I'm here, just busy

Okay y'all, I have been super busy and haven't written in a while. It is 2:10 AM and I can't promise that this will be coherent.
A quick run down of activities that have kept me from posting (otherwise known as "life")...
I have been trying to wrap up Mother's Day Out for this year which had me crafting some pretty snazzy canvases (9 t0 be exact). That took a bit. Planning Little Miss's (Is that apostrophe right? I always get confused with the apostrophe before the s, or after the s, or is it apostrophe es...I'm confused...what's new, I know.) birthday party and Little man's birthday is quickly creeping up behind hers. I have also been trying to work on my meal planning, couponing (not going so well), coming up with some fun crafts for the kids for the summer, planning the summer schedules (camps, VBS, etc.), having my 11th wedding anniversary (whooo hoooo), among about 20 other things that I can't think about right now because I will have a mental breakdown.
I am also trying to save money on birthdays and I have been whipping up ribbon covered flip flops & hairbands for my daughter's birthday. (Note: Whipping up translates to: laboring over, hot glueing one's self, cursing under one's breath, and nearly taking off the tip of one's pinky finger)
Oh yeah, on top of that, I have been remodeling the boy's bathroom upstairs. I am laying the vinyl wood planks, repainting the vanity, adding a little artwork and doing some overall fluffing. Fluffing is not a good word for a boy's bathroom...let's say tweaking..yeah, that's better.
By the way, I have no pictures at this point. I will post some, but I am tired. I have also changed up the look of my blog and I am not thrilled with it, but I am tired. Do you see a recurring theme here? I don't care because I am tired. Hmmmm. I'll have pics, a new blog look and better grammar and spelling the next post. Sorry, but I am just...nevermind. Good night Blogland.

Polka dots

So Little Miss decided she wanted a pink room with pink polka dots. Well, we are well on our way. As I said in my last post (I know it has been a while, but I have been super busy) the color on the walls is Chalk 1. I decided to go tone on tone for the polka dots and used Chalk 2. I know, I am a wild woman. I just took a good ol' soup can and traced around it in a random pattern and painted them in with a craft brush. I only got a tester can of paint from Lowe's (remember the paint debacle of February 2010?) and it is going to be more than enough.
(For some reason, it isn't letting me download the picture. I'll have to try later.)

On another note, I have put out a few of my spring decorations. Not much, nothing crafty, but it will have to do. I am feeling rather tired. P90X is killing me, and not softly (sorry Roberta Flack) I might add. Speaking of busting a gut, I have another blog if you are interested in complete self-deprecating humor & a good laugh....at me, not with me. :)


Happy spring y'all!

Julia Child would be proud...and I'm not talking cooking.

Okay y'all. So, I will make this as short and sweet as is humanly possible for me. I know, that is a stretch, but so are the yoga pants that I have on...
Lowe's has truly disappointed me. My mother-in-law moved out this past weekend and we decided to give Caroline back her old room which was builder's beige, then pink, then beige/blue, and is now pink again. We turned her old room...old as in the one that she has been in for the past 6 months, not the old one as in her original one...oh, for Pete's sake, now I am even confused....Where was I? Oh yeah, it is now an office. Soooo, I go to one of the stores that I am sure they have at the strip mall in Heaven, "Lowe's", to get some paint (this mall will also include Hobby Lobby, Anthropologie and Chipotle in case you were wondering). Well, I decided upon a lovely pale pink, because if you know my daugther, she loves pink. I decided upon "Chalk Pink 1" by Laura Ashley. I asked for 1 gal. of primer tinted to match the paint & 1 gal. of satin paint. They sent me home, unknowingly (to me, that is) with 1 gallon of OIL-BASED Kilz primer and 1 gallon of LATEX paint. I didn't realize this little faux pas until I had already cut in the top half of the ceiling and around the doors (I didn't do the bottom because I was going to use that wainscotting wallpaper on the bottom half, but that is another disaster that I will go into detail about in a later post.), and was trying to clean out my brush with water. Ummm, yeah, that is when I realized that something was awry. I called Lowe's, told them my situation and they ("they" as in lady that was working the paint desk) told me that it was "fine". Apparently, I had nothing to worry about because it was primer and you can put latex paint over oil-based primer. That is what people do when they want to change from oil to latex. At least, that is what she said. Let me go ahead and say that I didn't believe her, but she is paint desk girl, and I am not. It isn't in my wheelhouse. Well, let's just say that it wasn't "fine" as paint desk girl said. It took twice as much paint (which equates to twice the time and four times the frustration) to get it to look right. (I have to add the disclaimer that the Lowe's manager confirmed my suspicions and discounted our next 2 gallons 50%...thank you very much.)

Needless to say, it isn't perfect, but my quest for paint perfection ended after the 45th coat of paint...and the realization that my husband was cutting in with my pastry brush.

Texas Weather

You just never know about Texas weather. Those of you who don't live in Texas truly don't understand how true this is. This is what our house looks like this morning. From the way that the snow hit my snow boots this morning, I am going to bet that we had nearly a foot of snow....in Texas...I am serious. We are supposed to have temperatures in the 50s tomorrow. Goodbye snow. It was nice to have you, if only for a couple of days...

Snow ice cream:

1 gallon of fresh, clean snow

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup sugar

2 cups milk

Stir & enjoy right away.

'Cause I didn't have anything better to do...

When you are stuck at home with 2 sick kids for what feels like an eternity (really only 6 days), it is amazing how productive you become. After about 4 days, I finally had enough. The retina burning turquoise walls and way too shiny and uneven stained cabinets had to go.

Here is the laundry room before I ever touched it...

Lovely 1990's oak cabinets. I will say, they were in great shape, are very sturdy & I love the raised panels.

After ripping out the matching 1990's linoleum, do you remember me putting these totally rad (oops, sorry, I have the 90s on the brain) peel and stick laminate flooring tiles in?Now, for those of you new to my blog, these are the same tags that I made to hang on the laundry sorter. ...and the same jars to hold various stuff that I use daily.

Now, here is my new old laundry room!

I wish I had the pictures of the retina burning color on the walls that came after my before pictures above...totally confused? Welcome to my world...Anywho, I think I was too embarrassed to keep the pictures. Here is the newest color. I mixed 3 different colors I had in my garage and came up with this lovely little blue-gray. I like it. It doesn't hurt my eyes and that is always a bonus. I also painted 1 layer of Kilz and a couple of coats of regular latex paint over the polyshades that was there before. I was shocked at how well it covered and at how durable it seems to be, because Heaven knows that I am flat out sick of this darn room and it wasn't going to be painted again no matter how horrifying it turned out.

Now, for just a little tweaking...I'll get back to ya' on that one.