Chachacha changes!

We've been working on a little project over here that has little to do with home improvement but a lot to do with why I haven't had the energy or ambition to write anything or do any home improvement lately.

Baby number 4 is due to arrive around November 19th and we're very excited. I hope that now that morning sickness has passed I can share a few pictures of what I have managed to do around here lately and then get working on some new projects. There is a bed to be built very soon before I get too big to want to haul around heavy boards. But first I really need to clean my house because my poor family has been living in filth the last few months while I laid around like a lump of uselessness. I'm not good at being pregnant or being in labor but we make such amazing children that we just couldn't stop at 3.

Thanks for not abandoning me during my lack of posting. I might do better. I'm not great at follow through so I make no promises. :)

Crockpot magic

I have this habit of just throwing a bunch of stuff together for supper and then my whole family loves it and thinks it's delicious and I can't remember a single thing I used. It happens with pasta and roasts and chicken. Of course there are super supper fails too so I can't just depend on always throwing together something wonderful. So I'm going to try to record some of my expiraments here and maybe I'll even come back and tell you how they went and post a photo or two.

Today's supper is going to be a pork roast with mashed potatoes and lima beans. I took a pork shoulder picnic roast and rinsed it well and threw it in the crockpot. I mixed together 1 cup of water, about 1/4 cup soy sauce, about 4 Tbsp A1 steak sauce, 3 Tbsp red wine, some jarred roasted red peppers, and a small handful of sun dried tomatoes. I poured that all over the roast and set it to low where it will stay for about 8 hours.

I know that the soy sauce and A1 are a safe bet but I'm a little worried that the red peppers and tomatoes won't go in the direction I'm trying for. We'll see I guess. With a roast you can always cover it in BBQ sauce or ketchup if it isn't amazing and nobody will know the difference. I mean, that was totally your plan all along. BBQ sauce covers a multitude of sins and salt makes mistakes taste good.

What's for supper at your house? Do you even eat supper or is it dinner or something else? My dad eats breakfast, dinner, supper, and anything in between is called having a little lunch. I eat breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks because most people understand what those words are supposed to mean and dinner is just too confusing.

Hydrate

I've made it my goal lately to drink a full 64 ounces of water every day. It is not unusual for me to go an entire day without having anything at all to drink so this is a HUGE change for me. I've been hounded my entire life by my dad to drink more water and now by my husband but a long string of UTIs has finally convinced me that I need to get serious about this.

The best tips I can give if you also struggle with staying hydrated is to buy a 32 oz bottle. Sort of like this (affiliate link is just to illustrate the type of bottle I mean, I got mine as a free giveaway at an Ag show).Nalgene 32 oz. Narrow Mouth Loop-Top Bottle BPA Free (Google Affiliate Ad) It makes it soooo much easier to remember how much water I've had to drink in a day. Very few people actually know how many ounces of water they drink because they use regular cups and glasses and then you lose track of how many times you've filled it. Most people don't really have to think about it too much because they have this affliction they call thirst. I don't seem to ever have that. I think I'm broken.

So yeah, making it idiot proof helps. Also a lot of Crystal Light and SO many trips to the bathroom.

to my 16 year old self

Here's another post in my series on things I want my kids to know someday. My oldest daughter is going to be 10 this year and it's starting to become so very real to me that she will one day be more than a child. Someday she'll be friends with people who are doing drugs and having sex and *gasp* going to church. She's going to be introduced to things outside my realm of control and she's not going to take my word as the TRUTH anymore. Shit is too real y'all.

