Learn from me

If you give a mom a gold medicine cabinet,
she's going to want to paint it.
Once she paints it,
she's going to notice that the etagere behind the toilet doesn't match,
so she'll head to Walmart (on a Saturday in December) to get more spray paint.
She'll prime it.
Once she's primed it, she'll notice that the bottoms of her socks feel tacky and strange.
She'll take off her socks.
Once the primer is dry, she'll go out to paint the color.
She'll forget that she's barefoot.
Halfway through, she'll discover that her spray finger doesn't work so well because she's already painted the thing once with primer.
She'll call for her husband to help her.
She'll want to go inside, but will then notice there are leaves stuck to her feet.
I mean STUCK to her feet.
She'll also notice that they appear to be very painty on the bottoms,
like hobbit feet on crack.
She'll decide to go wash them before they get worse.
Once in the bathroom, standing in a tub of warm water, she'll notice that her feet seem to be sticking to the bottom of the tub.
She'll tug one up.
Then she'll see the painty footprint left behind,
but also see that there is no noticeable difference in the color or texture of her foot.
She will then panic just a bit, and grab for the scrubby sponge.
This will clue her daughter in to the fact that mommy is sitting on the side of the bathtub.
The daughter will then come to keep her company.
The mommy will be a bit busy with the paint freak out, and not notice the daughter.
The daughter will seize the opportunity to grab the diaper sprayer and give it a good squirt.
This will cause the mommy to yelp because it's cold, which will bring a son in to see what is going on.
The mommy will still be in a bit of frenzy, scrubbing at the painty footprint and scratching at her painty feet, and will ask the son to go get the barkeeper's friend.
The son will leave, and then come back confused and without the scouring powder.
The mommy will have progressed to stripping down and scrubbing the tub because she's leaving painty footprints everywhere.
The son will be dispatched to find the husband.
The husband will find his wife, naked and irritated, scrubbing at the bathroom tub with painty feet while two children watch and ask her for random things.
He will bring the scouring powder and shoo away the children.
The mommy will resume scrubbing.
She will alternate between her feet and the tub until she's not leaving painty footprints anywhere.
Then she'll notice that she's pretty stinky.
She'll grab a quick bath and get dressed again.
While she's doing so, she'll consider what other things need to be done to make the bathroom pretty.
She'll then go admire the freshly painted etagere, but will resolve to wear shoes the next time she paints something.
Especially with spray paint.

Yet another harebrained idea

Or we could call it THE PROJECT FROM HELL

We all know this happens from time to time, especially to me. I have a great idea, things go wrong, I have to fix it, they go more wrong, I start crying and wondering how in the world I thought I could pull it off in the first place... Meanwhile John stands there trying to deal with the fallout of an overwrought wife up to her ears in project and PMS.

Sorry, honey. You're awesome.

So, this time the idea was actually pretty simple. Niall wanted to be a skeleton for Halloween. I'd seen articles on how to do freezer paper stencils before. We had a long sleeved black tshirt that fit him. Sweat pants from Walmart were five bucks. (A nice skeleton costume was $$ so I only considered that briefly.) I ordered glow in the dark paint from Dharma for those extra cool mom points.

Measured his shirt. Traced design onto paper. (Bless the people at Apple for having glass screens on their laptops. Makes tracing easy!) Slowly, but surely, cut the design out on freezer paper. It was all going well.

 

Design cut out. Awesome.

Then I looked up the settings for the iron again, just to make sure. Set iron to medium. Got it. Ironed on the stencil. It was all going so well!

 

I am the greatest Mom EVAH!

And then I started painting. I had 5 tubes of glow in the dark paint, and used a tube and a half on this part, but that was okay. The rest of the stuff would be long bones and not so hard. This was going to be the most visible part of the costume, so it had to be good. Except then I started to notice... the glow in the dark paint didn't have any color to it. None at all. It glowed - beautifully. But in the daylight it would look like Niall had just spilled random stuff on his shirt.

Insert a little irritation here. 

