Doll Cradle

A few years back, I got given a couple doll cradles that someone's child had outgrown. Neither was in great condition. So, they got put in the garage with the intention of sanding down and painting up sometime in the future.

BEHOLD, THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED!! 

Well, Marco threatened to throw them out. So, we took a closer look at them. One is completely rotten. The other, however, while looking awful, could have a few years of life still in it. 

And, then came the clincher: We set up our cot (crib) in anticipation of the baby, and the girls immediately wanted to know where their babies could sleep. 

I forgot to take a completely BEFORE picture, but here it is after just a quick sand (by Marco)

A quick coat of primer. I can't believe the pink is still showing through. I'm getting a bit nervous at this point!

  The general (but unspoken) rule in our house is that any "craft" that I want to take on, shouldn't cost us any money (or much, anyway). This rule is in place because, in general, I am not very good at crafts. That is to say that while my intentions are good, my execution sucks. :)
This might be a good time to show you the blog where I actually got my ideas from. A blog where she actually does a GOOD job. Where it appears that things turn out the way she intended them to! However, it was also because of her blog that I was afraid the pink would continue to show through - it might have been her intention, but it was NOT mine.

Anyway, to determine what colour the doll cradle would be, I pulled out our trusty box of Resene test pots. Can you tell I've been trying to get Marco to paint a green wall in our house?? So far, no luck.. but I'll keep trying :)

And Voila!! The finished product - all painted!! 

I ended up using 4 colours in total. The 2 back sides (blue) are painted Resene Crescent (same colour we used in our middle bathroom). The inside panels (green) are all painted Resene Koru (one of the colours I tried to convince Marco of to no avail. The cursed spindles and bars they're attached to are painted Resene Milestone (one of the colours that we trialed to do our small bedroom - its sort of soft brownish-pink, relaly mutely pretty). And finally, the rest is painted Resene Bon Jour - a basic off white. No idea where we wever tried to use that colour!

So, if you checked out the blog that I was originally inspired by, and if you know at all about my lack of sewing ability (not to mention, my lack of sewing machine), You might've already guessed that I was excited to see her idea for making a doll "mattress"!!

So, step 1 - grab an old pillow case that I don't need.  (mostly because the sheets have  immigrated to the garage as drop cloths over the years)

Step 2: measure cradle (in hind sight, measure twice, or more). Add 10 cm to each side (oops, only added 10 cm  to each measurement). Cut pillow case to smithereens. 

Step 3. Tie knots around sides. Find something to stuff  inside the "mattress" (in my case a small bit of polyester insulation from the garage). Stuff it. 

 Step 4. Realize that the finished "mattress" is WAY too small and as usual my finished product sucks.

Step 5. Remember that its for a couple of indiscriminate children and not for resale and they'll probably love it. Decide to pretend the "mattress" is really a pillow. All solved!

Aww.. 

Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow

We've decided, as parents, to be a bit more proactive about allowing our kids to engage in Sunday worship. One of the easiest ways to do this, we feel, is to help them learn some of the songs that we sing in church. Unfortunately, there are a lot of songs, and we don't know which ones will be sung before going to church. So, we decided that this year, we'd teach our kids one verse to one song every week (or most weeks).
To keep it a bit fun/easy, we started with a simple one: "Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow".

Here's Kelsey (at the end, I cut her off as she started singing "The Three-Fold Amen", sorry):

Brilliant Change table Solution!!

I'm currently 37 weeks pregnant with baby #3. So, we've been busy finishing up some renovations, selling small cars and buying big cars and getting stuff out of storage to get ready for this new baby!!

Thankfully, I've kept most things from when the girls were little so we don't need to buy a lot. However, one bigger item we need - besides a bigger car - is a new set of drawers (a dresser) for the baby's clothes and things. And, unfortunately, about a year ago, we sold my mammoth but perfect change table because it was just taking up WAY too much room. Anyway, so a while back I came up with the brilliant plan to find a dresser that was the same height as a change table and also deep enough to put my change pad on top. This should not have been a difficult thing.

Sidebar: This is what annoys me most about living where I do. I do not know why, but it seems that time after time, I have an idea that I know I've seen a gazillion places before, but when I want to make it happen in my home - well.. its only available in the big centers, or it costs a million dollars more than it should, or its only available overseas.

So, I started by shopping at the local shops. One local furniture store had the perfect dresser. However, it cost $450. Have I mentioned that we're poor?? So, I took the measurements from that dresser and began to scour TradeMe (the second hand website). Not very many around. And (as usual) most were in the big centers. So, after nearly 4 weeks of searching to no avail, a new place was devised.

