It's Almost Like I Have Time To Get Stuff Done

I vaguely remember it. The memories whisper in the corners of my mind. The evidence is all over the house.

There was once a time when I enjoyed buying junk furniture and making it awesome.

Then along came Alexis and she carried with her a giant black hole that sucks up time. As she's gotten older, I have slowly managed to shrink that black hole, to the point that now I have about an hour per evening to do something. Anything. It might be hanging out with Alexis, but it might be a return to the glory days or cheap furniture acquisition.

Just because I wish I had been blogging when I did this, let me just show you my most favoritest furniture redo. It started out as a horrific pine entertainment center that was marked down at Hills when the store was closing. It was so hideous that it was still there when prices were slashed to 75% off. When I was done painting and staining and painting and gluing, it ended up looking like this:

Sexy, no? Check out the details:

I love that thing.

What I didn't love was this thing:

That is a china cabinet that we bought many moons ago at IKEA. It was an As Is purchase that I hated, but knew that it could be made into something better. Oh, and when I say "many moons," I mean I can't even blame Alexis for the fact that it wasn't painted. I think it may have taken me 10 years ...or more ... to get around to it. Maybe. GET OFF MY LAWN. WHIPPERSNAPPER.

While you're getting off of my lawn, take Cody with you. When he was a puppy, he did this to it:

Apparently, ugly IKEA furniture tastes good because he chewed the crap out of that thing.

Anyway, I can finally say it has been given a new life. While I may eventually beat it up some more (to make it look even older), I'm pretty happy with where it's at right now.

The first thing I did to it was beat it up. No, seriously, I took a hammer and some nails and gouged and poked and banged until it had some really fun dents. Then I dug up some acrylic paint I had sitting around and gave it the once over.

Isn't it lovely? Heh. That was just a primer coat. It's red and black and splotchy because I was intentionally screwy with the paint. I knew you wouldn't actually be able to see the base coat, but the personality of it would show.

The next thing I did was coat the entire thing with the bright white paint we had sitting around. It was a $5 dented can of Behr ultra white, meaning it wasn't the color I would have liked to use, but it was here and it had almost no value to me. I used some crackle effect junk before putting the white paint on, so it wound up looking like this:

I left the inside black because the goal was for the inside to just sort of not exist. I want whatever I put into the cabinet to be the star of the show, and for the shelves to just go away.

It was a little too ultra white for my taste at that point, so I went over the entire thing with a tan sort of paint, wiping the majority of the paint off as I went.

Here's the before the "staining" with the tan paint:

And here's with the tan paint on it:

(The sides are still ultra white in the pic)

And here's how it looked after I wiped most of the tan paint off:

It just sort of muted the white a bit and added a little bit of character. Then I took an electric sander to the whole thing, wearing off the paint on some edges and otherwise "flattening" the china cabinet.

So then I had this on my hands:

I had one last thing left to do. One MAJOR thing. You know how IKEA furniture has that crappy laminate stuff on the back? That stuff that doesn't really take paint? I knew better than to fight with that stuff, so I went a totally different route.

I wallpapered it.

Isn't she lovely? For the record, the lights were inside when I started. The husband did that part years and years and years ago. Oh, and don't tell The Twitter you have discovered a love for wallpaper. Twitter is VERY anti-wallpaper and will FLIP OUT.

(Suck it, twitter. I told you I knew what I was doing. ;-) I'm still trying to figure out which room of the house I could wallpaper, by the way. Seriously. Go ahead and flip out over THAT.)

So that's the final product. A purdy, beat up, old looking cabinet that has sexy wallpaper on the back.

Now I just have to get the rest of the dining room to catch up with the "new" cabinet.

Sometimes You Find Love In Your Pocket

Through a river of tears and a pouty mouth, Alexis managed to squeak out why she was having a nervous breakdown. "I'm not good at the computer," she said.

It had (finally) come to her attention that she's behind her peers in all things computer-related.

It's by design, really. Her design. She has never shown much interest in anything that has to do with computers. She has never asked for a DS, doesn't play our Wii, and couldn't care less about things Mickey's website or Webkinz or any of that sort of thing. She has always preferred coloring, writing, reading, and pretend play to anything electronic.

I explained as much to her, slowly talking her down from the ledge. By the time we were done chatting, she seemed to understand that different kids pick different things to learn first and that it was OK that she had chosen to be good at reading over being good at navigating the mouse on a computer.

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We owe the world a forest by now. Possibly two. Alexis spends most of her evenings coloring and drawing and writing and cutting, plowing through reams of paper as if they are oxygen. The evidence is everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Little scraps of paper litter the family room floor. The fridge is wallpapered with Alexis art. Crayons are burned off like wood in a fireplace. She goes through them so quickly that I buy them five packs at a time.

Alexis just plain loves to create art.

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As I sat in the parent orientation for kindergarten (yes, KINDERGARTEN!), I reviewed the bulleted list of signs that a child is ready for The Big Time. One item after another got a mental checkmark as I realized that Alexis is way more than ready to take on school for real. She might even wind up being a little bit bored academically.

And then it struck me--nowhere on the list was there anything related to computer use. The focus for kindergarten readiness was related to social skills and speech issues--alphabet recognition, sounds, some reading and writing, etc. 

"Interesting," I thought.

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As the orientation continued, I began to fidget. There was once a time when I could make it through a one-hour meeting paying full attention, but that time is most definitely not now. Between doodling on the handouts and staring at the posters on the wall, my mind was everywhere that it didn't belong. As the school nurse continued providing information, I began digging through my jacket pocket.

And found this:

A tiny little Alexis heart.

She most definitely picked right when Alexis decided to work on reading, writing, and art early on.

Sometimes There Are Advantages To Growing Up

"Go on up," I urged Alexis. Her dance teacher was calling her class to the stage, but Alexis was swimming in her usual nonstop stream of chatter and didn't hear the words. Once she realized it was her turn to rehearse one last time before The Big Show, she quickly ran to the front of the auditorium and plopped down on the floor, just as she had been instructed.

No hesitation.

No second thoughts.

She just did as she was told to do.

It took me a second to realize the gravity of the situation.

Three years ago I enrolled Alexis in a "Mommy and Me" gymnastics class because she was terribly shy. She was so frequently crippled by her shyness that the issue couldn't be ignored. It didn't seem like the sort of thing she would just outgrow, so we opted to try to slowly help her gain some confidence by putting her in uncomfortable, but safe, situations.

First it was the "Mommy and Me" class, and then a year later she asked to take a regular gymnastics and dance class. That class was with the same teacher, the same students, and in the same room, so it was all very familiar. Baby steps towards independence. There were bumps along the way, but slowly she learned to go into the classroom by herself. Slowly she learned to be confident in her fun. Slowly she figured out how to take that shyness and shove it in her pocket.

And now she's at a "real" dance studio, taking "real" lessons, and preparing to perform in her first "real" recital.

And she's completely confident going into it.

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The March of Dimes March for Babies is important to me, but there is absolutely no way I'm going to miss that first real recital this weekend. The two events happen to be scheduled at the same time, so I've graciously bowed out of the March for Babies this year.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

If you're one of those people who believe in giving babies a chance to dance with confidence, perhaps you'll consider donating a buck or two to my friend Doug's team? It would mean a lot to everyone who has met his two little men as they are only here today because of the amazing work of the March of Dimes.