7 Quick Takes (vol. 2): Scrambled Egg Question Answered

Happy Friday y'all!

--- 1 ---

Note:  if you're going to clean your glasses, before taking glasses off to clean them, make sure that the bottle of cleaner in your hand is, in fact, cleaner...

... and not hairspray!

--- 2 ---

My grandmother answered my incredibly pressing scrambled egg question.  She's so smart.  She said that scrambled eggs are not scrambled eggs unless you scramble them in the pan.  Not scrambling them in the pan produces an omelet.  My sister and my husband said this too, for the record.  Who knew I had such logical people in my life ;)

--- 3 ---

Inspired by The Library Project over at Like Mother, Like Daughter, I ordered The Three Little Pigs and The Three Bears for Matthan.  He loves books like "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You" with sing-songy text and bright pictures.  Do you have any books to recommend?  Let me know in the comments.

--- 4 ---

I discovered a hazard in making dinner and dessert at the same time.  I licked batter off of my finger and it tasted like garlic chocolate chip cookies.  Gross.

--- 5 ---

Cloth Diaper and Diaper Rash advice - skip to #6 if talking about these and poop ain't your thing


We have been dealing with the terrible ammonia smell that can sometimes come with cloth diapers.  I think we've fixed it now!  This post was helpful, so was another one, but I can't find it.  If I find it I'll post it.

On that note, here is one of the best pieces of mommy advice I've ever received, ever (you can thank my sister for passing this along to me)...

For diaper rash, place your kid in a cornstarch/baking soda bath.  The ratio of cornstarch:baking soda is 1:1 and the water should be opaque (or cloudy so you can't see the bottom of the tub).  For a normal sized bath tub, I use about 1/4 cup of each and run the water til it's waist high with my kid sitting (so a few inches of water).  I let Matthan soak for about 15 to 20 minutes.

This has worked, thus far, for any type of rash or blemish he's had on his tukus.

Matthan had a particularly nasty "burn" from an acidic teething poop, that left really bad marks like his skin had been rubbed off.  AWEFUL!  After two baths on consecutive days, it was already 98% better!

I also put coconut oil on him as a "diaper cream".

Bonus:  all this above is cloth diaper friendly :)

--- 6 ---

I made envelopes this week inspired by Pinterest (using instructions from here and here).  Why?

My templates

My new, pretty, homemade envelopes

Made a card to go with one of the envelopes

Inside detail of the card

--- 7 ---

I've created a "completed" board on Pinterest, mostly so I can find the ones I use a lot.  It makes me feel accomplished.  Like checking things off the To-Do list.   

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

-Just to be clear, when I direct you to a site via one of my links, I'm not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless I state otherwise).-

Healthy Discontent is the Prelude to Progress

"Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Well, I don't know if it is healthy, but I have definitely been feeling discontent with the state of our bedroom.  Part of my discontent was wanting to paint the right color the first time, because our ceilings are twelve feet (I think) in the highest places, and I think my husband would quit on me if I asked him to repaint the entire room because I picked the wrong color.  Hence the five paint samples painted on our wall.

Bottom middle color was the winner :)

It donned (sp?) on us that we have never lived in a place with color on the walls (since college, anyway.  Ironically, both of our rooms growing up were an intense teal, similar to the darker colors on the top row of the picture above.)  I didn't take any good before shots of our room, but since we lack creativity in furniture arrangement, you can see exactly what are room looked like here in an old apartment, and envision that arrangement in our room with the beige walls from when we moved in.  You'd get a really accurate picture because our room was full of junk until about Thursday when I realized painting was going to be extremely difficult if we didn't remove the junk.  

I loaded up the little guy and took him to The Home D-Pot (that's how you say it if you're cool ;) with me to buy our paint and other painting "necessities".  (Oh, c'mon, you know I had to slip at least one picture of Matthan in here).

"It's ok Mom, I'll drive"

A light switch plate may not be a painting necessity, but the bulldog one left by the previous owners wasn't jiving with our new zen bedroom plans.  But anyway, the painting began!!

Our bedroom seems to be the dumping ground for anything that doesn't have a place.  I'm determined to fix that, but I feel like I have a very long way to go.  Any suggestions??  Yes, I'm slowly getting rid of stuff.  After an average of a move a year since being married, we've purged a lot.  Guess I'll have to purge some more.  We also have a very small attic because of the tall ceilings in 2/3 of our house.  As I clean, junk just seems to move from one room to the next, depending on which room I'm cleaning that day.  