It came about as I was making the bed in the baby's cot (crib). I was standing over it thinking, "I love this cot. Its such a great height." Then  - light bulb moment - "pity I can't change the baby on here."  Within moments (hours, actually) the husband had taken the change mat down from its storage space and placed it perpendicularly over the cot. Perfect!

My cot (crib) that my father-in-law made before Kelsey was born. Pardon the teeth marks - one of my children happens to be part beaver - must be her Canadian heritage!

So, with Morgan's doll demonstrating, here's how I envisioned my new  "change table"

So, Marco disappeared to his garage. Noises could be heard. And within 2 hours, he called for me to "come see!".

2 wooden boards with slats made up from the cut off slates from one of our new wooden blinds and a few tacks!! Genius! I added the velcro strips and VOILA!!

Here's the side view so you can see how it "attaches" to the crib (cot)

The whole thing is VERY lightweight to boot!! The only thing we're unsure of at the moment is how much weight it will hold. However, we put a sack of potatoes on, so we know it'll hold at least 4.5 kg - good enough for a newborn!! 

Oh, and the dresser issue was solved easily by bringing out one of 2 sets of small drawers that we were storing in the garage (and hoping to do up and sell sometime). So, we've pulled out the bigger of 2 drawers and Marco is currently in the garage sanding it down, putting new handles on it, and in 2 days - after a thorough oiling  - I'll get it in my house ready for baby clothes!! Woohoo!! (pictures to follow soon)

Renovations - Kitchen

Back to our 3 year renovation journey that's still not over... the KITCHEN!!
The kitchen must be a girls favorite room to get done. Well, it was mine anyway. Plus, by this point I'm able to shower and toilet in a clean room, so life is looking up anyway!!

i should note, however, that besides doing up the laundry room/bathroom in the first 4 months we also put floor and ceiling insulation in the whole house and put new spouting on the house!!  But those things aren't fun to take pictures of, or talk about. Plus, we just got someone in to do those jobs (I know, we cheat!).

We had decided to do the important and expensive jobs first and as quickly as possible so that the less expensive jobs would be easier to save up for. After all, for $20,000 we could do the kitchen, or the whole rest of the house, but how often do you ever save up $20,000 before "needing" some of it. Its much easier to save up $2000 for a bedroom - you know?

So, here's what we had to start with. 

Unfortunately, the kitchen looked better in pictures than in real life. It was quite deceiving really. No one could quite understand why I was so desperate to get a new kitchen.
However, the what you can't see is that MOST of the wooden cupboards had been used over the years as notepads, and had phone numbers, names, swearing etched in. Not what you want when you kids are learning to read!
The pantry doors didn't close, so we had developed a string system to tie them together and closed.



The stove also didn't work very well. There was one element that only worked on HIGH, one that only worked on LOW and 2 that didn't work at all. So, for most cooking, you'd start the pot on the HIGH element, and then move it to the low element when it was hot enough. and don't even think about cooking anything nice or several things at a time!!

The four drawers beside the over also were problematic. One didn't open at all. One was missing a handle, so we couldn't shut it all the way or it too would be unusable. and the other 2 needed a good ol' heave-ho to open. But, at least we didn't have to worry about the kids getting into our drawers!! :)

The stainless steel counter top was quite nice, I must say. Although the kitchen faucet on top of the window sill was weird and leaked profusely - especially if you tried to turn it!!

Oh, and this is the hole that the "fridge" was supposed to fit in. However, unless you have the world's thinnest fridge, that would be impossible!! So our fridge had to live in the dining room. Handy if you wanted a condiment during dinner, not so much while you're cooking!!

So, there were issues - even if they don't show up in pictures.

So, step one was to go and visit as many kitchen building places as we could. Which was a little bit fun, and a little bit scary. It was fun because you could put all these neat things into your kitchen. Scary because every "neat thing" costs just a little bit more and VERY quickly adds up!! So, one of the first quotes came in at $20,000 at that didn't include any of the building prep to get the kitchen ready - so yucky, yuck, no thanks!! But, as we met with different designers, we got a feel for who we wanted to work with, signed up with one of them, and then could negotiate what we wanted vs what we needed vs what we could afford. It was at this point that I was especially thankful that we were doing the kitchen at the beginning of our project while we still had money. I can think of nothing worse than skimping on the kitchen because you simply don't have the money. Its one thing to have to make wise financial decisions (I suppose I don't need lights that automatically come on in every cupboard, or corner drawers that cost 10x more than a normal corner cupboard!) but quite another to need something and not be able to afford it (hmm, maybe we don't have to put in a stove!).

Step 2: Demolition!!

I think this is Marco's favorite part. If I did any of the work, it would be my favorite part too!

 There was lots of rot to be found. Ugh. Very worrying for the boys. Very gross and dirty for me.

The pile of rubbish grew by exceeding portions every day.

