Bathroom, refreshed

Thanks so much for all of your input on how to repaint our bathroom. It was SUPER helpful to consider it all, and we did end up going with an idea that Emily, my favorite design guru, provided in a comment (not to mention a flurry of follow-up emails where I asked increasingly desperate and specific questions before we finally got everything settled).

The idea was white paint below the chair rail and peacock blue above it. We went back and forth between two Benjamin Moore colors--the more muted and sophisticated Largo Teal and the brighter and more playful Surf Blue. Side by side, I leaned toward the Largo Teal because it seemed like the safer and more polished choice, but Torsten has a THING for bright paint colors and I always, always veto him, and I did genuinely like the Surf Blue even while I was a little nervous about how it would look as a paint color, so I kind of felt like... if I'm ever going to compromise on paint colors (and yes I know, it's both of our house and I can't rule the decor choices with an iron fist, but also, sometimes I'm OBJECTIVELY CORRECT and we are not painting our whole house in primary colors), half of a small bathroom seems like a good place to do that. Even though looking at the bright color side by side with the more muted color made me feel a smidge nervous (Surf Blue on the left, Largo Teal on the right):

So! We went with the Surf Blue, Torsten's bright color preference and actually? It turned out AWESOME. It isn't as bright as I was expecting, and I feel like it really works. It's not juvenile or garish at all. I don't even feel like I compromised or settled... I just straight up love it. Everyone who has come over since we painted it has exclaimed over how great it is, including people whose own home decor I really admire, so I'm feeling good about it. I also LOVE the way the lizard looks on the wall (the lizard has a few touches of peacock blue in its design, so I feel like it really works).

Now, two choices left... do we keep the current mirror (which I thought I wouldn't like but actually I like much better with the teal paint than I did with the beige) or go with something a little simpler? If simpler, I'm strongly leaning toward this one, but am undecided. And... what to hang on the big expanse of wall that is currently totally blank? All thoughts are, as always, appreciated.

Bathroom paint advice, please

OK, so, we have just made the impromptu decision to paint our main floor half-bathroom. This was unplanned because we only just finally got our handyman in to repair all the paint and drywall damage caused by the window installation, and luckily the guy who fixed and flipped our house before we bought it left all the paint he used, and it turned out that we had every paint we needed except the one for this bathroom, BUT we didn't realize that until our guy had already used a slightly off shade of beige around the window, so right now the bathroom has a two-tone look going on.

We have made no changes to this bathroom whatsoever since moving in (unless you count hanging up the ceramic lizard--eventually we will hang more stuff on the walls, when we get around to it). It has a beige paint color that we never would have selected ourselves, and the same goes for the mirror and fixtures, but we don't hate them or anything and aren't interested in spending money to replace them. But, I'm also not interested in bothering to try to paint-match the beige, which wouldn't be a sure thing anyway since we don't know anything about the paint that was used in there, and would rather spend a little more time and money (and it's not much more, since it's such a small bathroom) to make it a much nicer color.

So! Here's the bathroom in its current state. As you can see, beige paint with white trim and chair rail, white marble-ish counter top (with gray streaks) over dark brown cabinetry, weird frosted/etched mirror that is ostensibly neutral in color but has always seemed to me to have a mint green undertone, gray window blind. I had some trouble with the lighting in these so the paint color doesn't look the same in all of them, but I think the current color is most accurately represented in the close-up of the lizard.

As far as parameters, we are leaning toward a non-neutral color in the bathroom, something not overwhelming but a little bit bright and fun. Torsten in particular is a big fan of bright colored paint, and we aren't willing to do that in any of our actual big house rooms, so a bathroom seems like a good spot for something a little more fun and less neutral than the light gray that we will probably end up painting most of the rest of the house someday that is probably much further in the future than I care to consider. (Edited to add, thanks to Diane: you know how I feel about purple, but actually I think we'll do our master bath in pale purple someday, so I'm very open to non-purple colors for this bathroom.)

Also, like I said, we don't want to pay to replace fixtures or anything else in the bathroom, though I'd be willing to consider swapping out the mirror if the new color deeply exacerbated its green undertones in an ugly way. The gray blind is definitely not going anywhere since it's brand new, and ideally we'd like to keep the lizard in there as decor as well, though if it clashes horribly it can be relocated, and like I said, we'll add a few other things to the walls eventually too.

So! Please tell me your bathroom paint color opinions. What color? Bright? Dark? What colors are your own bathrooms painted, and what do you like or not like about it?

