Seven Quick Takes (23)

1. Well, this has been an exciting week. On Monday Michael tripped and split open his forehead on the corner of a wall. There was blood everywhere. I have a vivid image of him standing in the kitchen trying to wipe blood out of his eyes but not being able to keep up with it as it dripped off his chin onto the floor.

We were able to stop the bleeding pretty quickly, and my mom stayed with the babies while Michael and I rode in the ambulance--a trip he did NOT enjoy. Luckily Keith arrived just in time to help me restrain him while they cleaned and glued the wound. Ugh. :(

Then the next day he picked the glue off. So he's had a huge band-aid every since, and it bleeds a bit every time I change it, but according to the doctor there's not much more to be done about it.


2. The next day we said "bye-bye" to binky. Ever since then Michael refuses to nap, and "quiet time" has been ... not so quiet. I am not ready for this!! I already knew and appreciated how much sanity naptime gave to my day, so this week has been really frustrating. I've had so many projects I'm itching to start and now no time to do anything. Hopefully a new normal works itself out soon.


3. I've been letting him bring books into bed, but what Michael would really love to do is build things with his door shut. And I would totally let him, except that his palaces of blocks and magnetiles or long looping tracks inevitably crash on his wooden floor, waking up his brothers. He is really good at building and puzzles ... I think he's a very spatial thinker.

At my parent's house, and with a little help, but in his signature style.

4. I've been knitting a lot lately but in a very non-committal way, jumping between hexipuffs and crochet flowers and leaves for Michael's blanket. All little parts of larger projects.


5. I've also had some non-knitting projects in the works ... I bought lumber for this table (before naptime ended ...), written up a spring-cleaning to-do list, and hung up teal paint samples in various places ... But it's all mostly on hold until this naptime/quiet time thing is sorted out.

Apparently Keith and I had an agreement some time ago that our kitchen would be white with teal accents, maybe a backsplash. He reminded me of this in dismay when he saw those swatches up on the wall. But I've definitely developed a taste for more color and would like to experiment a little. I think he's right that anything except, perhaps, a very light teal on the walls would be too much. What I'd really like is painted cabinets ... but since ours are laminate, that doesn't make sense. (Well, 75% of them are laminate. This section is wood; another is metal.) Which makes me a little sad. I'm determined to paint something though. Maybe the door frames?


6. I forgot to post about what we ate last week. On Friday and Saturday we had this curry with homemade naan, and other nights we had frozen ravioli with pesto, a quiche with broccoli and carmelized onions, and mushroom soup.


7. This week's meals:

Monday: Honey Lime Sweet Potato Tacos
Tuesday: Clam chowder
Wendesday: Broccoli pizza and mushroom and carmelized onion pizza
Thursday: Out to dinner at Burgatory with my family ... not particularly Lenten ;)
Friday: Fish tacos

Kitchen Daydreams--a tentative "before"

Recently I started a Pinterest board devoted entirely to my kitchen daydreams. Painting that kitchen cart has only given me a taste for more. My brain is full of terracotta floors, teal cabinets, open shelving full of teacups, and pretty tiles. Right now my mom is borrowing our wallpaper remover to strip her bathrooms, but when she gets it back I am going to town on this yellow stuff. It's pretty, but not what I want. And then there's that bare spot. 

More than a year ago, I posted a picture of this kitchen from the real estate listing. There was a big (pink) hutch right there, and behind it ... a hole in the wall with the insulation spilling out. They fixed the hole, but I'm sorry to say we've just been sort of ignoring that eyesore for a year and a half. I wouldn't mind putting a hutch there, or some open shelving. Right now it's just our trash bin and the little Ikea cart I painted. 

There is so much to love about this kitchen. Two ovens! So much cabinet space! (There is more of it out of this picture, as you'll see, plus a huge closet with sliding doors.) Enough floor space to waltz in! 

But also: concrete right underneath the tile (no subflooring=a hard surface that dishes shatter upon on contact, and COLD cold cold in the winter). And a huge bare patch in the wall. And the colors ... I think they made the previous owner very happy. Me, not so much. Except for the greyish countertops, there is not a thing in this kitchen that isn't pink or yellow. 

Blurry. Sorry.

Back out into the dining room. My view as I cook dinner most nights.

(If you know me in person you've probably already heard this story, but: Keith brought that pretty blue tea kettle into the marriage. When we were first dating I saw it and loved it and asked where he'd gotten it. But before buying my own I thought--wait. What if we get married someday? So I held off. And we did. And now it's mine too. ;) )

This counter is the site of a perpetual battle. I recently moved the coffee maker and tea basket here so we could have a little beverage corner; the wine rack and bucket have always been there. It looks nice and clean now, but tomorrow? There will be something on it--papers from Keith's backpack, some mail, pages Michael has colored. And by this time next week there will be no free counter space, except perhaps where I've forcefully evacuated things from in front of my coffeemaker. I set up the little basket on the far left for papers that can't be thrown out or immediately filed, and it helps, but only so much. 

(That little door is an ice maker. The previous owner suggested we renew the warranty of $100 a month when we bought the house ... we don't even ever turn it on. It would be nice for a cocktail party, though.) 

 Another angle. Keith's plant life taking over a corner of the counter. ;) I would love to have potted herbs there but I'm not sure the light is enough?

The counter just keeps on going!