Before the big reveal!

But for now, it's clean!!! And painted!!  Progress has been made, people!!

Taken with panoramic setting on my iPhone.

Diapers, Diapers

All of this cuteness...

Matthan ~ 10 days old

...produces a lot of diapers and laundry.

We chose to go the cloth diaper route.  These aren't yo' momma's cloth diapers.  We use the Fuzzibunz One Size cloth diapers and we love them.

Cute little tongue, I just want to pinch it. :)

Nursery in Progress

Over the past week or two, among other house projects, we have slowly been getting things together in the nursery.  We have put together the crib, swing, and changing table, and painted the room...and by we, I mean my dear Hubby of course.  I supervised from the camping chair we have in the room and took pictures.  

Pieces laid out, surveying the instructions

The day that we received the crib from Tim's parents (thank you Grandpa Peter and Grandma Mary!), Tim broke into the box and started putting it together.  I posted real time updates of the work on Facebook and the posts received funny responses like some of Tim's friends cheering him on. :)

Lots of pieces and my supervisor chair

Looking like a crib!

It's amazing how something that is supposed to hold something so small can be so big and create so much trash in the process....that's ok, it made for great compost (another house project).

Almost done!

He finished the crib around 10:30 and I was thinking we were headed to bed when he instantly broke into the baby swing box.  He had told me earlier that there was probably only a couple pieces and would be really quick to put together.

Took a second to pose for me :)

Then he opened the box, and it had a lot more pieces than he had anticipated.  He was not intimidated.  I think he has a gift when it comes to putting things together.  I should have timed him.

More pieces, more instructions

And done!

Finished crib and swing

The former house owners used this room as their nursery and it had a Dr. Seuss theme.  While I love the color yellow, the yellow in this room was "Oh My Goodness! Yellow!" (shouldn't Home Depot hire me to name their paint colors?).  Anyway, it was not exactly what we had in mind.

When I sent my SIL a text message with the finished crib, she replied "it looks good against the yellow."  I asked her if she was being sarcastic, and her reply was "Yes...unless you decided to keep the yellow...and then it looks great!"   I laughed so loud Tim came out of the room to see if everything was ok.  :)  

Goodbye yellow!

So we painted the nursery "cotton knit"... otherwise known as ... white.  Yep, we're that boring.  We have plans to add color, we just liked the idea of a neutral on the wall.  Here are some ideas for the room.  

Our inspiration for colors we want to use in the nursery

 We would like to paint this tree on the wall and hopefully do the shelves as well.  I have some other ideas for artwork as well...but we'll see what we actually get to before our little Sprout comes.

Picture and inspiration from Pepper Design Blog

 For now, here is the crib and the changing table (from my dad, thanks Grandpa Jim!) against the cotton knit.  And if you look closely, you can see the cute crib sheet and blanket.  It's a work in progress :)

Popsicle Prayers

...with a preggar pic thrown in.

The hubs and I have been talking about having a family altar for a while.  What is a family altar you ask? Great question...one I had to ask as well.  A family altar is a place in your home that you deem as the center of your family prayer time and devotions.  There is a lot of information on the internet about the history of family altars and what items people include in their family altars.

A friend of ours wanted to get rid of a shelf, and I had a hard time turning it down, since it came at the bargain price of...free...and voila!, the humble beginnings of our family altar was born.

Surprisingly, this post is not about family altars.  It's about popsicle sticks....stick with me (ha! pun was unintended, but punny nonetheless!)  I'm always looking for ways to incorporate our faith into the little moments our day...so much easier to think about than to implement and execute...I'm working on that.  One of the girls in the Bible study I work with, came up with the idea (inspired by Pinterest I'm sure) to have a prayer jar with all of our names in it.  Each week we pick a stick with someone's name on it and pray for that person all week.  I was looking for a container that would serve this purpose in our home and while cooking came upon the perfect jar...or can rather.

 Sometimes I get caught up with wanting things to be perfect before implementing them...so many projects that I haven't done because I haven't figured out the perfect way to do it...rather than just going with the project and developing the idea in full as I go.  So this time, I went for the "it'll work for the mean time", undecorated aluminum can with the undecorated popsicle sticks, with all of our family's names written on them.  The popsicle sticks are supposed to be colored on one end (hence the sharpie-colored end of the sticks above) so that you go through all the sticks before repeating any of them, also ensuring that you get to everyone in the jar.