Cleansed

I haven't read that KonMari book yet, though I did purchase it (on my Kindle! Because no clutter!) and started reading it, and actually was interested and meant to keep reading, but then switched to my book club book and forgot to go back. And our house still has a lot of clutter and spaces to organize. But! On my maternity leave with Annika, I had some sort of delayed nesting instinct kick in and did a LOT of organizing. I ended up with bags and bags of stuff to donate. Lots of too-small baby clothes (I counted OVER ONE HUNDRED pairs of baby girl pants, which is especially amazing since Annika never wore pants as a baby), lots of too-big women's clothing, lots of stuff in great condition that we just never use before. So I bagged it all up and... promptly stored it in a closet. Because, well, I didn't know what to do with it.

But, with Annika climbing out of her crib and us getting ready to move her into her big girl room, we ended up going through the last couple of spots in the house that I hadn't organized (namely, the closets in the nursery and in Torsten's office). Torsten's office was pretty much where all our crap went to die, and it was a LOT to go through. It took a few weeks of a bit at a time, but we did go through tons and tons of stuff and organize it and get rid of a lot of it. Then I dragged everything to donate down to the basement, where it sat in a HUGE pile, glaring at me while I worked every day.

But then! My parents came to visit, and they made a road trip out of it, which meant they showed up with their giant minivan, so I actually had an opportunity to get rid of a bunch of stuff. I itemized and photographed it all first for tax deduction purposes, which actually didn't take as long as I would expect, and I set aside a few big pieces of baby gear that we paid a lot of money for and that weren't worth all that much as a tax deduction to sell, and then my parents and I filled their minivan with all the bags and boxes of stuff and drove it off to Goodwill for someone else to enjoy and benefit from. And lo, it was a lot, and lo, my house is so much emptier, and lo, it is all delightful and I am happy.

I then photographed the baby gear and listed it all on Craigslist and the first thing to sell was the crib. It is now gone, out of our house. Annika is peacefully sleeping in her new room (which is not entirely set up yet--she is still on a floor bed until she learns to stop falling out, and there's a bookshelf we still need to assemble, and we haven't done the decor yet, but once all those things come together I will photograph it all to share), everyone is in a big-kid bed, and the era of cribs in our lives has ended. And I didn't even feel sad watching it go out of our house. I mostly felt good that the crib, which is still in great condition minus some teething marks from Callum (THANKS KID), is going to be used by another baby. And hopefully that baby will sleep as well in there as both of our kids did.

In the meantime, onwards and upwards! Our baby phase is over and we are both supremely content for that, as we are both bigger kid people naturally (more about this in a separate post eventually). Lots of crap is out of our house, and now it's time for me to get back to that book and then start getting rid of other stuff that takes up space but that hasn't actually been designated as crap to get rid of just yet. Because there is a lot more. And the relaxing feeling that comes from getting shit you don't need out of your house, and passing it on to someone who may actually benefit from it, is unmatchable.

It's interesting... I was naturally neat as a kid and then went majorly downhill in college (I blame my freshman roommate, who was an absolute delight and is still a friend but was a total slob and brought me down with her), and as an adult I kept slobby habits for a long time and over the last few years have been very slowly climbing my way out of that hole, one habit at a time. By now our house is actually generally neat most of the time. We keep on top of the dishwasher. We vacuum regularly. We put laundry away as soon as it comes out of the dryer. And our closets are not stuffed full of crap. The ticket to this has been to set up organizational systems and stick to them. But, there are still a lot of places where we don't have a good enough system in place, or have slipped out of the habit of using it. Our pantry was beautifully organized and is now starting to slip. Same with our toy shelf, Torsten's workbench, and our upstairs hall and linen closets. Those are where I want to start. But I also want to get rid of a lot of stuff that has a place, but is never used and doesn't actually need to be here. That's the next step. Because I've learned that my overall stress level is much lower when things are neat and not cluttered, and Torsten feels the same. And we are getting there, one step at a time.

In the meantime, bye-bye stuff:

Quiet house

Er, so, I make a little blogging comeback and then I have a few house guests and totally disappear and, well, whoops. I've been trying to blog once a week, minimum, and last week was the first week I was in town and didn't blog. Alas. Back on the wagon!

