moving slower

If you couldn't tell by the quiet here on my blog, I've been moving a lot slower these days. This applies to just about every aspect of my life and is largely due to my pregnancy (no puns intended). Between being tired + sick for so long in the beginning to now being so tired + sore I feel like I didn't get much of the "energetic" part of pregnancy. I have drive and motivation to do things, I want to do ALL THE THINGS, but I can't. I try anyway and end up miserable at the end of the day, and my husband isn't too happy with me for pushing it either. Most days I feel fine in the midst of activity, but oh how I pay for it later!

I've had a couple sessions of physical therapy and have already been able to tell the difference in my physical ability just by keeping up with the exercises and advice given to me. I'm really disciplining myself to get my stretches done, it helps that the boys love to join me. 

I have a blog post all written out for an update on our 40 Bags in 40 Days project, but editing the pictures has been slow going for me. It'll come soon. We've also taken on a couple big home improvement projects over Memorial Day weekend that I'll share soon after. 

Oh yeah, Mother's Day has come and gone as well. I was showered with gifts and given the gift of relaxation. Ben + the boys gifted me with an act of service which I loved because 1. it got something done and 2. it is teaching our boys how to love others with servants' hearts. They cleaned out our garden area, which was a tangle of weeds and filled a couple pots with dirt for me to plant my herbs. I won't be planting a full garden, just basil and cilantro this year. Overall I felt blessed to be a mother to my sweet boys and wife to my thoughtful husband. 

Slowly but surely I'll get some more exciting updates posted and maybe some more baby posts thrown in here and there. For now, Desmond is napping so I'm going to snuggle up next to Malakai and take a little rest myself. 

Let's Play Catch Up {December 2012}

Hi. I'm Shandell. I blog here sometimes. Remember me?

Oy. It's been a long time since I've sat down and updated {again} and there is a lot to talk about...hence the not having time to blog about it.

Well- last time I posted we were smack dab in the middle of a very hectic schedule. Ben had 3+ weeks of intense practice every night for the drama at church. It didn't take long for us to figure out that when you start doing more to further the kingdom of God, that the enemy attacks. He tried hard and we were down for a bit, but we got back up. Des suddenly wouldn't go to sleep for me, but once Ben got home and held him he would be out in less than 10 minutes. We had sickness throughout the house, and I broke my toe one night just when Ben was about to leave. Amidst all that I was left to prepare for Christmas on my own. I found joy in knowing that God had good planned through it all and in the end, at least 12 people decided to walk with Jesus because of the message conveyed through the drama.

Early in the month we actually made time to go get our tree at a farm, see the fire truck light parade go by a few blocks away, and prepare for and attend a cookie exchange.

{tree farm!}

{firetruck light parade}

{a sampling of my holiday projects}

In just one month Malakai got a new bed, his first desk, and a lit Christmas tree in his room. A lot of "firsts" for this guy. He was just a "little" excited.

On December 18th we had a pretty decent snow. It was a bit wet, but it stuck and looked beautiful for about 8 hours. Kai made his first snowball, which he promptly threw at me. Then subsequent others that he threw at his brother. We also made our 1st snowman together (last year I ended up making it all on my own). Desmond loved stomping around in the snow and found himself a puddle to play in. boys. 

We had a staff Christmas lunch at the church, a small group dinner that we hosted, welcomed a few new babies, and then we started Christmas celebrations early on the 22nd with Ben's side of the family.

{Pottorf Family Christmas}

Christmas Eve Malakai helped make cookies for Santa for the first time. We wrote him a letter as well. That night we usually attend the candlelight service at church but Desmond had a nasty cold so we had a quite evening. Christmas day we went 3 different places, Des was coughing so hard that day he puked 4 times (twice on me), the next day it was still so bad Ben stayed home (we were up all night). Then we had a couple days to prepare for the next round of Christmas celebrations.

{Christmas Eve Traditions: new jammies, cookies for Santa, story with daddy}

{Christmas morning stockings, Christmas evening with family}

The 29th was my birthday and on our way to a family outing Ben planned, Kai got car sick...once again, it was on me. The night of the 30th we had immediate families over for dinner to celebrate my birthday, that night Ben got sick...thankfully NOT on me. He was up all night getting sick and I was up with the boys half the night because their routine with daddy was thrown off. Even still, I enjoyed my birthday and we got through it.

