Archive for the ‘house stuffs’ Category

My kingdom for a free weekend at home.

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Posted 18 Jul 2012 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category house stuffs, marriage, motherhood, toddler business

This week marks the beginning of a six week period of time where I will not rest my head at home on any Friday or Saturday nights. Six weekends of being away from home. Six weeks of unpacking and repacking suitcases and duffel bags, restocking travel shampoos and on certain weekends, kissing Abby goodbye for a few days.

Don’t get me wrong – not one of the weekends I’d skip. They’re all full of family, friends, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and MOTHER EFFING BLOGHER IN NYC (I’ll try to save that for another post, because the internet isn’t annoyed enough with all that already). It’s just insane to me, that yet again, the hubs and I can say “We’re not making any plans this summer! Let’s relax!” in April and then suddenly every plan was made within the next six weeks. OH THE IRONY.

In my mind, this is all the ultimate test of my anxiety and whether or not I have it under control. I mean, for most people sans crazy problems, this sort of social schedule would throw half of them over the edge. Me? I’m already losing sleep. NOT GETTING PANICKY, LET’S NOT PANIC…just not sleeping well. Which sucks. And then tends to make me more anxious. And then I go to BlogHer and my anxiety almost kills me to the point where I almost vomit and shit myself at a table of 20 bloggers ON MY FIRST NIGHT THERE…<wraspy fast breathing> OH WAIT. That was last year.

I forgot I’m not talking about #blogher12. And I also forgot this isn’t Twitter. (Which, PS. If you don’t follow me on the Twitters yet, you totes should. I’m there way more often than I am here.)

And since it’s been over 2 weeks since I posted last, here’s what I’ve been up to:

  • Painting the exterior of our house & garage. (NOT FUN) (buy our house)
  • Getting a new garage door hung (buy our house)
  • Hauling rocks out of our backyard where a kennel once stood. (buy our house)
  • And general toddler business, like trying to potty-train and re-sleep train Abbers. (buy our house)

Did you see what I did there? It’s called “Shitty subliminal blogger messaging.” Don’t you suddenly feel like buying my house? I thought so. LUCKY YOU – we’re planning on putting it on the market early this fall! Hence the painting and rock hauling and caring about garage doors. Mama needs more space and if we’re planning on adding another germ-magnet to the family (NO I’M NOT PREGNANT, MOM) we need more usable space. And a better school district. And a two car garage. And three million dollhairs. And a McDonald’s Coke machine in my kitchen. You know, typical wishlist items for the possible “forever home.”

So that’s me in a nutshell. I’m going to try to get a few more posts in here after each weekend of madness so you can follow along with all the fun. But we all know what a half-assed blogger I am. I make and break promises like Justin Bieber influences lesbian style around the world.

image courtesy of wwtdd.com

Adios crib. Hello big girl bed.

1 Comment
Posted 11 Dec 2011 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, house stuffs, motherhood, paparazzi

Three hours and one effed up shoulder later, we have this.

I have to say, I love it. I got choked up when I started taking apart her crib/toddler bed. When the hubs and I brought the pieces down to the basement, I wondered if we’d ever put it back together again. (I made sure to separate all the screws and bolts and label them accordingly, so I don’t curse the day I ever took it apart. You know, just in case.) And then I started feeling panicky and sweaty so I decided to worry more about getting an Ikea bed assembled and less about procreation and the next five years of my life.

Anyway, Abby loves her new NEW big girl bed.

I’m probably going to cry.

1 Comment
Posted 11 Dec 2011 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, house stuffs, paparazzi, toddler business

Today, we are starting another new chapter in Abby’s life. The REAL big girl bed.

She’s been sleeping in her crib-turned-toddler bed quite well, but with the recent (and successful, might I add) removal of bottles from the bedtime routine, the focus is now majorly on book reading. And she is almost too big to be held in the rocking chair anymore, so we’ve been reading to her in bed. Mostly, I’ve been laying in her effing crib reading to her. (Go ahead and picture that in your mind. Now imagine me trying to get out of her bed without waking her. It’s slapstick comedy at best.)

