Lofty Responses

There's this thing happening with the post about the loft that I didn't anticipate--there are questions coming up in the comments. I absolutely LOVE that they are, but the Review page isn't really built for responding. There are a zillion reasons I have it set up that way, and I don't want to change it. So, I figured I would address those questions here publicly.

First, though, I want to address the people who were all OMG! NEUTRAL COLORS! WAAAAAH! I'm totally on your team. I'm all about bright and vivid and even crazy colors. However, I'm in resale mode with this house. We bought it because it was a crazy good deal of a foreclosure, but I don't actually like the house. I like things about it, but not enough to be all, "We're staying here FOREVER!" We probably won't. Thus, I'm trying to be smart about the number of rooms that are outside of the neutral spectrum. Of course, white walls make me twitchy, so I wound up painting the ceiling, but whatever. Oh, and there's still an element missing to the wall paint that will spice things up a bit. When I get around to finishing that part, I'll post the results.

OK, so, the questions....

Do you think she will stay in this room once she is moved in? (megrcam51): I gave in on the whole "You already have a bedroom" thing once the weekend rolled around. I was cool with letting Alexis sleep up in the loft, but didn't want middle-of-the-night-oh-my-goodness-heeeeeelp-meeeeee-moooommmmy drama depriving me of sleep. So, she slept in the loft the first available Saturday night and . . . well, nothing. She stayed there all night, slept soundly, and didn't need her mommy at all.

Now let's take a moment to wrap our brains around that. My kid. Slept through the night. Without bothering me. ALL HAIL LOFT MAGIC!

She has slept there every night since (two weeks and counting) without ending up in our bed even once. (!!!!!!!!!!!!) She ain't never moving back. In fact, if she tries to go back to her bedroom, I might have to threaten tan Hello Kitty's life. Alexis is sleeping in that room whether she likes it or not. FOREVER.

A suggestion from bizzymom on how to deal with the blank walls "...Paint a beautiful mural on the wall...": Hahahahahahahaha! ::gasp:: Hahahahahahahaha! Um, NOOOOOOO. I've done the mural thing twice now and I. AM. DONE.

Actually, no I'm not.

I never finished the murals I started in Alexis' bedroom when we very first moved into this house. Two years ago. There are fairies without faces and flowers without petals in there. I honestly don't even know what I want to do about it at this point because in some ways, Alexis has already outgrown the theme in there. It's crazy how big of a difference there is between what 3-year olds like and what 5-year olds like. I've been debating the whole "Finish it or scrap it" thing for months. Right now I'm leaning towards "Just pretend it's not an issue and do nothing."

I love the idea of lofts, but they scare me in practice. I have a clumsy kid, so I envision him crashing to the floor while trying to get down to go to the bathroom. (Jen): Y'know, me too. I mean, Alexis is that kid who frequently gets attacked by walls and who never met a floor she didn't want to smash her head on. And, yet, I know for a fact that she climbed down and went to the bathroom in the middle of the night earlier this week and she didn't have any problems at all. It probably helps that she sleeps with a light on. It also probably helps that there is a good 18" between the edge of her mattress and the fall-to-the-floor side of the loft. If she were to roll off of the mattress, she'd have to keep rolling over her giant pile of crap before she would fall. Considering that pile of crap includes a box of tissue (I asked why she needed tissue up there and her answer made my brain feel like it had been replaced with glitter), two shoeboxes (again, don't ask because I have no clue why), and several other pointy jabby things, she's probably OK. Oh, and there is an edge all around the loft. I'll show what I mean when I post the loft how-to stuff because it probably makes sense once you see a photo.

Were the bookcases part of the loft or just something you added? (Mimi): The whole point of the room re-do was to have bookcases in that room, so they were going in there no matter what. The first draft of the plans for in there included floor-to-ceiling shelves on the same wall, but the air vent would have been in the way. Once I realized that, I started thinking about built-in window seats or some alternative, but then remembered that we are in resale mode. Whatever was built in there needed to be something that would still allow the room to be used as a bedroom so that potential future buyers didn't freak out. A loft fit the bill.

I originally drew up a loft plan that used bookshelves as supports in the front, but then Mr. Husband got all "I don't do bookshelves" on me. He was perfectly content to build the loft, but not bookshelves, so I went on an extensive hunt to find some the right size. I never did find them, but I was able to piece together a few different things from Target. The critical part was that they had to be 5' tall since I had decided that was the ideal height for a loft in that room (the ceiling is standard height). I have plans to add some trim so that the bookshelves and loft all look like one piece. I'll post photos once that part gets done.

Anyway, the short answer is that the bookshelves were added, but they are intended to be part of the loft. They'll get there soon.

Is it childish that I now want a loft bed?? (Ali): Ummmmm . . . NO. If the mattress up there were big enough (we're temporarily using the toddler bed mattress), I'd be up there right now. It's freakin cozy and awesome up there.

Last thing. Remember this photo?

Obviously, it was taken when Alexis was climbing up into the loft and I was already up there. When I went in to take photographs for the review posts, Alexis decided it was a FANTASTIC time to start relocating every stuffed animal she owns. She went up and down that ladder 5206 times, which made it really hard to take a decent photograph. What should have taken less than five minutes took more like an hour.

I'm pretty sure that's further proof that the kid is trying to destroy me.

Her "I'm innocent" shrug does nothing to convince me otherwise.

