Posts filed under 'Around the house'

heatwave

1 comment July 11th, 2010

fun with friends and birthday cake

ashandmom8mos

ashandorange

ashandsarah2

ashandsarah

ashandadam

ash85mosrings

ashanddan

bdaycake1

1 comment April 7th, 2010

assistant lighting dude

Matthew was working from home the other day and when he finished using this lighting plot I gave it to Asher. Should have gotten it on video, it was that hilarious. Luckily there is no shortage of these at our house so there will be a next time. Lucky boy!

helpingdad1

helpingdad2

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helpingdad6

1 comment March 17th, 2010

mr. mom

I didn’t feel so great today so Matthew took over all baby duties (besides feeding) while I tried to sleep off the pounding sinus headache I woke up with. He also did laundry, took Asher on a walk to the supermarket, and made us a pot of minestrone soup for dinner.

soup2

Then served it with the best rated baguette in NYC.

soup1

I should take a sick day more often.

2 comments November 15th, 2009

tummy torture

3:32pm

tummy1

3:33pm

tummy2

3:33:47pm

tummy4

3:34:21pm
tummy6

3:35pm
tummy3

3:35:03pm

tummy7

3:35:42pm

tummy8

3:35:43pm
tummy10

3:36pm

tummy121

2 comments October 3rd, 2009

A Labor Day Miracle

Last Christmas morning Matthew surprised me with a new laptop.

macxmas

(pardon the dark purple nail polish. I have no idea what that’s about)

It really was a huge surprise. I even whined that my present was too “heavy” and I didn’t want anything heavy before I opened it. Seriously! Welcome to life with me.

It then spent 3 months in the box because I was traveling and too busy to move everything over. Once I booted this bad boy up I could not believe I had waited so long. It’s about 7 billion times better and faster and prettier than my old laptop. I lurve it.

Sunday night I was reaching for the baby monitor and I knocked an entire glass of seltzer into my laptop keyboard. My virtually 6 month old computer.

The one with 1,174 pictures taken since July 22, 2009

OF MY BRAND NEW BABY

We quickly shut it down and removed the hard drive and battery. Then Matthew put it in a box layered with paper towels and lots and lots of rice.

macrice

He took the box, taped it up and put it in the kitchen to dry for 3 entire days.

Meanwhile my brain went through plans A-D

a) buy a new computer and transfer the drive (sounds expensive)

b) buy a bigger hard drive for my old computer and transfer the drive (cheaper)

c) buy Matthew a new computer, buy a new drive for his old computer and transfer the drive (more expensive but inevitable)

d) WE HAVE NO MONEY FOR ANY OF THESE THINGS, YOU ARE SCREWED YOU CLUMSY MORON (truth!)

We opened the box Wednesday night and started it up

AAAANNNNND it works. So far. Enough that I backed up all my pictures. It seems totally fine. So far. Shocked that the keyboard works but it does (so far)

UM…

macriceyay

Let’s keep our fingers crossed huh. Let’s also keep our photos backed up.

2 comments September 14th, 2009

Pet Me

um…can you pet me?

siblingsa

 

 

Can you pet me?

siblingsb

 

 

Wait, I’ll get closer.

siblingsg

 

 

Can you pet me?

siblingsc

 

 

Your head smells really good

siblingse

 

 

Can you pet me?

siblingsf

 

 

It’s ok, I know you’d pet me if you could

siblings2

 

 

We’re going to be best friends

siblings1

3 comments September 8th, 2009

Spacebags are space saver-y

We are pretty much unpacked and settling in at the new place. Since we ended up with a bit more time on our hands than we thought we’d have we started looking for ways to make this tiny apartment more functional and efficient. (AHEM, busy work)

We previously had 2 huge bins of guest blankets and pillows that took up a large amount of room in my closet so I decided to buy one of those spacebags for $20 to try it out. Wouldn’t you know, OMFG they work. Not only do they work, they are awesome and took about 2 minutes to use from opening the package until we had the stuff stored again.