{for my birthday- a pegboard for my kitchen, a necklace Kai made, boots I can't wear, and snuggles with my boys- yes Kai is asleep.}

Yesterday, New Year's Eve, we had our final Christmas gathering. Ben stayed home sick, and I took the boys for a bit. They faded fast so we left early and we were all in bed before midnight.

Today we all took it easy as Ben is still recovering from his stomach flu, and we are praying that nobody else in the house gets it next.

Needless to say, I fell behind in just about everything. House work (especially after the broken toe), Christmas prep, my part-time job at the church. I guess you could say my "resolution" for 2013 is to catch up! Now that most of our big events are out of the way I feel like I can breath and start to pick up the pieces (literally!).

I honestly feel so incredibly blessed. When I had hurt my foot I had family come over a few nights and help me with the boys while Ben was at play practice. Between Christmas and my birthday, we were showered with gifts. Not just material things, but gifts of presence and love as well.

2012 surely made itself known in our family's history books and I'm looking forward to the blessings and lessons that 2013 will hold for us.

DIY: Reupholstered (and kid-proof!) Dining Room Chairs

Look everyone, I'm posting something on my blog besides an apology for not posting something on my blog in forever! Not only that, but it's a tutorial, which means I've made myself do something besides work recently!

This past weekend Ben + Kai played out back while I whisked Desmond away for a quick trip to the store. I wanted to get some groceries as well as some fabric as quickly as possible...so I went to the big fat Walmart because yes, they have both.

I've been meaning to reupholster my dining room chairs for at least 2 years now, ever since the cats we used to own tore up the original fabric. The desire to fix them up increased when Kai started spilling things on them after we moved him from a high chair to a booster. Now he insists on sitting in the chair without the booster and sadly this coincided with a potty training accident which left us with a ruined chair pad...so the need for new fabric (and padding!) became much more urgent.

I grabbed way too much fabric (I'm a total beginner at yardage and such) and just enough vinyl. Since I planned on using clear plastic vinyl over the fabric I just chose the cheapest version of what Ben + I both liked the most, which was a dark red. Then I asked the gal working there which weight of vinyl I should choose and she suggested the medium one. I also grabbed a small package of cotton batting to replace the ruined chair pad. It all came to about $25.

When I got home and the boys were down for nap, Ben helped me take the chairs apart. At first I planned on removing the fabric from all the pads but after how long it took for just the ruined one we decided that was far too much work and it would be fine to just cover the other 3 chairs.

Here's a little before picture of how bad the chairs looked, along with me working on taking one apart.

I had planned on taking the chair apart before going shopping to see what I was working with. That didn't happen which led to me wishing I would have purchased a foam chair pad instead of the cotton batting but I didn't want to waste precious time so I just used the whole roll to replace the one cushion. 

You can see the scratches from the cats on the pad to the right. We've been putting this off for FAR too long! The pad on the left is the batting I purchased which I just cut to a little bigger all the way around than the cushion, since the cushion had some overlap to go around the wooden seat of the chair. 

Then I used the cushions to roughly measure how big my squares of fabric + vinyl needed to be and cut. Next I ironed all 4 squares of fabric, while lamenting over having purchased far too much red fabric. Thankfully this is such a lovely color (my fave) so I'm sure I'll find other uses for it down the road. Lesson learned...and a much better one than having too little fabric. 

Somewhere in here the boys woke up and Ben left me to my project. As you can see my workspace was in our garage because in our teensy house there just isn't a lot of open space, especially once the boys are up and about.

Next I just put the fabric onto the table (Ben brought the dining room table out for me to have an elevated and clean work surface), then the cushion upside down on to the fabric and began stapling like crazy. I started at the front of the chair, stapled the middle and worked my way out to the corner of each edge. I also had to use a hammer since our staple gun is light-duty and the chair seats were rather thick.

When I got all the edges done I folded the corners as nicely and tightly as possible without making the fabric pucker on the other side.

I found all sorts of help online by searching for "reupholstering dining chair seat". Reading through a couple sites helped me visualize the best way to go about the process. Next though, I could find nothing on how to cover seats in vinyl. I wasn't so sure about how to fold the corners since a sturdy plastic doesn't fold or lay as nicely as fabric. I just had to figure it out myself.

