Keeping Up with the Cases

Hello Goodbye

2015-01-13T13:27:00.000-06:00

I'm dropping in to make official what was probably obvious awhile ago: I'm done with this ole blog. There are probably a couple of spambots who will be sad, and I'm sorry, bots. I really am.

I started this blog over 6 years ago, when my kids were small and numerous and I needed an outlet to preserve my sanity. My family outgrew this blog a few years ago, and by that I mean that my children aged (imagine! I didn't see that happening) and their stories were...their own stories. Sometimes I can tell their stories, but by and large they are their own awesome people, learning and stumbling along with the rest of us. Baby stuff on the internet isn't such a big deal; second grade failures and triumphs are private.

Plus, once I curbed the kids' stories, I was left grasping for content, and Keeping Up with the Cases started to feel like an unfun obligation. Who needs that? Life is busy enough. Here's a lesson: No matter how sad it might seem, prune what feels like an unfun, unnecessary obligation. My blog did its job, and now I'm cutting ties. Plus the Kardashians crashed my party and made me look like a copycat, even though I was here first.

I stopped my domain name because I'm cheap, so now you'll have to type in "blogspot dot com" to get here. Why do you need to get here? I, myself, am running away and never looking back. I'll eventually shut down comments and close down the email account.

My husband asked that I include a shameless plug for him here, too. He's on the sidebar, too, but just as a reminder, you can find him here and keep up with his own musings, book reviews, photos, and such. He is in the middle of writing a novel, and it's not a dopey self-published one, either. He is under contract with a publisher and has an editor and everything! It's pretty exciting times. You should keep up with The Professor. Just make this one small trade, one Case for another.

In closing, thanks and much love and congratulatory butt-slaps to any long-term followers reading this. You stuck it out! Six years is an ETERNITY on the Internet. Consider me impressed!

For the time being, I'm still on Instagram as "casemama" (not linking because that also sounds unfun, and in the dead of winter I need to shed all the unfun I can, folks), or at least until I'm not. The Internet makes us an easily-bored people.

Love to your mother, fool.

The Kitchen: Where We Stand Now

2014-07-23T22:01:00.000-05:00

When I last updated you on our kitchen remodel, we had a floor in, were done with the major construction work, and were waiting on cabinets and a sink. Today I'm going to show you just where we are right at this moment in time, give or take a few photos that I accidentally slipped in that feature a plywood countertop. (If you see that bad boy, just squint and pretend it's not there.) We are by no means finished and are looking at a few more months of slow and steady work (and slow and steady saving of money, because CASH), but we do have a completely functional kitchen that is already looking miles better than the original.

So after the floors were done, my father-in-law came to our house for a week and worked with my husband on bringing the kitchen to a usable point of existence. This meant installing the sink, faucet, and plumbing, getting in all the cabinets, and installing doors and drawers. This also meant building a fridge enclosure, as well as my father-in-law, who is a carpenter, cutting all of our butcher block countertops for us so that we could stain, seal, and install them later. They got all that work done in great time and did a brilliant job. If you know them and see them at any point, give them a few congratulatory butt slaps for a job well done.

Because I like high drama kitchen reveals, here's a reminder of what it looked like when we moved in during March of 2008:

The dusty ruffled valances and mini blinds really sealed the whole home purchase deal for me.

As of right this moment, this is my kitchen:

I know, right? Turn your head and look at the other side.

Sorry for the awkward angles. It's a galley, you guys. It's lovely, but it's still tight.

If you are an observant person, you might notice that we moved the range and somehow lost a fridge. More on the fridge later, but yes, we moved the stove. We needed the magical kitchen triangle to be closer than it originally was, and we were sick of having a window next to a stovetop. We are the royal family of open windows, and we were sick of our coveted afternoon breezes blowing out the gas burners. Plus the window at the end of the galley faces south, which means hours of fresh, hot sunlight pouring on whichever poor soul was destined to cook at the oven in the evenings. (That would be me.) So our contractor moved the gas line and put in all the necessary equipment for a range hood (WHICH WE'VE NEVER HAD, OMG, YOU MEAN I WON'T HAVE TO SWEAT OUT OF THE TOP OF MY HEAD IN ORDER TO PREPARE A MEAL NOR DEAL WITH THE ODOR OF A THOUSAND DINNERS SEALING THEMSELVES IN THE WALLS OF MY HOME, WHAT WITCHCRAFT IS THIS??!!) and then, AND THEN, I said, "Hey, can you do a wall niche?"

All casual-like, as if I ask for niches from talented professionals ALL THE DANG TIME.

I got me a wall niche.

I will probably say this about 649 other things before this blog post is done, but that wall cut-out might be my favorite thing in this room. It's certainly my favorite a-ha! moment that came from my very own brain pan. After we demoed but before our contractor arrived, I was just standing around, reminding myself that it would all be worth it (*sob*) and then I turned toward this blank wall and BAM Jesus hit me with this amazing idea: You are going to have to tear out the walls anyway, woman. Why not use that to your advantage and look like a kitchen from a magazine?

Thus the idea for Wall Niche was born.

Only after Jesus hit me with this amazing idea did I turn to Pinterest and find inspiration photos to show the contractor, who is a total genius and completely caught my vision AND THEN hit me with this other amazing Jesus-given thought: "Instead of making it a rectangle like most of these you see, why don't we round out the top and make it an arch that mimics the arched doorways in your home?"

I do not want to be flippant about our Christ, but man, He was working niche miracles that day. Along with our contractor, who took notes on how high and wide I was thinking, broke into that wall, worked around and built up the studs, and just did an amazing job with it. He gets a million points to Gryffindor for that built-in ALONE.

(I should note that all of the drywall on this side, including the niche, will be tiled. It's bare now, obviously. This is another time where you need to squint and imagine.)

Just above the miracle niche, in between the two upper cabinets, is where we're all prepped for a built-in exhaust fan:

Instead of going with a naked stainless hood, we are going to use a model that requires a custom-built cover so that it looks like just another cabinet, painted white and all. I'm not really a stainless fan, and I like the idea of as little interference on this small wall of cabinets as possible. Here's a possibility:

I literally just googled that right now because I am too lazy to sign into Pinterest and find the actual 300 range hood posts I have saved, but you get the idea. We're holding off on the range hood and surround because we need to save up for that project. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but dang, remodeling a kitchen from scratch is expensive. Did you know that? Well, now you do.

Just to keep it real, here's a picture of the actual light we are using in this room:

Believe it or not, it's still better than what we had before. By the time this is all done, we'll have two semi-flush mount schoolhouse fixtures on the ceiling, a pendant over the sink, under cabinet lighting all over the place, and lights built into the range hood. But I am planning a special thing for my ceiling that forces us to hold off on lights for now. I'm keeping quiet about that at the moment. For now, bare bulb dangling from the ceiling is our jam.

Something to note: You may have noticed the soffits the men built up on top of the wall cabinets. These serve a couple of purposes. The soffit above the wall we're looking at, the stove wall, conceals the duct work for the range hood ventilation. (It vents out the side of the house, to the left, which is the back side of our home.) The soffits also will serve as a place for trim and crown molding. I wanted my cabinets to go all the way to the ceiling for as built-in a look as possible. I really think that finishes a kitchen, and the idea of a few inches of space just gathering dust above my food prep areas fills me with ick. Ikea wall cabinets are supposed to be hung something like 5" from the ceiling (plus we have old plaster walls, so who knows how level everything is?), so the soffits fill in that gap and will eventually get covered for a faux built-in look. Make sense?

Moving on to the fridge. I decided to NOT plan our current fridge into this design because it is a) 15+ years old and b) too big for our space. It's a perfectly functional Whirlpool that works great, but I couldn't get cabinet configurations to work with its two-door, 34" self. It's just too big for the room. So we moved it to the basement and it is now officially called Basement Fridge and that's what we are using for now. Why, you ask? Well, because the 30" fridge that I want is expensive and I am also saving up for that. For now, we have a perfectly proportioned space just waiting for it.

If you look carefully in that enclosure, you can see the drywall patch from what used to be the only light switch in the room. Because walking all the way to the end of the room, sticking your hand in the dusty space in between the fridge and the wall, and groping for a light switch/outlet plate (why the outlet? no one ever knew) made SO MUCH MORE SENSE than just having switches in reasonable places. Now we can turn our bare dangling bulb on and off from two places in the room, just like rich people.

Here's another angle of the enclosure:

In case you're looking for specifics, that's a 24" X 24" X 30" over-the-fridge Akurum cabinet. It's built out just slightly so that it, combined with the panel on the right, will cover the refrigerator COMPLETELY and only show the barest amount of huge, looming appliance. I can't afford a cabinet depth refrigerator, either money- or width-wise, so I'm going to fake it as best as possible with a standard depth fridge. Our contractor was a genius who suggested we pull out the plaster in between the studs for appliance ventilation, thus giving us a few inches off the depth dimensions. We're just fine using Basement Fridge for the time being, but I know this will all look great when it's got a real, actual Main Level Fridge filling it out. (We'll still keep Basement Fridge! We love you, Basement Fridge.)

Jump to the right of the stove and you'll get a taste of how great Ikea's cabinet options are for space-crunched kitchens. Here we have what looks like an innocent, 15" lower cabinet door…

…but open it up and *gasp!* it actually turns out to be a 15" pull-out cabinet with two narrow drawers built into its top!

Kroger and Aldi spice containers represent!

I bought a thing from Ikea that helps hold up cookie sheets and what-not, and this is a PERFECT amount of space for me. For now I'm putting spices in the wee drawers. I know some people would fret about them being next to heat, and I'll take that into consideration, but for now I actually really like them here. They aren't toppling over one another in an upper cabinet, and since I'm a shortie with short legs, having them looming over me in an upper cabinet doesn't really make much sense anyway.

To the left of the stove on the bottom is a three-drawer unit that I completely forgot to photograph. Use your imagination.

Okay, let's shift our attention to the other side of the kitchen. On either side of the window on that wall are cabinets. On either side of the sink: cabinets. I squeezed as many cabinets as possible into this space, knowing it would be holding the bulk of my storage and counter space. This is another reason we moved the stove: Now I have over 8 feet of counter space just on this wall alone, as opposed to the 4 feet in the original design. If I had left the stove where it was, I would have lost out on all that glorious, nearly continuous countertop.

In this next photo you can see the cabinets to the right of the window/sink, as well as the butcher block countertop (I got it so dark, you guys!) and the window trim the men had to rip off (for now) to get the cabinets installed.

First, those countertops. Yes, they're butcher block; maple, in fact. We bought them in 8 foot sections and, as mentioned, my father-in-law expertly cut them in four pieces and routed the edges. Over the course of about three weeks, we stained them (Dark Walnut by Minwax) and then sealed them with Waterlox. I wanted dark to begin with, and boy, did I get dark. The maple just loved that stain. My only regret is that they are so dark that I lost most of the look of the wood grain, but I can deal. I like them, but yes, they are hard to keep looking perfectly clean. Don't get them this dark if you're not a fanatic like me who wipes down her counters approximately every 20 minutes. If you're looking for a more comprehensive tutorial, might I suggest looking here? Ours still need one final light sanding and oiling, but we installed them first so we could have better light than we did working on them in the garage. I can highly recommend the Waterlox, and I can also highly recommend my children's godparents, who had a bunch of Waterlox on hand and graciously let us use what they had left, thus saving us some money. Blessings on their heads.

Moving on. I don't have knobs or handles yet, so it's hard to tell just what is what in the above photo, but that lower bank of cabinets houses some of the most glorious kitchen storage known to man. When I designed my kitchen, I designed it with nearly all drawers in the lower cabinets, knowing that I would be paying a lot more money than if I just settled for standard doors or even a mixture of doors and drawers. I love drawers, you guys. They use space wisely and are far easier to clean, plus with drawers you never find yourself sitting on the floor, half of your body inserted inside the cabinet, searching for a lost Pyrex lid. (FUN FACT: Been there, done that.) I figure, hey, how often do you get to design a kitchen from scratch? Pay the few hundred dollars extra and get the dang drawers.

So this same lower bank of cabinets looks like this when you walk up our back stairs from the basement or back door:

That's a 36" cabinet unit that has two deep drawers on bottom topped by two smaller ("standard" in Ikea-speak) 18" drawers. Those big drawers are glorious. Here's a semi-crappy shot of both of them in action:

The top holds ALL of my everyday dishes in pert little organizing caddies, and the bottom holds ALL of my pots, pans, and matching lids. Plus a griddle. I lined all of my cabinets and drawers with this liner and while it's indeed cute and affordable, like all shelf liner it represents a painstakingly slow job that will try your patience and make you lose your salvation approximately five times. You have been warned.

Directly next to the 36" drawer cabinet OF GLORY is an 18" four-drawer cabinet. The drawer on the bottom is a deep drawer and the other three are standards. As you can see, one of them is empty because I don't yet have anything with which to fill it. That's how awesome this kitchen is, you guys.

(That picture was taken while we were still finishing our countertops and were just using plywood.)

Next is the sink and its cabinet, which I'll feature some other time. It's the only basic lower cabinet I have, since the plumbing and some modifications we did to the sink didn't allow for the depth necessary in a drawer or pull-out. To the left of the sink is another feature that might be my favorite: an 18" pull-out cabinet that surprisingly effortlessly becomes a pull-out trash and recycling cabinet.

