Spring Cleaning

If you're here from Mrs. G's, welcome!

I had intended to clean out my sewing/crafts room but I made no next to none nada zilch zippo very little insignificant progress on that.

However, the bathroom is done! Twenty-one years ago, our upstairs bath looked like this. (The other baths were worse.)

We stripped off the floral paper and, like an archaeological dig, found another layer underneath. We painted most of the room white and put up some 1989 wallpaper on the main wall. Would you believe, 20 years later I still have no picture of it? Or a picture of the hideous floor? A big chunk of it had been cut out and sloppily put back in again. It used to drive me crazy when I gave the boys baths.

Anyway, I have a thing for new toilets. Water-saving, easy-to-clean toilets. The other toilets in the house had been replaced, so I begged for one last new toilet for Mother's Day. And a new floor.

Here it is, in all it's PEZ decorated glory.




While a bathroom may not be the heart of the home, it is certainly a vital organ!

Atrium White or Cielo Blanco

The Handy Husband is patching a hole in the wall. He brought in 2 cans of white paint, wondering which matched the bathroom?

Hmmm... I put on my thinking cap. We used the Ameritone Cielo Blanco to paint the interior of the house about 18 years ago. So the Benjamin Moore Atrium White must be what we used for the master bath remodel 6 years ago. Why do I have to remember these things? You'd think we could manage to write something on the label!

Why did we have a hole in the wall? Ernest slipped getting out of the shower (he prefers ours to the one upstairs), grabbed onto a towel for balance, and yanked one end of the towel rack out of the wall. Leaving a large hole in the drywall. Yes, he's fine.

But don't you just love paint names? When we had my mother's house painted, I picked "Melted Butter" for the yellow exterior. And for the white trim, of course it had to be "Popped Corn." I'm completely serious.

Today's Discoveries

Things I learned today:

Our cat can balance things on her head.

(See Chuck for the champion of balancing.)

UPDATE: Ernest calls this Cat Jenga.

It appears we have termites. The inspector is coming on Friday.

There are 110 holds for the new Michael Connelly book.

I tried those darn reading glasses again.

I'm TRYING to smile here but my eyes are watering.

Things are easier to read, though.

Frank can no longer copy the WoW patches to Ernest's storage device (his iPod). Now Ernest has to download them himself. (Ernest used to carry WoW around on the iPod so he could use it on any computer he found free, but now I think he has to stick to one computer as WoW will no longer allow itself to be copied.) It took 15 hours for Frank to download the new patch.

Do I care about this? No.

But it was a discovery, and has consumed the two of them since 5:00 p.m.

YESTERDAY.

SO WHAT DID YOU DISCOVER TODAY?

Refrigerator Blues

Yesterday I was getting ready to drive to the airport to pick up Ernest. I wanted to leave earlier than I originally planned (but that's another post) so I needed a quick breakfast. Scrambled eggs, I thought. That's fast AND nutritious. So I grabbed an egg...and said what the some other word that is not family friendly heck? The egg was hot. HOT. The whole fridge was hot and the temperature display was off. But the freezer was fine.

As I always do in a moment of crisis, I called the handy husband for his opinion. Because he always has good advice. And then I avoid the "well, you should have done this..." conversation that usually happens if I don't call. The Handy advice was, "Unplug it for 5 minutes."

Done, and the display started working again and said 71 degrees. Room temperature. And I had to leave the house right that minute or I wouldn't make it to the airport on time. So Frank agreed to check the fridge periodically to see if it started to cool down again, and if it didn't the Handy Husband would call for repairs.

And it did cool down again ...

What the frickety-frack happened? Maybe it was left ajar overnight just enough that the light stayed on? Who knows? When I got home I threw out milk, eggs, chicken, mayo, yogurt, whipped cream, batter blaster, leftovers...anything I thought would kill us. I did keep the condiments on the lower shelves, and the things in the bins, as they were still cool to the touch.

I wish I could find a song called "Refrigerator Blues." Anyone want to write some lyrics?

This seems the opportune time to post a picture of the fridge, like many other bloggers have done. So here's mine. It's a lot emptier now!

• See the HonestAde Cranberry Lemonade on the top shelf? My kids are addicted to it.
• Me, I like Perrier mixed with a splash of Pomegranate juice (next to the milk).
• How many different kinds of salad dressing do we have????
• The industrial size maple syrup from Costco is almost empty. (The kids make their own pancakes.)
• There are those yummy Rainier cherries.
• GASP, is that some Pace picante sauce hiding behind the Perrier? Someone won't like that.
  

Trading Clean Sweep Spaces, Episode 1

I may have mentioned, we are eventually moving Frank into the room over the garage. We are also moving Ernest into a bigger room in the house. And moving the sewing room and guest room into smaller rooms.

