Ready to Go

Our bags are mostly packed (and by "mostly", I mean Charlotte's are packed and mine is not). We've been telling Charlotte all week that she's going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days and she's going to have so much fun. We've never left her for this long, but I'm pretty sure that we're the only ones having a problem with it. She's thrilled :)

I'm looking forward to our trip, despite the fact that I'll miss this smiling face a whole lot.

She must have known my resolve was weak today. I asked her what she wanted to do and she thought about it for five seconds before announcing "go outside on a walk and then get a Happy Meal!". She won.

I'll be back in a week or so with stories from our trip. And lots of photos...

~Stacy

September Sunset

I don't know how many more chances we'll get to spend evenings at the beach...though Charlotte asks to go literally every night after dinner, so I imagine we'll keep doing it until it starts getting dark before dinnertime. We rode our bikes up there Friday evening, and it turned out to be the perfect time to go. It was cool but not cold, the sky was clear and colorful, and it wasn't teeming with obnoxious high school kids since they were all either out or at the football game. Lovely :)

Have a wonderful weekend :)

~Stacy

A Room to Grow

Hello! Did you have a nice long weekend? Ours was lovely, and even lovelier is the fact that tomorrow is already Wednesday :)

We finished Charlotte's room a few days ago and now it's definitely my favorite room in the house. I had my worries about painting the walls pink, but now that it's done I think it actually looks really great against the crisp white trim and ceiling. I like it much better than the yellow (I didn't mind the color but I was just tired of it and it had started looking really dingy).

Charlotte's feelings about her room are overwhelmingly positive. Sometimes when we've been downstairs or outside for awhile she'll stop and ask to "go see my room? I love my room!". And she regularly tells me that she's "so excited about my big girl bed!". So that's adorable. And it definitely makes the aggravation of painting the ceiling worth it.

Here are some "before" shots:

And some "during", which are never pretty. We pretty much just dumped everything from her room into the extra bedroom until it was finished, making for this lovely sight:

After the painting was complete, Chad built her new bed frame in her room. We bought her a twin bed frame with built in drawers underneath, which meant we didn't need to buy a box spring--yay! And those drawers hold a lot, which is a must in a small house with precious little closet space.

Thankfully he had some "help":

After a very long day of sanding, painting, cleaning, and building, we were hungry. Charlotte was gone most of the day so it was a race against the clock to finish everything up before she came home and needed to go to sleep. This is what happens when Chad orders dinner on a very empty stomach:

Let's not discuss how much of this we actually consumed in one sitting.

Once everything was done we moved the crib back into the room, along with the bed, just in case there was drama with the new bed and she needed to sleep in the crib awhile longer. Thankfully she loves her bed, so out the crib went after less than a week. 

So now I present the finished room:

I was going to make a new quilt, but realized this one I made last fall was kind of a perfect match. It's a double sided patchwork made of flannel (the line is Marmalade by Bonnie & Camille for Moda). It is super soft and a great size for a twin bed.

I made this bunting out of some of my most favorite fabric ever--The Simple Life by Tasha Noel for Riley Blake Designs.

The only other change I want to make is to switch the curtains out to white--I'd like to find some white eyelet and make them, with maybe a shade underneath to block out more light when she's sleeping. I'm planning on repurposing the pink striped curtains and making floor pillow covers. Someday, someday...

This room just makes me happy. It's bright, colorful and cheerful--just like the little girl who sleeps here. :)

~Stacy

Quilted Placemats (and Mug Rugs Too!)

I did some serious stash busting this weekend. I had a lot of leftover odds and ends of my favorite fabrics with vintage-y vibes and found a way to use up a whole lot of them: quilted placemats and mug rugs. What are mug rugs, you ask? They're a placemat/coaster hybrid: smaller than a placemat, larger than a coaster, and the perfect size to set a mug of coffee and a treat. I first heard of them on Pinterest and thought it was a cute idea so I made my own.

I did my own thing for these--I didn't follow any pattern or standard measurements (are there standard measurements for placemats??). The finished mug rugs are about 5"X8" and the placemats are about 13"X19".

Someday soon I'd like to write up a cutting guide and instructions for these. Someday soon most likely means "hopefully within the next 12 months but don't hold your breath", so we'll see. :)

These were fun to make--kind of like sewing four mini-quilts. I want to make more in different designs and colors, I just need to find someone to make them for. I don't need to become a placemat hoarder on top of a fabric hoarder... ;)

Happy Sewing!

Tea Parties and a Farewell to August

So in my last post I mentioned that we repainted Charlotte's room and set up her new "big girl" bed, with crossed fingers and lots of hoping that the transition out of the crib would go much more smoothly than our last attempt. Well, wish granted. She loves her bed and has slept wonderfully without any trouble all week. Phew!

In celebration of this accomplishment, and since her room will now have some more space in it without a twin bed and a crib, we bought her a small table and chairs set to put in there. Her best friend has one in her room and she's been asking for a "tea party table" for awhile now. We told her it was coming a few days before it arrived (probably not the best idea, but she was as patient as she could be). It arrived on Thursday and she was so excited she had a hard time formulating a sentence. She pretty much just clapped and shrieked "Excited!" when she saw what it was. She makes my day. :)

Needless to say there's been a lot of tea time over here.

