Oh Christmas Door

Alternate Title: Another Year, Another Weird Idea from the Monroe's

Remember last year's Christmas "tree" from THIS post? Yeah, a tripod and some lights was just enough to wet my appetite for something more creative in our apartment at the holidays.

Again, we have many reasons to not have a tree:
Real: Expensive, Anny is allergic to pretty much any cut conifers, too.
Fake: It's fake, and takes up a lot of storage.

This year we were inspired by a Home Depot commercial, of all things. (HERE, if you have not seen it.) I had thought all year about just cutting a piece of plywood into the shape of a tree. I kept putting it off because I could not figure out a few aspects, and I'm glad that I did. We ended up thinking outside of the box once we saw that commercial, and really like what we ended up with.

We started by going to the local ReStore, the retail outlet for Habitat for Humanity. We ended up getting a folding closet door for $10 and a partially used gallon of paint for $5, which just happened to be the perfect green for Christmas! (By partially used I mean that there was maybe 1/2 cup missing out of the gallon of paint - it is incredibly full, even after finishing our project.)

Without further delay, here is what we did:

Started by taking out the slats from the closet door. Since we are in an apartment and I don't want to risk the white carpet becoming stained, I did this in the basement near our neighbors storage area:

With Abby's help, of course, I cleaned the door on both sides from top to bottom. She insisted on her spray bottle, her own washcloth and the most helpful thing for the really dirty part, the scrubber from Ikea.

Abby helped me paint, too. The proof is in the hair, right before Abby's second bath and hair washing of the day last week:

I finished up painting the rest of the door one night after she went to bed, which made it both easier and a bit less messy. I also put on the first coat of paint on the slats. Since we knew we would not be using all of them back on the door, I only painted about half. Good thing, since I broke four in the putting-back-on process (after breaking four or five during break-down) and we still have extras to spare.

I drilled pilot holes in the one of the not-painted slats to use to keep everything in order. We decided on four holes across to allow space for little ones to fit side by side, or to spread them out across the whole slat.

With the piloted hole, it made it easy for Abby to help in that part, too!

Here is the freshly painted door, before the slats:

Here it is with the slats. I was goofing off when I put the red bag on the light. (Which is to say that I like it and Anny did not, so it becomes my goofing off!) We put one into every fourth hole - made for even spacing to accommodate all sizes of ornaments:

Once we added the lights (string of 70 LED's - low power use, too!) around the edge and hung our ornaments along the slats just as we had planned! We sectioned things off, sort of. Presidential Ornaments on the top left, memory-based stuff on the top right and less-easily-broken ones on the bottom.

Like I said, we're all really happy with the door! Storage will be a snap, too. Someone at work suggested that we could leave it up year round and just hang pictures or such. We are not sure about that, but it is on the table now!

4th of July Weekend!

Hard to believe it, but there are things that happened this weekend that we did not do. What we did this weekend was:

• Behind the Scenes tour of The World Aquarium. (It is no National Aquarium, but it was nice)
• Family Movie Night watching Megamind for the first time
• Church and catching up with folks we have not seen in weeks
• Fair Saint Louis to see a local band we like (Cut short because of fun storms)
• 4th of July Parade 
• A Carnival for lunch and fun, including Abby's first Ferris Wheel ride!
• Dinner/party at a friends house
• Fireworks with a perfect view and fun company

Glad I had an extra day to the weekend, this would have been too crazy for two days!

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

One of the petting places at the aquarium! We also go to feed Otters and an Armadillo. Very cool experience for all of us.

Just a pic I like from the Fair.

A picture of (part of) the Arch as the storm approached. We were soaked by the time we got to the car, but since it rained for about 12 hours after it started, we are very glad we left when we did!

Abby waiting for the Webster Groves parade - she was mostly patient. It was wet so the parade was delayed, but fun once it got going.

Abby and I on the Ferris Wheel - her first and my first in as long as I can remember!

Fireworks in Kirkwood. We walked, which was nice because we did not have to deal with traffic. We met up with a friend from church and her little girl - glad we had company since the fireworks did not get started until 9:30! The girls frolicked and ran around while we waited.

Next weekend we are going to summer camp together! I don't think I'm going to take the camera, though. I have never actually been to summer camp as a camper - I'm looking forward to taking it all in!

Summer is Coming, and BUSY!

