Year: 2016

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! Current mood: doing the happy dance. Thinking about our new mudroom it makes me want to go all Carlton-like from the Fresh Prince. It is that good.

Because we have had a serious problem.

That picture is not even staged. There truly was a random glove on the floor (uh, mine), a broom, and enough shoes to form a small dam. Trying to come in from outside was really annoying. No matter how many times we tried to keep the stuff on the floor to a minimum, it just crept back. And this is what you see from our entire kitchen and family room area – it’s messy and unattractive and we knew from the beginning, from the first moment this house was ours, what the solution would be.

So let me start with some geography. Our house has/had a cute little sunroom. Perhaps obvious, but:

Coming up our driveway a little further you can see the side door, which is an entrance directly into the kitchen (where the shoe pileup is). See the lovely red circle next to it? That is the window I knew would have to become a door.

So this past November, that’s what happened.

Now the sunroom had two doors: one exterior and one interior – the interior one opens into the foyer.

Readers, here comes the critical point. It was now conceivable that someone could come in the new exterior door and find themselves in a proper place to take off their boots, hang up their jacket, and then enter the house. [SHOCK] & [AWE]. The mudroom is just steps to the left from what has been our usual dumping ground.

All Jason had to do was build out this nirvana. We planned for one big L-shaped bench, some lockers, and a row of hooks where the bookshelves used to be. I was obsessed with painting it a fun color (we ended up with Shagreen by Sherwin Williams) and also doing the awesome beamed ceiling that same color (but at 50%, which I detailed in my prior post). Then we needed to pick all the other stuff: the rug, the hooks, the baskets, the fabric for the bench cushions…of course this was all after Jason was done building everything. It was a big project, as it turned out, and there were a few hiccups.

1) Everything was cream. The moldings, mullions (those little wooden bars between the window panes), baseboards, all of it. We initially thought to just keep it that color but I needed that fresh, cheery bright white. I whined a lot about it and Jason was finally like “Are you cah-RAZY? Do you know how long it will take me to paint all that??” I said DUH you are not going to do it with a brush, you are going to do it with a sprayer! (Luckily Jason gets very excited about new toys tools so I played that to my advantage.) After welcoming the Graco TrueCoat Plus II 1300-PSI Electric Handheld Airless Paint Sprayer to our family, we bought stock in painters tape and had at it. The prep work took one hundred times as long as the actual painting because we covered each pane with resin paper and taped all the sides.

He had to do a couple coats but the end result is pretty flawless. No brush lines, even color application, and the room sparkles. A very good decision, that paint sprayer. So now that everything was white…

2) There was not really any heat. Actually, the room was freezing. Who wants to put on a cold jacket and icy mittens? No no no. There is a vent in the ceiling connected to our central air system but this room is on a cement slab with original windows and it just never warmed up. At first we thought about radiant heat in the floors, but I loved the hardwoods, and we eventually realized a wall-mounted electric panel heater was probably the answer. The problem was, they were all at least 24″ wide and we had a close-but-no-cigar 21″ between the bench and the wall. We searched and searched and I finally found this little guy (which, by the way, was so elusive because it is not sold on Amazon. I didn’t think there was anything left in the world that was not sold on Amazon, but apparently, there is and this is it). So we mounted it in the corner and checked that off the list.

3) When you entered the mudroom through the new exterior door, there was no light switch. Often in winter, you come home and it’s dark out. It didn’t seem practical to have to pass through the mudroom and into the foyer to turn on the light! Because Jason is Jason, he found some sort of light remote kit where the original switch becomes the remote and then there is a wall mounted, faux-switch receiver, or something. We tacked this receiver to the mudroom wall just inside the door. Think of the Clapper (in fact, we probably could have installed one of those now that I think about it ha!). But this looks like a real switch without actually having any wiring behind it.

The old interior switch kind of looks like a button now.

There is a little delay in the light turning on when you hit both this one and the faux one, but honestly, who cares! So now we have the remote switch and the receiver that both turn on the same light, and both in convenient spots. Woo!

