I'm too exhausted to think of a title

I'm tired. Like beyond tired. Being a mom is hard bizness, some days it is harder than others. Last night was one of those days. Wait, what?

Judah woke up 2 hours after being put to bed and was up for for pretty much 4 straight hours last night. Just up. Wiiiide awake and wanting to hang out. Would squall if left alone, but perfectly content to just hang and gab and grab stuff. I was not down with that shit. But I had no choice. He wins. He always does. He finally went to sleep. Or so I thought. 45 minutes later he was up again. That time didn't last as long. Buuuuut, then at 5 he was up for another hour. And pretty much just stayed up. He hung out with Bill while Bill got ready for work, so I got a whopping 30 minutes or so more of sleep. I was in tears by the time Bill had to leave for work, because I was so effing tired and there was nothing I could do about it. There have only been a handful of times Judah has made me cry and they ALL relate to sleep deprivation. I like my sleep. Bill came home on his lunch hour so I could nap while he took care of Judah. After he went back to work J & I took his afternoon together. 

I'm really excited that tomorrow is Saturday and I get to SLEEP. Bill will get up with J in the morning and I will sleep. It will be glorious. But of course I can't sleep right now because my sleep schedule is all effed from sleeping in the middle of the day. Sleep cycles, you are one nasty broad.

I don't know what I would have done if I had to go off to work this morning. I could barely function at home, I can't imagine having to go in to work all day. It would be one thing if I could have caffeine, but Judah barfs like a mofo if I have one teensy cup of french press. 

Before, J came along I thought I would be able to get so much done as a stay at home mom house manager. I would be able to:

keep the house clean

not have a dirty dish in sight

cook dinner every night

wash and fold laundry at least once a week

run all the errands

go on nice long walks every day

finish up my Montessori credentials

finally crack out my sewing machine

join the local art co-op

work on home decor projects

do the ten thousands crafts and DIY stuff I have filed away (ahem, pinned nowadays)

oh &, you know, hang out with Judah

Boy, was I sorely mistaken. I don't know how some people do it. I am able to accomplish the hanging out with Judah part, the dinner part, and the laundry (which I was already pretty on top of, that seems to be the one chore I can routinely accomplish). The end. The rest seems to just be a pipe dream. I don't have the time or energy to do any of that other shit. When Judah finally goes to bed at night it is time to make and eat dinner. After that I have maybe an hour or two of me time. Well, it should only be an hour or two, but I often stay up way to late (like right now) because I just want to do some stuff for me, even if it just dicking around on the interwebs or watching tv or a movie with Bill. 

I would really like to get a handle on the whole house thing. I clean it (but not as often as I should). It happens in spurts and stages. Right now the top priority is the upstairs bathroom. I just vacuumed upstairs a day (or two?) ago and cleaned the downstairs back a few days before that and vacuumed and mopped downstairs a bit before that. My goal was to get the whole house cleaned in increments within a week. I'm lucky if it happens in two. But, what I really want (need?) is just to go through everything and get it organized. We just have so much stuff. So much. 

I want to use Morris' quote as my mantra and go through all the things. And get rid of the so many of the things. In general, I'm bad at getting rid of stuff. I feel bad throwing it out or donating it if I spent money on it (even if I don't use it) or if it was a gift (even if I think it's fug) or I never use it (because, one day I might, right?). So I keep it. I keep all the things. And that needs to stop. At the very least I need to get organized and put the things Ijustmightusepossiblysomeday away. For an old house we have quite a bit of (underutilized) storage. The entryway has a bench seat with hidden storage, there is a built in hutch in the dining room, built in cabinets the laundry room, and more built in storage in the upstairs hallway. Plus, two guest bedroom closets and the attic... and the basement... and a damp garage. The closets in the master bedroom and the nursery also could benefit from a massive overhaul. The closets are not huge, but the space could be used so much more efficiently. 

If anyone wants to come over and organize all the things for me, have at it. I'll even cook you dinner and give you beer. I just won't clean up after.

Because I am super lazy tired, here are some inspirations decor photos... that are all just things I pinned. Check out the lack of clutter. That is what I want. Less of all the things. More of a few awesome nice things.

See what I mean? I totally need to pare down all the things.

House Tour- downstairs

So, I realize I said, oh, about a year ago, that I would post photos of the inside of the house... and I never did. If you have been waiting and waiting for that day to come, you are in luck, my friend. At least sort of. I snapped some quick photos of downstairs before our bbq/shower the other weekend. I totally broke all the cardinal rules of home photography. I used a flash, the lights are on (it was pretty dark and dreary outside, so natural lighting was not working), and I did not style anything... It is definitely set up for the shower- with random extra seats in the living room, onesie decorating set up in the dining room, and tables set up for buffet style grub in the kitchen. But, you know, you at least get an idea of what our house looks like. Also, I only took pictures of the 4 main rooms: the foyer, living room, dining room, and kitchen. I did not take any pictures of the guest bathroom, Bill's office, or awkwardly large hallway (some day I would like to combine the weird hallway with Bill's office to make a family room/media room type thing. Some day.)