I started the same way I had with the fabric, by doing all the edges first. When I got to the corners I had to figure out what would work best. I wanted to make sure to cover evenly but not have a bulky piece of plastic. I just snipped one edge (as pictured below) so that when I folded the corner up there was one less layer of plastic to work with. 

So I just kept going as I had with the fabric and stapled down all the corners by pulling tight around the edges. With the vinyl, there's a bit of space on each corner between it and the fabric, but it isn't very noticeable. Otherwise, my little technique worked! Take that internet!

All shiny and new! Next I traded posts with Ben and hung out with the boys while he attached the seats to the frames with the original screws. After just a few hours of work (including shopping for supplies!) we had new chairs!

I just love the way they look, they now match our kitchen decor. My favorite is how the red pops against the grey wall. Actually, my MOST favorite part is how my son can spill all over these and I can just wipe them off...

At this season in our life, having wipeable furniture is a must if anything is going to last through not one, but two toddler boys! Spill away kiddos, spill away!

After I did this I also got a tip from a friend that you can reupholster/kid proof furniture by using waterproof shower curtains as your fabric. Has anyone done this or something similar to toddler-proof at home? I just love a good tip to keep things from getting ruined or having to keep the boys off of certain things. Again, with the size of our house, it's just not very doable to have much be off limits. 

What's your favorite DIY?

growing my first garden

Most of my growing up was on a large ranch just outside the city limits from where I live now. We almost always had a garden. We at least had pumpkins if only from tossing the previous ones out into a patch of dirt somewhere.

The last 4 years we've lived in homes with plenty of yard space for gardening, but I didn't take the time to try my hand at growing something on my own. Most of my hesitation came from having little to no success at keeping house plants or easy plants alive. I'd often forget about watering them or keep them in the wrong type of environment.

A good friend of mine has a very impressive vegetable garden and I finally decided to take a try at growing my own. We already had the raised beds, one full of strawberries that I decided to pay closer attention to this season. Of course the weather here didn't cooperate very well for strawberries and then I ran into a few pests: strawberry snails + sugar ants. I used google and surveyed my facebook friends who advised eggshells, coffee grounds, and human hair! Coincidentally I had just cut Kai's hair so I used all three and was able to save a lot of the strawberries. They turned out okay, but I've learned that ever-bearing strawberries should be moved to new spots and who knows how long those berries have been in the raised bed since they were here before we were.

On Memorial Day weekend I decided to plan veggies in our two other raised beds. A couple weeks before Ben was sweet enough to clear the beds of weeds and debris, then we worked together to add more nutrient rich soil. I planted Jack-o-lantern pumpkins, sweet dumpling squash, "slicer" tomatoes from starts, carrots, and sugar snap pole peas. I built a lattice out of bamboo arches and gardeners twine for the peas to climb. It only cost me $5 which was much cheaper than buying lattice or something premade for them to climb.

About 10 days after planting, the first sprouts started to come through. I was so excited that my garden was actually starting to grow!

Malakai and I would go out every morning and check on the veggies. He loves helping...



I was surprised by how fast things were growing, especially the pumpkin leaves, which were visibly bigger every day!

{I made markers out of a cut up milk jug}

Another week went by and everything continued to grow as I kept the weeds and pests at bay. I didn't use any chemicals, just suggestions I found through google and  knowledgable friends.

I did my best to keep up with the watering, but as our summer schedules got busier it got more difficult. Thankfully we've had pretty cool weather so nothing scorched. Ben then set up some sprinklers on a timer thanks to some timers that his dad let us have. Now we're able to water the garden automatically at 5:30am every day. On particularly hot days I turn on the sprinklers for a bit in the afternoon or evening too.

About 6 weeks after planting our garden had filled the raised beds!

{towering tomatoes + climbing sugar snaps in the background. spreading pumpkin + squash up front}

A little over a week ago it became evident that my garden was trying to take over the world...

{those tomatoes have cages in there somewhere + the pumpkin is creeping into the yard}

I had my friend Jamie come over to look at my garden and give me some advice. She was so sweet to help me out. She advised me on how to contain my tomatoes and how to tell when things were ready to pick. 

{peas + maters}

The next day I went to work on tying up my tomatoes with the gardener's twine I had from the structure I made for the sugar snaps to climb. I weaved some of the smaller branches back in to the cages and tied the heavier ones to the cages. Then I tied them up around both plants a couple times for added support. I also trimmed some of the limbs that would have just snapped from the weight of the fruit anyway. I also harvested 50+ sugar snaps. It took me about 45 minutes which ended up being a rather large and lengthy pain in the back. Gardening while pregnant isn't easy!

Earlier this week I picked another 50 or so peas and spotted a pumpkin forming! I'll be picking all the carrots this weekend + planting more in their place.

I shared the sugar snaps with our extended family and will probably have enough to pick new ones at least once, if not twice more. Now I'm just waiting on the tomatoes to get big and red while I pray that bugs + birds don't get to them first! Any tips are greatly appreciated.

I wish I could say that growing our own food has inspired Malakai to eat more veggies...but it's just not true for us yet. He at least tastes them before spitting them out, we'll keep trying!

What's growing in your garden?

Happy Weekend everyone!

Thankful on a Thursday: backyard blooms

I am the opposite of a "green thumb"...whatever that is (black thumb?). I cannot keep simple house plants alive, like a lovely winter cactus I had taken home from my great-grandmother's home to remind me of her after she passed. You think that I'd be able to keep it alive because 1. it had sentimental value and 2. it's a cactus, but somehow it still died.

Outdoor plants do much better around me, only because nature takes better care of them than I ever could. This goes for weeds + moss too which have taken root in our grass. Although, in our defense, our grass was messed up before we bought the place (yet we didn't know because it was overgrown, disguising the dead leaves that had killed patches of grass).  I digress.

We gained a LOT of foliage when we moved her last spring. It was so fun to watch things bloom and try to figure out what they were. We have two very large maple trees (a PAIN in the fall) and a dozen smaller flowering trees. One is a plum and one we suspect is an apple that no longer bears fruit. We also have a lot of flowers; tulips, hyacinths, many different colored roses, mini roses, petunias, a butterfly bush, wisteria,  a rhody and a few others I don't know much about.

For our housewarming one of Ben's aunts gave us some lovely yellow daffodils and lilies. We set the pots outside with every intention to plant them. Eventually it was "out of site, out of mind" and then when Ben was mowing the lawn last week he mentioned that the daffodils were growing. I missed getting a photo of them while they were still blossoming, but it cracks me up that nature did a better job taking care of these plants than I could.

{I mean...really?}

Here are some other, prettier, things that have begun to bloom and blossom in our yard recently.

{purple buds that turn into very pretty blossoms. anybody know what this is?}

{this one reminds me of cherry blossoms, but I know it's not. maybe?}

{pink + white tulips that did not bloom last year}

{our wisteria is running out of room to grow. We may move it soon}

{these poor strawberries are being strangled by weeds}

Perhaps some day I'll find enough time, motivation, and know-how to make things look a little better. For now I'm content looking at how pretty the flowers look without any effort on my behalf.

This week I am thankful for:

601. the lovely plants + flowers that defy the odds and bloom anyhow.

602. a week full of gathering with friends just for the sake of socializing and catching up.

603. God's promise of provision.

604. Ben's promotion at work! woohoo!

605. a close knit family.

606. meeting new people and making new friends through my church/job.

607. sweet little movements in my belly increasing every day.

608. the way my husband makes me laugh.

609. the joy of putting together Kai's Easter basket, including his first Bible.

610. lunch out with my mom + sister today, even if Malakai maybe might have been a cranky, screaming, thrashing, mess.

What are you thankful for?

it's not easy, being green.

On Saturday morning Ben + I took Malakai to visit my in-laws while we got some work done on our home. Ben's goal for the next few hours was to get the new kitchen faucet in place. Mine was to prime + paint all the patched holes in the dining room and living room.

Ben did some prep work and then had his dad come over to help him remove the old faucet. The removal alone took 3 hours. Something about a corroded washer and the right wrench. The actual work to get the new fixtures in took only 20 minutes!

Meanwhile, I washed the walls, primed the nail holes and patched a few others. These nail holes have been ugly white dots on our walls since we moved in. Something we have just gotten used to. While the primer was drying I scrubbed the baseboards and lower half of the walls in our living room, dining room and hallway.