My French host family left last night, and things are feeling oddly quiet around here now. They were DELIGHTFUL guests... in addition to just being fun and lovely, they are also incredibly helpful. During the two weeks they were here, they:

• Weeded our swing set mulch and tree beds
• Cleaned our patio
• Washed and folded tons of laundry
• Climbed very high on a ladder to remove a lot of dead branches from our ailing willow and then cut them into firewood
• Cleaned our gutters
• Fixed our broken refrigerator water dispenser
• Figured out how to remove and replace our dishwasher filter that we've been trying to fix for years
• Helped us empty Torsten's office and haul furniture so that it could be painted for when it becomes Annika's new room shortly
• Kept the house sparkling clean
• Cooked many delicious meals

I swear, I don't expect or request this type of thing from my guests... but they are the types who like to keep busy and are super handy around the house, and they saw things that needed doing and just... DID them. It's a rare guest who leaves your house in better shape than they found it, and man, it was just what we needed after what's been a slightly crazy summer.

In addition to putting them to work, we also went out and about with them quite a bit, including a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park that I'll post about separately, a visit to Pikes Peak, some day trips around Denver, a Rockies game (my host brother plays baseball so they were our first foreign guests who actually understand baseball and enjoyed the game), multiple delicious restaurants, and lots of shopping. 

It was delightful, truly, and I miss them already. Who would have thought that 14 years later, we'd still be so close? Soon they'll have known me for half my life. Lucky, lucky.

Big girl room

Recently Torsten has been suggesting that we think about moving Annika out of her crib sooner than later. Since she is very good at independent play, he is thinking that if she can get out of bed by herself in the mornings and is in a childproofed room, she might be happy and play on her own for awhile before disturbing us, which would be lovely on the weekends (and this did happen with Callum so it's not totally unreasonable). However, she's only 19 months old--we moved Callum a couple months after he turned two--and up til now she's been perfectly happy in her crib, so I wasn't in any kind of rush to make the switch.

However, that timeline may have just gotten expedited, because in the last couple days, she's started doing this:

Now, lifting her leg onto the crib rail isn't the same as actual climbing out, which requires significant additional strength and flexibility, BUT I recall distinctly that with Callum it was none too long between when he started doing that with his foot and when we first heard the telltale thud of him landing (on his feet, thankfully) on the floor next to his crib one morning. And Annika is much more nimble and willing to take risks than Callum ever was. We could probably troubleshoot our way around this--Jonna suggested, in a genius manner telling of her own personal experience with this issue, turning our crib around so the high side faces out and putting it in a corner so there's only one short side, and attaching very stiff cardboard to said short side--and if she starts climbing out before we have another bed available for her, we may do that--but I think she has a personality that could handle a big girl bed, so I don't see a reason not to do that instead of trying to thwart her will and keep her in her crib for longer.

So! Unexpectedly, I am thinking about her big girl room. Our plan is, and has been for awhile, to move her into the room that is currently Torsten's office and make that her permanent bedroom. It's bigger than the nursery and offers a lot more options for furniture configuration. That also allows me to start with a clean slate when it comes to decor. Nobody will be surprised to hear that purple will figure heavily--but actually, I am not thinking that we will paint the walls purple. I browsed through a TON of photos of purple rooms online and out of all of them, there were only a couple that hit the sweet spot of a lovely muted pale purple that wasn't overwhelming or excessively childish, and frankly, I don't trust our ability to select a paint color that will give that same feeling. Plus if the walls were purple that would limit my ability to go with purple accessories without creating a bordello feel.

So! I'm thinking light gray walls and then lots of purple accessories--curtains/blinds (conveniently, since we haven't ordered our blinds yet, we can switch one of them from the planned gray to a nice purple), artwork, bedding, rug, even some furniture. Basically a similar concept to Callum's room except a lighter gray on the walls and both light and dark purples instead of blue and orange. I have not been able to find an inspiration photo online that exactly sums up what I'm picturing (though I've started a Pinterest board of photos that have useful elements), but this one comes the closest (as far as color scheme only as it is not at ALL the style I'm envisioning for the room--but it nicely shows off the light gray walls complemented by purple accessories):

One big question we are mulling over is whether to get a bunk bed or not. Annika and Callum have their own rooms and we like it that way and plan to keep it so, but it would be nice if they could share a room if they wanted, or if we needed them to if we had lots of guests (which has happened a couple times), and also it would be convenient for sleepovers when they're older. However, Annika has shown herself to be something of a climber, at least compared to Callum (she's not like Liz's Reagan, though, let's be clear). So, the bunk bed would certainly need to be babyproof, or at least not have a ladder for her to climb up. Right now I'm leaning toward getting a cheap-ish IKEA bed (like this one, the same that Callum has) for now and then switching out to a bunk bed in a few years when she is more rational and less of a menace to herself, or at least getting a bunk bed where you can remove the ladder or potentially hold off on installing the top bunk for awhile. I was looking at the bunk bed that it seems half the internet has, but a) it's out of stock in white and it has to be white to match the furniture we already have, and b) I want the bottom to be a full and I'm dubious about the extension kit this one has to make that happen.