That involves a lot of purging for me, which I am not good at. But it feels good when I eventually do it. I threw away recycled a huge pile of magazines. I'd been saving them for recipes and craft ideas. I said to myself, "Self, you know you're never going to go through all these. Just bite the bullet." So I did. I'm going to have to do the same with my fabric stash.

We moved Ernest's loft bed last week, while he was gone. It is going to be an awesome room. He will be able to sit up in bed for the first time, and have an extra bed for sleepovers. I had to pack up all his toys, and man, does he have a lot of stuff. That boy is a bigger pack rat than me. When he was little, he insisted on keeping all the packaging the toys came in. At least he's outgrown that.

Once I lost him in his room. Just kidding, but it made a cute picture:

This was about 5 years ago.

I'm going to Clean Sweep it...i.e. only put back about half his stuff, and see what he says. He already agreed to donate several boxes of Lego.

Nephew McQueen helped me move all the sewing stuff out of the room, so I could clean the carpet. Then he helped move Ernest's stuff back in. I paid him with a TV set we don't need anymore. I think McQueen is going to help again today. This time I could pay him off in toy cars, except that he probably doesn't need any more.

Heart of the Home

Thanks, Mrs. G for inspiring the Open House!

The Heart of My Home is where my family is. Usually that's in our living room.

Here's my favorite reading chair. The Kindle is "open" to Petite Anglaise. It's good. That abstract blue cat on the wall is nicknamed "Acid Kitty" after a story someone told about his cat who went on an acid trip. Don't look at the pile of laundry at the foot of the bed in the next room. It's clean. Also don't look at that bag of Kettle Chips trying to hide to the left of the chair. Whose chips are those? Hmmmmm. Ernest also sits here to play World of Warcraft. We might have to share the chips.

The cat, reaching for my glass of wine. Naughty kitty. That's the handy husband in the background. Behind the wine glass is the computer where I blog. Because Ernest is usually playing World of Warcraft on my laptop.

The other end of the couch. The cat barfed on her end this morning. No, she didn't drink the wine. It was a hairball. That darn laundry pile is peeking in again. See that blue painting? That's my Precious.

The TV. Would that be another Precious? That's Guitar Hero on the floor. See, I am honest. I did NOT clean up for these pictures, except for the cat barf.

Some tchotchkes.: Ernest as a bee, and his cowbell from the bike race. You know we like more cowbell.

Some of Ernest's artwork in the dining room nook.

The view from one of my new windows.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back any time!

I Have Holes

In my head? No, in my house, in 100 degree weather of all days! Today, after much deliberation and four weeks of order time, we had 7 new Milgard windows installed!

This is the story of 5 of the windows; the other 2 were in another room. I'm rarely able to get a before picture because things get torn apart when I'm not paying attention too quickly. But there must be family photos that show the before. These were the holes in my house this morning:

From the outside:

This is after:

We got a bevel in the glass, instead of the standard grids, or muntins.

Me, Myself, I We have serious psychotic issues concerns with our replacement windows looking like replacement windows. For example, these had to be paintable on the exterior. That's why there's no picture of the exterior, because painting them is yet another project.

I am just loving them. They actually lock, have screens, are air-tight and well insulated, and give me a much clearer view outside. Ahem, not just because they are cleaner. But because they're not divided up with the muntins.

So we're ordering up 5 windows for the upstairs really really really soon. Plus I think the garage will look really cruddy if we don't, so 2 more there. That leaves 3 pieces of the house undone. 1) the kitchen/dining nook (it's too small to be a room). I'm going to delay that one as long as possible in the hopes that we will just get disgusted and do something major like bump out the front of the house. 2) our master bedroom, which is such a funky addition we don't want to mess with it right now. And 3) the side door/windows....which does need replacement before the cold winter air comes it. Yes, we get below freezing in the winter.

And after having the house open in 100 degree heat, I am longing...just a little bit...for cooler days. I hope Ernest didn't take his 9-mile hike at camp today!

Sunday afternoon.

The men of the house went off to do men things: Handy Husband tinkered on his car in the garage. Frank ninja-ed (like here and here). Ernest rode bikes with his cousin, McQueen.

So I watched Becoming Jane.

By the time they were all back the movie was over and I was bored, so I cleaned. Some of you may know I hate cleaning. Is this because my mother was not a great housekeeper, or because I worked as a motel maid in high school? Anyway, I was so bored I cleaned the blinds in the dining room, and then the kitchen. Then the kitchen tchotchkes had to be cleaned too. Here's my clean kitchen window area, including my Valentine's Day present. (The new faucet.)