Then Ben asked that I touch up some spots on an edge where two paint colors meet. Our once lavendar living room became a lovely shade of tan called "fresh linen" the night before we moved in. Because it was such a rush job, there were a few errors here and there. One that really bothered my husband was where the tan bled over to the green on a corner in the hallway.

We had asked the homeowner's to leave all the paint in the garage and they obliged. Over half of the house was painted in a lovely sagey green color that we left because we liked it and it actually matched some of our throw rugs perfectly. There was only 1 quart of this green paint in the garage, from 2002. I mixed it up anyway and began to touch up the corner for Ben. As it went on it looked great. I finished the corner and moved on to the dining room and living room {which is basically one "big" room}.

As I was painting I said to Ben + his dad, "Well this looks perfect, there's no doubt that this is the right color of green!" and continued on my way.

As the touch-ups dried I went to remove the taped edge from the corner and it tore off the tan paint! I mean, we were using some fancy painter's tape which is made specifically not to do this. There was a huge lavender splotch underneath and I panicked because we had nothing leftover of this color. So, I called up Ben's mom to say I was going to be late picking up Kai and ran to the nearby hardware store to pick up a quart of Dutch Boy's Fresh Linen.

When I walked in the door, I  saw this...

Now, both Ben + my father-in-law are colorblind and when I called them out from under the sink to look at this, they were both stunned. We have been living in this house for SIX MONTHS and had no idea until this mishap that these two walls were different shades of green. 

I could list all sorts of explanations as to how we didn't notice until now, but after the work that ensued, I don't have the energy for excuses. This disaster was obviously bigger than that of the small purple spot on the other side of the house. I began checking all my patch work and only 2 walls were this lighter shade of green. This one, and the one on the end of the hall that I had just painted the entire edge from floor to ceiling. 

Needless to say I was distraught. This whole project was supposed to take 3-4 hours so we could pick up Malakai and put him down for a nap, then move on to other smaller projects. 

Oddly enough Ben and I had just been talking about painting this very wall a dark shade of grey some day in the future. So I figured rather than ordering a whole gallon of this dark green we might as well paint it the color we wanted. I grabbed all my paint samples and magazine pages and we chatted about shades of grey. I also tore off a piece of wall where we already had this lovely eye-sore to match the light green for the end of the hallway.

The faucet turned out to be faster than the painting after all and I'm so happy with how it turned out. 

By 2pm we finally picked up Malakai and he crashed immediately. Ben stayed home with him and I ran to Home Depot {my least favorite store of all time, but we had store credit there}. This post is getting long, so I'll spare you the exhausting details of the issues I had with the employees in the paint department. I grabbed a patch repair kit for the gaping hole in the wall, a quart of the custom light green, and a gallon of Glidden "seal" grey.  

When I got home we ate a super late lunch and got right to work. Ben patched the hole while I started cutting in with the dark grey. He rolled the rest of the wall while I painted the edge down the hall for the second time. I tested a small patch and let it start to dry before doing the whole thing. It looked great, so I continued to repaint and then came back in to help Ben with the dining room. 

When we looked at the hall again...it wasn't such a great match after all. 

I wanted to die. We were both so exhausted from the morning project turned entire-weekend life sucker. With our house in disarray and too much toddler-height wet paint, we went to my parents' place for dinner to let things dry until Malakai's bedtime. 

At 9pm we put the 2nd coat on the entire wall, and the first coat on the patched hole. We had also decided to paint the entire end of the hall in the dark green to cover up all the mistakes. I painted that stinkin' edge for the 3rd time that day as I grumbled about having 4 shades of green {including Kai's room} on our walls at that moment. 

Sunday after church we put the 2nd coat on the patched part of the grey wall and I meticulously fixed the  edges {another painter's tape fail} and we called it "good enough". 

{yes, I painted with a toothpick}

Here is the semi-final product of our new dining room wall {awaiting decor of course}. 

I really love how it turned out {despite my worries the entire time that it somehow looked purple}. My favorite part is how the red + black decor contrast with it. I can't wait to put something bold and red up on the wall!

Now...on to more projects in preparation for our housewarming in T-minus 5 days!