Discuss đ .
Month: December 2008
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The making of Rebecca’s room
Considering what kind of shape our house was in when we bought it (fashion-wise, that is), you’d think we would have done more in the first three and a half years living here. Not so. We’ve painted two rooms, replaced several light fixturesâbut that’s about it.
Other than the kids’ rooms. Three years ago, we took down vile wallpaper in Hayden’s room, put in new chair rail and baseboards, painted, and I even made new Roman shades for Hayden’s room. It’s still not totally done (a few finishing touches on the shades, and we have to hang a lot of the little accessories and decorations I made), but it’s a world of improvement over its previous state.
Rebecca’s room was an even more extensive project. Here’s what we did for her:
- Took down the hunting duck wallpaper and borderâthanks to my BIL Sean for helping with that one (seriously, it looked like this:
) - Repair holes from a few dozen twenty-penny nails and retexture walls, with help from my dad
- Install and caulk crown molding and casing around closet, again with help from Dad
- My mom made a valance, curtains and ties, with almost no help from me (I picked the fabric đ )
- Prime and paint ceiling and walls, with help from my FIL
- Tear out ugly old green office carpet, remove nails, staples and tack strips from original hardwood floors, with help from my FIL
- Sand floor, with help from my BIL Kevan
- Fill nail holes in floor
- Stain floor
- Polyurethane floor (3 coats)
- Stain and polyurethane closet doors
- Stain and polyurethane carpet-to-hardwood threshold thing
- Paint baseboards, install, caulk and repaint.
- Paint accent wall and alcove stripes pink.
- Replace alcove shelves
- Hang curtains and closet doors
Load in the furniture and voila. A short (NOT!) seven months after we started, it’s now my favorite room in the house.
And since you asked, here’s a close up of the floor (alcove stripes reflected in it, and quite unswept):
Categories
A room with perspective
This weekend was a momentous one for us: Rebecca moved into her own room!
“Am I to stay here?”
And Hayden got a big boy bed!
He actually asked for quiet time on his first day with the big boy bed—and he stayed in bed the whole time! (Last night, however, was the first time he fell out of bed đ .)
But I think the people who are most excited are me and Ryan—after four and a half months, we finally have our room to ourselves! All of our toiletries have been migrating to the guest bathroom so that we didn’t wake Rebecca as we got ready for bed—and once we were ready, actually going in our room sometimes required nerves of steel and holding our breath.
Strange how having free reign of one’s own room can feel so . . . freeing!
What little changes in your life have brought big changes in your attitude?
Categories
Impromptu neighbor gifts
I’ll be honest. I don’t particularly enjoy spending days slaving over a hot oven to prepare baked goods to show my neighbors which among them are my favorites. (Hi guys!) I personally would not be the slightest bit offended if we didn’t get any neighbor gifts.
But this week, I discovered the best neighbor gifts ever. I was all set to host my book club Thursday night—I’d read the book, cleaned the house, picked up refreshments (again, not spending the day mixing and baking), made cocoa (one homemade thing, plus milk was $1.85/gal!), warmed those not-even-semi-homemade cookies in the oven, set out the Little Debbies, fed the baby—and then we waited.
No one was early.
No one was right on time.
No one was five minutes late.
No one was ten minutes late.
No one was twenty minutes late.
At that point, we decided no one was coming—and we had more than a gallon of hot cocoa on the stove. And we had nothing to store it in, thanks to Ryan’s slightly overzealous cleaning, taking out the empty milk jug.
So we bundled up the kids, grabbed a tray of cookies and the pot of cocoa and headed to visit our neighbors. (This never happens in the winter, okay? It’s cold out there!) We spent a delightful couple of hours visiting with them, their older daughters taking turns holding a very placid Rebecca and their sons and youngest daughter playing with Hayden—and I even got to discuss the book club book!
We told them that would “count” for our neighbor gift and a better way of expressing how much we really enjoy having them as neighbors I can’t imagine. Thanks for having us, especially on such short notice!
[We are the proud owners of one of those notebooks of Christmas stories to be read each day of December leading up to Christmas—and this year we remembered to pull it out. After tonight’s scripture from Isaiah impromptu concert from Messiah, Ryan began tonight’s story. And it was on this wise. . . .]
We never had money to spend on each other, but we had caught early in our lives a sort of contusion [the story says contagion, but I think this misreading is where we got off track] from our mother. She loved to give, and her anticipation of the joy that a just-right gift would bring to someone infected the whole household. We were swept up in breathless waiting to see how others would like what we had to give.
Secrecy ruled—open, exaggerated secrecy, as we made and hid our gifts. The only one whose hiding places we discovered [sic] was my grandmother’s. Her gifts seemed to appear by magic on Christmas morning and were always more expensive than they should have been. She was a drug dealer. She had a plot of fifty marijuana plants out back—
[Ryan had to stop for several minutes while I sputtered, choked and, yes, cried with laughter. We then discussed whether or not those were the real printed words.]
That Christmas I was glowing because Mother had been so happy with the parchment lampshade I’d made in the fourth grade. Father had raved over the clay jewelry case I had molded and baked for him. (“Baked?” Grandma said.) Gill and Emma Lou had been pleased with the figures I’d whittled out of clothespins [Mother less so, I’m sure], and Homer had like the scout pin I’d bargained for with my flint. Then Grandma started to pass out her presents.
Mine was heavy and square. It’s a brick of cocaine!
“You’ll have to cut and deal it yourself, dear. I’m getting too old for that kind of thing.”
I’d been in the hospital with an overdose that year and then on crutches after one of Grandma’s rivals broke my leg with a baseball bat. And I’d wondered how it would be to have an erector set to build with. Grandma had a knack at reading boys’ minds and I was sure that’s what it was. But it wasn’t. It was a pair of boots, brown tangy-smelling leather boots. I turned them upside down and out tumbled—
[The End]