When we bought the house I knew I wanted to give the kids fabulous rooms that they could grow with and I wouldn’t have to redecorate for years. Ethan’s room was going to be the easiest to redecorate so I decided to start with his. His room wasn’t wallpapered and he has laminate flooring. I found his bedding at Target at all places and it started evolving from there. I was looking for camping theme bedrooms for ideas and came across the paint by number mural that looked like it was made to match the bedding I had purchased. I decided to give it a go, if I turned out to be a really bad painter I could just paint over it and I wasn’t out much money.

Normally I would point readers in the direction of where I bought the mural from but I can not give a 100% recommendation so they will not be mentioned by name. The mural I received had numerous issues. It had been reproduced poorly and was missing the top border and they edges of the trees on the left had side, there were elements missing such as the birds nest, part of a tree and text. The one that got me was the key that you are meant to be following doesn’t match up to the mural you trace. There are parts of it that are just odd, lines that go to nothing and items in the key that do not exist on the traceable. Me having to draw all the missing elements in frustrated me and caused the project to take a lot longer than what it should have. I am not an artist, that’s why I bought something I could trace and fill in.

In the end I am very happy with how the mural turned out. I can paint by numbers! It looks great with the bedding and I’m happy I persevered with it to get it completed. His room is my favorite in the house right now.

Now on to Georgie’s room…..stripping wallpaper and replacing carpet, fun!!

We are now referring to our house as the money pit and for good reason. There is a large amount of cosmetic work that needs to be done, that’s not really an issue. The issue is the problems we find with each project started. We are having a half bath put in off the kitchen in what was our second pantry. Our plumber (who is gorgeous and does great work) discovered that the sewage pipe from the kitchen to the septic was held together with duct tape. I know duct tape can fix anything but seriously, why would someone do that? The last thing you want to risk is a leak in the crawl space, that is just asking for a whole mess of issues including inviting termites to come and play. We have also discovered that the downstairs shower and toilet haven’t been ventilated so we keep getting a lovely sewage smell in the downstairs bathroom. Thank goodness we got a great deal on this place! This beautiful home on our lovely estate from here on out will be referred to as the money pit.

After murals on the walls, lipstick on the carpet and various other toddler related disaster you’d think I’d learn not to trust my kids when they were out of my site. Wrong, once again my laptop has become victim to my son. He pulled thirteen keys off my keys off my keyboard when I was cleaning the kitchen. Luckily I was able to get all but five of them back on. I am missing the letters c, x, z, an alt key and some other key that fortunately I never use. I now get to type on little black nubs for the missing keys, fun!! I didn’t want a new laptop right now but it is looking like I will be getting one soon. I love my 12″ tablet HP but it is not sturdy enough to survive my kids.

The damage

As a parent I can understand that sometimes you might have to bring your kids to work. When Georgie was a newborn I was lucky enough to have a job that allowed me to bring her in with me. I had my own office, wasn’t near any other employees and was able to close the door so that if she did start crying she would never bother anyone. I did this for one month before we left Australia for the US. If we had planned on staying I would have found daycare for her; I would not have expected this to be a long term solution.

This past weekend we had an Architect come over to take some measurements and photos for a renovation of our old barn and the plans for our new garage. This guy showed up with his six year old son in tow. I personally find this very unprofessional, especially seeing that he mentioned that his wife was at home with their 18 month old. My husband ended up watching our two kids plus the architects child while I showed him around. This is our family home and my husband and I both want to be involved in the plans for it. We felt as if he wasn’t taking his job or us seriously. We made the decision to hire him together and he should have been talking to both of us about what we wanted for this project. We both want different things and its his job to put all that together.

In the hour they were here this child managed to bust my sons large Mickey Mouse balloon, hit Ethan with a truck, turn the slide upside down, climb up on it and try to get Georgie to climb up so he could shake it and knock her off and the worst was he killed our goldfish. Yes, this six year old child killed our much loved family pet. He dumped an entire container of fish food in with the fish and that’s what led to her death. We have had that goldfish for ages and it was a great fish with a lot of personality. We were only annoyed but the death of our fish was the final straw for us. How do we know that he won’t bring his son along with him in the future, next time he could injure one of our children.

The Architect has now been fired and it was all due to a twenty cent fish. I wonder how he feels knowing that he lost a large job due to something that costs twenty cents. Hopefully he learned a lesson and doesn’t take his child to clients houses anymore. If he does hopefully he’ll keep his son with him and not expect the client to babysit him.

I thought it was time I come on and answer a few questions. Thank you to those of you that have gently prodded me and checked to make sure that we hadn’t fallen off the face of the earth.

