Silver & Sage Living Space

Most of my creative energy these last few weeks has been dedicated to our basement (sorry Blog). Between road trips to Ikea and consulting with my gays, I have been feeling pretty excited about getting this freaking thing done!

Bathroom tile is ready for grout. Our final light (the bathroom vanity) arrived on our doorstep yesterday. AND I just ordered a new dining room chandelier for good measure. I know this has nothing to do with our basement, but now that our 100-year-old wiring has been updated, we feel more confident about upgrading things like this...so we don't get shocked even after we turn off the breaker...which happened when we updated the kitchen light.

Anyway, the most challenging decision for me to make in this whole basement project has been paint color. I had all these ideas in mind, and my head was spinning from the stress of it. To top it off, we could only afford two color choices, which totally doesn't jive with my paint-your-house-as-many-shades-as-possible ways! Shades of gray seem to be the most fetch trend right now, so I tried finding a shade that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, and that coordinated with the spa color we chose for the bathroom. Oh, and it also had to match our bedding. However, every shade I tried seemed too cold, too beige, too purple, or too dingy for the space. I love the gray look, but what looked great with the bedding made the laundry room feel like a dungeon. I had visions of us re-painting everything in 6 months if it wasn't perfectly perfect.

After losing sleep for 2 nights, I decided to start from scratch.

• How can I make the basement a cohesive space? 
• What would I be using this space for? 
• What shades make me feel warm and fuzzy inside?

To answer the first question, I made an executive decision: the bedroom and bathroom were going to be the same color, and everything else would be painted the coordinating shade. I loved the idea of laying in bed, looking through the bathroom door, and seeing the same shade of wall color in a different room (like this and this). Bedroom/bathroom color choice took precedence! Otherwise, we would be spending another few hundred dollars on new bedding - not what we wanted. So we picked a color! (Reveal to come soon.)

Next, I had to develop a long-term plan for the living space. I stood in the empty, white living room imagining what I would spend most of my time doing there besides watching TV. The answer was laundry. Then, I had to ask what color I wanted my laundry room to be. It certainly wasn't a variation on the theme of gray. I needed a bright, happy, and clean color that would inspire me to actually fold my clothes.

My next largest activity in this space will hopefully be knitting and sewing. There isn't a great place to sew in our house while watching TV, so I am very excited to make a little station for myself, with the Ikea Fintorp system to hold some of my crafting supplies. We were getting closer to narrowing down our choice when I decided that colors I associate with crafts, and that give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, AND that I had Pinned most frequently - are shades of greens and blues! And sometimes these shades were disguised as "grays" on Pinterest.

So there you have it! We picked out a few paint samples that matched our criteria, painted them on paper and hung the paper around the basement. The minute I saw Benjamin Moore's Silver Sage paint hung in the laundry room doorway, I knew it was THE ONE. It still shades a little gray, but has a happy, relaxing tint. And I love it.

Color: Benjamin Moore Silver Sage - it shades a soft gray-green/silver-sage (haha! duh!) on the actual walls

Light: Ikea

Washer/Dryer: Samsung  - not what I would choose if I had to do it again, but that's what we have

Laundry Print: Etsy

Storage: Ikea 

Sewing Machine: Brother

Flooring: Vinyl PVC (resistant to wear, moisture, and extremely durable - perfect for basement spaces)  

We still need to find a couch for the space, so I am keeping my eyes peeled for good deals. I also need to pick out carpeting for the staircase, as wood flooring is out of our budget for now. I cannot wait to share actual pictures when it is all put together!

Sod Rolling Party 2014! {and other various happenings}

This weekend was cray-cray! And yet for the first time in months, I sat down during Everett's nap yesterday and had spare time to read. Usually nap time means chore time in our household, so this was a special treat.

My favorite part of the weekend was getting to witness baby Blaine's baptism. How awesome is it that he got baptized on Pentecost?

And I certainly can't be mad about the progress happening in our basement.