No worries. I had a 40% off coupon so I could go buy some white paint. I'd just have to check for more glow paint in case I ran out. Got two tubes of white paint - velveteen because that's all they had left and I have no idea what that's even supposed to mean... but it's white. It'll do. And some spray on glow paint. Just in case. With the coupon it was $12, still way under the cost of a costume. 

Came home and painted some white. Let it dry, and painted more. Let that dry and painted one more coat to be sure. And then checked - nope. The glow paint did not have what it took to glow through all that white paint. Gave it a light coat of glow paint. It didn't look very glowy. Decided to spray it with the spray on stuff. The spray on stuff was WET. I started to freak out again. I had never done freezer paper stencils before. How well was it sticking? Was freezer paper even up to what I was putting it through? I mean... that was a lot of painting and moving and stuff and spray on wet and AAAAAARRHEOEONDHWNEONAE!

Insert wailing and gnashing of teeth here. Turn hairdryer on shirt. Notice it starts looking kind of cracky. Retire to couch to regroup. Decide that I am a moron, and I also smell. A bath is in order. And some Mike's cranberry. Booze and a bath. And some leftover birthday cake. 

After all of that, I started to peel up a section of the shirt. It didn't look bad! It didn't look bad at all! I stopped peeling though, because the paint was still kind of dampish and sticking to the freezer paper some.

 

I may not be a failure after all!

Decided to NOT destroy all that work with impatience and hand wringing and went to bed. That was probably the best decision I made all day. Bed, when you are tired and overcome with failure and doom, is always a good idea.

This morning, I carefully, CAREFULLY started to peel away the rest of the paper. And HOLY MOSES HALLELUIAH YAY GOD LOVES ME! It worked!

 

Super happy boy with way cool shirt. And cocoa wheats that Daddy made.

And you know what? IT EVEN GLOWS!

 

I'm so doing this again.

on my watch

 

Why yes, Mommy did take Sudafed today. Why do you ask?

Going for that cool Mom award

Here's the invitation to Rowan's party.

And here's the ticket. The destination will have our address filled in.

This time, I win

Rowan's shoelaces have been a constant thorn in our sides. He can tie, but he's not very good at it and they're always loose. So they always come undone. This wouldn't be so bad, but he doesn't care if they're undone so they're always flopping around and getting ripped up.
I had an idea to fix it. One piece of elastic, thread it through, and sew the ends together.
Sha-zam. Done. Issue solved. It's been a week and they're holding up just fine.

lunchtime tip

Heat the spaghetti-o's in a big pyrex measuring cup.
Then you can pour it right into the bowls. No big spoon needed.

Ya, it's been that kind of day.

So... MOTY moment

Some days you just chase your tail.

Yesterday was Eleri's well visit for 4 months old. She's doing great! 13lbs 9oz, growing, thriving, prevacid is working, yay yay yay.
Niall woke up with a puffy eye. So, when I got to the doc's office I asked them if we could piggyback a check on him with our visit. Yes. So score for us!
We didn't know if he had something in there, or if he was trying to get pink eye, or what... so Dr. A put some contrast stuff in there and shined a black light in his eye to see.
Are you picturing this? Imagine how easy it was to get him to cooperate. Just imagine.

So is it any wonder that I forgot that it was early release day at school?

I got a call at about 12:20, "Mrs. D, did you forget that it's early release day? I have Rowan waiting for you in the office." D'oh!
I tore around, getting Niall up from his nap (he hadn't gone to sleep yet), getting Eleri out of her swing (she was very asleep and didn't enjoy the waking), slamming the door, buckling in carseats, getting my keys caught in the carseat buckles...
School is only about 1.5 miles away... but still... I forgot my KID.

Rowan was sitting there on the floor of the office, with the 3 other children who were also waiting for forgetful parents. He thought it was funny. The office staff were very understanding. Eleri's hair glossed over any disapproval. Rowan told me that maybe I needed more coffee.

So ya. Some days I don't blog. And now you know why.
Oh, and Niall's eye? nothing was in it. We have drops because he thought it was the beginning of pink eye. I get to put them in BOTH eyes, 3 times a day. JOY.