Helene's Room Makeover

Helene is moving over to what was Campbell's room when we first moved into this house. In the meantime, it's been the craft room/kids' study. Now it will become her bedroom, and the room in between Campbell and Helene will become the game room (which Helene wants to call "The Club").

We decided to do a loft bed for her, so she would have more room underneath for playing, storage, etc. After looking around at what was available, we chose to order from College Loft Beds because they seemed sturdy and good quality for a good price. We received 6 very large boxes full of plain wood and assembly instructions. There were some pre-drilled holes, but it was nothing so easy as assembling furniture from Target or IKEA.

First we primed and painted everything. Actually, we would paint one set of boards, construct it, and then move on to the next section. The trickiest part was figuring out what each board was for. Some were obvious, but since the beds are highly customizable, not everything we ordered was explained on the assembly instructions.

Helene did some work with the drill, but it required some strength, so mostly she painted, helped me figure out what was what, held things level for me, etc. She was a great worker. I could not have built this alone.

Tobie, on the other hand, was not entirely helpful. She loved hanging out in this room, from the second we started painting the walls. She left her mark in the way of cat hair painted into the boards.

And she is quite content to sleep on the bed all day now that it is finished. There are two shelves in the headboard (behind the cat).

We bought a staircase/chest of drawers to put at one end of the bed. It's great for clothes storage, and it's much easier to get up to the bed that way than just scrambling up the ladder rungs on the end. There are 3 shelves and a desk built under the loft. Helene's Monster High dolls are neatly organized across the shelves now.

There are 3 small accessory shelves beside the mattress (you can see them at the top of the picture above). One holds her lamp. I think she wants to put a small trash can on one of the others. The new lamp and chandelier are shown below. I think they are so fun and perfect for this room.

(If I can find the battery charger for my camera, I'll take some better quality pics to post. The iPhone is handy, but doesn't do it all justice.)

Campbell's 12th Birthday

Campbell's birthday is another important even I didn't get around to blogging about last year. Starting early in his life (approximately 2003 or 2004, right after Dan Brown published The Da Vinci Code), we starting doing treasure hunts for Campbell's birthday. He would have to solve the clues to find his presents. This year was probably the 9th or 10th year of this tradition.

2012 Clue #1:

The sheet music on the piano is "Right Here Waiting". His first gift and next clue were waiting for him right there in the piano bench.

 Clue #2 (Hint: Spanish):

 Clue #3 was with the gift he found under his bed.

 Clue #4 on the gift in the attic:

 He was pretty excited about the D&D 100 sided die:

 More cards and gifts from extended family:

 Dr. Who cake ("Bow ties are cool."):

Later, on the weekend, he had a few friends over for a D&D party. I made a cake that kinda looks like a dragon (if you look closely and use your imagination), and I hired a friend to make the cake pops that are in the shape of various D&D dice.

 I don't know if the numbers have any significance. Just my kids being silly again.

My Birthday (last year)

These pictures are from my birthday last year. I don't know why I never got around to posting them at the time, but I just ran across them again today, so I wanted to make sure they ended up here, since I no longer scrapbook, and blogging (+Facebook) is just about my only record of our lives.

My birthday was truly one of the best days I had all summer. I dropped of both kids at school, and then John & I went to Estes Park to meet my dad and brother for a bike ride. We rode for about an hour, and it felt great (and the scenery was lovely, of course).

Then we went to Coffee on the Rocks, and my mother and Courtney and Bell joined us.

 At home that evening, we were able to celebrate with my kids, as well. This is the traditional strawberry cake that my mom has made for me almost every year of my life. I love it!

 And this is the crazy cake that my kids made for me. :) It's pretty wacky and didn't taste very good, but I LOVE that they spent the time on it, and I love their silly senses of humor.

My 40th birthday is coming up this summer. I'll have a big party, but it will be hard to beat last year's celebrations.

Goodbye, Ranger

This has been a very difficult week.

Innocent spectators were killed in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Citizens and first responders died in the fertilizer plant explosion in West.