Tens things I would love to tell my 16 year old self (that she wouldn't even hear because she'd be too busy doing her own misguided thing)
1. You are beautiful! You do not need to make boys want you because they already do and you are trying too hard and attracting the wrong ones.
2. You will one day miss all of this. You will long for the freedom of your little red car and driving down dirt roads to go to the swimming spots and walking outside at 3 am in the summer and flirting with new boys and going home to a place you are loved and belong and don't have to clean.
3. Your parents don't know what the hell to do and could probably use some reassurance that you're going to be just fine. They think you're going to die in a gutter after a lifetime of bad choices. They are afraid for you.
4. You're doing okay kid. You are a good friend and a good employee and a good student. You work hard for your grades and your money.
5. If he doesn't take you on a real date, to a place in public where you spend time together, maybe even have a meal or see a movie, you are not 'together' and he is not worth your time. If he can't afford to take you out he should make you dinner or rent a movie and make popcorn.
6. Dream big! MIT is not out of your reach if you truly work towards it. Acting is not an impossible dream and will someday happen for you. You have all the gifts you need to be amazing at life, just believe.
7. Thank people more. Tell people you love them and thank them for spending time on you. Your physics teacher deserves to be told how much he impacted your life. Your brothers could stand a thank you for the times they go out of the way to be awesome. So many people do so many things for you and everyone around you and they don't hear it enough.
8. Exercise. Start now because it will be harder to start later.
9. Pick your friends better. If they don't take care of themselves (mentally, physically, educationally) they won't take care of you.
10. Talk to everyone! People are so interesting and you will need the practice making new friends. Make sure you spend less time talking and more listening. You can find something to like about everyone but don't waste your time with those who are toxic to you. If being around someone puts you in a bad mood, walk away.

I'm going to try to take a few pictures around here so we can get back to some actual home improvement type stuff. I haven't been able to do too many big things until recently because we've been super broke but I'm getting back on the wagon train.

Legit fears

I found a list on Pinterest called 30 Things my kids should know about me and think it's a great idea. I'm going to steal some ideas (hopefully that's okay) for blogs posts and some will go in my journal if they wouldn't be interesting to the general public. Please link to your blogs if you answer the same questions or just tell me in the comments. Today's topic is 3 legitimate fears.

#1: I am terrified of the dentist. I get anxious and tend to cry for about two weeks leading up to making an appointment and then two weeks leading up to that appointment. This fear has several contributing factors. The first is that things in my mouth that don't belong there make me dry heave. I can't do mouth guards and had to quit soccer when they started to require them. I can't stand any strong flavors so I can't do flouride or even tooth polish. I can only stand regular Crest toothpaste because all the mint toothpastes out there make me sick and the crest took me many years to tolerate. The second HUGE reason is that when I was a kid, I was freaking out and crying and my dentist told me that if I didn't knock it off I would never see my mom again. You might think that my child's mind exaggerated this but years later I met a new friend and she told me that when she was a child, her dentist told her that if she didn't stop crying he would take her out to the woods and tie her to a tree with itchy ropes and leaves her there. Same dentist! The kicker is that this man had a daughter our age and one younger and they were both total sweethearts. Scarred me for life. Intellectually I know that he was just being a jerk and that no dentist is going to threaten me now but I'm terrified of them anyways. Having their hands in my mouth makes me so sick that I feel wrong for weeks afterwards. Like I've been violated in some way. Yucky.

#2: Big dogs. I have never had a bad experience with a big dog but my older brother got chased or bitten or something when I was young. I think part of my fear is that I can't fight back. The idea of hurting an animal is so abhorent to me that I can't even process the idea of kicking a dog that was biting me. I know that would be the solution but would I just let the thing gnaw on me until someone helped me? That's how I picture it in my head. Plus, teeth dude! Teeth are scary and dogs have sharp ones.

#3: Being dead or injured in some fashion and my younger kids being helpless. I am terrified of a car accident or stroke or something where my kids are alone and can't ask for help. I really need to start training my preschooler to call daddy or to run to the neighbors' houses if she ever needed help. I just don't want to scare her because she's already afraid of silly things and this is such a remote possibility that I don't want her to worry about it needlessly. Sigh! Parenting is full of all these things where you can't go too far but you have to address it and it's so hard to walk that line without screwing up.

I'm sure I could think of many more fears that I have but these are the biggest and the ones that take up the most space in my brain. What are you afraid of? Anything that your intelligent brain tells you is stupid but your primal brain says FLIGHT FLIGHT FLIGHT?

