Daddy's Home!

After 15 not fun days, Daddy's home!

I was really surprised by what a hard time Lila had without him.  I expected her to miss him, but she was really sad about her Daddy being gone.  She popped into her cozy coupe the other day, and I asked her where she was going.  "To Daddy's house," she responded.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have rented The Lion King for her for the first time last night.  "The Daddy is just sleeping! Let's skip to the next scene!"  And now that I'm writing this, I am realizing why she was worried that Daddy was sleeping in this morning.  

And Daddy has finally realized that my last name may be Hutson, but I am an English at heart, so that means he needs to bring me presents, and they should usually be of the chocolate variety.  I have no idea where they all went.

Thank you to everyone who helped me out while Johnny was gone! You have no idea how helpful you were!  But we're not quite out of the woods yet.  Even though Johnny is home, he is spending every waking minute studying for his fourth actuarial exam on Monday at 5:00pm.  He's been studying non-stop for the last six months, so we really want him to pass this one so that we can get our Daddy back for good...or at least until exam five comes around.

Olive's Quilt

My mom commissioned me to make a quilt for Olive to roll around on at her house.  And since I have nothing to do and no one to talk to past 8:00, it got finished pretty quickly.

It's the same pattern that I used for the quilt in Lila's Big Girl Room...that we actually call "Little Guy's Room" because he's the one who slept in there, but now Lila sleeps in there.  Lila's room is where Olive sleeps.  Everyone on the same page?

Olive is very lucky that she got Daddy's blue eyes...and Mommy's eczema ridden skin...that Daddy calls "Lizard skin."

You're welcome, Olive.

Museum at Prairie Fire Review

Yesterday we made the trek up Nall to visit the new Museum at Prairie Fire with some of our buddies.  After braving the slippery slope of the polished concrete front walkway that I'm sure is a good idea on a sunny day, we all decided to just do the general admission so that we didn't have to spend anything.  But after looking at the baby T-Rex and some of the TV screens, we kind of looked at each other and said, "Is that it?"  Now when I told Johnny about this, he guffawed at me and mocked, "JUST a dinosaur?!"  Well, I mean I'm proud of them for finding it and everything, but that's literally all the general admission is, and according to Lila, "It's a yiddle bit scawy."

So we decided to go ahead and pay $7 to do the Discovery Room.  Best decision ever!  It is really cool.  Lila was able to walk around with a magnifying glass and look at all different kinds of fossils and shells.

They also have a couple of fake skeletons that you can put together.

There's a dig site that Lila and her best buddy Livvy loved.  Though, Lila was greatly concerned about the sand getting in her shoes.

They also have live bugs and reptiles.  Lila loved the little turtles.  Mommy did not love the hissing cockroaches.  Thank you, Aunt Melody, for suggesting to Lila that she get one as a pet.

There's also some kind of astronomy room that Lila never went into, electronic microscopes, and they have a little play area with blocks and things for littler kids.  The signs all say that the play area is for 3 and up, but Lila definitely enjoyed herself.  I could see kids up to ten and over finding things to do in there and having lots of fun.  Kids under three are free, which was nice, but I think it's stupid when places charge for the parents to go in.  So we'll see if the prices change at any point or if they get some kind of better year round family pass.  I am also curious to see how the place looks in a year.  There is so much cool stuff, but that also means there's tons of things to keep in working, clean condition.

We will definitely be going back.

Putting Mama to Sleep

As we all know, Lila has a slight obsession with putting things to sleep.  Yesterday she decided I was next, so I lay down on the floor on this lovely little pillow.  Lila quickly informed me that the pillow was NOT for me but was instead for Baby Ahyive.

This was my pillow:

When I complained, she looked at me, sighed, and said, "It's all we have."

She then proceeded to sing "Feed the Birds" to me with her own little twist at the end.

Dollar Store Frames

Phew. This blog post almost didn't happen.  I realized that Johnny took the camera cord with him to Army, but after informing him of the world's great need to know how to decorate with dollar store frames, he directed me to the Leap Frog laptop cord.  What a pal.  So never fear, this post will indeed happen.

In our living room we have this great big bookcase.  I used to have all kinds of stuff on it, but it was overcrowded and stressing me out.  I knew I wanted to have a bunch of matted photos on the shelves but didn't want to spend $300 buying 15 nice frames.  I had a few leftover frames from my friend Sarah's bridal shower, so I tried taping 5x7 photos to white cardstock and then putting them in the 8x10 silver dollar store frames.  It worked pretty well, so I went and bought a few more to fill up the shelves.