My daughter got stitches after being bitten in the jaw by a dog (our dog).

And we had to give up our dog.

It hardly seems worth mentioning that last thing after all the other tragedy in the world, but I'm sad. And I need to write about this and post some pictures as a part of my grieving process, I suppose.

We got Texas Ranger from the local humane society last May. A couple of months after getting him, Campbell stuck his face down near the dog's and growled at him. Ranger bit him in the cheek. It was traumatic, and we discussed giving the dog back, but we decided Campbell had provoked him, and perhaps we could train both of them on how to act around each other.

Last fall, a neighbor boy was walking past Ranger in the yard. Ranger was chewing on a cucumber (I know; weird, but he likes cucumbers). The boy reached down to pat him on the head. Ranger bit his arm. It didn't break the skin, but it caused a big, bloody bruise.

We discussed the possible need to give the dog away, but we decided instead to research "resource guarding", train our dog and our kids as much as possible, and put him in his crate when other children were around.

Another time, Campbell got into Ranger's crate, just playing around. Ranger went in with him, somebody banged on the side of the crate, and Ranger bit Campbell's ear.

We had a dog behavior expert come out to the house and give us advice. We moved Ranger's crate to the garage, so he could only have access to it with our permission, and thus become less possessive of it. We continued to talk to the kids about resource guarding and how to be careful around the dog, as well as how to help train him.

Campbell still loved Ranger and enjoyed playing with him. And I think Ranger loved all of us, too. Here he is cuddling with Campbell when Cam was sick.

This past Sunday, Ranger had been sitting on the couch with Helene for an hour. We were all sitting around together, reading.

She snuggled her face close to his, and he bit her.

She SNUGGLED him. No excuses now. No time to think about further training and ways we could make it work. I'm not going to train my children to NOT SNUGGLE the pets. We had to take him back to the humane society. Of course he immediately (after biting her) looked guilty. If possible to see this on the face of a dog, he really seemed to be thinking, "OMG. Where did that come from? I'm so sorry!"

I know it was the right thing to do. He cannot be in a house with children. I hope somebody will adopt him who can keep him out of situations where this might happen again. But I'm sad. He really was a sweet dog. To tell the truth, he loved me more than anyone else in the family. He would crawl up in bed with me in the mornings after John got up to get ready and I was still sleeping. John would come to kiss me goodbye, and Ranger would growl at him, protective of me.

I get in bed at night and look for him. I wake up in the morning and think it's time to let him out. I shovel snow and look for him to come play along.

30 days, 30 projects

A friend of mine has posted on Facebook about her 30 days/30 projects goal.  I am not quite that ambitious, myself, but on Sunday, I found myself at home for several hours, and the kids were leaving me alone.  I decided that if not 30 days/30 projects, I could at least do 1 day/3 projects!  My first project was filing all the paperwork that I've been shoving in a cubby since April.  One big thing checked off the list (but not exactly picture worthy).

The second project was to beautify the powder room a bit.  It looked like this before:

 kinda plain, but with bird and birdhouse accents.

On Sunday, I found an adorable bird at a craft fair (to which I owe thanks again to my 30 days/30 projects friend - she's the one who told me about it), which I hung on the blank wall over the toilet paper.  I then sent Helene and Sydney out to gather twigs, which I used to "frame" the mirror.  Years ago, I had mentioned to a friend that I thought I should frame this mirror.  She said, "You could just paint twigs around it instead."  When I told Helene that plan, she misunderstood and thought I meant hang painted twigs around it.  I liked her idea of actual twigs:

 I could probably add some more sticks, but it's a good start.

Here's a close-up of the bird from the craft fair (it came on this stick - so cute!):

Project #3: There's this pile of junk on the bar close to the door leading to the garden.  It's mostly tools and seeds and sunscreen that have been left lying around, and I've thrown them in this box and pot, meaning to deal with them later.  Well, since I've never "dealt" with them, I decided I should at least make their containers cuter and less in the way.

 I searched the house for cute containers and found this basket and these two metal buckets.  It's not perfect (I'm open to suggestions), but it's an improvement: