Life in Color Photo – Page 92 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

And the water is off… again

Not that I'm complaining too much, I mean I have the sweetest neighbor who basically lets me waltz into her house whenever I have to pee (thank you Tracy for not making me use the porta potty). And this means things are getting done! Of course it looks fabulous in the yard:

Ugh, that's a project for the summer. As is this:

Yikes, and since we took away part of the fence separating us my neighbors get a good view of this too. Did I mention I have awesome neighbors? Things are going well up there:

Windows! Sheetrock! Tape! Fabulousness. It took a bit of trickiness to get all the angles for this area:

The two main corners were done with a rounded edge to minimize accidents down the road.

I think a good goal for this bathroom (the kid's) will be to get the ladder and leaves out of the tub before baby comes. 🙂

Things are going well downstairs also:

The Ribbon Jar side remains extremely cordoned off. But it is pouring out side so mud is everywhere else. The big hole in the front yard is because we just got new water service from the street. Yum, clean water. See then it was like, well it comes to here:

A new water shut off that actually works! So after this it joins back up with our old pipes in the house. For $300 it seemed stupid to pass up new pipes in the house, and that's what is going on down there now. It should be signed off on tomorrow so that we can finish sheet rocking. Oh and we came up with a solution to the pipes that can still be seen:

The left will look like a closet, but really just have that pump. The right will be cupboards on the bottom and then shelving up above. I think it will look really clean and nice. You know, once I can start making things clean and nice. Oh and this one is for Bj:

Our new range hood soon will not just be for looks! He is super excited about this (hey, me too). There is still one more step. And we might have to live with the electric range for a while (budget issues), but actual venting air over the stove? Genius!

Baby Book

So right after I moaned to Sarah on her blog that I wasn't going to be able to make a baby book for my little baby I realized, that I had to do it, regardless of where my supplies were. And so I drug everything upstairs (including the table to which Bj said, "AMBER!!!!"). I know, I know, my back is hurting me now, but worth it maybe?

It's totally temporary, I have to take it down tomorrow, but this is set up in my living room, in the midst of construction chaos. So I haven't really been scrapbooking during the day because it's cold and there are a lot of guys walking around. But over the last few nights I have managed to get a good start on:

The baby book! My brother and his girlfriend gave me a gift certificate to a local scrapbooking place and when I went there I decided I didn't really need many embellishments.

I'm going to stick with ribbon, flowers, brads, labels, Quickutz Paige letters, and white, kraft and green cardstock. I also came up with a set design for the background paper so I can have some extra of those cut out. I know I'm not going to finish the book now so I have a couple big ziplocs of all the supplies. That should be all I'll need to finish it.

I did a page just like this for me as well. The right side will be pictures of Bj and then one block will be for journaling about him.

More pictures of baby as a fresh little new born. What kind of ink can you use on their little feet for the footprints?

I pulled out my baby book and it's really simple, but I love reading the things my mom wrote about me. some favorites:
"2 months – sleeps all night long, but likes to be rocked to sleep and have her back rubbed."
"8 months – follows me around house, plays in kitchen drawer and cupboard (under my feet)."
under year two it says, "Talks all day long!"
4th birthday, "Soooo happy to get a cabbage patch doll! she even cried happy tears!"

So I think I'm going to need pages where I just list memories and thing, besides pictures. I printed off some lists of more pages I want to make. We'll see how far I get.

Also making me happy today:

More hole filling! Lots of progress on the house. We picked out all our light fixtures, I picked up light bulbs yesterday, carpet is ordered, my cabinets come tomorrow, and my mom and I are going to pick up the tile. I'm going to go get mini cans of paint today so that when the texture is finished at the end of the week I can put samples on the wall!

Patching

Once your house gets ripped apart it's the waiting for it to be put back together that seems to drag on and on. Today things really seem to be turning more towards that putting back, and I am so grateful. First of all that arch that I've missed, it's back!

He asked me if it looked like it did before, and I looked for pictures, but turns out I need to zoom out more when I shoot the house. This was the closest I could find (looking back through the my cottage category makes me miss the tidiness so badly). I think it's the same. It looks good to me. The other thing the master sheet-rocker is doing? Patching all of those "oops" holes people have been making ALL OVER THE HOUSE. Turns out it's hard to get between these old walls.

