Quiet Time

What do you get when you put one 4 year old and one 2 year old into a small room by themselves for "quiet time" lasting just over an hour?

A big, fat mess.
P.S. - it was certainly not a very quiet "quiet time".

New bunk bed

Jesse got a raise at work, quite a substantial one. Honestly, he's be very underpaid for a while now, but not one to raise a stink about it. At any rate, it's quite the blessing. And there's something I've been wanting to get for the kids for at least a year now: A bunk bed from IKEA.

It's really short as far as bunk beds go. Standing up, the top railing of the top bunk comes to just under shoulder height for me.

Anyway, since we have a little wiggle room in our budget now, we decided to finally go out and get this for the kids. Up till now, they've been basically sharing the twin mattress on the floor, or sometimes separating themselves, with one of them in the crib-turned-toddler bed. (And it just so happens that Melinda had been complaining for the last several days about her mattress being on the floor. She wanted it up high, like Mommy and Daddy's bed is, now!)

So we made the trip down to IKEA this past Thursday night, attempting to squeeze it in between a Cub Scouts meeting that Jesse needed to attend. The traffic was horrible, though, and while we made our list of items to grab easily and quickly, the self-checkout was kind of a nightmare and took much longer than it should have, with only one attendant to help everyone who ran into a kink - which was just about every single person on 4 different machines. By the time we were out of the store, the kids were going nuts (well, Jacob at least - he missed his nap). And we had to take Jesse straight to his meeting instead of going home. He thought he'd be in there for 5-10 minutes, just long enough to get info on Day Camp. But guess what? The kids and I waited in the van for a full hour and 2 minutes. And this was after I had told myself that if Jesse wasn't back in an hour, I'd be going out to look for a disabled body on the ground. The night was dark and quiet enough to make my mind go there, especially since I didn't actually see him go into a door.

But he did make it back, grumbling about stupid meetings lasting 20 times longer than they needed to, for no good reason, and we made it home around 8:30 pm. Jacob had fallen asleep in the car while we waited for Jesse, so I tucked him into our bedroom. Jesse decided to go ahead and tackle the assembly that night, because he and Melinda were both excited about it. And since Jacob was out of the picture, it really was a good time for an involved furniture assembly project. I "helped" by sorting the pieces and reading the directions.

Here's the first completed side:



















Melinda was doing great at going through the different hardware pieces and picking out the right ones. I think her favorite part, though, was inserting the wooden pegs into the many, many holes. Nice and easy job! Then she got in on some hexagonal screwing action:

And before long, we had enough pieces to stand the whole thing up and put it together. Melinda was getting pretty tired by this point, and it was all we could do to keep her focused on handing Jesse one screw at a time, instead of jabbering in some sort of nonsensical language and just plain not paying attention to anything.

Finally, assembly was done. We even got the neat little tent set up on top! Then we quickly got out the new mattresses (also IKEA), threw some sheets on them, put the pillows and blankets on, and finished up at about 10:30pm!!! Whew! Melinda was more than happy to climb into bed on the top bunk, up under the canopy. Although she has mentioned that she'd like a window in the canopy. I think I can handle that easily enough, by cutting out a circle and sewing some clear vinyl on it.

I'll have to rearrange some pictures on the wall, but otherwise, we're set! Jacob was thrilled when he saw it set up the next morning, and he's been hard at practice to get up and down the ladder easily. Of course, it's been really difficult to get them to sleep since we've gotten it - the novelty of a bunk bed will take a while to wear off, I think. But hopefully before the new baby interrupts all of our night schedules. Neither one of them can decide whether they want to sleep on top or bottom, separately or apart, etc., so there's a lot of going up and down and whining and arguing before they end up falling asleep. Still, it's obvious that they love it. Melinda came and told me, after she and Jacob had been playing in the bedroom for a while, that they had a great "adventure". The bed was a boat, and they got sucked up in a tornado (that's a nod to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker game that she loved to watch Jesse play on the Game Cube this past year), and then the boat ran into some sand, and on and on and on. It did sound like quite the adventure, and she was thrilled to re-tell it!