Anyway, we aren't fully decided on this, so please weigh in! Do you have bunk beds for your kids? At what age did you get them? Are there any babyproofing tricks and tips for them? Do you think they're a terrible idea? I want to hear all opinions on this matter, please and thank you.

Be-windowed

Windows! We have them! Well, most of them. It was all very sudden - they called three weeks before the originally scheduled install to say they had a cancellation and did we want our windows installed sooner? And by sooner, tomorrow? We were like UM YES PLEASE and then had to scramble around to get everything ready - payment ready, all furniture and stuff away from the windows, etc.

We replaced every window in our house--I think it added up to 21 altogether? It was a lot. But they brought in a big crew and they got through the whole job in two days. Most of the job. Well, kind of.

First of all, a couple of the windows didn't fit. They were like three inches too big, which according to the installer who did the job (who wasn't the same as the installer who did the measuring, due to the last minute switch in dates) means that when the guy was measuring, he just forgot to subtract the width of the frame on a couple of them? Our installer told us that this is a very rare mistake, and even more so that it's multiple windows in one house -- and it does seem like a very weird mistake--it's not like he did the math wrong, he just didn't do it at all, and this guy is a serious veteran, and ALSO (this is the worst part that I can't think about without cringing), apparently the guy who messed up the measurement is on the hook for the cost of the wrong-sized windows. Which will be a couple thousand dollars, as it was multiple windows and some of them were very large. So. That's deeply unfortunate and I feel terrible about it. I mean, I know it was legitimately a mistake, but I would not care for a job where if I blinked and forgot to subtract three inches, I could end up on the hook for thousands of dollars.

ANYWAY, so, the problem is that of course they didn't realize that the new windows didn't fit in the house until they had already pulled the old windows out, SO, all they could do was nail the old windows back IN again and put some insulating foam around them so it wouldn't be too awful, so... I guess functionally they're not that different from what was there before? Except that there's a ton of exposed splintery wood with nails sticking out of it, and no window frames, and also no more curtain rods which means we have no way of hanging our curtains back up, which is particularly unfortunate in the dining room because it faces east and it gets super bright in the mornings and also the windows are 50 years old and have zero UV filtering which means that it also gets really hot in there AND I'm concerned about our nice dining room chairs fading in the sun now that there are no curtains, because they still don't even have a shipment date for the replacement windows, and it will probably be about a month before they're actually installed. We know the fading is a risk because it happened to our couch, which sits in front of a window:

The couch used to be the brown color that it still is at the bottom all over. Of course that took six years to happen and nothing so drastic could happen in a shorter time period, but our dining room chairs are possibly the nicest furniture we own and a few weeks in direct sunlight with no window coverings can't do anything GOOD, you know? Also this is what our dining room windows currently look like, and this is AFTER Torsten went in with a hammer and pried out as many of the nails sticking out as he could:

The other problem with this delay on these two windows is that we've been told that you can't order blinds until the windows are installed, because you have to be able to measure to the exact 1/8 of an inch, which is fine, except now we're a month out from having the last two windows, and the savings on blinds comes from ordering and installing them all in a batch, so right now we're in a holding pattern on ordering the blinds, and those also take at least two weeks to come in, which means we're looking at multiple weeks of no blinds on any of our windows. The new windows at least have UV filtering so we don't have to worry about sun damage or heat, but it's still, you know, bright and also not private. So, not ideal.

Also, I did not realize, though perhaps I should have, how damaging it is to install windows, or really to remove the old ones. They pulled everything out, windows, frames, trim, all of it, by pounding really hard with crowbars, and the effects on our drywall were not pretty. The force caused some nails to pop out of studs and break through the drywall and paint. The pulling off of the frames took large chunks of paint with it. Rogue hammers caused chips here and there, including in the crown molding in our living room. Some poorly handled ladders messed up the paint on our siding and bent one of our roof gutters. Etc. etc. Here's a sample that pretty accurately reflects what the walls around all our windows currently look like:

