Entering the Painting Game

Anyone who knows me, remembers the time when I swore not to ever touch a paint brush again. It was July 2006 and O and I had spent the last 4 months in shifts painting our house, which we then put on out market to sell.

I have always loved painting, finding it therapeutic, but that was a serious overdoze.

But here we are again. Our hallway is going to get a little update in this colour. Instead of the dirty magnolia walls and horrible badly stripped doors, it's going to be this colour with fresh crisp white doors. All other doors in the flat are white, so this will tie it all together nicely.


I love before and after pictures, so I will post the process at it goes along. Knowing the amount of time I actually have available for this project, it will be more of a before, during, during, during... finished process.

A Perfectly Ordinary Day

Today started as as most Tuesdays with the shock of getting up at 6.30. No, getting up is not the shocking part, but to get myself and the children ready and out on a certain point in time is seriously challenging for me after 1year at home with them.

So this morning wasn't very different from my other Tuesdays, it all went fairly smoothly until we had found our way down the stairs and had been running towards the pay and park-spaces by the park.

Our car wasn't there. I tried not to sound stressed out when gently asking C if he remembered where daddy parked the car yesterday? He didn't remember. Silently I was cursing my husband for parking totally willy nilly and not informing me and myself for not having any mobile phone, so I could call him and ask. After some searching back and forth I noticed the car..on our street, opposite our main door. *gaah, we made it in time, though*

The main part of the day was spent trying to keep J happy while working, but to be honest, I spent most of the day drewling over properties.

After pick-up we went shopping and to get J up the stairs I bribed her with sweets *I had 3 bags of shopping, Js school bag, gym bag and a number of hats in my arms *ok 2, but they felt as if multiplying with every flight of stairs I manged to climb* ...

Feeling very smug having planned something else then sausages and beans for Tuesday dinner, I put the lovely beef steaks with tsatsiki cheese in the oven. 30 minutes later and with really hungry children waiting by the table, I realized that I my supposedly lovely gorgeously smelling beef steaks smelled rather odd. I had forgotten to take out a plastic (but coloured in the same colour ans the foil tin..) styrofoam which they lay on, having now been roasting away together with the steaks and actually was completely glued to them.

Kids had tortellini *thank goodness for 1minute cooking fresh tortellini!* and I had nothing.

C had his homework. Thank you teacher, he spent 80 minutes carefully colouring 18 dots,17 triangles etc on different animals. The last one I did with C counting *it was 40 minutes past bedtime and C was practically falling off his chair*. He was a bit upset with the result, so I had to write a note to the teacher saying "mummy coloured in some of the pink clouds...* so understandably not as neatly done.

Then it was time for bedtime stories..

Js Midnight garden, around 16 pages who goes like this:

"Makka Pakka
Akka Wakka
Mikka Makka Moo

Makka Pakka
Appa yakka
Ikka akka ooo

Hum dum
Agga pang
Ing ang ooo

Makka Pakka
Akka wakka
Mikka makka moo"

and then to C's room for a Dinousaur fact book session, 20 minutes of reading names like:

Chin-shak-iang-o-sau-rus

A perfectly normal day...time to get get some energy for tomorrow. Please God make my tv connection work tonight *J managed to switch off the whole tv-computer thing earlier today*

Friday Dreamin

Friday was spent more or less in a rush. Working, then rushing C from school, home to change and then to a birthday party. Who plans a birthday party for 18 5y-olds on a Friday evening?

Before, I have never been too excited about 2 storey apartments, but now I am warming to it.

Seriously..

ok, so I am completely obsessed with Grey's Anatomy, but I still think that expression can be applied on my day.

Yesterday I just said to O, "I am actually feeling rather well today, but then again, that's how I have been feeling every Monday, only for it to take a turn for the worse on Tuesday and then seriously downhill during the course of the week."

True to my dooms day feeling, at 3am this morning, C woke up with a terrible cold. Yet again. Ok, so one day at home and then off to school for his last day. And then the tummy bug hits us again. What IS this?! I NEVER have tummy bugs, but now? And ALONE.

I feel terribly sorry for myself at the moment.

On a good note, I received my new lovely table runner from John Lewis: Nice, isn't it?

I also received a quite encouraging email from my new GP, who did run a long list of blood tests on me last Friday.

Verdict:

I am out of the woods regarding my iron, it is now normal! (I managed to run down my iron stores to 5 after J was born and it came with heart condition and other not so nice side effects.), but this is now fine.

Good news number 2 was that kidneys are just fine (my blood pressure is mysteriously rising since the birth of my 2nd child), but thanks to my new GP I am going to an impressive specialist on the subject (I have done some googling and he has done a lot of good!)

Cortisol level is still up a little bit, and needs further investigating by my Big City endocrinologist who started an investigation last year, but wanted iron to be up before doing anything further.

Admit it, this must have been my most interesting post this far?

Dream on..

For years I have been dreaming about beautiful chunky furniture. At first for our dining area in our house 4years ago, then my dreams have spread to include bedroom furniture. We have some old furniture, which O's parents bought at auction before we met and these are still my all time favorite. But we always end up not having enough money or time and go to IKEA.

So after 4months of having all our clothes in vinyl bags lined against the wall, I threw in the towel once again and we set off for IKEA on Monday evening. For less than one really nice piece of furniture, we will now be kitting out our bedroom with wardrobes and 2 chest of drawers and bedside tables. In the new Hemnes collection:

I felt a bit defeated at first, but now I am more excited about it, mostly the part where we will get organized, once and for all!

However, shopping at IKEA is not exactly as straight forward as one would hope (although being a Swedish fan, I realize it has it's flaws.. :) ). The wardrobe doors were out of stock, so we are only getting the frames this week, the wider hemnes chest of drawers were out as well, or actually. While O and the children tried out the carousels outside I did some shopping indoors and when I came to isle 8 location 18 and realized there was only one box left, that's when I, out of pure desperation, went Hulk. I managed somehow to get this monstrously heavy box onto the shopping trolley only to realize at checkout that it was only 1 out of 2 boxes that was left.. *grrr*

Bedside tables were sold out as well, so we have to go back next week. But, we did get the wardrobes and the chest of drawers above. It is now standing flat packed in our hallway waiting to get unpacked as soon as O comes home (I am trying to strain myself from doing it on my own!)

Comment of the day: C was amazed by the City Christmas Lights while we drove past them. He said: "Now it's Christmas, all the lights in the world is shining. They are saying: Trust me".

My wishlist

There are some drawbacks to having birthday in the autumn.

You are among the youngest in your class (that is if your school enters pupils by calendar year).

Come to think of it, nowadays I don't really consider it a drawback on my part..

The other drawback is Halloween... Last year, I didn't really wish for anything more then a home made birthday cake. When my birthday arrived, I was thrown a lovely birthday party by my family, but our life was really chaotic that week and I wasn't well, so O was shopping for the party, kind of in the last minute, and bought me a cake instead, or rather, he let the children choose between the one's in the store.

I got one with a marzipan witch riding a broom on top...

So this year I am using this place to give little hints on what would really make my day.

1) A home made cake.
2) if there is not time for baking, I woud LOVE to have something like this accompaning the halloween cake:

Photo: Fairmont & Main, John Lewis

..for our kitchen. I would also love to have any of these gorgeous items for our new utility room:

Photo: John Lewis

Comment of the day: When playing musical statues and I stopped the music: C: "George is out!!"
"George who??"
C pointing at one of the cuddly toys, not really moving around to the music in the first place.