Finished/Not-Finished Dining Room

I surely do love a formal dining room.  This house has a dining room AND a roomy kitchen nook, basically my dream come true. 

Since I like a dining room to get as much use as possible, I tried to keep ours cozy enough to sit at the table with coffee, and casual enough to allow the kids to spread out with their art projects.  This room has amazing natural light and a lovely view.  It's closely connected to the living room, making it easily accessible for more than 'formal dining.'  Our kids like to park their chairs at the windows and yell to people as they're coming up the front walk.  Don't be frightened if that happens to you when you come to visit.

do you like my map? 

Before: the walls were light blue, and a pewter colored chandelier hung from the ceiling.  The window treatment, while pretty, was a little too fancy for my personal taste.   The rug came with the house, but having little children to clean up after means I prefer hard floors in eating rooms. 

I love having windows at child-height

I painted the walls Dutch Boy Rudimentary Beige.  I used this same color all throughout the house.  Maybe boring, but I love it.  David hung the new light, and he's currently working on building me a hutch.  You'll notice I don't show one wall of this room, and that would be because it's completely blank until the new hutch comes in.  Once it's decorated and the rest of the wall art hung, I will have an even better 'after' to show.  Let's all text David multiple times a day and ask when my hutch will be finished, shall we?

(FYI, the table is set because friends were coming for supper.  We're not quite fancy enough to always keep the dining room table set up.)

We found the house blueprints in one of the closets and framed the front page drawing.  I just love it.   That flower picture is in need of a frame, but who has time for frame shopping?. 

my view from the kitchen sink

nice flow to the living room

hi Daph! who is running from the kitchen

Our dining room chairs are the same that we had at the Parkrose house, but I painted them black to trick myself into thinking I have new chairs.  We love how they turned out, and love the black against the light walls. We have a plan for some wainscoting or board and batten in this room, but I have to figure out exactly what I want and of course have to have David home long enough to help with the project. 

Aren't you excited for me to get my new hutch?  In time for some fall and then Christmas decorating?  Yes, me too. 

At Least Jonas Has a Done-ish Room

I'm feeling brave enough to share two of our rooms that we have in fairly good liveable conditions.  If you think house pictures are lame, you'll hate this post.  If you happen to love a good 'before and after,' this one's for you. 

Jonas's nursery is the most completed room.  His car rug is in the big kid's room right now and I have at least one more thing to hang; other than that it's looking pretty swell.  I'm sure as he is in there snoozing he is appreciating the beauty around him.  He probably has really nice dreams.

His room required the most painting because I wanted to paint the trim.  Trim painting, especially going from dark red to white, is rather laborious.  It is not made much easier when done while home alone with 3 children. 

(My 'before' pictures aren't that great.  I took them while we were at the house for the home inspection, so was snapping quickly while trying to stay out of the way/keep the kids out of the way of the inspector.)

weird Dave

Daph needed to be in every single picture

We didn't mind the barn red trim in the room, but for a baby nursery I wanted white.  David liked the red closet doors, though, so we kept those for now.  The doors work for a baby boy room.  The beige was a bit darker than I wanted, and I didn't love the green above the picture rail, so the whole room got freshened up with new colors. 

David built this super cute rustic shelf

canvas + sharpie = 5 minute 'art' project copied from Pinterest

Hobby Lobby map

Christian doing unusual things

I didn't take a picture of the doorway, but this room has one of those cute little entry nooks that we're planning on doing this to:

this picture is everywhere but I can't find an original source

And that's the nursery!  Of course usually it looks like this: darkened, J sleeping in the rock-n-play, fan for white noise, random stuff on the dresser...perfectly imperfect, as our house typically is.

I was going to show the dining room, too, but this post is so huge we'll save that for another day.  Such exciting things to look forward to!

