Fabric store virgin

I have an old desk chair that was my grandma's that I want to refinish for Fred as well as a bench base that I need to make a top for and upholster to be a piano bench and extra seating at my kitchen table. I'm not a total fabric store virgin, but pretty close. I have been wanting to get a sewing machine and learn how to upholster for a while now. Let me just say, sewing machines can be stupidly expensive. And since I don't always finish the things I start, I didn't want to spend a bunch of $$$$ on a sewing machine. I started looking on craigslist and struck out. So when my local fabric store was having a sale I decided to just take the plunge and go get a basic inexpensive one. If I didn't stick with it, it seems as though I could put it on craigslist since the selection there was nil. So I got to the store at about 10:30 with the specific intent of buying a sewing machine. Despite the fact that the store opens at 10:00, the sewing machine store doesn't open 'til noon. Apparently a store within a store?! Confusing. Well fabulous. I now had 1.5 hrs to loiter and make myself crazy with indecisiveness. I may have to rethink this new hobby. All the fabric is OVERWHELMING! I don't know what it's all used for. There are 2 kinds of people that work there: the minimum wage socially awkward girls and the old spinster ladies, neither of whom are overly helpful. Oh and the gay guy, he was in charge, a job that appeared about as easy as herding cats. So I finally get my sewing machine and pick out 2 fabrics for my chair and bench with the help of my fabulous designer friend Teresa over at Wavy Glass Interior Design. She's so awesome that she helped me via Facebook while on vacation in the Dominican Republic on her 40th birthday. I have high standards and when I say she rocks, she fucking rocks! Go check out her stuff. Now. You can come back here any ol' time. Anyway, I get my number and stand in line for round one of the cutting table. It felt like forever but that may have just been because of this not so cute little girl singing "Let it Go" at the top of her lungs. Lets just say I am not a lover of all the children. I basically can't stand other peoples' kids. I like my friends' kids, but strangers kids are the reason I was 30 before I had my first one and even then I still cried the first week after I found out I was pregnant.*officially climbing on soap box* Could her mother, grandma or aunt have at least attempted to put a muzzle on her? And yes I'm totally judging only because they all were completely oblivious to the numerous dirty looks, sighs and eye rolls that were coming from not just me. If your child is having a total melt down or being seriously disruptive and you are scrambling to get the hell out while trying not to die inside, girlfriend, I'll stand beside you, tell you to keep your chin up and you got this. But if your kid is acting the fool and you don't give a shit about the rest of us in this special circle of hell called the fabric store on a Sunday afternoon, then I secretly want to knife you in the parking lot. Moral of the story is when I get the rare opportunity to be out shopping without my kids I sooooo don't want to listen to yours m'kay? *down off soap box* So I finally get up to the table, make a complete guess at how much fabric I need, and off I roll. Then I'm like, sonofabitch!!!! I needed foam for the bench cushion, which also needed to be cut by the yard. I briefly consider coming back another day as I had really reached the extent of my sanity. But I decided to plow through because I figured as long as mini Idina Menzel wanna be was gone, I could make it. I get smart this time and pull my number from the little deli ticket machine before going to get my foam because the line was all the way to China by now. When I attempted to pull out the foam I wanted, 3 more pieces came with it because foam sticks to itself, as everyone but me realizes. I end up getting in a fight with the giant pieces of foam, wrestling them to the ground in an unsuccessful attempt at putting back the pieces I didn't want. The pressure's on now because I can hear the numbers being called and for some reason this time he is quickly getting to my number and I still haven't got the rest of pieces of giant fucking foam to go back in the cage they have them stored in and I can't get my piece in my cart. "Number 85"........Fuck that's me! They call out your number and give you exactly 3.5 seconds to get up there before going straight for the overhead page. "NUMBER 85!!!!!!" Then another 3.5 seconds before moving on to the next number. So I abandoned the unruly muthafucking foam and raced up there. I'm flustered. I have sweat dripping from my boobs. I gotta get out of here!!!!! Joe's texting me asking when I'm gonna be home, even though he TOLD me he had nothing to do today. So what? Now he has something to do????? Bullshit move my friend, but whatever. I get my foam cut, pay, and bust outta there like I haven't seen daylight in 100 years. I get home and muster up the energy to paint Fred's desk chair and recover the seat. I had some leftover Benjamin Moore Chelsea Gray so that's what I painted it and I picked out this super cute orange alligator pleather for the seat. So here it is, my first reupholstering project!

   

           

         before

         

    strike a pose

               

   

   a little repair work

After

Love! 

So of course now I'm cocky because that was so easy. I'm lying to myself when I say it was a real upholstery project. It was scissors and a stapler. But who cares, it's adorable! 

Later that week I moved on to the bench I got at this place called Redo Des Moines. It's literally a couple storage units that these people fill up with all this raw stuff they find. I don't know where they get it and I find it interesting that they don't really give a straight answer when asked directly. Estate sales? garage sales? curbside? ditches? dumpsters? where ever! I don't really care because they've got cool stuff for dirt ass cheap! Remember my designer friend Teresa, she found this bench for me. 

