Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Baby Blessing


I wrote about River's baby blessing almost two years ago and now it's time to write about Ocean's blessing.

We scheduled it for Labor Day weekend to make travel arrangements a bit easier for those coming long distances.

After trying to get some good photos of Ocean in his outfit, this was the best I managed

because this happened.

He wasn't thrilled with mommy. Though I did think that the pointing finger and slightly accusatory expression were funny.

Later that day I caught him looking solemn and serious

and then he got a little worried.

The onesie is from the GapKids site (on sale, with a coupon) and I made the pants and the little bow tie. We could have used River's outfit, but I wanted them to have their own outfits that they can keep and use for their own kids if they choose.

I pulled out the big camera for the group pictures, but had people who were unfamiliar with it take the pictures so the results aren't as in-focus as they could be. Should have just stuck with the camera phone.
My parents, two of my sisters, and our little family

Mr M's parents, one of his brothers, and us

And now we're a family of 5!

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Basement Blackout Curtains

The first basement progress post can be found here, and this is the second post in the series.
what this end of the basement currently looks like

Like I said in my first basement progress post, the main room in our basement is a multi-purpose room: the kids' play room, my sewing and craft room, and our home theater.

We don't have a TV upstairs because we have a projector in the basement. Well, that and we don't have cable and can't pull in local channels with rabbit ears because of all our tall trees. We don't mind since Amazon Prime and Netflix are cheaper than cable. Whether we're watching DVDs or streaming tv shows, we have a much better viewing experience than we would with a run-of-the-mill TV.

The only problem is if we want to watch a movie while it's still light outside: there's two glass doors that lead to the patio I built and that face the setting sun. All that sun is great if we're playing or creating, but not so good when we're trying to watch a movie. Several years ago I bought fabric for curtains and two black sheets to line the curtains. I wasn't in the sewing mood, mostly because I knew I'd have to lay everything out on the floor and I wasn't looking forward to it, so the roll of fabric has been shuffled from my sewing table to the guest room closet to the-under-the-stairs closet. I threaded the hem of the sheets on the curtain rod as an interim solution and tried to ignore the fact that the too-long sheets only kept out some of the light.

too-long, too see-thru, and sagging because of the loose bracket

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of the brackets holding the curtain rod was pulling out of the wall, despite the fact that I'd used anchors to install them. I'm guessing the anchors were just no match for small kiddos pulling the sheets back and forth across the curtain rod.

Since I had to take the curtain rod down (and remove the sheet curtains) to fix it I decided it was time to buckle down and finally sew the curtains. I sewed the lining to the curtains so it was a little fiddly, but overall the project wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be and only took a few hours.

light tan fabric with a darker tan leaf print

The fabric is thick, and with two panels there's a fair amount of weight for the curtain rod to support. I knew I couldn't depend on anchors in the drywall to support the weight, so I had to find a stud to screw the brackets into. While the stud was closer to the door frame than I wanted, at least I was able to find one close to where I wanted it placed.

I used rings with clips to hang the curtain panels. The rings are great because it's easy to adjust the height a little without having to re-hem the whole thing.


The result: the curtains look good and are much more effective at blocking the light than just the sheets. One more project that I really didn't need to delay for so long.

it's a sunny afternoon out, but you can't tell with these curtains

I also made a curtain for the other window in the room. I'd rigged an old, too-long tab-top curtain to cover the window, but it was old, unevenly faded, and rather ugly. As I removed it I realized that this particular curtain panel was purchased to cover a window in our very first {very tiny} apartment 14 years ago. Apparently I never got rid of it in any of our moves or purges in the intervening years since then, though the rest of the curtain panels from that first apartment are no longer around.

the ugly old curtain

There wasn't enough fabric left over from the other curtains to make another curtain, so I looked through my stash and found a tan pillowcase that I bought at IKEA that was too large for our pillows. After cutting the seams, there was enough fabric that when I combined it with the leftover piece I had just enough to make a single curtain panel for this window. I lined it with part of a brown sheet that was also sitting in my stash, waiting to become a dust ruffle on the guest room bed (but won't be since I changed to gray bedding in there).


this window looks so much better with a nice curtain
the stained glass is one of my projects from a class I took in college

Both curtains do a terrific job of darkening the room. They also help with insulation. The basement stays cooler in the summer than the rest of the house, but it's also cooler in the winter, which isn't nearly as desirable. I'm hoping the basement will be a bit warmer in the winter than it has been in the past.

