A Day In The Life of a Toddler Toting Working Mom

I decided to document a Wednesday for this, which - along with with Tuesday - is one of our toughest days. Those are the days I teach yoga and then Joe comes to the office with me and I have no one to help me with him. Maybe next time I'll document one of our easier days.
Here goes...

January Cure; Week 5

January came to a close on Friday. This past weekend was Super Bowl partying and Super Bowl prep.

I'm really not sure if any of the items left in the living room or spare bedroom will get finished any time soon. For example, instead of fixing the coffee table, we may just buy a new one. The current table is looking rough and it gets moved around so much - though I really couldn't tell you why - that the legs are just going to get wobbly again. We have talked about tightening the legs and refinishing it though, so who knows what will happen (or when).
And I tend to just get lost in the spare room. There's a light at the end of the tunnel in there, but I really couldn't put a timeline on when I think I'll actually be done going through that stuff. One thing at a time though. One thing at a time.

January Cure; Week 2

We're wrapping up the second week of the January Cure!

This is what's left on my list and where I stand with them:

Living Room
Replace the front door knob/handle (in progress)
Replace the garage door knob (relies on the completion of the front door since we're just moving the knob)
Fix wobbly coffee table legs
Tile around the fireplace

Recap Summer 2013

I don't know if you caught it, but I totally didn't do a Spring recap. Spring kind of melted into winter and summer and wasn't really it's own thing. I've decided to include some March and April in here for that reason. Just a little bit.

Above: I ran my second 10K. It was harder than the first.

I also did some fun arm balance stuff while I was at work.

A friend and I took the dogs out to Malibu and hike/walked. Then we went to the Country Mart and got them whipped cream.

Thanksgiving 2012: Prep

We're kind of hosting Thanksgiving this year. It's like a mini Thanksgiving.

Thursday we'll be going to my parents' house. I'm bringing risotto (maybe pumpkin this time) and bundt cake. Easy peasy. I'm pumped.

But FRIDAY, Friday has been dubbed "Thanksgiving-er" or Thanksgiving Strikes Back. Long story short, Tim's parents didn't want to drive up early, so they're coming up on Friday morning and we're having a smaller separate Thanksgiving with them. My parents may come too. I promised my mom we would not force her to eat a lot.

But even though it's small, we still have to get our house ready for guests. We haven't had anyone stay in our guestroom since June, and then Tim worked from home most of the summer, which turned my sewing/computer room into his office, and all of my stuff got piled up on the bed. Sorry potential guests.

I am by no means a domestic goddess. It is a challenge for me to clean the kitchen every day, but I do it because I love to see my kitchen sparkle - we worked hard enough on it.
Our house is always a mess. I shudder to think what it will turn into if we have kids.

But it's been especially messy lately for a couple of reasons. Hubs has been absolutely SWAMPED at work. He ends up bringing work home with him and the rest of his time is spent doing things that take his mind off work - unfortunately, that doesn't including cleaning.
And on top of that, I am in yoga teacher training right now. I'm actually only in class 9 hours a week, but top that with all the studying I have, plus hours of taking yoga class, observing, and assisting, and my schedule is jam packed.
It's also really important to us that we don't use our free time being couch potatoes, so we make sure to get some kind of workout every day. Staying healthy also keeps our house from being clean.

But enough with the excuses. Things are the way they are, and this weekend I am cleaning like a mad woman.

...and taking yoga and going out for brunch with my hubby. ;)

Thursday night I started to tackle the guestroom. I cleaned up most of the junk that had collected on the floor, put all our suitcases away in the closet, packed up my art supplies. I meant to bring a stack of old financials to work with me on Friday to shred, but I spaced, so I'll have to do that this week.

Friday night was more cleaning. Because I went to yoga in the morning, I had the whole evening to GSD (get sh*t done). Two loads of laundry, folded and put away. More guest room mess tackling - mostly getting crap off the bed because it really should not have been there anyway - that place is for Panda naps. ;) I also managed to sweep up the clumps of dog hair off the stairs.

Today I am hoping to finish everything else. Change all the sheets on both beds, vacuum (luckily, the robot can take care of the living room), dust, put away random clothing items (shoes and socks that get taken off and left wherever), put the upstairs bathroom back together, put fresh towels in the guest bath, organize the workout equipment, clean the wood floors, maybe even go over all the stainless steal with some fancy stainless steal cleaner.

The biggest hurdle is what to do with all the junk that doesn't necessarily have a place. I'm going to try and throw as much of it out as possible, but I already know most of it won't be tossable.