Hey look there's one right behind the computer screen. This makes me so happy because they "leak" dust and I don't like dust. I know dust is usually mainly skin cells and stuff, but I bet 99% of the dust in my house right now is pure plaster baby. The rest of the upstairs is starting to really take shape too:

We passed plumbing inspection upstairs so the green board (sheet rock treated to resist moisture) is going up in the bathrooms (here the kid's bathroom). The bad news? We didn't pass in the basement. The drain did not have enough fall so that can't be covered yet. The plumber says he'll be back right away (or he said he would two hours ago, I haven't seen him yet). The cuteness of the alcove still tickles me:

The highest point there is 6' 8". The two middle boxes under the window seat will be cupboards, and then along each side built in bookcases. A little library for our little human. Taking advantage of all the little spaces was something I really wanted to do. Okay so the built-ins under all the eves didn't work out (hey turns out that costs tons of money). But we are going to put one in this room:

(the "airlock" between construction and actual finished house) We're utilizing this space:

That's our old closet. It will have two side by side chests of drawers with an open box that I made tall enough for my cardstock collection. And speaking of cardstock, and thus scrapbooking and paper crafting and all that goodness. I seem to have caught the bug again. At the worst time too. I tried yesterday to work on the floor of our clean room (bedroom/home office/closet/scraproom/knitting nook), but I've got way to fat pregnant to make that work. I had to take a bath last night (well, had to, more like wanted to, I love the new tub) to get the tightness to go away. But I still managed to get a start on this:

The baby probably won't come until the new year, but I figure December is still going to be nutso crazy. I mean I'm going to nest people, you know I'm going to. The house will be done (1 month… really!). I will be decorating and sewing and CLEANING. I'm even going to have my grandma over. She's the cleaning/pillow fluffing/furniture re-arranging guru. So things will be moving along. I'll have weekly midwife appointments, holiday things, presents to make. I'm sure lots to write down. So I decided to do Ali's album idea again this year. I've done it before (gah was I an over achiever than or what?) but I'm doing it simple this year. I picked out four colors of 8.5 x 11 paper, halved it, cut up the back of a drawing tablet for the covers (hey my supplies are all buried downstairs) and punched holes in a few more random things to add interest (like the Alaskan journal). One thing I do love about having a bunch of my stuff in storage is that I use what I can get at. I'm dreaming of my new craft room now (the room that was our bedroom, with the built in drawers). I have to keep it SERIOUSLY tidy (it's also the walkway to upstairs) so I'm contemplating new organizational and design options.

Oh the plumbers just got here, gotta go!

I’m over it; or plumbers are messy

Oh you guys. I want a clean house, like yesterday. But instead yesterday I got the messiness that is plumbing work. And um, yuck. I mean, good, I'm glad we're getting it done, but ewwww. The bathroom received more holes:

Which may not look like it, but is actually a good thing. We did think we were going to have to move the toilet, push out that wall and have the pipes go down that way. But with a little clever work on the plumbers part we were able to do this. And this:

This is in the stairwell to the basement. We thought these were going to be exposed pipes, but they squeezed them in here. All the old nasty pipes in the basement are now gone (well we're still waiting on getting a new hot water pipe to the existing bathroom).

The pipes here stuck down really far. That thing in the floor is our mini pump for the utility sink down there. I'm having a built in cabinet/bookshelf combo to conceal this. On the other side:

This is where they let my bathroom sink drain on a rug.