At any rate, this bunk bed will probably be our one "splurge" with the pay raise. Despite how badly I want a new set of couches, or how nice it would be to get Jesse a car that's not about to fall apart any second... We're hoping to get a good savings going, now, after so long of having practically nothing saved at all.

The life of plywood, part 2

I originally posted in the Just Life post, near the end, that we recently bought a cheap piece of plywood to use between our mattresses in order to get our bed back up off the floor. Well, when we bought the wood, it was bigger than we needed it to be, so Jesse had them cut it at the store, and he went home with two pieces. One, we used for our bed. The other has been floating around while we figured out what to do with it. It measures 2 feet by 4 feet.

It just so happens that when our bed was on the floor, we had the box spring vertical against the wall, since we had nowhere else to put it, and we didn't really want to throw it away. We covered it with a large blanket that my Grandma had made for me as a wedding gift. So we basically had a queen-sized box spring as our headboard and wall decoration in one. Follow me so far? Anyway, when we put our bed back on the frame, the wall behind our bed suddenly looked extremely bare, and white.

I finally had an idea come to me for that extra piece of plywood. And today, I put it into action! We headed out to JoAnne's Fabrics today, and took advantage of a President's Day sale: We bought a piece of upholstery fabric for 50% off, and then used a coupon for an extra 10% off the total purchase. The whole family made the trip, but Jesse wasn't up for offering opinions on which fabric to pick. He kept shrugging his shoulders and saying, "I don't know, I can't really picture how this is going to look in the end, anyway...."

So finally I settled on a fabric that I liked, despite the fact that it pretty much matches nothing in our bedroom. Because, let's face it, nothing matches in our bedroom, anyway. We've got navy blue cheapo curtains, a hand-me-down dresser that has chunks of veneer missing and a mish-mash of knobs on the drawers, navy blue sheets and pillowcases (although right now, we're sporting beautiful red striped and green patterned Christmas pillowcases that Jesse's sister, Rachel, made for our family), and a brown and cream quilt that a different Grandma made for us, also for our wedding. And then we have a rocking chair in a forest green color, and our "bedside tables" are covered in blue cloths. So, nothing matches. And as a result, I just decided to pick something that I liked instead of worrying about trying to match something in the bedroom.

I also grabbed some batting-by-the-yard, and then we picked up a couple packages of small flat thumbtacks. And at home, I went to work: I laid the fabric face down, then the batting, then the extra piece of plywood on top. And started thumb-tacking the fabric to the back of the plywood. After the first few, I could tell my thumb was going to get sore quickly, so I grabbed a hammer to help. But even with that help, I still had to get them started with my thumb, and boy is it sore now. Yes, a staple gun would have been immensely less painful, and much quicker, but hey- we're cheap, remember? We don't have a staple gun. So thumbtacks worked just fine.

Here is the end result on the back, with all the lovely thumbtacks that made my thumb nearly get a blister:














And the front, where things actually look nice:














And then I finally manage to drag Jesse away from his computer, so he could help me screw some wire into the back, and then help me hang it on the wall. And here is our new "art" above our bed. Yay! It's so fun to do a quick project that makes a nice difference in your room. I really do like the fabric - it's very peaceful and calming, and I'm really finding that I like green a lot. Maybe enough to make it my "favorite" color. Maybe my favorite house color, at least. I still love love love blues for clothes. Oh, and for the record, Jesse really likes it, too, even though he couldn't picture it before! He said, and I quote, "It looks great, Becky." and "Nice picking, hon!" :)


















































Sure, maybe it's not super fancy, as far as projects go, and it's certainly not an entirely redecorated room, but it was still fun to do, and I really appreciate the wall not being completely bare now. And besides, we used the extra piece of plywood and gave it a new life! Now it's not stuck in the back seat of Jesse's car, or relegated to become a junk piece of wood for Cub Scouts to practice their skills with screwdrivers and nails. Nope, it's become a lovely piece of art! :)