Happy birthday to meeeee, my dining room is done!

Well, almost. I need to sell this table and chair (plus the other three that go with it that I felt it was superfluous to photograph). Then I need to hang curtains, pictures, and return the tools to the garage. Believe it or not, I don't plan to accessorize with an electric drill and a bucket of drywall compound.

These two cross-stitch pictures were made by a family member and handed down from my mom to me for Christmas last year. I need to cut some mats using a mat cutter I was able to borrow from a church friend.

However. I'm super excited that the painting portion of this room is done. We have some kid free time coming up soon and I plan to use that to finish the little odds and ends. Because nothing says "happy 31st birthday" like a new dining room!


Cheapskate breakdown:

Paint: $10
Curtains+curtain rod: $7 (from Wal-Mart on clearance a hundred years ago)
Dresser for extra dishes: $15 from garage sale+free Menards pulls
Art: $5 from garage sale for framed cafe scene picture, $15 or so for mat board, frames, and paint for dulcimer pictures
Sunshades: Luau party beach mats from Big Lots via a garage sale 50 cents each+magnets ($2) sewn in fabric pockets on back to hold them up on steel door
School desk: $12.99 from Goodwill
Other decorative stuff: (vintage canisters, silver tray, sparkling grape juice bottle, respectively) Free--Christmas gift, $1 at a garage sale, free from hospital, personalized with Little Girl's birth info)

=$68.99

Once I sell the table, I'm hoping to score a good deal on a kids' table as this is a multipurpose playroom/dining room for the time being.

Paint!!

I'm sitting here typing this with primer and paint polka dotted hands. As you can probably surmise, I've been busy painting, hence my absence from blogging.

(I thought it was a good idea to actually live life instead of just blogging about it...)

I got one wall painted blue and then my husband and I decided we kind of hated it.

From this...

...to this

It's a nice shade but just a little jarring with the rest of the house's muted theme (it looks gray here but it's actually robin's egg blue).

So we did what any other cheap/innovative people would do and mixed the blue with some other too dark paint with blue-ish undertones. It came out kind of the color of a Hershey's Kiss. Mmmmmm.

I'm looking forward to finishing this so I can hang pictures and curtains. After that I already have grand plans for ripping up tile in the bathroom.

Baby fever

I don't have baby fever. I wonder if that's normal. I fully expected to, and tonight as I was rinsing the shampoo out of Little Girl's hair while attempting to keep her from standing up in the tub, it hit me that I have a toddler.

The second child has been so easy compared to the first. I guess it's different for everyone and a lot depends on the child's personality but Little Girl has been a nice surprise after the challenges I overcame with Big Girl.

Not to say it hasn't been hard, especially the last five months of waking up at least twice in the middle of the night to rock and nurse back to sleep. She's a messy eater and a 19 pound chunk that has no interest in walking. Plus, I'm starting to question the wisdom of raising a baby in a two story split level house which will need, by my estimation, approximately six baby gates.

Maybe it's because I'm a seasoned parent or maybe it's a combination of many things, but this past year has been just a flicker on my timeline. Nursing was such a challenge the first time, and I honestly think it was both our stubborn personalities put together that helped us fight our way to what I determined was the "finish line". Sleep was insane. I think I could count on one hand the number of times Big Girl slept through the night that first year. And that's with a very liberal definition of sleeping through the night. I missed my life at work like crazy and many days thought I would go insane with no adult interaction (or interaction with anyone who had a vocabulary of more than 12 words).

So why don't I have baby fever? Maybe it's because there are still a few challenges with raising children that are still fresh in my mind but I think it's because I feel a sense of peace and contentment. I look at the future and see our family of four and it just feels right.

I guess I do have baby fever in a sense though. Not for an 8 pound newborn but for a 2500 square foot house. I love the anticipation of pregnancy and watching the creation of something new. I'm expecting a new house.

Original color of walls: yellow
Joint compound: white patches
Sample paint: various shades of brown
Ultimate paint color choice: blue

Please don't judge...not only am I repainting, this seems to have become a catch all spot for random junk. I guess the before and after will be really satisfying this way.