What's on My Mind Monday

Linking up over here:

 

I.  Our garage door is starting to look presentable.  It's also no longer suitable as a prop in Final Destination, which is a nice bonus.  

II.   I think it's time to break out the edible finger paint again.  As I was typing "bonus", (I'm a multi-tasker)I noticed my sweet girl "painting" on her play mat with her own spit up.  She didn't seem to appreciate when I wiped it up (alternately, when I took away her "toy").

III.  House fever has abated.  Patrick and I are going to do the mature, adult thing by waiting to save money and then buy a bigger, better house.  In the meantime, this one is keeping the rain off our heads just fine.  Well, at least it will once we replace the roof.  : ) 

IV.  Madison seems to wake up just a little earlier every morning.  We've already pushed her bedtime back from 6:15 to 7:15.  I guess it's time to bump it back just a little more.

V.  Speaking of Madison, panic set in this morning regarding her birthday party.  When did she get to be eight months old?!  And who knew that eight months was only four months away from a year?! 

Happy Monday!

-Kelli

Work of (he)Art

After seeing a blog post over here about edible finger paint, I decided to give it a shot for Madison.  I found a recipe on Pinterest (where else?), gathered all necessary ingredients (corn starch and food coloring), and got started.

 Source: theimaginationtree.com via Kelli on Pinterest

I thought it would be fun to make her first project a Valentine for her daddy.  Yes, I am posting this a week late, thankyouverymuch. If I had it to do all over again, I'd quarter the recipe.  See the jar on the left in the picture below?  Yeah, that's the extra paint.  Right now it's in the fridge, just begging for someone to mistake it for mayonnaise.  I thought I'd try it later to see if it works as leftovers.  I'll keep you posted on that one.

I decided to go with just two colors, mostly because I only cleaned two baby food containers for the project.  Of course we did pink, because who makes a Valentine without a little pink?  I wanted to do pink and red, but I'm pretty sure we would have needed about a gallon of food coloring to turn that little jar red, so I settled for pink and blue.

Since I figured that "Happy Valentines Day!  We need to replace seven stained kitchen tiles!"  would make for a less than romantic greeting when Pat got home, I protected the kitchen floor by taping down a cut up gift bag and some newspaper.  I also prepped her "canvas" by taping out a border and a heart on a sheet of scrapbook paper.  If I had it to do over again, I'd definitely use something a little sturdier, like cardstock. 

I wasn't sure how Madison would react to the new texture.  I made the paint during her nap and kept it refrigerated, which not only chilled the paint, but also thickened it to almost a play-doh consistency.  The only thing I was sure about was that she'd taste test it at some point.  Here she is 0.003 seconds after touching the paint for the first time:

I guess it was good, because she decided to go for the source.  You know how when you're taking pictures and only looking through the camera at an event, and there's a little bit of a lag-time?  Maybe that's just me.  Anyway, I looked up from the camera to see this:

  With a little coaxing grabbing her pudgy little hand and scraping it across the paper, she started her "painting". 

After letting her get a good amount of pink on the paper, I had her swap to blue.

 Before she applied it to her masterpiece, she had to do some quality control:

 The finished piece.  See how lumpy the paint turned out?  I added extra cornstarch while mixing it, because it seemed thin.  I think next time I'll stick with the recipe.

Next time, I'll also have a bath ready and waiting.  Painting is messy work!

 Of course Madison's artwork merited a spot on the frame wall, so up it went!  We made a few other changes since you saw it last.  Once I get it all the way I want it, I'll do one big post. 

 I was in a huge rush to get off to our Valentine's date when I was framing this, so I did a horrible job and made it all wrinkly.  At the time, I planned to fix it once we got home.  That was seven days ago, and I haven't touched it...oops!  Oh, and I mentioned that next time I'd use cardstock or some more suitable surface for the painting.  This is why:

See the white spot in the left ventricle?  That's where the painters tape tore away the wet surface of the paper.  Again, oops!

I'm kind of nervous to see how the painting ages.  Have you ever used cornstarch paint?  Should I expect some sort of mold or pest problem a few months down the road?

