Rodents in the House #notinmylife

 

Sort of an ominous start to a post, isn't it? Well, yes, it is, but this is my life.

The life wherein since I've had kids I'm perpetually adding one more thing to that laughable list of "Things I'll Never Do."

Somewhere on that list is this.

My children will never be allowed to have caged animals.

It all started with Zoe Bug's science teacher, Mrs. Odell. You see, Mrs. Odell, evil educator that she is, taught my child how to make a Power Point.

That's right, she taught my Zoe Bug a marketable skill.

Tomorrow we home school.

Seriously though, Zoe Bug learned how to make Power Points, and now she thinks she's all that. Not only does she think she's all that, but she's using her new found skill to persuade her parents to do things they said they would never do.

Banding together with her sister, she and Stinkerbell created this most persuasive, and very well researched collection of gerbil factoids combined with a subversive plea to allow them to bring a pooping, caged rodent into my house.

My house.

And where is my backbone, you ask?

At the hospital with the placentas.

Excuse me, but I'm slightly distracted here. I'm curious to hear what a raspy breathing gerbil sounds like.

Are we talking Darth Vader sounding or harmonica sounding?

And correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think the cage needs to be cleaned every day. That's another one of those gifts I received upon having kids.

Dog Nose.

Ha! These kids know who their audience is. Appealing to our desire for no poop.

And what are they talking about "you can just feed them veggies out of our fridge?" We don't eat veggies. On purpose.

I love the reference to the grumpy morning person. I tell you what, it's not me.

They're going to "cross that bridge when we come to it?" I'm laughing here.

This whole Gerbil conversation started around Christmas, and Peanut Head and I have been against it from the beginning.

Hence the placating Power Point appealing to our inner nerds.

Admittedly, we did think it was cute. Peanut Head even went so far as to teach the girls how to make an Excel spreadsheet to outline the costs down to the last cent.

As a hypothetical projection, of course.

These slides were created for the Addendum Power Point based on the Excel spreadsheet with the itemized list and cost projections.

Upon seeing the cold hard truth, I was hopeful that my children would not be able to exert the discipline required to save such a large sum. Mostly.

Part of me was a little excited to see them care so much about something that they were inspired to plan and save their money instead of spend it on the equivalent of endless amounts of Happy Meal toys.

Parents loathe Happy Meal toys.

Oh dear. I can't let this one go without talking about it.

First, fish. Have we talked about the fish?

Probably not, but that was something else on the list.

We will never have fish because fish swim in their own poop.

I excel at failure, I'm just going to put that out there right now.

And the fish, the fish. Zoe Bug could not keep a fish alive to save her life.

We had so many fish die in this house, I could have opened up a seafood restaurant.

So many fish that I was inspired to tweet poetry.

Fish die, and kids cry

And parents ask "Why?"

Wouldn't you die, if you swam in

Your own poop, like it was soup?

An inspired poem.

By the way, Zoe Bug did not think it was funny.

For that matter, she does not think I am funny. At all. Ever.

And that reference to helping out with the vet bills? Ha.

Meet our veterinarian, Dr. Lucinda Gooseberry. She specializes in rodents.

This one's my favorite. I shall be checking all of these links and if I find that you have plagiarized this Power Point in part or in whole, there will be NO GERBILS!

There will be NO GERBILS!

Ahem. Yeah. So you can see where this is going, right?

Stinkerbell turned eleven yesterday, and the scheming little monster disbursed her tentacles of technology to appeal to our relatives to send her Petsmart and Petco gift cards for her birthday.

And they did.

And so we went here.

Armed with the Master Plan.

And bought lots of stuff, not having to spend as much of their own cash as they had planned, but still enough for them to really feel it.

However, it did not deter them from marching on to the second place that is the Keeper of Gerbils.

And food. For the Gerbils, not the Gerbils as food.

Although maybe because our vet.

The setting up was great fun.

Um, this. Really?

Somehow I can't quite picture it.

This tank has been arranged and rearranged countless times for their comfort.

They settled in right away.

And they were named. Lightning and Kat.

Irony lives.

Our Veterinarian was kind enough to welcome the rodents to their new home.

And her lovely assistant, Nurse Gunny Bun-Bun.

She is ever hopeful that they will fall ill and require her assistance.

Come to me, My Pretties.

So yeah, rodents. What's next?

Hunter Safety

This project, like most projects I take on, has a very unstable vision that keeps shifting as I consider multiple color combinations. I went into this a lot more realistic than I usually do. I knew I was going to use the color Weathered Glass in the Valspar Eddie Bauer palette, but other than that, I knew I was going to keep an open mind.