Once I'm done cleaning, maybe I can attempt to make our place look a little festive. Who knows!?

Do you have family staying with you for Thanksgiving? Do you have to do as much cleaning as I do?

Kitchen Remodel; Part 3

The kitchen is done!!!! ...mostly

It's as good as done anyway. Look at some pictures of it and then I'll tell you what's not done. :)

What you see when you walk in. Tadaaaaa!

This baker's rack is a lifesaver. It's extra counter and storage space without eating into the kitchen. Also, its a place to keep the wine. ;)

Ah, the shiny appliances! Please also note that the wall behind the fridge is actually part of the pantry. It goes into infinity, but its not usable space since neither of us are Gumby. We decided to treat is as a wall and paint it blue to tie both sides of the kitchen together a little better

My lovely lovely drawer organizers and new flatwear. (The flatwear was actually a wedding gift, but I didn't want to put it in the drawers while they were still gross)

WE HAVE A CEILING FAAAAAAN!!!!!

"Whaaaat?", you say? "This is incomplete?" you say?

Yeah.

*sad face*

Here's what's missing...

* A window covering - We bought blinds at Home Depot, but they are too long and we need to take about half of the slats out before we can hang it. I've asked my husband to do it before he leaves me for four days, so I can close the kitchen blinds while he's gone. (It annoys me that the neighbors can see straight into my kitchen all the time). He's just going to put them up at their current length and I MAAAAY attempt to remove the slats while he's gone.

* Pretty knobs and handles on the cabinets and drawers - We bought these too. They're in bags, waiting to be installed. They only haven't been because we've been busy. They were supposed to go up yesterday, but we ended up having a really busy day, so no knobs for me...yet.

* Switch plates - We have these too... and a couple of them are even up...but the extra half inch of wall made putting them up a slightly more complicated task than we anticipated. I think we ran out of bolts of some kind? I don't know. Ask my husband. He was doing it. *shrug*

And then we're done... Done done, like, for realsies.

And now to close, here is a picture of our dog, Panda, helping me put everything away in the kitchen.

Clean Your Room!

I hate when I give in and clean up after my husband, and then once everything is cleaned, I'm super protective of my work. Like if I just Pledge'd the normally cluttered and dish/drinking glass covered coffee table, I have to fight the urge to actually snarl when plates and glasses start to collect on my once perfectly clean coffee table.

Our bedroom, however, is a different story. We live in a Escheresque split level townhome with the bedroom on the top level and the washer and dryer in the garage at the very bottom. This is roughly what our house looks like from the side:

Obviously, this is not to scale, but you get the idea. It takes a lot of walking up stairs for things to make it into our room, so once there, they usually just get thrown somewhere - the floor, a dresser, wherever. 

So - because I am embarrassed to post a photo of what it actually looked like - here is a paintbrush sketch of what one would see when they walked into our room (not to scale): 

What it should have looked like

What it did look like

Something I couldn't quite get the right look of in paint was the clumps of dog hair floating around on the floor and embedded into the area rug (which doesn't actually look like puke, by the way. I'm just too lazy to attempt actual detailed designs)

Last weekend we decided to do something about this embarrassment mess. If we have people over, we should be able to instruct them how to get to the second bathroom without thinking, "maybe I can stall them long enough that the downstairs bathroom will open up."

It took the two of us most of the day to get all the clothes/junk picked up off the floor and put away or thrown in the wash, clear off the dressers and end tables, sweep/mop/vacuum up the dog hair, pull the sheet/dog hair cover off the papasan chair, put on a new one and wash the old one, change the sheets/pillow cases, rearrange the furniture.

It is so great to finally have a clean room. It's been nearly spotless for over a week and we've been working hard to keep it that way. Clothes aren't getting left on the floor. The get immediately put away or into one of two strategically placed hampers. When the hampers are downstairs because I'm doing laundry, we have a designated pile where the clothes go until a hamper becomes available. 

I'm really trying to stay on top of the dog hair clumps. I noticed a few accumulating behind Panda's bed (the papasan chair), so I made a note to myself to get those picked up when I get home today. 

This morning my husband left the ironing board out in the middle of the room. I was about to leave it there out of lazy-stubbornness, but I looked at it and all I could see were imaginary piles of clothes and other junk accumulating on and around it, so I folded it up and put it in the closet. 

When I left this morning, our room looked more like this:

And this...I like. 

Sidenote: Yes, the walls are actually two different shades of red, and no, we did not paint them that way. We just have not had a chance to repaint them yet.