-Kelli

What's on My Mind Monday

 As usual, I'm linking up over here this morning:

 I.  Crossfit is tearing me up, in good and bad ways. 

• The good: I wore my old (as in high school, but don't tell anyone that I'm wearing ten year old clothes) jeans to church on Sunday.  They were buttoned up and everything!  Not that I would ever go to church with unbuttoned pants.  Especially not if I was five months pregnant and not mentally prepared for the elastic pants thing.  No, definitely not me.  (Don't worry, Mom.  If  someone else, who was not me, ever decided to go to church with their pants unbuttoned, I'm sure they would have worn a belt.  You totally wouldn't have been able to tell that my I mean that random, not me, other person's pants weren't buttoned.)
• The bad: Wednesday's workout made my bottom (we've been working on replacing the other "b" word now that we've got a little copycat-in-the-making in the house) sore.  I was so sore on Thursday night that as I crawled into bed, I whispered (we really need a house with carpeting/insulated interior walls/a split floor plan) "Ow!  I sat on it."  Patrick didn't even need to ask what "it" was.

II. Madison got to play with her friend, Audrey, in the church foyer yesterday.  I think it's funny how different their personalities are: Audrey had this HUGE grin on her face the whole time (I'm pretty sure she's consistently the happiest baby I've ever seen), while Madison was alternately frowning in concentration/very slightly smirking.  Patrick and I were concerned that she would "love on" (slap) Audrey's face, like she always does with us, Bella, and the baby in the mirror.  There were a few close calls, but we managed to catch her pudgy little hand at the last second each time. 

III.  I am so in love with her little face.  I can't believe that one day she's going to ask me for makeup.  Can you imagine covering those beautiful little eyelashes in black goop?  I wonder how long I'll be able to get by with buying her clear mascara.  If the peas in lieu of green beans substitution I tried the other day is any indication, it'll probably mean a second trip to the store the same day.

IV.  Speaking of makeup, I had a dream last night that while walking through Walmart, I discovered that all this time I had been shopping in the "expensive" Covergirl aisle.  In dream Walmart, two aisles down, there's another selection of the same Covergirl products for way less money.  I guess it was more of a nightmare than a dream.

Have you ever changed your vocabulary?  Worn ten-year-old jeans proudly?  Would you ever go to church with unbuttoned pants?  Yeah, me neither.  I mean, who does that?  : )

-Kelli

Our Valentine's Dayte

 See what I did there?  Day, date, day-date, dayte.  Wow, I think I just get more clever as time goes by.

We decided to take Madison on her first date for Valentine's day.  Since she loves avocado, we opted for Iguana Joe's, a local mexican restaurant.  Here she is all dolled up and ready to go:

 How much do you love her ruffles?!  Nana got her Valentine's outfit at Gymboree for  60% off! 

 It was already six o'clock by the time we got there (aka about thirty minutes before her typical bedtime), but we stopped for a photo op nonetheless.  A good choice, if I do say so myself!

 We started her off with an appetizer of Puffs:

 Followed by a $3 (!!!) sliced avocado tray.

 A nice lady at the table next to us offered to take our picture.  Madison kept looking away at just the last second.  The lady insisted on taking "one more".  She took twenty pictures.  We didn't get one with Madison looking at the camera.  Some things are predictable.

 In all ($3 avocado aside), I think it was a pretty successful night.  Madison had such a good time that she didn't mind putting off her bedtime for an extra hour!  

 How was your Valentine's day?

-Kelli

TWO Little Monkeys

I haven't mentioned Bella here for a while.  Reminder:  Bella is dog.  She's a lab mutt, very sweet, obedient, and quiet.  She's also extremely athletic.  I've never seen a dog accelerate as quickly as she can, or jump as high.  The other day, she went to the back door to ask to be let out.  Normally, she'll sit by the door and stare at the handle, willing us to turn it.  This time, she was really excited about something she smelled or heard in the back yard.  She sat down like normal, but then she jumped straight up, and her back feet were on level with my chest.  I'm 5'9". 

Before we finished our fence, we had developed a coming home routine for Daddy (that's what Bella "calls" Pat, too).  Madi and I would open the front door and wave hello, and Bella would sprint out through the door, turn a tight corner around Patrick (almost like he was a barrel and Bella was a horse), then loop into the back yard where she would do her potty business and wait for Pat to come through the house and play with her.

