Bunk Beds

The girls have shared a room since Ethan was born, but these beds were just two twins.

As part of our Summer To-Do List, Lillian wanted to make them into bunk beds.

Pro tip: do not try to assemble bunk beds by yourself while 7 months pregnant.

We also painted our loft which has been half-painted for... a while.  The tape and sheeting were left up for a day or two while we were putting up a few coats and I found this little guy is a bark scorpion which the bug guy said that he sprayed for.  Blech, I hate scorpions.

How's your backyard?

This represents about 4 weekends of work. By Tyler. He's nice to have around.

P is for Projects

We're big into letters around here, but that's not what this post is about. On rare occasions, I (Tyler) have time to be handy and make stuff. Here's a couple of the recent ones that I wanted to show off:


First we have the train set. Lillian came home from preschool one time with a train set she made out of toilet paper rolls (the cardboard on the inside) and milk carton lids for wheels, all held together with brads, string, and a little glue. Sadly, the train didn't last through the night. After many tears, I told Lillian I'd make her a new train, a BETTER train.







Second, we have the shelves. You many not know this about our brand new house, but we only have one (1) closet that is not in one of the bedrooms: the Harry Potter closet under the stairs. And although large, it was deep and impossible to get to anything in the back. In with the shelves and now we have an extended pantry/food storage/place for the games/camping stuff and we still have room to walk in and out.







Finally we have the spice rack. Amanda apparently had no problem finding spices when she had them scattered willy nilly about the cupboard. It drove me crazy trying to find anything so I built this double decker rack. It may not be perfectly flat, but I think if you check out the video you'll see that it gets the job done quite nicely.

spice rack from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Composting

A few people have asked me about composting, so I thought I'd enlighten the world about how we compost, Ball style.

First you get a tub like this:

Then you drill lots of holes in it. The holes are about the size of my pinkie, maybe a little smaller. Make them in all the sides, the top, and the bottom too.

This is the stuff I put out this morning. There are all kinds of lists people have posted about what is and what is not compostable. Mostly, it's all organic matter that isn't dairy or meat.


To have successful compost, you need to have about equal parts brown matter and green matter. You can think of it like this: the stuff from your kitchen is green matter, the stuff from trees is brown matter. Some examples of brown matter are: sawdust, shredded bills (this is very satisfying), torn up newspaper, dead leaves, etc.


I keep the small tub of sawdust next to the compost and pour in a couple handfuls every time I add stuff from the kitchen.


Then you shake it all up. Air is very important to the compost, as well as water. You may have heard that Tucson is a desert, so I wet down the compost about once a week. It should be as wet as a wrung-out sponge. If you live in a place that is more humid, you may not need to wet it down.

Your compost will have arthropods in it, this is a good thing. If you can't handle that, composting is not for you. It doesn't smell if you're doing it right. I did have a period where mine was attracting a lot of flies, but I don't think I was putting in enough brown matter, and it was right after I made jam, so the compost was like 80% strawberry tops and hulls. I haven't had much of a problem since then.

Also, notice at the bottom of the last picture, I put a sun chips bag in there almost 2 months ago, and it's still fully intact, crinkling as loudly as ever.

Garage Update

My parents came to town for a little over a week in August to help out with the new baby. Well, actually my mom came with my niece Courtney to help with the baby, while my dad came to play with me. So I took the week off work and most of the time was spend working on this:

It may not look like it to those with untrained eyes, but this took most of the week (in the garage in AZ in Aug mind you). I'd estimate we made at least 10 trips to home depot and drank at least 20 gallons of water each.

Last weekend I was trying to do something in the garage and I decided it was a little cluttered so I utilized some empty space in the garage like so:

So maybe I put a few extra things on those hooks, but it sure did open up the garage. It even had Amanda saying, "Awww, its like we have a grown-up person garage!". Finally, I have a proper place to shed my blood, sweat and tears. Thanks dad.

Look down, now look up. Your kids are now in a sandbox.