I haven’t quit blogging, I’ve been on a pure exhaustion/mental health break. In May we took a trip to New York, a few days we left before the trip we made an offer on a house. We made the decision to move to the city where we’ve spent two years “temporarily”. The job opportunities here became too good to refuse and we decided to take the plunge and call it home. We looked at our house days before we left thinking it wouldn’t be what we were looking for but fell in love the moment we pulled up the driveway and knew we were making an offer within the first few minutes. Its a good thing we love this house if we knew the drama filled path buying it would bring we would have passed on it and kept some shreds of sanity.

The drama’s that surrounded the purchase of this home have all the making of a great soap opera and would have made for some great blog posts. I’ll save the saga for another post. I will say if you are self employed and are determined you can get a home loan. When Realtors say now is the time to buy they are right, what they fail to tell you is the banks don’t think now is the time to give loans. Especially on houses that are 107 years old! My husband and I have a thing for quirky houses and this house is the quirkiest we’ve lived in by far. We purchased an old farm house built in 1892 on four acres less than five minutes from where my husband works. It was a gem of a find and too good a price to pass it up. It needs work but majority of work required is cosmetic.

We moved at the end of June and the move involved getting our things from Memphis, all our household belongings out of storage in a town two hours away and everything we had in the apartment here in town. If that wasn’t enough we had to make an early occupancy deal with the previous owner since the closing was delayed. The closing ended up being delayed by 32 days, no joke.

We are slowly getting settled in and I will start blogging regularly as soon as I finish painting my little guys room, I wanted to be done with it two weeks ago!

Congratulations Kelli at Random Thoughts of a Supermom! Please contact me with your details so we can get your Crayola Wonders set out to you.

Than you to everyone that entered and tweeted about the giveaway!

How is it that 2009 is almost half way over? I remember when a year used to seem like a year, since having kids a year seems to fly by in a few months. I can’t believe its been three weeks since I last blogged, it was the quickest three weeks of my life.

My husband and I flew out to New York to pick up our RV. We bought this site unseen and were a bit nervous about it but we were more than pleasantly surprised at the condition its in. The inside has more storage space than I know what to do with and there is also tons of storage space underneath. I’m going to do minimal work to the inside, just recover the couch and reupholster the window boxes.

I have to tell you about the trip to pick up the RV; it was quite an event. Our flight to Charlotte was delayed so we missed our connecting flight to New York. Our one hour layover in New York turned into a four hour layover. I was surprised at how fast the time went at Charlotte airport, it really is nice for an airport. They have all these great rocking chairs by the windows overlooking the tarmac. We kicked back and read while waiting for our next flight.

The delay had us getting into JFK right at peak hour Memorial Day weekend. We were caught in traffic with all the people escaping the city for the weekend and it took us over 3 hours to go about 60 miles. I finally understand the saying there is no place like home. I’ve never really settled and enjoyed my nomad lifestyle but the traffic in New York made me appreciate the wonderful little piece of the world we live in.

I have lots more to blog about and a contest to announce the winner of but this will have to wait until this afternoon. I need to get the kids dressed and get them off to daycare.

Kicked back enjoying the view at Charlotte

What do you say to a friend who’s oldest child has just been diagnosed with cancer? I have been a member of an online forum for three years now. We all have two year old children born around September 2006. One of our members oldest child was just diagnosed today with a Brainstem Glioma. There are a lot of resources on the web for what not to say and some of them I really can’t believe a human being would mutter. I want to create a list for others who find themselves in the situation of trying to support a friend with a sick child. Please leave comments on what should be said and suggestions for what can be done to help a family in the same situation.

This weeks Small Talk Six at MomDot is six pieces of advice that are obvious but some people are clueless about. Really, only six? I am a pretty passive person most of the time but there
are a few things that I see when I’m out that make me try and figure out what someone is thinking. I made my list, miscounted and ended up with seven. I couldn’t make up my mind which one to take away so this week you get one extra from me.

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1. Buy pants that cover your butt crack, butt cleavage is not attractive and is reserved for plumbers only.
2. Screaming at your child in public is not the way to get them to calm down
3. Yelling at the person checking you out at Walmart over an item not ringing up is pointless. It’s not their job to check you out and manage all store inventory.
4. Getting drunk to the stage that you pee your pants is never funny nor is it attractive
5. When you are 38 years old you don’t have to tell everyone you meet that you were homecoming queen, that was 20 years ago, stop living in the past.
6. Constant negativity is not the way to win friends.
7. Do not send text messages while you are driving! In the time it takes you to look down at your phone a child could run in front of your car or the car in front of you could have to stop suddenly.