Fast forwarding to last night, I had to run to the store for a few things we're out of.  When I got back, Patrick opened the door so I could bring in the groceries without fumbling for my keys.  Bella charged, did a quick turn around my ankles, then sprinted for the back of the house.  Pat and I instantly knew what was going to happen, and called for her to come back, to come inside. 

She didn't listen.

CLANG-A-SHING...WROH!

Yep.  She hit her head on the chain link at full speed, which for her is pretty dang fast.  After an eerily quiet few seconds, she slowly trotted back to us and into the house.  I think she was trying to figure out how we managed to spank her from so far away. 

I managed to convince her to sit still long enough to examine the knot on her head.  Surprisingly, she didn't draw blood, but it looks like she shaved off a lock of hair.  Doggy portraits are hard, especially with a sissy point and shoot, so this is the best I could do to share it with you:

This was really bad timing for me.  Between Madison's and Bella's head injuries, I'm starting to worry that if Patrick turns up with a bo-bo in the next couple of weeks, people will think I've got violent tendencies!

-Kelli

Good Riddance to Bad Sallies

I promise the title will make more sense by the time you've finished reading this post.

House fever is getting pretty bad here at Casa Philpot.  I've been spending at least half an hour a day finding the "perfect" next house for us.  The only problem with that strategy is that once I find the perfect house, I'll be forced to watch it get sold to someone who actually prepared themselves to buy a house instead of just looking for a house, and that will be no fun at all.

See, the first step in us getting a new house should be to get as much $$$ as possible for the one we already own.  Now that we've filed our taxes, and are expecting a refund for the first time in four years (self employment + not filing quarterly taxes + procrastination = a really stressful April 14th), we're trying to finish everything in the house that we can do with the materials we already have.  Once we get our refund, we'll use that to help with putting on a new roof.  Actually, the refund won't be very useful for putting on a new roof...refunds don't have arms.  But refunds can buy arms.  Well, technically in America, it's now illegal to buy arms or the people to which they are attached, so we'll just have to rent some arms.  Hopefully, our refund will also buy us some shingles and miscellaneous roofing materials.  Maybe if we ask it nicely.

 Anyway, I'm pretty sure the point I was trying to make is this: right now, Patrick and I are trying to accomplish everything we can without spending any money.  One of the things I'm trying to finish is the wall of frames.  This is how it looked when I first "finished" it for the Pinterest Challenge:

Then, while touching up the paint in the hallway (something I didn't post about because I can't think of many things more boring than paint touch ups), I accidentally knocked the iron scrolly thing off the wall.  Okay, I'm gonna be referencing the "scrolly thing" way too much to continue using that phrase; it shall be henceforth known as Sally. Sally used to hang by two finishing nails that had to line up perfectly with two teensy holes on her back.  The first time I hung Sally(see, this is much more fun already), I almost stopped in the middle so I could go Google some useful curse words to interject during the hanging process.  I finally got her on the wall, albeit a bit crooked, and planned to let her stay that way for all eternity, or until the house sold, whichever came first.

Not only did I knock Sally off the wall, I also bent one of the nails, as you can see in the next picture.  At this point, I was regretting my previous decision not to Google an appropriate profanity; I really could have used one.

 The funny thing is, by the time Patrick got home from work that evening, the frames sans Sally were kind of floating my boat better than they ever did before she fell down.

To tell you the truth, I don't remember how or why Sally ever became part of the frame wall arrangement.  She's not a frame, she's not rectangular, and she's not even particularly pretty!  (Sorry, Sally.  I'm sure you're a nice girl and all...)  I guess maybe segregation has its place after all.  Wow.  In one post, I've managed to mention both slavery and segregation.  I assure you that when it comes to real people, Sally excluded, I oppose both.

What do you think?  Has Sally outstayed her welcome?  Do you name inanimate objects in your home?  What do you have planned for your tax refund, or are you getting a refund this year?

-Kelli

PS-This makes day two that I've misspelled my name.  Yesterday was "Kelly", today was "Klli".  I wonder which typos I didn't catch?  Never mind... I'd really rather not know.