Mother's Day done got DIYd

Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas out there! Our day has been mostly wonderful. It all started with a surprise from my chickens. I awoke to little vignettes of kidly love. Here's an example:



What you're seeing is a hanger, an abused sequined sash, and a toilet paper roll (saved from the recycle bin) with the word "Happy" written on it. It is attached to the hanger with a ponytail holder. Hello, fabulous! My kids DIYd the hell out of that party streamer!!

Then we had coffee milk all piled up together on the porch swing.

WAIT, THE WHAT?!?!

Thaaaaaattttt's right--BG and I turned our attention from the ballroom to a little quick-and-dirty porch DIY over the last few weekends in an attempt to mark off Item 4 from my new year's to-do list. The weather has been warm but wonderful, flowers are in bloom, and mama got the itch to create container gardens.

Last Saturday, my little guy and I hit the local nursery for an assortment of greenery and flowers. He picked out the baby Candidum, saying, "These are handsome! Just like me!" I don't know how anyone could resist that. We also got sweet potato vine, salvia (I will have to be on the look out for Miley Cyrus!), asparagus fern, blue bubble plants, wee Vinca, Bee Balm, hen and chicks, and lavender.




Young W and I potted the goodness in these planters from Crate and Barrel. My vision was to mix low, medium, and high with bright colors and a green background. I think they turned out OK!



^Do you see that bit of color peeking in on the left? That is our new Oriental Weavers Sphinx Caspian olefin rug from Wayfair. I limited my search to cheap and cheaper and am thrilled with the colors and quality!

For seating, BG installed the real piece de resistance (both of this blog post and our portico), the International Caravan Iron Patio Sun Ray Porch Swing, also from Wayfair. I told him all I wanted for Mother's Day was to enjoy my new swing. He over-achieved and got to it last night. Two eight-inch hook thingies from the local improvement store hold the swing in place. He drilled a guide hole and then screwed them in. When the going got tough, he used a screwdriver as a crank to do a lot of the work for him:



I thought that was pretty schmart. BG and all his brains are pictured above.

Our little dude is just as in love with the swing as I am. We celebrated all BG's handiwork with several minutes of chillaxing in the breeze.



The kids couldn't wait to get out there for breakfast. There will be many mornings of porch swing coffee milk in our future. And on that note--it's sangria o'clock, and I know just the place to end the day.

**Thanks for the photography, BG! I appreciate that you don't hate taking pics like I do, can rock your work camera like a pro, and don't bi%ch too much when I ask you to upload pics for my bloggy use!

Spring chicken

Lil C turned 2 on April 23, and we hosted a birthday brunch. Why brunch? When I asked what she wanted for her birthday, she replied gleefully, "Tan-takes!!!" Pancakes are her favorite.

This party post isn't about a proper project, but it was a lot of fun and was a little crafty, so I thought I'd share.

Since brunch is a mid-morning event around here, I went with a roosters/chicks theme. I commissioned a rooster applique t-shirt, which C wore as a pajama top. My buddy Kristin at etsy's V. Lou Textiles does the most gorgeous applique and silk screening work. I highly encourage you to stop by her shop. Here is the finished product. Could you die from cuteness?

Since we have four little chickens of our own and I never want our friends to feel obligated to buy FOUR gifts per year (ugh!), we invite families based on kid ages after the first big bday, where everyone is invited. We had four non-family kiddos at this party and then cousins and nieces/nephew plus the bday girl's siblings for a total of 13 children. I needed a craft that even itty bitties could feel good about with limited input from their moms whose busy hands were filled with mimosas. And, friends, isn't that what brunch is really about? I landed on the idea of fabric markers and placemats. I traced roosters for the kids and let them do the rest of the work. It was a hit!



I set up a pancake buffet, having made a huge batch of pancakes the night before, using this recipe but subbing vanilla almond milk for dairy because of C's allergy. I simply reheated the pancakes in the micro in a couple of batches then set them in a chafing dish to stay warm. The fixins were two types of syrup; fruit including strawberries, blueberries, and bananas with brown sugar and cinnamon; sweetened shredded coconut (I was surprised at what a hit this was!); miniature chocolate morsels; powdered sugar; and of course whipped cream. Lil C blew out two candles stuck in the pancake stack of her dreams.

To supplement the pancakes, we had a potato-cheese-bacon dish, biscuits, juices, coffee, and something else I'm forgetting now. D'oh!

After all the noms, the kids played an upside-down-bobbing-for-donuts game <--at this point, I should just commit to writing this entire blog post in hyphenate. Jeez-a-loo.

Here's a pic of the near-victor. In a last minute upset, my first-cousin-once-removed, the sweet guy to the left, just out of view of the pic, won.  He was gracious and shared his prize--sugared gummy bears--with all the participants.



The party was short and syrupy sweet, and the birthday girl had a super happy day. So far 2 is looking really good on her.

High Cotton

I'm working on a blog post about Lil C's 2nd birthday, which was April 23. I'm feeling old and slow these days, so it will take me a bit longer still.

For now I'll show you another snippet of our foyer, which continues to be a work in progress.