Said rug, with said pipe. Old nasty pipe by the way. After they removed it I discovered why it wasn't draining so well. The pipes had rusted closed to leave only a pencil-width's opening. The plumbers were all, "wanna see, wanna see?" And I said yes, and then I regretted it. Double ew! This morning when four plumbers showed up I had to have a talk with them. I said, "listen, if you are going to make a mess on something just tell me. I'm here, I'll move it. It is way easier to clean up bare floor than rugs, boxes covered with stuff, or sinks full of plaster." We'll see if they take that to heart. In better news:

Bj survey's our bedroom. I think it must be nice to be gone all day and come home to see progress. We picked out our carpet (assuming the price is right), and tile (ditto) so that we could finalize our paint choices since they say they'll be painting by middle of next week. It goes paint, then electrical fixtures (and our mini split heat/ac units), then cabinets, then carpet/tile, then trim. Then they'll work on the outside. And finish up the random patching along with the basement. A lot of work ahead, but I can see the light. And I guess the plumbers aren't so terrible. I mean I did take another fantastic shower this morning. Still I will be a happier girl once I can clean and it stays that way 🙂

It’s good to be home

Yes, it's good to be home, no matter how much of a disaster home is right now. Bj and I got home very early on Saturday morning from a trip down to California. We went down to take grandpa's remains to rest with his wife at Riverside National Cemetery. It was sad, as I knew it would be. But luckily we were not alone. Grandpa's two nieces and one of their sons joined us for the ceremony. It was a very short affair, as somehow the honor guard did not get scheduled. I felt horrible about this since grandpa had written down quite a few places that he just wanted taps to be played (he qualified for gun salutes and a fly-by but didn't want it). They did play a recording of taps and Bj's 3rd cousin (?) helped fold up the flag which was presented to Bj. Bj said a few words and that was that. Then we went out to a late lunch with his relatives:

Bj has relatives on his dad's side! This was a first meeting for all of us. I found them to be very nice and it was interesting to hear what they remembered about grandpa.

We spent the rest of that day resting before meeting up with Bj's cousin (on his mother's side) for dinner. It was so much fun to hang out with them, and I felt so grateful for other family down in the area. Plus a 2 year old second cousin is quite the treat after dealing with sadness. I think children this age only know happiness: "I play at Gymboree! I have dollies! That color is pink!" That plus fresh guacamole, yum! We were also able to meet my dad, Kim and Emilie the next day for dinner, as they were down at their California home. Saturday was an early flight, but despite all my fears, it went well. I did as my midwife said and drank tons of water. I had to hurry back as a dear friend of mine was having a bridal shower that I could not miss.

Kathy was tortured in all the normal ways. Here she is getting fed a stick of gum after missing a question about her fiance. I had to play this game at one of mine, and I can tell you it's much more fun to watch! She was a great sport though:

And super cute of course, as all brides tend to be when in love. Her wedding is a few weeks after my due date, so I'm working on being supportive now. I'm guessing I'm a mess in January! Better get the gift now. Lots of the crew girls were there and I actually got some good pictures:

Baby and Sciarrino (yes the belly touching is a rare thing, don't try it, I might bite you!). Proof to the baby that Sciarrino was always around and so lovely to us.

When this girl gets married next summer there will be four little babies at her wedding, crazy! We'll try to keep them quite Kristen!

While we were gone our house was still being worked on. In fact I insisted that they do a few of the really noisy messy things, like this:

Removal of old tub. He said they might have to break it to remove it. I would call this broken all right. Good riddance to cold baths! You never did me right tub, never. Behold our new tub:

And more importantly to Bj, our new shower head that is above his head. Our old one came to his chest (I had to bend to fit under it, and I'm short). It was funny (to me), but so annoying for him. This is covered in plastic so we can use it. It won't be tiled until one of the new bathrooms is functional. Tile has to set for a week or so before getting wet, and we don't want to be without that long. I took a bath in here this morning. It's still short, but it was warm. And I was comfortable enough to soak for an hour with out even realizing it. Added bonus? Bye bye constant leak. Of course the real progress continues upstairs, so let me take you on a tour.