Giving The Illusion That I Get Things Done

If I ignore the fact that there's still a little bit of painting to do, that a lot of trim hasn't been installed, and that there is a severe lack of artwork on the walls, I can now call the spare bedroom DONE! It used to look like this:

But now it looks WAAAAY different. Go over here to get a peek (And enter to win a $150 Walmart gift card. Someone is going to win. It might as well be you.).

Part of that room redo includes making a couple of DIY light fixtures. One hasn't been started yet. Which, URGH. I have no clue why not. It won't take much more than an hour or two and all of the materials have been in the house for months. Instead of working on that one first, I decided to start with the light fixture that nearly murdered me in my sleep.

It's kind of awesome, it just took a little longer than I thought it would. And by "a little bit" I mean, "I thought it was a 2-hour project, but I forgot to carry the 1 or something." It took more like six hours from start to finish.

It started life as a plain old IKEA paper lantern. Nothing fancy. Absolutely cheap. We're talking $5 for the shade and $4 for the cord set. I added about $6 worth of tissue paper and a bottle of glue to it, so the total cost for the light was around $16. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

I started by cutting my tissue paper into little 1 1/2" by 1 1/2" squares. I used red, light pink, and dark pink tissue.

Then I crumpled up one little square so that the center made a point. Like this:

And I dipped the point in some plain ol' school glue.

All that was left was to stick it onto the light shade.

I didn't try to make a pattern or anything. I just stuck one little square on the lamp shade, then did it again, and again, and again, and OMG. A bunch of hours later, I had finally covered every inch of the paper lantern.

The squares weren't cut perfectly evenly and they weren't spaced perfectly evenly, but it obviously didn't matter. Once a few hundred were glued to the lamp shade, it looked like a giant fluffy flower. Or something.

Alexis says it's the "pretty pink light." I'm willing to go along with that description.

Oh, and, HELLO THERE FANCY LOFT BED! Go check out the rest of the room over yonder if you haven't already.

(P.S. If you ever decide to try this, work with a smaller shade. Trust me on that.)

PodCamp Summarized. Sort Of.

Another PodCamp has come and gone and, as usual, I'm sort of short on cohesive words about the whole adventure. It's hard to sum up two days of non-stop awesomeness with any less than a novel. Since I'm not in the business of writing novels, I'll just list some random stuff:

• Thanks to everyone who took the time to introduce themselves to me. It's always fantastic to put a face to a name or even an IP address. And if you didn't introduce yourself, next year? Please? Or even sooner? I promise I don't bite. Much.

• To those who I bullied into attending, thanks for doing so with an open mind. I think it was unanimous that it was a worthwhile weekend, which is always a good thing. Oh, and I TOLD YOU SO. (*cough* BECKY *cough*)

• Justin Kownacki knows how to put together one heck of a great session. Every year, without fail, he does a fantastic job. He didn't even have to give me any deodorant to get me to say that.

• Huge thanks to Jenna for co-presenting with me. I adore that woman.

• Speaking of our presentation, video of it will be available as soon as a PodCamp volunteer is able to trudge through and edit the hundreds of hours of video. I'll post the link once it's I get it, but in the meantime, here are the slides that we used:

Blogging 201: Finding Fodder

View more presentations from burghbaby.

• Because TWO people have commented about it, can I just say that my posture isn't actually as bad as it seemed during the Blogging 201 session? Standing in the spotlight in that room was like having a short human show up at the side of your bed in the middle of the night and shove a flashlight in your face. I tried to sort of melt into the wall to get away from it, but that didn't work. BUT I SURE DID TRY.

• Odds are that I will be charged with presenting Blogging 201 again next year at Podcamp Pittsburgh 7. If you have thoughts about what would have made that presentation better, please let me know. I have some notes of my own, but it's really helpful to hear other perspectives. Just don't tell me to stand straighter because I KNOW.

• I'm not posting the slides from my second presentation, which was about Stumbleupon. The reason is that the slides don't really stand alone. I will, however, post the video once I have it. Oh, and I apologize to anyone who has StumbleFinger from clicking too much this weekend.

• I would like zombies and hatchet-wielding bunnies to show up every time I try to eat lunch. Can that be arranged somehow?

• Jonny Goldstein put together this visual summary of the Blogging 201 session. Way cool, no? (Click here to view it full-screen.)

• Somehow my last name showed up on entirely too much stuff this PodCamp. I don't care for the sake of me, but I do try to keep Alexis' name from being google-able. Good thing I have a plan that will fix that little mess, eh?

• No, I'm not telling you what that plan is. You could probably figure it out if you tried, though.

• Bar Louie is awful. The service is horrendous (I nearly died waiting to get a simple caffeinated drink. Seriously, my tombstone would have read, "All she wanted was a soda.") and I really didn't need to see the next generation of mom bloggers being impregnated. Oh, and GET OFF MY LAWN.

• The word caffeinated looks like it's spelled wrong, but the dictionary says I have it right. Interesting.

• I told you this would be random.

• The organizers and volunteers, as always, did an amazing job. They sacrifice a huge portion of their personal time, which is no small thing. So, thanks, guys. All of you.

• The generosity of Pittsburghers never ceases to blow my mind. You know who you are. Thank you.

• Anybody want to organize a PodCamp to run next weekend? I'll show up! Promise!

• Just don't try to give me any more Vitamin Water. I think I'm done with it for a little while.

• Well-written blog post conclusions are overrated.