So if we haven't gotten to tell you yet, we've got some big news from our family. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that, so...
Snap, is that what I think it is? Yep, Liam is going to be a big brother! Here are the quick stats:
Kristen is right at 18-19 weeks
The due date is August 17, but it will likely be born August 3 if this one's anything like Liam
It's still an "it" to us for now, but we find out the gender on Monday (3/23)
Kristen and I completely don't care if it's a boy or girl
Liam is 100% convinced it's a girl and won't hear otherwise
Kristen and I are about equal parts excited and terrified, Liam is all parts excited
We haven't even begun to think about names, but even if we had one picked out we wouldn't tell
So partly because of the new baby (and partly just because we wanted to), Kristen and I decided to give Liam a new room, a little boy's room instead of a baby one. So we started with a blank slate - what was the guest room, which we hadn't done anything to in terms of paint. Here it is in all it's blank slate "stone wheat" goodness:
We had actually already painted two of the walls the off white you see there, I forgot to take a true before pic, but that's pretty close. So the entire room was the creamy beige to start with, and we painted two opposing walls (and the ceiling) white. What's going on the other two walls, you ask?
Ooh, yeah, hello beautiful. The remaining two beige walls were painted with this gorgeous navy blue, and voila!
Is that it? Pfft! Of course not! What else could we have planned?
That's right baby, stripes! Alternating navy and white stripes, to be exact, on the other two opposing walls. We have a cool wall of stripes in Liam's old baby room, which, if I do say so myself, is pretty freaking awesome:
However, the intervening fog of years and sleep deprivation made me forget what a serious pain in the ass it is to paint stripes on walls as textured as ours. Even with the amazing frog tape, I had to paint the blue stripes on top of the white, then go back and re-tape over the blue, just leaving the ragged edges exposed, and paint white on top of that.
But ultimately my persistence to stripedness (stripenicity?) was rewarded with the sharpest paint lines you've ever seen. Go ahead. Zoom in. I dare you to find a blot, a smudge, anything besides perfection.
By the way, I got smart on the second wall of stripes. On the first one, I laid out the tape lines using a long 4' level and a measuring tape. It was pretty good, but not perfect. Then I remembered that I have one of the coolest tools ever invented: the laser level. This thing has paid for itself so many times over in saved time and amazing alignment. It helped out later on, too.
I think it took me about 20 minutes to lay out the tape lines using the laser level. The first wall probably took at least an hour. I'm still smacking myself about that one. I digress. Stripes complete, this concluded the painting section of the remodel. Now, along with my trusty 4 year old helper, I got to put together the next big thing for Liam's new little boy room: a brand new big boy bed!
Kristen found this cool bed (of course - she finds all the cool stuff) which has drawers underneath - ridiculously handy, and cute to boot. And she also located The Cutest Little Boy Bed Blanket Ever. Liam helpfully tested the mattress strength. Here's the bed with awesome blanket sans jumping bean:
Next addition, an awesome star night light mounted to the wall, and this great bedside table and lamp. All found by Kristen (as if you had to ask).
A few more smaller touches: awesomely quirky shelving (currently proudly displaying Lego builds), fun wire bin for holding all things bouncy and lightsaber-y, and cute-as-a-button growth chart.
Oh, I almost forgot - we also added some crown molding to the room (or is it moulding? I'm gonna go American on this one). It's a small touch, but it really adds a little something. We went with a nice narrow one since the ceiling is pretty low. Liam's new room actually had a number of fun little angles to challenge me - no 4-corners-at-90-degrees-each boringness here.
But without a doubt, my favorite thing we've done in Liam's room is the array of airplane prints. Kristen found these amazing hand drawn water color prints of vintage aircraft on an Etsy shop that are just spectacular. We picked out and got 6 of our favorites and put them in white frames with a white matte, to be hung on the solid blue wall right above Liam's bed. Wait, I have to hang an array of rectangular frames in a precise geometric grid? Best day ever! And yes, you guessed it, laser level to the rescue!
I mean, really, it's almost criminal how easy this thing makes it. Need them all the same height? Mark the height you want, move the laser level up to the line and bam! Instant horizontal alignment. Now you need the next line to be level and line up vertically with your top holes, too? Bam! Done - with one measurement only! I love this thing. Here's the final result:
I know, it's amazing. I give 90% credit to Kristen, 5% to myself for handyman work, and 5% to my laser level for sheer awesomeness. I might need to name this thing. So that's it for now. We have plans for some really cool shelving to put on the other wall of stripes, which is currently sitting bare. We're probably going to change out the ubiquitous ceiling fan/light for a cooler light fixture as well, and then I think we'll be done. Drop us a comment below or email, we'd love to hear from you!
By popular request, I'm going to suspend my recap of the year to do a few current events. And it doesn't get too much more current than last night - Halloween! I asked Liam a while back what he wanted to be for Halloween this year, and to my utter delight he said "I want to be Jedi! I will be Qui-Gon and you can be Obi-Wan!". I tried to explain to him the relative ages and the whole master/apprentice thing between the two, and that I should be Qui-Gon and he should be Obi-Wan, but he was having none of it. And for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, shame on you, and click these links for info on Qui-Gon (light and heavy reading versions) and Obi-Wan (light and heavy). I digress. Our costumes arrived at the house on Wednesday, and Liam was instantly infatuated - he didn't want to take off the costume and he wouldn't stop playing with his lightsaber for anything! Here are a few great shots Kristen got from that first day.