I realize this isn't perhaps as sexy-looking as a Rev-a-Shelf unit, but it works beautifully and really looks great in person. I had to measure very carefully for the containers, but these were some from Lowe's that fit well enough to allow one of those mini-drawers at the top of the cabinet. (You can see it closed in the above photo. It's our junk drawer.) I LOVELOVELOVE having my trash and recycling containers right here, and the side parts to the drawer unit hold them in just fine. One thing I was worried about was them not staying upright, since I know the Rev-a-Shelf design holds them up on their tops, but thankfully my fears ended up being unfounded. Ikea will recommend a 15" pull-out cabinet with their own plastic containers for trash, but their containers are puny. Splurging on the extra 3" was worth it for trash and recycling cans we could actually use.

Next to the trash cabinet is a modification we cooked up after I saw a similar design on Ikea Fans. I wanted our smallish microwave off the cabinet and as out-of-sight as possible. We briefly toyed with buying a new microwave-as-vent-hood unit, but those are so dang huge and, let's face it, microwaves are not pretty. Why feature it on the smallest wall of my kitchen if I didn't have to? Thus the microwave cabinet was born. My mom did something very similar in her recent kitchen remodel, so I knew it was possible.

Here's the thing: There are gaps in that cabinet because the Ikea kitchen salesman talked me out of my original plan (a deep drawer on bottom and a standard drawer on top of that, then a shelf for the micro) because he thought it wouldn't fit the micro; he wanted me to buy two standard drawers. Imagine my irritation when we put it all together and I saw that, indeed, my original plan would have worked and was actually an awesome plan to begin with. For now we're living with it and will eventually replace the bottom standard drawer with the deep drawer, thus eliminating the unsightly gap.

Look at me, gushing about my trash cans. I must be an adult.

I'm almost done, I promise. I wanted to show you at least one of my upper cabinet units in action. This is the two-cabinet unit above the microwave, to the left of the sink, which we use for most-used pantry items (we have a pantry downstairs for the long-term stuff) and some mixing bowl storage.

It's not all stored in cute jars with chalkboard labels, and I am sure it will get stuffed full as time goes on, but I can guarantee that it will always be neat and tidy. With chevron shelf liner. Amen.

And…that's where we are! Right now, our kitchen is functional and pretty and getting there. We need trim and molding, tile, a couple appliances, lights, and a few other relatively minor touches, but the big, scary stuff is done. And guys, it feels so good. So very good.

NO. MORE. PLASTER DUST. Amen.

The Kitchen: Demo, a Floor of Horror and Hope, and PLASTER

2014-07-09T08:11:00.000-05:00

So I'm back to talk a little more about our experience redoing our kitchen. The last kitchen post I wrote went on and on (sorry--I'm pretty excited) about our plan, and I gave you a bunch of pictures that kinda sorta communicated what look I was going for. In case you need a refresher, here is a bullet list of my large-scale goals:

White, bright, and fairly traditional, or at least timeless. I don't want to hate this space in 10 years. I want the minor details (knobs, paint, decor, lighting) to be easily changeable for an updated look; I want the major stuff (cabinets, countertop, sink, appliances) to stay fresh and attractive for a looooong time. I looked at old home magazines (10-15 years old) and found kitchens that had escaped looking dated; they were all white with Shaker-style cabinetry.
Lots of storage. Lots of drawers. I want this kitchen to use every inch of available space for storage; thus, the choice of white. (Also, I avoided open shelving. I know it's cute and all the rage right now, but it doesn't feel timeless to me, nor does it seem to use space wisely in a room where space is at a premium. I can incorporate shelving in other ways.) Not only is the white timeless, in my opinion, but it will offset the to-the-ceiling wall cabinets and help to prevent them from looming. I have two windows that face west and south, so natural light isn't a problem.
So. Many. Outlets. (We had one outlet. Only one side worked.)
So. Many. Lights. (I had one circular fluorescent light set in the middle of the ceiling. This is dangerous when you are near-sighted and have to cut vegetables in the dark. We live in Illinois, people! Winter is long! I need light.)
Features that made sense. Did you know that to turn on our one kitchen light we had to walk all the way to the end of the kitchen, reach behind the side of the fridge, and grope for a switch that was inexplicable placed there? Did you know only one section of one wall had cabinets? A lot about our kitchen never made sense to me, and sense and order are next to Godliness in my book.
A black-and-white floor. I have wanted one since high school. I figured that if a burning desire for a specific type of kitchen floor was going to hang onto my housing-lust center of my brain for this long, I should probably give in.
An apron-front farmhouse sink. We're skipping a dishwasher, so I also needed my dream sink to have two basins.

Thanks for bearing with me on that list. It helps me get my thoughts in order sometimes, too. Plus this is my blog and you are choosing to read it. I figure that you're just asking for this sort of thing.

So! In May we started demo-ing very quietly and slowly, one door at a time. It felt like a small rebellion, but really it was because I was desperate to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING to make our kitchen move along. I bought the cabinetry in March while Ikea was still doing its spring kitchen sale (I'll talk about our choice of cabinetry in another post), so all those 5,000 boxes, give or take a thousand, had been sitting in my garage for weeks, openly mocking me. We had a timeline, and I was anxious to push it up. So I started pulling off doors...

…which meant that I had to shift our kitchen to about four different parts of the house, including a large portion of our dining room. Since we have bookshelves that house a lot of our books in our dining room, those books had to be moved to the sunroom. Kitchen stuff also went in the sunroom. And the basement. It was madness and chaos, and it's still presenting a challenge to put back together.

My poor husband was going crazy with the mess in the sunroom, where he has his desk and was attempting to finish his dissertation.

This normally houses books, which are seen stacked in the above photo:

Rookie mistake: Putting your mostly-used kitchen items right next to the doorway of the kitchen…because: Plaster.

When the time was right, my husband started ripping up the rest of the kitchen. Here is a beautiful view inside my cupboards. All that dust is actually sawdust because, you see, they were slowly grinding themselves apart.

He got great satisfaction from ripping off the wall cabinets. Here's a shot from early in the demo process:

Once the room was cleared, it was time to tackle pulling up the floor. You might recall that we had crappy peel-and-stick vinyl flooring that had long since given up the will to stick. We knew we were going to be dealing with multiple layers of flooring; we just didn't know quite how many or how much asbestos-based backing was involved. Pulling it all up represented a couple of days of sweaty, hard work for my husband. He wore a mask and broke the tiles up as little as possible before sealing them in heavy, construction-grade garbage bags.

Ugh, those walls. That floor. This was an ugly time. My yellow tea kettle represents hope.

I took the following shot when he found himself in a corner surrounded by at least four different layers of flooring.

Once the room was totally clear (except for the appliances), we could see the pine base over the floorboards. The wood isn't really appropriate for flooring all on its own (it's very soft and very, very rough after all the flooring being glued and nailed to it.) He vacuumed it thoroughly after removing a million nails and got it really clean.

In between getting the floor pulled up and laying the new tiles, our contractor moved in and worked for something like 8 solid days on electrical work, venting a fan for above the range, moving the gas hook-up for our range, moving the heating/cooling to the opposite side of the room, creating a wall niche for above the range, and about a million other crazy things. He was amazing. Here is a vague shot of walls torn apart and lighting boxes going in:

We hired a contractor for the work we just had no clue on how to handle nor any desire to screw up royally, as we surely would have. The electrical work basically represented a complete rewiring of the entire room in a 66-year-old home, plus lots of new stuff, all of which was well and above our skill set or the skill sets of our (talented and tireless) fathers. Rule #1 of renovation: If you can't do it well, hire out to a pro. It's money well spent.

This was the hardest time. If you are even vaguely contemplating a major kitchen renovation, you need to first and foremost ask yourself if you can handle the following things:

Copious, just RIDICULOUSLY COPIOUS, amounts of dust. Drywall is bad; plaster is worse. We have plaster. It got into my brain. True story.
Eating hot dogs for 6 weeks. Every night. Or at least it will feel like every night. I don't like hot dogs on my best days, and these were not my best days.
Washing your dishes in your tub. For weeks. Bonus points if you only have one full bathroom! (That's us. Naturally.)
Having to make 2 billion tiny-yet-important decisions that you had never even conceived--I mean, they weren't even on your radar, they weren't on ANYONE'S radar--right there on the spot, knowing that you'll have to live with these quick, important decisions for the rest of your natural-born life. (I am going to live out my life and die in this home at a ripe old age and get buried in the backyard, so no, I'm not being dramatic.) Should the lights be centered in the room or along the doorway? At what height do you want your outlets? Do you want to plan way ahead and make sure your tile backsplash lines up perfectly with your outlets? (WHO DOES THAT? I mean, I admire that amount of planning, but seriously.) On and on and on and on. I was amazed at the questions our contractor would throw at me. I looked like a deer in the headlights 95% of the time. He was very patient.
Did I mention the dust?

These considerations are, of course, already on top of the normal considerations of any renovation, which include going above budget, unexpected problems/substitutions, marital discord, and total exhaustion.

I am so glad we are past this point. It's a first-world thing to complain about, but hey, I live in the first world, and I'm trying to do the best thing for my family and my home. And it was very, very hard.

But! Worth it all for this niche. Just imagine it over our stove and filled with bottles of oil.

Once our contractor was done with his major work, The Professor and a friend (thank you, Dan!) put in the luan on the floor. This took a few hours of solid work. Here is the luan (it's a thin plywood specifically designed for underlayment) with the beginnings of chalk lines:

The chalk lines got gradually more complicated, as he was preparing to lay VCT flooring on a perfect diagonal. As you may remember from my previous post, my original black-and-white choice was linoleum, but it proved to be prohibitively expensive for us. (I still think linoleum is an awesome option, you guys, and I wish it could have worked.) I stumbled upon Armstrong VCT (Vinyl Composite Tile) flooring and fell in love with its linoleum look-alike charm.

VCT Facts, in case you're intrigued: It's vinyl, yes, so it's not green like linoleum. Sorry. BUT. It's very thick (not at all flimsy like peel-and-stick), and the color goes all the way through, meaning a scratch isn't the end of the world, though it's pretty hardy flooring and can take a beating from, say, a family of six for many years. At our Lowe's you can buy only two different colors off the shelves, even choosing to buy the tiles individually, but if you want any other of the multitude of colors on offer, you have to order them by the box. (This is silly for us. We have an Armstrong plant in town, just down the road from Lowe's.)

At Lowe's the tile was $.89 per square foot, and so I bought some, but then we travelled closer to Chicago to another store (Floor and Decor in the Plainfield area, if you're local) and found a black and a white that I actually liked better (I think they were Classic White and Classic Black) for $.69 a square foot. We needed 96 square feet, so yeah, LOTS cheaper than linoleum, which was going to be more like $8 or $9 a square foot. We could only buy the tiles from Floor and Decor in boxes of 45 square feet, which left us just barely under the necessary amount when we bought one box of each color, so I kept a few of the individual tiles from Lowe's, even though they weren't an exact match. Those slightly off-white pieces went on sections of the floor that were going to be under cabinetry; we like to think of future homeowners redoing the kitchen in 30 years, trying to figure out WHAT IN THE HECK the Cases were thinking doing different-colored tiles. I hope the Internet is still around and they find this blog post.

The Professor followed this tutorial to carefully install the tile along a perfect diagonal. He used glue specially made for VCT. He did an amazing job, and to the uninitiated, it really looks like linoleum. It's soft to the touch and feels great under your feet. And that tutorial is pretty great, too. I'd recommend it for a newbie. In general, I'd recommend this flooring.

Here he is during a dry-run of the tile. He carefully covered the entire floor exactly as he wanted it, cutting as he went, before removing half of the tile for glue.

King Peter made his necklace.

Once half of the room had glue down, he had to wait a couple hours for it to get sufficiently tacky.

Then he laid that half and repeated the process for the other side. It represented an entire day's work; he worked late into the night, and the results were awesome.

If you look really closely at the above shot, you can see what our home's future owners will be stumped about: the slightly off-white single tiles we used to fill in space where we didn't have enough of our chosen color. Cabinets go there, so no worries, future owners. We had a method to our madness.

Once the flooring had had time to settle (a day or so--you could walk on it after just a few hours), we cleaned it really well and sealed it with a liquid sealant the guys at the hardware store had recommended. It's not a true wax, but it helps fill in the teensy cracks and gives the tile a thin protected coat.

At this point we could think about cabinetry. (FINALLY. It really does have to get really bad before it can actually start looking like a kitchen again.) My father-in-law, who is a professional carpenter who gives us a week of his time each year for home projects (BLESS HIM), came in town and he and The Professor got to work with the cabinetry, sink, plumbing, and all the other big stuff they could get done in a week. But I'll save the details for another post.

I'll just leave you with this little teaser:

It's going to look awesome, you guys. I'm completely impartial.

Interview with a Seven-Year-Old

2014-07-05T14:36:00.000-05:00

Interview with one pretty awesome 7-year-old. Mohawk edition. We had some time alone today during the sleepy, still part of the afternoon, so I asked if he'd like me to interview him. He agreed. All of his answers took lots of time and thought; this kid does nothing rashly or without careful consideration. He is very deliberate.

Christine: "Please state your name."

B: "B.R. Case."

C: "What grade are you going to be in?"

B: "First. I mean, second." (second)

C: "What is your favorite food?"

B: "Hamburgers."

C: "What do you like on your hamburgers?"

B: "Ketchup and mustard."

C: "No cheese?"

B: "No cheese."