Stairs that come up through our old bedroom (the back bedroom) and up into the new second floor landing. This tall "entry" was a weird space to try and find a fixture for so we went with a set of can lights. To the right you can see the kid's bedroom door. Behind the stairs is it's closet. To the right of this is the kid's bathroom:

The tub/shower is not set yet, it will be pushed to the left and the short wall has the vanity and sink. The toilet is tucked into a little nook, much like downstairs. In fact this is right above the downstairs bathroom. The landing opens up to my favorite part:

It's our alcove! If you look out this window (on a really clear day) you can see Mt. Jefferson. The nook is tiny, six feet wide and just tall enough for Bj (6' 6" I think) at the highest point. The window seat will have two little cupboards in the middle. And then we'll have built in bookshelves on each side. We already have a fabulous rug to go right here and I can picture sitting there with baby when I close my eyes. I can't wait. To either side of this are attic voids that we'll use for storage:

They will be decked and have cupboard doors for access. I had plug ins put in there, so I'll string up Christmas lights or something to be able to see in. My mom has a couple of these and she covered the insulation with oilcloth, I think I'll do that too. The other side of the upstairs is our master suite.

Oh and in the hallway there is a linen closet. So that slanted opening will have a slightly shorter door than normal. That door leads to a little hallway. The hallway goes back to the bedroom area, with separate doors to the bathroom (you can see the shower there, it needs to be set). I'm excited for the bathroom but the one thing that I'll miss is a big soaking tub, there just wasn't room for one. So instead we got a big shower, with a seat for shaving. Not that I can shave right now with this belly, but I figure I"ll want to some day in the future :). The other door goes to our walk in closet. Right now our clothes are on a bar that keeps falling apart, so it will be quite the upgrade. Behind the closet in the bedroom is a nook:

We are going to put baby there for the first little bit. It's bigger than I thought it would seem. Big enough for a cradle and changing table at least.

So I'm showing you these pictures now, because after our insulation inspection tomorrow they should be rocking and rolling on the sheetrock. Then it will really look like rooms. It's already so much warmer having the insulation up. It should be four weeks until it's finished up there (and in the living room, and the basement). And after that the siding and porch will be done. I dream about cleaning, I can not wait until I can really clean this place. The dust is the most annoying thing in my universe right now!

Baby love – a baby shower!

This weekend my grandma threw me a baby shower, which was so lovely. It was up at her house so a lot of my family got to come (we live an hour south of most of my mom's family). My mom called me the day before to see if I had bought my grandma a hostess gift. "No," I said, "I made it!" I did this on Friday night at Sciarrino's. After glancing at a pattern in Denyse Schmidt's book I decided to have a go at it my own way. Which turned out to be a really tiny way. Lucky for me my grandma is tiny.

She throws a big Christmas party every year so I wanted to make her something for that. Lesson learned though, oven mitts have to be a little bigger than you might thing (if you want bigger hands to get in there). My mom was the one who ran me around all day:

And when we got up to Portland we picked up Tex. She drew the number to be my "slave" My grandma came up with this as an alternative to games, so she got to get me water, write the gifts down, etc.

Ha ha! I had no idea she made this face until I uploaded the pictures. Don't be scared of the baby Tex! 🙂 She won't be able to make it to our joint crew girl shower so that's why she got to come hang out with my lovely family. Of course she'll be on her honeymoon in New Zealand, so don't feel too sorry for her! Now I should note that everyone there told me I looked small in person and huge on my blog. I don't think I look that huge on my blog, but I'm just letting you know, lest you think I'm a tank or something. Oh and the consensus at this shower was for a boy, what do you think? Despite that my mom did get me something VERY pink (and cute) "just in case" And lastly there were a couple of cute babies at the shower. I didn't get a good picture of my cousin's daughter Meg, but I did snap one of this cutie:

Remember her?

Oh and since I didn't get to it before the date I thought I'd post my attempt to lure more trick-or-treaters than the ONE Bj got last year.

Note the decorations, and you can't really tell but I also have fake spiderwebs. So despite having a porta potty in the yard, lumber, piles of dirt, and a broken doorbell, I got seven knocks for candy! Whoo hoo. I'm thinking next year with the new porch I'll do even better.

I love going to my mom’s

When things are crazy and loud and cold at my house, sometimes it's just the ticket.

Taken with my iPhone yesterday. I know Bj, dangerous! But I didn't drop it. 🙂 Baby loves this. It moves around like a little nutball in there when I'm soaking. I just sit there and watch it and think to myself, "This is crazy!"And it is, and wonderful and I love it. Love you little baby!

I couldn’t live like that.

So yesterday we had our windows dropped off by a friend (who sells windows, convenient, no?). I was showing him around and I said, "I just can't wait until everything is clean." And he said something like, "Ya, I couldn't live like this." That's when I realized that it really is crazy. I'm freaking pregnant! So I give you some update pictures:

Me going upstairs where there were eight guys working, "Who cut the hole in the living room wall?"
Plumber, "Oh I did that."
Me, "Why?"
Plumber, "I went down the wrong wall."
great…. Plaster now all over Bj's electronics. So glad we're keeping the furniture covered. But in better news, they plumbers are doing a good job getting everything stuffed into walls. We were afraid the plumbing coming from the new master bath was going to have to show in the stairwell a bit, no worries there. And the plumbing from the kid's bath was going to have to run behind our current toilet (causing the wall to have to move out 2 inches), but they figured out a way to do it behind the sink, which is already fired out for the large pipes. Score!

The basement is not SUCH a disaster. The new footings are poured, and since they used hot set, they are dry. The walls are nearly done. My mom actually came up with a cool way to hide the pipes since we can't put back up the cabinet/nook thing we had before. Oh and she came up with a great idea for the space on the right. My mom is a design genius, I'll keep you posted.

Check it out. Bj no longer has to have a heart attack like he did every time I went down the stair/ladder combo, it's all stairs baby! And with all the temporary supports gone it's much easier to get around down there. Meanwhile upstairs:

Said plumbing. Leading to an inspection today that when passed means the rest of the joists can be decked, which means the rest of the walls can go up, which means the electrician can finish up here, which is great.

Windows go in today, and roofing goes on. This is actually moving fast. When I asked yesterday when they wanted the cabinets they said two weeks. I ordered and the earliest I can get them is the week of Thanksgiving. Oops. Bj says I'm going to get fired from my project manager role. Excuse me, who else is going to do it for free? 🙂 So yes, chaos. But I think I might have mentioned that I grew up around construction. And my parents never flipped out. We moved into one of our houses before the carpet was laid and spend a few days moving everything from room to room while one section of the house was installed. I called that an adventure, not annoying. Now this is more annoying than that, but I have some great guys working here, and a great imagination that lets me visualize exactly how it's going to look. People, it's gonna be awesome.

I don’t know about you, but crafting always makes me feel better.

So ya, that totally sucked. I'm still not over it (the tree cutting thing). Today I peaked out my bathroom window to see what my neighbor was doing and he was sitting in his driveway on a lawn chair facing our house. Creepy. Ugh. I talked to the neighbors on the corner about the flood light. They were super nice, but can't turn it off because it's activated by nightfall. And they've had five break-ins. So I give them that one, and put up extra blackout fabric behind the curtains for now. We'll see how I do tonight. My nice neighbor Tracy gave me her old changing table, so you know, I'm leaning towards that side of the street :).

But that's not what this post is about. See way back in September my mom was supposed to take me to Portland for a fun day to celebrate my birthday. But that was scheduled for the day after grandpa fell, and she got to take me to my Dr.'s appointment instead. So Saturday was the day. She picked me and my belly up in the morning.

We went to the last farmer's market of the season and got lots of yummy fresh veggies. We had an early lunch there. I had the most delicious creamy lentil and ham soup with grilled cheese sandwich. I don't think I've ever had soup and sandwich out side on a cold sunny morning before, it was fabulous. We popped into a fabric store so that my mom could get buttons for a project she's not doing such a good job at keeping secret from me. I was trying to stay away, and once I saw she was checking out I came over and my mom was talking to an acquittance. She exclaimed upon seeming me, "What happened to you? Well, I mean I know what happened…." It was pretty funny. All the ladies in the quilt shop were laughing. We headed to my mom's house and I was just going to work on more little blankets, but I figured with my mom there I should tackle something a little trickier, since she could help me with the hard bits. And I made this:

A little sleep bag! It's so soft (I made it out of flannel) and stylish. I used some fun quilting fabric to make the bias binding and even learned how to do snaps for the side.