But! For all that, I actually don't really mean to complain, because the company is legit and they are going to send someone to do the repairs of the drywall and the siding and the gutter, and while I struggle to see HOW they will repair some of the drywall issues, I guess that isn't really my problem, and in the meantime, we have all these new windows, and lo, they are glorious. Truly, they are. They open! That's the biggest thing -- half our old windows were missing screens and the other half were painted shut and we as a result could open almost none of them and it would get so stuffy sometimes. Colorado has a GREAT climate for open windows and it is so delightful that now we can take advantage. Also, it's not nearly so hot in rooms where the sun is shining in, and we hear a lot less traffic noise, and also I'm very excited to see our next energy bill. Also some of the windows are big sliding windows instead of two regular windows side-by-side, which makes them seem much bigger, which is delightful, especially in the kitchen. It really just feels lovely to have nice new windows throughout the house.

So! Overall win! We are generally thrilled with the windows. But also a learning experience: when they tell you an install time, they mean how long it will take to get the windows themselves replaced, but it does NOT include the time to get the house looking as good as it did before as far as fixing collateral damage -- we still don't have a timeframe on when that will be done.

But at least we have lovely windows to tide us over in the meantime. As long as we don't look in the dining room.

House stuff

OK, please forgive me for being boring and domestic, but in keeping with my whole blogging for documentation deal, all the stuff we've been doing with the house recently has taken up a surprising amount of head space, so here we are.

First, we finally replaced the shed in our backyard. We had this TuffShed playhouse thing that was in the yard when we bought the house six years ago, and while it was cute enough, it wasn't practical--too small and low for real storage, plus not weather-proof because it had open windows and doors. Because it was TuffShed brand, we could probably have sold it for a few hundred dollars, except that there was no easy way to get it out of our yard because it wouldn't fit through the gate. Finally I listed it on Craigslist for free with the caveat that whoever took it would be in charge of cutting it apart and removing it from the property on their own. I had SO MUCH INTEREST that I had to take the ad down after just an hour, at which point I had already received texts, emails, and calls from at least 30 people. I gave it to the first person who asked, which turned out to be two ladies who run a farm in rural Colorado, and it took them FOURTEEN HOURS to take it apart in a way that would allow them to reassemble it again later, but they DID get it done, and they took every last nail away with them, and lo, it was glorious.

With that shed gone, we took the opportunity to replace it with a proper shed that we could actually store stuff in. We found one the right size and structure for what we needed on special offer at Costco, and then the heavens opened and our beloved handyman/contractor, who had moved out of state with no plans to return, actually DID move back and assembled the new shed for us. It's bigger, it's taller, it has room for our lawnmower and our snow tires and our excess patio furniture and our bikes and and and. And it also looks good! See?

Then, because we were finally able to get stuff we've been storing on our side patio off the patio, we were able to get our patio arranged in a really functional, lovely way. I already had a nice patio chaise lounge, and we finally got a matching setup (though he got the chair and ottoman instead of the chaise lounge) for Torsten. We moved things around on the patio so there's a dining area, play areas (with sandbox and water table), and a lounge area. As a final touch, we got a patio heater at Costco, so our patio is usable on cool spring evenings. It has been surprisingly major life change... so much more use out of our backyard! It helps that both kids LOVE the yard (Annika yells "ow-side! ow-side!" the second anyone goes anywhere near the back door) - we basically spend our whole weekends outside, straight through til bedtime, and everyone is happy and tired by the end of the day. It's not magazine-ready, but it is SO FUNCTIONAL:

Lastly, thanks to Torsten's parents' incredible generosity, we are replacing the windows in our house. All of them! Our current windows are the originals from when the house was built 50 years ago. They are plain glass, they have no UV filtering (as a result, the back of our couch, which faces a picture window, is completely sun-faded), they are not at ALL energy-efficient, the wind comes right through them, many of them are missing screens, AND the vast majority of them won't open. But in a month! They will be gone! And we'll have new, modern windows! Our furniture won't fade! We won't be freezing at night because our bed is in next to a window! Also, since we live near the highway, we will not hear traffic noise (we don't hear MUCH now, but we hear things like sirens and 3 a.m. drag-racing, and supposedly with the new windows all we'll hear is blessed silence).

This leads to the question of blinds... which turn out to be staggeringly expensive, at least the fancy ones our window company recommended. This is our major topic for next month (because we can't order until the window are installed so that we can get accurate measurements): BLINDS RESEARCH. Brands! Types! What features are worth paying for and what's a waste of money? How can we get good blinds that do not cost nearly as much as the windows themselves? These are the basic questions of homeownership, yes?