Without further ado…

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

Before

After

I might be guilty of overposting at this point. But I love it – the room is so sunny and cheerful, honestly the boys love to hang out in there! They race along the benches and squeeze their little bodies into the lockers (Ashton calls his his “closet”). One last glamour shot:

There are lots of things I didn’t go into detail about i.e. the front bench opens on a hinge for more storage, the light fixture is new (no thanks to the old ornate gold one), and Jason made the Six Craft board out of one of the original bookshelves by staining and sanding it down. I just love love love everything about this new space 🙂

Sooo, what’s next? Oh! I know…it looks a little something like…

Cabinets are ordered, countertops are picked, appliances are just waiting for their delivery date…we are a month out from the demo and this will definitely be our biggest project ever!

Ski lessons have been big on “the list” this year. I grew up in Vermont racing at Sugarbush, but I don’t even have a memory of learning how to ski in the first place, so it must have been early! Almost positive I was dangled from the end of a rope at Mad River with my dad holding me back.

Anyway, Ashton is more than half way to being 5, and so far he can’t ski, bike, or swim. Yikes. (He does ride with training wheels and loves to swim with a float, but on his own – not yet.) We need to get on this stuff. Skiing is a hard one to tackle because the lessons are 45 minutes away and kept getting pushed off (by the mountain, not us) due to school vacation, cold weather, etc. Also Alex really can’t come so it has to work with our schedule. Jason stayed home this time.

Finally, last Sunday at 1:30 pm, he was Nashoba’s newest mighty mite! It was a gorgeous day – I was basking in the sun watching Ashton in his mini group. It was an hour lesson. Overall review: it was kind of a zoo but somehow, not much happened. At all. A few times the kids were moved 3 degrees uphill by holding on to a hula hoop so they could “ski” back “down”, but mostly it was just them getting used to having these funny boards on their feet. Ashton fell over a lot and crossed his skis several times, but by the end he seemed to think that was it because he said, “Great Mommy! Can I go on the big hill now?” and pointed to the chairlift.

Uh, no, you can’t. Sorry sweetie. And then he got legitimately mad and threw a fit! I was shocked, he got super whiny and almost cried he was so upset. We talked about how he had more lessons and he seemed to perk up, but sheesh.

I’d post one of the thousand videos I took, but the truth is a snail could ski faster and you’d fall asleep instantly.

Nashoba called yesterday and said this weekend would be the last of the lessons. There is simply not going to continue to be enough snow! So that really stinks. Ashton doesn’t know yet.

By DIY in this case I mean paint. Here is what happened.

The other night Jason and I were sitting on the couch going over the last pieces of the mudroom project. He said, “And then on Monday when you get home I’ll paint the ceiling.” I said, “You know what, I don’t think so. I’LL paint the ceiling – YOU can take the boys around the block on their bikes, feed them dinner, do the dishes, pick up all the toys, put the laundry in and give them their bath and I’LL peacefully paint away in the next room, listening to music and thinking about all the compliments I am going to get.”

Because that’s how our projects typically go. Jason has all the fun with the tools and I get stuck with all the regular chores plus the boys. It’s just not fair and I was taking action. I could paint a ceiling, right? How hard could it be? Yep I was doing it. I believe Jason’s exact words were “I can’t WAIT to see you paint the ceiling. Oh, this is going to be so great. I guarantee this makes more work for me in the end, but I totally can’t WAIT to see this.”

He thought I was going to quit, or royally mess it up, or both, which of course made me more determined than ever. I told him there hasn’t been a ceiling like this since the Sistine Chapel, you just wait!

So there I was. The ceiling is 6 big squares and then a few small ones, all separated off by the beams. We had put sample color blocks in a few spots to try and figure out if we should do it at 25% or 50% of the wall color (50% was the winner – the color is Shagreen by SW) but other than that, it was a blank slate. I started by trying to cut in using just the brush and my impeccable skill, but after roughly 45 seconds I realized I needed the painters tape and I needed it bad. Is that cheating? Oh well. I took a break to tape the moldings and beams off. (And yes, I absolutely made Jason take my picture! This was history happening.)

Whoops, heh heh. Wrong one 😉

Notice I did not title this post “How To“. I presume there are a lot of different ways to do this but this is how I happened to accomplish it and thought you might want to know.

