Holiday Cards

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I absolutely love getting holiday cards in the mail. I anxiously check the mailbox every day starting December 1st. After the holiday season is over I keep them in a box. I've been collecting them for about 10 years now and it's so fun to see families growing and changing. I recently saw a great idea by Jess for keeping cards organized by year. I'm totally going to do this!

p.s. if you read my blog and recognize your card and wonder why your child looks quite alien it's because I blurred out all the faces.

The Deck *shakes fist in air*

Our deck needs major TLC. The kind that can really only be remedied by, oh, let's say $8,000. Srsly. The entire deck needs to be replaced. It's 32 year old redwood and it's HUMONGOUS! So instead I pretend it's not rotting under our feet and try to pretty it up.

Yay! It's amazing what some patio furniture and an umbrella can do. I bought the rug at Kohls a few months back when it was on clearance and had those Kohls cash things and and additional whatever they were giving away that day. I bought two rugs and it barely covers the splintering mess. 

Our back deck is really big. Like probably 1,000 sq. feet big. Not really sure since recently I tried to measure for the cost of replacement wood and I quickly gave up. We have two other decks that are also in dire need of replacement. Ugh. Damn you dry rot *shakes fist at sky*.

The umbrella is from Costco. Probably last year, but I think they carry them every season. We've been through a few because we are careless assholes. If you take care of yours I'm sure they last longer than one Summer and I highly recommend this purchase.  Fire pit is clearance from Target like 5 years ago. Copper and aging beautifully. Has seen maybe one fire. Hello... it sits on a tinderbox ready to go up in flames at the slight mention of a match.

Ahhh, my Adirondak chair. Or should I say the kids Adironak chair. Yup... it's childs size. I bought this at Ace hardware about 8 years ago and I lurve it. Not enough to actually use some sealer or anything but enough to make a cute little pillow for the dern thing.

Here's his big brother who I apparently don't love enough to recover his cushion. This is the original cushion it came with and I'm saving it for a template. One day. *shakes fist at sky*.

I recently made this ottoman by using some old outdoor cushion fillers that were rotting before my eyes. I just wrapped polyfil around the 4 square cushions and measured to make a square cover. I did manage to brush off the mouse poop. Yes, it was covered in little dark turds. I needed to add two zippers to squeeze the filling into the cover. It worked! Yay me.

 

Here it is being demonstrated by my lovely and willing assistant. It's comfy.

I also made a little succulent arrangement. Hope it doesn't die. It's cute. It's also been three months since it was planted and has stayed the same size. Is this normal? Feedback anyone.

Oh and the whole reason for this post is to say I planned on making a Moroccan pouf but Fabric.com sold out of the fabric I chose and the square pillow fabric was meant for a square pillow so now I've put that project off to the side most likely until next Spring even though where I live it's pretty close to Springtime year round. I saw this pouf tute and thought to myself "hey lady, you can surely do this in no time". And by no time I mean have NO time.

Soon the deck will rot beneath my feet and I will have no worries about how to best pretty up this outdoor space.

Lucy Goosey

How did this little thing grow up to become...

This huge monster?

She would really prefer to live inside with us since she "imprinted" on me from such a young age.

She's beautiful, majestic and proud. She also beats up on the dogs and chickens. Insert frowny face. She recently killed my favorite chicken so we've had to build her a new special place that allows her free range of our property. This free range does not include inside our house but today we had a bit of a heat wave and had all the doors open and she just waddled in to the house. I didn't have the heart to kick her out. Until she crapped ALL over the floor.

p.s. do you see all those laundry baskets lining the hallway? I currently have 8 loads to fold. That's not too bad right. Right?

Springing into action

I haven't really felt like doing much these past few weeks. I'm lacking motivation. It's all because I have some serious Spring organizing that needs to be done and I'm overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of crap that I have around my house.

The doll sits with half a head of hair patiently waiting to be finished. She lies among too many other unfinished projects that are piled on this spare dining room table. 

Spare dining room table? This table is a daily reminder that last Spring I brought it into the house out of storage so that it could be used during the re-finishing of our current dining room table. Now both tables are filled with junk and no re-finishing has been done. *Sigh*

Just writing this both aggravates and motivates me to kick myself in the butt and just get something done! So I'm off to tackle a small project that will make a dent in my cluttered house. Possibly something crafty.  

Easter Birds

Happy Easter everyone!

We couldn't resist adding to the flock.

We got a new duck and a goose. They were only a few days old when we got them last week and they are growing so fast. The duck we named Lucky Ducky and she (he?) is a Magpie Duck. The goose is named Lucy Goosey and the man at the store didn't know what breed she (he) is.

When they are ready to join all the other ladies outside there will be one goose, two ducks and nine chickens. Until then they are in our living room or as you can see in the photo above we took them for their first swim in our bathtub.

Free time

Where all my free time goes

...

The neighbors aren't complaining. Yet.

