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!

We Sold Our House!

I don't know how to write a post about this. Our whole home-ownership story is filled with chaos and bad decisions, starting with the day we signed the purchase papers almost five years ago. We have learned a lot about ourselves as people, learned a lot about the goals we have for our life and learned many, many hard lessons about finances. We love the house, but for us it was a bad choice.

Bottom line is that we will be paying off the house debt for about three years even though we sold it two weeks ago.

When we bought the house we knew we were going to make things tight. Then we continued to pay for infertility treatments and finally were blessed by having a child. I can not tell you how quickly our comfort of finances went out the window and we had to borrow even more money to deal with that. Not a good feeling, and that is honestly when we really investigated a move to somewhere we could afford to be.

The good news is that we have now put ourselves into a place, both physically and mentally, that we can afford to pay off that debt now, and still live very comfortably here in St Louis. We are not naive enough to think we will not have hiccups, but we are smart enough to know that we need to set ourselves up for success in the future, not failure.

It has been several hard lessons to learn, but we are stronger people now. Stronger in the long run for our finances. Stronger in our relationship.

I do not know if we will ever buy a home again. We have talked through and around it. We have found a great apartment to live in in a wonderful location that is more-than-affordable. The people who live here, it seems, live here for many years at a time. One of our neighbors has been here for more than 15 years.

So, with signatures across two days and hundreds of miles, as of this two weeks ago, we are no longer homeowners. And we could not be happier.

Crafty Dad: Photo Display

So last week I declared that I would hang things on the walls this weekend, and I have!  I have hung four things, which is not great considering there are about ten more to go.  A good deal of our battle, though, came from deciding what to hang up at all.  We did not do a great job of sorting before we moved from Maryland, and that was mostly due to the fact that we did not know how or where we would be living after Paul and Sarahlynn's house.

(Long rant about personal and responsible financial decisions redacted. Another post for another time)

Anny will tell you that I am a picture snob when it comes to actually printing them.  I take hundreds every month and now there there is Facebook and Picasa and Flickr I share more than I used to, but printing is a stretch for me.  Fun fact: it's only January 9th and I have already deleted more than 120 this month.

We have lots of wall space in our apartment and have been talking about hanging things since about week two of living here.  Clearly this is not a priority for me.  In the end I decided that what I really want is a way to have pictures displayed, but not have to frame-commit to pictures.  The fewer holes in the wall the better, or something like that.

We got a gift box with a really pretty royal purple colored ribbon and one day I thought that it would be cool to find a use for.  The next day my thought evolved to using it for a photo display of some sort.  We decided where to use the new find, roughly.  I was concerned about a sag in the middle.  While measuring to decide where to put it on the wall and something clicked: USE the yard stick to support the project!  Less nails, more support!

Anyway, here is what we did:

Started with a yard stick and drilled holes at the 1 inch, 18 inch and 35 inch marks of the stick.  This made nailing to the wall later much easier!

I hot glued the purple ribbon to the yard stick after centering it.  Turns out I did not let the glue get hot enough before trying to put the ribbon on.  Solution? Anny pulled out the iron and used a VERY gentle setting to melt the glue through the ribbon to flatten out the spots.

Using the drilled holes I put a nail in each side.  (There is a hole in the middle if we need to give more support later, but I did not use it.)  I did the drilled holes mostly in an effort to not have to put a whole lot of power into nailing with the nice ribbon on it. 

We have hung the pictures with magnets, so neither the pictures or the ribbon are going to be hurt when we change things in and out. 

Total cost of the project was one dollar, for magnets. Had I thought through it better, I would have just brought home some plain magnets from work that we can use for more pictures.  The ribbon was free from a gift basket, the yard stick was free (to someone else, years and years ago) from a paint and room-design store. 

This give me flexibility to change pictures in and out - or a designated place and way to display Christmas Cards next year - which should lead me to print more pictures, which makes Anny happy.  This is a win win project!  It took less than ten minutes of work time, too! 

