A lovely way to waste an afternoon

I've had a post in 'draft' mode since the beginning of the month. It consists of a mile-long "May Makeover" list of all the things I wanted to get done around the house this month, including but not limited to: painting many walls, revamping the kitchen, rearranging rooms, moving & painting massive pieces of furniture, and lots of other ambitious things. I even posted about it on Facebook as a teaser. High hopes here, people.

Life being what it is, I've managed to accomplish laundry, cooking, working out, worship, photography stuff, and other everyday tasks. But I'm bummed that nothing that I've wanted to do this month has happened yet. So much for 'making over' this house in May.

However, I did tackle the garage yesterday (which interestingly enough was not on the to-do list; I simply went crazy), and the other day I DIY'd the daylights out of a pillow ... which is what I'm going to write about today, since I haven't done any of the other big, awesome projects I'd intended this month!

DIY Anniversary Date Pillow

I found this super cute pillow on Pinterest:

source

I can never resist anything with text or numbers on it, meaningful or not. I knew I could make something similar, but the likelihood of me actually sewing a new pillow is not good (for one, my sewing machine isn't working, and considering all the other things I "should" be doing around here, getting the machine fixed and then purchasing all needed supplies to make a pillow is out of the question). So I pinned it to my craft board for a Someday project.

But, the other day, I was shopping my house to "style" our bed (always a work in progress) and came across this pillow:

Its been many places all over the house, and finally shoved into the reject pile currently unused pillow stash. Its not really my style anymore, but the biggest downfall is, its totally impractical to have around, because the cover doesn't come off, so how is one supposed to wash away the inevitable kid splatters?

Remind me to tell you about the time I found poop on my white fur throw pillow. *gag*

Anyway, I turned the pillow over and looked at the back .. contemplating ..

Blank canvas! This could be the perfect anniversary date pillow! Or it could be a giant fail, in which case I'll trash it. Nothing to lose, other than time I could have spent mopping. {yeah, right.}

I pulled up Word on the computer and typed out our anniversary, changing the font until I found one I liked that would fit the space. I wound up choosing Book Antiqua. Printed out the numbers as big as I could (high quality copies here, only the best for me!) ...

.. and cut around them to make stencils.

Laid them on the pillow, got most of it positioned to my liking (eyeballed it) ..

After positioning most of the numbers, I moved the dash and the 2 to the next spots, since we have two of those in our anniversary. I guess I could have printed duplicates, but I was in a hurry. Mom mode, you know.

 

And started tracing!

Ta-da!

Then, grabbed my black fabric paint and a little brush (borrowed from the boys' watercolors!).

And started painting!

I had to take about 64 breaks to do mom/housewife stuff, take Dax to swim lessons, etc. (thus the reason there are no more 'in progress' photos), but by the end of the afternoon, my pillow was done!

There were a few accidental paint dribbles which I just smeared around, hoping it would look "antiqued." Overall, I'm happy with the result! Looking back, I wish I'd not used so much paint and let the numbers look more stamped/worn. But I like it.

 

Ah, if only that's how my bed looked all the time. Here's how the new pillow really looks in the bedroom:

At least its not thrown face down on the floor! Real life, peeps. Would you expect anything less from your friend here at Momthentic? Bottom line, all that matters about our bedroom is that the boys find it comfy and welcoming enough to hunker down on the floor with Angry Birds and a bag of chips. The truly important stuff, right?

So, at least I've gotten one crafty/décor-ish thing done around here. Maybe I'll manage to squeeze in a few more projects before the month is out! I'll be sure to share them here if I do! I have an absolutely insane idea for the laundry room ....... {evil laugh} ...

Linking up at:

Barf: a reality of mom life.

March and April were crazy months up in here. I volunteered to spend a combined total of 80 hours in the door to door ministry during those months. I cut it super close and wound up getting my last hours in yesterday afternoon. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought, tonight I want to watch The Hobbit with Juston and have a glass of wine. It sounded like absolute bliss. I told myself, starting tomorrow I'll get back on my old routine, the house will be clean(ish) again, laundry will be done, and I can start on all the house projects I've been dreaming of for months. But tonight I just want to relax!!

