Transroomation

Okay, peeps, I apologize in advance for the plethora of pictures that you are about to experience, but there is just no way around it. This is the post in which Savanna's "room" becomes an actual bedroom. It's pretty exciting stuff. (I'm just happy that we remembered to take pictures throughout most the project, since we are generally pretty terrible about that.)

Our house has four bedrooms, but since we are using one of them as an office, we  decided to convert a strange loft-type room upstairs (that we have no use for otherwise) into an additional bedroom for Savanna, to eventually be shared with Alexa once we have another baby. And that is exactly what "we" (read: Craig) have been working on since we moved in at the beginning of August.

The room already had walls and a space for a door, but also had four troublesome open windows that needed to be closed up, (with framing, drywall, cardboard filler, more drywall, lots of layers of joint compound, texture, and paint)  in order to make it a bedroom...along with an actual door. It's been a long process, with a steady break for just about the whole month of September, but we (ahem, Craig) have been back in business for the last few weeks and now Savanna has real walls, paint, and an actual bed to sleep in. (This poor middle child of ours seems to always be the one to get the shaft.)

 Anyway, here is the process and the proof.

starting the framing 

beginnings of drywall 

filling up the space with cardboard for noise reduction

the view from the hallway that goes 

nowhere during the filler/drywall part.

(more on this awesome hallway later)

Craig risking life and limb to fill in the 

windows on the staircase side of the room

more drywall 

framing the door

getting lots of help from these lovely assistants

a real door

texturizing before painting

Dusty Daddy

starting to paint

(this part usually goes really quickly with help from the kids)

bunk bed wall

one million miles of tape 

two million miles of tape

going for the plaid effect

checkers, anyone?

lots and lots more taping

pure fanciness

getting the bunk bed together

more bunk bed fun

Voila! Bedroom in Wonderland.

Craig is amazing. As usual.

(But I don't know how he would have done 

it without his talented sub-contractor)

Next on the agenda is framing in a closet so that Savanna doesn't have to keep going across the house to get her clothes out of Julia's. That one is in the works right now and hopefully will be operable pretty soon.

A Good Reason to Stall

 I really should be reading Uncle Tom's Cabin right now. I gathered up my book and my notes like a good little student when I suddenly remembered on my way upstairs that I had to hop online to renew an overdue library book. And, 20 minutes later, here I still am. (Craig is in the other room enjoying his new surround sound right now. His homework is a lot funner than mine.)

I know that everyone is probably up to their eyeballs with Pumpkin/Halloween pics and pretty much over it. I mean, Thanksgiving is just a little over a week away. Let's get on with it already, right? But here are some of ours anyway. Lots, lots more to come, on account of I seem to be very, very short on time these days. But as long as I post before next Thursday, then I figure I'm not technically behind, right?

I'll keep telling myself that while you enjoy our little Halloween Gallery. (Hallowallery? Galloween? I'm still working out the kinks on that one.)

Daddy gets all the points here. I stood on the sidelines and look pictures while he did all the dirty work involving the pumpkin guts. Such a stud.

Love them the pumpkins. And the girlies.

Better Squeeze This in While I Can...

Hooray! We finally live in a city with community activities that are both FUN and FREE. (In Laveen, things were either fun OR free, but rarely both.)

Good ol' Goodyear had a fabulous fall community festival, chock full of pumpkin decorating, animal petting, and general revelry. I won't lie, though...the most exciting part for me was probably the acquisition of four (FREE!) reusable shopping bags. If only my old Save the Earth Club could see me now!

Can't believe she's mine

Sorry, future Julia, for posting this picture

in which it appears that you are creepily attempting

to strangle your sister, but I couldn't pass it up.

(We all know you were just trying to get her to 

face the camera, which, incidentally, she never does.)

See, future Lexa? You always looked away at the last second.

Apple cheeks and pumpkin stickers

Love this "get me out of here" face 

almost as much as the strangling picture

That's better, but check out Lexa's averted gaze...

(This picture is dedicated to the Lady in Yellow, 

who will never know that her headless visage

 has been repeatedly featured on a stranger's blog.)