I wanted something that could double as a piano bench and extra seating at the table when we needed it. I looked for MONTHS and was not finding anything that was the right size, look and price. Teresa sends me a message one day 'found your bench'. Honestly, sometimes she pisses me off. She's so damn lucky with the stuff she comes across. Like it's really not fair actually. But none the less, this was THE bench. $45. Sold.
The people at Redo said it was 95 years old and I believe it because the finish was disintegrating. Also, somewhere along the line someone had tried to restain it but they didn't do it properly so the purplish stain was just wiping off with a wet rag. So nobody better comment about what a sin it is that I painted it. After that I made the bench top out of plywood and that stupid foam and batting and attempted to sew the corners of the cushion cover. I really wanted to use my sewing machine! Bad idea. I screwed it all up. Second attempt was just to staple everything. Good idea. I did a good job. The next Sunday morning I decided to put touch up coat of primer and paint on the top of the bench frame because the purple was coming through in a couple of spots. I set the upholstered cushion, right side up, over on top of the deep freeze, did the touching up real quick, and left Joe and the boys home while I went to the gym. When I got home, this is what I found.

Upholstered cushion, right side down, set back on the freshly painted bench. I almost fell down the stairs trying to get to it, as if my rushing was going to fix the damage already done.

I tried to keep my cool because it was my New Years resolution to not get all sideways pissed about things and I figured the first part of April was a good time to get going on that. Normally this is a situation that would have made me go absolutely off my fucking rocker crazy. But instead I just called him and informed him of what he did and that I was going back to the fabric store. And after I finished it AGAIN, I decided I would officially let him live because it turned out better. Third time's a charm!

Freezer meal success!!!!!! (so far)

I work 12 hr shifts, so on those days dinner is my husbands job. He has to get home in time to get Fred off the bus, go get Barney from daycare, if it's Tues. or Thursday they go to Taekwondo, then come home and get dinner going. With evenings that crazy, dinner is usually pizza, macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets. On the days I'm at home it's still hard. I don't know about you, but for me, dinner is painful.  Making the meal plan, shopping, planning, deciding what to cook each day and finally cooking. It's exhausting. Then there's always the question of whether everybody is going to eat it, or if even one of them is going to eat it? And most likely SOMEBODY is going to take issue with SOMETHING that's not pizza, macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets. One time I made these awesome hot ham and cheese sammys on hawaiian buns with this brown sugar glaze. Nom nom nom. They were *snap*snap* fabulous. Fred took one bite and just sat there. He whined, "they taste like pretzels." First of all, no they don't. And second of all, what's your beef with pretzels? He says he doesn't like them. Well child I got news, you are the only person on the planet that doesn't like pretzels and they don't taste like pretzels anyway so EAT! And I'm left to try and not lose. my. damn. mind. when they turn their noses up at all my hard work. I have felt for a long time now that there's gotta be a better way. Why isn't this working for us? One reason I came up with is I'm a planner. I can't just fly by the seat of my pants with dinner or anything else for that matter. So my idea was to do a little planning and preparation with dinner which lead me to freezer meals. Basically the idea is to make a bunch of meals that freeze well, put them in the fridge the night before to thaw, and they'll be ready to pop in the oven the next day. Hot damn this is genius! THIS will work. One small requirement is that you need to have a deep freeze, so I had to spring for one of those. But if you've already got one, you're half way there! It doesn't have to be big. I debated between 5.5 cu feet and 7.2 cu feet. I got the 7.2 but really I think we would have been fine with 5.5. Up to you.

Next I went on the hunt for recipes........

Katie over at Happy Money Saver has some ideas I borrowed

Chicken pot pie (2)
Honey glazed pork chops
Lasagna

The ladies over at six sisters stuff had
Homemade chicken nuggets (these were good, but quite labor intensive)
Poppy seed chicken casserole (I omitted the poppy seeds. My kids aren't going to eat anything with black dots in it)
Easy cheeseburger casserole
Ricotta stuffed shells
Baked ziti

The mom over at moms budget has a plethora of useful stuff! There's so many recipes to chose from. I could link to a bunch of stuff but you can just go check it out for yourself. She also has these freezer meal list so you can keep track of what you have and what you've used. (This will be useful. Trust me.)

Can't forget queen Martha
She, of course, has all her shit all figured out. I hate to have to love her, but I do.

I used a few of my own recipes too. P.S. I'm not good at measuring, temperature for oven or length of cooking time. I always just kind of guess. So sorry, you're on your own with that part.

Pulled pork
Just throw a pork roast in a crock pot with a packet of french onion soup mix and a can Pepsi, Coke or Dr. Pepper with a little water as needed. Cook for 6-8 hrs or until meat pulls apart easily. Add BBQ sauce to taste. Eat some now and let the rest cool and place in freezer bag.