Callum's New Room

Callum's bedroom has been a serious work in progress for a long time. I had planned to wait until further along in my pregnancy with Annika before moving him out of the nursery, but in March, when I was maybe eight weeks pregnant, he climbed out of his crib. So we got the room painted in a rush, bought a mattress, and moved him in. At the time it was just the bare gray walls, the mattress on the floor, a rug, and the dresser we already had.

Slowly over the summer we've added to it--furniture (I waited for those orange and blue bookcases to come back into stock from Ikea for literally six months, and they FINALLY did truly the day before we were going to attempt to DIY the same thing with white bookcases and spray paint), artwork, and curtains. The curtains took the longest--I special ordered them on Etsy with the airplane fabric that I'd found elsewhere, and there were some snafus with the fabric ordering, but the seller got it done and they finally arrived just this week, which is why I've finally taken photos.

The goal for the room was something that suits Callum now, but that he can grow with. So I tried to keep the staple pieces of the room fairly neutral to his current age and interests (with the exception of the curtains, but even though they have airplanes on them, I think/hope they're a pattern that he will like for years), and use decor, bedding, and accents to add things that he's into now. I started by finding a couple photos on design blogs that served as the inspiration for the color scheme (this one and another that appears to now be offline), and then just searched for things that fit over time.

All the furniture is from Ikea except the dresser, which is from Land of Nod, as is the rug. The orange and blue pouf in the corner is from Target. Pretty much all the art is from Etsy, as is the mobile. The orange globe lamp is from Ikea and the orange and white lamp is from Home Goods. The lamb on the dresser belong to my uncle Michael, from whom Callum gets his middle name. The photo over the dresser is from when I was pregnant with Callum (my belly is there behind the dog, though it's hard to see in the photo). And of course the piglet print over the dresser moved from the nursery. The bedding changes--we have the same duvet cover with orange stripes too, so sometimes the room looks more orange than it does in these photos.

Anyway! Enough with the background, here's the room. I'm THRILLED with how it turned out, and luckily Callum seems very happy with it too.

 

   

   

 

Springtime in the yard

First of all, I have to say, I don't know if it's because I've been living in some sort of new baby parallel universe, but while everyone else has been lamenting the weather, I've actually been feeling like this winter was... not so bad. I mean, yes, there have definitely been cold days and we did have one miserable snap when Callum was a week old (and of course exactly when my parents were here visiting) where the temperature was below zero and it was gray and snowy for days on end.

But overall it's been mild, I think. I'm pretty sure our average annual snowfall is around 60 inches, and I don't think we've gotten anywhere near that this year. We've had lots of sunny warm days, even shortly after Callum was born in January, where we were able to take him out in the stroller for walks. I've had a standing date with a woman from my childbirth class to go for a walk in the park once a week for over a month now, and we've had lovely weather for every single walk. We've even gotten some rain, which is a rare treasure here in semi-arid Colorado.

Anyway, with things feeling springlike for awhile now, we've taken the opportunity to do some work in our yard. Like homeowners. Adults. Isn't that weird?

It started with a few things: a gift, a Groupon, a gift card, and a windstorm. And now we are thinking of all sorts of things we'd like to do, and assessing which of those things could be feasible on our budget.

First, a very dear friend gave Callum a redbud tree as a baby gift. Actually, since she lives far away, she gave him a gift certificate to a fabulous local nursery with a request that we use it to purchase a redbud tree, which of course we did. It's now planted in the yard. It's still teeny, and just starting to bloom. Once all the blossoms open, we'll take a picture of Callum next to it, and turn that into an annual tradition so that we can watch him and the tree grow together. The same friend gave the same gift to my sister's baby, so Callum and Morgan can have matching redbud photos throughout their childhood.

Here's the tree currently:



Of course, while we were at the nursery we discovered all sorts of wondrous other plants and yard things that we'd love to have. So we had some discussion and decided that since someday when budget and time allow, we'd like to relandscape our yard completely, rather than planting a whole bunch of stuff in the meantime we would do one barrel of flowers on our front porch. So we did:


Then along came a Groupon for another local nursery. And once the redbud tree was planted, we thought wow, we should really put a couple more trees on the lawn so it doesn't look so bare. But not giant ones, because we don't want it to be overwhelmed. So maybe shrubs would work well. And the nursery just so happened to have lovely small lilac trees and snowball bushes for almost exactly the price of the Groupon:



Conveniently, some lights Torsten's parents bought us at Lowe's last year turned out not to be what we were looking for, so we returned them for a merchandise credit and used that gift card to buy some mulch and tree edging, as well as some fertilizer and grass seed so that we can reseed our yard, which as you can see is very much in need of it. We also finally got around to calling an irrigation company to check out the built-in sprinkler system in our yard, and learned that it seems to be nearly functional and should (knock on wood) be fully functional, or close to it, with just some minor repairs, which will hopefully be happening tomorrow.