Abby is already focused on her birthday, but is aware that there is a lot that happens between now and June 12th!

• Next weekend is Paul's birthday and Renaissance Faire
• The week following is the last week of day care for the year
• Then a holiday weekend
• Then a day at work with mom & dad (half at each) and a day at a friend's to finish out Anny's school year
• Then a driving adventure to Wyoming to celebrate the retirement of Nana and Grandpa
• A week of Bible School
• and then Abby turns Four!!

It's only a month away, but when you look at all of those things, it's going to be a long and fun month of waiting!

After her birthday things will be calmed down...for about ten days! Here is what the next five weeks look like, as it stands now...

• A trip to Maryland (long weekend for me, a week-long trip for Abby and Anny)
• Fourth of July fun, and a long weekend too!
• Two weeks of swimming lessons
• A week of downtime (for now anyway)
• Then a week of Green-Focused Vacation Bible Camp

Wow - I thought that after a crazy summer like last year it would be hard to be so busy, but I was clearly wrong! What do you have going on that you're most excited about this summer?

Be Jealous

For many years of our togetherness, Anny and I have done appetizers and desert for big "couple days" like Valentine's and our Anniversary. This year I got a crazy deal on Mamapedia.com for a great deal on Sheri's Berries. You know me, the $15 for $30 was not good enough for me.

I used our $30 to buy berries that came with a $25 gift certificate to Restaurants.com. By my math, I got the a dozen strawberries for a net of $10.

Anyway, this year Anny got Chocolate Covered Strawberries for Valentine's Day! They arrived Friday night with a notice to consume them within a few days to be sure of their freshness. They are gone now. Anny was nice enough to share them with Abby and I!

First time I have taken pictures of food for the purpose of "art" that I can remember. Unfortunately it was already dark outside, so I had to use makeshift light inside the apartment. Basically I took a white paper towel and wrapped it around my Craftsman workshop light. Worked perfectly!

What are you and yours doing for the fake holiday that happens this week?

Our Non-Traditional Christmas "Tree"

Best Christmas Tree - potted and in the house for a few weeks, planted in the yard following the holidays
Great Christmas Tree A- Fresh, locally cut pine
Great Christmas Tree B- Fake tree, bells and whistles, kept for many years to balance out environmental impacts and such
Good Christmas Tree - Real tree, imported across hundreds of miles - but at least it gets composted.


Yes, that is a camera tripod decked out with tree lights!  We thought long and hard, but here are realities in our house:
1 - We don't have a yard to plant a potted Christmas tree
2 - We had three fake trees that we gave away this summer, buying a new one now sounds really awful
3 - Anny is allergic to cut pines - not occasional contact, but the last time we had a cut tree she had hives. When we have a real wreath, she had issues again.  (Worry not, Sarahlynn, she's only had issues when it is in our living quarters!)
4 - We wanted to do something a little... different.  This year has been all about creativity and, well, different.

Ladies (are there any guys that read my blog? Is this thing on?) I present to you our Tripod Christmas "Tree"

One neat thing is that we have a ball in the dead-center of the thing, so it kind of pushes the light around:

Abby is completely nonplussed about the whole thing - she takes pretty much everything in stride these days! 

Now to figure out those last few boxes from the move - might just put them in storage and ignore them!

Easter

Yesterday I posted a picture from Sunday. It is a picture taken on Easter afternoon, post nap and pre-dinner time.  We went over to The Aunts house on the early side because the weather was too perfect to spend time sitting in the house watching another movie.  Easier to convince Abby of that if we go someplace that she does not associate with the television.

We gathered everything up and headed over right after my cousins did.  Abby immediately wanted to play soccer, and since I had extra feet hands to enjoy the game with, I didn't hesitate!  We played for a while, then went inside and back out several times.  I think Abby just likes going up the stairs in the split level. 

Here is the picture again:

I am in love with this picture, I think.  First off, it's pretty decent quality wise.  I haven't gotten any recently that I am proud of, but this one I am.  I love that it captures SO much about Abby.  She loves to be in a dress.  She loves flowers, especially dandelions.  She loves to be active and really enjoys soccer.  I really want her to be well rounded, and work really hard to be sure that she's exposed to all types of things from music to sports to clothes to people.  Glad to see it's working so far!