Slices of Life, Vol XIV

*Driving past Bonneville Dam:
Daphne: Is that a bridge?
David: Nope, it's a dam.
Daphne: Oh, it's a dam bridge?
David and Melissa:

*While watching me cook supper:
Daphne: What are you doing?
Me: I'm grating cheese.
Daphne: Grating? What's grating?  Are you making the cheese dead?

*Daphne: "Someday all the old people at our church are gonna die!  And then some new people will come!"

*After seeing inside Papa's beehive and then noticing the hexagon tile in our bathroom Daphne said, "Our floor looks like honey holders!"  (We've since taught her the word for 'honeycomb.')

*While we lived in our rental, our neighbors used to sit in their windows and stare at us while we were in our backyard.  Sometimes 5,6 people at a time.  It was strange.  So one day Daphne said, "Maybe when we live in our new big house we can stare at OUR neighbors!"  (Now that we live here, we don't do any unusual staring.)

*Daphne: "Daddy is going to let me visit jail so I can see the bad guys.  And I will say to the bad guys, 'You naughty bad guys, you are going to stay in jail until you learn to follow God and your Heavenly Father!'"

*Daphne got on the phone with David and said, "Hi Dad! I'm playing with needles but I'm being careful!"  Then she hung up.  (Nothing to fear when Mom is in charge, obviously.)

*Daph loves to be crafty and Jonas gets the benefits:

Daph Endorses These Pickles

I recently stumbled across Smitten Kitchen's Easiest Fridge Dill Pickles and thought we should give them a try.  I was cautious getting too excited about whether or not they would be good, because I hate cucumbers and even the essence of cucumbers, and wasn't sure such a simple recipe would truly turn cucumbers into pickles in only a few short hours. Baking kale into kale chips is supposed to turn kale into a yummy snack, but really, kale chips are just kale turned into warm, cripsy, kale grossness.  This could be a similar experience. 

I let Daphne have the first try, because she's a braver taste-tester than I am, and because if they turned out gross, better her taste buds than mine.  (I'm a great mom.)  She loved them enough to make me brave...and they really are good!  She eats them by the bowlful, until I cut her off because I'm afraid her stomach will hurt.  Christian won't try them because he's even wimpier food-wise than I am, but David and I both really like them.  I think we're going to have to start growing cucumbers and dill in order to keep these a summer staple. 

I have a jar of apple peals and water fermenting on the counter, trying my hand at homemade apple cider vinegar.  I think it will turn out just fine because my jar looks just like the jar in the recipe photo, so surely that's good?  And it smells fermenty-sweet, also a good sign.  I think. 

Happy Wednesday!  Go forth and make yourselves some pickles. 

Christian Turns Three: Train Edition

Do you find that your children's birthdays are just the most wonderful of days? 

I say it too often I'm sure, but being a boy-mom is delightfully fun.  I love the train tracks spread across the living room and the monster trucks rolling under my feet as I cook supper. There seems to be an innate ability to make all manner of car/airplane/train/tractor sound effects.  I like his occasional "pwetty pwincess" dress-ups with Daphne and how he likes to fix my hair, laughing hysterically while doing it.   

One of my favorite things about 3-year-old Christian is how it seems he loves to say my name.  He'll pull on my hand and say, "Sit with me so we can talk about cool stuff, Mom."  Then he ends every single sentence with 'Mom.'

"I like blue trains, Mom."

"Did you see that big rocket ship, Mom?"

"When I get big I'm gonna drive train engines, Mom. And big tractors, too, Mom."

"I'm getting really huge, Mom."

"Can you draw a engine with me on it, Mom, and Daphne and Jonas and you and Daddy, too, Mom?"


Last year was all about the buses and this year is all about the trains.  David was scheduled to work on Christian's birthday, putting a crimp in much birthday planning.  But at the last minute he magically got the day off, clearing the way for church as a family in the morning and a simple family supper in the evening.  

His birthday supper selection was "macaroni and cheese and hot dogs with a fire and sticks and then marshmallows and cake and cupcakes." So thankful for his love of nutrition. 