Another Garden Bust

In our garden this year we planted green beans, onions, carrots, radishes, green peppers and one squash plant.  A second squash plant began to sprout around the 4th of July.  We also did a few rows of lettuce seeds from two years ago, so we did not expect them to grow. 

As a reward for our labor of planting, weeding, watering and feeding we got... two dozen green beans.

We had hoped there would be an "AND" after those words, but alas all that we got was green beans which have long since passed our plates.  They were good, but we just did not have luck with the rest of it.  I am blaming the weather, mostly, for our terrible farming season. 

May in DC was terribly rainy.  June was wet, but not very hot.  July was a little warmer and more sunny, but drier.  Ugh. 

On the other hand - I would like to sing the praises of growing green beans for a family garden!  Abby watched them all from sprout and now matter how much water they have gotten, they have grown and produced!  I'm not sure if we will get more this year, but there is a decent chance of it!  We grew some last year from seeds from day care!  

Maybe I should take this as a reality check: either get better soil or stop trying!  Definitely what I'm thinking is the case...

We are doing a lot better of a job at composting this year - we have put out two trash cans that we are putting scraps into and have done really well about it.  We take our trash out about once a week now between what we can compost and what our town/county will let us recycle.  (Could probably take it out less often, but we don't.)  We found an extremely helpful, an slightly bizarre, link from Planet Green.  Did you know you can compost pizza crusts?  What about latex condoms*?  Check out the whole list HERE!

Maybe next year we will have a wonderful garden, flowing and growing with fruits and vegetables to share with all.  In the mean time, I am looking forward to the Farmer's Market this weekend!

*Debate has been happening amongst my friends about whether or not the condoms are supposed to be unused, and I don't know the answer so don't ask!

Play Kitchen Build

It's finally here - the blog post about Abby's new play kitchen!

I was inspired by a blog post I found HERE that did something similar, but I kept parts of their idea and added some of my own.  As an added bonus, my brothers' scroll saw is in storage, so I got to buy myself a new one!

I started with the Ikea RAST end table.  At $15 it was probably cheaper than if I went out and got nicely finished wood and cut it myself, plus it was a great, square starting point.  (Cost so far: $15)

Then I cut a hole out to put in a metal bowl from our kitchen.  We have too many bowls as it is, so giving this one to the project made sense to us.  I added a piece across the middle to support any weight Abby might apply, as well as to divide the box in half - one is the "oven" and the other side is currently non-purposed.  This is also the point that I had to buy a new scroll saw, which was both fun and awesome at the same time!  (Cost so far: $15 for project, $29.99 for saw)



The tricky part, and the part that required the most thinking, was the faucet.  I scoured Ebay and Craigslist for a real kitchen or bathroom faucet, new or used, for several days before giving up.  I looked at prices in stores, but the cheapest was about $30.  I could not justify that in my head.  I decided to make something out of PVC pipe, and I think it turned out well.  It's two pieces, a p-trap and a part that fits into the p-trap.  I had to cut the bottom piece to get it into the tight space, but that was easy.  The two pieces cost me a total of $3.  (Cost so far: $18)



I had a random piece of nice, finished wood laying around the house that is only about 1/4 of an inch off of fitting perfectly with the table, so I used it.  I'm not much on perfection - it gives me nothing to complain about later if there are no flaws!  We think the wood was a shelf to an old entertainment center.  Cost: free.  (Cost so far: $18)



Since I have about a dozen mouse pads at my office that do not get used (they come with new computers, and we've gotten ten new ones in the last four years) I decided to put them to use in my project.  I cut circles out of the mouse pads to make burners.  They are not attached for two reasons - we might paint it so they would be in the way, and I don't know how we would attach them properly.  Oh well.
I added stove top knobs that are actually casters from tables at my office that were on their way to the trash.  They were screwed into a 1x2 across the top at the same time that I put a kickplate (1x4) on the bottom to keep toys from sliding under the kitchen.  (Cost so far: $18)



I added an oven door and Abby immediately knew what the whole project was!  You will notice that the knobs here are pink - it's because the casters from the previous picture were too large with the door on the oven - it would not open!  I ran out to Target and picked up some dresser knobs for $5.  Ended up at Ikea the next day and could have gotten better looking knobs for less money, but what's done is done.  (Cost so far: $23)



And that's the whole thing!  If we had bought a wooden play kitchen in a store we would have spent at least $125, and the cost for one can go up to numbers that I'm too embarassed to type!  I spent $23 and about four total hours on this project by using mostly scrap wood from around the house.  You can also check with your local hardware store (or Ikea!) for scrap wood to save on the cost.