But the other day, it was pretty outside, and just cool enough (along with a little fan I rigged on one of the chairs) to sit outside and paint the popsicle sticks.  Tim had rigged a clothes line up to dry some clothes, and this worked as the perfect place to hang the popsicle sticks to dry.

 If you have an easier way to accomplish this, let me know.  I just decided I wanted a painted look rather than a colored-with-a-marker look.

Now, I did promise a preggar pic...

27 weeks

And for a close-up of Sprout :)

Sprout is in there smiling and waving...I'm sure of it.

Here was the final project, made with some modge podge and scrapbook paper.  Although, I have to work on my modge podge skills, because after a few moments, the paper crinkled :(  But it still looks cute... from a distance.

Mount Grocery Bag

I learned to save plastic grocery bags for things such as trash can liners...but saving them has led to this...

Before :(   I had to move the vacuum cleaner, it was holding up the grocery bag mountain

Complete take over of my pantry by grocery bags.  At first glance you'll probably notice the giant pile on the floor, but then you'll notice the trail from higher up... first the bag above that was supposed to be holding the rest of the bags, then the bag on the very top where I started stuffing them because the first bag couldn't hold them all.  This is such a riveting post, isn't it?

On Pinterest, I saw a handmade grocery bag holder and decided that's what I needed...along with some initiative to clean my pantry.  On the other side of my pantry (no picture, just assume it's as messy as the first side) we have a Goodwill bin...

Side note:  We have a Goodwill bin that we put things in when we think we want to get rid of them, but we only actually take it to Goodwill after several months, that way if there is something that we really shouldn't get rid of yet, we have a last chance to rescue it.  But, if we haven't seen or thought about it in several months, off to Goodwill it goes.  And now I digress...

I thought I might find something in the Goodwill bin to use for my craft project and I found this...

I laughed when I found this, because...it wasn't mine.  I immediately walked into the room and tried to ask the Hubs in a very nonjudgemental, non-laughing tone "where did this come from"?  No offense to anyone who likes Miss America...but the thought of my husband with this hat was comical.  He said someone gave it to him... I would have pushed for more, but he was waiting on a business call...I'll find out more later.  No one probably thinks it's as amusing as I do anyway.  

So after a little sewing...and organizing and mopping...I had a new grocery bag holder...

I used parts of the hat to make the label

And now my pantry looks like this...

After :)

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real

~Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life~

Every Thursday at Like Mother, Like Daughter

With a home decorating theme...

{PRETTY}

Framed napkins from my grandmother-in-law

It only took us ten months...but we finally decorated our apartment. Oh, I know what you're thinking..."in the last post you have paintings on the wall and the living room looks so put together" Yes, our living room has things on the wall and a few knickknacks to make our guests think that our apartment is put together...but the rest of the apartment was so....so....bare. We stumbled upon Hobby Lobby's 50% off sale and that provided just enough to get the process started.

The frames above were a thrift store find that I spray-painted (still unhappy with the color, but too lazy to change it), and they now hold beautiful napkins given to me by my grandmother-in-law.

The best day of my life so far...maybe I should have put this under "happy"

We actually have pictures OF US on the walls now! The frame is from Hobby Lobby and the picture needs no explanation as to why it's pretty...isn't Father Adam just so pretty ;)

{HAPPY}

The clock is also from Hobby Lobby (I'm not intentionally promoting their store, but in the way of inexpensive craft and decorations, they are one of the best). I did talk them into giving me 60% off since the hands were bent and it had marker on it (The Hubs fixed that easy enough)...I've been told that I like to haggle. Haggling, and having decorations and pictures up on the wall makes it feel so home-y now, and that makes me so happy. And the clock makes me happy...isn't it fun and colorful?

{FUNNY}

I'll give you 3 guesses as to why I'm in this pose

Do I look a little silly? Well, I sliced my finger pretty badly while cleaning the glass in the frames, and it would not stop bleeding, so The Hubs made me hold my hand above my head. Well, I was just too darn impatient to let my injury slow me down so when Tim walked around the corner, this is what he saw...and then he took a picture. He was quite amused.

{REAL}

And because no home-decorating project ever goes completely right... Tim promptly drug out his tools to hang our new decorations on the wall, and after 5 seconds...the drill died...and the spare battery was dead...postponing the project by 45 minutes while we waited for it to charge. In the mean time I drove him crazy with "a little higher", "a hair to the right, no left", "it's crooked", as he graciously hung pictures on the wall for me...all the while with my hand in the air. That's life in the Zack house.

Pictures hanging in our hallway