Floors are in progress, tub is assembled and waiting to be installed, walls are painted, lights are ordered. Bam!

And now I know why people have a million kids. It is because when they are older, they do manual labor for their elders. This weekend my siblings and I got together to roll sod and put in a fire pit for my mom.

The grandchildren loved playing in the new grass.

Here's a Before picture from an earlier post...

A huge improvement! As per usual, Baby Ceci slept like her angelic self for most of the day...

 And Everett got to partake in his favorite activity: playing with the hose.

His least favorite activity? Well, on Saturday it was running in a race. The Bloomsday Road Runners Club puts on a race called The Festival of Miles every year. They have races for all ages, BBQ for families, free throw competitions, and door prizes. So fun right?! Yes, at least for everyone but Everett. The nugget was whining the whole time while the kid to his left was getting psyched up by his dad. The pep talk must have worked because that kid definitely won.

And then there's my kid. At least he didn't come in last.

He still got a medal for his minimal efforts...

Then he decided he was fine for about 5 minutes until a meltdown told us it was time to go. Next year, WE ARE GOING TO WIN THIS THING!

Weekness

This week...what a week. Well, let's start the story of this week from the beginning.

I ran my first half marathon since before I was pregnant!

I had been running pretty regularly for a few months, and trained with my dear friend (also an Emily), who is super fast. I ran my best Bloomsday time and felt stronger than ever. Then the week after Bloomsday, I was walking at work and felt my pelvis crack. My body is still recovering from pregnancy/childbirth, and I felt a little discouraged this was happening 17 months later. It was hard for me to walk after this, let alone run, and I had huge amount of anxiety about running a half marathon in this condition - but I paid $90 to run it, so I wasn't about ready to give up!

Since I didn't get a chance to train further than 8 miles, I started the half marathon slow and steady, and I ended with a decent time. I have mixed emotions about this accomplishment. The day was hot, the course was obnoxious, it was lonely running all by myself, and although my official finish time was not my worst time, it was my second worst. However, I am happy to report that my pelvis stayed in one piece, and my dad finished his first half marathon that day!

Tuesday morning I brought Everett to his 18 month checkup. He jumped up so high on the charts that the nurse had to measure him twice to make sure it wasn't a mistake! Any mother of a small baby knows the feeling of accomplishment when this happens! 

Remember how I word vomited my thoughts on parenting a toddler? I asked the doctor for any professional advice she was willing to share, and this was her response, "I've been watching the way you interact with him, and you are doing a perfect job! You are already doing everything I would recommend."

I'm not slowly killing my child! Of course, I felt elated and rewarded myself with a pint of ice cream from the Scoop. Then...

If you follow me on Instagram you know what happened the next morning. I was laying down while playing with Everett. He was standing over me horsing around and I remember thinking, "How the heck did he get that?" Famous last words.

Everett was holding one of these...

He looked at it closely, decided he didn't care, then dropped it like an uninteresting toy. Unfortunately it landed on my head. I didn't curse, I didn't scream, but I did cry. Then I started bleeding everywhere, so I rushed myself to Urgent Care to get stitches. Jeff stayed home with Everett because he was so upset, and I knew watching me bleed at the doctor would be even more traumatic.

Later that night, for the first time Everett said, "I love you Mommy."

And that, my friends, is parenting in a nutshell. You feel like a failure, you feel the bliss of success, your child gives you a concussion, and then he does something so sweet that your heart is bursting with joy!

A Weekend of Friends and Family

Our Memorial Day weekend was one for the books! We spent the extra time off work road tripping to Oregon to visit with friends and family.

Look at my sweet nugget picking flowers with Grandma.

It should be pretty obvious from the picture above, but Jeff's mom is a master gardener. Check out this sweet succulent planter she made and hung on the side of her house:

She is also a collector of Glassybaby votive holders. 

 

And she's an all-around fantastic woman. Everett loved seeing his grandparents. One of the highlights for him was when a dump truck came to deliver gravel for Grandma's incredible garden creations. He wouldn't nap because he could hear the truck outside. So we had to go out and watch it - such a boy!