Triple Decker

two baby chicks

Julia ran up to me right after this picture

was taken with an incredulous yelp that 

the chick had just peed on her hand.*

Note that the rabbit is looking at

 the camera and yet Alexa is not...

Chillin' out, maxin,' relaxin,' all cool

She can't say her sisters never taught her anything

Fin. Halloween pics to come!

*the reason I started this blog in the first place is so that I would have a place to write things like "incredulous yelp." For some reason, they frown on cool phrases like that in academic papers.

Crazy Hair Day + The Obligatory Aftermath

As the DFP, or Designated Fun Parent, Daddy is in charge of crazy hair day around here. (Mommy being in charge would be decidedly un-fun, thus Daddy's nomination.) This is the third year in a row that he's done it, and, as any Fun Parent should, he does a bang-up job involving lots and lots of colored hair spray, rubberbands, and bobby pins that result in some imaginative, Dr. Seuss-ish display. (As in, "every kid down in Whoville liked crazy hair day a lot. But the Mommy, who cleaned up after it, did not.) Okay, I don't really dislike crazy hair day, but I do have the task of cleaning up the bathroom after the mad crazy hair day rush leaves all sorts of hair accouterments laying about amongst the inadvertent splashes of colored hair spray covering the counter. But, as the Designated Responsible Parent, that's my job. And that's okay.

Anyway, the girls' hair looked great, and only one of them showed up to school late because of it.

Not a great pic, but the only one we got of Vanna before 

I rushed her off to school while Craig worked on J's hair

Julia Goolia, who was no more than two-lia

(Okay, so she's seven, but that 

doesn't rhyme with anything fun.)

fancy hairwork, no?

Lex wanted to be included as well, so I did what I

could with the supplies that remained.

Could have been much worse, but this is what I 

discovered a little later in the morning...

you can't really see the color on the 

counter, buy believe me, it was there.

Speaking of aftermath, J managed to get almost 

none of the hair color out of her hair when she 

showered that night, so I had to wash her hair in the sink 

about four times before the water actually ran clear.

(If you look really close, you can still see traces

of red in her part...and it's been almost two weeks.)

Happy Crazy Hair Day, everyone!

Mom Brain

I am finding that my already ample "I can't believe I just did that" moments are increasing lately with alarming frequency. As my children get older and my brain continues its slow and steady conversion into fluffy cotton candy, I am asking myself more and more, "did I seriously just do that?" and, sadly the answer is always a resounding, "Why, yes! Yes I sure did."

Sometimes these moments start with a good idea. This one did, anyway.

Since potato soup was on the menu for our Flagstaff trip, I had the genius idea of making the accompanying  rolls beforehand so we didn't have to mess with it while we were there. (Frozen rolls, not homemade, otherwise this story would seem a little more tragic.) I got out the rolls to allow plenty of time to defrost, rise, and bake before we left that afternoon...after which I promptly forgot about them.

I wandered into the kitchen some several hours later to discover their swollen state, so I quickly pulled off the plastic wrap and pre-heated the oven so that I could pop them right in before they started to deflate. Then I ran into the office to work on a discussion question that was due that day, and when I came back out at least 45 minutes later, the taunting hum of the oven reminded me that I had never put the rolls in at all. If they were a little puffy before, they were Ginormous at this point by comparison. I mentally kicked myself, and asked myself the obligatory, "did I seriously just do that??" after which, not to be dissuaded by even my own brain deterioration, I put them into the oven and crossed my fingers that they would not completely explode in there.

They didn't; they just got even huger and rounder, and since, at this point, it was time for us to be leaving, I hastily threw them into a bag and hoped for the best.

This is what they looked like right out of the oven:

But by the time we got to the cabin, they looked at though they had been tucked nice and snuggly under somebody's warm buns for the entire two-hour drive. (Sorry, no photo. My shame and consternation were too great.)

I told my mother-in-law that I was going to go ahead and blame the change in elevation on the destruction of my poor rolls. But we all knew that soft and sticky Mom Brain was the real culprit.

I'll tell you one thing, though...they still tasted pretty darn good.

When was your last Mom Brain moment?