I got this super cheesy ornamental urn from the Family Dollar and wanted to put something nature-y in it. I considered willow and bamboo, which are fine if a little over-done these days. You know--big vases with tall sticks. You've seen them everywhere.

This weekend I procured (maybe "stole" would be the word my second grader would use) some cotton, which is an agricultural and cultural touchstone for our family. I'm pleased with the outcome. The pic is crappy, naturally. I am basically camera-less unless we borrow BG's work camera, so this is courtesy of my phone. Terrible blogger etiquette. Guilty.



The urn sits below a beautiful Scrabble-inspired shadow box with our family names. It was a thoughtful and crafty gift from a bloggy bff (visit her here).

It all comes together in my version of our family tree.  I hope our little chickens can fight the temptation of pecking those lovely poofs of cotton off the stalks! If they can't, we can always "find" more ;)

Seasons change

Our weekends have been taken over by the outdoors--in manifestations of soccer and yard work.

As soon as spring hit (which was back in winter some time, so says Mother Earth in spite of our silly calendar), our yard began to establish dominance. The poison ivy is back. Hedges were suddenly overgrown. The ground cover crawled on to the sidewalk and lay there, just daring BG to weed-eat it.

Last weekend BG and I spent about five hours outside, save for the occasional water break. Today it only took two. We found a few short cuts and have this yard team-work thing down to a science. Sure, my neighbors may wear their best judgy faces when they see me using the reverse-blow function on the blower instead of raking. Lazy or genius? Who cares if it gets me back in the A/C sooner.

Unfortunately the ballroom makeover has had to take a back seat to other projects this spring, but I'm hoping very soon I can focus my energy on it once again and establish my own form of dominance.

Quick and Dirty DIY for the Soul

All of the blogs I'm following these days are books in the making. If I had a book deal (which I so do not), I'd call it "Quick and Dirty DIY for the Soul." Sometimes you just need a little success to remember you can rock a DIY at any scale. That is what I needed today. And this table was the target.



I wish I could say that BG dumpster-dove for this beaut. But he didn't. No, no, this is just what the G-chickens do to things (i.e., they destroy them). This table is a few years old and has outlived its made-in-China-and-sold-for-$15-with-four-chairs-at-Big-Lots life expectancy. To that I say pshaw. It's time for you to be fabulous, wee crappy table.

A few weekends ago, I picked up a yard of oil cloth on super-duper clearance. I saw it. It saw me. Even I am ODing on all the damask in this house, so the zebra stripes were a welcome change. It was marked at $3.99 a yard and rang up at half that. Oh, hai, come home with me! I know just what to do with you!



All I needed was a staple gun, but I over-achieved and layered the upholstery job with a table pad (white, from Target, for about $10). This way if--or rather, WHEN--my children abuse the oil cloth, I can gank it off and still have a non-hideous table between destruction and replacement. 

The corners are not upholstery perfection. I could tack them down. Eh, I'll probably get to that the same weekend I finally paint out the trim on the shelving unit pictured behind the table.

A year ago today, no joke

Last April 1, we were moving into our new house.

We had occupancy a few weeks before closing, so our purchase date differs from our move-in date by a bit. BFF-J picked up our two big girls, E and V, from our old house, and I got choked up a little at the thought of them coming home to a different home altogether. They were like the honey badger and didn't care; they were way more captivated by BFF-J's van's DVD system. My mom took the little two for the day us. There was a shoe debacle (young W's shoes were missing in the move, so Mom had to run to a local shop--with a barefoot 2yo--to get some kicks). My aunt, uncle, and cousin-in-law helped us move with a big U-Haul and a lot of sweat. Mom joined us later with the babies and unpacked my kitchen and bathrooms and put sheets on our bed. Those are the true necessities in life, amirite?

BG and I were so wiped out from moving and cleaning, I think I fell into the bed in a puddle of tears. I cry when I'm tired. It's quite charming and never embarrassing at all  /sarcasm

Even with those tears, I have never regretted moving or buying this house for a second, and I know BG agrees. It has changed our lives in so many wonderful ways--reducing commute times (which has the pay-off of negating BG's severe road rage), getting us closer to the big girl's school (which will be V's school in August), and introducing us to a whole load of new local friends... with wine!

This past year, we accomplished the following:
--Creating a mudroom from an outdated and too-small breakfast room
--Getting an overgrown yard in shape, front, back, and side
--Cleaning up the front walk
--Organizing a metric frack-ton of stuff
--Painting a whole bunch (foyer, hall, ballroom)
--Decorating, in our unskilled and slightly pathetic way
--Making the ballroom functional
--Living and loving life with the four little Gs

There is still so much to do (like the significant ballroom update I owe you guys). It will come. There's time. As Edgar Allen Poe once said, "I have great faith in fools -- self-confidence, my friends call it."

GIVEAWAY REVEAL! The winner is...

...Elly, who commented that E put herself in a cape and HP glasses.

Indeed, E made herself a Harry Potter character in her self-portrait :)

Elly, congratulations! Your prize is on its way. You've won a very special Harry-Potter inspired bookmark from the GeekOUTlet etsy shop.

Thank you all for your guesses!