What is this?

Do you know? It is the snow melting on our brick patio along the pattern lines.

Swiffering

We have a swiffer. I don't like it, so I don't really use it.

Earlier this week, we were getting ready to paint the bathroom and I needed to wipe down the walls. The bathroom is humid sometimes and the dust sometimes sticks to the humid wall surfaces and there was a spider web in one corner. The corners are really high up.

So I swiffered it. I wrapped a damp microfiber cloth around the swiffer and cleaned those walls. I swiffered it so we would have a nice, clean surface to paint. John walked in just as I was finishing up. Apparently, he saw me walk down the hall with the swiffer and assumed I would be cleaning the floors, not the walls.

Silly John. Then he took a picture because he found it so unbelievable.

Also, this is apparently how we celebrate the New Year holiday as this was taken a few hours before midnight.

New Year's Eve

We had a nice New Year's Eve at home with the kids. We had cheese fondue (note: kids disliked this last year and still don't like it) with fruit vegetables and bread. It was delicious. For dessert, we had chocolate pudding from a box in our never before used martini glasses. It was very festive and celebratory in between all the whining and complaining about not liking the cheese. William impressed us the most as he ate a pile of plain steamed broccoli. He was just happy not to have to eat the cheese. Weird kid. Anyway: happy new year!

Dinner

It's been a crazy day.  We've been tag teaming off and on trying to finish up the tile in our bathroom project.  It just isn't going to happen tonight.  Unfortunately, this really isn't the best time of year to do a tiling project because the clean up is a little more difficult when it is so cold outside.  It would be preferable to take the tiling mess outside and hose it down.  That won't really work right now.  It would be easier to cut tiles and mix mortar for the project also if it were just a little warmer.  Ah well- I guess we usually don't do things the easy way! (note: John is out in the garage right now cutting a pile of tile for tomorrow in the hopes of putting our car back into the garage before the BIG snow that is supposed to be coming tonight.)

So, this morning while John was prepping for tiling, (okay: we couldn't find the trowel for putting down the mortar.  I suspect we let someone borrow it and they didn't give it back.  John was prepping by going to the store to buy us another trowel) I threw a pot roast into the crock pot with some carrots (a TON of carrots if we're being honest here because I read the directions wrong) and potatoes.  I figured when we finished tiling we were going to be dirty and tired.  That winning combination isn't going to put the dinner on the table.


Fast forward to dinner time.  The tiling isn't done, but we are out of time.  John is outside cleaning up, somehow.  I am trying to put together plates for dinner.

We have some lovely bread to go with the pot roast.  The pot roast is looking good, but the carrots and potatoes are just barely in the "done" category.  I'm making it work.  I'm making it work because I'm hungry and also because Gemma has climbed her way up onto the countertop and is now turning the water off and on. ( Of course I took her off the counter.  What kind of mother do you think I am?  I took her off the counter twice and then I decided to just hurry up with the dinner stuff.  Because it would take until breakfast to get anything done while also keeping Gemma off the counter).

As I was prepping plates, I nibbled on a piece of the bread.  It was....not as good as I thought it would be.  Disappointing and I made a note to not buy that kind again.  A note I'm sure I won't remember because GEMMA COUNTERTOP.

Finally everyone is sitting down.  John is impressed as he slides into his chair.  He loves pot roast with carrots.

"How long did you have to bake the bread?"

John asks as he takes a big bite.

"I was supposed to bake it?"

So, I guess it was a partially baked loaf of bread and I was supposed to finish baking it at home.  Oops.  No wonder it didn't taste good.

Snow boots

We are at Menards looking at flooring. Music is playing in the background. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Amelia is dancing in the aisle.

When I ask Amelia if she is dancing, she replies "It is very hard to dance ballet in snow boots!"

Sent from my iPhone

Bathroom redo #3

Next up: the floor. I had been itching to pull up this floor for at least 6 years. But, something else always made the top of the list. The existing floor is what I would call The Least Ugly of the Ugly choices in linoleum ever.

When we were building our house, we had choices for flooring, lighting, paint, fixtures, cabinets and counters that were considered "standard". Those standard choices did not add to the cost of the house. However, most of the time, they weren't usually choices I would make. Sometimes there were only 2 ugly choices: would you like the single white bare bulb fixture or the cream colored single bulb bare fixture?Being on a budget, we upgraded very few things (taller cabinets, breakfast bar, bay windows, vaulted ceilings, atrium stairs). We opted to upgrade only the things that would be very expensive or impossible to upgrade ourselves later.

Anyway, this flooring was the least ugly of the ugly choices. I never loved it (it has PINK in it), but I knew I had to live with until we could afford to fix it AND I knew what I wanted to replace it with.

Last year at Thanksgiving, I found some replacement tile at a good price. We bought it immediately and then it has sat in our room in the corner. For over a year. Just waiting for is to have time/energy to installing it. Finally! The time is now!

The downside is John and I spent 2 hours ripping out the old linoleum by hand and then scraping up the chunks of backing paper stuck behind. Not my favorite job by far and I have the blisters to show for it.

Mess

Home improvement is messy. And disorienting. It throws me every time to walk into this room and not find a mirror under the light fixture.