jump up and down

our summer groove

Living in a house in a small town and adjusting to summer is giving our day to day activities a different rhythm.  I feel like we are stilling getting into the groove here.  It's a good groove though, just one with a few more tasks (mostly taking care of the yard) and a few more diversions for the boys.  I am trying to relax and enjoy summer, and if my sparse blogging is any indication, I've been doing a fabulous job of it!

 

So what have we been up to?  We made strawberry freezer jam yesterday - yum!  And pancakes this morning for the smothering of the jam - yum, yum!  Don't you just love that last bit of jam that's left after you've ladled it into jars?

Peter is seeing two new therapists - a great speech therapist who has training in sensory issues and a new occupational therapist, also with lots of training in sensory issues.   After only two sessions, he knows more about what is going on with this boy than his last OT ever did.  We are excited for the changes and to start some new things to help Peter.  He starts summer school the week after we get back from our 4th of July family visit weekend.  I've been assured that it will be low key and I hope it will gently help him (and me) be ready for kindergarten in the fall.

I finally hung our laundry on our clothesline today.  This feature was definitely on the pro list when we were deciding if we would take this house and it rained so much right after we got here that I hadn't been able to use it.  Then when the rain finally stopped, I was too much in  the habit of using the dryer and didn't make the effort to hang things on the line.  Last week, I was inspired by Kirsten's post and got to it today.  Now, like her, I just need something to put the clothespins in.  I think maybe a clothespin apron...another project to add to the list.

And maybe we will forgive our landlord for having such repugnant taste in home interiors if he continues to bring us fresh vegetables from his garden...maybe.

small town summer day

A free pancake breakfast,

A row of classic cars for your viewing pleasure,

A parade consisting of everyone driving their cool car or truck down main street and throwing candy,

and a 5K in which I place dead last because their are only about 20 participants and let's face it, I'm a slow runner (and sorry, no pictures of my somewhat humiliating defeat), can only mean one thing...it was our small town's annual summer celebration.  We had a great time...I think I'll like this place.

before and after: the entry

 The curtains are finished and the maps are up - yes, I used vintage road maps to cover up what one commenter aptly referred to as "puke on walls."  If the house were mine, I probably would've done something more permanent, but I think this really works for a rental. 

The idea came after I saw a vintage map tablecloth on a wall.  It made me think of the cupboard full of road maps that my grandparents had in a cupboard in the house I grew up in.  My grandparents have driven their car to a lot of places.  My grandpa worked for IBM and was sent to school in New York once.  The whole family drove the car across the nation and spent a few months there. My mother always talks about how much that experience opened the eyes of a born and raised in Utah girl. Unfortunately, I encouraged my Grandma to get rid of most of those maps a couple of years ago when I was helping her purge, so I bought a couple of lots of maps from eBay.

There are a few other walls in the house that have been or will be covered with these maps.  We all enjoy looking at them, especially Ryan.  And Peter brought one of the leftover maps to the table today and said, "Where do you want to go, Mommy?" so we're all getting from these maps what I hoped they would accomplish - a sense of adventure and a feeling of wanting to hit the road.  At some point in my life, I want to take a cross-country road trip, so I'm fueling the desire in those who will hopefully join me on that journey.

I think the entry is going to look even better after I re-do the two pieces of furniture I picked up a couple of weeks ago at the thrift store.  Along with this chair, I've got three other wood chairs with upholstered seats now that will all be painted white and have various homes throughout the house, but I haven't decided how to do the re-upholstering.  And I'm thinking about a nice golden yellow for the side table - it is actually painted in some sort of faux wood finish right now and I'm trying to decide if I need to strip it or not. 

happy father's day

to the best dad I know.  Maybe I'm a little biased, but if my boys' devotion is any indication, Ryan really is the World's Greatest Dad!

Ned would be in here too, but he was too squirmy and all the shots with him were blurry.  And yes, there is a little sneak preview of what I did with the splattered yuck walls in the background there.  Maybe I will get the curtains sewn up soon so I can show you the whole thing!

before and after: the play area

I finally have one area of the house ready to show - our little play area.  The living room is short and wide and naturally separated into two spaces by the front door (which you can't see from the road because of all of the pine trees so everyone comes in the back door anyway, but that's another chapter in the book of this quirky house), so we decided to make half of it into a play area for the kids. 