One shouldn't be afraid of electrical wires hanging down, should they? 

The wall between the outside door and the kitchen was removed to add a bit of space to our kitchen and open things up a bit! 

 Kelsey was a great help during the demotion stage. Plus pictures of a 2 year old with a hammer have the added bonus of freaking out overseas grandparents! :)

A high tech solution to keeping all the renovation dust out of the rest of the house was installed. 

The old kitchen window (that was poorly installed at some point anyway) was taken out, to make room for a new bigger, better window. 

Our handy-dandy builder buddy Erik, making sure that everything is done up to code and properly. Things got a bit hairy after they took the old window out and you could see the whole kitchen wall move and sway with every breeze outside. 

And with all the changes, the rubbish pile grew. And grew. And grew.

You can see from this picture that they replaced all the rotten weather boards outside, plus to the right of the door, there are 2 windows that we took out when doing the laundry room renovation. A year or so later, Marco sanded and repainted this whole wall.
Also, part of the kitchen renovation included gutting our other bathroom, as we were about to take a bit of space from that room for the kitchen (in order to fit our fridge in the new kitchen). So, that's why part of the rubbish pile includes a bathtub!!

Renovations, are not without their casualties. This was Marco's leg after he stepped into a hole in the floor, inadvertently. He's got a lovely deep scar now! 

Final yucky part of the demolition was discovering that part of the kitchen floor was not wood, but concrete - probably where at some point there was a hot water cylinder. Unfortunately (for Marco), this was also a few mm's higher than the wood as well. So, he rented a concrete grinder and spread fine concrete dust throughout my entire house. The he filled, just the part that would be seen, with new wood boards to go along with the old boards. (He's so clever)

Step #3 - rebuilding.

Marco is installing a new door and you can see the new floor boards where the old wall was.













I guess we'd already started rebuilding with the new window and whatnot, but its always fun when the Gib boards (drywall) goes up and things start to actually take shape. I should note that we put insulation in all walls as we build, we get electricians in to do the electrical stuff to keep it all kosher and we get a Gib stopper in to finish the walls. In our old house, Marco Gib stopped one room, it took forever and he was never completely happy with the results, so we admitted that some jobs you should pay someone else to do because they do it better and faster!!

 

here's the new fridge box - very wide, and perfectly deep! With a plug in the back too!! Yippee!! 

After this, painting.. what fun!

I should also note, at this point, that friends of ours were on holidays during this period and graciously let us live in their home for a week. It was a big change from microwave and crockpot cooking in the dining room. A big change from dusting the kids off every day, carrying Kelsey to the toilet so she didn't step on a nail, or in a hole. It was such a great holiday. A bit hard for Marco, however, as he balanced his real life job hours, with hours on the house, with coming to see us in the other house, but definitely nicer for me with a 2 year old and a 10 month old!!

My favorite feature of this room was about to be installed. Its probably my favorite because (for once) my husband thought an idea of mine was good. It started out when I wanted a corrugated iron wall. A wall with some punch and colour!!  It took some convincing, but he went along with it. :)

And doesn't that look good??
 I love my corrugated iron wall.

However, then one night as we were still in the planning stages, I asked my husband an odd question. "What's corrugated iron before its corrugated??"
"I suppose its just flat colored steel", he responded.

And, did you know that while a colored glass splash back is about $500, a perfectly matched iron splash back of twice the size is only $13?? Can you see my smile??

So, thus was born my new iron splash back.








Finally, it was the day for my kitchen to arrive!! At this point, Marco had sanded the floors but not varnished them yet. So, they had to be a bit careful about bringing stuff in.
We had hummed nad hawed a few months back about whether we should save some $$ and install the kitchen ourselves. But, wow, were these guys good!! Definitely glad we got them to do it!!
With in the day, it looked great and was done!

All level, bench top (counter top) on. :)











So, after a quick install of the appliances by our lovely electricians, and a final sand and varnish of the floors the room was done. Ahhh...

I wish my floor was always this clean and shiny. 

Look how nice my brilliant back splash looks! 

 My new giant but shallow pantry.
I'm sorry, but side bar here. This is another brilliant idea we put into this kitchen. Deep pantries lose things. Shallow pantries do not. We were already slightly short of space, so this just made the most sense. Its absolutely huge too, because we built all our cupboards higher than normal since we have a higher than normal ceiling.
And, its taken me a few years, but I'm slowly getting all Tupperware for my pantry too.. its AWESOME!

And, of course, my awesome corrugated iron wall. I love the punch of color it gives to the room!

Oh, in case anyone is curious:
 - our kitchen was designed by Rawcraft Kitchens.
 - Our cupboards are Resene Quarter Ash
 - our walls are Resene Ash
 - the corrugated iron is Coloursteel Pioneer Red
 - The benchtop is "Granito Negro" with a textured finish.