His party was a roaring success.  Last night on his way to bed he said, "I would like my birthday again after I wake up from my nap."  Now he's rotating his way through his new cars, trains, and tractors, happy as can be.  It was a perfect day.

waiting for a party to start

hot dog roasting

loving our roomy new dining room

Beach Day

I love that picture of Cannon Beach.  We took the kids there for the first time on Tuesday, and once we got to the beach, enjoyed a beautiful day.  I don't know what's wrong with us that we haven't taken Daphne or Christian to Cannon Beach yet.  It's only one of my top 5 favorite beaches in the entire world (Daph was very impressed that I got to live there when I went to Ecola), but apparently we've been very lax in our beach adventures.

The drive is about an hour and a half, but since we like things wild, it took us 3 hours.  Our first issue had to do with a me staying with the car and getting gas in Hillsboro while David walked across the parking lot to my favorite Starbucks (185th, yay!), except he got confused and walked to a different Starbucks.  The kids and I sat at my favorite Starbucks for what felt like hours wondering where he was, me imagining him having disappeared into thin air, search parties, breaking news on TV; the whole 9 yards.  But we were finally reunited and it was fine.  Especially because he managed to get a Pumpkin Spice Latte at whatever other Starbucks he went to. 

Our second issue occurred when Christian started whimpering in the backseat when we were about 20 miles from CB.  But you know kids and whimpering: it happens so often you mostly tune it out.  What you can't tune out, though, is the sounds of massive amounts of vomit spewing from your child's mouth.  We pulled onto the first logging road we found and spent 45 minutes trying to clean up the disaster, something that's rather hard to do when you only have about 7 napkins in the glove box and you're almost out of wet wipes in the diaper bag.  David got sick too, because he does that when he sees other people get sick.  A trucker pulled over to tell us it was National Dog Day, so at least we had that.  

Obviously we were off to a rough start.  Cannon Beach was the busiest I think I've ever seen it, but we found a great parking spot, had a good lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, then spent the rest of the afternoon under the sun and on the beach.  Jonas was pretty good the whole day and the kids had a terrific time playing in the sand and water.  Lola found a few doggy friends to run with, so I think she enjoyed her Dog Day fairly well. 

We drove home uneventfully but in a rather malodorous car.  One feeding stop for Jonas meant we even missed city traffic.  Hurray for beach days.  

her favorite beach activity is digging a hole to hang out in

must've just been a little carsick, because he perked right back up

jonas's first beach trip

all of us

Fish and Other Stuff

We made our annual trip out to Bonneville Fish Hatchery last week.  We don't have air conditioning at our house (which is good because I don't like air conditioning), but when it gets really hot it's nice to head out of the city.

Basically we looked at all the fish, I took a bunch of pictures of the backs of my kids while they looked at all the fish, we had a picnic, then went to Cascade Locks for ice cream.  Then it started raining and we had a cool thunder storm.  Then it was very humid.

I don't even know why I'm writing about this; it wasn't really that interesting.  I won't let that stop me from posting pictures, though!  

(Great quote for the Bonneville tourist brochure: "It wasn't really that interesting.")

(It is fun, I promise.  Our kids love it there.)

first trip to the gorge and first time getting a diaper changed on a picnic table

In other summer news, I finally got started on my canning today.  And while everyone else in social media is posting pictures of their colorful and completed jars, I thought I would put a nice spin on things by posting photos of how my children's faces looked while I was working in the kitchen:

"doesn't anyone love me and want to snuggle me?"

"I pretty much hate my life."

No shots of Christian, but he was running around being a pill.  Throwing things down the stairs, stealing food and feeding it to Lola, yelling wild war cries; you can imagine, I'm sure.  I'm not worried, though, because I know they will love me this winter when they have food to eat.  (And they'll be like, "sheesh, Mom, you could've just bought this stuff from the store.)