Music Room

Several people have asked to see pictures of our new house, a request I’ve blissfully ignored.  We’ve lived here for 4 months now and those months have been filled with school work, scouts, dance and vacation.  Not to mention unpacking and decorating.  We’ve been having our dining room set slowly but surely restored to its original glory and battling what can only be described as zombie wasps.  But that’s a story for another time.  The point is, our house isn’t as presentable or as photogenic as I’d like it to be.  However, if I wait until it is, the children will be grown and out of the house and it will be time for us to downsize.  So here we go.

If you come in through our front door, the first room to your immediate right is the music room.  We don’t have need of a formal living room, so we moved our grand piano into the space and are attempting to created a somewhat formal but welcoming library/music/quiet area.  It’s going slowly since this is one of 3 rooms which we’ve never had before.

Look what I did yesterday:

musicwindowI moved a ladder in!

Heh heh.  Actually, I did something I’ve wanted to do in our home for several years.  I added a quotation to the wall above the window.  Here, I’ll show you a close up:

dsc02103It says, “If music be the food of Love, play on. -Shakespeare.”  How perfect is that for a music room?  I did it all myself, except for Philip bringing me the ladder.  Which we left there, since it looks so classy.

That’s the window at the front of the house.  Now walk with me towards that window, then to your right and we’re looking at the piano.

pianocornerDoesn’t that look nice?  We need a lamp in here because this is the one room in the house that didn’t have some kind of overhead light.  The angel next to the stairs doesn’t actually live there.  My grandmother made her for me when I was oh…6 years old.  She (the angel) is waiting her turn for the washing machine since the years have been a little hard on her.

So my decorating dilema for the day is two-fold.  First – see the curtains in the front window?  I’m not too thrilled with the rod showing there.  The red curtains are always open and the sheers are always closed.  Any ideas for how to hide the rod?  Or just leave it?

Second – what sort of lamp should I get for the piano?  I’m thinking floor lamp.  The adjoining room is the dining room which has cherry wood Queen Anne furniture.

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Motherhood

Now that I am feeling better and not dying from swine flu, let me share with you one of the joys of motherhood that befell me this week.

As I lay not quite dying, 101.2 fever, all hot and cold at the same time, propped up on pillows to alleviate the coughing, and sleeping almost peacefully, I heard a knock on my bedroom door.  I ignored it, of course.

A few minutes later, I hear my first born whispering, “Mama?”  I responded with, “mm” and tried to go back to sleep.  But Boo can be quite persistent and he tried again.

I turned ever so slightly toward him, peered at him with one half closed eye and said, “Are you bleeding?” in the best menacing tone I could manage.

“No, it’s worse than blood.  Bip pooped and needs you to wipe him.”

I closed my eye and wondered if I could muster enough strength to clobber Boo with a pillow or if I should just lie very still and hope he’d go away.  While I debated, he pulled on my arm saying, “Mama…come on…Bip needs you.”

So I dragged my poor, fever ravished body out of bed and down the hall, thanking God – literally- that Bip had chosen an upstairs bathroom and not one that would require me to navigate stairs.  Boo wisely followed behind me – out of my reach- and made sure I didn’t fall over.

So I helped Bip with his personal hygiene, washed my hands and returned to the sweet bliss of my Tempurpedic mattress and Hampton Inn comforter.  I think Boo might have had the nerve to say, “good job, Mama” but maybe it was just the fever talking.

Now if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Oink Oink?

I have a cough, headache and a fever…I wonder if I have the swine flu.  Whatever it is, I’ll be out of commission for a couple of days.  I am way too busy to be sick right now.  Between taking Pumpkin Girl to ballet class, acro class, Nutcracker rehearsal, plus folklorico class and RE, I do NOT have time for this.

Argh.

I wonder what the chances are of the rest of the family remaining healthy.

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Obligatory Halloween Pictures

Our first Halloween in our new neighborhood was quite a success.  The weather warmed up and the snow melted, though it was a bit chilly once the sun went down.  The neighborhood children were out in force and we only had one set of teenagers without costumes.

We bedecked our house inside and out:
rsz_dsc02061Next year I’m going to figure out a way to stick a pumpkin on that cavalry statue without breaking it.

rsz_dsc02063I made this fireplace screen back in 2003 and this is the first time we’ve had a fireplace to put it in front of!  I put my little trick or treaters in front to look like they’re trick or treating at the stores.  Here’s a close up:

rsz_dsc02064

This little guy is new this year and I stuck him on our front porch with a fake pumpkin.
rsz_dsc02092

The only bummer this year was that we didn’t get a chance to carve pumpkins.  We usually don’t buy pumpkins until the day or two before Halloween because in the past, we haven’t really had room for them in the house and leaving them outside was an invitation for the squirrels to have a feast.  WalMart had tons, tons I say!, of pumpkins not long ago, but sadly they were piled up outside and froze.  None of the local stores had pumpkins either, so we were out of luck this year.  The children actually didn’t mind at all.

