Playroom December 30, 2009

We were lucky enough to be able to buy our first house last summer.  After being crammed into a little apartment for 7 years, which was worth it because the trade-off was I got to be a stay at home mom, it has been a whole new world of quality family time.  A lot of it has been spent in the attic.  We had it converted into a playroom for the kids and a music room for my husband (he is a good sharer though).  Links to before posts: 1 & 2

And my little blur of motion going down those same stairs.

*

This is the building zone.  Blocks, games, people, etc.  Go ahead and say it, I’ve heard it before.  I don’t feel like my kids have an excessive amount of toys and I will proudly tell you that most of them are craigslisted, freecycled or thrifted.  A bit defensive, perhaps.  🙂

The book area over there behind the rubber ducky collection.  Okay, you have me here.  It IS excessive.  The boy loves his rubber duckies, what can I say?!

Dress up and dramatic play area.

This is the playmat area.  Our hope was to leave a big blank space that the kids could manipulate and rearrange as the game and their creativity dictated.  Also we wanted a place they could get their energy out in the winter.  Here they are this morning, building a house out of the of the playmats I scored off Craigslist (I searched for about a year and got lucky one day last summer!).

And here are the little ones getting some of that energy out the other day.

Can’t type much, too nervous.  Going to get an emergency root canal in an hour.  Arrrrgh.

Paint By Numbers December 28, 2009

I finally found a home for my (growing) collection of vintage Paint by Number paintings.

Here is a quickie iphone shot of our guest room.

I would take some more but my parents and their 2 large dogs are inhabiting the space at the moment!  My mom is a great hunter and found lots of these for me in NC.  (thanks Ma)

I just found this great online exhibit and thought I’d share.  I was going to post it to Facebook but those folks are tired of my chatty a**.

Jump to the online exhibit.

I particularly like the part where they have included peoples’ memories of PBN.

I’m on a Roll…

I’ve got butter on my pants!  Ba-dum cha.  I will always love that joke.

But I came here for help, not guffaws.

What is the name of this plant?  The one that looks like little grapes.

I think it’s in the succulent family.  I covet it but can not find the name.

Any help and/or cuttings would be much appreciated.

Science Museum December 26, 2009

We took a trip to the Science Museum, we are lucky to live so close to some great Museums and even more lucky that my FIL bought us a family pass!

I was smitten with the color of the walls in the Human Body room.  Any guesses to the make and name?

-Struggling with the age old question…           

Bones overlooking the Charles.

Deconstruction.

Painless deconstruction…

I DON’T KNOW!!! GET OFF MY BACK SWINGING GNOME, PLEASE.

Doesn’t everyone get chocolate milk at the Science Museum? Our habit is chocolate milk and Space Ice Cream.  (dehydrated wafers of yuckiness but space in the title and it’s SOLD!)

Tube and ball fun.

I am well out of the habit of writing and sharing.  Funny how quickly one can fall out of the groove.  Maybe my mind has been taken over by Bejeweled Blitz ( 279,250 suckahs!).

Uh… November 29, 2009

so, remember me blathering on about being too busy?  Well I didn’t.  My friend Hannah and I just went in together on a booth at a local antiques cooperative.  Zoinks.  It’s a good outlet, right?!!!  Like my etsy shop without all the annoying shipping hassle.

So if you are a MA person and want to check out our wares, drop by  the Massachusetts Antiques Cooperative, 100 Felton Street, Waltham and go to town.  We’re the cool booth (at least that’s what our mothers think).

Update: Here are new photos of our space.  We will eventually have vintage Valentines and other bits and bobs on that divider screen but for now it’s covering up the neighboring stall’s grungy screen.  One of the guys that works there walked by and said, “It looks like somebody lives there.”  We were pumped as that was what we were going for.   Second only to, “It looks like somebody shops there.”!

Short of buying it, we still can’t figure out how to cover up the neighbors art work on the other side.

The beginnings of our booth.

It’s not that fuzzy in real life.  We have work to do to make it more cozy and inviting but we’re proud of our start!

Went to the last flea market of the year in Rowley this morning.  SUPER SCORES.

Close up of the crazy divine fabric.

Salty wants you to SHOP.

These are rusted to perfection.

A pair of these for a ridiculous price.  They are NOT leaving my house though.  Not for a good long while.

Close up of one side of our “booth”.  We are working on some partition ideas.  Anyone out there who has a booth, we’d love any tips you had to offer!

Cheers and goodnight!

This Post Brought to You from a (temporary) Resident of Sickville November 24, 2009

The quickest path to a blog drying up, imho, is having stuff you want to say but for whatever reasons you feel like you can not.  It makes it hard for me to shoot the sh*t.  Nothing serious, stop your guessing.  Just stuff to process that probably is not best done in a public forum.  How’s that for a juicy post?  Meh.