Here's Abby enjoying her newest toy!

Taxes are Done!

It's tax time here in the US.  Anny and I finished up our taxes last night and filed electronically.  (which means that I finished our taxes while Anny got Abby into bed.)  I think it's the fastest we've ever submitted, mostly because I'm afraid of forgetting to do it later on!  I don't think that I have ever waited until April 10th or later, but I've sure waited until the 1st before... 

One year, when we lived in Manassas, we took our taxes to one of those use-us-in-the-K-Mart joints and ended up forking out $95 and sitting there for two hours or more while some guy who only does taxes as a hobby hunted and pecked into his trusty computer.  When he left to use the telephone I took a glance at his computer screen only to see that he was

We're getting a sizable return this year, again.  I guess when you fork out more than $15k each for childcare and mortgage interest the Feds look on you with some favor.  (Though the childcare credit was only $600, which is a mere fraction of our output.)

We have gotten big refunds for the last few years, really, and that works for me.  Anny has begun to ask me if we should change our witholding on our paychecks to have the money more consistently through the year or if we should continue to get the big refund at the end of the year.  Really, she just brought it up and we haven't had time to discuss since then. 

I know that there are two theories on taxation:
1 - Take a lot from my paycheck and I get a big refund in the spring
-or-
2 - Take less from my paycheck, leaving me more on a monthly basis, in exchange for a smaller refund, or even payment, in the spring.

I think that the reason I am okay with Uncle Sam having more of my money during the year is that I can do a little splurging once a year.  I also figure that if my money is in "the system" it's being used for things much more important than me - the money is what is used to fund the programs and such that the govermnent is providing.


So - what do you do with your taxes?  Are you in the keep-my-money or the take-my-money kind of planner?  Why?  (Have you always done it and just never changed, or do you have new reasoning for me to know?)

It's Been a While

Lots has happened in the last week. Some I can blog about, some I can not. Anny has already blogged about our visitors HERE, and all that I would add is that it was very nice to have them with us. (Editors note, though: I'm proud of Anny using links! She's learning quickly.)

I always forget how hard it is to take a few days off and follow it up by actually going to work for a day! Our whacky schedule has me off again at the end of this week and the beginning of next, so it's even more weird! Luckily not too much work piles up for me when I'm gone during the summer. I keep tabs on email just in case, but voicemail it out of the question. My office knows that they can get me by cell if they need something, but are always respectful of my time away.

The highlight of my time away was just plain old hanging out with the family. We had granduer ideas of going downtown and packing our schedule, but really just hung out a lot. I finally inflated Abby's little pool and used it as a great tool to wear her down a little each day so that bed time was easier for us all. :o)

Oh yeah, and we had a bunch of green beans from our garden with dinner one night!! We have a cucumber that's close and a bunch of flowers on our squash plants. I think our peppers got planted too late and might e useless this year. Oh well.

What have you been up to for the last week?

Married to a Institution Teacher

(Sorry for the silly title, I've been jealous of the strikethrough abuse over at Stark Raving Dads for a while and had to use it myself!)

The Summer officially begins tomorrow, but that is only according to the sun. According to our society it begins on Memorial Day, which is fine with me. According to my household, Summer began on Tuesday.

Summer is a different time of year, almost a different life, than the other nine months when you're in a relationship with a teacher. While your schedule stays the same they are able to sleep in and stay up late. They are able to lounge all day, or take a jaunt to have lunch with friends. You are stuck. In the same old grind. All. Day. Long.

There are many other things that are signs that the season has changed.