Cheap blinds

We were in need of blinds for the girls' rooms to block out the light during nap time and to block the super bright yard lights of some of our neighbors. But we are also on a super budget due to the whole owning two houses issue so what is a girl to do? Well after she spends a few trips drooling over the cellular blinds at the store that would cost over a hundred buckeroos for just the three most important windows, she wanders around and stumbles upon window magic.

I did not know these things existed but they make temporary paper blinds that you can just cut to size and stick up in your window. We paid less than $15 to cover our three windows and they look so much better from the outside. It's all about the curb appeal baby! I found them at Lowes but I'm sure they have them everywhere they sell blinds. Maybe.

It took maybe five minutes per window to cut them down to size and then stick them up. They come with double stick tape on one side but this one fell down after about a week so I also stuck tacks in there to hold a little better. I think the overzealous application of texture in this house contributed to it falling down but I would still consider tack or staples wherever you are putting these just so you don't have to think about them again.

They also came with two small white clips that you use to hold the shades up if you want that delightful sunlight in your room. It takes a little longer to gather up the folds than just pulling a string but it doesn't bother me at all, especially as a temporary solution. I think if we were to live in this house for a long time we would eventually replace these shades with something nicer but we both know that this house isn't going to be our forever home so we are willing to live with some less expensive options here and there.

You can't tell from outside that these are made of paper and they block a lot of light. They also had white ones that just diffuse the light and they had black ones that block all light but I didn't think that black would look great from the street and the gray looks really nice. Someday I'll get the goo gone out and take off those window stickers but they are on every window and it's just such a project that I can't make myself do it. I have a recipe pinned for a homemade goo gone with coconut oil that I want to try because I despise the smell and feel of goo gone. Maybe if I get around to making that, I'll get excited about peeling off stickers and not be so annoyed at the person who SHOULD have peeled them off months ago when the windows were installed when it would have been easy.

What's your favorite hardware store discovery? Because this is at the top of my list right now. I love finding a solution that works for me and it so much less costly than what I thought was my only option! Did you notice that I'm using sheets as curtains and I didn't bother to hem them yet? I'll tell you all about that sometime.

Lookin' sharp

One of the biggest concerns that comes along with painting accent walls and transitions between colors is that of bleeding. Obviously you will not be gushing blood, I'm talking about the bleeding that almost always occurs when you try to get a sharp line using painters tape. It doesn't matter what brand of tape you use, in order to peel neatly off the surface it is adhered to, painter's tape is made only slightly sticky so it doesn't rip off the paint underneath. This leads to a little bit of bleeding no matter how careful you are. And trying to go without the tape is only for those with surgeon-steady hands and perfect line painting skilz. That is not me.

So I was ecstatic to see a tutorial on another blog showing just how to get that sharp line I was looking for in the master bedroom where I needed to do an accent wall. Check out House of Hepworths, she has some other projects that I have used and I like a thrifty gal! (Sidenote: You know what's not fun? Searching through several Pinterest boards three times each looking for the pin that bring me to that link only to finally find it near the top of one of them. Why didn't I see it the first or second time through? Gah!) So if you go to that link, you'll know exactly what I did and see better photos of the actual process but I'll just summarize it here for you if you're too lazy to click through or don't plan to do any accent wall anytime soon and don't need the full info.

Basically you tape off your line, paint the edge/corner the color of the wall you are transitioning from. In my case that was the pink I had previously painted on the other wall. Let that dry fully and then paint your accent wall or transition. When your final coat of the second color is still wet, slowly pull your tape off and reveal the beautifully sharp line you have made. Marvel at your mad skilz and write a blog post about it just so people can see how awesome you are. It really is the little things that I get excited about.

In this photo the wall actually looks peach like I wanted originally but in person it reads a lot more pink than I had hoped. I have since apologized to the mister for painting his bedroom pink and he said "What? It's not every man's dream to sleep in a pink and purple room?" He truly doesn't care and I'm sure after the first day he has never even noticed the color again but pink and purple really aren't his jam. Oh well.

But seriously, how happy does that sharp line make you? Because I like to just stare at it for awhile here and there. I probably should have waited to take the photos until after the paint was dry but I am not known for my patience so you'll forgive the splotchy purpleness of drying paint.