Our first stop is the foyer. You can see the main entrance to the house along with the little entryway (with a bench seat) in the bottom photo. You can also see our coat/shoe closet to the left. When we bought the house  this room was already yellow. We like the color. It is very low on our priority list of rooms to paint. It definitely could use some touch ups and plaster work, but, like I said, we like the color so it stays.

Next stop is the living room. The first photo is looking in from the foyer, the second is from the dining room. This room is top priority on the painting list. The beige overload is killing me. We have the colors all picked out (a muted turquoise for the below the picture molding and a light version for above the molding and the ceiling). Only issue is, we need the plaster (yep, lots of our walls are good old lathe and plaster) repaired before we can paint. There is damage on the ceiling from an old water leak (from before we bought the place) and there are various cracks and holes that need to be fixed.

And, now we come to the dining room. In the top photo you can see the door on the left leading to the kitchen and the door on the right leading to the weird hallway. The second photo is looking to the living room. You can see part of the framework for the giant pocket doors that can separate the dining room from the living room. Like I said before the dining room is all set up for onesie crafting, not so much dining.

Last up is our kitchen. The kitchen was an add on. From what we can tell is was originally a galley kitchen that took up the area of the funny hallway and maybe 1/4 of the current kitchen. The first photo is from the doorway to the dining room, the second is from the back door. I hate the red walls. Hate. And, if you'll notice we have no drawer or cabinet pulls. There is a lot I would like to do to this kitchen. A lot. The space is really big, but the layout is really poor. This project will wind up being such a big one that I think it will probably be years until we actually get around to fixing it up.

That, my friends, is (most of) the downstairs of our house.

Art Wall, a beginning

As I mentioned last week, we had some frames to hang. Today, we hung them. I had grand plans to make some epic art walls.  I have been oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over art walls on the interwebs for quite a while now. I am sharing them with you so you may ooh and ahh as well. Let the fawning commence.So, very very pretty.

My many apologies about the links. I am trying to become more organized when I save images so I know where I found them. When I know where I found the image I’ve linked back, but when I don’t… well, I didn’t.  Lets just chalk this up to a rookie mistake, okay? Good. I’m glad that’s settled.

Anyway, my point was not my poor blogging courtesy, but rather how much I love these art walls.

Here is our interpretation.It is just a start. I would like to see it grow. I’m not 100% committed to the arrangement, but as we get more pieces to hang I hope that it will fill out nicely.

We hung the rest of the pieces we framed last weekend as well, but not in an art wall set up… Rather in my standard museum hang. You know, evenly spaced and at a eye level. Classic. 

Flor-ed!

My Flor tiles arrived this week. Yay! I haven’t yet put the little flor-dots on them (special stickers that hold the tiles together), because I have been playing around with the configuration. This was my first attempt:I swear I did not take these photos in the middle of the night. It was like maybe 5 o’clock, it just happened to be pouring outside so ambient light was nil. Anywho, I quickly realized that when I ordered the tiles I had not planned on having them be 2 wide- there were no where near enough to have them doubled. Okay, one by one it is then.  Trial number two: sticking to my original vision.  I placed the tiles in a sort of random layout. Okay, not that random since it goes floral, blue, floral, cream, floral… But whatevs. During a more ‘pure’ random didn’t really work with the tiles only being one wide. So, we lived with the above layout for a day or two, but I wasn’t really feeling it. Thus, the third (and current) configuration: I still need to cut one of my extra tiles to make the runner fit the hallway a little better. Once I finally get around to doing that I will be ready to apply the flor-dots and be done. Well, done with the runner. One day I will actually paint the walls, doors, and trim. One day.

We are still waiting for our living room rug to come in. I’m really hoping it will arrive this week. Keep your fingers crossed!

Framing Frenzy

On Saturday we made an epic journey to Ikea. We made it through with our sanity (mostly) intact. We also made it through with a cart full of Swedish designed, Chinese made goods. The bulk of our purchases were frames… thus, it has been a framing frenzy!Hopefully one evening this week we will have a hanging frenzy! Oh, and a handy tip: I used an old butter knife to flip up and down those pesky metal tabs that you find on the back of cheap frames. Worked like a charm and no sore fingertips.

I did all the framing this morning before Bill got up (I know, it is quite shocking that I woke up first!). I have more frames, but I need to sift through massive amount of my digital photos and pick out which ones I want to order and frame. I also now realize that I should have gotten some more larger frames because I want to print off some of the sweet images from here.

Anyway, once Bill got up we switched to working outside. Nothing really amazing, just all those normal maintenance things like mowing the lawn, weeding the flowers, and weed whacking (around the beds of our little neighborhood garden).