But on to the main event! Liam and I got geared up yesterday afternoon and I got my nice camera all set up. Then the Jedi training began! Camera lover sidenote: I had recently bought a wireless trigger for use with a remote speedlight flash, which also doubles as a wireless shutter trigger for the camera. This came in crazy handy here - I just set up my camera on a tripod with the wireless trigger, got it focused on the part of the yard I knew we'd be in, and had the trigger in my hand as Liam and I had fun. Highly recommend this.
We really had a fantastic time together. We went on to trick or treat around the neighborhood with some neighbors that have similar aged kiddos, and Liam had a great time. He was a little shy at first but quickly warmed up to the whole idea of getting candy - he would run on up to the door and give a hearty "Trick or treat!" when it opened up. But I think we both had the most fun during our fun photo shoot in the front yard - I know this was one of the most fun Halloweens I can remember. These were just a few of my favorite photos - for anyone who wants more awesome Jedi action head over to our flickr album. Well that's it, short and sweet for this post. I hope everyone else had a great Halloween! Drop me a note in the comments below or shoot a quick email, would love to hear from everyone.
Hey gang - only 2 weeks since the last post, this might be a new record! At this rate, I'll catch up to posting about current events in another...3 months. Hmm. Well, I might have to compress some months together in our recap of the year. At any rate, in this post we're looking back to:
April 2014
I remember this last spring being wonderfully mild, and looking back through my photos of the month this was definitely confirmed. At the beginning of the month the three of us took a trip down to south Texas to help Kristen work at the ranch. Liam is actually a pretty great helper, and loves to help us work. Here's a great video of him scooping and moving the cottonseed around.
If you're wondering what the cottonseed is all about, that's one of the byproducts of growing cotton that is unused by the textile industry. It can be pressed for oil, or, as Kristen uses it, as a food supplement for cattle. Hence the large amounts of bags of cottonseed against the wall there, waiting to be taken out to feed Kristen's girls. Here's a great (and rare) shot of the three of us a little later that day, out at the working pens.
Meanwhile, back at home our spring garden vegetables were busy growing! We got everything planted right at the end of March - here's what everything looked like about 3 weeks later, right about the middle of April.
Our tomatoes really took off! I was really happy the way my custom cages worked out, I feel like they provided a lot more support than the usual ones we bought before. And another 2 short weeks later - the growth on these plants was phenomenal, especially the tomatoes! Here's our non-tomato bed:
And the tomato bed - look out!
We really did have a wonderfully cool spring. We even had a light freeze, right in the middle of April - completely unheard of! Fortunately, I had a lot of training over the winter with how to cover these raised beds to keep the plants alive. Another great benefit of the raised bed in general, and the design I used in particular. Here's our tomato garden all covered up and happy:
As quite a few of you know, I love to have at least a few projects going on at any given time, something to hone my handyman skills on (and hopefully use at least one power tool). I tackled framing our bathroom mirror as a home project this month. This was a fun one that wasn't too hard and turned out pretty well. First, our large, blank bathroom mirror:
I assembled a fairly large array of clamps next. Why, you ask? Just wait.
To frame the mirror I bought baseboard in a pattern that Kristen and I liked, painted it the trim color, then cut to length and mitered the ends. Pro Tip: It's worth checking the 45° stops on your miter saw to see that they are actually set at 45°, both initially and after heavy use. Mine weren't - learned that one the hard way on this project. After my geometric fun, I literally glued the cut sections to the front of the mirror, creating a frame around it and hiding the edges of the mirror. The hard part of this project was gluing the pieces to the mirror - they had to be braced in place, or they would slowly slide downwards and then dry in the wrong place. How to fix this? The large amount of clamps you just saw. Check this out - that's right, I'm using clamps in reverse to push against more clamps clamped to the countertop!! Bwahahaha!!
Once the bottom piece was clamped right, I got the other 3 up as fast as possible and then braced them with my homemade 2x4 bracket. This actually worked really well.
And the final result - looks pretty sharp!
April also marked the time the wildflowers in our part of Texas really hit their stride. As most of you know, they're usually very good out at my Mom's place in Brenham, and this year was no exception. Kristen's sister Amy made plans to take her two boys out to my Mom's farm to take pictures in the flowers, and we were planning on meeting there so we could get photos of Liam as well. At this point I don't really remember why, but we ended up getting taken surprise by Amy's visit, so Kristen and I didn't really look our best (more me than Kristen, she always looks awesome). But we still ended up with some great photos, particularly of Liam. Here are just a few of my favorites.
The last big thing in April for us was Easter - it was super late this year, April 20th. We took the quick drive over to my Mom's farm in Brenham and did some Easter egg hunting! My brother Tim and his now wife Jennie also made a surprise visit, driving up from Houston - it was great for us all to meet her!
That about wraps it up for April - all in all a great month! Stay tuned for more updates, hopefully I'll keep on this good roll. Last post I mentioned working in the country - turns out I jumped the gun, the real work is coming next post.
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