a BIG present

The little one is sucking up all my taskmaster juice, so once again, we are going into the past on this post. Mainly, April. With a splash of May.

Back in April, I turned 30, and relearned that Mike is quite the schemer when it comes to gift giving. Apparently this present had been in the works for years, crossed state borders, and come up against several almost got its! He usually builds up anticipation for the gift by dropping puzzling clues that I never seem to get right. This one he simply said would not be arriving on my birthday and that he might be in trouble.

Hmm …

So, on the night of my birthday, I ask to know what’s coming my way and why he might be in trouble. “Where’s your iPad?” he asks.

I pick it up, look at him, and wait.

“Check your email.” I pull it up, wait for the app to sync up, and there’s a new email from Mike titled: Card catalog.

The word might not mean much anymore. But librarians (and hipsters) it means SQUEE!

our current state of affairs

Mike took a Monday off a couple weeks ago. And sent me a picture much like this.

Then the next day I got a cold. A couple days later, he got a cold.

Also, there's a good, solid inch of concrete and industrial wire under this tile. Which meant Mike had to go buy another tool. He was pretty giddy about it.

Colds are now mostly gone. Hope to have an update soon!

Timelines schmimelines! Boxes and Boxes!

Yeah, the dining room isn’t done yet. I’m thinking little Poppyseed did not inherit DIY genes, because my usual furor over projects is pretty absent. It could be the fact I’m in bed around 8 since I have a dancing jumping bean from 3:30 - 5:00 am.

Oh, mom, stop! You're embarrassing me!

But we do have some exciting news, other than my expanding waistline.

We have boxes and boxes of hardwood floors sitting throughout the house.  SCREECH RECORD STOP WHAAA???!!!  Yep wood floor purchase for-the-win!!

the longest project - but not quite 9 months...

So, I think we get the DIY prize for Longest Project Ever. Our dining room project, which began last year, or 3 months ago (however you want to slice it) is still in progress. Progress being a relative term. But we had a good excuse: two other important projects came up.

The first project came on Christmas Eve, when we got a big fat positive on multiple pregnancy tests and couldn't be happier! Unfortunately, I was soon laid flat by morning sickness and fatigue. We’re now at week 13 and I’m just starting to get some energy and non-nauseated hours back. The couch has become my best friend and enemy, so our DIY speed came to a screeching halt. In my defense, growing a human is hard, you guys! In the first trimester, the kiddo is doubling in size each week while developing all its parts, and while s/he’s too tiny to “feel” yet, I definitely get a punch from the hormone cocktail.

Say hello to our little 'Poppyseed'. The ultrasound tech also found a little surprise.

Ignore the bad brush placement. This little one was too wiggly to get many good shots,
and of course you can only see the arm touching his/her nose.

While gestating is exhausting, it doesn't quite account for all of our time. We also took on yet another little project. We gifted Mike's parents with updating their bathroom!

something we should've done long ago

Well, I think it's quite obvious that we did not finish the dining room makeover before the new year. January 1 came and went with a big whoosh and we only had bare wainscotting to show for it. With the holidays and getting hit by a bug going around, we just didn't have the energy most nights to work on it. But we're getting there. Two coats primed, just gotta fix some rough spots, and then onto the paint!

Today we did a silly little update that has a big impact on us - and it's something we should've done loooooong ago. Cabinet pulls!

We've tolerated these things for far too long. It's not just that they're dated ... they're also gross and gunked up and resistant to cleaning. But because we plan on replacing the countertops and painting the cabinets in a couple of years, it felt silly to invest in pulls that worked with the stained cabinets and might not jive with the "new" kitchen of our hopeful future. But ever since we replaced the pulls in the wet bar and library, the kitchen pulls bugged us every time we looked at them or opened a cabinet. 

nailed it

We've been busy in the dining room. It used to look like this:

Then it looked like this:

Stay classy.

It's definitely going through an awkward phase. Over the past few weeks we've primed the trim, ceiling, and lower wall. Then this weekend, we put up the base for our wainscoting, which we hope to have completed by Christmas (or New Year's).

New closet doors

This post is coming about a week late. Last weekend, pre-Thanksgiving, was a busy weekend. What did we do?

• Installed new closet bifold doors
• Attempted to hoist the boat
• Dropped boat on pavement
• Put boat in the back patio
• Tidied and prepped garage for winter
• Winterized patio
• Finished painting half bath threshold (forgot about that months ago)
• Hemmed pants and made an infinity scarf prototype
• Cleaned the house, then made a mess during projects
• Graded papers

We don’t have any pictures of the boat hoist fiasco, because we needed all of our hands involved. Essentially, we need to adjust our pulley spacing and find a way to keep the boat from sliding forward in its cradle as it’s raised. So, after some failed attempts, we rolled Woody around the back and set her deck down on some bunks. I’m sure the neighbors love seeing her back out there.