Harry S. Truman 3rd grade report

My daughter has her very first report due tomorrow.

Check it out, it's quite informative. I think you will learn a lot.

My Chevron chair makeover is famous!

The chair makeover I showed you last week has been featured on Better After!  Yay! Go check it out.

Lindsey's hilarious blog features amazing furniture transformations. I love it and get lots of inspiration from it.

Thanks for writing about my chiar Lindsey!

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Rules Again

My daughter was in great need of a desk chair.  I wanted something cute but affordable.  I've looked a million times but everything I was finding (that I liked) cost more than I wanted to spend on a 9 year old's chair.

After about a year of this it occurred to me, last weekend, to make my own chair.  Um, hello remember how I just went on and on like 2 posts ago about how I have a million chairs lying around? Yeah I'm not really quick, I get that.

In addition to the 1,000 chairs we have from my parents old dining set, we have chairs from my in- laws old dining set, so I used one of those.  Apparently we are the chair dumping ground.

Below are the before and afters.  Note my arty photo in number 2, pretty cool, huh?   Okay the actual truth is that the baby took the phone from me at that point and took the photo.  When I looked at it I thought it looked arty so I told you I did it as I have sub par photography skills and I wanted to look cool. Apparently my 17 month old is better with a camera that me.  But he can't walk and I totally can, so ha!

I think it's pretty cute and my daughter adores it! I'm just loving the Annie Sloan chalk paint.  It is so easy to use (no sanding, yay!!!) and it goes really far.  I've done two chairs thus far and I've used maybe 1/4 of the can.  Everything in my house is going to be light blue if I'm not careful.

My only issue with this paint is it is not easy to find.  You need to google it to find places near you that carry it.  The places in Kansas City aren't all that close to me so it is a trek to go get some. But I'd much rather be in my car singing my heart out to the radio for 20 minutes to get this glorious paint than have to sand a piece of furniture, so it's all good. I'm not mad at you Annie Sloan chalk paint.

The fist day of spring, Norman Rockwell kind of stuff here

Just a boy, his beer and his dog.

Note: No babies drank any beer in the making of this photo -  although he tried. Fortunately it was already happily sitting in mommy's tummy.

TBT

In this completely schizo blog I will discuss house decor at times.  I fancy myself an incredibly amateur (and let's be honest, incompetent) designer.   

Today, in honor of Throw Back Thursday, I am going to bring an old blog to back to life for like 7 minutes. It was a short lived diary about our money pit.  I learned that writing about decor costs money and I ran out of that quickly.

I'm a Throw Back Thursday virgin and decided to jump on the band wagon way after everyone else has.  I'm super cool like that. So if you are having trouble falling asleep, check out sad, old ignored blog and you can enjoy hard hitting stories like Blankets, a 2 part series and Inexpensive Window Covering Options

In honor of the old bloggy blog I also wanted to show you a chair makeover I recently did using Annie Sloan chalk paint for the first time.  OMG why have I never used this before?  Usually I buy all the materials for a project, sand for 8 minutes, get bored, pour a glass of wine and then purchase a new throw pillow online to make myself feel better about my failure.

But this stuff is the answer to my dreams - NO SANDING!  Pretty lame dreams, huh?

I have a bunch of these chairs. They were the chairs to my parents dining room table they had when I was growing up.  They have been recovered no less than 298 times by my mother but once I inherited them (much to my husband's dismay - where were we going to put like 10 chairs?) I knew that they would look really cute painted different colors (and recovered). I think this first attempt proved I was right. 

I've got several more to go.  I have visions of doing them in a rainbow of colors.  I have nowhere to put them though. Maybe I'll give them out as Christmas gifts to random people next year?

Madonna, who?

I risked my sanity last week and took my 3 children on a road trip BY MYSELF.  You know what?  We survived...barely.