Peanut Head was in the background insisting that I use some of the stockpile of leftover paint we have from my many painting sprees. That's where the light tan comes in. It's our token color just for Peanut Head. 

We finished painting the walls a couple days ago, so yesterday the girls and I drove around town looking for wall stencils. In my mind, I wanted to do something cool with the tan on the bottom part of the walls, and use up some more leftover paint. It turns out that for what I was looking for I would have to order it online. And since I'm on Spring Break this week, ain't nobody got time for that.

I ended up buying a package of Martha Stewart stencils at Michael's, still trying to create a vision in my head.

This is what I came up with. I ended up just using craft paint I had on hand, and I did this without Stinkerbell's knowledge as she left for a sleepover shortly before I began messing around with the stencils.

She came home this morning and exclaimed "Whoa! I love the fireworks on my walls!"

They do kinda look like fireworks, so that's what we're going to call them.

Last night I had a restless night of combining paint colors in my dreams.

What color should we paint the bed? I think I want to paint it chartreuse. Something snappy.

If I paint the bed chartreuse, then what should I paint the nightstand? The magnet board?

I popped out of bed this morning determined to solve the color dilemma. 

The Stink and I went to Lowe's where I immediately grabbed my idea of Chartreuse, only to become distracted by the lovely oranges and yellows. I really had a rough time of it, but ultimately we both agreed on this bee-yute-iful shade of Hunter Safety Orange. Valspar calls it Pumpkin Butter, but whatever. I big fat puffy heart love it.

As we were having the paint mixed, I saw this sign at the paint counter, and do you know what? I've always wanted to try chalk paint, so what better time than now to do it. So we did.

I went with the Plaster of Paris recipe on the right, and I really like how it turned out. The paint did have some chunks in it, which was sort of a pain because I had to keep scraping them off the bed while I was painting, but I really like the texture when it dries.

This is just the first coat.

And this was after three coats. I haven't decided if we will sand to rough up the edges a bit. I'm a little scared I'll screw it up. 

The color is so yummy though.

I hit all the trim with a couple fresh coats of white semi-gloss and I'm giving it another hour before I start moving furniture in. I can't wait to see it all come together. We bought a delish Chartreuse fabric that I'm going to "upholster" the box springs with. I know I these colors seem pretty crazy, but I promise, in my head they look amazing together.

But then again, I could be wrong. Stay tuned.

Spring in the House

It almost looks like a Christmas card, doesn't it? Don't be fooled though, it's "Spring in Idaho," the musical.

I can't even get on Facebook right now for all the complaining about the snow in spring.

And it's not like this doesn't happen every year.

Idaho likes to tease us with beautiful spring days and then WHAM! You can't handle the Spring! Take some blizzard.

Honestly, it doesn't bother me a bit because I'm an inside girl and I have plans for my spring break. Not normal person plans, but plans.

Because I like to start things off on an ugly foot, I kicked off my Spring break with a little food poisoning via Fish Taco. Let me tell you what a special treat that was. I'll spare you the gory details, let's just say that now I'm really in the mood to Spring clean.

And if you know me at all, you know that it's going to start with a list. A four page list lined out in excruciating detail. A list that I have no hopes of finishing in one week, and maybe not even throwing in summer vacation to boot. Still, it's good to have goals.

Very possibly, if past experience can be any indication of future success, I'll make it a third of the way down the first page, throw myself on the couch and say, "I don't wanna."

It might happen. I just like to be realistic about these things.

I got myself off to a good start though and tackled my possibly never cleaned in the six or so years of ownership oven. I followed the instructions on one of the pins on my "Keeping House" Pinterest board and even cleaned between the glass. I'm pretty proud of myself.

 

One of the benefits of having the kids on Spring break with me is that they can help. Stinkerbell gets all the jobs in tight spaces. I'm pretty sure I could not sit in that very spot and clean with such precision as she is demonstrating.

Before the week is out I'm going to send her into one of my corner cupboards to excavate. The only drawback to using her is she is so OCD that she wants to pick everything up with a kleenex. She tried it for this job, and I gave her my angry eyebrows with firm instructions to "Suck it up, Princess."

Besides massive cleaning projects this week, we have grand plans to redecorate Stinkerbell's room. Somewhere along the way, despite my attempts at nurture over nature, the Stink has developed an aversion to pink and all things girlie. It is with great sadness that I am painting over the painstakingly stenciled flowers this week.

 

It is with great joy that Stink paints over the last of the pink.

On second thought, that blue is sort of a Cinderella Blue, isn't it? Not that I like Cinderella, but I'm grasping at straws here.

 

Anyway, this part is done, but we have so much more to do. I plan to pop in here every day this week with updates along the way.

Stay tuned.