Anyway, I started moving things around in her room to accommodate said big girl bed. Here’s an in-progress photo shoot:

I’ll update again while in progress. Wish us luck. Ikea can be a bear on Sundays.

 

What to do in my free time…

2 Comments
Posted 06 Jul 2011 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category house stuffs, LadyCave, RAD, retail therapy

(And by “free time,” of course I’m eluding to the hour I have after Abby goes to bed and when I go to bed every night.)

So, Summer’s nearly half over. Go ahead and punch me in the e-face for saying that. I just did. Regardless, this means a few things:

  • BlogHer is less than a month away and I haven’t ordered business cards yet, procured an outfit fit for SparkleCorn or had my third mental break about how HOLY CRAP IT’S LESS THAN A MONTH BEFORE I SEE ALL MY FAVORITE BLOGGY FRIENDS.
  • I haven’t gotten ANYTHING done on the house that I was hoping to. (This includes but is not limited to painting our bedroom & putting up curtains or painting the exterior of the house. Or planting flowers. Or getting rid of that damn dog kennel.)
  • It finally just got nice out. And summer is almost over. (Go ahead and punch me again.)

Anyway, since I clearly have nothing else to do-slash-worry about, I’ve decided to add a few other endeavors to my never-ending to-do list. Two of which I don’t want to talk about yet lest I jinx myself and then they don’t happen because I’m SUPER excited about both of them (stay tuned). HOWEVER, the one I can talk about is this:

I plan on creating a LADYCAVE in my attic space.

No, that was not innuendo. As much as it sounded like it was. Maybe we should just pretend it was innuendo because it’s funnier that way.

Right now we have a full finished atticspace that is currently functioning as a spare bedroom/dumping ground for old baby clothes & gear/dumping ground for my purses, doll collection…

Okay – it’s just a dumping ground with a bed, desk & dressers that is totally not working for me.

I really want to create a space where I can disappear to if I need to write a blog post, or load picture to the laptop from the camera, or just relax for some “alone” time. In 18 years when Abby’s out of the house. Hopefully.

SO. I’ve armed myself with a new subscription to House Beautiful magazine and a new pinboard on Pinterest, titled LadyCave.

I’m super serious about making this happen. Well, as serious as I am about painting our bedroom and getting rid of that dog kennel. BUT I’M FOR SERIOUS. I will make this change happen. I’m sure IKEA will be my muse.

Anyone see anything awesome I need to pin? Let me know.

 

(oh, and a post with pictures from the weekend and one of the new ink to come. PROMISE.)

The Nursery – where is it now?

4 Comments
Posted 19 Apr 2011 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, baby business, house stuffs, paparazzi, retail therapy

Since I posted a “Nursery” tab at the top of the this blog, I realized how much we’ve added to it since then. The biggest addition being a toddler.

Not that I had another baby, but let’s be honest – this isn’t a nursery anymore. It’s Abby’s room.

I look back at all the initial photos I posted, and they’re so organized and minimal. This is due to two reasons – one being that Abby really WAS a baby, and was not able to do anything in this room but sleep in it. The second is that – and I’ll be honest here – I was trying to impress the folks at Ohdeedoh. And it didn’t work. I still get a lot of traffic from there, but it’s mostly people checking out the paint color on the walls. (It’s Benjamin Moore’s Grey Wisp if you’re curious).

Anyway, this room has changed from my version of baby heaven to Abby’s. There’s more toys, more books, more EVERYTHING because she needs deserves everything.

view from the doorway

detail: pictures opposite dresser

changing table, glider & shelves

detail: hook under shelves

detail from top shelf: personalized crest waiting to be framed

bookshelf, crib, diaper genie (gross), mounds of toys

And a more interesting view of the same picture:

VERY interesting

 

So, that’s a good vision of Abby’s room today-much more lived in, more crap, still more to do, but loved so very much by a little girl and her parents.

(if you have any questions about where we got anything, just let me know and I’ll add it to the bottom of this post!)

(oh, and sorry but not really about the photo quality. the fancy camera’s batteries were dead so I was stuck with ye olde point & shoot. my bad.)

Baby Announcement Crest – Found at a gorgeous Etsy shop called Spread the Love. Melanie was awesome to work with!

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