I tried to get Vinny to stand still the other day when I was taking pictures of the shirts I just made. This was the best I could do. 

What is that he is doing you ask? Someone thought that Luca needed a full size drum kit for her 8th birthday. No, I am not shitting you. Chef somehow convinced me that it was a great idea. I understand that I married a rocker at heart, but I must have doubled up on my happy pills the day he brought up this brilliant idea because clearly I allowed this to happen so I have only myself to blame. 

It's been very loud at Casa de Romeo.

{holiday crafting and all that cheer}

Those 40% off one item coupons can be fan-f$%@ing-tabulous. I mean if you needed that one item anyway it's like a jackpot. For me not so much. I feel the need to walk into Michaels/JoAnn's/Beverly's/younamethestorethat'sgotmynumber and buy shit. I am not kidding that I have a table full of craft/knitting/sewing projects that have suddenly found their way into my house.

In case you are reading this and live in another country that does not do the crazy coupon frenzy thing like us Americans, let me brief you. Most of the big craft/fabric chain stores issue a 40% off one item coupon (they are issued by the bucket loads with varying dates of eligibility to get us to return multiple times, unfortunately). These stores know that by getting my sorry ass into their doors I will not only buy my one l i t t l e item at 40% off retail price, but I will continue to fill my shopping cart until all savings of said piddly little item are completely forgotten. 

Moral of story. Buy handmade and forget about handmaking. It's cheaper. Trust me. 

Jumping on the Christmas tradition bandwagon

I totally caved into peer pressure. I mean the Elf on the Shelf has gone viral at the kids' school. Every day all I heard when they got off the bus was all the funny things these elves were doing at everyone else's house but ours.

So for his first night at our house he set a good example for the potty challenged child of the house.

Ta Daaaaaaa!

Sorry for the graphic image. Chef thought I was nuts that this is what Christmas has turned into. A softened Hershey Kiss and some green food coloring (apparently Elves have green pee much like their cousins the Leprechauns).

And here is a nice close up just in case the previous image was not enough to make you sick.

Dirty Dishes

Today we fixed the chicken coop door. And by "fix" I mean re-built, and by "we" I meant The Chef. I did manual labor today though. I wore a dust mask as I cleaned out the hen house. Ugh. That was gross. They sure like to poop wherever and whenever. We have cute little cubbies for each bird and now they have fresh straw lining their boxes. The duck gets her own special box on the ground of the hen house.

Soooo.... our shoes were pretty dirty after today and I decided to see if you can wash Crocs in the dishwasher. I think yes, but worry about the heat. I figure if that cheap-ass yellow bowl I bought at Target does just fine, then the not-so-cheap Crocs will come out all sparkly clean. 

If those bowls can swing it I'm sure the Crocs can.

Crossbreeding

In Vinny's world the zebra and lemur 

are 

a perfect match 

as demonstrated by their intense kiss

He carefully explained that if there are such beings as a ...

zorse

zonkey

and a

zony...

surely a zemur could exist

Seriously though, for some reason I found myself Googling hybrid animals. Clearly I have too much time on my hands.

eWaste

The shirt fits. He's pretty happy about it. In case you were wondering, the broken t.v. is still sitting by the front door. I have it on good authority that this weekend it's going off to eWaste recycling. Let's hope so because as you can see by this photo, the crap is really piling up on top of it.

Keeping the Little People Inside

So today I hung this rug above the front door. It belonged to my Opa. I've had it for years and actually it found it's way outside at one point with cat vomit and fast forward two years when my dad found it on my back deck crumpled in a ball. He thought it was destined for the trash but decided to take it home and see if he could clean it up I mean it is an antique after all. I know, such respect I have.

He did a great job so to reward him for his effort I hung it on the wall away from future cat vomit (it was previously hung over a chair).

 {image}

Oh boy,  seeing the lock like that makes it look like some kind of torture device. Well it looks great on my door I assure you.

I decided to post this picture not because of the rug on the wall, but the lock on the door that I know you are just itching to ask about.

It's been there about 8 years now and I'm surprised to see they still sell them. I do not remember spending that kind of money on it so I'm thinking the price has gone up over the years.

Well... at around 2-3 years old my kids all seem to learn how to operate the lock on the front door. My girlfriend had this same issue with her oldest at the same time as Rocco and she installed an ugly-as-shit deadbolt up high like mine (Don't worry, she doesn't read this blog no hurt feelings). She had a locksmith come and install it too.... At the same time I poked around the internet and found this lock that kind of matches a lot of the stuff around here and it's super easy to install and lock. It even makes a great noise that almost has a Medieval sound. It uses small screws so that when removed and filled with wood filler will not leave half the marks/huge holes as my girlfriends deadbolt.

So where is this leading to? Vinny has learned how to sort-of unlock the front door so we've started using it again. I kind of forgot about it since it hasn't been used in so long. 