We also pruned down our rosebushes and put new mulch in the front flower bed where the tulips grow (still waiting on them to bloom, but when they do, they'll be red and yellow):



And in the backyard, we had an awesome wildflower garden last year. Some of them are perennials but others are not, so we put down some fresh seed on top just to make sure it'll grow back nicely. Most of it still has a ways to go, but some lovely purplish blue flowers have already bloomed:


Oh, and the windstorm. Well, that sucked. We had a fence that looked like this (and still have this fence on one side of our yard):


But then it was super windy one night and when we woke up a giant panel from the fence on the other side of the yard had blown over and was lying in the grass. The whole fence was rickety and nearly 50 years old to begin with, so we knew it really just had to be replaced. Luckily our neighbor agreed, and there was no fighting or anything about who had to pay. We split the cost 50-50 for the side fence, and Torsten and I of course paid the full cost for the front part of the fence with the new gate, since that is on our property only, and just a few days later our fence looked like this:


Of course there are still a lot of other projects. Most of them we're holding off on because wow, this stuff is so expensive and time-consuming. But, Denver does an annual mulch giveaway for residents, all created from the Christmas tree pickup, and it's this weekend, so we're borrowing a neighbor's pickup truck and going to get as much mulch as we can carry, so we can mulch the treebeds by the driveway (and also maybe prune the bushes?)...


...and the treebeds where the aspens grow in the backyard:


Of course, there's one staple that we absolutely love and have no intention of changing, ever, and that's our willow tree:


Isn't it lovely?

What are you guys doing in your yards this spring? Or what would you like to be doing, if time and money were no object?

Nursery photos! FINALLY.

The nursery is done! Literally, truly, wholly done. The last thing we were waiting for was a print of one of our maternity photos to frame, and now that has arrived and we've hung it. And every little detail is in place.

And that means that, at last, I can show you photos of our work. You guys, this is the first room that I have ever DECORATED, like with a VISION and a PLAN. There's no theme, per se, other than "turquoise walls and yellow accents," but I am SO HAPPY with how it came together. Torsten and I both love this room. So does Montana, for that matter. And we can only hope that Piglet will as well.

Let's all just refresh our memories as to how the room looked when we got started:


And here it is now, from the very same doorway:


And another angle:


Prints from one of my favorite Etsy sellers:


Decals over the crib:


And the bookshelf (that stuffed lamb on the top shelf belonged to my uncle Michael, after whom Piglet will get his middle name):


Now all we need is a baby, and then the room will REALLY be complete.

Dogs and sheds. Or playhouses.

Man. Having a job is a real pain in the ass sometimes. Like when they expect you to do all this WORK in exchange for that paycheck they keep giving you. I mean, not that I don't work regularly, but some weeks the workload is more manageable than others. This has been one of those "other" weeks.

TGIF, is my point here. Torsten and I are thinking of driving to the mountains tomorrow, perhaps somewhere we haven't been before? We usually go to the Breckenridge area but perhaps tomorrow we'll head somewhere closer to Rocky Mountain National Park for a change of pace. The dog will come too, of course, and perhaps a not-too-strenuous hike will be in the works as well. Though I will say that when you're pregnant, most things become strenuous once you've hit 9,000 feet or so.

But the dog, the poor dog. Call it prep for when a newborn is here and we have no time or energy for her, but when work is so crazy we abandon all thoughts of taking her to the dog park and she has to settle for boring walks around the neighborhood instead. Not nearly as good for her, since she has to walk at our tedious pace instead of getting to sprint like a greyhound, as is her preference. Of course taking her to the mountains won't help with that situation, since we are the law-abiding (or giant-fine-averse) types who don't let her off-leash in prohibited areas, which is almost everywhere. But at least it will be an exciting new place with lots of interesting things to sniff, pee on, etc., right?

Anyway, she doesn't seem to mind too much. She creates her own entertainment, really:

Perhaps today I will join her out there instead of working.
Doesn't it look peaceful?

