownish tones.  Nothing is striking me.  And I need something to strike me before I can commit to it.

Jason saw a discount/factory outlet type tile place in town, so that’s our next stop.  Cross your fingers for me, hopefully something there will be perfect and maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll be inexpensive too!

Oh and on the bright side?  I *did* find carpet that struck me!  Hopefully I can find tile that works in the kitchen AND coordinates with the carpet because I really love the carpet.  More on that when we’re done dealing with tile!

as seen on tv

So the kids are watching Sprout this afternoon.  Jag likes Zoboomafoo.

The tv gets quiet, so I glance around the corner and I see Jag’s paused it.  Then he runs in from around the corner with a pen in his hand and yells, “I need paper!”  He quickly snatches a piece of paper off my printer and goes running back into the family room.

I followed him, and found him carefully copying this down from the tv…

Apparently, he thinks we need spacebags.

I couldn’t help but laugh.  I asked him, “are you going to call?”  He replied, “no, I have to be 18 years old to call.  I’m going to save it in my room until then.”

time outs and stuff

I saw these time out spots on Jon & Kate Plus 8 (anyone else addicted to that show?  does it not make you feel like you’re on vacation with your own family?) and thought they were a brilliant idea.  And so cute!  I’ve been debating whether I’d buy one or try to make my own - finally just broke down this morning and bought one (the pink spot for Kat since we’re getting to the point of needing it).  How dopey that I’m so excited about a time out rug!  ;-P

Totally uneventful weekend here.  Didn’t get much of anything done (Kat’s pink paint is still in the can, sitting on the counter in the laundry room - doh!), but I guess we got some rest.  Here’s the thing - I h-a-t-e sitting around doing nothing on the weekends.  It drives me crazy, I want to be out doing STUFF.  Whatever, anything - just something, ya know?  Jason, on the other hand, wants to lay low and relax after a long week at work.  So we sort of clash every weekend.  We usually compromise and spend one day out and one day in, but I’ll admit that our one day in usually leaves me really frustrated and grumpy.  I’m thinking I should find a part time job one day a week - maybe I should look into assisting wedding photographers on Saturdays or something.  I don’t even care about getting paid (although play money would be nice), I just want to do something fun!

Enough of that blather…

I’m going to go watch my DVR’ed Scott Baio is 46 & Pregnant, then find some motivation to get stuff down around the house this afternoon!

a few quick things

First, thanks so much to everyone for the chicken recipes and ideas!  I’m using a couple this week and a couple more next week!

Second, if you’re local to me - the semi-annual WeeRuns consignment sale is coming up next month!  Children’s spring and summer clothing, toys, equipment, furniture, maternity clothing, etc.  Check out the website for more info:  WeeRuns.com

And third, I picked up a cute little dino sandwich cutter at Walmart on Saturday for making Jag’s lunches.  And don’t you know, the next day I was looking through my newest Hearthsong catalog and saw the same one.  For more money!  Granted, you get two cutters for $7 at Hearthsong, but I got just the dino by itself for $2 and didn’t have to pay shipping.  (although I sometimes think the experience of shopping at Walmart is worth paying shipping elsewhere, hehe)  I used the cutter this morning and I love it, Jag loved his little dino sandwiches too!

Thatisall.  Hope you all had a great weekend and a great Monday so far!

groceries

Oy.  I’ve been putting off grocery shopping all week, trying to avoid having to take both kids at the same time.  Really, I could take them both and it’d be okay.  I’d want to come home and drink heavily, but I could do it.  I just dreeeeeaaaaad it.  Anyway, we’re getting so low on things - I really just need to suck it up and do it.

As usual, I’m having trouble coming up with menu ideas.  We usually get ourselves in ruts, where we feel like we’re eating the same things all the time.  At one point I tried to come up with a “meal database” spreadsheet where I listed meals, their approx cost, their preparation time and level of ease, and then rated each.  I got a good start on it and kept it up for several weeks, but let it die and now it’s terribly out of date.  Too much work.  I need to do something simple like a recipe box and index cards I guess.

So I need a chicken meal idea.  Doesn’t necessarily need to be really easy or inexpensive.  Just good.  Got anything to share?

On to other news - today is the last weekday of Jag’s winter break!  I don’t know if I’m happy or sad.  He’s already complaining that he doesn’t want to go back.  I wish he hadn’t already picked up the anti-school attitude.  He’s got a long road ahead, it sure would be easier if he had a brighter outlook on it.  I’ve been trying to encourage him to enjoy school, but he says the schoolwork is boring and the only parts of the day he enjoys is recess and his once-a-week music class (he’s been asking a lot of questions about Mozart lately - he’s really into learning about historical figures).  I’m not sure what to do about that, honestly.  Part of me wonders if I should be homeschooling him to keep him challenged, but that is such a huge task to take on.  I’m not sure I’m cut out for it.  I just don’t know…  :-/

Anyway - hopefully we won’t hear too much whining this weekend about school starting back on Monday and we’ll be able to enjoy ourselves.  I’ve definitely decided on the dark strawberry pink for Kat’s room, so I hope to get that paint and some white paint for her dresser so I can get started on that.  I also think I may have found some bedding that will work in our master, I hope to double check with the paint chip and then make that purchase.  It’ll be good to have a pretty bed again!  I haven’t had anything but random quilts and white sheets on the bed since Jag sprayed my wheat-colored damask duvet cover with bleach cleaner 2 years ago.  Little stinker!

(I’ve been rambling on about decor type stuff for a number of entries now - how boring!)

Oh, something interesting (to me!)… I was taking the tree down last night and found a lizard living in the star on top!  Poor little guy was so dehydrated and weak.  I waited for Jason to get home to remove him, but it was too cold to put him back outside so we put him in Jag’s little terrarium to keep him inside until it warms up this weekend.  We put a little water in last night and put him under the under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen to warm him up a bit and he looks so much better this morning.  The kids are having fun watching him.