C: "What's the best thing we've done this summer?"

B: "Hm. The times we went to our grandma and grandpa's house."

C: "What is your favorite thing about your brother J?"

B: "He never tries to bug me when I'm reading a book."

C: (laughs)

B, defensively: "What?!"

C: "I just think that's a really good answer. It made me laugh...So what's your favorite book?"

B: "Hero Factory." (This is disappointing to me, but he is seven.)

C: "What is your favorite thing to do? Like if you had a day free, what would you do?"

B: "I would play video games all day because we don't have any video games."

C: "What's your favorite thing about your sister?"

B: "She likes Batman better than unicorns." (This is perhaps not factually accurate, though she does like Batman a lot.)

C: "So what's your favorite thing about H?"

B: "Like when I'm drawing a picture, he doesn't mess it up."

C: "What thing do you think you do best?"

B: "Read well."

C: "What is one thing you think you could work on?" (I had to explain this one a few times for clarity.)

B: "Not hurting H when I'm frustrated." (This surprised me, since it's just not true. B and H are best brother friends.)

C: "What's your favorite thing to play outside?"

B: "Soccer."

C: "Okay. When you grow up, what book would you like to write? Or you could tell me what it's about."

B: "Bats, non-fiction books, about how they live and what they eat and how many types of bats there are. I think that's it."

C: "If you could have a pet, what would it be and what would you name it?"

B: "I would have a dog; I would name it Scruffy. He would be a Golden Retriever 'cause Golden Retrievers, if you throw a stick, they fetch it, and that's why they're called retrievers."

(bathroom break)

B: "Another question you could ask is if you could make yourself into any dessert, what would it be."

C: "Okay. If you could be any dessert, what would it be?"

B: "Chocolate chip cookies."

C: "Okay. Two more questions. What's your favorite video game to play at Ta and Pa's?" (his grandparents, my parents)

B: "It would be Mario Cart on the Wii."

C: "Last question. What is the best thing you've done so far this summer?"

B: "Ride my bicycle without training wheels."

That's a wrap! What a cool kid. (P.S.: When we finished up, he asked to ride his bike outside. I was sitting at the dining room table, and after a few minutes I heard his talking while riding his bike on the sidewalk underneath the window, which is built on a gradual slope all the kids have struggled with on their bikes. He was chanting, "Don't stop, don't stop" to himself as he pushed with all his might to make it up the slope on his own. Cool kid.)

The Kitchen: The Plan

2014-06-13T09:38:00.002-05:00

I'd like to share my kitchen vision in this post to give you an idea of what we're planning on doing. The best I can do is show you a bunch of photos I found via Pinterest that include disparate elements of what I like. You should know that I have been planning and scheming and dreaming about this kitchen for years--several years--and that definite planning began in earnest over two years ago. So I have a tremendously firm grasp of what I do and don't want, and it's changed somewhat with time.

If you've been around the blog any amount of time (and have been paying attention), then you'll remember my feverishly excited post from nearly three years ago. I had found a picture and I was in love:

I had also found a huge antique cast iron sink, and thus my love for antique sinks was, if not realized (as I have a couple in the house already), fully bloomed. When we began planning and measuring our kitchen in earnest, we had to come to grips with the fact that our bargain antique sink was too large for the space. It's a full five feet across, and considering that I was going to have only eight feet of total countertop on the sink side of the kitchen, I couldn't justify a five foot sink. It's still sitting in our basement, and I have high hopes of using it in our laundry room someday.

I still love the look of a random, flea-market-find kitchen, but I also realized that it wasn't very practical for a kitchen like ours that is low on space and in desperate need of efficient cabinet design for maximum storage. What I retained from that original picture was a white cast iron sink, butcher block countertops, and pops of Jadeite and other mint-colored items. (I already slowly collect Jadeite pieces--score!)

As far as flooring went, I knew I wanted a black-and-white tiled floor on a larger scale than our upstairs bathroom. (The majority of our downstairs flooring is hardwood, but we've tiled the downstairs bath and entryway with period black-and-white floor tiles, too, and so I like to keep the black-and-white theme going where there isn't hardwood. I didn't like the idea of doing hardwood in the kitchen since it sits at a right angle to the hardwood in the dining room and would be difficult to match to the original oak.) This picture is a good idea of what I was going for:

The tile is set on the diagonal and everything! There's a farm sink with a deep apron! White cabinets! Now we're getting somewhere.

It's hard to tell whether that particular floor is tile or linoleum or painted wood, but you get the idea. I initially had my heart set on true linoleum (Amstrong's line is called Marmoleum), which is eco-friendly and long-lasting and antimicrobial and just in general a magic material.

And note: It is NOT the same thing as vinyl. Vinyl = petroleum based. Linoleum = natural materials based, mainly linseed, thus the name. Linoleum pre-dated vinyl and was only eclipsed by vinyl because anything petroleum-based is cheaper. Large-scale places like hospitals and schools very often still use linoleum flooring because of the clean factor. Consider yourself educated. I wasn't when I began this process, but now I am, and I will never tire of lecturing people who don't really know what linoleum is. Those people include nearly all the local flooring store employees in town. It's insane.

Anyway, I had to finally admit that linoleum was out of my budget. It runs around the same price as marble, plus underlayment, and I couldn't justify $700+ for a 92 square foot kitchen. So then I discovered VCT, also made by Armstrong, which is vinyl (sorry, environment) that mimics linoleum and runs $.69 a square foot. Boom. Suddenly my flooring was both awesome AND affordable. Imagine.

Here is a picture of a white galley kitchen that gave me hope. It's not exactly the look I'm going for, but it's pretty hard to find pictures of galley kitchens because apparently everyone else in the world (ha) owns a large open kitchen with professional appliances (ha) and islands. No one lives in old homes? Really? Everyone can expand or knock down walls? (We couldn't really do that even if we wanted to. Our kitchen sits squarely in between our property line and a staircase.) Hmm. So it's just me with a bowling alley for a kitchen? Okay, then.

I tell you, it gave me hope.

This next picture is from a neat home you can rent in Galveston. I loved the floor, the white to-the-ceiling cabinets, the schoolhouse fixtures, and the white subway tile with dark gray grout. It's simultaneously on-trend and traditional, and I can't afford to have a kitchen that is going to be outdated in 5 years. This kitchen just works.

This next kitchen is really popular in Internet-land, for good reason. This gal has taken a small space and made it lovely and functional and beautiful, while taking popular elements, like open shelving and an ORB faucet, and married it with traditional white cabinetry, the white sink, white subway tile, butcher block, and real-life appliances in a real-life space. She's a genius. And her cabinets are an almost identical look to our chosen cabinets, which makes me feel like a genius by proxy.

The sink in that photo is Ikea's Domsjo single-bowl sink, which, if you share my love affair with farm sinks and have done any measure of research, you will recognize is the most affordable option on the market while also being well-made and beautiful. We are opting out of a dishwasher in our kitchen (don't want it, don't need it, can't really justify the space it would take), so I decided to go with the larger double-bowl Domsjo, for maximum dish-washing potential, which you can see in action in this photo:

The sink! The cabinetry! The countertop! The tile! This homeowner might be my soulmate.

So those are my inspiration photos. I had all that inspiration firmly lodged in my brain last fall when I took part in a contest the housing design department at my alma mater does every year. Each year the senior design students do an Ugly Kitchen Contest, and the head of the department puts out a call for staff and faculty with truly ugly kitchens who would like free design done by senior design students. It's a win-win for everyone! We signed up this year, and I got hooked up with a truly awesome student who took my vision and ran with it.

Here is a (fuzzy) picture of her design. Sink side of the kitchen on the left, appliance side of the kitchen on the right:

I have too many kids calling for my attention while I blog to make that picture any better.

And here's a more complete draw-up she did for her final presentation of my space:

Out of all the other design students, her design won the contest! The department chair said that the judging committee liked the design for its simplicity and timelessness. Boom.

Now, my final design doesn't include everything she suggested here. I'm not even using the same cabinets she was using for her dimensions. But her drawings give you a decent idea of what we were wanting to do. One big difference between the original kitchen and the new plan was that we wanted to move the range to the same side of the kitchen as the fridge. This opened up the sink side for nearly eight feet of counter space, where I had originally had maybe three. Whoa.

With a firm design in place, I was able to move forward, confident that my ideas were sound. I waded into the world that is Ikea kitchen design (oh my word, it's a crazy world), agonized over configurations and measurements for months, pulled the trigger in late March, and the rest is history. As I type this right now, my husband and father-in-law are getting the upper cabinets hung, which makes me insanely excited.

Thanks for letting me ramble so much about KITCHEN DESIGN. It's something near and dear to my heart, and I think that even after I have my dream kitchen, I'm still going to be excited by kitchens.

Next time I post, I'll take a break from kitchens and just do a funny kid story or something. Promise.

The Kitchen: Why We Are Putting Ourselves Through This

2014-06-10T16:49:00.001-05:00

So we've embarked on a major renovation project, and really it doesn't get much more major.

We are redoing our kitchen.

This is, of course, cause for celebration and joyous whooping and energetic high-fives, but it is also the time for chastened solemnity and quiet consideration because, you guys, a kitchen renovation might eat your soul and steal your humanity. I say that without an ounce of hyperbole. Renovating your kitchen might twist you into something that is somehow not human.

Now when I say "kitchen renovation," I mean imagine how intense it can possibly get without having to actually knock down walls, and you'll perhaps have an idea of what we're dealing with. And I OF COURSE realize that this is a first-world problem that I have on my hands. I have a wonderful home. I had a working (albeit desolate and poorly executed and perhaps ready to kill me in my sleep) kitchen to begin with that had been in constant use for nearly 70 years. I have the money and time and inclination to knock it all out and start from scratch. Let's just get this out of the way: I realize any complaints I might make are the complaints of the privileged.

Every time I get a little whiny, a little voice in my head whispers faintly, Please remember that you spent nearly $4,000 on new cabinetry. And also shut up about the plaster dust.

So I realize that I am speaking from a very lofty place. But I also realized many years ago that to get our kitchen, which is, in a completely undramatic way, very much the heart and soul of our house, up to scratch, we were going to have to someday spend a wad of money to gut it and start all over.

"Up to scratch" meant cabinetry that wasn't falling apart into piles of sawdust, flooring that wasn't asbestos-based and four layers deep, storage that actually filled all of the available space for storage (imagine! who would have thought that efficiency in design would be possible!), more than one workspace outlet, and just, in general, a space that didn't make me want to weep with sorrow. Privileged sorrow, but still: sorrow.

If you're at all inclined to peruse magazine or blog or website articles about house transformations, I'm sure you've run across multiple stories about how a family turned their kitchen around for "less than $1,000!!" or "just with paint!!" or somesuch magic. And when people gut their perfectly functional 90s kitchens whose only fault is cabinetry in the wrong color, I do tend to grind my teeth a little. (Gaze upon me up here on my high horse!) I would KILL or maybe just maim for that kitchen that only needs maybe some paint and a new faucet, and I've seen people do some ingenius, beautiful things to better their spaces for not much cash. Kudos to those folks.

But we cannot be those folks, because that is not our home. When we bought this house, we bought it in large part for its potential. We have slowly saved up and made major improvements that have, in many ways, greatly transformed both its looks and functionality while still trying to preserve its post-World War II bones. It's a cool house with plaster walls and original woodwork and arched doorways and hardwood floors, but it looked terrible, and I just mean TERRIBLE, when we moved in six years ago. For some review, see my letter to Mrs. Dorothy.

We've since done steady and sometimes major renovation, including total guttings of both bathrooms, all-new windows (except the sunroom! darn you, sunroom), tearing up carpet and restoring the hardwood underneath, all-new siding and trim and whatnot, some window reconstruction for more sensible living (like in our bedroom), and then also minor updates like paint, new lighting, updating outlets and covers and switchplates, and the like.

We have pretty much worked steadily and as cash allowed for six years, but the kitchen just sat, looking fairly terrible (I'll get to pictures soon, I promise) and neglected because, seriously? No amount of paint was going to help. I was fairly certain the cabinets wouldn't even TAKE paint, the varnish was so bad, and I didn't see much point in spending money and energy on painting something I was going to completely rip out ASAP. In short, the bathrooms and the kitchen, some of the most important and telling spaces in one's home, absolutely had to be ripped bare in our home in order to start from scratch and become functional, safe, and updated.

My husband tells me he and his dad found extension cord in the wiring in the walls in the upstairs bathroom. Do you see what I mean?

Anyway, now that I have used up all that Internet space yammering on about the WHY, let me give you some pictorial evidence. This is what our kitchen looked like when we moved in. The mini-blinds and valances were gifts from Mrs. Dorthy.

I guess I should maybe explain the layout, too. You enter the kitchen via a wide-ish arched doorway in the dining room. The kitchen itself is a galley, and of course galleys, while potentially wonderful when designed well, are teeny and hellish when designed poorly. Ours had the original 1948 cabinetry on only one side. Presumably the homeowners did this to save money OR because removable cabinets, like Hoosier cabinets, were still popular OR a combination of both. Whatever the reason, we were dealing with falling-apart cabinetry that didn't take up all useable space on one side and a blank spot on the other. We filled that blank spot with our fridge and a baker's rack.

The baker's rack was a source of much gnashing of teeth for me, since it meant all my business was on display at all times. I mean, look at all that glorious food! And utensils for a KitchenAid mixer! And a microwave that instantly cooks food! Gah. What a drag to own all that awesome stuff and have it be known to everyone.