This is the best before picture I have of the area, taken when we looked at the place the second time.

And the afters....

The Entire Area - the rug was a clearance deal from Target.  I almost paid as much to ship it as I paid for the rug, but still a great deal and covering up as much of the nasty carpet as possible is a must! 

The bookshelves - both were pieces we had before.  The white one is actually one from Ryan's childhood and I painted it white.  It was a dark blue, about the same color as the corner chair in the overview pic above.  I considered keeping it the same color, but after we put up our white bookcase in the living room, we liked the white so much that we decided everything that could possibly be turned white should be painted.

My one splurge for the room was a set of Trofast toy storage units from Ikea.  I knew that if I were going to have most of the toys that close to the living room and dining area that I would need them to be easy to put away and then not seen when they are put away.  My favorite drawer is full of a set of vintage wood blocks I found a couple of months ago.

My wonderful Mom came two weeks before we moved and helped make the curtains.  I was lucky enough to have that ribbon in my stash - a roll I bough when our local Hancock's went out of business.  The top is just white muslin and the bottom is Alexander Henry's Traffic Jam.  The chair is another great thrift find, bought for a whopping $2.25.  I had planned to put it in the bathroom to sit on when bathing the boys, but it didn't fit, so I thought it added a little something here.  I will probably make a cushion for it, but there are so many sewing projects right now that it's on the backburner.

The top shelf of the bookcase is a mini-office space - a vintage aluminum pan I picked up a while back and filled with envelopes, staples, tape, and all those things that the boys love to play with but we can never find if we let them.  The two bread pans are for mail and bills. 

And a bit of decor...the top print is from Candace at Sparkle Power and the bottom is from John W. Golden and both were hanging in other areas of our previous place.  The globe is thrifted - does it count as vintage becuase it still has the USSR on it?  We bought it as a family a week or two before we moved.  You'll see as I show you more of the house that there is a bit of a geography/map theme.

I'm quite pleased with it.  I'll probably add a few more things - maybe some pennant banners over the windows and possibly more artwork, but overall I'm liking the looks and it seems to be functioning well for the boys and for me.

 

getting there: a little sewing

Getting things together in our new place seems to be going very slowly, but maybe that is just because I want everything finished now so I can sit back and relax.  There's still seems to be a lot to do, but I think most of the cleaning is finished (or as good as it's going to get, a lot of things are just damaged and I'm thinking about ways to cover them) and I am focusing more on my improvement projects, so that is good.  The boys are starting to calm down and accept this as home.  Peter is pretty much there, but Ned still struggles sometimes.  On Sunday, Ryan had to chase him down the street right after he yelled, "I want to go home!"  Today he said the same thing to me when we were outside, but when I explained that this was our new home, he decided it would be OK to just go inside. 

 

I did get my sewing machine out, finally - mostly because I was forced to after I opened my shop last Friday, thinking that it would take a while to get things going again and then sold a banner on the first day it opened.  It was good though, I'd been meaning  for several days to get my room to the point where I could sew.  Last night I braved the creepy basement and stayed up to put these pillows together.  The Etsuko Furuya scooter fabric was an impulse buy that I had to have when I was buying fabric for the curtains in the play area.  I knew the colors and funky feel were just what I was going for and had to make a pillow out of it.  The other pillow is that piece of thrifted embroidery that I blogged about  in February (before we knew we were moving) and that I'm so glad I hadn't done anything with yet.  I think you can see just from these two pillows alone that I'm going for an incredibly eclectic look and so far I'm really liking it.  I don't expect to have the living room "finished" for a week or two (or three), but I'm happy that minus a few pieces of furniture that I bought (all thrifted, so not a big loss) that just won't fit, this room is turning out almost exactly like I thought it would.  