One of my projects I had while away from work when Ethan was born was to build a sandbox. Lillian and I bought all of the materials and sand and cut and assembled it in most of one day. Lillian spent most of her time playing with my hand tools, but she did hand me a screwdriver every now and then. It just so happened that I found a smokin' deal on a plunge router a day or two before I built the box, so I decided to make good use of it and put the kids names on the side: "See Amanda, we did need a router." Hopefully I don't have to have another child before I have time to build something again.

Long suffering and long toiling

Tyler is a hard worker. Having watched him go through 4 years of school, I knew this, but I haven't really seen him work so hard on one project since then, so I think I forgot a little. On Saturday, he was out in our backyard working for probably about 10 hours. I'd bet he's put in about 30 hours total: digging, shoveling, hauling, raking, more shoveling, leveling, measuring, measuring again, staking, mortaring, and the like.

I probably complained somewhere along the way that he was spending a lot of time in the backyard and not enough time waiting on me hand and foot, but it's going to be soooooo nice to have a place where the kids can go outside and spend some energy without getting incredibly dirty and/or attacked by ants.


Don't mind Lillian's crazy hair. I put it in Chun-Li buns for church which she promptly took out when we got home. Also, she dressed herself.


I think he's going to mortar in the backside just for aesthetics, finish laying the bricks (which is the easy part), and then sweep sand over all the cracks. (And then we have to actually buy patio furniture... but first things first.)


Lillian was fascinated and a little upset that a pigeon walked over daddy's sand, especially after I'd been telling her for a week not to do it. The little footprints are Nora's. In Lillian's words, she's a stinker who doesn't listen.

Tyler thought this picture looked like those vinyl decals people put on the back of their cars. Check out that belly... yeah, I still have 2.5 more months.

To finish the backyard, Tyler has to dig for and install a sprinkler system, I think he's decided to lay sod instead of seed, and do something about maybe making me a planter to have my garden that I will probably kill.

Sticking it to the man

Really, I don't have many hobbies. I'm not that crafty and I'm am living proof that not all Mormon women like scrap booking. But, one of the things I do like to do is find ways to stick it to the man.


My MIL taught me how to make my own spreadable butter. She's been doing this for years and the butter industry totally copied her and they now sell this stuff for like $3.50 for a little tub. She should have patented it.

What you do is mix equal parts just-softened butter with canola oil. To fill a little tub like this, I use a cup of butter and a cup of oil. It's pretty liquidy when you mix it, but it sets up in the fridge. Soft even when cold. She uses unsalted butter and adds in her own salt. I just use salted butter and save myself the trouble.


Another way I stick it to the man is my obsession with patching and mending. When we were in school and Tyler rode his bike all over San Luis Obispo, his inseams wore out really fast. I must have sewed up each pair of pants at least 4 or 5 times and added a patch or two before he would buy new ones. His favorite pajama pants are getting to be quite comical. I tried to buy new ones, but The Perfect Pair is hard to find: somehow, the garment industry doesn't think that tall, skinny people want loungewear for their bottom halfs.

This pad got a rip in it the last time I ran it through the wash, and then with us sitting on it, it got a little frayed. Now, it's the lucky chair.

High Chair Makeover

Yesterday, I was perusing the giveaway section of Goodreads, and they had a book about called EcoBaby or something. The blurb said that average parents spend upwards of $7,000 in preparation for the birth of their child. Is this true? Because that's ridiculous. This book purported to show you how to spend less than $1,000. I'm pretty sure that for Lillian, we spent about $50 before she was born, and not really very much until she started growing out of all the hand-me-down clothes we got from friends and relatives a year or so later.

I didn't really think that it was a secret that to save money, you don't buy new things: you borrow, take hand-me-downs, pillage thrift stores, breast feed (if you can), and make your own baby food, which is not that hard. I should have written that book.

Anyway, we were really fortunate to get a lot of our baby furniture from Tyler's sister, who was done having her kids. One of the things she gave us was this high chair:


It's sturdy and useful and, until recently when Tyler broke a prong off one of the buckles, in perfect working order. But, sorry Tonya, it's ugly. I've always thought it was ugly.

