Progress in Zach's Room!

Huzzah! I finally feel like I am making some progress in Zach's new bedroom. That's mostly in part to my awesome sister who broke into my house and did some sneaky painting on Saturday night. Zach and I had plans to go to a friend's house for dinner, and I'd asked my sister if she'd come over when we were done (and once Zach was in bed) to help me do the final coat of green on, well, every place that was to be green. I'd had a minor issue with running out of paint and the next can being slightly different from the first, so it needed one more thin coat on everything just to even things out and make everything the same shade. We were a little later leaving the friend's house than I'd intended, and I was thinking as I turned into my neighborhood that I should call my sister and see if she'd still be up for painting or if it was getting too late. When I turned the corner onto my street and saw my sister's car parked in front of my house, I was feeling pretty bad about it being roughly an hour later the time I'd told her I was aiming for! Turns out that she "broke in" about two hours before we got home and had already gotten a great start. Love her!! Lol, although I have to admit I was a bit jealous that she got to spend two whole hours ALONE in my house; I can't remember the last time *I* got to do that :)

While she finished "rollering" the green paint, I drew the outline for the street and managed to get a couple clouds painted. You can see in the pictures that I left a large gap between the two clouds. That's because I'm still debating on whether or not I want to attempt painting an airplane. The plane will definitely be a last minute decision based on how the painting of everything else goes. Today during nap time I attempting to stencil the first coat of the sailboat. After that's finished I will paint a lake around it. The stenciling was super easy, but I've determined that this is the one and only stenciling attempt until I'm able to get to Michael's and buy some spray stencil adhesive. Apparently there IS a reason way every website I looked at recommended using the spray adhesive! Until then I'll stay busy doing the second (and maybe third?) coat on the sailboat, painting the lake, and cutting out the stencils for the car and trucks.

But without further ado or anymore jabbering, here are the newest room pictures:



Two clouds painted -- I picture a farm & sheep every time I see it like this. I really hope that stops once there are cars on the wall!



A close-up of the street penciled in ... but you can't really see it.






My angle is crooked in this one, not the boat. I promise.

The Boys' Rooms

I made this a page on here too, but once I start posting pictures I'm going to be removing a lot of my writing (everything but the to do lists). I think it's partly because I'm just wordy and partly because of the layout I chose, but I feel like all my posts are a bit on the "novel" side of things in terms of length. Not quite what I'm going for. Here ya go:

OK, I've officially fallen off my rocker. I've actually wondered if I am perhaps going through a manic episode and need to go get myself evaluated somewhere. (Yes, that was a joke!) Since we're pretty much broke, at least when it comes to extraneous money for fun things like bedrooms, I decided I'd save money and do a lot of the work myself. A LOT of the work. Here are my to-do lists for the boys' rooms:

Zach's Room:

• Paint 3 walls green


• Paint car/truck mural on 4th wall


• Paint some sort of decoration on the solid, non-mural wall (I'm thinking words of some sort? Stop? Beep Beep? Dunno yet.)


• Sew curtains for windows


• Fabric paint some sort of design on curtains

Baby's Room:

• Find fabric I 1) like and 2) can afford


• Sew the following:
  - Curtains
  - Bed Skirt
  - Bumper


• Paint room or touch up existing paint (wholly depends on fabric choice


• Paint accents on wall above crib

Sounds easy, right? Right ... but the first step before any sewing can be done would be remember how to thread the damn sewing machine. And no, that one wasn't a joke :) Zach's room gets first priority, then I will move on to the baby's room. Once I get that done, I have a list of other things I'd like to sew, but they're definitely bottom of the totem pole things. (New sling, new boppy cover, pillow for rocking chair in baby's room, and a car seat tent) Now ... any bets on how old the baby will be when I actually get all this stuff finished? I'll give you all a hint and say that I have definitely inherited my mom's ability to finish projects. The quilt she started for my brother when he was about 2 years old was finished in the weeks before he left for college ...

Zach's Room

To get ready for the new little guy that will be joining us in May we're planning on moving Zach's bedroom across the hall into what had been being used as a playroom. I have big goals for this room. Well, not as big as the goals I have for the baby's room, but we'll come back to that a different day. Zach's current bedroom isn't anything special - blue walls because we had a lot left over from painting our bedroom. Mattress on the floor with a sports-themed comforter, because I found it on clearance over the summer at Target and it beat what he had been using - my old red and blue comforter from my college dorm room. No curtains, no personality, just boring. So for his new room I decided I wanted to paint a mural with cars and trucks. Initially I'd planned on just painting grass, the sky, and a road and using those removable wall stickers for the vehicles, but ultimately I just couldn't find anything that I liked. I think I'm too picky. But hey, I figured, how hard can it be to paint a couple trucks ...

Apparently I'm not going to know for quite some time. Tomorrow marks the day that I was hoping to have the mural done, and how far am I actually? The non-mural walls are almost done, just need a bit of touching up. The grass needs at least one more coat of trim around the bottom and another coat with the paint roller. And the sky? Well, that's not even started yet. Turns out I hated the blue I bought and wanted to get something different. However, since my colorblind brother told me the same thing about the blue that I'd been thinking myself (that it looks rather purple), I felt a little better about my decision! I've been telling myself since Thursday night that I was going to go work on the room after Zach was in bed - I couldn't do it before then because Jerome has been working or at school every night until at least Zach's bedtime. And yet, I have made no progress since Tuesday, when I ran out of green paint and decided I didn't like the blue. Turns out my motivation is slim to none after 8:30pm. But because my goal of having Zach moved into the room by the end of January is quickly approaching, and the only thing that really needs to be done for him to move in there is the painting, I'm now going to do the insane and start painting at 10:30pm. Thankfully, Jerome has agreed to let me sleep in tomorrow, which is a good thing, because I promised Zach that he would take him to go buy donuts for breakfast ...

But the point of this post: I'm going to be making a page for the boys' rooms so you all can keep track of my crazy to-do list and the progress of the boys' rooms with me. (Yes, there will be pictures too.) Except I'm not doing it right now because I really need to go paint.