Back to the cabinet side. The original windows had long broken, and I had since adjusted to the heat of windows face both west and south in a room where windows didn't open and I had no stove vent. (Answer: Die from heat. The end.) The windows on the cabinet side also took up precious square footage with their width, and they were really set up so high that even if I HAD been able to open them, I would have had to climb on the sink to do it.

As detailed extensively in this post, part of our siding project almost 2 years ago included ripping out those old windows and replacing them with one narrower-but-taller casement window that actually opened (AMAZING) and gave us several more inches on either side for potential future cabinetry. Since this window gives me the glorious view of our neighbors' house, I didn't feel like I needed as wide a window as before. I have been so happy with it and am so glad we were able to make this small step when we did. For two years I've had fresh air in the kitchen! And bare drywall, but hey, progress is progress, even if it's incredibly slow.

How about that overhang, though?! When The Professor was demo-ing this room, he had a little celebration when he ripped that bad boy down. We hated it so.

Here is a closer shot of my gold-flecked laminate countertop. So vintage. And honestly, it never really puked me out, looks-wise; it's just so dang hard to keep clean! People who choose white countertops: You be trippin'.

Note in the above shot the appearance of my one sole outlet available for countertop appliances. Only one side of the outlet actually worked regularly.

Last fall I was able to buy a new range with money I earned as an actual grown-up teaching college writing classes. (The vintage range I showed you here ended up being a complete and total lemon, according to the sweet repairman who very gamely agreed to give it a shot. Alas, alas!) I settled on the Whirlpool White Ice gas range, although it appears that in the six months since I bought it, they've dropped my model. (Mine has as little stainless as possible, while what I linked to has stainless all along the backsplash. I do not think stainless is God's Answer to the Kitchen. I think white is a much more timeless look for appliances.) I'd recommend this model highly. It has the largest window on the market, meaning from the front you see very little color and a lot more oven, and it cooks evenly and quickly. We have had a problem with the starter in the oven portion, but our local dealer we bought it from has been quick to fix it and it's under manufacturer warranty.

As you can see from the above shot, modern standard 30 inch ranges are too small for the provided space in my kitchen, meaning lots of crud and dust collecting on either side. Plus the range butts up against the rather low sill on the west window, another kitchen foible that makes me ragey. You can also spy the stick-on vinyl that had been applied sometime in the last 20 years...on top of many more layers. But more on the floor in a future post. I've probably said enough for today.

That's my kitchen as it WAS, and even as I type this, it has changed drastically and for the better. Hurrah! We're still many days away from completion, but it's nice to look on these pictures and offer up the contented thought, At least I don't have to cut my hand on the strangely vicious shutting mechanism of the cabinets anymore.

It's the little things.

Paradise

2014-06-03T13:10:00.001-05:00

I realize I haven't checked in here lately, and since we're currently in the thick of a major remodeling job that I'd like to document here, I thought I should mayyyybe give ye olde blog another go. This summer will be 6 years since I started a family blog, and I'm definitely feeling the difficulty of finding creative content in the face of a) rampant micro-blogging (Twitter, Instagram, even Facebook, etc.) and b) my children growing up. They are their own people, so while I have no problem poking fun at them when they are stupid (kids are pretty stupid, Lord love them), I don't know how much freedom I have to tell their personal stories.

Anyway. That seems rather esoteric. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Before I launch into any posts about Our Life Coated in Plaster Dust, let me fill you in on this past semester. (Both The Professor and I have been thinking in terms of semesters since we were five, and because we are petulant and adverse to chance, we've gone into academia in order to retain that mindset. Please adapt.)

Last fall I taught two classes in the English department at my alma mater (surreal, y'all), and this past spring I scaled back to one. It was College Writing I and it is generally inhabited by only freshmen, and I soon came to an important conclusion: I love college freshmen. I LOVE them. It is an irrational love, since they can be some of the most maddening creatures in creation, but I will say this in their defense: they are also some of the most awesome, and I am so thankful I had a very teeny part in the beginning of their college experience. I hope I had a very large part in the beginning of their college writing experience, and I also hope they don't think I am too much of a crazy liberal heretic. Amen.

I'm all signed up to teach two sections of freshman writing again both this coming fall and spring, so I think I did all right. I'm really glad for summer break, but I'm also really glad for this teaching opportunity. Imagine! Me! Getting up and putting on makeup and teaching young adults! What in the heck has come over me? Is it something in the water?

The Professor spent the entire academic year writing his dissertation, and he rounded it up with three weeks of research in Austin at the Harry Ransom Center at UT. That was a crazy time. I visited him for a long weekend, and then he came home and we settled into normality again. Then after another month he left for a week in Germany, AS YOU DO. Just before Germany we started our big remodel, which will take up a good portion of our summer. He is scheduled to defend his dissertation mid-July, officially making him Dr. Case, and then, after our family summer vacation, he'll start back at Olivet full-time teaching in mid-August.

Basically, I do not understand how he's not flat on the floor, dead. I suspect he's a robot.

In the middle of all that, our kids grew and flourished and learned and, you know, LIVED, and we managed to get a decent photo on Mother's Day:

It was a Mother's Day miracle.

In case you're wondering: King Peter the Boy is 5.5, H is 2.5, and J and B are both (duh) 7.

In just two days the older three finish up the school year, and then I will officially have two smartass 2nd grade boys, one hyper-extrovert 1st grade girl, and an almost-three year old on my hands. Sometimes they are almost too much for me to handle and I want to run screaming from my own home, escaping into the corn fields forever. (Question: What would I do in the corn fields? Answer: Cherish the silence.) But most of the time they are bewilderingly amazing and I would like to high-five the universe for making me their mom.

Between times I am handing out graham crackers in an effort to just get everyone to shut up for five freaking minutes, for the love.

So that's my quick check-in to Blogland. Hope it wasn't too whirl-wind for you. Life is pretty grand for us. Fun and healthy and free of drama beyond the normal, life-with-kids kind. We go to church, we go to school, we work in our garden, we try to serve our community, we gather with friends and family, and we work everyday to create a little paradise here on Earth in our very home.

And when I look down and realize that my two-year-old son is bossing the life out of me, I realize that karma has come full-circle and that I am only experiencing the effects of a life of bossing everyone else around me.

Also amen.

DIY Salvaged Frame

2014-01-28T09:54:00.002-06:00

Quick post here to show you that I can browse Pinterest just like the best of them.

No, I didn't slather mason jars in chalkboard paint and then turn them into light fixtures. I'm not that far gone.

Actually, my friend Annie, who is a true artist and a whiz at decorating her house with found objects, inspired me to complete this project. A few months ago our neighbors threw out a HUGE frame in the alley, and I salvaged it because I saw potential and also I love free things. And then it sat in my basement and I forgot about it, until Annie showed me an old frame she had transformed into an easily-changed picture display frame. She had used already-in-place nails to mount lines of sturdy wire across the width of the frame and then mounted photos using clips. I liked the idea and knew my massive frame would work beautifully, so I got to work.

(It helps that I saw the same thing at Marshall's for around $60 and immediately recoiled at the cost-to-effort ratio.)

First I found a can of yellow spray paint and painted the nasty faux-oak. The paint couldn't reach into the huge cracks and creases of the frame, but I actually like the effect of the black cracks on yellow surface a lot more than just plain yellow. Then I measured gaps at 3-4" intervals on each side and marked where I wanted lines of wire to hang. I then painstakingly screwed eyelet hooks into each marked spot; next, I twisted sturdy wire through each hook. Finally I gathered printed photos of our family and hung them to the wire with fancy paperclips and mini clothespins. My husband hung it for me in our tiny hallway between our bedroom and bathroom, where it is the first thing you see when you walk through our front door.

Previously I had a large canvas hanging there, but it hung horizontally and didn't mimic the shape of the arched doorway very well. I like this a lot better, and I love the pop of color it lends to the hallway. Plus I love seeing all those people we love and cherish.

Baby H is here to be your faithful guide. He and I have had some very serious discussions about not petting the pictures too much. Honestly, he wants to kiss all the faces, which is what happens when you raise your baby to be Orthodox.

I know this project isn't earth-shattering or original or maybe your cup of tea. That's totally okay. But I really like it, and I'm proud of myself for accomplishing something outside of the normal laundry/housework/diaper duty/teaching/trooping through snow routine. Also, this is my blog, so I can show any and all overdone projects that I want. #winning

And it's worth mentioning that at the very center of our photo web is a picture of the couple that started it all. This picture is from our college Christmas banquet from Christmas 2004.

Now go and make something of your own! Extra points if you can also use something discarded by your neighbors.

Hot Husbands Building Tables

2014-01-18T12:21:00.001-06:00

So we wrapped up all of our Christmas break craziness of building and painting and getting high (on paint fumes, duh) and ended up with a beautiful girl's room, a beautiful new dining room table, and four sick kids, three of whom needed antibiotics and multiple trips to the pediatrician's office. I'm not saying all of these events are related, but I am saying that crazy people who do insane projects are less likely to stress out their children and make them susceptible to bronchitis and ear infections. Maybe. I don't know, because I am not a chill person.

Anyway, that's what I get for bragging about dodging the stomach virus. We also got the Polar Vortex and Chiberia and whatever else you want to call wind chills of 50 degrees below zero, and now everyone is officially sick of winter in mid-January. You know what we really need? Hot husbands who build us hot tables.

Lucky for me!!

I, of course, forgot to take a "before" picture, so I quickly shuffled through my camera roll and found this photo from this past summer. We were hosting King Peter's birthday party, so please don't think balloons, streamers, and seven children are part of our normal days. Focus instead on the black table:

And those messy bookshelves! It was a busy time, people.

As you might remember, if you've been around here long enough (this blog is over 5 years old! WHAT), I got this table and its four chairs way back in college and painted it black in 2009. I was really happy with the painted table for quite awhile, until our kids multiplied and then got huge and then our extended family multiplied and suddenly we were eating in shifts or off of our laps in the living room. Despite the black table's 11- or 12-year run (including its original country look), it was time for a change.

So The Professor decided to tackle the making of a farmhouse table for my Christmas present this year, and I settled on this design. It's actually an Ana White plan, and according to my husband it was pretty straightforward, aside from one or two minor editing mistakes that required an extra trip to Lowe's for lumber. He used untreated pine (sure, it's soft--but this is a rustic table being used by kids; divots are expected and perhaps even encouraged), a couple of coats of dark walnut stain, and three coats of polyurethane, and after a couple of days of hard work he had nearly miraculous results.

It's, um, rather large. Actually huge. He made it something like 16" shorter than the original plans, and we probably could have shaved off 6" more (if you sit on the end near the window, it's a tight fit), but man, it fits everyone. It's solid. Here's as close a shot of the pedestal legs as I could get from the side:

The similar table from Pottery Barn that Ana White was trying to copy costs around $1,500. We paid around $200 for supplies, including some replacement blades for borrowed saws.

And the view from the kitchen:

I hope you noticed that I got my bookshelves in order. They need sprucing up every 4 months or so. I think the books breed at night.

My next request of my husband is that he build one matching bench for one side of the table (also found at the Shanty 2 Chic link.) I'd like to retire the Windsor chairs, as their legs are technically too wide, as well as the cheapo ladder-back chairs, and find a crazy assortment of vintage chairs I can paint in various colors. (The two green chairs actually belong in our office/sewing room. We're forever carrying chairs around the main level.)

I do wish I had a good shot of what our table NORMALLY looks like, which is covered in paper, markers, and various art supplies until not even an inch of tabletop is visible, but you'll just have to imagine four happy children enjoying enough room to get creative and not having to jostle one another for elbow space.

In conclusion, I have the hottest husband ever who has done a very dangerous thing in building me a table...

...because, of course, now I think he can build anything.

Mwahahahaha.

UPDATE: He scooped me! My own husband scooped me. He's started a blog, and here's his own take on building the table. He gives some good specs on the measurements and materials, in case that interests you, plus a couple better angles of the table itself.

Deck the Halls with Sawdust and Paint Fumes

2013-12-30T08:21:00.000-06:00

I hope your holidays have been merry and free of pukes. I am proud to report that we only had one puker this Christmas break, and that puker was King Peter the Boy, who is the best sick person in the entire world. Case in point: She threw up once in the middle of the night, came down to matter-of-factly report this to her parents, then bossed the virus out of her system. I am always in awe of her force of personality, and it is never more evident than when she is sick. Everyone else around here gets violent man-colds, so her short-lived illnesses are almost a relief.

Anyway, we stayed home for Christmas, as we always do, and celebrated as quietly and easily as we could. May I say here that I follow a LOT of home DIY bloggers on Pinterest, and the holidays are when their projects reach a fever-pitch and all I can do is watch my feed in amazement and say, "Ain't nobody got time for that." Seriously. These women must be exhausted, and their poor families must be neglected. We put up the tiniest tree known to man, limited our kids' gifts to three each (and those three were all really basic and subdued and--guess what--THEY WERE HAPPY), went to a couple of events around town, and spent the rest of our evenings reading or occasionally watching movies. It was bliss. There was nary an elaborate garland or mason-jar-chalkboard gift label (seriously) to be seen, and somehow we made it through happy and joyous. Amazing.

As is tradition in our household, we embarked on elaborate home projects after Christmas was done and have thus subjected ourselves to all the exhaustion and frustration we were trying so desperately to avoid leading up to Christmas itself. It's how we roll!