5 hours and 9.2 million crumbs in my car later, we arrived in Oklahoma City for a visit with my family.  Surprisingly the only time I wanted to wrangle the necks of any of my children was during this conversation:

Scene: Imagine the most lovely singing voice on the planet. Sort of like an angel singing at the top of her lungs trying to regain her youth. (in case you couldn't tell, that was dripping with sarcasm.  I was blessed with my parents' singing voice.  It is NOT pretty)

Me: "You must be my Lucky Star
'Cause you shine on me wherever you are
I just think of you and I start to glow
And I need your light
And baby you know" 

Now imagine the snotty-iest, most obnoxiously pre-teen accusing voice you can think of. Very similar to nails on a chalkboard.

9 Year old daughter: "UM, WHO sings this song???"

Me: It's Madonna.

9 Year old daughter: Humph, never heard of her. Can we turn on some Taylor Swift?

SMACK!

Okay I didn't really smack her simply because that wouldn't be safe while driving 80 MPH down the highway.

Baby on the run, er crawl

You turn your back for 1 second...

I guess I should be glad that he is 17 months old and still crawls otherwise he would have been 1/2 way to Missouri by the time I caught him.

Note1: If you knew where I lived you would find that last comment hilariously funny - we live in Kansas but 5 houses from the State Line of Missouri.

Note2: If you can't find me for a few days, check the local jail.  A policeman drove by and looked at me very suspiciously as my baby was crawling dangerously close to the street and I stood there laughing & taking pictures.

My Funny Valentine

This came home from school last week with my 6 year old. Apparently they were clearing out their desks and he found this gem.

I guess I should just be happy that I've been noticed and he no longer thinks a laundry fairy washes his Sponge Bob tighty whiteys and places them neatly into his drawer.

Juan Pab-no!!

Okay, I watch the Bachelor.  If you asked me face to face I probably wouldn't admit it, I'd say something like "oh yeah I've seen it a few times here and there" vs. yes, I've seen every damn episode every damn season (truth). Wow, that is much easier to admit to my computer than to your face.

Last night was the season finale and thank God for that. I need a break. Juan Pablo has proven to me that looks only go so far.  I used to think he was hot but now when I see his face I break out in itchy red hives - I'm thinking I'm allergic to jackassed-ness.

He chose (sort of) Nikki from Kansas City (holla!).  I'm assuming she is a lovely person as she works at Children's Mercy. Because all of the experiences we have had there have been amazing, I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and I hope that she will do Kansas City a solid by dumping him soon. 

As horrible as this entire season was I could. not. stop. watching.  It was like driving by a car wreck and you just have to look - however, this car wreck had a huge fiery explosion and a parade of tie-dyed elephants walking through the middle with martians belly dancing on their backs.

There were two times during the After the Final Rose part of the show where I 100% truly thought they were going to come out and say "just kidding you've been punk'd! This was all a joke!" Nikki's facial expressions at several different points made it seem like this was all a big crock and some of the things Juan Pablo said were so moronic that there is no way any human being who uttered them would be able to put on his own shoes.

I know there are lots of people who believe all of this is fake and scripted, but I'm one of the losers who doesn't so just let me live in my dumb fantasy.  Anywho, he is awful and it is over and that is all I am going to say on the matter. Let's pretend this never happened and I won't mention it again. (Well until Monday May 19th when the Bachelorette starts)
 

Whoa, where'd she come from?

Okay so really truly I am back this time.  Not like those silly other times where I said I was coming back to blogging and, well, I didn't.

So here's a recap:

Went to work for a cuckoo crazy person for about a year.  She lost her marbles (and her company) and so I left. She owes me several thousand dollars so if you see her, send her my way.

I then went back to work for the company I had worked for before cuckoo crazy person.  

I worked there for about 2.5 years (previously I had worked there for about 8 years). They called me one day and told me they wanted me to do the same amount of work I had been doing (which admittedly wasn't a ton) for 60% less salary. Yep, not super on board with that so I'm no longer there.

In the meantime I had a baby, bought a new house and one of our dogs died.

Now you are caught up, let's carry on.