Before:

With Matthew’s head for scale purposes.

spacebag1

During:
spacebag2

After!
spacebag3

The new storage system takes up about 1/3 of the old one. We bought a 2nd spacebag for the rest of it and now all of it sits in a spot smaller than one of the bins. A-MA-ZING. Highly recommend this product. A+++

I bought mine on amazon but I think they sell them everywhere. I think we will invest in more to store baby stuff…and maybe my winter clothes…and who knows what else.

Add comment July 18th, 2009

A project for when we run out of projects

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really want this headboard

embroideredheadboard

and there are DIY instructions here.

{via d*s}

1 comment June 24th, 2009

Things I Have Learned In the Move

#1-Boxes are free
Start searching craigslist a month before for free boxes and you won’t have to pay for any. People are very generous.

Don’t write on the boxes so when you pass them on they are clean and pretty. Use different color paper to make notes on what is in the box, to help with actual move day by tell the movers what goes where. Also helps with unpacking. Then make sure you have enough of each color.
Me ”Blue is the small bedroom, purple is our room, green is the living room and yellow is the kitchen”

Mover: “Ok I have a white label where does it go”

Me: “uh…that is Living room too”

Did I bother counting the sheets I had before assigning the largest room? No. But you should! 

boxes1

#2-Moving while 8 mos pregnant sucks.
It is not easy for many reasons. When you cant lift or bend packing is hard, and unpacking is harder. On top of that Matthew does not remember anything he packed.

Location: Our new Living Room

Time: Mid-Afternoon, day after we moved in

Scene:  MP: “Have you seen where the black power strip from our room went”

Me: The one you packed 3 days ago? no.”

matthewembarrassed
 

#3 -Moving is the perfect time to declutter.
We seriously downsized for this move. We turned our office/catch all into a room for the baby so we needed to get rid of a ton of stuff to make it all fit.
While packing, always have a box open to collect things to get rid of. We still have ours going so as things get unpacked if we don’t love it, it goes to good will. We’ve dropped off about 5 bags of clothes/sheets/towels and 20 boxes over the past few months. Just this weekend we donated 3 more boxes and now the one we have going is almost full, I’m sure by the weekend we’ll have 2 more. Its amazing how much you don’t need when you are trying to maximize your space. We slowly went from 4 full size billy bookcases 3 years ago to 3 halfsize ones today. When all our books didn’t fit in the new allocated space we ditched enough to make it work. I only kept ones I loved or haven’t read before because thankfully I finally realized that I don’t care if people walk in and say “wow, you have alot of books” It makes me feel so much better to say “I go to the library” Same with DVDs. We stopped buying them for the most part years ago, I think we probably only accumulated 2-3 a year the past 5 years but we still had about 150-200. We have netflix, and cable, and plenty of places to rent them if I’m having a psychotic DVD viewing related emergency. If it wasn’t a kids movie and I didn’t watch it in the past year I donated it. I would have liked to sell them but in the end the time just wasn’t worth the $50-$100 I would have made.

This week I have been dealing with the miscellaneous boxes of random stuff. Office supplies, crafts, old photos, mementos, stationary…probably the hardest ones yet.

#4 – If you have large junk people will buy it.
Even though its a huge pain in the behind, take the time to sell anything on craigslist before you move so you don’t have to deal with it later.

Now this may seem like a no-brainer and really we tried to get it together but ended up with 4 things at the new apartment we needed to get rid of. Matthew goes to the school of just putting everything out on the street but I can’t help it – if I can make $25 thats better than nothing.

It was a bit of a hassle to sell all those things at once while unpacking but I brought in a total of $230. Which was more than enough to cover the baby’s new dresser/changing table!

#5 – Things take way longer than you estimate.
Do not offer to paint. If your landlord asks what you want to do just say no even thought you don’t want a crap job done by crap workers with crap paint that you will want to touch up for 2 years. Tell them to just do it all white even if you want Natural Wicker. 

lrmp

Especially if you end up painting your humungous LR/DR area Cotton Ball. AHEM. 

lrwall1

(We are doing the pipes and around the windows this week. Again, HOW DID THESE PEOPLE LIVE HERE??)

Add comment June 15th, 2009

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Reading

The Birth House by Ami McKay

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Peaches
Finding the Perfect Bedding
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Cookbook

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Drop Dead Diva

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