Speaking of children…
rsz_dsc02089Check it out – after spending boocoo bucks on costumes the last couple of years, we got off easy this time.  Boo was a vampire, dressed in black jeans, white button down shirt, his dad’s bow tie, the red vest I knit him a couple of years ago, the cape from his magic kit and a $1 set of vampire teeth.  Bip loved Pumpkin Girl’s dinosaur costume from a few years ago, and we found Pumpkin Girl’s Cleopatra costume at Marshall’s for a song.  Cute and inexpensive!   Doesn’t get better than that.

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Happy Birthday!

Eleven years ago today, our Boo entered the world, all 6 pounds of him.  He stubbornly refused to come out without the use of vacuum and forceps and he’s been giving us a hard time ever since.  Alas, he is cute and funny, smart, helpful, generous and an all around nice guy so we can’t help but love him deeply.

Happy Birthday, my young Jedi.  May the force be with you.

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

A Bit of Excitement

So there I was, minding my own business, wrapping up some last  minute things before putting Bip down for his nap.  He and Boo were playing Wii Fit and it was Boo’s turn.  Bip was sitting in a little chair in front of the fireplace.  What I didn’t see was that he was actually tipping his chair back.

Oh yes, he did indeed fall back and hit his head right on the edge of the brick hearth.

You know, with all my children, I have never had to deal with a head wound.  I’ve heard that they can bleed a lot and you know what?  It’s true.  I ran to poor Bip, scooped him up and carried him to the kitchen, dripping blood as we went.

I put a clean wash cloth to his head and then instructed Boo to clean up Bip’s hands which were quite bloody and was scaring him.  Seriously, there was a lot of blood.  I had Pumpkin Girl call Philip so he could start on his way home in case we needed to visit the ER.  By the time he arrived, we had Bip, me, and the floor all cleaned up.  Bip had on a nice clean shirt (at a clean chest, which had also gotten covered in blood!) and was settling down.

It was hard to look at his wound since it is in his hair, but as far as we can tell, it doesn’t need any further care.  Philip helped me settle him down for his nap and then returned to work.

Later in the day, Pumpkin Girl and I got in the car to go to ballet class.  Can you believe it – the car wouldn’t start!  Last night it had been snowing on our parked car and when we got home, the passenger door was stiff and snow was caked on the window, so I had trouble closing it.  I guess it didn’t close completely and the overhead light stayed on and drained the battery.  Thank God we didn’t need to take Bip to the ER!

Bip seems to be fine now, other than the bump and his matted hair.  When we got home from ballet, I asked him how he was doing.  He said, “Bad hair day,” and pointed sadly to the back of his head.

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Sadness

I really was going to write this over the weekend, but Saturday morning I was pulling on my socks and I managed to rip my right index fingernail off, halfway down.  It bled and hurt.  Alot.  So much I cried when I had to get a new bandaid.  Hello?  Band-Aid brand?  Whatever happened to the no-stick pad?  Cuz it stuck and naked nail bed hurts. Really badly!!

So I really can’t use that finger much, which makes it hard to type and really interferes with my computer games household chores.  But I’m here now, hurty finger and all, making about 12 typing errors per sentence, but here it goes…

One of the most striking things about our new home was the view.  All the people that traipsed in and out of our since we moved in, the locksmith, carpet cleaner, movers, furniture repair guys…all of them commented about the view.  Of all the windows that face the back yard, only the bathroom and bedroom had window treatments.  It was just too beautiful to block.

Well, the city, in its infinite wisdom decided that the dry creek behind us needed to be cleared of the trees.  Something about improving drainage and delaying erosion.  I’m thinking that tree roots help with erosion, but then again, I’m not in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Now our backyard view is pitiful.  It’s like mighty Samson, shorned, betrayed, weakened and blind.  It hurts to look at.  It hurts to know that this view, this one thing was our home’s crowning glory.  It hurts that it will never, ever look the same again.

Here is the view from the deck, looking to the right of our house, as it was the day we bought the house.
rsz_dsc01750

Here it is now. Make sure you click to make the picture bigger so you can truly appreciate the horror.
rsz_dsc02038I know, I know.  I think the drainage pipe is a nice touch, don’t you?  Reminds me of the L.A. River.

Here is the old view, looking to the left.
rsz_dsc01751

And now…
rsz_dsc02036Oh look – neighbors I never knew I had.

We were spared one single aspen and one other tree behind our house.
rsz_dsc02035

I know they are just trees.  I know that in the grand scheme of life, this isn’t that important.  But I loved those trees.  Looking out our windows brought me such joy.  Sitting on the deck, listening to the wind through the aspens, spying the deer walk along our fence, getting a snack – this is exactly what I thought of when I thought of Colorado.  Even though we were moving to a big city, being surrounded by such Coloradoness was the unspoken dream of my heart.  And I wanted aspens. Imagine my joy at finding all that I wanted.

So my heart broke last week, listening to the chain saws and mulcher turning my trees into wood chips.  I’ll admit it, I cried.  As I sat in the office window one night and could see my across the creek neighbors, I realized we would need curtains.  I’ll never be able to sit outside with my coffee and enjoy the beauty of nature.

It’s tough, accepting the things you can’t change, losing the things you love so much.  I’m sure there is a lesson here, but I don’t really want to know what it is right now.  I’m such an Eeyore anyway, always sad about something and now I’m mourning my trees.

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Copyright The Mac and Cheese Chronicles 2020.  All rights reserved. Images and content may not be used without express permission.