She came out at one point with one of her stuffed sheep.  She could only play sparingly because the sheep needed some time for a nap.  Here is a shot of that:

Abby cares greatly for all animals big and small, real or stuffed.  She cuddled with the sheep for quite a long time before laying it down, then again to make sure it woke up gently.  She's fun and funny about that stuff.

So, this is our Easter post four days in the making.

Christmas Gifts - Can be Last Minute!

We have both had the same idea in regards to Christmas gifts for our families.  By "both" I mean that I had an idea in September, and began to put that plan into motion.  Last week Anny "had an idea" that sounded pretty much word-for-word what was described to her in September...  Yes, we "both" had an idea - and I'm sharing that idea with you!

When my office moved over the summer we found lots of supplies that were untouched from the move 5.5 years prior.  We redistributed some of those items to organizations that could use them - and in the case of legal sized manila file folders, I am such an organization!  We got them for the sole purpose of letting Abby pain them until her heart is content.  Some days that is three brush strokes and the fun game "clean the brushes and make the water splash" and other days it's quite a long ordeal.  I hate to throw things away, and hate even more to spend money on paper for her to paint.  Win/Win!

Enter - the plain manila file folders:



With a bit of planning, we had about two dozen of these folders with some sort of paint on them - some were heavily painted and some were not so plentiful:



We cut them into pieces that accommodated the cut-out that we wanted - a Christmas Ornament to show through our perfect Abby picture! (I will not show you the picture yet - you have to wait until everyone getting their picture opens it!) After finding just the right pieces to make our list complete, I drew on the ornament shape (which is the size of our drinking glass, plus a small square on top) and Anny cut them out. We are all about shared labor in our house!


(This was the template one, thus no paint)

The final product looks a lot like this, but with the real picture in it!



With every Ornament-Shaped-Picture-Frame, we are giving each recipient a regular picture frame to put it in.

Total time invested:
Abby - a few minutes about once a week painting whatever she wanted!
Anny - Three months to "come up" with the idea - 20 minutes of cutting and ten of putting pics in and taping it to the back.
Rob - About an hour of picture taking, but it was an outing unto itself, and a negligible amount of time drawing the template on the backs of the painted folders!

Thanksgiving!

There is almost literally no way for me to capture all of the awesomeness that was our Thanksgiving this year - Anny's parents came from Wyoming and Paul and Sarahlynn and the girls made the trek to our house too!  All in all there were six adults and three girls - and it was a blast. 

The girls sat at their own table for meals, and that worked out really well:

From Boals Visit 11 2009

We took everyone to the NASA Goddard Visitor Center over in Greenbelt.  It was small, but perfect for our outing on Friday.  Here are the girls again:

From Boals Visit 11 2009

Of course we took them to our favorite local museum, the College Park Aviation Museum!

From Boals Visit 11 2009

(That is where my pictures run out!)

Our turkey was perfect, our company was great. 

The girls were incredible together with the exception of a few incidents that were likely fueled by sleep schedule craziness.

I really wish that we lived closer - and maybe someday soon will - these are the type of people I could see every day and not tire of!

Halloween 2009

We did something strange last year - we grabbed two costumes from another teacher at Anny's school at a very good price.  I think we paid $10 for both, but their children had outgrown them and we were a year (and a hope) away from Abby being able to fit into them.  $10 is low risk, so we didn't really hesitate.  I did an even stranger thing this summer and bought another one on Ebay when I found out that Anny's schools Homecoming would fall on Halloween.  With that in mind, here are three stories from our Halloween...

Friday at School:

For those that do not know, Abby's daycare is contained within a school for children with special needs.  The daycare is in the last two classrooms on the back side of the building, but the two programs work together for special events, like Halloween!  All of Abby's classmates dressed up in their Halloween finery and went Trick-or-Treating to all of the classrooms in the school.  Even better than that was that they invited us parents!  I had a blast and it was quite possibly the cutest thing ever.

At Homecoming:

From 10 2009

The high school football game was scheduled for Saturday, and I had a plan.  We grabbed lunch at the grocery store and ate it in our seats, then we got Abby dressed up as the school mascot: A Gator!  She hopped on my legs for a while, then ran around a bit.  Once the Pom Squad sat down, Abby really got attention!  (This photo was taken by their coach.)  Abby was excited and happy, and most of all we tricked her into being warm on a chilly day!  (Okay, so it was about being adorable, but two birds/one stone!)

