Project Closet: Complete

As you may know, I am addicted to Pinterest.  Since joining, I've realized that Stretchy's room needed a little bit more.  The paint on the walls is perfect- just how I pictured it.  The animal mural makes me smile every time I see it.  BUT, as we accumulate baby things I've realized that her room needs storage.  With a couch, a bathroom door and two closets, there wasn't any wall space for shelves that she'll be able to access for toys and books.

Intro: Project Closet.

I've pinned many a kid's closet to my Pinterest boards and finally used that inspiration to create a closet perfect for my soon-to-be-toddler's jungle bedroom.

Here is a picture of one of the closets (this one we actually use to store all our junk):

Nothing fancy.  Picture one closet rod, two upper shelves.  Same thing in the closet on the right (of course, not pictured...)


Now, here is a picture of the new and improved closet.  Might I add that I thought this would be an easy project to do a little bit at a time while Stretchy napped during the day.  Turns out, it was an entire two day project.  BUT, well worth it!

I used ClosetMaid organizers, added fun colored luan, a few built in shelves, and stacked closet rods.

In a year or so, all toys, books, games, play clothes and shoes will be easily accessible to a crawling (and walking?) toddler!

My Baby is All Grown Up

As any nursing mom can tell you, feeding a baby makes you SO THIRSTY.  All. the. time.  More often than not I'm balancing a baby on one arm while waiting impatiently at the fridge for the water dispenser to fill my giant plastic cup.  I must also either dance, sway or bounce during this time or said baby gets even more impatient than thirsty mom.

Lately, as I've been drinking water during all our play-time activities, Stretchy has become very interested in what's going on in that cup.  She stares, oogles, talks to and reaches for it almost every time I pick it up to take a sip.

A couple days ago, on my way to the fridge, with just a drop left, she grabbed the cup with both hands and brought it to her mouth.  Does she do this with all her toys?  Yes.  Is a cup a pretty rattling toy?  No.  So I thought, "Hey, maybe she's really thirsty too."

I was right on:

Pretty soon she'll be sitting at the table with a full set of silverware...

Super Bowl Snacks and Baby-Love

1. I have a hangover.  Not a drinking hangover (though after Stretchy went to bed, I did have a beer or two), but a food hangover.  We didn't go out to a Superbowl party or have people over or anything.  It was just me and Bob and a whole bunch of terrible for you, fried, frozen appetizers.  SO YUMMY.  Food-love.  However, this morning I feel like a piece of ****.  Fun.

2.  Baby-Love.  Last night was not a good sleeping night.  Stretchy was up 3 times instead of her usual one or two.  I was tired (and beginning my food hangover).  This morning at 6am I did not want to wake up.  BUT, Stretchy was SO CUTE this morning, that she totally made up for it.  I got a gillion smiles and even a bunch of giggles.  And now she is napping.  Happy Mom (if only I wasn't food-hungover, it would be a fantastic start to a day).

My Baby, The Genius

Just saying, Stretchy is awesome and can totally read books now :)

Time. I've Lost Mine, Can I Borrow Some of Yours?

Let's start by saying that before I had a babbling, rolling, giggling, smiling, energetic baby on my hands I actually wondered in those last months of pregnancy, what I was going to do with myself during the day once she arrived.  SERIOUSLY??

Let me continue by saying that the few posts I've managed to write in the past few days have occurred for the following reasons.  1. My parents were here and successfully managed to entertain the baby for a while.  2. I have decided that despite my New Year's resolution to be more organized, which resulted in a cleaning schedule, that cleaning is not the best use of my time. 3. Stretchy is taking a nap.

Since she was born, I have gone from having all the time in the world.  Time which I used to fill with mindless activities like browsing the internet, playing mindless solitaire games on the computer, drawing random doodles, trying new recipes, shopping at stores by walking down every single aisle, and even, on occasion, napping.

For some reason, now that I have zero time, I continually think of things that I never did WHEN I HAD TIME, but that seem imperative now that I don't.  Like making a home organization binder, redoing my teaching portfolio, making a book of our photos from our year in Dresden, sleeping...

In fact, now it seems that I have actually managed to have negative time.  Negative time occurs when you not only have zero time to get anything done, but when it seems that the time you might have to get things done is so minimal that it doesn't exist.  It causes all "things that need to get done" to pile up so that you become so overwhelmed that even when you have time, you cannot utilize it because you are so befuddled by those "things" that you don't know where to start and are fairly certain that even if you did start, you wouldn't be able to finish and would probably just add to the list rather than be able to cross things off.

Stretchy naps about 3 times a day.  Awesome?  Sure, it would be.  If she ever slept for more than 20 minutes.  20 minutes allows for the completion of the following household tasks:  emptying 1/2 the dishwasher, washing 6.8 dishes, putting in 1.2 loads of laundry, folding 20 items, putting away a laundry basket full of items, except those 4 things, making a bed, taking a shower and getting dressed, writing 4/5 of a blog post, or most often, checking e-mail (resulting in the use of the remaining 19.5 minutes mindlessly surfing the internet).

So, how about it.  I've lost all my time.  Can I borrow some?

Cake Wars: Me vs. Me... In my kitchen!

I love Food Network Challenge where they have to make crazy cakes.  Every time I watch it I'm convinced I should probably be on it.  Mostly because I have close to zero cake decorating experience and have made all of two (now three) decorative cakes in my baking career.  Yet I still feel, that despite never having even seen a piece of fondant, that I could be a strong competitor.

While in Dresden, I made two fancy-schmancy cakes.  One was an alligator for our friend Casey's birthday, and another was "commissioned" after the cake was displayed at a party, for another friend's daughter's birthday.

Click here to see the first cake, an awesome alligator.  Here to see the second cake- a frog prince.

After the first cake a year ago, I was asked to create a dragon cake for a friend's birthday.  He's Welsh, and the Welsh flag looks like this:

Unfortunately, when I agreed upon making the cake, I didn't even know I'd have a baby yet!  Needless to say, making fancy-schmancy cakes is a time-consuming process.  With a small baby, I would have needed approximately 1 year, 4 weeks and 3 days to complete a dragon cake.  So, I had to call in the reinforcements.  Thanks Mom!!

Due to my incredible cake-decorating expertise, I only had to redo the entire carved part of the cake once, and the wings twice, but other than that, things went smoothly (though as always, took about 14 times longer than originally anticipated).

Here is the fancy-schmancy dragon cake.

I also made cutsy-wootsy dragon cake pops.

See, told you I should be on Food Network!  Also judging by the quality of photo #1, I should not enter photo contests... Though I am starting to work on the quality of photos (see photo #2)  but can only manage to bang out one good photo a session...

In Other News...

Stretchy is the cutest ever and is getting cuter by the minute.