Step 1. Figure out where you want to put it. Quite an obvious Step 1 and for me, this was easy. We have a big long wall that separates the old part of the house from the new part of the house. It goes under the stairs and it is just dead space. Frame wall, here I come!

Step 2. Get your frames together. I’ve made one of these before, so I basically was all set in this area to start. But if you haven’t, ask yourself: Are you eclectic and/or artsy? I’m not, so all my frames needed to match. Lots of people make walls with all kinds of mediums and do not limit themselves to photos only, but let’s be serious, I need the limits. So I had previously chose some different white Pottery Barn frames, those Target Room Essentials frames, and a couple of sets of these to make my wall. The whites all match and the frames are varying thicknesses so it looks good. But I have no idea how to tell you how many frames you’ll need – depends on how many bigs and smalls you’ve got

Step 3a. Using your trusty tinfoil, make molds of each frame that you have.

Step 3b. Use Post-it’s to number them as you go. I didn’t have any so I just improvised, but make sure to come up with some kind of tracking system so you know which frame goes with which “mold”.

 * Helpful hint: Use your sharpie to draw a rough estimate of the photo opening on the foil. Some of my frames have large mats, some small, some have 2 or 3 pictures per frame, so it’s good to know how to distribute those elements evenly as you go along. I forgot to do this until the end.

Step 4. Put your frames in a safe place, and try not to pile them on top of each other because they’ll chip or get dinged somehow. Been there.

Step 5. The design part. Gather all your foil squares and some painter’s tape and start sticking.

Not quite sure why I look so fat in that picture. Unless it’s true that art imitates life in which case…lol.

Anyway, it’s a lot of trial and error, I’m not going to lie. You want to have all your shapes evenly distributed, with not too much space variance between all the frames. The painters tape really comes in handy here. I knew there was no way I was going to get all of these in a perfect block, so I decided that some jagged edges in the overall design were ok in the end.

Step 6. Finally tell your husband it’s time to hang the frames. Make sure it is 5 pm on Superbowl Sunday. Assure him there is a hard 6:30 pm stop time and he’s allowed to drink beer while he does it. Work down the line and replace each foil square according to the matching frame number. Rocket science, this is not.

See that posture? It says, “I’m not thrilled right now.” When picture-hangers display this kind of negative attitude, send in children to slow things down. Heh heh.

This is accomplished by:
* having to explain what he is doing
* having to explain why he is doing it
* children then wanting their own tools and belts
* using said tools to bang obnoxiously on the walls and the floors
* leading imaginary repairs on the step stool.

We got about half way through before kick off. The next set of installations went similarly, and in fact, if you want to know why things take 150% longer when you have kids, watch this video. “Your drill is going there, brotha!” I was dying laughing.

Step 7. All my frames were pre-filled from my last photo wall, but I do have some new ones to switch out and a big 11×14 print coming for the middle. So get yourself some 4×6’s, 5×7’s, and 8×10’s  (I use mpix.com – not the cheapest out there but the quality is awesome, in my opinion) and get yourself one of these picture hanging tools from Home Depot. It will help immensely.

Step 8. Admire your before and after!

It’s not perfect but it’s perfect enough. That blue dotted tape line marks the top of the chair rail/board and batten/wainscoting/whatever I eventually decide on for the bottom section of the wall. It’s going to go around the whole room and up the stairs. Someday! Jason’s sort of busy 😉

This blog gets pretty skinny this time of year. Not a lot of things to report, you know, besides winter. I have been focusing on small things around the house, the mudroom walls are painted, the bench cushions are being made, and in another couple of weeks it will be considered ★ finished! ★ Also, the photo wall is up so I can do a post on that pretty soon, and I finally found some window treatments for our family room. Of course, they were in TJ Maxx, and I needed five pairs, so the great “call around to every store in the greater Boston area trying to track them down” project commenced. Finding these were an obsession. I actually ventured out in the storm during the snow day this past Monday to buy some that were *only* going to be on hold for me until the end of that day. So I had to go there. In the end, I found 5 pairs in 3 stores = success. But because I can’t do anything that is easy, they all have to be hemmed and cut to various widths, which will definitely cost more than the panels themselves. Ahhh the irony. But they are worth it. I had previously picked out a fabric from a fabric store and the quote to have them made and installed was $6,000. That’s, six.thousand.dollars. They would have been gorgeous but, not in my budget right now, so the $34.99 ones from TJ’s looked pretty good, even if it’s another $50 to alter them (which, uh, it is). I’ll post a picture when they are up, probably in about a year because now I need to pick rods and finials and who knows how long that will take.