Saturday Night:

Saturday evening we had some rain, so we started by playing in the yard under (and around) the umbrella.  Once dinner was done, Abby knew that something great was supposed to be happening, so we could no longer keep her pent up in the house.  We only T-o-T'ed on our street, but Abby's bag was plenty full.  We started walking with a friend down the street, and the power of two-cute-toddlers can not be matched!  Abby even got candy twice at one house because we brought a friend!

We had a great Halloween, and hope that you did too!

Happy Mother's Day

While I have neglected my duties just a little bit for Anny's special day*, I wish all of you mom's out there a Happy Mother's Day.  It is hard work no matter what the age of your children, or of yourself.  I pray today that you have peace and quiet, a cooked meal that someone else had made, and a feeling that you are loved. 

As I know the struggle that many people have, I am pasting my favorite (if that's the right word) Mother's Day prayer from a few years back written by my friend Jan Edmiston.  She wrote this the MD before Anny and I were parents and we were struggling mightily with our situation.  This brought me peace:

I'm thinking about and praying for all those for whom tomorrow will be a rough day: those with mean mothers, sick mothers, absent mothers, disappointing mothers. Those who would love to be mothers but are not. For mothers who have lost their children and children who have lost their mothers.

 *Due to a heavy work load this week I was not able to pick up a gift certificate, but the intent is there and that's all I can say right now due to the readership of this blog.  It's not dirty, there just might be other mom's involved.  If I keep typing, I'll spill the beans...

And We're Back!

I guess I should start with Christmas and will blog later about other subjects...

This Christmas I took off almost a full two weeks from work between holidays, vacation and sick days I only had to work for about a half of a day in the middle.  Turns out that putting in that half day was good for my coming back to the office yesterday because I could hit the ground running just a little bit.

We spent the first week visiting with Paul and Sarahlynn and their girls in St Louis.  Aside from plane delays on the Baltimore side of both flights, it was a wonderful time away.  The extra two hour delay on our way out was certainly not the best way to start a trip, but Abby was a great sport.  I took her over to the B gate at BWI and we found some children headed out to Orlando to play with.  They danced, jumped and chased each other for so long that Anny texted "everything okay?" 

Since we only get the cousins together every six months or so, for now, it always makes me just a little bit nervous about how they will react to each other.  Turns out, once again, that there is nothing to cause concern!  We arrived so late Saturday that the cousins (two girls, one 23 months, one five years) were long asleep, so the first re-meeting would wait for the morning.  Since we were on east coast time, and they are an hour behind us, we were up first.  As everyone began to wake up, it was like a wonderful reunion for all three of them!

Abby had used the word "mine" two times the weekend before, but perfected it while we were there!  Anny and I keep comparing the three of them to the seagulls in Finding Nemo:


It really was adorable when it comes right down to it.

It was great to spend time with Anny's family, even though our time was short. 

The week of New Year's we were home.  We were sure to figure out something out of the house during the day, and got to catch up with friends during the week too.  We took Abby to the play areas at two malls (Columbia - A+ and Tysons Corner - B+) as well as the massive fish tank at our local Bass Pro Shop.  She was amused and happy to have us around, I think. 

Now we have all settled back into work and school and are getting the routine of life back down.  I would say that Abby does really well at that, too.  I know that she does better than I do, after all!

More blogging to come later this week - not sure which topic will fire me up, but lots of things are simmering!

Merry Christmas to All...

We're having an awesome time in St Louis, MO, with family.  Abby is having great times with her cousins Ellie and Ada.  We are getting to know the area and friends here.  Times are good for us.

I wanted to share with you the Prayer of Confession from the early worship service at First Presbyterian Church of Kirkwood. 

God of good news for all, we are eager to draw near the manger but unsure of what we might see.
A child of love and peace is born into our world, a world of economic uncertainty and international conflict.
We have neighter lived in love nor cultivated peace.  Forgive us.
Birth forth tonight, in the midst of our community, love and peace for all people. 
In Jesus' name we pray.  Amen.

It's interesting to realize that the world we live in has changed so much over the last 2,000 years, yet we are still in a world of economic uncertainty and international conflict.  I would like to say that I have lived in love and cultivated peace, but I'm just not sure.  I am glad to be forgiven.

I pray peace for all of you as you celebrate whatever you celebrate. 

Happy Chanukah.
Merry Christmas.
Blessed Kwanza.