Many hours later, the kids were in bed; we opened our $6.99 Malbec and popped some popcorn. Cozied up in bed, started the movie ... and less than thirty minutes later we both were nodding off. Decided to call it a night and had lights out by 11:15 (that's early for us). Fell asleep holding my hubby's hand, feeling happy and content, and pleased with myself for having two great months, and looking forward to May.

And in what seemed like two seconds later, my mom self was propelling down the hall, spurred on by cries of "MOMMY!" coming from the boys' room. You know how as a mom you can jump out of bed and run without even being awake? And then you wake up at some point and marvel at how your mom abilities kicked in and your brain heard your kid even though you technically didn't!

Well, the smell of puke woke me fully when I got to the boys' room, and I saw my poor baby had barfed (thankfully this kid is on the lower bunk, so no puke sliding down the wall this time). "Mommy, I barfed all over my bed! Its slimy! Its yucky!!"

Nighttime barf is one of those parental duties you just cannot be prepared for. Anyone who thinks they want to have a baby (because most people never think about having KIDS; people want sweet soft lil' BABIES, but babies grow into kids who create real, stinky, human puke) should have to spend a night the way I spent mine, in order to make sure you really, truly want to be a parent.

1. Have a really long, exhausting day, then try to have a relaxing evening with your spouse but wind up falling asleep like old people.
2. Sleep like a log for two hours.
3. Jump out of bed and run into a room reeking of puke.
4. Strip a kid and a bed covered in barf; clean it all up.
5. Waddle all over the house looking for clean blankets to make a bed on the floor for the kid. Note to self: try to keep clean folded blankets in ONE SPOT for this very reason.
6. Spend the rest of the night alternating between dozing off and jumping out of bed to hold a bowl under kid's face so barf doesn't get all over your bedroom carpet. Very important: during the times you're dozing off, be sure to remember all the things you've completely forgotten to do in the last week. That makes it extra fun.
7. Stagger out of bed in the morning to get the older kid off to school. Younger kid who was up sick all night is finally sleeping good and you have to wake him up to load him into the car for the (thankfully short) drive to school. Older kid is freaking out because "if he barfs in the car, I'm going to barf too!!!!!! I don't want him in here sitting next to me!!!" Et cetera.
8. Come home and tuck Sick Kid back into his makeshift floor bed. Hop back into bed yourself, and wake up at 11am with a stiff neck and a headache. Spend rest of the day eating Cheetos, drinking Diet Coke, blogging, and browsing Pinterest to make yourself feel better, but just wind up feeling guilty because Cheetos and Diet Coke are not very fun or fit and now I'm just a hypocrite.

Barf creates a terrible conundrum for me. The responsible mom part of me just wants to clean it up efficiently; sanitize everything, and go back to bed as quickly as possible. The other part of me desperately wants to inspect the barf to see what it is. Why is it that color? Why does it smell like that? I guess the mom part of my brain needs to know that too. What made him barf? Is it the flu, or was it the half a bag of Sour Patch Kids I let him eat at 4:30? Why did he barf up something he ate hours ago? Where is all the stuff he ate after that? If I really look closely, will I barf too? Is the other kid going to wake up sick tonight too? And here's a good one: why can't barfy bedding go into the washing machine? Why do I have to rinse it all off in the tub and then somehow carry sopping wet stinky bedding down to the laundry room at 1:30am? Can't I just run like four rinse cycles to get the barf off? [Juston says NO. Barf cannot go into the washing machine.]

The barf gets cleaned up, and life goes on. The only good thing about having a sick kid is getting to stay home and be lazy, watching movies in our PJ's. I always love an excuse to sit around all day. But then the kid starts feeling better, and starts talking at their regular amount of words per minute, and the day becomes like any other, except I'm extra tired and look extra haggard.

"Can I go ride my scooter?" "Mommy, watch this part. Hey Mommy, watch this part. Mommy, LOOK! Mommy, you missed the best part!" And my personal favorite: "Hey Mommy, I just ate a toenail."