Then, the other day, I ran across a website selling (and extolling the virtues of) laminated cotton. At first I couldn't find any for less than $18/yard, and I thought that was a little steep. So I looked into just buying a new cover, but that was going to cost anywhere from $30 to $50, and I'm not paying that.


Finally, I found some non-ugly, gender-neutral fabric for only $13/yard. I felt like I had won the lottery. Later, when Tyler came home from work and I relayed this whole story in breathless detail, as he was trying very hard to sound interested and hide the bored look creeping onto his face, I stopped myself and realized that this is my life. And I was very depressed for a second.


But then I remembered that no, this is my life:
and I was happy again.

Ta-Da! It doesn't fit quite as snugly as the other one did (which is weird because I cut the pieces the same size), and it's only slightly mangled around the left side, but I think it looks pretty good.

Well, we have done SOME things.

Back in September, we decided how we were going to do up the backyard. That was pretty much all we did about that. Then we got this dog. If it were up to me, the dog would be a 99.9% outside dog. I realize that we do have some extreme temperatures here where we'd have to let her inside, like the 6 months where it's so hot, you want to take off your skin and soak your bones in a bucket of ice water. But, it's a short haired dog... right? This prejudice is probably because my dogs growing up were 99.999% outside and the concept of an inside dog is completely bizarre to me. But, I think Tyler likes the dog to lay at his feet while he watches Dead Like Me (by himself because I'm sleeping). This means that we let her in. Which means she jumps on the counter. And pees on the carpet (although, not anymore). And steals the kids snacks. And jumps on the couch. I have thought about shooting the dog with our shotgun, but I don't know where the shells are. I would use the .57 magnum, but because of my irrational fear of pistols, I don't know how to use it and I'd probably end up killing myself or one of my small charges that I actually like, which would look bad.

Canineicide aside, the dog brings in a lot of dirt into the house during these jumping, stealing, peeing ventures. Dirt from our backyard, that is still dirt.


This dirt grossness was the catalyst for us actually getting in the car and going to the landscaping place to look at pavers. Tyler decided on this pattern, and I think we're going to go with this color which is actually kind of a gray-purple, if you can't tell from the pictures..


I realize that we're still not all that much closer to being done, but it's one small step towards finishing, one giant leap towards getting started. I think the next step is renting a jackhammer to dig up our hard-as-rock dirt. So... that will be fun, not that I'll get to use it. Dumb pregnancy; it ruins all my fun.



Also, this is how Lillian spent all of dinner last night. We had ravioli. She likes ravioli. Usually.

Well, I don't really want you to die.

We didn't have TV until we moved to Tucson. In SLO, I think we got a fuzzy NBC; and in one apartment, we got PBS, but that's it. Then, we graduated and Tyler got a real job and we ordered cable. A luxury such as that I had not known in a long time. At first, I spent hours watching What Not To Wear and Trauma, Life in the ER. I watched a few episodes of various baby and birthing shows, but the ones where the babies/mothers had negative outcomes made me upset, so Tyler banned them from our house.

After a few months, we realized that cable TV is expensive. Very expensive. And our TV watching sort of petered out anyway. When we moved to Sahuarita, we got basic cable. I looked it up, and it was $21.95 a month for 20 channels.

Me: I'd like basic cable.
Cox guy: OK, that will be $50 a month for 80 channels.
Me: No, I'd like BASIC cable.
CG: (incredulous) Like... the one where you only get 20 channels....? (Like no one in their right mind would do something like that. Only 20 channels? A person will go crazy with so few options).

So, that's what we had. Then, that $21.95 a month started feeling like a lot. Especially after we added our car payment and extra insurance.

This is what Tyler is doing outside as I type. With the antenna, we get NBC, CBS, FOX, 5 different PBS stations (one of which is in Spanish and a kids PBS, which is brilliant), various Telemundo stations, and the Tucson channel. Which is almost as many as we were getting with basic cable.

Antenna: $100
Mount, grounding wire, and various odds and ends: $20
New drill bit to drill into our bedroom closet: $10
Ladder rental: $20

Sticking it to the man: Priceless.