This year my big (very big) gift from my husband is a handmade farmhouse table for our dining room. No joke, guys. He is making me a table. It's amazing, and I have been in awe of his focused progress and hitherto latent carpentry skills. At this point we're at the polyurethane, then wait forever, stage, but all of the pieces are together and just waiting to dry and get put together.

At the same time he is building this in our now sawdust-encrusted basement, I am painting King Peter the Boy's room as she has been visiting her grandparents in Michigan for the past few days. The Professor just shook his head and sighed loudly when I proclaimed my intention to paint her room, but honestly, despite the weariness and dizzying paint fumes, mixed with the stain fumes wafting from the basement, I'm glad I tackled it. I love my daughter, but she is a handful, and painting her room with her in the house would have been an impossibility. The three boys have been happily independent and very patient with their distracted parents, but adding her to the mix would have basically blow all of my plans out of the water. (Not to mention her bossiness; I can only imagine the directions for elaborate unicorn murals I would have received had she been hanging around.)

So basically our house has gone to pot and we have been throwing whatever food we can find at our children as we each work tirelessly at completely separate huge home projects. Feel free to also shake your head and sigh loudly. The worst is behind me, so I can take it.

For now, this is what our dining room looks like:

Note the lack of an actual table and the unsettling presence of virulently pink dresser drawers. When I say we have been throwing food at our sons, I mean it: We have been setting them on the floor and throwing food at them.

Our basement now houses BOTH of our tables! The Professor moved our old own down there to use as a workbench, and the new tabletop, which is drying from its first coat of polyurethane, sits on top of it. You can sort of see how it will look with its arched trestle underneath.

Our basement is already a pit of despair, but we like to heighten that impression by building stuff in it, strewing sawdust everywhere, and using three different types of paints and stains in order to build up an intolerable level of fumes. We can't run our clothes dryer because the fumes are getting lit by the flame that burns the natural gas (I think I have that right), thus making our clothing reek of gas. Seriously, this has happened. Welcome to our lives.

If you look to the other side of the basement, you can see the other two trestles and a headboard.

Those trestles are boss, man. My husband rocks.

I don't think I'm adequately conveying how busy we've been since the day after Christmas, but things are finally settling down. C's room is painted at least, and while there are still lots of finishing touches to be made, at least I don't have to deal with her trying to interfere with the trickiest and most time-consuming part of transforming a room. I'll of course show you the final products of our labors, but bear with me, as the fumes have made me slow and stupid.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal. And a happy new year, too.

Life is...

2013-11-17T21:08:00.000-06:00

…realizing that you haven't posted to your once-regularly-updated blog in nearly three months and feeling guilt and overwhelming shame.

…having the existence of your blog brought to your attention again by a college student, because guess what: the internet works. (Note: If you are one of my students, you should be working on your paper and group project. Now. Because remember: What if you are hit by a truck tomorrow?)

…teaching, yes. And sort of surprisingly enjoying it. Surprisingly because teaching high school was something I would never go back to, and high school and college students are really not far removed from one another at all. But the issue with teaching high school was bureaucracy and lack of freedom and pressure to get my students to pass a freakishly backward standardized test when they had bigger issues, like abusive homes. And third grade reading levels. And poverty. And unwanted pregnancies. And apathy. College students might have crazy big issues, too, but they are not in college against their will, and teaching them affords more freedom than teaching high schoolers, and you can always use "You are paying $40,000 a year to skip class, you moron" as leverage. Plus college students have a lot of energy, and as an extrovert, I just hoover that up, y'all.

I'm liking it a lot, and I'm signed up for next semester, too. But that's enough about teaching, since my students can Google.

…looking over at The Baby, who is of course still The Baby (that is how I see H's name in my head: The Baby), but somehow doing things like talking and dancing and giggling and arguing and reasoning and copying and learning, and realizing how short, how heart-meltingly short, this Baby time really is. Everyone says it. Every random grandma walking down the street stops me by placing a hand on my arm and another hand on her heart and then by very dramatically intoning, "Savor this. Remember it. Cherish it. It goes so quickly." And I just roll my eyes and say, "Okay, thanks, that's helpful, could you please take this bag of groceries? Because, you see, my toddler just sat down in the parking lot to prove a point and the other three are in a wrestling match in the cart corral and fuzzy, dramatic predictions about THE FUTURE are not helpful, but grocery-grabbing would be."

But you guys. That random nana is right. So right.

First he's a squalling, life-disrupting, scrunchy newborn who makes everything so doggone difficult. And then you blink (yes, blink, it's truly very dramatic) and he's a two-year-old in a pumpkin costume standing up at the dinner table shouting "SHAKE YOUR BOOTY" and then falling (due to the booty-shaking) and sobbing and running to Mama and saying, "Kiss da boo-boo, Mama" and then, upon receiving the kiss, sobbing some more and saying, "Not DERE, HAAARRRRRR" because Mom. Seriously. That's not the boo-boo spot. It's haaaarrrrrr.

That's it. That's what it is.

I have never kissed anyone as much as I kiss H's chubby face. True fact. He cannot grow up.

…cheering on The Professor as he takes this entire academic year to write his dissertation. And man, you guys, he is kicking that dissertation's bottom. I really didn't expect any less, since he is the Most Driven Person in the Universe, but seriously, his progress is amazing. He has half of his dissertation written, about 1/3 of it reviewed and revised, and all of it mapped out. He's cleared for crucial research in Texas in the spring. He has grand plans on defending in the summer, and he'll definitely be back to full-time teaching at Olivet in the fall, just four years after starting graduate school from scratch. He does all of this while running the planetarium, continuing his research assistantship at the Adler, working on publications (both academic and fiction), and being an awesome husband and dad. If you see him, give him many high-fives. He deserves them. And probably also a nap.

…watching my three big kids flourish and thrive in school. We are so happy with our district's magnet programs, and we are extra super happy with the magnets our kids are in and with their teachers and aides and principles and support staff. Seriously, so many awesome, dedicated people work their hardest to make sure my children are engaged and learning and safe and healthy, and you know what? When I watch King Peter the Boy lean in reeaaaallll close to her adored kindergarten teacher and whisper "I love you" and stroke her teacher's hair, I can't help but think we're in a good place. Many high fives to my awesome community. Also, her teacher has pretty awesome hair, so this is all very understandable behavior on KPtB's part. Also, her teacher loves horses, so they're pretty much BFF.

…being really positive. How do dramatic, pessimistic people make it through life?

…admitting that it's not all roses. Fine. I'm really positive, but geez, you guys, my kids DRIVE ME CRAZY sometimes. Today was one of those days. Mr. Case and I yelled a lot at the big ones, because they fight and tease and punch each other and lie (yep) and throw fits and cry and generally do a great job of getting on our nerves a lot of the time. We essentially have three kids who are all the same age. And it is an immature and ouchy age, filled with a lot of arguing and disagreeing and exasperating. The winter weather makes it all the harder, as our house is small and there isn't a lot of room for thundering elephant children who really need to run around the block five times backwards to get out all of their energy. Some days, like today, are really hard and discouraging. And yes, random nana. This too shall pass. But don't tell me to cherish this, because I won't. I'll cherish the hugs, the cuddles, the quiet talks, the "I love Mom" cards, and family jokes, but I refuse to cherish B punching his sister in the face because she called him a "Brainiac." I will not.

(Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby.)

So that's life. Some of it. A general picture of it. We're busy, but not too busy. The kids fight, but not all the time. Sometimes it snows in early November; sometimes we get tornadoes in late November (that was today.) It's changing all the time, but for the most part I can fake like I know what I'm doing and convince those around me I have everything under control. If I'm smart I'm actually cowering in the corner shouting "JESUS, TAKE THE WHEEL!" but no one here ever hears me, and my husband thinks I'm a hero.

Basically, life and I are on good terms.

O Alma Mater

2013-08-28T14:44:00.001-05:00

Well, summer is over (at least break is), and for the first time in several years I have to keep a set schedule and prepare lesson plans.

Because, you see, I am teaching as an adjunct at my alma mater.

And yes, I'm teaching College Writing II, and yes, I'm using a lot of run-on sentences and incomplete sentences and what-have-you, and you know what?, stop judging, this is a blog.

My three sweet big kids started school last week, just in time for the hottest days of the entire year, and are settling into the routines of first grade (J & B) and kindergarten (KPtB.) The transition has been a little tough on the boys, who are learning that, while first grade can be fun, it certainly isn't kindergarten. Also, did I mention that it's hot? Our schools are numerous and old and not really designed for school in August, which means no air conditioning. So the kids and teachers go stark raving mad for the first couple of weeks, and I have nothing but respect for the teachers who are attempting to get in any amount of learning that they can while perched in a close classroom with 25 melting six-year-olds on the third floor of an ancient building.

I have respect, y'all.

(Oh, and King Peter? At the end of her first day of school, which ended up being 8.5 hours long when you include bus rides, she bounded off of her bus, sweaty to her marrow, and shouted, "I LOVE IT!!" with more enthusiasm than I will ever be able to muster for anything in my entire life. Her transition has been seamless and enviably perfect.)

Since three of my children are in school all day and The Professor is using this academic year to write his dissertation (which means a normal schedule without daily trips to Notre Dame, which means between him and a sweet friend, H is taken care of while I teach), it seemed like a suitable time for me to jump into teaching again. So I am officially an adjunct professor with the English Department, my old stomping grounds, teaching two sections of College Writing II. I teach one class each day, so yes, now I have a schedule that revolves around more than laundry and dusting. It feels weird.

I have no doubt that I can DO that work required, nor do I doubt that I will be good, because you guys. I am a good teacher. I am a great communicator. I am a pretty dang good writer, and I know my MLA. (As long as I have the book.) I am not bragging; I am just acknowledging the gifts I have been given, and I hope all this translates into a positive first semester teaching at the college level.

For full disclosure: I am the least athletic person in the world. No matter how hard I try, I cannot master Rachmaninoff. Math beyond fractions makes me cry, and as much as I can admire and believe in science, most of it is beyond me. I cannot reliably spell "accommodate." I am selfish. I have a hard time reading books that are new to me. I am not very brave.

But I can teach, and so we'll see if I remember anything after being a full-time mom for six years. Really, all those lessons I've learned as a mom should definitely come in handy, and as sweet as these college students are, they are 19 and 20 and 21. They are babies. We will be okay.

School. Hold your breath. Close your eyes. Jump in. It's going to be fine.

Chicken Butt

2013-07-23T14:58:00.000-05:00

So. Chickens. They are happening.

Mr. Case has long yearned for chickens. He has had a thriving garden for several years, and this year he expanded it. The next logical step was livestock, and since we live in the city, we are pretty much limited to chickens. He checked with the city authorities last summer and was told that as far as chickens are concerned, the line between "pet" and "livestock" is pretty hazy, and that it really comes down to your neighbors.

So we asked our neighbors for the materials to build the chicken run.

No, really, we did. Our neighbors to the north had an old dog kennel that was attached to their detached garage. When they had a dog, it could go into the garage by way of a staircase that hooked up to a garage window. Their dog died a few years ago and the kennel just sat, rotting away, so The Professor approached them and asked if he could dismantle it and use it himself. They were more than happy for someone else to take care of it, so he and his dad tackled it one morning a couple of weeks ago. A few days later they rebuilt it next to our detached garage, where it essentially serves the same purpose as it did as a dog run, except now it's for chickens.

It runs a little beyond the width of our garage, underneath some great shade trees, which have since been trimmed a little.

The Professor and his dad made a ladder (walkway?) out of an old closet door that runs from their coop in the inside of the garage to the outside run.

Here's the walkway and little platform leading to the window from another angle:

On the side nearest the side door to the garage they built a gate. Apparently they only needed something like $10 in materials to build this whole thing because it just fit together so perfectly for our purposes.

(Note: If you have strong opinions on a roof, just keep them bottled up inside. He knows a roof, which would be really difficult for this particular run, might be a necessity later on, if predators start carrying off the birds in broad daylight. He considers this a test run. Just so you know, the birds only stay outside during the day. They are ushered into the coop at night and are separated from the outside world by a heavy door.)

On the inside is their coop, where they have a roost and a nesting box, for when they are laying eggs. Mr. Case built it entirely out of scrap materials, which is really pretty amazing, I think. Here is a straight-on view of the nesting box. To its left you see the door that covers the window. This opens and closes by means of a heavy pulley system. To the left of all that is the roosting area, where he has a couple of heavy limbs positioned for optimal roosting.

Last Thursday The Professor and the three big kids went to a local poultry farm and bought three Rhode Island Reds, one for each kid. These girls aren't laying yet, but should start producing this fall.

Oh, and their names? Amy, Feathery, and Robochicken. You're welcome.

Chicken butt.

So that's our next endeavor in suburban farming. I personally have no desire to do anything with these guys. I'll take their eggs, but my husband knows he is on his own for anything beyond that. I have willingly spent over $4 a dozen for cage free, vegetarian-fed eggs for several years, so I could take or leave chickens. But he was SO EXCITED for them and SO EXCITED that he finally got to realize his dream. Even when he built the dang run SO LARGE that it completely encased my entire stock of lily-of-the-valley, thus ensuring their future demise, I couldn't get mad. Even when he built the dang coop SO LARGE that there is no way we could ever fit our van in our already teeny garage, I couldn't deny him this.