My office phone rings. Often.
When school is in session, Anny and I do not speak from the time she leaves for work until she is in the car on her way home. It's a bit weird, mostly because it ends up that I talk to my friend Bryan more than I talk to my wife some weeks. During the summer, though, I receive random calls throughout the entire day. First day out I got three. Thursday I received at least twice that many.

Things at home are relaxed.
With all of the extra time on her hands, Anny is much more relaxed in the evenings and that makes for a better day all around. It might have to do with the fact that there's more free time, but so far this summer week I believe that it is the extra mommy-daughter time. I love that they get this time together, but I'm honestly jealous.

Things in my head are mixed.
Again, I'm jealous of the extra time that the girls get to spend together. I might have to steal Abby to myself one of these weekend days and send Anny packing.

The hours during the school year are penance for the summers free. Do not ever tell a teacher that they have it easy because they have the summer off. With the amount of stress and (sometimes) horror of teaching, this is well earned.

But I wish it was my schedule too....

Just a Little Weird

Got home from church yesterday and were greeted with a very nice surprise: a cut lawn. It appears that our neighbor needed to cut his lawn, and just popped right over the driveway and did a quick cut for us too! Very cool.

So, how do you thank a neighbor for such a selfless act?

Okay, so here's a wrench in the matter: how do you thank a neighbor for such a selfless act when that neighbor speaks a different language?

I don't believe that the father/husband speaks any English, but I know that mom/wife has been taking classes to learn. I do have some conversations with their seven year old daughter and her cousin. Is is apropriate to ask them to send thanks on my behalf? Is it better to write a thank you note, offering to do the same in return? If I do that, do I write it in English and then copy it into Spanish? (BTW - I do not speak or write Spanish very well either, but am sure that I could translate a short note)

Please let me know your thoughts. I'm at a loss...

Give Them a Chance

Tired of your spouse not helping around the house? In our house it is apparent that Anny does most of the traditional housework, and I do most of the traditional repairs/major housework. It is also apparent, though, that the work is more shared today than it was a year ago. What precipitated the change? We changed our attitudes.

Rather than deal with one another huffing and puffing about how little help we are getting, we have put systems into place that set each other up for success. You may remember that from Puppy Training School, but I am here to tell you that it is a great method for keeping your sanity.

For the first two (or so) years that we were married I was on a drug that, mixed with poor sleeping habits and my disease that it was supposed to fight, made me constantly exhausted. Now that I have changed drugs I have more energy, though I will still admit to one or two really bad days a month. I used to think that I was just being lazy, but that was not giving credit to the fact that, like it or not, I'm sick. Since then, though, I have picked up my fair share.

Here are some things that we have done to maintain sanity, especially through 9 months of parenting:

Laundry:
The big problem that I have with laundry is the sorting. I never learned it and it did not make sense to me that one shirt was cold and another was warm. Once things were sorted, I got more confused because I could not remember which pile got which load. When we were still in VA Anny made three post-it notes, and put it on top of the respective pile. That was helpful to us all.
Laundry #2:
In the fall we were dealing with two laundry baskets, one for us and one for Abby. This made my sorting issues even more frustrating, because there are more colors and varieties now. We made a purchase that has helped to save us both from killing each other: three hampers. Nothing expensive ($4 at Ikea) and nothing big. This has helped me to understand why things go in which basket. The BIG BONUS to this method is that you don't have to wait until the weekend to toss a load in the washing machine. When I see that one basket is getting full, I will grab it when I get home from work. Very nice system in place.

Grocery Shopping/Meal Preparation:
I can not stress enough how much meal planning has helped our budgeting and sanity, all at once! On Friday we decide what we want to eat for the week ahead. Hopefully this is done as a team, because one person deciding what the family wants is not helpful to everyone.

The big advantage is that everyone has a say. If you don't feel like chicken next week, it's your job to come up with something that you DO want. I also don't get to be authoritarian about what we should eat, and it gives us assurances for variety. (Yes, I would like pizza Monday and calzones Tuesday. Just some garlic bread on Thursday would be cool too..) Once Abby is old enough to help in the kitchen, she will be included in making the lists and helping all around.