Also, I asked Tyler if he felt handy, completing his first major home improvement project on his first house. He was up on the ladder when I asked and he answered, "Not right now. I actually kind of feel like I'm going to die."

Backyard Landscaping

Our backyard right now is just dirt. Boring. Of course, we've been planning to landscape it, but it was sort of far down on the priorities list. #1 was a car for Tyler. #2 was blinds. #3 was couches for the front room. #4 was a piano for me. #5 (now #1, I guess) is landscaping the backyard.

We knew we wanted some bricks and some grass... but now that it's next on our to do, I can't decide how I want it. So I thought I'd leave it to the internet. Now, I know you're not surprised that Tyler built a scale model in SolidWorks of our backyard, because you shouldn't be. (Even the BBQ and patio set are to scale.)


These first two shots are of option one- Extending our current small patio.


Pro: it would be a larger flat area. You could just walk right out of the house to put stuff on the table for dinner and not have to walk around the BBQ.

Con: the table would mess up the line of sight to the lake if we wanted to have a porch swing and swing on it at night, or whatever.

And, option #2:

Pro: clear shot right out of the house to whatever swing set or climbing apparatus we want to put out there. Also, clean line of sight from future porch swing.


Con: left turn out of the house, seems to eat up more grass area.

I think we've mostly decided to get fake grass. Tyler was very anti fake grass until he accepted the fact that to have a lush, green Northern-California-type lawn, you'll lose your shirt to the water company. And, the Arizona grass that goes brown dormant in the summer is unacceptable, apparently.

I also want him to put a planter out there, but we've talked about that before. I'm still not sure that I'll grow actual food in it... maybe just some nice flowers.

Piano Sleuth

I mentioned a while ago that I was going to buy a piano. I had about $500 saved up thus far for the whole operation, but I was still unsure of what direction I wanted to go. Did I want a new piano (which would have cost a bit more than $500, which means a lot more time spent saving)? Did I want an electric piano? Did I want a used piano? How used are we talking here? One day two weeks ago, I was idly checking craigslist for used pianos, and I happened upon a listing for the Green Valley thrift store (which is right close to me... actually, it's the only thing close to me). They were listing a piano for $180. "Chances are," I thought to myself, "it's a piece of crap." But I loaded the kids in the car and drove down there to check it out.

We got there, and the piano was off in a dusty corner with a tag that indicated the price had been marked down at least 3 or 4 times. Probably because all the keys didn't work.


So I opened her up to see what was going on with those keys.


I noticed that the inside had a fancy design on it, just like the piano I grew up with.


(This is a dramatization, of course.) What I saw was that the offending keys were disconnected.


There, right as rain. And, the little old ladies were very impressed at my engineering know-how.


While reassembling the piano, this little screw came out. I put it back in and decided to buy the piano. I could have afforded a nicer piano, but I had no way to move a nicer piano from who-knows-where in Tucson down to my house aaaaand, these nice old ladies were going to get someone to deliver it in two days for a nominal fee.

I waited with baited breath.

The piano showed up two days later and it looked... off. The first thing I noticed was that it didn't have a music stand (see above picture). I asked the delivery men if it had come off, or if they had taken in off and forgotten it. They didn't know what I was talking about. Huh, maybe that screw came loose and some helpful sales person had set it aside somewhere. I'd call the store later. The second thing I noticed was that some of the keys were cracked. I didn't remember that at all. Those moving jerks cracked my keys. I did a run up the keyboard to make sure they still worked, and a number of them didn't so I opened it up again. No fancy design. In fact, the whole set up was different. By this point, the moving truck was pulling away. I ran out behind them, flailing my arms, screaming, "You brought the wrong piano!!!"

There was only one piano in the store, they tried to tell me. I carefully explained my case, went through all my exhibits, and finally found my receipt that confirmed that yes, they had brought the wrong piano.


A few days later, they showed up with the right one. A week later, the nice old piano tuner man came and gave it his once over.


And now I have a piano.