Next on my list though is to tackle this...the sponge painted entryway that many of you have requested to see.  Our lease specifically forbids painting (probably only because I brought it up when we looked at the place) and our landlords live across the street and do all of our maintenance and repairs, but I've got another idea to cover up this hideousness. 

settling in

Apparently, moving is tiring for the whole family.  Ned fell asleep on our office chair on Saturday afternoon - it doesn't look very comfortable to me, but he seemed happy there.  We're settling into our new place, still swimming in a sea of boxes, but starting to make our way out of the mess.  I did have a couple "What have I done?" moments after we moved in.  The toilets and faucets and lights are all working now and hopefully I won't have anymore.  I also had not realized how dirty the "new" place was or had assumed that it would be cleaned before we moved in, but it wasn't and we have had to do a lot of cleaning and still have quite a bit more to do (anyone know an easy way to clean linoleum that has dirt stuck in all of its little divots?).  I'm hoping that by the end of this week I'll be ready to start on some of my projects and re-open my store.

I never got around to another post before the move because the boys are having a harder time adjusting than I anticipated.  The other times we have moved, they were both very young and it didn't really seem to phase them.  Their anxiety started about a week before we actually moved as they saw everything going into boxes and has just started to ease up.  Ned especially has reacted by clinging to his blankie that he had finally given up except for bedtime, asking for his binky (which he has been denied), and needing lots of extra patience.  I'm glad Peter has a few months to adjust to being here before he has to go to a new school too. 

Here are the things we are loving about the new place:
    -waking up to chirping birds and hearing them all day long.  I don't think I ever mentioned that our last place was right next to the freeway - no birds there!  I'll never live next to the freeway again.
    -the yard. The boys are constantly asking to go outside and loving every minute of it out there.  Even Ryan was surprised by how much he enjoyed mowing the lawn with our new electric mower.  We keep saying, "You get the smell of grass, without the gas!"  I have planted our vegetables that we started a little while back and I hope to get a few more this week.
    -our new ward at church.  Everyone has been super friendly, warm, and helpful. 
    -watching the price of gas go up and not having a heart attack.  Ryan just had to pump up the tires on his bike (that he hadn't rode for 2.5 years) and it was ready to go for the 1 mile ride to work.  Hooray for that!

another one: crochet rag rug

I was going to make myself catch up on my e-mail before I posted again, but packing is in full force now and I fear I won't post again before the move if I stick to that rule!  Please know that I love and appreciate your comments and I try to respond to them in a semi-timely manner, but I'm really not that good at any sort of correspondence unless it's a pressing matter!

Anyway, I wanted to show this rug that I crocheted this a few weeks ago -  it was a great TV watching project.  It will probably go in the kitchen in the new house.  It's made out of strips of thrifted sheets.  I meant to have it be a circle, but apparently I am not so good at getting the shape right when I'm going free hand and it's more of an oval or rounded square.  I'm just glad that it sits pretty flat.  I mostly followed this tutorial from Vintage Chica. I may have used a bigger hook than I was supposed to - the one I bought came in a two pack with two sizes, but the individual hooks weren't marked, so I just went with the biggest one.  My rug has a lot of space in between the stitches, but I think it will work well.

I'm getting really excited to get into that house and get decorating.  Our big moving day is next Saturday (the 23rd) and then we'll be back and forth for another week while we clean up at the old place and let Peter finish his last week of preschool.  I'll probably do at least one more post before moving day with a few more thrift finds.  In the meantime, I'll be back to stuffing all of our worldly possessions in boxes and trying to keep the boys from climbing all over them!

three

This little guy turned three on Friday.  He's done a lot of growing up in the last year - potty training,  giving up the binky, and growing out of those terrible twos.  He's still full of sass, which we love, it just includes a little more reason now.  I'm so glad that three years ago, this little guy became a part of our family.

The celebration was pretty low key because of our impending move. 

We enjoyed our favorite chocolate cake,

and a new bicycle.

Happy Birthday Ned! 

today

I'm breathing a sigh of relief over here.  Finals are over and I did really well in both of my classes.  And at the same time, I'm trying not to get too stressed out about our move - two weeks until that and all I've got packed is about ten boxes.  It will all come together, right?  It always does.  And it seems like we have a flurry of events and celebrations in those next two weeks.  Tonight we had Peter's end of the year social for preschool.  I didn't have time to put together a handmade gift for his teacher and the aide in his class, so we got some flowers, put them in thrifted vases and tied some ribbon from my stash around the vase.  Peter loved giving them away - he wrapped his arms tight around the vase and was so careful not to drop them as he offered the vase.  Tomorrow a certain little guy turns three.  How, how, how did he get that old?