Nice cheap project.

After the frames in the living room worked pretty well, I thought that I could do something similar in our almost redone Family Room (Johnny when you get home you get to paint some more!).  Like everyone, I'm sure, I've held on to a bunch of cards through the years that I really like.  I've had them up on different bulletin boards throughout the house, but I wanted to do something to display them more nicely.  I found some 5x7 frames at the dollar store that already had mattes and slipped the cards in those.  Then I realized that I don't remember where a lot of the cards I've kept are.  So there's that problem.

I like how it ended up. And it only cost $6.

In other news, if anyone has an extra copy of The Cat in the Hat, we need a new one.  Lila was mad that I put her to bed.  On second thought, I am really sick of that book.  Good choice, Lila.

Father's Day 2014

(I will interrupt myself before I've started and say that I almost titled this "Father's Day 2013" but then I remembered that it's not 2013 anymore.)

Our girls are missing their daddy today.

Lila got to video chat with Johnny today and just kept saying "I missed you today," over and over again.

We love you, Daddy. Thank you for working hard for us.

Night One Without Daddy

Lila: But where's Daddy?

Rachel: Remember he's gone at Army.

Lila: But I miss him!

Rachel: I know; I miss him too.

Lila: Do you want me to make you feel better?

Rachel: Yes please.

(Big hug from Lila with lots of pats on the back.)

Goodnight Sunscreen

I mentioned earlier this week that Lila really likes to put her little sister to bed.  But when Olive isn't around or is being uncooperative, Lila's interests have moved to basically anything else she can find.  Yesterday she put the "mommy sunscreen" and the "baby sunscreen" to bed together...on top of a container of chalkboard paint...using blankets, a towel from the front door for wet shoes, two place mats, a burp cloth, and a dish towel.

I like to think she gets her inventiveness from my side of the family.

Waitin' On the Love of a Travelin' Soldier

When we were at Wheaton, Johnny was on a ROTC scholarship.  When we started dating, we knew that most likely he would graduate and then be deployed, serving four years of active duty and four years inactive to pay back his scholarship.  That's how we convinced my dad that we needed to get married in January before we graduated.  "But we love each other!" "We won't get to be together!"  Worked like a charm.  Anyway, around the time Johnny had to make his final decisions for where he'd be going after college, he realized that he could serve the eight years that he owed through the National Guard.  He could still have a civilian job and then serve one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.  Perfect, we decided.  (By the way, look how well-rested we look in this picture. Anyone else have children in their bed during the storm last night?)

So Johnny graduated as a Second Lieutenant in the Army and has since served in the National Guard, first in Philadelphia and now in Topeka.  It's been fairly uneventful.  He was called up once during a blizzard in Philadelphia.  He had to drive around in a Hummer to shut down all the highways, but the roads were so bad that he had to walk to the armory to get to the Hummers.  Sorry he's wearing the same outfit in all these photos, by the way.

After the blizzard event, he spent four months in Augusta, GA doing some training.  Since then he's moved up to First Lieutenant and now Captain.  He goes to Topeka one weekend each month and then for two weeks during the summer he goes somewhere for more training.

This year he's going to Fort Riley, and he leaves tomorrow.  I'm never happy when he has to leave, but we've been extremely blessed that in five years of serving, he has never been deployed.  Johnny comes from a huge Navy family with four close family members currently serving Active Duty, including his sister and her husband who have to live apart and his cousin whose husband is deployed.  I'm thinking about them all as I'm packing up Johnny's ACU collection.  It's true that we've all consciously made the decision to have our families serve as military families, but that doesn't mean that it's an easy service...and Johnny and I are on the way easy end of it.

With the 4th of July coming up, don't forget about all the military families who are serving, especially the people who are currently deployed and are being greatly missed.

Breakfast Nook Redo

Our kitchen's breakfast nook has seen a lot of changes.  Sometimes it looks like this:

Other times it looks like this:

Or this.  It was just too weirdly shaped for anything to stick permanently.  So I got the idea that I would tear out the pantry and build two smaller pantries on each side of this wall with a bench in the middle.  Add a table, and presto, breakfast nook.  I had a contractor come in and a $3,000 estimate later, I decided that was not gonna happen.  He did give me the idea, though, of doing a corner bench with a table.  He quoted that one for about $2,000.  I said, "Thanks for the free idea!" and went about doing it myself.

So here's what I came up with...and as usual, forgive the mediocre photography...if that's even what you want to call it.  The corner bench is actually three benches from Ikea, two with drawers, one without.  Since the kitchen is on the smaller side, storage was very important when
I was looking around for banquette seating.  These drawers are great and huge, and when I get tired of this setup, they can be used elsewhere easily.