Perhaps a good closing story to this post would be our daughter's attitudes toward the chickens. The day they were scheduled to pick them out, she was asking lots of questions, the last of which was this: "So when the chickens can't lay eggs anymore, can we kill them and eat their chicken meat?" When we answered in the affirmative, she yelled, "YAY!"

Amy, Feathery, and Robochicken, meet reality. Enjoy your stay. FOR NOW.

My Kids: An Urgent Update!

2013-07-03T05:00:00.000-05:00

So should I even acknowledge how long I've stepped away from the ole blog? No? Good. Because I have a big, messy, loud, tiring life outside of the Internet, and mainly I use the Google machine for Pinterest, anyway. I'm Casemama, I think, if you feel like following all the geek pins ever created ever, amen.

But Raechel said I needed to post some photos of my big huge human children who are actually, you know, looking and talking and thinking like REAL PEOPLE, and she's right, we're overdue. So that's this post. Pictures I found that I my father-in-law took at our home a couple weeks ago. Of my kids. Plus braggy snippet updates on their doings. Welcome to my blog, I can do whatever I want!

First, Mr. Raisin, who is a raisin no more but something more along the lines of a puffy marshmallow man. (That's how his brother described his arms recently: "puffy.") He looks uncannily like his older brothers did at this age. He is 20 months old, nearly 21, talking and climbing and developing a vibrant and awesome personality every second of every day. He is also incredibly spoiled by all of us. He is never out of our arms if he can help it. His hair and his eyes slay everyone he meets, and he earns double slaying points on a humid day when his curls really stand at attention.

Crusty nose happens. No biggie.

He's just so great. I am stunting his growth all the time so he never gets big and stops saying "wa-wa" when he wants a drink.

Queen Anne/King Peter the Boy easily possesses the most personality I have ever witnessed in a person. She stumps me like 32,059 times a day, either with her behavior, her questions, or her imagination. She has a really great natural talent for drawing (unicorns, natch), and she sees everything through a filter of rainbows. She is feminine without needing lots of pink, princesses, or frills--just horses and unicorns, which suits me just fine. She has her own army of admirers, fondly referred to as The Unicorn Brigade, and she scares me daily because she just does not know the meaning of "stranger." All strangers are simply friends she hasn't met. My favorite example is when we walked into the YMCA lobby and she hollered at the random lady walking past, "I really like the lipgloss you have on your lips!" Potentially creepy, but mainly hilarious. You should have seen the lady's expression.

She has these smokey green eyes that change to gray or blue depending on the light. I can't even with her.

The twins are so alike in personality it's scary, but I realize it would be unfair to simply lump them into the same category, as they are of course different people. (You'd be surprised how often others forget this.) I'll start with J, my warrior. He is, in a lot of ways, very quintessentially boy. He is still maturing and learning how to NOT burst into tears when things don't go his way, but the tears dry quickly and then he's off fighting with Transformers and rolling in the mud and creating elaborate imaginative lands filled with talking dolphins (his favorite animal) and black knights. He is my wiggly, jiggly boy who needs lots of physical activity to get through a day. He also needs lots and lots of books, all nonfiction books on dinosaurs and robots from the big kid section of the library. I am amazed at his reading skills and the information he can hold in his awesome, busy mind. Yet with all this loud gogogo wigglewigglemove on and about his person, he can display such tenderness and thoughtfulness toward his siblings. I am so honored to have a part in his growing up. He is so fun to watch.

These are the best photos of him ever. This is pretty much J all the time.

He and his twin brother are more than just best friends and even more than just brothers. It's almost as if they are each other's shadows or something poetic like that. Like limbs that work together and can't function alone. Does that even begin to convey the depth of their relationship? Sure, they fight and gripe and groan like all brothers, but 95% of the time they are working in harmonious synchronization, whether they are reading quietly, playing, or tormenting their poor sister, who understandably feels a little left out. On their kindergarten teacher's suggestion, they are going to be in the same class again next year, because they just can't function apart for that long. Who knows, they may end up together all through school. We lucked out with those kind of twins. I, as a loud and proud extrovert, lucked out with these two people- and activity-wary introverts; they are teaching me so much about how people of all types process the world. I am learning not to drag my kids so many places, no matter how much KPtB and I crave the activity.

And my sweet, sensitive, bat-obsessed B. This kid has such a heart for other people and animals, and I am so proud every time he questions injustice. Even in the comfort of our jumbly home, he is easily the quietest kid, and I can almost HEAR him processing everything, absolutely everything, that he encounters each day. He has done a lot of growing up this past year, and I knew we were going places when he easily began playing with a little boy on the playground last week and asked, "So what's your name?" That's a kid right there. A big kid who makes friends and just likes to play. He can make the most elaborate Lego creations, ships and guns that just absolutely floor me, and he is just crazy for facts about animals and the natural world. A few days he and I had a very serious talk about dreaming after he lamented not having good dreams even though he "thinks about great things all day" just for the express purpose of experiencing them in dream form at night. I suggested he start a dream journal, and he immediately procured a notebook and logged his first dream. It's sitting next to his sleeping form right this minute. What an awesome kid.

WAIT WAIT, you thought I was done? Honey. If having a fourth child a few years after the first three arrived back-to-back-to-back has taught me anything, it has taught me this: Giving the baby a wee bit more of the spotlight is okay and right and just.

Plus that hair flip just adds more and more to the slaying points.

I know you were about to ask, and the answer is yes, he does get kissed a lot. By everyone, including his big brothers, whom he adores.

So that's my brood. They're loud and messy, and they fight and drive me up a wall many times a day, but I've put too much work into them to give up on them. Also I love them with the white hot passion of a thousand dying suns, which helps considerably.

(In case you were wondering about H's teething necklace, I still think it's hoodoo voodoo. But we keep it on because teething for him means ALL THE DRAMA, and I will do anything to avoid drama, including voodoo.)

Trees and Other Wonders

2013-05-16T11:11:00.001-05:00

I have very good and exciting and big news, everyone! My husband, Stephen Case, has a book. A book of short stories, to be exact.

Here is what it looks like:

Whoa, right?

So this book is a book of short stories, like I said, almost all of which have been published previously. (Think magazines.) There are a couple of stories that are previously never published and are included as a sort of bonus. Whoo, bonus! I'd lump his stuff into the broad and ever-dynamic genre of Science Fiction/Fantasy, though I hesitate to say that because I know that's not everyone's cup of tea. (And if it's not your cup of tea, I'm really tempted to shout "YOU'RE WRONG," but that might be a tad judgmental.) Just know that his stuff is really great. It really is.

Sure, I'm his wife. I'm SUPPOSED to be his biggest cheerleader and fan. But I'll tell you a secret: It took me a long time to get through all his stories. I read sci-fi and fantasy with the best of them, almost to the exclusivity of all else, but there are so many variables within any genre, and Stephen's stuff isn't necessarily, right out of the gate, even MY cup of tea. Seriously. It's twisty and sometimes dark and often very enigmatic, and more than once I've finished a story and thought, Okay, what the hell just happened? And I get cranky if I have to think too hard. His writing challenges me, and it's heaped with beautiful imagery and wordplay and fantastical flights.

You should totally read it.

It's available on Amazon as a Kindle edition here. His author page is here. If you're interested in learning more about him and his research (yes, you are!), then here is his website.

(Note: We don't own Kindles, and so we had to figure out how to make reading a Kindle book possible on our own devices. Luckily, Amazon makes it easy to buy no matter what you have because--hey!--they want to sell you it, no matter what.)

Three cheers to The Professor for a job well done!

Mother's Day: They Are Beautiful Because They Can Kiss

2013-05-13T16:00:00.001-05:00

Okay, obligatory Mother's Day post, I guess. But I have something I just can't pass up sharing.

Something besides this photo, I mean.

Ben Folds said it best: I am the luckiest.
Also, J is nefarious.

And also this one of My Sister the Goddess, our mom, and me.

Do you think any of us look alike?

You should know, if you don't already, that I am incredibly blessed to enjoy a happy, close, drama-free relationship with both my mom and my sister. We live close to one another, are intimately involved in each other's lives, work together to raise all six of the children, and only occasionally get bossy with each other. Okay, well, my mom and I are the World's Biggest Most Uptight Bosses and My Sister the Goddess is totally chill and patient and kind, so it's actually pretty funny that we all get along as well as we do. In a sitcom we'd be at each other's throats. Instead, we are happy.

No, what I was REALLY anxious to share with y'all was this strange, unexplained book that B, who is six, brought home from school on Friday. He wasn't able to explain much about it, being interested in decompressing with a big pile of Transformers after a long day at school. The "book" is comprised of several recycled coloring pages stapled together, and while his brother, J, had one, too, also on the subject of mothers, it wasn't nearly as wild as B's. I think they were told to use some cause and effect in their stories, but beyond that, I am left wondering at the specific prompt, beyond "mom."

(To preface: You should know that they boys only recently encountered the idea that "kissing is gross," and of course they picked it up from classmates. They've worked out a system by which kissing is okay. Kissing is okay at home, but at school they just don't do it and they play along with the "ewwww" of their friends' reactions. I don't think they have any concept of romantic kissing; just nice, familial kisses from their parents. At school, this is considered gross. But at home, they will gladly take part. Fair enough.)

I'll translate after each page, okay?

"~~Grand~~parents Mom is my BFF because they are beautiful."

"They are beautiful because they can kiss."

"They can kiss because I like it."

"I like it because I'm used to it." (It's like Stockholm Syndrome, this kissing business.)

"I get used to it because my mom is the best!"

It all follows, right??!!

I'll take whatever kisses I can get, because a little boy thinks that I am beautiful and the best. The end.

We Have Life

2013-04-30T10:02:00.002-05:00

Well, I guess I let time slip away from me again. That's okay. We're busy. Who isn't, you know? Sure, the things we're busy with are just every-day, un-earth-shattering things, but such is the pattern and make-up of life. We have life. We have busyness.

We have digging and the poking of sticks.

We have art-making...

...and the beginnings of wall-filling in a previously neglected corner.

(After months of brainstorming methods of disguise, I just said "Hang it all" decided to embrace the thermostat and humidifer control by framing them. Will approves.)

We have the time-consuming task that is cheering on our little introvert in his first attempt at a team sport.

That is B, if you're curious.

And we have flowers.

Northern Magnolia (aka "Tulip Tree")
First seen here.

Oh, we have flowers.

Azaleas. Thank you, Mrs. Dorothy.

Because, of course, it's that time of year where we all feel crazy and itchy (in the best way possible), and I go outside and become like a landscaping rage monster of insanity. Today I'm ripping up half of my front lawn. This is the truth. I'll fill y'all in later, once the rage monster qualities have subsided.

I'll be quiet the rest of the week (I hope) because as far as weeks go, it's a doozy. It's our Holy Week (Orthodox Easter isn't always on the same schedule as Western Easter), which means lotsa, LOTSA services throughout the week, culminating in a late night Saturday Resurrection Service, which itself culminates in a 1 a.m. lamb dinner. I couldn't make this stuff up. I love being Orthodox. I'm so excited to eat meat. Lent is long, you guys.

Besides THAT awesomeness, it's also graduation weekend in these here parts. We're in the middle of the whole dog-and-pony show this year because my dad is graduating with his master's (WHOO. TO THE. HOO.) and we have lots of family and friends coming up/staying with us to celebrate. Lots of dinners, lots of togetherness, etc. All great.

Add to that: A Cinco de Mayo presentation that King Peter is taking part in. She's been singing in Spanish all week.

Add to that: Baby H gets tubes in his ears on Thursday.

I probably left a few things out. Suffice to say, it's insane. Good insane, and welcome and happy insane, but I'm sure we'll collapse sometime Sunday afternoon and never stir again.

And now I'm off to enjoy the 80+ degree day outside with my baby boy. Tell me your favorite perennial in the comments and I might just consider it for my front future garden.

Lemme Sum Up

2013-04-15T10:00:00.001-05:00

Well hello, beautiful.

J at a swimming lesson

I'm back.

From left to right: Wolverine, Cap, and Batman,
as presented by Wolverine.

We here at Keeping Up with the Cases have taken a nice long leave of absence in order to get sick back-to-back-to-back (to back), cheer The Professor through his comprehensive exams (he passed 'em all!), and crawl our way through early spring.

It's been tiring. Worthwhile, but tiring.

H, tired Daddy, lizard boy

As you might be able to tell, I've also joined the 21st century and gotten on Instagram. You can find me under the handle casemama, if you so choose.

But once you see how steeped in nerdom I am, maybe you won't choose. That's your constitutional right, and I respect that.

My contribution to First Contact Day, because oh lordy.

We've sustained a few bumps and bruises along the way, and even a trip to the E.R. after tripping and gaining a "Harry Potter scar."

Besides taking part in freak, forehead-gouging falls, King Peter the Boy has also plastered my fridge with approximately 20 pictures a day. We're all actually quite impressed at her artistic skills. In comparison, her older brothers' drawings look like potato people.

This is a mama unicorn. Just let that sink in.

A lot of my time has been spent persuading my husband to undertake a kitchen remodel this summer, researching kitchens, discovering that we don't have enough money to do a good remodel this summer, falling into a tailspin of despair and anguish, being mean to my husband because he won't ever let me do anything, making it up to him because I am a child, coolly and calmly coming up with better kitchen designs and a game plan with my awesome, patient mother, resolving to in fact undertake a thorough and awesome remodel next year, and scoring a vintage gas stove on Craigslist for pennies because that's how I roll.

