Happy Halloween

My boys true form:

My favorite Haloween Video:

Damn You Pottery Barn

Damn you and your sexy catalogs that make me think "yeah, I can make my house look like that!"  I love Pottery Barn, and I love their catalogs. I get a lot of great ideas on how to organize my stuff from them.  I also enjoy making a mental list of things I want to save up for.  In our last house I bought some awesome chandeliers and had the last one for a year before leaving them for the shrew that bought the house from us.  I hope she likes them (grrrr).

Despite my love for this store, and their tempting furniture combos, today I am just fed up.  I took a look at my house, and thought, why is this so hard?  Why can't I have a house that looks lived in, but not like a disaster?  Then I remembered...I have 3 kids under the age of five, and lets face it, the set ups in Pottery Barn are total fantasy, especially Pottery Barn Kids.  Give kids chalk and they aren't going to just write on the area of the wall painted in chalk board paint...am I right?  Thought so.

So, I went to the site today and am going to share photos of the things I love, and why I can't have them until I'm in my 50s (maybe 60s...I do have 2 boys).

We'll start in the Kitchen: 

It looks so beautiful.  Couldn't you see your kids eating a home made breakfast including buscuits made from scratch in this kitchen?  You at the sink washing dishes with a red checkered apron on?  A smile on your face?

Yeah, in reality, my table is covered in Aunt Jemima syrup after the boys eat the waffles I threw in the toaster for them.  Meanwhile I survey the sink full of dishes from dinner the night before that I was to tired to do and wish I had done them, because I'm still to tired to do them.  I also wonder if I brushed my teeth before leaving my room, because if I didn't the chances of getting that done are slim.  The best I can hope for is time to put on a bra before taking Eldest to school.  Suck it Pottery Barn.

Next, lets go to the home office:

I love this office set up and to be fair, I own it in black.  Its very functional, and looks AWESOME, but this picture leads one to believe that you could actually store priceless art under your desk or leave out your key board cleaner without any worry that your children will touch them.  Let me tell you, this is not true.  This is false advertising!  My kids crawl under my desk all the time (or they did), to turn my computer off from the power strip, unroll all my wrapping paper, and play with things in my drawers (like push pins and permanant markers).  This picture is so beautiful, but just because you own it, doesn't make it so!

This is another fav.  I love how organized this person is and I have wanted that little paper/ribbon holder thingy for a very long time. I keep saying "I could probably make that myself", but never do.  The jars full of pencils and various other things are adorable, but again, they would be destroyed in a matter of moments if I actually took a que from this pic and did that in my little home office.  I also love how the desk doesn't go all the way to the wall and breifly thought about doing that in my new house, but then I remembered that I don't have a sexy lap top.  I have a desk top (that is totally hot by the way), and there would be wires and a CPU junking up the room scape (and not having it against the wall would make it easier for the baby to pull it all down on her).  Kids.

Don't have one of our over priced book shelves?  That's OK, just stack your books in a neat and orderly pile next to your desk for an instant conversation piece and a make shift table.  Its the new thing...WRONG!  nothing says "come f*ck with me" to a kid like a neatly piled stack of books. 

OK, moving on to the bedroom:

Oh Hudson collection, how I love thee.  And again, to be fair, this is what I have in my own bedroom.  I LOVE it (side note, I don't have that end table).  When it arrived I felt like a true adult.  no more Ikea bedroom furniture.  Then slowly the kids starting using the base board as a car ramp, and the cats kept "missing" when they jumped up and scratched the wood in a few places.  I also don't have the luxury of having sheets that truely match, like in this photo.  Mine are from wal-mart.  Fitting the bed is really the only criteria I have for linens at the moment, so they work.  I also love that this person has a book on his/her nightstand as if it will be waiting there for when they return.  I have lost two wrist watches since moving in because my kids take them from my night stand.  Our bedroom is just another playroom to them...*sigh*.

Lastly, we have the always elusive "entryway"

I would give my right arm for this set up.  So organized, so fashionable, so chic.  The people that live in this "house" obviously have important things to do and all the right things they need to get them done fashionably and on time.  I mean, even this ladies thermos and yoga mat match!  I can picture my kids, grabbing their monogrammed back packs as we leave to go to school.  Me in my skinny jeans and trendy shirt with a mug of awesome coffee that I brewed myself in one hand and my designer purse in the other.  All done up, but not to the point that it looks like I made an effort.  *snort* yeah right.  Remember my comment about the bra above? I wasn't kidding.  I sometimes leave the house in what I slept in to take Eldest to school.  Middle doesn't have shoes on half the time and the baby is usually still in her PJs.  I don't have to get out of the car to drop him off at school, so that has a lot to do with my minimal effort.  If I did have to get out of the car, I would certainly make sure my teeth were brushed, hair was combed, and a bra was on, but it is what it is. 

I keep telling myself that once the kids are all in school, I'll have that time to organize, do yoga, and grocery shop with a coordinated outfit on.  Thinking this makes the end of the day bearable, when I still see the dishes from the night before, now sitting under the dishes from that night and I just turn off the light and go to bed in what I wore that day, which just so happens to be, what I slept in the night before.