Philippians 2:14

"Do Everything without complaining or arguing!"

 What a world it would be, eh? 

(and yes, I know.. there is more to the verse.. but when you're dealing with 3 &4 year olds, there is no reason to complicate things!)

So, we've been dealing with a bit of extra attitude in our house lately. Well, maybe if I'm honest, its been going on for a while, but now there's two of them and one fairly impatient (very pregnant) momma - so change was necessary!!

Lately, its seems that every time I ask (tell) one of the girls to do something (at least anything that goes against their precious desires), I'm met with a sour face, defiant NO, storming off, completely ignoring me, or even a full out tantrum.

So, a few days ago, Marco and I were talking about how to deal with it. I simply don't have the physical strength or the energy to discipline physically at all. And since our lovely 4 year olds latest tactic was dropping to the ground like a 1 year old, well.. we had to put our thinking caps on, get on the same page, and come up with a BRILLIANT plan!!

I think we've done it!

At the moment, I'm bombarded constantly with requests to play games on my "phone" (my iTouch), so I realized that we should be able to make this whole compliance/obedience issue a positive, rather than the usual negative. Somehow, they had to be able to earn game time. And somehow, I needed to be able to take it away too!! Well, as soon as I said that, Marco said.. "what about a clock?" well.. duh.. of course!
So, a few hours later, out of the deep dark abyss called his garage, came this:


So, now at the start of every day both hands (one for Kelsey, and one for Morgan) start at 0. When they are asked to do anything, they are expected to reply (immediately) with "yes mom", or "OK mom" (or Dad). When they do, their hand gets moved ahead by a minute. If they don't, or if they complain or argue, the hand is moved back a minute! Then between suppertime & bedtime, they are allowed that many minutes of game time on my "phone". And, since i don't really like them to have that much time, we only made the clock go up to 15 minutes! :)

There are, however, a few glitches which we're still working through! For example, at the moment my lovely bossy eldest child, thinks its a competition between her and Morgan. Not the intention. So, we're talking through that one. She also likes to tell me (constantly) that I should move it ahead. "I did it straight away mommy, you have to move my hand ahead!" - Ugh. There is also the problem with what happens after they've had their daily game time and they're getting ready for bed. Do I move the hand ahead or don't I? I choose not to, much to the dismay of my eldest rule follower! So, we had a quick chit chat about how we need to be obeying with a happy heart even without the clock. I mean, the whole point of the clock is to just create new habits, but how to explain that to a legalistic little girl??!!

Anyway, I'm quite excited about our new little clock! I'm excited to see the attitude changes in my little girls, and I'm hopeful that it'll result in long-term changes too!

oh, by the way, the clock is just a cut out piece of MDF, spray painted red. The hands are cut out of ice cream lids. I'm pretty sure a marker was used for the numbers and the letters. And a screw was placed in the middle to allow the hands to easily move. And, since we have plans to rip down the wall that we attached it to, Marco just screwed it onto the wall. :)

Renovations - Bathroom/Laundry Room

This blog was supposed to be about our family, our marriage etc., but part of that should also include how we spend (what feels like) the majority of our time! RENOVATIONS!
We are currently in our second house. Our first house was a small 2 bedroom brick house that was in excellent condition but very dated style. So, in the 2 1/2 years that we lived there, we simply had to repaint, pull-up a bit of carpet and change a few curtains. Easy!

Then we bought this house:

This house needed help. This house was a 3 bedroom wooden house that was very much neglected over the years. In fact, when we got the keys, I cried. 

Note to others: NEVER buy a house while you're still postpartum - or pregnant, for that matter!!

We've been here now for almost 3 years and we've accomplished LOTS! But I'm just now starting to like it here. (pathetic princess, I know). Anyway, I'll use the next several posts to do some before and after shots of various parts of the house. 

First, make ONE usable space in the house!

So, we immediately had to gut the laundry room and toilet and build a PROPER bathroom/laundry room. And for the month or so before that was finished I was forced to bathe in this bathtub designed for very skinny people. The shower hose only reached up about 3 feet so you HAD to sit down in the bathtub and sort of hold this shower hose over your head and body. Meanwhile, the water pooled up behind as my backside acted as a bath plug! Fun memories! 

But, before the first 4 months were out, we had turned THIS:

Into this!!

Ahh.. much better!! Marco tiled the floor himself. We put insulation in the walls. Moved the toilet, added a shower, took out 2 windows and even put in stairs leading to the roof space to make storing things a bit easier! Marco even got someone to fix the door (which had a rough cat shaped hole cut in the bottom of it) and then stripped and oiled it! 

My favorite bit, however, is this one wall we managed to bring up:

it makes me smile :)

So. One room down.