I swore out loud when I found it.
And made my husband pick it up directly
after his oral examination finished.

Don't worry, I'm still making plans for things The Professor can do this summer, since no summer of ours is complete without a huge honey-do list. Also don't worry, because the kitchen is a go for next year. We just don't want to have to cut corners, as would certainly be the case if we rushed into it now. Bonus: I have more time to plan and shop!

So that's our past month or so in a nutshell. Now, mid-April, we're delighting in unfurling flowers, the occasional sunshiney day that breaks up the monotony of (much-needed) rain, and the duck couple who have made our neighborhood their nesting home for the fifth year in a row. I mean, seriously. I get to walk outside in a free country in a wonderful neighborhood and visit with ducks. What more could I wish for?

I can only hope your spring is as awesome.

Vintage stoves for all!

ps: If you caught The Princess Bride reference, you get 50 points for Gryffindor.

Random Post in March

2013-03-12T15:28:00.000-05:00

I don't have much time or energy to put together the semblance of a rational post. I'm sorry, but we're deep in the throes of Stomach Bug 2013. Or at least Stomach Bug Early Part of 2013, because let's not forget the depressing fact that there is more winter at the end of this year.

I'm sorry. I'm like this every March. March in northern Illinois is always hard, especially for light junkies like me. I am absolutely addicted to sunshine. (I hope you've read Sunshine by Robin McKinley, the best book my favorite author has ever written, and if you have you'll just nod your head solemnly when I state that my element is sunshine.) All my magic happens when I've been soaking in sunshine. I made myself buy a ludicrously huge and floppy sunhat last summer so I won't meet an untimately death via skin cancer at the age of 42. I think I have solar cells in my fingernails. I can feel myself soaking up the sun. Sunsunsunsunsun.

Okay, I'm done waxing eloquent about sunshine. Do you want to hear about puke? Of course you don't. Just know our lives have been full of it. It's just how things are, but knowing that doesn't make the last couple of weeks any easier.

Add to all of this the fact that The Professor is feverishly studying for his comprehensive exams. These are his field tests that, once completed and passed, give him the "all clear" to start working on his dissertation. These exams are the bridge between classes and dissertation, and they represent an insane amount of reading and studying. I never want to do anything like this in my life. I have no higher education ambitions, and I respect him hugely for doing this. In the middle of it all he caught the virus, too, so things are, understandably, a little insane and off-kilter around here.

All I want is an all-expenses-paid tropical vacation. Without kids. Is that so much to ask?

Just to keep things in perspective: We are, besides the bug, healthy. And happy. Our kids are smart and energetic and fun. We have a great home, heat, and plenty of food. I am sitting here, wrapped up in my Star Trek blanket and drinking coffee, while three of my children nap and none of them throw up. I have so many blessings.

Anyone else out there battling the bug? It's going around here. Just in time for spring break.

Anyone else out there just want sun?

Raisin Sings

2013-02-26T15:18:00.000-06:00

I shared this on Facebook last week, but it deserves a wider audience. Behold! Raisin Baby (Raisin no more!) sings. Specifically, he sings like Ariel. And talks a little.

I plan on doing a post soon outlining all that this kid can do and say, but let me just say this: Holy cats, prepare to be amazed.

Living Room Redux

2013-02-19T21:44:00.000-06:00

After we got our bedroom in order, I turned my attention to our living room. Last I showed you, I had gone against my husband's wishes and painted it white. It was pretty stark, so naturally it drove me crazy and I had to fill in the Great Blank. Problem is I had pretty much blown my budget with paint supplies, so I had to get creative, as I had recently done in our bedroom. Little by little the white got filled in, and I gave a sigh of relief and thanked Past Christine for having the foresight to embrace the neutrality of white.

Behold, the neutrality of white:

I, of course, didn't have the foresight to take a "before" picture (I just started moving furniture and splashing paint around, it was PRETTY INTENSE), but our previous paint color basically matched the furniture. And the wood flooring. Which meant everything was the same color, and it was making me a raving lunatic. White seemed like the neutral with the most longevity, and Pegasus (an Olympic paint--I used satin) is proving to be a paint kindred. It's clean and bright and on the cool side of things without being stark, and it makes our space feel HUGE. We used it in our upstairs bathroom last summer, and I'm still happy with it, even on this much wall space.

Here's a testament to the power of white paint: Before using it on the walls, I was starting to hate my beautiful, expensive, wonderfully-made couch, loveseat, and armchair simply because they were brown. I secretly wished for them to die in a fiery crash. (?? I don't know, I was irrational.) Who wishes such a fate on Bassett furniture? People surrounded by brown, that's whom. Then I painted the walls, and the brown furniture became beautiful and practical and timeless again. I once again thank Past Christine for her risky first-year-of-marriage purchase, because let's face it, Present Christine could never blow that much money on furniture. It's all due to the power of white paint, people.

As you might be able to see from the above picture, I like busyness. I like patterns (and lots of 'em!) all mixed together in what I hope are complementary ways. I got the biggest, baddest area rug I could find (this one from Rugs USA) in the boldest, most eyeball-watering pattern available. (Note: I don't have any other rugs on my wood floors, since we deal with allergies, but this is our only living space, so it needs a rug. This one is nearly 8' X 11' and it is PERFECT.) I decided to welcome every color but pink, although maybe pink will sneak in there without me noticing. I started throwing lots and lots of things on the walls, and my happy factor rose by about six thousand points, which is just shy of Total Bliss on the Happy Scale. Finally! My living room was eclectic, crazy, and print-happy, and I was truly enjoying it for the first time in years.

Now shut up, Christine. You talk too much.

Let's see. Nothing here was new (the frames are the always popular and versatile Ribba frames from Ikea, and the pillow is Jori's favorite, from Pier 1 a couple years ago) except I found that new lampshade from Target and the green candlestick was a clearance special from Hobby Lobby. The kids' pictures used to be lined up in a row above our couch (as seen here, in our baby announcement), but I much rather like this close grouping. Bonus: Rae took that picture of H.

In this corner I both maintained some established elements and changed some stuff up.

I spy three separate plants in this photo.
I have a lot of plants, y'all.

What we left the same was the grouping on the wall of the World's Fair poster and father-in-law-made shelving. (Those were the shelves borne of me handing him the Pottery Barn catalog, saying "I like these, please make them," and him performing miraculous miracles of carpentry.) It just worked for this space; the only change I made was to the stuff on the shelves.

The table is an old Hemnes from Ikea we've had for years. I can't even find this model online, so we officially have an Ikea antique. Fun fact: I really like it in the living room because it stands up to my kids and its doors hide useful things like coasters and babies who like to climb on its shelves. The glass antique lamp was a garage sale find from years ago. I did purchase the curtain (from World Market, here) and curtain rod (Hobby Lobby) specifically for this room, and I'm so happy I chose to go with a crazy mismatch of patterns. I left our star light (Ikea!) up after Christmas and made it permanent by containing its cord with a cable cover. It adds much whimsy. Whimsy pleases me.

Our one major change in this corner was shedding the Chair of Destiny. I still loved it, and always will, but it took up a ton of space in our narrow room and wasn't really serving us well. I passed it on to an appreciative and Chair of Destiny-loving friend and replaced it with this Klappsta from Ikea. I did NOT pay $150 for it--I paid $15 at a consignment store. It was in fabulous shape, aside from a few stains, and I went to work with both a bleach pen and some fabric at once. I managed to get out the arm stains, and the cushion is now happily ensconced in some fabric I found at--wait for it--Ikea a few years ago. I'd like to spray paint the legs some happy color, like red, once I figure out how to operate an allen wrench.

I should note that we tried a few different furniture configurations in this room, but ultimately landed right back where we started. We have a long, narrow living room that doesn't allow for much versatility or for a coffee table. The lack of a coffee table might be my one great regret.

I've had this end table in the next shot for a couple years now, originally bought from another local consignment store. I bought it painted dark brown, but the paint/sealant job wasn't well done and it started scuffing and peeling in no time. I looked around downstairs for some paint that was a) punchy and b) enough to cover a small table, so yellow it was. Sorry the lamp is so bright. I never claimed to be a photographer. Oh, and the owl canvas was a present from my parents. It's from Pier 1. OH YEAH, and the lamp is from a consignment store. I think it looks like an aquamarine brain.

My big project in this room was filling in the large amount of wall space over the couch. We had a lot of action and color going along the top of the wall (thanks again to my father-in-law for the amazing shelves!) and a lot going on with the chevron floor, but the big blank wall in between remained blank for some time due to its sheer level of daunt. Over time I gathered a whole bunch of possiblilities, mostly from my house or even my mom's house, and one night I finally said, "Husband, we have got to get hanging."

The only things I bought specifically for this wall were the little yellow chair (Hobby Lobby), the blue Martha Stewart chalk paint for inside the large frame (Michael's) and the Shirley Poppy print. (I love The Black Apple and have been yearning to buy something of hers for several years now. I finally had a good excuse!) The weird mirrored shelf thing, found at the same store as my now-yellow table, houses my ever-burgeoning collection of cow creamers and serves a second, deeply satisfying function of annoying the heck out of my husband. I think he's creeped by the cows. You can't see it in this picture, but the red frame hosts a porcelain unicorn of King Peter the Boy's. (Perhaps you can spot it in the photo of the brain lamp.) The green pillow is one I found at Pier 1 many moons ago; I made the blue one; the purple one is from the-store-that-shall-not-be-named; and the multi-colored chevron was hanging out at our local Marshall's.

Here's a closer look at one side of that wall:

So the blue chalkboard paint is right on the wall, framed by the old frame that used to house my high school senior photo. (I will never put that on the blog. Just FYI.) The cat/map canvas was made by my sister-in-law years ago; I think we actually stole it some time back. The black and white photograph is my husband's I had printed on canvas. The lamp was my last purchase for the room; it's also from Ikea, and I'm super duper happy with it. It's a seriously well-made lamp, and it comes in red, too!

I honestly didn't spend much money for this project. I used birthday and Christmas money, as well as money from a few things I sold, to fund anything I felt I needed to buy; the rest I either dug up out of my basement or dug up out of my mom's basement. Clearly whatever I couldn't find used I found at Ikea (honestly, I don't go there very often at all), and whatever I didn't like the color of I painted. These are my methods.

Thanks for putting up with my detailed blathering. I know it's not a major renovation, but I'm really happy with how this room is shaping up. I feel like finally my teenage self, who had purple walls and a crazy amount of wall hangings with no relation to one another, is justified in her eclectic tastes. It's like the 17-year-old me is now legitimate.

It feels awesome, you guys.

ps: Bonus points to my dad for changing out all of our old outlets, switches, and covers. He gets many virtual high fives, everyone.

Exercise, Schmexercise

2013-02-08T10:28:00.000-06:00

I hate posting without pictures, but this post is about me finally exercising and we all know that THAT'S not going to happen on the internet. So instead I offer you this sweet 'stache picture:

You're welcome.

Anyway, I'm finally exercising. This is, like, blog-worthy news, you guys. Seriously. Pretty amazing stuff.

I have never liked to exercise. I come from a great family, but when we want to reward ourselves or perk ourselves up, we treat ourselves to food. My mom always lamented the fact that we weren't the type of family to, I don't know, go on a bike ride or swim some laps together as rewards. Sure, we took family walks and bike rides, and my sister and I did some sports (it took several years for me to accept my complete lack of athletic ability), and then we both did years of marching band, but we weren't that kind of family. You know the kind I mean. The super fit family that only posts pictures of group mountain hiking excursions and team Iron Man challenges on their Facebook wall. No, we were staying in and making cookies. And having an awesome time together.

We also never quoted Shakespeare, another fact my mom liked to lament. We quoted The Simpsons and various Muppet movies. It explains a lot, y'all.

Off and on I've attempted a regular fitness routine, but first school, then a job, then WHAMMO multiple babies in a short amount of years always interrupted any half-assed attempt at exercising I had started. I was always secretly relieved. I never knew what to do on my own besides running, and running makes me want to jump off a cliff. In my opinion, there is nothing worse than running. Seriously, nothing worse. I have a bad knee, so not only is running not enjoyable and really boring, but it's exceptionally painful, and visions of early knee replacements dance in my head the entire time I'm wheezing and hating everyone and everything. There is nothing worse than running, unless you count running on a treadmill in a gym. That is the ultimate worst.

I didn't begin to actually like exercise until about a year ago when I discovered (always late to the party) Zumba. I wrote about my flailing Zumba(!) moves here, and I have managed to keep up a semi-regular class routine for this past year. I loved everything about Zumba--the dancing, the great cardio, the acceptance of any and all fitness levels or body types--and I still love it. But with a husband pursuing a PhD, preparing for some big tests, it was getting harder and harder for me to get away and exercise. Plus Zumba classes outside of a gym membership were hard to find. Plus I was stagnant, fitness-wise. I needed more to lose that baby booty.

Enter the YMCA. We have an awesome and active Y in our community, very close to our home, and I have been begging for a membership for a few years now. We were finally able to make it happen, and y'all: I haven't looked back.

I don't know what's become of me, but I am there, sweating and swearing and simultaneously being miserable and transcendentally happy, nearly every day. Perhaps it's wanting to prove to my husband that our monthly payment is not in vain. Perhaps it's a love of the free childcare and showers (which I don't have to clean!) available to me. Perhaps it's the fleeting glance of myself, naked, I caught in a mirror. Perhaps it's just a clear understanding of how much harder achieving fitness goals is going to be, now that I've had all these babies and turned 30. My body has morphed into something very different than it was a decade ago. I'd like to beat it back into submission.