Can you tell that they are awesome snaps? Because they are. I bought them locally, and it turns out she is on Etsy so you can all check her out at Epic Erma. These are the Cowgirl Snaps. After that project took almost all day (and another trip to the fabric store) I wanted to do something quick. So I worked on this project:

I've been wanting to make this pin cusion from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts for about a year. I had no pincusion. Now I want like fifty, this was so fun to make, and uses just scraps. It was a great day, thanks mom! I have enough flannel to make about a million soft things, but am going to wait before doing anything too major because I have showers coming up! Can you believe I'm far enough along to have a baby shower thrown for me?

Now can you? Ya, check out that belly! Bj took some pictures of me today after I realized it had been 6 weeks since the last batch. But to be fair we had a crazy last 6 weeks. The one thing I've been doing every night is write in the journal Michele got me. It only has room for a couple of sentences, so it's easy to make time for. At the beginning of each month there is a spot for a picture (and measurements and stuff). The ones of me at the beginning are just insane. I can't believe I was ever that small (ohhhh my poor boobs!!!). I don't know what I'm going to do about the shirt situation. I think maternity shirts should be a bit longer, the larger sizes just get bigger everywhere, so that's annoying. Anyway for those of you coming to my shower some registry information. I know someone needs help on this because the store called me, but I can't figure out who it was that couldn't find my registry, so spread the word:

Use the sidebar of this site to find our registry at
Little Urbanites
in the Pearl
916 NW 10th Ave.
503.227.8729
They also have a new online store/site right here. You can search for me in the registry section but it is missing a few of the special order items and things that are not yet listed online.

We are also registered at
Wee Bunz
1-888-WEE-BUNZ
Speaking of diapers, Bj just said to me tonight, "I just realized that if we have a girl we're going to have to be very careful of how we wipe it." Hehehe someone's been reading the baby books.

And yes we did do the big box baby store
Babies R Us
It just has a bunch of little stuff, safety stuff, and the convertible car seat for when the baby outgrows the infant one we got from Michele.

Of course we'd be happy with anything, so don't feel like you have to get us something from a registry at all. I know that I'm the first among many friends to have a little baby so some asked for a little guidance. There you go!

I weep for them

Two days ago I came back from a walk around my neighborhood to teenagers in my yard with chainsaws. This is never a sight one wants to see, especially when they have ropes dangling from the tops of arborvitae separating you and a neighbor (and the view of the intersection). I was upset, though the plants are clearly on mixed soil. I don't know who planted them, or when, but they've been there for a while.

I was mad, mostly that my neighbor didn't talk to us about it, that he used my yard to do all the work,etc. Bj was like, "Don't stress! You need to get over this, it's done, and we wanted them trimmed anyway." So I tried, I let it go. It was just the tops, and though sloppy, wouldn't really effect anything major. Then yesterday I got a call from another neighbor. She felt she should warn me that my neighbor had out the chainsaw again (well not him, but these teenage boys that we don't know where they come from). He chopped down all the trees from the edge of the fence to the arborvitae and now there was a huge gap between our yards. I'm glad she let me know because I think I would have gone into labor right there from shock. We're putting a nice big porch on the front of the house and now it's going to be not private at all. But my friends that was not the worst of it. What he did next he had every right to, but color me extremely upset anyway.
I'm not sure if many of you remember this idyllic scene from this last summer:

It is no more. The beautiful Japanese maple, the shrubs, all of it:

GONE. Why would you do this? Why?!?!?! I have a theory. I think it is because he hates me. See I put up that fence when I first moved in so that my back yard could be locked and no one would be able to get to my basement windows (and thus the Ribbon Jar). He can't get over it. I told him we were going to do it, and at that time he said nothing to me about it being a problem. I only found out after that he told everyone who came over he hates it. Um, I'm sorry but I have to fence in my backyard. So anyway. Now I have a new problem. The next neighbor over from him has three big floodlights. One:

Is like a personal streetlight. While annoying before, with nothing between me and it I now find it unbearable. I could not sleep last night it is so bright, and I was so upset about the tree thing. I may find this early morning post a bad idea later but I just had to get it out of my system. I can only hope little baby looks out its bathroom window to this:

And never looks straight down. I'm going to go be crafty at my mom's now.