Enchiladas
Cook how ever much ground beef you want depending on much you want to make and mix with enough canned enchilada sauce to coat the meat. Toss in a handful of cheddar cheese and mix. Fill and roll tortillas and place in foil pan. An 8x8 pan holds 4 tortillas. Cover with foil and freeze. When you're ready to cook them, pour another can of enchilada sauce on top. When half way cooked, top with cheese and finish cooking.

Breakfast burritos
Put scrambled eggs, cooked sausage (whatever form you want), and cheese in tortilla and fold in half. I then put 2 in a foil pie pan, cover and freeze.

Breakfast burritos

Chicken nuggets

Chicken nuggets in freezer bag

Chicken sans-poppyseed casserole and chicken pot pies

Lasagna - Cheeseburger casserole - Baked ziti

Some people tout this as something that can be done in one day. For me this was not a one day deal. I shopped one day, cooked the stuff made with ground beef one day and chicken the next. It helped to cook up a bunch of ground beef and chicken and set up an assembly line system. I also froze 1 lb bags of cooked ground beef and some chicken breasts as well as chopped peppers and onions. So if I come across a recipe that I want to make that day I have some basics on hand already prepped. Mom's budget also has some great marinades and sauces that you can make up and put in a freezer bag and add chicken or pork chops for an instant meal!

I bought the foil and foil pans at Dollar Tree. Best deal around for this stuff. One thing I learned is that the 8x8 pans are ideal for my family. I could either use one 9x13 and have leftovers (which never get eaten). Or two 8x8's and get two meals out of it. I ended up with about 38 dinners. 2 meals from each of the 16 recipes + the chicken tetrazzini and meatloaf each made 3. I figure we probably won't have freezer meals every night. We'll grill out and I'm sure the kids will still want pizza , macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets from time to time so this should last us at least 6 weeks. 

So far it's been really freeing, although I do kinda dread my next marathon cooking session. I've considered looking into calling the Schwann's man. I'm not there yet but I may think differently after I repeat the process. But for now I'm kicking back and enjoying the less stressful afternoons! 

Messy kitchen

We look like we're stocked up, ready for the big bang

Toy Storage Version 5.0

Ah the never ending task of toy organization. For the first 4 years of Fred's life we didn't have a dedicated play room. He had a few toys in his bedroom, but for the most part they were in our family room. I've overhauled it 4 times by changing the shelving and the baskets/bins/containers. Things wouldn't fit right in the containers/shelves or a birthday or Christmas would come along and despite purging old toys, we'd outgrow the storage. Even after we finished the playroom upstairs I didn't move it all upstairs because I felt like I was banishing them from the main area of the house. Plus, if they had a TV show they wanted to watch, they had to do that in the family room because I had always said I would never put a TV in their playroom or bedrooms since all the smart people (AAP, parent's magazines, websites, blogs etc.) said not to. So for the next 2.5 years we lived with a few toys here, a few there, a few everywhere! I began to feel like my house was being taken over. I had no where to call my own space and I never got to watch anything I wanted to watch on TV. Fast forward to the day I snapped, er, the light bulb came on over my head. We never had all our crap strewn about the house when I was a kid! We had toys in our rooms and in a playroom in the basement. Hell, we had whole rooms of the house we weren't even allowed to enter unless it was a special occasion. What the fuck was my problem??? They have a PLAYROOM! Put all their shit in it already! So began Toy Storage version 5.0. Step one: decide that unless one of those child raising "experts" lived in this house, I was putting a TV upstairs. Screw it. I don't care what ya' all think. Step two: decide once and for all on a storage system that fit the space and was definitive. I narrowed it down to this

 or this 

Just kidding :) Even if I could afford these rooms, my kids would destroy them and I'd be pissed that they "played" in the playroom. Moving on.......

I took my time exploring different ideas. Pinterest wasn't invented the last time I did this, God bless Pintereset. I found this idea for buckets from the Dollar Tree which is waaaaayyy more my speed financially.

I liked it but wasn't sure it was exactly what I wanted to do. But it was a place to start. I wanted to reuse the stuff we had that was working which was pretty much just the wire cube shelves I got at Target during toy storage version 2.0. Once I got to Dollar Tree I decided this wasn't going to work. The buckets aren't very big, but zip-tied together they would make one really big bucket pyramid that my kids would have no trouble tipping forward and dumping everything out. Have no fear, there was amass of other splendid options in my favorite wonderland of dollar treasures.





And here's what I did with them

                                                                                              

I used the zip ties to attach pictures of each container and their contents. It may sound anal to have things in specific buckets but I have found it's much easier to keep track of the toys and all the pieces and easily see what's missing. Once you experience the world ending for a toddler that can't find Woody's hat, you will understand.






So I'm happy with it for now. Oh, and there's my bad mommy moment TV that I have no intention of feeling guilty about :)