I am lifting barbells in a group weight-lifting class. I am shredding any wisp of abdominal muscles I have left after childbirth in a group circuit-training class. I am continuing to dance and jive and just generally make a happy fool out of myself in Zumba. In short, I have discovered a love for exercise in a supportive group environment with lots of bossy, knowledgeable instructors who tell me just what I need to do to reach my fitness goals.

I. LOVE. IT.

I am now that irritating person who moans and groans when she can't make it to the gym for a day. I proselytize about Body Pump to anyone who stands still long enough to listen. I live to shower in a locker room where, sure, I'll encounter lots of other unclothed women. But, hey!, no little people are bothering me, and I actually have time to shave my legs. Just yesterday I dropped the texting plan on my cell phone and traded that charge for the permanent rental of a locker in the locker room. I realized something in my brain had snapped when I found myself excitedly telling my family about my spacious corner locker ("It has a rod to hang my clothes on!") in the evening.

My mom says she doesn't know whose daughter I am anymore. I am wondering when the aliens came and stole my personality.

Using up my mornings to work out means my house isn't always clean. I can get in a shower at the Y, but I don't have time to blow dry my huge amount of hair, so my hair hasn't looked "done" in two weeks and the last time I put on makeup was for church last Sunday. I constantly walk around hunched over because every one of my muscles aches. I'm pretty stupid at working out, which means the instructor has to move beside me and show me how to do really simple moves. I am so exhausted that I fall asleep by 8:30 most nights, snoring loudly while my book of crossword puzzles slips from my fingers. It is neither a glamorous nor a thug life.

But let me tell you this: I am getting fit. I am involved in a fabulous community resource. I am meeting new people. I am a stay-at-home mom getting out and about and refusing to hold onto these 20 extra pounds any longer.

I am loving exercise.

Please do not contact the aliens. I am quite happy being a pod person.

A Post for Future Christine

2013-01-30T14:43:00.001-06:00

Red eyes: the curse of all blue-eyed people
the whole world over.

Sometimes I just need to post things my kids say and do so that Future Christine (who is stronger, leaner, and meaner than Present Christine) can remember and become the sort of unhelpful person who stops new moms and says, with a wistful sigh, "Enjoy it while you can. It goes by so fast."

I know this is pretty mean for Present Christine, but seriously? That's completely unhelpful. Please, stranger lady, go enjoy your children or grandchildren as they are right now. If you need a baby fix, volunteer at the hospital or church nursery. Or hold mine! I'm on the fourth one, I don't care about germs anymore. Have you had your shots? We're good then. I'll be back in thirty. I'll bring you a latte.

(You guys, let's all chuckle because we all know that Present Christine is pretty mean in her own right. I hate to meet Future Christine. She's such a jerk.)

I don't mind sharing that maybe 75% of the time our house feels like chaos. Now, that it IS chaos is just patently not true; it is just how it feels. The Professor and I are both rigid Type A individuals, so there is lots of order and routine in our home, and the kids are all happy hostages in our great takeover. Stockholm Syndrome kicked in long ago, especially for B. Everyone craves organization, everyone craves routine, and I still have to give a numbered list of stops we're visiting on errand day to avoid traumatic meltdowns. My kids are also Type A, is what I'm telling you. My house is clean. Our sh*t is in order.

But still: it often feels like chaos, and I know this is just because four children get in the way of ANY type of organization we think we have set in stone. There are shoes everywhere, even if they are stacked neatly by the front door in the designated spot. I still step on Legos, even if the boys are fabulous about keeping them only in their room. I'm still waiting on C to finish up her breakfast so we can get out the door on time, and this is mainly because C is the least-Type A of all of us and also: She is four. And in a perpetual dreamworld. It's a beautiful place full of unicorns and rainbows, but dangit, it makes me late. I am never late. I do not brake for unicorns.

So as you see, the chaos is mainly of our own devising, with a little bit of good old-fashioned rascally kid chaos mixed in for funsies. We go to bed happy but exhausted to our bones. My expression is permanently set at "Exasperated." Twice this morning I found myself saying, "Y'all. I cannot even." And then later I had to apologize for hollering at everyone. C asked me, "Why are you so angry this morning?"

Burn. Queen Mean Present Christine.

We had one of THOSE days over the weekend. Everyone was nuts. None of us had a chance to rest or just hang out together. Neither The Professor nor I got any one-on-one with each other or any of our children. We put our kids to bed snarling at them the entire time, while they chattered happily and hugged us tight. We were taking them for granted and demanding that they get themselves together and, I don't know, become US. Immediately.

After everyone was in bed we came downstairs. He started on the dishes and I grabbed one of the kids' notebooks to steal some paper to make a grocery list. It turned out to belong to B, my sweet, sensitive, tightly-wound child. (I am so sorry, Future B.) The first page I turned to made me exclaim out loud. The Professor asked what I had seen, and I told him:

"Dear Dad: I love you Dad. Love B."

I kept turning pages to find a blank one.

"I love DAD."
"Mama I love you."

Eventually I gave up on blank paper and just started flipping, reading his messages out loud.

"Frands in Sunday School: [list of names]"
"I love Mrs. Adamson"
"Dear Mama, I love you."
"My Frands: [list of names]"
"Once Upon a time was a boy named B...and he lived happily ever after. THE END"
"Dear Ta I love Ta."
"I love my dad."

Most pages just contained one line or sentence, in the wasteful way of children. Oh, how precious those messages were. They hit my heart with their deep love and sensitivity, reminding me of how ungracious I had been to my boy who had the audacity to whine at me. (Gosh, five-year-old. Grow up.) I was so ashamed of myself while simultaneously so proud of the love B had to offer, despite my sometimes weak example. I vowed to get over myself and my rigid personality and always appreciate them in the future.

And then, of course, I lost it with him this morning because he had the audacity to be off of school on my birthday and then ask me the same question four times in a row.

I don't know what I'm getting at. Of course I could make this a Sunday school answer and point toward God, and of course that is true and right and good. I cannot do anything on my own, as I learn in painful lessons multiple times each day. I could start walking the streets and hollering at random, startled mothers to "Enjoy this while you can!" (That option would make no sense because a) it makes no sense anyway, and b) where are my OWN children in this scenario? Wandering the neighborhood? I hope they have become feral children in the nearby cornfields. What a great scenario.)

I guess I'm mainly writing this down so that Future Christine can enjoy it, even from a distance. I hope Future Christine can look back on Past Christine and think, Oh, you did a great job with those kids, and you certainly enjoyed it. Your hair looked like a hot mess three-quarters of the time, but no one can deny that you loved your kids and raised them up and gave them and yourself to God a thousand times a day. Well done, faithful mama. Now go get your upper lip waxed, because it won't break the bank and HONEY.

Reminder to Present Christine: Call the salon.

January Photo Dump (Mainly Featuring H, Because of Cute)

2013-01-21T13:10:00.000-06:00

I'm just going to stop in and dump a few photos over here on the ole blog. Because I can, and also I have a sinus infection and am not really capable of much beyond a photo dump. I don't know about you, but when I think 'sinus infection,' I think like, Oh, kind of a nasty cold, but not so bad. But seriously, they are THE WORST. I haven't had one in a few months, and I conveniently forgot how utterly draining and energy-depleting they seriously are. I stay at home and have kids in school and a supportive husband and parents and don't necessarily need to fix a meal every night for us to survive, and I am spent. I salute all parents who deal with sinus infections (or worse) while working full-time and juggling everything that that entails. I feel like a huge baby for even saying anything, but hey. I'm a huge baby and just cleaning the bathroom makes me want to take a nap.

(Don't use our upstairs bathroom, you guys.)

Speaking of babies, we've got one. He's 15 months old now and is seriously THE BEST ever. We cannot imagine how we functioned without him in the cold, distant, pre-Raisin past.

Oh, yes, The Curl. He has a smidge more hair on his head than he did this summer, but it still insists on curling right on top and sometimes it does some truly miraculous, gravity-defying things. Winter static adds to the general hilarity.

He's saying lots and walking and running everywhere and forcefully requesting independence and all those typical toddler things. Except I refuse to call him a toddler. He is mah bay-beeeee.

Most of these pictures feature H because, let's face it, he and I spend the entire day together. We're buds.

These two are also buds:

My handsome husband-with-a-winter-beard is back to a 8-4ish schedule (most of the time), sleeping at home and just generally delighting us all with his presence. And with his beard. I got him that cardigan for Christmas because he has the slender, tall body of a male model and is perfect for clothes like this and skinny jeans. I would hate him if I didn't love him so much.

Final point and photo: We've been battling lots of various viruses the last couple months, which is of course frustrating and disheartening, thought not unexpected considering the time of year and the extreme exposure my three oldest have in public school. All of our immune systems are in boot camp. Two weeks ago I was at the pediatrician's office three days in a row (with different kids), and last week I had at least one kid home from school each day. J felt womity and puked on the bus this past Friday morning (so awful, right?), and while he seemed to feel exceptionally awesome and hungry and chipper immediately after, he was still exhausted enough to fall asleep on the couch, which I assure you NEVER happens around here.

Blankie, red hair, purpley sick eyes, palepalepale wan face that is so slender these days and not at all like a baby's. Be still my heart, I love it all. I love him so much, and if I could take all the puke and snot and fever and general misery into my own body and leave him healthy and strong, I would. For now all I can do is rush to school, cuddle on the couch, and buy stock in apple juice. And kiss him when he's asleep because MOOOMMMM.

Just so my future self remembers: J has stopped calling me 'Mama' and now calls me 'Mommy.' I told him I preferred 'Mama,' but he is insistent and really, who cares? We're still a step away from 'Mom' (which makes them sound like teenagers) and he's still calling me, you know? I'll take whatever I can get.

I'm going to abruptly end this post and sleep the sleep of the just. At one o'clock in the afternoon. Thug life, you know?

Blazingly White

2013-01-07T20:22:00.000-06:00

So you know last post when I proudly showed you our "new" bedroom?

I got that post up just in time, because two days later this is what my bedroom looked like:

And this:

And part of the sewing room looked like this:

That's not to mention the piles underneath the desk. Or the piles behind the chair. Or the general crap-dump going on in the front of the sewing room:

My house looked like several tornadoes had come through (if tornadoes can be concerned with organizing books by genre and author) because in the living room I was doing this:

And this:

You see, Camelback (by Sherwin-Williams) and I were parting ways. It was a good neutral that had served me well, but I had been itching to change it for some time. I was over its warm tones, and I was sick of my walls, furniture, and floors all matching. I was swimming in a sea of tan. I needed change.

(I did this completely against my husband's wishes. I just feel the need to admit that. Not that he really cares about the color, per se. He just didn't see why I needed to go to a bunch of trouble to change something that was, to his mind, perfectly fine. As in "not crappy and broken," like a lot of other things are when we tackle renovations around here. I see his view, but I respectfully think it's stupid.)

It was a tedious, cranky job because a) I had to work around our high and very detailed bookshelf, which is, for all intents and purposes, built-in; b) I was doing it on my own (see above note regarding spousal uncooperation); c) I didn't prime (stupid) and therefore had to apply three coats; and d) I was painting not only the largest room in our house, but also our small hallway and our entryway.

Also, everyone chose last week to get furiously ill. B actually burst an ear drum the night I was wrestling with the final coat. IT WAS INSANE.

But I got it done! The final product is...stark.

I chose a white called Pegasus by Olympic, and I'm really happy with it, starkness and all. I wanted a neutral that wouldn't look outdated in 10 years, and as much as I like gray, I'm not predicting longevity for it. White is as neutral as you can get, and I had seen lots of rooms done in white that really appealed to me. Of course, they have usually had years (or money) to accumulate lots of funky, personalized wall decor to temper the starkness, so I'm giving myself time. It's going to stay stark for awhile. I'm telling myself to be okay with this.

It's all very...echoey, what with the few hundred books who normally call this room home out on vacation. We seriously have a lot of books. The classics a portion of sci-fi are housed in our bedroom, in case you need to borrow a book or something. And all the shelves in the dining room are still intact. Oh geez.

Oh, and we've created a little conundrum for ourselves in the form of the hallway alcovey guy in between our bedroom and the bathroom. It used to house two tall, thin Billy bookshelves from Ikea, full to the brim with mostly sci-fi, but when we took them down to paint we realized they had been hogging nearly all the space in the hall. We had been toying with the idea of building something nicer to replace them, but when we saw how much hallway we had been giving up just to house them, they were definitely out. Now the stubby hallway looks so blank and bare.

And we're still veering to the left when we make potty trips in the middle of the night. Old habits die hard.

We're considering more above-the-door, hidden book storage in there. Or floating shelves on the wall? Again, we're taking it slowly. Sure, we want sci-fi back in its place, but we want to do this well and use our small space wisely, unlike before.

So that was my week after New Year's. Now the kids are back in school, ear drums NOT bursting, the walls are most definitely white, and I have to balance on the loveseat to get T.S. Eliot back in American Poetry.

Here's where I'd make a Prufrock or "Wasteland" joke, but that seems really stupid in a snobbish sort of way, and also I'm tired and keep tripping on the volume of Little Women that's near the foot of my bed and my walls are very very white and ZOMG, what was I thinking, I have kids.

The end.