After getting Everett settled in Portland and snuggled in Grandma's lap, Jeff and I traveled down to Eugene...sans Bebe.

We spent 2 nights with a group of our best friends from college. I get a little depressed after spending time with these individuals because they were what made my college experience so memorable, and it's hard only being able to see them a couple times a year. There are 12 of us when we all get together, and each brings his/her own personality to the table. And we all get each other. An outsider looking in on our group will wonder what the heck we are talking about, and they will also wonder how they can become part of our circle. I know that if I ever asked, any and all of these individuals would drop everything to be there for me. I am one lucky girl, and I wish everyone could have just one friend like the eleven I have. Just try to imagine life with 11 kindred spirits!

Also, because I know you have all been dying to meet him, here is my GBF in the flesh. Isn't he so handsome and stylish and skinny? Yup, he's a pretty big deal and I know him.

 

As for an update on our house remodel, walls are all textured, we chose our paint colors, and we bought some stuff at Ikea last weekend. Things are happening!

Toddlers

This little munchkin is 17 (almost 18) months old, and I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around this fact. The last (almost) year and a half has been life altering, and now that I am on this journey, I could not imagine living life any other way.

Life with a child is...full. I cannot think of any other way to describe it. Being a parent is like being an on-call doctor: you have people constantly looking to you for leadership, you are always ready to respond to crisis, your touch heals, your presence comforts, you give life, and you are an expert in your field only after years of experience. Granted, you never get a vacation from your kids, and there is never another Everett's Mommy to relieve you, but all this hard work is totally worth it because from the moment the on-call doctor places your child in your arms, you know you would do anything to protect him. My sister said it best when she told me that having a child fills you with a love so profound that it consumes you.

Sometimes this deep, all-consuming love gets tested. Sometimes doctors get burned out, and so do parents. Having a baby who wants independence is exhausting. I have decided this is what makes toddlers so challenging: they want something, but are not yet aware of their limits or the limits of the world in which they live. "Everett, if you stand on the back of the couch you will lose your balance, you will fall, and you will hurt yourself." These are things he does not yet understand, and it is hard to know if it's worth the tantrum that will ensue as a result of my parenting intervention.

Do we let them fall and learn from their mistakes? Do we protect them from falling and make this a game (because it will turn into that) by rewarding bad behavior with attention? Where does our all-consuming love do more harm than good?

I will admit, it is more difficult for me as a parent to enjoy these firsts. A few months ago, I took Everett on his first trip to the playground. I watched him toddle around in the grass and took him down the slide for the first time, but was paralyzed by the fear that he would throw a tantrum when it was time to leave the park. Willow was pulling at the leash and barking at other dogs and Everett came up with a fun game of running away from Mom. I was completely stressed out, but when I looked up at the other parents at the playground, they were watching Everett trip and fall all over his clumsiness with smiles on their faces. They were enjoying this adorable toddler more than I was (because they didn't have to deal with a toddler fallout in 15 minutes), and I was so caught up in fear that I could not enjoy this moment: his first trip to the playground, his first slide, his first time walking in grass.

Since then, I've had to remind myself every day that this phase is one of exploration. Even though his emptying out the bathroom cabinets every morning when I am trying to get ready for work is impossibly annoying, he is learning a lot about textures, colors, tastes (yes, tastes), and fine motor skills - and maybe he's trying to figure out a better organization system for me. Having a toddler means the constant juxtaposition of joy and frustration. The innocence of a baby has worn off, and now we are attempting to focus on the joys, rather than the frustrations.

Every day I pray for guidance, patience, and endurance. I am SO blessed to have this baby - no, little BOY - in my life, and I so hope that I can be his loving mother in the way he needs me to be.

Ebble's guide to #hotmess weeding: now I deserve a reward.

