Homemade play kitchen from a desk
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| Forgive me for losing the official “Before” picture (it’s been a while), but here is a shot of Darling Husband adding some framing to the underside of the desk (to make a little fridge and oven) |
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| He sawed a hole in the desk to make room for a Dollar Store bowl (a sink!) and added some leftover taps we had from our condo-dwelling days. Then he drill a couple of holes into the desk to hold a Dollar Store trivet (a stove burner!) |
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| He added a fridge door and an oven door, and I helped by adding the hardware |
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| Fridge swings open! Aw, so cute! |
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| Oven opens just like a real oven! |
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| At this point, I happily told Darling Husband his part was over (and he happily went off to do something else, probably watch TV) |
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| All taped up and ready for some PAINT! |
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| Oh, did you notice the adorable “cutting board” that came with the desk? I decided to leave that part natural wood. |
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| Priming SUCKS, doesn’t it? |
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| Once the primer was dry, I started coat #1 (out of a million) on the oven and the fridge |
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| The counters were painted a nice cheery red, and the cupboards were painted a creamy yellow |
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| Ta-da! Almost done! |
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| We added some hooks on the sides (also from the Dollar Store) and I stapled a red gingham skirt along the bottom to hide the plastic storage bins of play food and dishes. |
This project was so much fun to make, and I think D and C will be very happy with it on Christmas morning!
Now for the hard part — keeping my office door locked so they don’t discover it early!
What happened there?
Well, I didn’t intend to take a bloggy breaky, but it seems I took one anyway, didn’t I?
Sorry to those who read my last post and thought I had gotten sucked into a vortex of making television characters out of old Pampers boxes. I didn’t! Promise!
I wish I had a real explanation for where I was, but the answer is quite boring. I was here, at home, doing the usual.
- Loving on Baby C (who went and turned SEVEN MONTHS OLD yesterday, against my wishes) and Toddler D (who continues to be a very sweet but also stubborn not-quite-two-and-a-half-year-old)
- Cooking meals that range from “Pretty good” to “Ugh … again?”
- Washing dishes and wiping the counters a zillion times a day
- Playing with farm animals (the plastic type … in a nonsexual way!)
- Sweeping (not as often as I should)
- Loading and unloading the dishwasher
- Struggling to replace batteries in a Laugh’n’Learn kitchen toy (it took removing 12 screws before I finally located the actual battery compartment)
- Doing laundry almost daily (that’s what four people plus two people who wear cloth diapers does to you)
- Pureeing new foods for C to try
- Working on my freelance assignments
- Sleeping (not as much as I’d like)
But I also did some not-so-usual things in my near-month of absense, like:
- Hosted a Duck Dynasty themed birthday dinner for Darling Husband, who turned 31 (!) which means I really must be 29 (!) and we are certifiably getting OLD (!!!) somehow
- Oh yeah, and the above item involved making lots of food (and two birthday cakes) from scratch, which is always overwhelming to me because I get very nervous about hosting big events
- Adjusted to Darling Husband’s insane new work schedule, which has turned our lives upside-down but is not altogether bad, once you get used to it
- Completed the adorable play kitchen for D & C’s Christmas gift (post coming — I swear, it’s so cute, it’s like Pinterest threw up all over it)
- Finished all of our Christmas shopping, including stocking stuffers (because I am one of those weird people who get anxious when malls get busy, so I always finish before Remembrance Day)
- Supervised Darling Husband while he finished painting the hallway/stairs of our house, helped him re-hang a million photos, sewed a valance, and hemmed sheers
- Organized the crap out of the toys in our basement Play Room/Man Cave/Family Room (will I ever settle on a name for this room?)
- Continued to kick ass and take names in this whole Weight Watchers insanity (who’s down 56 friggin’ pounds? Uh, meeeeee!)
I guess the morale of this post is that blogging takes TIME, y’all (it also takes Southern accents!), so sometimes when life gets overwhelming, it’s OK to step back and not blog. Because you get all kinds of other crap done!
I always feel guilty when I don’t blog, but I try to keep some perspective and remind myself that sometimes I just CAN’T.
When the only time I manage to detach myself from both children and get onto the computer is a brief window in which I NEED to finish my freelance assignments (which, you know, bring in actual money) then unfortunately I just can’t spend time tapping away my little thoughts in Blogger. As much as I might want to. Or need to!