Up next: painting the LEGO table, which is the last of the projects I built while pregnant with River that still needs to be painted.

Monday, September 28, 2015

September Race Recap

Saturday morning's sky

I had hoped to hit the treadmill three times last week, but only managed two times. Add in a 5k on Saturday, and I still managed to run three times last week, so I'm happy.

Ocean still isn't cooperating with the early to bed, early to rise plan, so I'm squeezing in my treadmill time after breakfast or lunch.

After breakfast: Sunshine does her schoolwork, River plays, Ocean naps, and I commune with the treadmill.
Ocean moved his arm in front of his face just as I took this picture. 
Turns out he wasn't really napping.

After lunch: Sunshine reads, River naps, Ocean naps, and I commune with the treadmill. This is actually the preferred arrangement since River isn't trying to get too close to the treadmill, but I have to make sure I have energy to spend time on the treadmill.

There's a real nap...

Both times I walked to warm up, ran for a bit, then walked to cool down. Running on the treadmill after running outside a couple times reminded me that running outside is so much easier than on the treadmill. I find it requires less effort physically and mentally so I'm able to run longer distances before having to stop and walk. It makes me appreciate my outdoor runs so much more.

Speaking of outdoor running, Saturday I ran my September 5k. It was billed as an all terrain race, which translated to a mix of golf cart paths, gravel paths, short stretches of grass, and single and double track trails. It rained most of the day before and drizzled during the race, so it could have legitimately claimed to be a mud race as well :) Through some careful footwork on my part I managed not to get too muddy, but others weren't as lucky.

The first two miles were fairly level, but there was a pretty nasty hill in the third mile that really slowed me down. I managed to run the first mile and a half, but walked/ran the rest of the race. I didn't care too much for the finish, which had us going down hill a short distance just to go up hill into the finish line. The one saving grace was that it was a short up hill, but since I was quite tired by then I totally got passed by a 12 year old girl (it was a school fundraiser, so there were lots of kids who participated).

I didn't run hard during last month's 4 miler, since I was still easing into everything. While I'm still building up my training base and getting back into shape, I did run hard during this race. It was tough, but it gave me a good idea of where I'm at and what I need to focus on: mileage, endurance, and hill work. Once my mileage and endurance have improved I'lll add some speed work, but that's not a priority right now.

The distance was 3.11 miles and I ran it in 37:36. Not my best time, but not my worst either. At just under 10 weeks postpartum and not yet back in shape, I'm pretty happy.
1st mile: 10:51
2nd mile: 11:19
3rd mile: 14:19
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The races I've run in 2015:

Month
Race Time

September 5k
37:36
almost 10 weeks postpartum


1:00:18
almost 6 weeks postpartum
July 5k           

47:44      
38 weeks pregnant
June 5k          

41:19      
34 weeks pregnant
May 5k           

40:05    
29 weeks pregnant
pushed River in the jogger
April 5k         

42:36      
28 weeks pregnant
pushed River in the jogger
March 5k       

35:32      
22 weeks pregnant

33:55      
20 weeks pregnant
January 5k     

33:25      
12 weeks pregnant

And the progress towards achieving my 40 by 40 goal:


Date
Event
Distance
Event Type
1.
July
4th of July 5k
5k
Pregnant
2.
August
4 Mile Fun Run
4 miles
Road Race
3.
September
All Terrain
5k
Mixed surface

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Sunday Funny

Sunshine playing dead while River climbed on her.
I'm not sure why. They had fun though.

Me: what are you watching?

Sunshine: fanta see uh

Me: huh?