That shed, also. Have I mentioned that shed? I call it a shed but really it's more of a playhouse, though it's made by TuffSheds and therefore I think was probably reasonably expensive. You can see the porch and the doors and one of the windows. It has more windows, too, and carpet on the inside. It's not really suitable for storing things, but why on earth would anyone buy a playhouse made by TuffShed? No?

Anyway, the shed/playhouse/whatever was here when we moved in, and neither of us likes it much. We don't use it for anything, and it's kind of big and ugly, and it takes up a chunk of the yard for no real reason. When we moved in we thought it would be nice to take that out of our yard so we could have more, you know, green space.

Then we looked at it closer. And saw that it has a steel frame. A proper shingled roof. And a concrete foundation. That thing is SOLID, is the point. If a tornado came by it might actually fare better than our actual house. (Let's hope we don't ever find out if that is true, shall we?) I seriously have no idea how in the hell we could possibly get it out of our yard. Unless we hired a professional with a crane to dispose of it. And even then, the foundation would probably still be in the yard. And our bank account would be even emptier than it already is. In other words, there's a reason that thing is still there. And I suspect it will be there for quite a few years to come.

(Also, now that Torsten's parents helped us pull out the stupid mini dog run fence that used to divide our yard into chunks, the shed/playhouse/structure/WHATEVER doesn't look quite as giant and dominating as it did before. So we both hate it a little less than we used to.)

In any case, I imagine Piglet will like it. His very own playhouse! What's not to like? And in the meantime, at least the dog is getting good use out of it.

Nursery!

No, I don't have completed nursery photos to show you. Because the nursery isn't complete yet. In fact, all it is at the moment is painted walls, a rug, and a closet full of baby stuff that has yet to be organized in any way.

I mentioned that this is making me antsy, the bags and boxes of baby clothes and toys (almost entirely gifts and hand-me-downs... dear Internet, and soon-to-be-grandparents, thank you for providing for my child), so this weekend we finally did something about it. We decided upon and ordered the rest of the nursery furniture. And now it is all on its way to our house. Where we will have to recruit a neighbor to help Torsten haul it up the stairs, and then we will attempt to assemble it all (actually, only the bookshelf and the crib require assembly) without killing each other. It will be a good test of our marriage, yes?

Anyway, as a refresher, here is the room as it stands now (though the rug now lies flat, and so the books have been removed):


And here is the photo that inspired the planned color scheme (from here):


We have now ordered four pieces of furniture. Once they arrive and are assembled, the only major things the room will be missing are the crib mattress and blinds for the windows. Plus the little things, like a changing pad, crib skirt, laundry hamper, table lamp, and so on. We've also made pretty good progress on wall art--but once the furniture is assembled we will work on placement and figure out what is still needed.

Anyway! We purchased this crib when it went on sale. It is currently languishing in our garage, waiting to be carried upstairs and assembled.


Then, when my parents were here a few weeks ago, my mom and I went and bought this glider and ottoman set, a baby gift from my parents. It is my concession to practicality--it is not the most attractive chair I've ever seen, but it IS the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. And I expect to be sitting in it a lot, including late at night, so that seemed like a worthwhile tradeoff. We ordered it with a white frame and yellow upholstery, but NOT the upholstery shown in this photo (the fabric we ordered is less... shiny. And hopefully therefore also less ugly).


Then this weekend, we decided upon and ordered this dresser. (We decided to use my parents' early Christmas gift offer on a higher-quality dresser, since, as many of you pointed out, it will get lots of use, what with drawers that are opened and closed on a regular basis, unlike a bookshelf, which pretty much just sits there.)


And then there was the last piece: the bookshelf. I had been coveting this one (there are two in that photo, but we only would have ordered one), but we just do not have the budget for a $400 bookshelf right now. So we discussed it and agreed that a lower-quality, not-solid-wood bookshelf is just fine. As long as it is sturdy enough that it won't collapse into a pile of kindling as soon as we put a book on it, it's fine, at least for the next few years. (And we will be sure to fasten it--and all the furniture--to the wall so that it can't hurt Piglet, too.) So I was browsing Target, thinking I'd never find anything as perfect as the expensive shelf... and then look what I found! A nearly-identical replica of the expensive shelf, for less than half the cost (AND I had a promo code for an additional discount).


Now I just have to antsily wait for everything to arrive so we can put it together... and then organize all our baby stuff! And then wait for, you know, the baby, so that we can actually USE this room we are spending so much time putting together.

Also, while we're showing photos, here's a bonus one of me. 26 weeks today!