So overall, as you can see, things are quite boring. And predictable: we have been getting some snow and people have been getting sick. Last Friday, for some terrible reason, both Bentley and Belmont did not close like the rest of the state, which means I had work and Ashton had school. After I dropped Ashton off, I only stayed at work for a few hours before deciding we really needed to get home. So I picked him up and we basically slid back to Natick, the roads were so dangerous, the snow was super heavy too so there were tons of big branches down. But after the snowstorm passed around 4:30 and right as Jason finished snowblowing, the sun came out and it was simply gorgeous. The light touched the tops of all the trees in our neighborhood and everything was glistening white, it was honestly breathtaking – something I totally could not capture but I tried.

(See the sunroom on the left side of the house? That’s the new mudroom – the windows have blue painters tape on them because Jason sprayed all the mullions, sills, etc. white. Also see how low the power lines were?? The snow was that heavy!)

What was not beautiful was Alex. The next day, Saturday, marked the 4th day Alex had been sick. He just walked around the house crying and spent long periods of time sleeping on me 😦

Which NEVER happens. So Saturday morning I finally took him to the pediatrician. His cold was so bad he had mucous oozing out of the corners of his eyes. He would wake up with his whole face crusted over practically – yuck, TMI, sorry. But turns out he had a double ear infection and he’s been on antibiotics since.

We survived until Monday which was another snowstorm and official snow day. That one was kind of blustery and not so pretty at the end. I didn’t take any pictures.

Wednesday, yesterday, Ashton was finally back to school. We geared up for a regular day, I drove him to school, walked him into his class, hung up his coat and…he puked right there on the floor. So, I unhooked his coat, walked him back to the car, and drove him home. Sigh. But he was actually totally fine after that, he ate normally and played all day and even constructed this masterpiece.

While Alex snacked on snowballs.

So who knows.

Whaaaaat else. Brae Burn’s three week shut down officially ends tomorrow, so Jason will be leaving me to go back to work and I won’t see him again until this time next year (haha). It’s been so nice to have him home at night and on the weekends and I know the boys have loved it too. Ashton was supposed to have his first ski lesson this coming Sunday but it is supposed to be A degree. Like, one. Uno. Single. Not sure what I’ll do there.

That wraps it up for mid-February. I have to finish Ashton’s class valentines tonight, I get to go see new Baby Hugh on Saturday, and next week is school vacation week and Jen is away (yikes). But I’ll worry about that when I have to.

Choo-choo! This train just keeps on chugging 😉

This post, as I start to write it, has no clear theme. It will basically be just some random content that has materialized over the last couple of weeks.

First, I have to address the video of Alex from the last post. I got several concerned comments! Please know that if Ashton isn’t being the bad guy, Alex is, and Alex bites, so look out. The bottom line is two-fold: they are just brothers, plain and simple, and not only that, they are brothers under the age of 5 which means their little brains have no concept of anything besides themselves. They don’t get sharing, they don’t get “be gentle”. They only understand “ME”. Ashton is of course more in tune with how his actions may affect others, but it doesn’t usually stop him when it comes to Alex. These boys steal from each other, hit each other, the works. Jason and I talk to them, try to reason with them, sometimes yell at them, sigh. I am reading Siblings Without Rivalry. All this is to say though, while situations like that video do exist, more often than not they play and laugh. They both have pretty high rebound rates anyway. After the “steal”, Alex came over to me and I gave him a big hug, wiped his tears, and he ran back for more 🙂

Secondly, we are surviving the winter just fine so far (knock on wood!!). Having accumulated less than 8 inches of snow helps immensely. The one snowstorm we did get was an excuse to use the shovels 😉

HAHA. He could barely move I bundled him up so much.