When I was taking pictures of the front door I totally cropped them to look amazing. I mean who needs to see this monster that sits by my front door? Then I decided it would be funny to show you this dinosaur that used to house itself in our master bedroom. Our t.v. broke about 4 months ago and it has been sitting there ever since. I'm not sure which is more disturbing. That the t.v. is still here or that we haven't yet replaced the t.v.

In case you are wondering, I'm waiting for an e-waste recycling drive that happens near the kids school for the local chapter of Hope Services, at least that's what I'm telling myself every time it gets piled high with junk.

Chicks

Today we went and bought a few more chickens. Six to be exact.

Someone had a hard time not squeezing too tight.

For now they are living in a bird cage in our living room. Soon they will join the older girls in the yard. 

 

Because I Care

Have you ever put a drip dry item in the laundry basket thinking you would remember to pull it from the wash before everything goes into the dryer, only to have the item come from the dryer shrunk up to Barbie sized clothing? 

I made this little sign to remind me (or my husband should he walk by the laundry room and decide to put a load of laundry into the dryer and accidentally ruin a sweater. Yes this has happened).

The reverse side of the card says "Dry Low Heat". I laminated the sign at Kinko's and I keep it attached to the side of the washer with a heavy duty magnet. When I need to use the sign I put it so the sign overlaps with the door of the washer so I can't "forget" about the item that needs attention. 

I keep a sign in the master bathroom for Chef to use (he has a few work shirts that need special attention). We keep the card with a clothespin in a drawer and hopefully it gets remembered before something else is ruined.

On my signs I didn't use accurate symbols. I just picked some icons that I liked. For all I know my sign says "hand wash, hot dryer, line dry and add an extra dash of bleach".

Works great for the portable laundry baskets also. There are obviously many different cards you can make. "Pre-treat", "Use Bleach", "Tumble Dry Low"...

The free fonts I used are from two sources...

DaFont

Fontspace

I'm thinking these could be fun for lot's of other uses. Any ideas? Let me know in the comments. I want to use these symbols on something else.

It works!

... Thanks  to everyone that has left such lovely comments. It's so nice to hear from my readers. I love to hear from all of you. The play table is a success!

Complete with vroom vroom noises! Maybe it will keep that one busy so I can finish the matching pants to that shirt he's wearing.

Elusive Sleep

I am in a surprisingly good mood despite having such little sleep last night. Scratch that. Despite having such little sleep for the past 18 months.

The subject number one around here is weaning. I'm not in a big hurry, but if you ask everyone I come in contact with about the subject, you'll get an earful. Apparently once I wean this little bugger he will sleep through the night within like three days. I'm tired. Very tired. I may go postal if this backfires.

{The high chair is now a staging area}

Did you know that for every project I post on this here blog, there are really-no-kidding, 12 more lined up. Exponentially over the past 18 months it has grown to a monstrous amount. A majority of the ideas will no longer even work because they are for 12 months and under. And poor Luca could have had some really cute clothes by now. You should see the Heather Ross FFA II Oliver + S coat that I have halfway cut out for the past 8 months. Luckily on that one I thought ahead and started cutting a size 7. Let's just hope that I can make it and have her wear it before she turns 8.  That fabric isn't cheap.

The Blame Game

I blame you fellow bloggers for this mess.

 You see... if I had not been sitting here at the dining table with my laptop, immersed in the backlog of blog posts filling up my Reader, I may have been paying more attention to the rascal who found the container of raisins. I have 542 unread blog posts! We are fast approaching a state of emergency!! One of those posts could be yours!!! 

Oh the horror. To top it off, he now thinks the broom is his new toy. Note to self: purchase kid sized broom a.s.a.p. This could work out to my benefit after all.

p.s. Cute pants huh? I still have like three piles of coordinating fabric ready to be cut and sewn into these pants, but time, where does the time go? Oh yeah, time spent reading all your blogs.

She's Back

Remember her? from last June? Nod and say yes. I like to think you guys have been reading my blog at least that long.

This photo is from last year. She's been avoiding the paparazzi this year.

She's back. At least I think it's her. Or maybe her offspring? I'll have to do some investigating to see if she's building a nest in the same spot. I'm pretty sure I collected her empty nest (I collect the empties around my property) after she was gone this Winter. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Now I'm all worried.

Houston we have a problem

Our indoor cat (click on link to read about her previous antics) is now an outdoor cat. We adopted her November of 2009 and since we live in the country we were too scared to ever let her outside. The neighborhood is filled with coyotes, bobcats and mountain lions. 

Photo Caption "These stinkin' things don't seem to get the game. I caught you, now you're supposed to try to get away. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?"

Turns out just as we were too scared to let her out, the bird population was all too glad to see her kept in. She brings 4-5 birds to the door every week. I'm no bird expert but I've noticed a trend. About 75% of the birds she catches are the same species. I'm not exactly sure of the exact scientific name, but Genus: Stupid As Shit, Species: Can't Seem to Fly Away From Fat Lazy Cat works fine for me.