We're moved in...

Thanks to mom and dad, we are now box free.  Well, at least in the house.  The basement has a few more boxes in it, but nothing "important".  I've even decorated the house for Halloween!  What do you think?

Being in the house has been SO great.  I love it.  The kids love it.  What I don't love?  climbing up the stairs two to three times a night to feed my "She Beast"!  I swear, that girl is going to be the death of me.  She is eating so much and yes, that does include solids.  We're getting close to making her deal with it at night, but Logan's room is right next to hers, and he sleeps like a feather.  I don't need two kids up in the middle of the night!  Hey, at least I'm getting a workout, right?  I just wish it wasn't between the hours of 11:00 PM and 7:00 AM.

Speaking of Youngest, she is amazing.  This girl is doing so much!  She's full on crawling, she started solid foods like a champ (and like I had been depriving her all along), she never stops babbling, and she just starting pulling herself up yesterday.  Really?  I'm not ready for a walker, especially a walker than is under 9 months.  That's just creepy.

The boys are doing well.  Eldest has made a friend at school, and her mom and I are taking them to the Zoo.  Its taken longer than I would like to round up some moms to hang with on a regular basis.  I really miss having that group I could hang with whenever out in WA!

Rob and I did get to hang out, and we went to Karaoke at a bar near our house and it was....AWESOME!  They had a competition and the contestants were outrageous.  A man dressed like Lady Gaga, another busting through a screen singing Beyonce, and a 9 month pregnant woman singing "Me so Horny" in a Nuns costume.  So hilarious.  I'm so going back! 

I've been enjoying Wal-mart a bunch, and even had an opportunity to send in my own "People of Wal-Mart" photo, but I couldn't do it without being obvious.  The man has a slicked back mullet that he obviously spent a lot of time on, an old Jeff Gordon racing t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the shirt was tucked in into his jeans in the front only, and the jeans...well they were dungerees...not denim, not jean, DUNGEREES.  They were bright navy blue and looked brand new.  He had his cell phone clipped to his jeans too, and it had the checkered flag pattern on it.  He was taking his time picking out the right coffee to buy "dunkin donuts, or Starbucks...hmmmm"  it cracked me up.

I finally got cable.  What's scary is its been so long since I had a DVR, I don't know that I have the energy to program the new ones!  They are different from my last four, and the seasons are half over.  Hulu continues to be my saviour, but the kids take up so much time in the evening, that I rarely get to the TV before 9:00.  What is going on?  Hopefully daylight savings will help.  Yeah, the kids will get up earlier, but they'll go to bed earlier too!  I'm down with that!

OK, I'm off to pick Eldest up from school.

Amazing

Want to be inspired?  This is my friend Katharine from WA.  She has five kids, her youngest being 5 and really is a true inspiration to me.  Not only because she was able to do this, but because she was able to do this and take care of her family and her friends.  Love you girl!

Houses and Zumba

OK, we have two days until we close on our house, and by Friday we'll all be sleeping there.  I can not wait!!!!!!!!  In the last week, this apartment has been such a pain.  Harrison put a hole in the wall when opening the front door, Rob broke a drawer, and my massive amounts of hair have plugged up the master bath drain.  Really, the hair is starting to bug the heck out of me.  I know you loose it after having a baby, but its been six months and I'm still combing out enough for a small doll in the shower everyday (EVERYDAY!).  I am going to start taking vitamins and see if that helps, but I digress.

The sooner we're out the better!  We went to check out the house yesterday and found that they still had to do a lot of the stuff we asked about last week.  That sucked, because we had to keep the kids from pulling all the blue tape off the floor/walls!  They have two days to finish...sucks for them.  Rob is taking off Wednesday through Friday and will in charge of getting all our stuff into the house and I'll be going by after taking Harrison to school to help direct on where things should go in the rooms.  I really need to get a plan put together for Rob so he doesn't put things in the wrong place and create more work for himself. 

Now, to keep things sane, I plan on just hanging out with the kids as usual.  Going to the Y, going to the park, and going to school.  Today I plan on going to Zumba.  I tried this last week and fell in love.  Not only is it a GREAT workout, but I am doing dances that I always wanted to learn!  We JAM in that class, and to all my favorites and its all ages/sizes, so its easy to cut loose without feeling like all eyes are on you.  its going to be great!

Alright, I've spent the morning in my PJs and have let the kids watch way to much TV.  Time to get myself organized for the day.  Not much longer and I will have my own computer again...and a DVR!  Although, Hulu has really been awesome.  If you haven't checked it out, do it.  Its the bomb.

Habitat for Humanity

I love this cause.  My father worked a lot of houses in the Richmond, VA area when I was in High School and I went to Mexico in High School to help build homes and it was so fulfilling.  People in the US and around the world deserve a home, a safe home that will last.

Let's stand up on World Habitat Day and let it be known that affordable, adequate housing should be a priority everywhere—in our communities, in our towns, in our country, in our world.