Just putting on boots and stomping around in the leftover snowbanks and mud puddles has been quite sufficient since then. March 13 is not that far away (clocks spring forward!), but we are definitely already seeing longer days. Even though jackets are required, we still scooter and hit the playground!

Being outside after work when it isn’t pitch dark has been heaven. What is ALSO heaven is this little indoor spray park in Norwood. Honestly, the most random spot. It’s a kid’s splash pad, but it’s in a gym, but you don’t have to be a member. I found out about it on the Natick Mom’s facebook group (which by the way, is the best resource probably ever. Best place for kids haircuts, electrician recommendations, summer camp feedback, school registration info, road closures, birthday party spots, town events and the list goes ON, but all specific to Natick- the community of moms is amazing). Anyway I saw someone mention Ships Ahoy in the Rama Athletic Club as a “beat the winter blues” idea. I could not get the boys into their swimsuits fast enough. It was $10 per kid, I brought some buckets and toys, the water was warm, and there was a parent sitting area. The boys were in their glory which meant so was I.

Talk about a hidden gem! We will definitely be going back.

Lastly, I’ve been marinating all week on the idea of selling LulaRoe. You probably haven’t heard of it – it’s a new clothing line only sold through consultants and their leggings are completely awesome. Super soft and REALLY fun prints. Like bye-bye boring black. They sell for $25 at parties and pop-up shops but are very popular on eBay. My hairdresser sells them and is obsessed, as most sales consultants tend to be. She’s all over Facebook about it and on the one hand, selling them where I work, at a university, would be like shooting fish in a barrel. But on the other, it’s a multi-level-marketing thing, a pyramid scheme, and after learning more I’m just not going there. I know a lot of people that sell a lot of things as a direct sales consultant and the strategies are not for me. That being said, if you need a color statement this winter, try and get a pair of these leggings. I have zero stock whatsoever in these, so check out eBay maybe. Unless you have a consultant near you which, I have no idea if you do haha. They are OS (one size – fits all), and they even have a TC (tall and curvy) size. I am definitely a customer. If you decide you are the direct sales type, you might check them out as a possibility. Anyway just sharing my latest and greatest fashion find 🙂

Have a great weekend all!

It’s been nearly 4 (!!!) months since we moved into our new house. Projects abound and while several things are in progress, nothing can actually be considered “done”. We are a family of list-checker-offers so this is really annoying. I guess we did get an exterior door cut to turn the sunroom into a mudroom, but I’m not going to post about that yet because the mudroom as a whole is incomplete. Right now Jason is building out the benches and as of yesterday, things look like this.

Which means our foyer looks like this.

Due to all the junk that we used to hide in the sunroom but now we can’t because it’s becoming a mudroom. See how that works.

When Kari and Ben came to visit when we first moved. Ben taught Jason how to change light switches and outlets. Some of the existing fixtures were yellowed, the outlet plates were cracked, and the style was very basic. And we are not basic! No, we are not. I wanted dimmers! And wide toggles! And illumination when it is dark! And those outlets that have a USB port built in! All of those exclamatory features. I was willing to work for it too.

HAHA just kidding that is totally staged. Jason let me snap on one cover of one outlet and that was it.

But now, 90% of the switches and outlets in our house have been upgraded. We have one-ways, two-ways, three-ways, dimmers, backlit switches, decorative plates, the works!

The outlets have gotten a refresher as well.

Our house is very amply wired. There are outlets and switches all over the place so this was no small job. I’ll tell you what also won’t be a small job: the door hardware. Because, this:

There was another post that was next in my queue, but I had jury duty last week and feel the need to talk about it. On Thursday morning at 8 am I reported to the Waltham District Court, wondering whether I would have a say in someone’s future. In 2006 I served on a jury that, after 10 days of testimony, acquitted a first-degree murderer. It was a Dorchester shooting, the kids were on bikes for christ’s sake. As jurors we were taken by motorcade to the neighborhood, walked around, shown pictures, etc. It was an incredibly real experience, for lack of a better way to describe it. The witnesses, the bloody clothes, the full courtroom when we read the verdict. The truth, according to me, was that he did it. There was simply no one else that could have fired the shot. But the defendant, a boy who had been in prison for two years awaiting trial, was innocent until proven guilty, and the prosecutor could not do it. There were too many holes in the story, too many unanswered questions. It was clear when we read the verdict (amidst the cries and angry shouts of the victim’s family), the DA was shocked. It was his case to lose and for us, the jury, reasonable doubt of his guilt remained.