It also makes grocery shopping a lot easier. If I have had a hand in figuring out what we're eating next week, it makes it easier for me to go to the grocery store on the way home. (which is much better than Anny detouring with Abby in tow.)


These are two examples, but this post has been sitting as Draft for weeks so I'm publishing. What other ways have you figured out to set up your significant other for success around the house?

So Much to Blog About...

So little Blogging time!? If only Abby would feed herself, then I could use both hands on the laptop in the morning. :o) Kidding, of course. I like to feed her, it's the only time I feel like I can tell people to butt out, it's our time. (Anny feels the same way, so we often bicker over who gets to feed her instead of who has to feed her.)

Some observations:


**I love that the radio now has 24 hour holiday music. I'm sorry to those that disagree, but almost every time I turn on the radio I'm thinking "Do They Know it's Christmas time at alllllllllll?"

**My kid is adorable. Freaking adorable. I won't deny it. Last night I was singing System of a Down to her, and she was giggly and smiley. Love it!


**No matter what project I take on at home, it will take longer than it should. I pulled out our kitchen faucet to replace it with a new one on Saturday night. Pretty easy project. Unless I'm the one that bought the faucet. There is an O ring that arrived smashed inside the faucet. i.e. I never could have had any control over it, but it makes the faucet leak. Badly. Oh yeah, the O ring is not available at Home Depot.



**THIS is just gross.

**I love my wife, and we're a good team. She's been sick and I've been sore, both during the last two weeks. We take care of each other. I must acknowledge, though, the she does a lot more taking care of me than I do of her. She's not even that mad that the faucet is taking longer than it should.

**I really like our church. We have been to two pot-luck-types of dinners in the last couple of weeks and have been reminded of how much of a family we have there. Our pastor is incredible and the other parents with young kids (and there are a LOT) are awesome.

**THIS is just adorable.

Hopefully I will get around to a real post this week. Don't hold me to it, though!

Two Things We Grew This Year

From October 2007

And both weigh about 15 pounds this year!

Yes, the pumpkins that I thought I killed over the summer produced two big ones after all. This is one of the two, the other is on the porch. I can't bring myself to carve them.....

Abby will Trick-Or-Treat at a couple of houses tonight, but I am reserving the right to sample the candy on her behalf.

Creating a Greener Life

Okay - I missed the official Blog Action Day about being green, but I was caught off guard when Sarahlynn calls us "greener" than their family. There are certainly greener families than ours, but I would say that we're not doing too terribly right now.

It made me realize that we do some things that are normal, and a couple of out-of-the-norm things to shrink our footprint on the environment.

The easiest of the things that we have done is replaced burned out bulbs with the energy efficient versions available everywhere now. We bought in quantity at Sam's Club bulbs in various sizes a while back. The one thing that is a drag about this "easy" project - finding dimmable compact florescent bulbs. I've seen them on TV, but can't find them in stores. (Any suggestions would be great!)

An out-of-the-box thing that we do is harvest our rain water. When it rains. The nice thing is that by storing it, we have still held on to water from the last storm, a whopping (and record) 35 days ago!

We do not clean the water for drinking or anything, but we collect rain water in a barrel as it comes from our front downspout. We use this water for our birdbath and to water plants and pumpkins around the yard. We spent $50 for the barrel, and have probably saved $35 on one year's water bills. By that math we will have paid for it outright within two summers.

We got ours locally from Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center. There are online outlets that carry them, but we like what AEOEC does to get theirs. First off, they recycle the barrels from the local Pepsi plant for their projects. Secondly, the barrels are then crafted by students as they learn about the environment and things that they can do to protect it for the future. Very cool. Secretly, Anny's dream job is to create curriculum for a center like this. She had an incredible experience working at an Environmental Ed place in Tennessee a few years back.

What we don't do yet, but we are investigating:

Create a front lawn that requires less water to begin with. There is no shade out there, so whatever is out there bakes in the summer.

Cloth diapers. We're just waiting for the daycare to say yes. Apparently they have never had the request before. Hmm.

So - what are you doing for the environment? What do you wish you could be doing? What else should we be doing? I would love comments on this one.

Preparations A-G, No H

So I have to assume that most folks prepare for their childs baptism in some way. Arrange for a cake and some platters; do a thorough cleaning of the house; invite friends and family to be a part of the celebration of brining a child to the church (officially).

We paint. Actually, I'm beginning to think that we prepare for any milestone by painting! Before we were "ready" to bring a baby home, (if that's really possible) we needed to paint the nursery.
The weekend of the batism, though, we are going to have great fun with lots of people staying with us, and even more people coming through for meals or just hanging out. This has brought about another version of THE LIST.

I am a list maker and, more importantly, a list follower. When we were getting final things in order for Abby's birth, we made a large post it note for each room in the house, and systematically moved them to the "finished" side of the wall when they were done. Granted, a few of those have not been done yet, but that's another post, on a different day.

My MIL and FIL do not require much preparation. They have "their room" which actually has furniture that came from their house about 18 months ago. It still smells more like their house than it does our house, to be honest. (which is fine, just an observation)

My BIL and SIL, on the other hand, have not been here before. They had the first children, and it has made the most sense to make trips west rather than have everyone fly east. They are going to come for the baptism, and we're elated! But it means that we have to get some things in order.

Sleeping: We have three adult beds in our house, plus two for Abby. We're set for the adults, and are going to borrow an air mattress for Ellie the toddler. Ada the (will be) ten month old will need the pack-and-play.

That led to the decision to move Abby to her room. She turned three months old this week, and with the combination of her age and the need to let someone else sleep in the pack-and-play, we moved her into her own room Saturday night. She did amazingly! Slept for seven hours and when she woke, she happily stared at the mobile above her. If she made peeps through the night, they didn't disturb us because it was through a monitor, not 14 inches from my head.

She slept there again last night and did really well again. She woke up right at 5:15, which is when I've been aiming at. That gives us enough time to eat and get dressed before my ladies have to leave for schools.

Dining: Our dining room had some very old, very not-our-style blue wallpaper with birds and a colonial theme. Our dining room is also sloped. The front half of our house is. The combination of the wallpaper and the slope has been known to make people a little woozy while dining. Our little kitchen table will not fit six adults, a toddler and two infants, though. This means that we need to make the dining room into a dining area again.

I have already taken down the wallpaper, but now have to patch some holes and get some paint up. That should happen over the next ten days or so.

The lists usually work, hopefully THE LIST does again. I'll probably update here as I go along. We're glad to have a reason to get some of our house projects done!

Pumpkin Update!

I gave up on the pumpkins on day this summer when the AC was out. I needed to vent on something, and the vines were growing up the outside fan unit. I folded back half of the vines onto itself, and assumed that would be the end of my fun, no maintenance project.

We planted the seeds in late May/Early June, and proceeded to ignore them completely after Abby was born. Priorities, you know. I based my decision to kill the project based on the drought we had been having.

I went out to take care of trashing the vines, and found a pumpkin bud. (no picture, sorry.) I began to water with our harvested rain water every other day or so, but didn't do anything else. This past weekend I went out to snap a photo of our one pumpkin:


(the dark green croc is mine, a size 12-13!)

And discovered a second one:



We're going to pick the one orange one this week to be sure it does not go bad, and hopefully to get the other one ripe because the nutrients will all go to one instead of two. We'll get some good autumn photos of Abby this year!

Pumpkin Update

I have kept up at weeding and watering about every other day. No fertilizers yet. Definitely no pesticides.

No flowers just yet, but hopefully those will be coming soon. Here's a picture from June 20th:

From 2007 Pumpkins

For perspective I have put one of my shoes in the background. They are size 13's! That's a great start this early in the yar.

We still have not seen bees, but I think I am going to buy a hummingbird feeder today to get the scent out.

My OTHER Summer Project

I've been writing so much about Anny and Abby that I've neglected to post pictures of my other summer project: competition sized pumpkins! Last year we stole some straight-from-the-carving-table pumpkin seeds and I planted them in the spring. This year I've decided to use the more traditional from-the-pack seeds.