I made the cushions and pillows myself, following this tutorial.  As mentioned before, I was trying NOT to spend $3,000 on this project, so I was dragging my feet about buying the foam for these cushions, which would have cost at least $60 with a coupon.  I looked around online a bit for alternative ideas, and I came across this great idea to use one of those egg carton foam bed cushions.  I happened to have one lying around, so I cut it apart, stacked it up, and voila! Free cushions.

The light was a $25 find at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  I also got some drawer pulls when I was there for when I get around to working on the kitchen cabinets.  I made the shade in the background from some plastic blinds following this tutorial.  

I really wanted to have a dish towel on the front of the shade, and I found this one at Sur la Table for $8.

Bird.

I found the table for $65 using our neighborhood website.  It was originally that circa 1995 orangey oak that everybody has.  I decided to try my hand at restaining it, using this tutorial.  It worked pretty well except for a few things.  1. I decided to start staining the table in the middle of Typhoon June, so it took forever to dry.  2. It also took forever to dry because I did not do a good job of wiping off all the stain when I was staining it.  There are still a few goopy spots on the legs where the stain dripped and pooled together.  So I wouldn't recommend sitting on the legs in white pants for extended periods of time.  If you were planning on doing that.

The rug I got for $60 off of Joss & Main, which is kind of like Zulilly except for house stuff.  I was EXTREMELY impressed with the quality.  It's a really nice rug...that is now covered in little spots of stain...but still, high quality.

My Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs pictures have been in every one of our kitchens since our first apartment in Philadelphia.  The frames got a little spray paint face lift, and I took the prints to Kinko's and had them blown up to fit the frames a little better.  It only cost $1.60.

Yes, I have Scotch Guarded everything, and the covers come off and are machine washable.  Thank you for asking.  I will mention that when I was making the covers, I slipped one on to check the fit, and Lila climbed on top of it, stood up, and peed on it.  I was so pissed.  No pun intended.

Not too much has changed with the pantry that I hate.

I added a chalkboard to the inside of the door.

And I repapered the shelves because I think the old brown paper came with the house.  Like in 1957.

It's already been so nice to have a place to sit in the kitchen.  Lila likes walking around on the benches (Free-Range Parent here) and reading my macaron and cupcake cookbooks.  And so far she hasn't peed on it today, so one point for the breakfast nook.

"I Need More Bankies."

So every once in awhile I do chores like vacuuming my room.  While I was recently vacuuming, the girls were playing in their room.  This is what I found when I went to check on them.

Lila continued to add more and more blankets each time I came in to check.

Notice the pillow. 

(Ok I will admit that I added the pillow...but it was at Lila's request.)

And more blankets.

And even more.

And one more.

At this point I informed Lila that Olive was getting too hot and we needed to take the blankets off.  Lila responded, "Mom you go away?"

I took all the blankets off, reminded Lila not cover her up again, and went back to finish vacuuming.  About two seconds after I walked out of the room I heard the familiar slam of the girls' door and the silence of two year old delinquency.

By the time I got back in, Lila had somehow found even more blankets and covered the Boo Boo even more completely.  I laughed and then put Lila in time out...because I'm the mom and I can do that.

Do You Want to Draw A Snowman?

The new Ikea benches for my kitchen were delivered on Friday.  And by "new benches" I mean pieces of wood, an Allen wrench, an instruction manual and two or three moments of "I'm pretty sure I don't have all the pieces."  Also included were a few large pieces of paper.

We got out our crayons that very safely reside in the drawer of the coffee table right across from the WHITE CHAIR, and Lila immediately asked me to color the princess from Frozen slamming the door.  Then she wanted the other princess from Frozen slamming the door too.  I should mention that I was arguing about a line from the movie with my 17 year old brother last night, and he said, "Trust me. I've seen it like five times." 

Next Lila asked me to draw some stairs. (She didn't believe they were stairs so I had to prove it by drawing a person climbing the stairs.)

Then she wanted me to draw a calendar.  I didn't even know she knew what a calendar was.

 There was also a sheep and a chair included in that set of requests.  Then we moved on to the chalk board in the kitchen where she asked me to draw swings and a slide.  She then tried to sit on the swings, which didn't work, so she informed me that she can sit on them when she's older.  She's also looking forward to being older because when she turns sixteen she has requested our 2006 Pilot, our iPad, and our computer.  Johnny also offered to throw our phones into the deal.