The boy went free. I cried and cried. He had killed someone else, but looking at his case through the lens of our justice system and its rules, he was free. We were told that as a jury, our decision is always the right one. Even so, it felt awful and I’ve never forgotten it.

I was not summoned again until now. Last Thursday was sunny and we sat in a nice room all morning. Most people dread jury duty, but show me a place where I can sit in peace, drink coffee and read quietly without kids yapping at my feet for an extended period of time, and I’ll show you a happy Kristen. (Although, this was my book. My mom hat is, annoyingly, never fully off.)

I suspect jury duty gets a bad rap because most people don’t see anything as a result of their waiting. They just get dismissed after a long day. Anyone that ends up serving on a jury though, I guarantee you the experience changes their tune.

So last Thursday they impaneled a jury for an assault and battery case (in conjunction with malicious destruction of property under $250) around 3 pm. The wait until then was, admittedly, long. I was the first one picked and took my seat. Opening statements described a scene a year and a half ago, where, after being broken up with over many things, the boyfriend pulled a knife on himself and begged the girlfriend to just push it into him, end his life, he was ruined without her. At one point he grabbed her face, threw things, etc. A general rage about the relationship being called off (except by the way, he had told her he was seeing someone else, and that someone else turned out to be in the courtroom the entire time!).

After he left the scene, there were hundreds of texts between the two of them. The transcript was an inch thick and she, the girlfriend, eventually stopped responding. He called her every nasty name in the book when he wasn’t begging her to take him back. He had gone ballistic.

Both the girlfriend and the boyfriend testified, along with the police officer who had written up the incident when the girlfriend reported it as domestic violence the next day. Everything the girlfriend said, the boyfriend denied. It was essentially a bad breakup of a couple in their 20s who brought out the worst in each other.

We had a spectacularly wonderful holiday break. It chugged right along, the perfect amount of visits/visitors, activity, playtime and downtime. We enjoyed lots of general togetherness and it was tough to go back to work this week. Now it’s 2016 and looking back…well, this:

My pants are tight, it’s suddenly frigid cold, and before us lies the Great Stretch of Nothingness, also known as January, February, and March. We get to scrape ice off our cars, itch our dry pasty skin, bemoan an empty calendar and suffer from innumerable diseases our 4 year old brings home from school (recently lice. He didn’t/doesn’t have it (yet) but it’s there!)

In order to combat the depressing view ahead, let’s look back at “the most wonderful time of the year”! Christmas was awesome – it just was. Ashton completely freaked out like I hoped he would and knew he would. Erik and GG were with us on Christmas Eve and the boys obviously wore their special ‘jamas.

Truth be told I wanted to have Ashton as the elf and Alex as Santa (because Ashton sometimes needs a reality check about being in charge) but Target’s size inventory didn’t cooperate.

Christmas (early) morning, family portrait.

It was your usual flurry of wrapping paper everywhere and a lot of “I can’t uh-BWEVE (believe) this!”‘s from Ashton. Alex was a little timid opening his gifts but of course his older brother was happy to help him out. (Ashton had some difficulty grasping that not everything had his name on it.)

Most of my pictures are blurry. If you’ve ever seen a kid unwrap a present or if you yourself have done it, you were basically there. For anyone that has not:

Santa was definitely good to the boys. After breakfast, they each chose a favorite new toy (the HotWheels Super 6 Lane Raceway for Ashton, which by the way, turned out to be everything I dreamed it would be, and a little battery-operated Thomas for Alex) and we all headed up to Vermont for Christmas part II! This was the only shot I actually took.