Sunshine: fanta see uh

At this point I went over to look and saw that she was watching Fantasia. Close enough :) I know I've definitely mis-pronounced words because while I may have heard them I'd never seen them written and therefore didn't connect the two.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Reasons and more reasons

River playing with math manipulatives- starting young!

I haven't been feeling like writing lately. Partly because of the headaches, partly because I'm not making lots of progress on projects, partly because I'm not exercising regularly, partly because of the baby blues, partly because of lack of sleep, the reasons keep piling up.

So let's talk about the reasons I listed above.

Headaches
There's one eye clinic in town that takes Tricare and the soonest I could get in was Thursday. My eyes haven't changed as much as I thought, though both eyes have gotten worse. The eye doctor thought perhaps post-pregnancy hormones could be to blame for the headaches. I've ordered new glasses, so we'll have to see if they make a difference. In the meantime I'm compensating by not spending as much time reading, whether it's on the computer or on paper.

Projects
I have made some progress, but not enough to write about yet. I'm still being slowed down by Ocean. He's getting better about continuing to sleep if I set him down, but he still prefers to be held as much as possible. He's two months old now and I know his snuggly stage won't last too much longer, so I'm enjoying it while I can and fitting in projects here and there.

Exercise
Saturday evening I finally got the treadmill completely unearthed. I spent last week moving things around and switching out the bed. I need to touch up some paint and hang some pictures, and then the room will finally be done. I'll post some progress pictures this week. Since the treadmill is accessible again my goal is to spend some time on it at least three times this week.

Our schedule on Saturday didn't allow me to run outside like I have the last couple Saturdays, and I missed it. This Saturday I'll be running a 5k race, so I'll be back outside again. The weather is finally cooling off and fall is in the air, so this is a great time to be running outside :)

Baby Blues
I don't remember having the baby blues after the Sunshine or River, but this time around I've noticed some weepiness on my part. I had a hard time after my second miscarriage and self-medicating with chocolate wasn't enough so I spent some time meeting with a therapist and working through my issues (mostly all the hangups I had around our fertility struggles). Doing so has made me a bit more aware of my mental state, so the weepiness didn't catch me completely off guard.

I've been diffusing an essential oil blend every night and it's helped me feel more balanced. Late one evening I found myself feeling a tiny bit weepy and I realized I hadn't started the diffuser yet. Generally I let it run for 8 hours and as long as I keep the start times about 24 hours apart I don't have any problems. There's new rules from the FDA about essential oil claims, so I won't mention the name of the blend, but it contains spruce, ho wood, frankincense, blue tansy, and blue chamomile.  I'm not saying this will help everyone, but it has helped me.

Sleep
I'm working on convincing Ocean that bed time really needs to come before midnight, but only with mixed success. One night he went to sleep at 11:30, but the next night he didn't go to sleep until midnight. One step forward, two steps back. It's not going to be an immediate thing, but working on it now means I should be able to start getting to bed earlier sooner, rather than later. An earlier bedtime for me means I can wake up earlier and hit the treadmill before the kiddos wake up.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Sunday Funny

I'm sure we've all realized how quickly small children figure out electronics. We've definitely seen this with River, who is adept at pushing buttons and swiping on our iPhones and iPad. However, he doesn't have them all figured out yet. The other day we were looking at pictures of him on my laptop and he kept trying to swipe to the next picture. Too bad my laptop doesn't have a touch screen :)

Monday, September 14, 2015

Treadmill Time!

I don't think I've been this excited to spend time with our treadmill in a long time. Of course, I haven't  spent 6 weeks on the couch, not exercising, in a long time either.

Last Saturday I went for a short jog while Mr M cooked his homemade bacon for his parents and brother. I did 1.65 miles total, 1 mile of which I jogged, the rest I walked. I felt a bit creaky and my lower back was still tight, but internally everything felt good. I had problems with that after River was born and I started running again, but so far so good.