We bought some non-frame related things at Ikea as well. Like these cute little bud vases, that I filled with cute little red anemones from our garden.And a bunch of candles to put in our (non-working) fireplace. I’m not super pumped with the current arrangement, but it is a starting point. I would like to add more height to the back row. I also had the great idea to buy a whole stack of these pretty fabric boxes. That way I could totally organize the gigantic mess that is my hall cabinet.You see, since the cabinet door opens down and the cabinet is so deep I cannot reach all the way to the back. I can barely reach to the midpoint, so everything gets all jumbled and mashed whenever I am looking for something (like a matching sheet set). Now with these handy dandy fabric boxes I could put matching sheet sets into their own box according to size and then just pull out the box instead of trying to get anything from the back. Perfect plan, right? Wrong! The baskets were just a few inches too tall. Sigh. So now I have to find other uses for these boxes, which I’m sure won’t be a problem… I do have a lot of stuff that could be stashed away into cute boxes. But, still, I’m disappointed that I don’t get to use them for their intended purpose. Oh well, I guess I got what I deserved since I didn’t take measurements ahead of time.

Well, that is it for this weekend. What kind of fun things did you all do? And remember, just a few short weeks until you get to see the entire house (which means I only have a few short weeks to shove things in closets or under beds clean).

Rug-tastic!

I have just completed some major rug shopping. And I am jazzed. That’s right. Jazzed.

Here are the rugs that will soon be joining our home. Isn’t she gorgeous? We actually already have a smaller version. We bought it just a few months after we moved in and at that point weren’t ready to commit to a large scale area rug.  However, the little rug grew on us day in and day out. It has morphed into being the inspiration for the color flow of our house. We have been planning for quite some time to take the plunge and upgrade. And that is happening now. And, I am jazzed (Ha, there is it again!). Anywho, we will move the smaller one up to our bedroom, but it really could work in any room of the house.

That is not all. Are you ready for even more rug fantastic-ness? I have also just ordered modular carpeting from Flor. These pretty little puppies will line our upstairs hall. You probably noticed that the 1st and 3rd image are the same, just the rug color has been been swapped from Blue Heeler to Bury it Bone. The center image is Pale Blue (it really got the short end of the stick stupid name-wise). I plan on using all three carpet tiles to create a random(ish) pattern. Yay! Such fun.

Jazzed.

 

Our Vancouver Getaway

We have been back from Vancouver, BC for well over a week now, so I guess the time to blog about it is now or never.

It was a really nice little vacation. We had a lot of fun and were able to relax (even though we were perpetually on the go… It is funny how vacation works, eh?).

We stayed a the Nelson House B&B in West End Vancouver, just a few blocks from wonderful Stanley Park. We had the attic suite, which was surprisingly large. It had a little writing desk and twin bed in one dormer, a kitchen nook in another, and the queen bed in the what would have been the third (however, the dormer window had been converted into a little balcony). Plus, there was the living room area in the middle.Right outside the writing desk dormer was a Magnolia in full bloom.

We arrived on a Tuesday and lucky for us the Vancouver Art Gallery is free Tuesday evenings! Now, can someone please explain to me why it is called a ‘gallery’ and not a ‘museum’? It is most definitely the city’s art museum with permanent and rotating exhibits, not some gallery where you can buy works.  

Anyway, the classical facade of the Gallery was covered in a hand painted mural by Michael Lin, which I loved. I was really hoping that they would have some prints of his in the museum, ahem, gallery store, alas, they did not. They did, however, have a framed Dutch still life print in their clearance section (a remnant from a previous exhibit from the Rijks, which I wish I could have seen). I think it will end up in our bedroom, but as of yet it is sitting on our kitchen table amidst a pile of mail.

The only other real souvenir we bought on our trip was this adorable mercury glass owl from Parliament, a furniture store in Gastown (which, sadly, does not have a website).  This little guy is living in our dining room on the plate railing that lines two walls.

I, of course, took a ton of photos while we walked or (tandem) biked around the city. Maybe some of the photos will actually be printed and framed. Particularly ones of the jellyfish at the aquarium or the birds at the conservatory. But, where would the jellyfish go? Hmmm….This little guy is adorable and would work well in our bedroom or in my imaginary art wall installation. I wish I knew how to use Photoshop better so I could play around with a bunch of fun effects. Right now I just use Picasa which is super duper basic. I love swans. I think this was only the second time I had seen them in real life (the other time being in Rome at Villa Borghese). I don’t think I will probably do anything with the swan photos, but who knows…

Now here are some to definitely print and frame:Just kidding! How disgusting are those seagulls choking down starfish? Blech.

Here is the pretty boy we came home to. He was super cuddly when we returned (even more than usual). We saw two saints while in Vancouver. Bill and I both stopped and just watched them go by. While (in our humble opinion) they were no where as cute as Ralph, they were far better behaved (being that they were able to be walked in a dense urban setting and did not jump or bark at anybody. Amazing, I know).

Well, that is it for our trip. This weekend we are not up to anything terribly exciting. While I am doing house stuff, it is just the boring things like laundry (which I am good about regularly doing) and dishes (which I am horrible at regularly doing). We recently bought some power tools (a jigsaw and miter saw) so expect some fun projects in the near future. Right now we are just making a pair of saw horses to get used to the tools and gear up for repairing the back steps. But, oh, my idea list of things to make with those tools grows daily as I find new plans and projects out there in blogland.