Sometimes you have a white trash yard. And sometimes you are ambitious and try to make it look less trashy. Sometimes you have to take an entire week off work, and this still doesn't give you enough time to make your yard not-trashy.

Take my word for it, white trash yards take a lot of work to get in shipshape. This will be our fifth summer trying to clean it all up. When we moved into our house the whole yard looked like this:

We rolled sod a couple years ago, which suffocated most of the weeds, but we still had a #hotmess situation around the perimeter of the yard - see above photo. We took a rototiller to it one year: this simply lifted up the weeds and re-rooted them. The next year we blitzed it with Roundup: this burned a lot of the weeds but they came back again with even deeper roots (not to mention the fact that this killed a lot of our plants...also, you know how much I hate toxins). Jeff's parents helped us clear the weeds a couple years ago, and this has thinned the weeds significantly. But many have survived the reaping.

This year, we are doing things my way! *We are going 100% organic and we are pulling these betches up by the roots.

*check back in a year...we will see if this works.

Step 1 of successful #hotmess weeding: start BIG! Get rid of the biggest weeds first. Focusing on one type of weed at a time is helpful. For example, start with the dandelions, then move on to smaller assholes. Try to remove as much of the root system as you can and throw everything away. If you find any slugs or snails throw them away. Earthworms stay in the ground. Sick looking bugs (ie mating beetles) get tossed over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

Step 2: once the big weeds are out, work on the little guys. These often have roots that spread out (like clover), and will spread (like weeds) once the bigger weeds are removed from the soil.

Step 3: water the soil and wait a day or two. Stragglers will start to emerge once the soil has settled. Pull these up now! These devils will come back to haunt you later. They are weeds, they are native plants to your yard, and they will survive.

Step 4: put in new soil and plant delightful flowers/produce. I like to use organic compost for my soil.

Your yard will go from this...

To this...

Before

After

This was a pretty thankless task. At the end of a day weeding by yourself, the only reward you have is a sore back. Not to mention, these areas are much bigger than they look in the pictures, so it's kind of hard to believe that this could take someone 5 days. 

However, all my hard work was not in vain. I got to plant a lot of veggie seeds, and even bought a couple new flowering plants for myself. Lately, I am obsessed with hellebore. I think the flowers have such a dreamy, feminine look, and they bloomed for a really long time last year.

Soaking nasturtium seeds before sowing. These make good companion plants for cucumbers.

To help a sister out, I gifted my friend (a new mom) with easy-care plants for her birthday. I hated not having a beautiful garden during our first year as parents, so thought some low maintenance seeds and flowers made for a good gift.

Corn is basically grass, so in my mind it should grow well with simple day-to-day watering.

Finally, my last announcement is that I officially made my first baby toy! Now accepting orders!

That's all for now. Happy gardening everyone!

Staycation: Mission Possible

Day 2 of Staycation 2014 has begun! The last two summers featured lazy pregnancy, mono recovery, and baby madness. As a result, our yard is in quite the state. Gardening has always been one of my passions, and I broke down in tears numerous times last year when I looked at our...situation. This is why I decided to take a week off this year. The week after Mother's Day is Spokane's official last day of frost, so this is prime planting/gardening time. Ladies and gays, I have my work cut out!

Look at all those dandelions!

There's really nothing I can do about my neighbors' trashy fence, so please just ignore it/them like I do.

More dandelions and overgrown lavender.

Even though it's a lot of work, it's important to have a positive attitude...

I continue to be amazed at how much my body has changed over the last 2 years. The last time I tried to do yard work I could only pull weeds for about 20 minutes before I was out of commission for the rest of the day. Thanks mono and baby! Yesterday, I went for a 3 mile run in the morning, went shopping, and made a HUGE dent in the weeds. I even had enough energy to do house chores after Everett went to bed. My hands are blistered, my body is sore, and my fingernails are bruised from pulling so many GD dandelions, but I am still ready to get my hands in the dirt for day 2. In conclusion, I must go! There is so much to be done!

Also, maybe I should harvest this rhubarb...