I had intended to get up for a 6:30 am run, but Ocean likes to nap on and off until 11:30 pm, eat one more time, then finally go to sleep at midnight. Saturday morning he didn't wake up again till 6, so I got a solid 6 hours of sleep. I can't complain too much with that kind of uninterrupted sleep, except now I'm ready to start exercising again and the best time I can consistently do that (I know this from experience) is before the kiddos wake up. If I'm not getting to bed early enough then it's just not going to happen.

I hit the magical (?) 6-week postpartum mark two weeks ago, so I'm good to start exercising regularly again, which I've been looking forward to. With three kiddos to worry about my best option for regular exercise remains our treadmill. Mr M's parents were staying in our guest room in the basement, which also happens to be where the treadmill lives. The room is small enough that I had to fold up the treadmill and put it in the corner so they had enough room to move around.


They returned home last Tuesday, so I was planning on pulling the treadmill out this week and making it feel less neglected. I haven't spent time on it consistently since I stopped training for the half marathon I didn't run, and I'm looking forward to making and sticking to a schedule and getting in shape.

I had planned on posting this last week, but I've been getting headaches daily for the last week and half/two weeks and I've had to drastically reduce my screen time. Well, anything that requires me to focus for long periods of time. My eyes apparently have changed a lot in a short period of time and reading, typing, driving, etc all make my head hurt because of trying to focus. I used to get these headaches every time my eyes changed when I was in elementary school, but I haven't had that problem in a good 25+ years.

The obvious solution is to go to the optometrist. The only problem is that we still haven't received the cards for the vision insurance we purchased through Mr M's work. We have Tricare vision coverage, but it only covers a yearly eye exam. The vision insurance through Mr M's work is only $10 a month, but will cover eye exams, glasses frames (up to a certain amount) and part of the lenses as well. Since three of us wear glasses, it's totally worth it. Unfortunately, since we only purchased the vision insurance and not medical insurance, the insurance company is having problems processing things properly. Almost three months of premiums and we can't use it yet, despite multiple calls and multiple assurances that everything's taken care of.

After spending most of last week trying to resolve the issue and still getting different answers every time we called, on Saturday I finally decided to just use our Tricare vision and get the exam so I can get rid of the headaches. I'll buy cheap glasses online and hopefully they won't take too long to arrive.

Because of the headaches I wasn't as productive as I wanted to be last week and didn't actually spend time on the treadmill. I did go for a run in the rain on Saturday, though. It was glorious :) Not too cold, not too hot, and I had my day-glo neon green shirt on to make sure the cars could see me. I ran a mile and a half this time and walked about a half mile for warm up/cool down. I'm not in shape, but it still felt good to get outside and moving.

I still haven't managed to get up early enough to hit the treadmill before the kiddos wake up. Ocean still likes to stay up late, though he did actually go to sleep at 10 one night last week, which caught me off guard. I was expecting him to wake up again, so I stayed up, purging the closet under the stairs in the basement (more on that soon). Eventually his schedule will level out, so I just need to be patient and be willing to hit the treadmill in the middle of the afternoon if the boys are napping. It's not my favorite time of day to change clothes and get sweaty, but I just need to do it.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Sunday Funny

River thinks he's so grown up. The other day I caught him sitting at the counter in front of Sunshine's computer with her Rosetta Stone headphones around his neck and his play cell phone open next to the computer. 


Friday, September 4, 2015

Master Bedroom Bench


This corner in our bedroom has always felt a bit empty and there's nowhere convenient to sit in our room. Our bed is too high to comfortably sit on while putting on shoes or socks and there's no other seating in our room. With those issues, I decided we need a chair or bench in that corner. I spent months trying to find a chair that fit this corner, but that proved to be a lot harder than I anticipated. I could never find a small chair that was the right size plus the benches that were close to fitting in the space were out of our budget.

After so much fruitless searching, I finally decided to just build a bench. Back in February/March-ish I purchased coffee table legs (15.25" long), fabric, foam, and buttons for the bench. Shortly after purchasing those supplies, I put the project on hold so I could get going on all the outdoor projects (patio, treehouse, shed, etc) while the weather was still bearable.