I have planted in three places, but only two are doing much of anything.

Bed 1 - Actually started out as a plant bed anyway. I added some compost-ish leaves and hay and such from last fall over top of the dried dirt. I planted four seeds directly into proper planting soil. One plant has sprung forth quickly, and one has grown some but has been lagging.

Bed 2 - Really just a place that we didn't have anything else to plant, and I don't want grass there if I can get a good pumpkin or two out of it! Planted four or five seeds on this one, and two have sprouted already.

From 2007 Pumpkins

I've been watering every other day or so, and we had some good, soaking rain over the weekend. We have begun to harvest rain water to use around the yard, so I use that water as often as possible.

Last year we only got one small pumpkin. Bigger than a softball, but smaller than a bowling ball. I found out afterwards that bees are needed to pollinate between the flowers that become the pumpkins, and we didn't have any bees until September. WAY too late to be fruitful!

So, this is the first in (hopefully) a series about my great pumpkin adventures. Wish me bees!

Getting Ready All Over

It may seem like an easy task:
Make sure that everything runs smoothly while I'll be out of the office when Abby is born.

It's is easy, but it's not.

If all goes according to plan, I'll only be out of the office for two weeks, and am accessible by phone or email.

I spend a lot of my day working for different people in the office. I keep trying to put on the persona that it's not too big of a deal that I'll be gone. I work with extremely competent, working adults. Everything should continue like clockwork. There seems to be a sense that it's not going to be such a nice clock, though.

I have written down in detail all of the operations that I typically do that others don't: web-calendar, voicemail controls, overnight delivery instructions, et cetera.

I think that the key to the anxiety is that the time off can't really be planned. Will it start in two days or ten? Will there be false trips to the hospital that trigger panic but are essentially just smoke and mirrors?

I think that doctors should stop using due dates. It focuses everyone onto one specific date, when we know that it's not in the realm of beign true. Only 5 percent of women deliver on their due date. ONLY 5%!!!

But anyway - in addition to the chaos of getting things done at home, I also am working hard to get things ready at work. Good news is that I get to reevaluate the way that some things are done!

There's always an upside!

Can't Say I was Lazy This Weekend!

Anny has a habbit of telling people that I am good at starting projects. She leaves it at that. Okay okay, I might be guilty of leaving a few projects in the air as days and weeks pass with no completion.

Several times this spring I have decided that I would start AND finish a project in the course of a weekend. The problem is that each project gets stopped because something else should be done to improve the overall use of the entire house, not just the one room/project.

We were telling the lurker-extroidinaire last night that we got a new freezer six months ago and just now is it resting where it will be for the forseeable future. Here's how it went:

Got the new freezer
Moved out the old freezer to friends house.
Tried to fit freezer into the closet where the other fit. Didn't work.
Ripped out shelving in closet to get better fit, and it was time to redo shelves anyway.
Painted said closet and realized at once "This would make a great office!"
Moved the desk to the new Office, former closet.
Put freezer into furnace room.
Discovered moldy flooring under the tiles in the furnace room. Must be dealt with.
Ripped out plywood and replaced.
Decided that furnace room would be better suited for tools rather than food!
Moved shop stuff into furnace room.
Moved freezer into newly designated storage/craft room.

That brings us to this weekend. The original freezer move was back in early March.

We heard from two doctors to plan on having a baby in the next two weeks, not four. We immediately took to writing down all of the projects that need to be finished (and some started and finished) in preparation for baby arrival. It's a long list room-by-room on post-it notes. BIG post-it notes!

One of the projects was to make the craft bench/storage for stuff shelving. I started with just lumber and two Ikea As-Is desktops. This is how it turned out:

From My Pictures (click on the photos for larger views) I am really happy with the way it turned out. I have already put the shelvable items on the shelves! It ended up only costing about $50 to do. ($28 for both of the as-is desktops!) I already had the plug strip, it was just a matter of mounting it. You can see that Anny's sowing machine is already on there, too. So THERE, Anny. I CAN do a big project in a weekend. Now I guess I should hang the door on the nursery that has been ready for three weeks......