My contribution to the tea party? A gigantic cup of coffee. I'm not a tea drinker ;)

On a totally unrelated note, today is the last day of August. What the heck summer, where did you go??  Today also happens to be Chad's 10th high school reunion, which we are attending in spirit only since he's up against a pretty intense deadline to finish a huge school assignment by Monday. He's working on his prospectus for his research proposal (don't fall asleep, that's the most technical thing I'll say in this post) and he has an important phone meeting about it tomorrow. This is all prep stuff he has to get done before we leave for our trip in less than two weeks. So instead of having a night out to meet up with old friends we are hanging out here...ah well, there are worse things. Like my 10th reunion last year, which was really pretty terrible. Nothing bad or dramatic happened, it wasn't that. It was just thrown together at the last minute at a dumpy bar and about twelve people showed up. We left by 9 and went to the movies and out for coffee. That was definitely the highlight of the evening and I don't even remember what movie we saw.

Speaking of high school, the first high school football game was last night. I sometimes forget how loud it can be with a stadium literally in our back yard, but it's a good kind of loud. I like hearing the marching band and the cheering, and smelling that delicious fall woodsmoke smell from all the fire pits, lined all up and down just about every backyard on our street where people gather to watch the game through the fence.

Goodbye August. You were a good one.

Have a fabulous holiday weekend!

~Stacy

In Two Weeks...

In just two short weeks we will be here:

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We are driving to Vermont in two weeks for a short vacation that is doubling as the last leg of the journey toward Chad receiving his MBA. He has to give a presentation to a group of faculty (no pressure) to get the all clear to begin his final thesis project to complete his degree. When he started at Green Mountain College almost exactly five years ago we visited Vermont for the very first time. Way back then (because it feels like it was twenty years ago) it seemed like his graduate coursework would never come to be; his graduation date so far in the future it didn't even sound like a real year. 

Well, it is a real year. And here we are. Five years later and we'll pack the car, make the 8.5 hour drive, do the obligatory school stuff, and try to get in as much fun and outdoor activity as we can. We're even staying at the same B&B, which I can't wait for. More on that later, but the place is just wonderful.

This will be our first trip without Charlotte, our first time away from her for more than one night. While I am looking forward to the trip, I am kind of dreading being away from her for that long. It makes my heart ache a little just thinking about it. But had this been the case 5 years ago, I would not have had a smartphone capable of taking pictures or FaceTime...so for that I am very thankful :) And I know she'll be in good hands, having a blast with my parents. She gets to follow her Grandpa around for four whole days, which is pretty much her idea of heaven. 

And my idea of heaven? This state in the fall. The leaves are already changing here, so I'm hoping that we see some pretty colors happening in Vermont. Vermont can be a bit of a show off in the fall...

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See what I mean?

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And this:

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Ridiculous. How can one state be so pretty? I'm just glad my camera lens is fixed, because this place is made for picture taking. And I'm ready :) You've been warned.

~Stacy

Some Greatness

As the final week of August begins and the month comes to a close, here's a look at the past week. It was a good one. But with pretend grocery stores, a visit from an awesome friend, and a bedroom overhaul where can you go wrong?

Let's start with the pretend grocery store. I had a moment of weakness and found a toy that I wanted to play with just as much as Charlotte did, so it came home with us. I'm she's pretty thrilled about it.

 It has a conveyor belt, scanner, working cash register with calculator, play money, and a credit card machine. Factor in the play food she already owns and homemade grocery bag and we're all set for a long time of pretend shopping. :)

On Saturday our best friend from college, Adam, visited from Pittsburgh. He brought two fabulous things. Thing one:

You might be looking at those and thinking "my, what delicious looking donuts!", but you would only be half right. Why half? Because these, my friends, are cronuts. A doughnut meets a croissant and then has delicious icing and cinnamon on top and some more delicious icing in the middle. I ate half of one and almost passed out from the sugar intensity but they are good.

And thing two:

Adam brought her a cat piano, which she loves. Clearly.

So about that bedroom overhaul...we decided to buy Charlotte an official "big girl bed" (a twin bed), since the whole plan of taking down the side of her crib and converting it to a toddler bed was an epic failure. For the past several weeks she's been sleeping in a regular twin bed at my parents' house when she visits and loves it, and she's been telling us she wants one for home. So we decided to get one, put it in her room with her crib, and transition her that way. I think it will work much better--I hope.

Anyway, I let her decide on a new paint color since we never repainted that room when she was born. It was already a neutral yellow so we left it. But it's been six years since that room has had fresh paint and it was time. So I asked her a couple weeks ago and almost before the question was out of my mouth she said "pink!". So pink it is. I found a light pink color, appropriately named "Ballerina", since she wants to be a ballerina right now. I repainted the trim a fresh white, and the ceiling (I cannot emphasize enough how much I hate painting ceilings. Well, painting anything really but I save a special hatred for ceilings). I'll show more detailed before/after pics later but here's a sneak peek:

Another exciting thing? Pigtails. That's right, this girl's hair is finally ready for them!

And some other random goodies, like finding her here:

Me: "What are you up to over there?"

Her: "Just sewin' Mommy."

You know, like it was the most obvious and normal thing for a two year old to be doing. :)

Love her.

Enjoy your last bit of August!

~Stacy