I guess the solution is for Laptops to Lullabies to get super-famous — like the Sherrys and Katies and Melissas and Amalahs of the world — with lots of sponsored posts and advertising, so I can afford to spend lots of time blogging. The DREAM, right? We all know I have plenty to say, and some of it is even interesting!
Until then, I promise to post as much as my two-kids-two-and-under / working-from-home-with-zero-childcare lifestyle can allow … and also cut myself a bit of a break when I can’t.
xoxo
Toddler crafts for crazy people
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| The packing tape is because of the Halloween rain insanity. No way was all that hard work going to waste! |
The good news? D loves this friggin’ train, and he played with it before AND after Halloween, so let’s hope it becomes a favourite.
Maybe that will make the memories of trying to paint it with him — while reining in my OCD as he painted BLACK on the BLUE PARTS — fade a little sooner.
Happy Belated Halloween!
xoxo
All patched up out
I am writing this blog post with my eyes held open by toothpicks. I am writing it now for posterity, so I never forget how tired I am at this moment.
We have been trying to get to a local pumpkin patch/farm/corn maze for, like, ever. Well, a month at least. But this pumpkin patch/farm/corn maze is only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 to 5, which does not exactly work well with our kids’ naptime (1:30 to 4:00/4:30). It couldn’t really be worse timing, actually.
Combine the evil nap hours with Darling Husband’s crazy schedule, some rainy weather, general having-two-kids-two-and-under exhaustion, and … yeah, we hadn’t been yet. Our porch was the only one on the street without pumpkins on it.
So today, I was determined we were going to make it work. We couldn’t go tomorrow, so it was literally our last chance before Halloween. And I am not a last-minute girl, so this bothered me, but whatever. I’m also a stubborn girl, and I wanted adorable family pumpkin patch/farm/corn maze memories (and photos … mainly photos). Plus, our friends from our old ‘hood (in the big city) were going today, and it would be extra-awesome to go with them.
Yes, it was still inconvenient today. Yes, it meant sneaking the kids down for their naps early (an hour and a half early, actually) and listening to scream of protest over the monitor. Yes, it meant Darling Husband couldn’t sleep as long as he deserved (after working all night, and working again tonight). Yes, it mean rousing two cranky kids who had just barely succumbed to their (early) naps.
Oh, and yes, my day had also started at 5:20 a.m. with a diaper blowout … only I didn’t realize it was a blow-out, and thought it was just a wet sleeper, so I changed ONLY THE SLEEPER but not the diaper, and then wondered blearily why the baby wasn’t going back to sleep, despite the fact that I’d brought her back in bed with me. When I saw the poo two hours later (everywhere), I realized the error of my ways. But this, you see, is what happens when you are Perma-Zombie Mommy.
But you know what? The pumpkin patch/farm/corn maze was pretty darn awesome.
We pet animals in a petting zoo, we bounced on a giant rubber pillow thingy (adults were allowed, too, OMGGGG fun), we zoomed down the world’s fastest slide made of some kind of tubing, we walked through a spinning vortex room, we played with metal “diggers” that dug up rocks, we climbed hay, we took a wagon-ride to the pumpkin patch and selected two lovely ones (Darling Husband actually picked them out, based on their long stems “easy carry-ability” while D kept asking anxiously when the green tractor would be back to pick us up — he thought we were stranded, I think) and D went on a little tram ride — when I say “tram” I mean “sliced plastic barrels towed behind a tractor.”
We also ate french fries, ribbon fries, and deep-fried Oreos. I don’t recommend doing most of the above activities immediately after eating those things, as you will feel like ass.
We stayed for more than two and a half hours, which meant a LOT of chasing after D, grabbing him out of the tractor’s path, bouncing with him on the giant pillow, going down the enormous/gigantic/huge slide with him (OMG I knew I was in trouble the second we pushed off … ugh), and nursing the baby in the chilly wind.
So yes, yes it was awesome. And yes, exhausting. We were all grimy and tired by the end. I was hugely dizzy and nauseous from the pillow-bouncing (no, I’m not pregnant). D was screaming because he didn’t want to leave. C was fussing. Darling Husband and I were both dead-tired. The kids were cranky all evening. Darling Husband took a nap since he had to work tonight, and I thought I was going to sell both of them before bedtime finally FINALLY rolled around.
But by gosh, we made memories, we took photos, and I even got a ton of video. So I call it a success! A very, very, very, very tiring success. But this is what parents do, right? Sacrificing sleep and sanity for the sake of some damned pumpkin patch photos? Sounds practical.
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Heather's Handmade Life 