I hold out hope that I shall ride again.  When I was a stay at home mom, this venue (and the way it connected me to your blogs) was a lifeline.  It was a way for me to feel creative, inspired and part of a larger community.  I do not want to let that go but the reality is that I have to let some things slide now that I am working outside the home.  My friends who read this blog and who started work before me or were always moms with  paying jobs are smirking right now (Hi Kath!).  It’s okay, I deserve a smirk or two for thinking I could move into a new house, start working after 7 years at home, transition my youngest into daycare for the first time, put my heart and soul into my job (that I love), do wonderous things like cook dinner, keep up my Etsy shop, write a blog, read your blogs and have time to enjoy my amazing (and growing) boys not to mention checking-in with my loving husband who is my partner in this all.  One step at I time, right?

I should say that the reason I have time to type this at all is that I am a temporary resident of Sickville.  2 nebulizers, buzzing at full blast.  Turkey what?

So I am going to surprise you now with MORE photos.  Maybe I should just set up a link to my Flickr account…

On Flickr, I named that last one, “Zipline to Heaven”.

I just reread this and I wanted to say this is NOT my goodbye, just a ramble in the wind.

&

Over the Thanksgiving break I have some photos of the craft room to finally share!

I Love My Little Boxhead November 10, 2009

He’s got a beard, a shoulder tattoo, a flower tucked in his “hair” and oh so much attitude.

I could not be more proud.

Halloween November 7, 2009

This year we trick or treated in our new neighborhood.  It was a totally different Halloween for us.  In our old neighborhood, located on a very very steep hill, we got very few trick or treaters.  We could leave a bowl out with a sign reading, “take a couple” and it would still be there in the morning.  Ok, to jump to new neighborhood in different town.  We had truckloads of Trick or Treaters, they just kept coming.  We had some smoking teenagers (and that’s not a costume idea) daring us not to give them candy and a grown woman happily thrusting her big a** pillowcase at me (no child in sight)- o  k  a   y, but most were decked out kiddos thrilled to be lugging their humongous bags of candy up and down the street.

 

The “sparkly dancing shoes” of my little skeleton.

My wee one in a hand me down costume my husband and I freezer paper stenciled back when we had free time.

We ended up not waiting until nightfall.

Potentially my favorite image of the night, boo for blur.  Not about to ask this unknown fella for a second shot, in fact I was rather pleased that I summoned the guts to do it a first time.

High five from the netherworld.

These are from my school’s Halloween celebration.

Good old-fashioned balloon shaving fun.

Someone ate the D.

Something tells me that toothpaste might still have been hanging out in the prize bucket at the end of the festival.

And here is my old Alphabet Sunday friend (we have to start something up again Lauren!) showing us all how Halloween can be HEALTHY!!!  Orange Carrots for all my friends!

Now on to Thanksgiving, ever marching forward…

Craft Night October 28, 2009

I was finally able to host craft night!  Kind of a big deal since our last apartment was too small to host such an event.

I think Trader Joe’s is the new Martha.  I hoisted 7 boxes of various  fried cheesy bites of goodness from the freezer and my hostessing job was nearly done.

After the “what? I always keep the place this clean” cleaning and the hors d’oeuvre heating up, I was too exhausted to think of a craft so I took photos of the crafts of others in progress plus odds and ins around my kitchen with my iPhone.  Is there a crafty app?

This craft night we had a new member join us.  We sent emails back and forth suggesting a light hazing might be in order, an excerpt:  Maybe the first time she comes, we could all be working on fake projects like an artificial floral arrangement, bedazzling a sweatsuit, and making a toilet paper cozy.  We’ll ask her things like, “Do you think this is over bedazzled or just enough?” “Does this floral arrangement look classy, like it would be in a really fancy hotel?”

Yeah, I know, we’re CRAZY.

But despite all our big talk, we welcomed the new member with open arms and she’s great.  She is doing this cool project, the pattern of which you see above.  She is crocheting the kippot (yarmulkes) for her daughter’s bat mitzvah.  ALL of them!  I wish I had gotten a photo of one.  I imagine she’ll be working on them next craft night as well!

Another crafter made a lovely necklace from these beads.  I set the bowl on top of my lame attempt to craft.

What I love the most about the Polaroid app is there is no cropping.  It is what it is.

Scarf on chair.  After this I gave up “crafting” for the night and focused on the aforementioned TJ bites of goodness (and badness).

And I don’t know if any of you are still with me because I have become sporadic because life has become more hectic (in a good way) but here is a teaser.

Our attic is FINISHED!  I will do a before and after post this weekend.  Total transformation of the space and how our family will use it.  Woot!

Laboratory October 10, 2009

Front  yard, spooky make-over.  Former owners dug out tree, makes for good loose soil to stick scary styrofoam in!

We made these specimen jars last year, remember?

We’re in a new house & there is no window to put them in so we’ve made the mantle our haunted lab.

Full view of mantle.  Still have not set up the haunted dollhouse.  Link here.

Thanks to Kate for helping me style the mantle. 🙂

Bird’s eye view of the bird.

Scary dude from last year, story here.

Still have not replaced keyboard.  Working too much!  Miss you madly.

Happy Halloween!

boo.