I used those short legs in the center- they have a nice shape and were cheaper than ones I could have bought online (I found these at Lowes). Still pricey in my opinion, but doable.

Once the big projects were finished and I moved on to finishing up the smaller building projects on my list, I finally got back to working on the bench. The weather was hot and muggy so I built and sanded the bench, then brought it inside to finish in the comfort of our air conditioned house. Why spend more time than I need to outside sweating?

I'm trying to use what we have in our wood stash for my various smaller projects, so I dug through to see what I could use. When I was sorting the stuff in the shed I cut the legs off this side table that I built a couple years ago. It's been out in the shed, taking up space for awhile now- I never really liked how it looked and after I moved furniture around it became unnecessary so it was banished to the shed. This, along with two 8' 2x4's from the shed made up the majority of the bench.

the side table I cannibalized

With the legs off, I was left with a narrow oak plywood piece about 8.5" wide by 60" long. I cut it in half, which left me with two 30" pieces. I'd originally thought of making the bench 36" long, but I went with the flow and the bench is 30". By gluing the pieces together I had a bench surface 30" long by 17" wide.

I cut 2x4s to fit the size of the plywood pieces, but attached the legs to them before attaching the 2x4s to the plywood with glue and wood screws. The 2x4s support the top of the bench as well as add a little height.
checking the fit of all the pieces

everything securely attached

checking the result

Once the legs and framework were attached I cut more 2x4s to fit between the legs and used our Kreg Jig to attach the 2x4s to the legs. This apron adds stability to the legs and makes the bench more solid.

I sanded it all down, focusing on the corners that needed to be rounded down a bit.

At this point I was done with the building portion and I brought the bench in the house so I could paint the legs and upholster the top.

That was all done a couple weeks before Ocean was born and I didn't make any more progress on the bench until a couple weeks ago when I started working on it again here and there when I had a few minutes. 

I wanted the bench to match the sideboard that we use as a dresser, so I finished the legs in the almost the same manner: I painted the legs with Annie Sloan chalk paint in Old Violet (though I skipped primer this time) and then painted the inner rings with some watered down black paint to highlight them. When that was dry I finished the legs with two coats of Minwax dark paste wax.


Once the paint and wax were dry and buffed I was ready to upholster the top of the bench.

I had purchased a roll of of project foam at wally world to use for the top of the bench. It's 6' by 3', so I was able to cut the foam in half and make a double layer. Instead of a 1" thick foam pad, I had a 2" thick foam pad, and for a lot cheaper than the foam I used on the tufted bench in our living room.


I measured and drilled holes in the wood for the tufting and used string to hold the foam in place while I trimmed it to fit and added the batting. I laid a double layer of batting over the bench and stapled it in place on the underside of the bench. Once the batting and foam were securely in place, I laid out my fabric over the bench in preparation for adding the buttons.



This time I used metal buttons that are tied to the bottom of the bench instead of using screws and gluing buttons on top like I did for the tufted bench in the living room. I like the end result a lot better and it's much more comfortable to sit on. The cost of buying enough all metal buttons with an integrated loop on the back was prohibitive when I made the tufted bench for the living room, but since this bench is smaller I didn't need as many buttons- only 8 rather than 29.

this fabric has a great texture

When I laid out the fabric I realized I hadn't bought quite enough fabric. There was enough to cover the bench, but not enough to do the diamond tufts. I wasn't too worried about it though and just let the fabric do what it wanted, which resulted in a much more relaxed look to the top.


After stapling the fabric in place, my final step was to add some nail head trim around the legs. I originally intended to have the nails run around the entire bottom edge, but decided that it would look better with the nails just on the legs.

I used 3 containers of these nails

I love how this picture turned out- my new goal is to take more like this one


After the nails were in place I carried the bench up to our bedroom.



It took about 6 months from purchasing the materials to the finished product, but with all the other projects I've finished in the interim, I'm ok with that :) This was a pretty easy project and if I'd had more time available, I could have finished it a lot sooner.  I like how it turned out and it fits the space nicely.