Other side--refrigerator, sink, etc. There's a bathroom to the left of the fridge.

I wouldn't have chosen stainless steel appliances, especially with young children; I don't even try to keep the fingerprints off. But all the appliances are new, which is such a blessing.

My view over the sink. :)

 Pretty things that make me happy.

I had to show you the chandelier up close. She painted this herself! She put so much attention into little handcrafted details, but her tastes were so specific. I wouldn't mind painting this another color but Keith says that someday it has to go. He is adamant. 

Sometime in the next week or two I am going to Home Depot and Lowe's--dragging all my kids along if need be--and loading up on primer and paint samples. Keith is reluctant to change anything until we know what we're doing with everything. But I disagree, at least in terms of paint. Paint is so easy to change! (If a bit more time-consuming when you have kids.) And I discovered while painting that cart that painting gives me energy. I enjoy it, and even if I spend all of naptime doing it, when the kids wake up I am refreshed and content. 

Ordinary Time

I've seen the word "hibernate" floating around the internet a lot this winter. I guess that's kind of what we've been doing--laying close to home, living life quietly. Ordinary Time, as the Church in her wisdom has given us. 

Keith takes the four-wheel-drive car to work, so there are times when I can't get up the small hill and out of our icy driveway. And it's been bitter cold and I've been reluctant to take the kids out anyway. 

Perhaps because I've been indoors so much, I've lately gotten a familiar itch--the desire to change something, to tackle a project in our home. More specifically, I really want to do something in the kitchen. Since redoing the walls and cabinets are not on the radar right now, I've settled for finishing this Ikea kitchen cart.

It still needs another coat of two of turquoise paint. I'm not sure I like it. It wanted something intense, but not necessarily this bright. I may buy a can of something darker, more peacock-colored. What do you think?

I am pretty proud of the staining! Of course, the babies found a paint stick with not-quiet-dried primer on it and tracked it all over the kitchen and dining room floor (and left a handprint on my stained shelves), resulting in some frantic scrubbing and our first call to the Mr. Yuck poison center. But all's well that end's well!

I've also slowly been emptying the freezer of yarn, baking it at a low temperature in the oven to kill any eggs. I have two ovens, so I can also bake bread or roast something for dinner at the same time. Which works out great in theory; not so much when, in practice, you turn the wrong oven on to 375 degrees and fill your kitchen with the smell of burning wool! I am a little sad; that yarn was meant for a lovely sweater. 

So far I've been pulling out yarn that I think was unaffected by moths; I am screwing myself up to be more ruthless when I reach the back of the freezer and the wool I know was eaten, lived in, and otherwise infested. Much as it will be hard to part with that yarn, I will hate myself if I keep it and end up having a brand new infestation because of it. Part of me wants to keep the it in the freezer forever because then ... I still have it. But it is time to let go. 

 And while I do this quiet work, the boys enjoy playing upstairs. All they really ask is a Mama to be their audience. :)

Too much paint!

1. Our dining room is no longer pink!

We definitely have more work to do, but oh, what a difference!Hopefully we'll get the new light installed sometime next week, then we'll work on finding new sconces. But we have our dining room back! No more plastic sheeting on the table, no more furniture pushed into the living room, and no more pink! The new color is called Martinique Morn. We're pretty happy with it.


2. I still want to paint a navy/indigo blue sideboard or china cabinet for this room, but Keith thinks if I put a big blue something in here that we'll be limited to palette of blue and green for the whole room because other colors won't go. I'm not sure that I agree ... what do you think?


3. Taking down wallpaper is addictive. I am repressing the urge to get wallpaper out of ALL THE ROOMS. (Blue checked in the twins's room. Dogs in Michael's room. Yellow in the kitchen. Varied shades of pink in the bathrooms). It's near-instant gratification, second only to putting that first coat of paint on a wall. (Least satisfying, to me at least, is that coat of primer. So anti-climactic!)


4. But ... it's also a lot of work. I think we could've knocked this out in a weekend, except we're limited to working while the kids are asleep. It took us a week and a half. When it comes time to paint the kitchen, we might just hire someone else. Our kitchen is HUGE, and there are a lot of nooks and crannies to get wallpaper off/paint on. It would take us at least a month.


5. Speaking of the kitchen. We really do need to redecorate the whole thing eventually, but where do you start? Cabinets? Floor?

Probably the floor, right? It's a bit Dr. Seussical for our tastes. But more importantly, when the previous owner built it in the old garage (which is why our ktichen's so big), she didn't put down any subflooring over the concrete. Which means the kitchen floor is hard, REALLY cold in the winter, and now there's a big crack down the middle of it. But that is a really big project--and definitely not DIY. So we can't just "redo" the floor without it being a huge thing.

And yet if we start to work on other parts of the kitchen first, that floor is still going be there. In a very not-passive way.

BUT. My mother-in-law pointed out that you can pain laminate and tile ... which might be a good temporary solution. It sounds like a lot of work in its own right though ... does anyone have experience with how well painted floors hold up in high-traffic areas?


6. Anyway, when buying paint for the dining room, I brought home a few chips of deep teal. I think I'm going to pain our kitchen block teal and stain the top. Which will make our pink-and-yellow-kitchen even more colorful. ;) But happy colors for the coming winter sounds okay to me.


7. Okay, I think that's enough of that. :) Head over to Jen's for more quick takes!