It's a front door thing...

This summer our goal list includes a lot of fixing up our little farm house on the outside. So the porch has been my pet project while Mr. B adds to our garden and other fun things.

We were so lucky when we bought this house that the sellers had done a lot of the work to fix the place up. They painted almost every surface, and I mean EVERY surface..even door knobs in the bedrooms! I think they got a little carried away...They painted the front screen door but left the rest in terrible shape so it's been on my goal list to re-paint it all and replace the screen. The screen had a gaping hole and was rusty and nasty looking.

It's an old house built in 1909 and the screen door may not be original to the house or it may be but I wanted to try and save it. Mr. B thought we should just replace it but I was determined to at least try. And of course I've always wanted a red front door. Did you know a red door is supposed to bring luck? I honestly thought it would take some convincing to get Mr. B on board but it wasn't too hard..I just had to find a house that was the same color as ours and replace the front door with some color options I liked..And he thought red was it!! Well we took off for the nearest hardware store to get screen, paint and all the supplies I'd need for my 'easy' little project.

Getting the screen door materials was easy enough, I just needed to pick an aluminum screen that I liked. Of course it only came in a big roll but now I have some in case I need it. Then came the paint. I wanted a white for the screen door and I figured while I'm at it I should paint the ugly back door too so I got enough white for all that. I thought picking a red might take a bit but I knew as soon as I saw Martha Stewarts 'Barn Red' it was the one for us!

I'm not going to get into the screen door process (mostly because I was so excited I forgot to document it) but long story short I re-painted both sides white and had Mr. B help me replace the screen. We cut it to size, then stapled one end, and then using scrapers we pushed it into the grooves. I decided to leave the original hardware for now. I may replace it someday if I see something I like.

 

 

Left is the old Right is the new.

I also painted all the aluminum trim around the door as well.

 

For the door I got Glidden exterior paint and a fancy Wooster brush that was promised to not leave brush strokes. For the first step I washed the door down with soap and water and then I used a magic eraser sponge (those things are truly magic!!) to get all the scuffs off.

 

I should tell you that on Monday I tried the stupid brush and it took me 3 coats to try and achieve the rich red I wanted and that matched the chip card. Oh! And that fancy brush?? Left crazy brush strokes. So I called Sherwin Williams to ask their opinion and the guy said to save the paint I already had add Flocoat to it...and that I should prime the door...Whoops! I technically knew that but was told there was some primer in my paint. Not true! Glidden Duo is what I should've gotten. In my defense I went with what the "expert" at the big box store I went to told me to get. I went to Walmart Monday night and got a roller that was for super smooth application too.

 

Okay, clean door check! Next I taped off the hardware. Next door I do I will just take it all off. And I also left my door on its hinges because well..I'm short and its too hard to remove on my own!

 

 

My plan was to roll all the flat surfaces and then brush all the bevels. I found  guide that said this is the order you should paint a door for ease and as little brush strokes as possible.

 

 

Plan failed!! The roller left little stucco marks (not super smooth like it promised) and of course the brush left stroke marks. BOO!!! So I ended up just rolling the whole darn thing.

 

Oh and did I mention that in this whole process my 8 month old baby was crawling around checking the process out..Like my baby "fence?" I couldn't close the door and of course the screen door was still off drying..

 

 

 

5, yes I said FIVE coats later I have a nice red door..It's not smooth but I rather like the look..at least it's growing on me ( I need to be honest with myself).

 

This is after the first three coats. The top two little squares are darker than the rest but it's above my eye level so I don't care!!

 

I figured while I was in the painting mood (I'm a little surprised I still was after all that I went through for my beautiful door) I wanted to paint a 'Welcome' sign on it. I know using vinyl is all the rage but I don't have a big cricut mat let alone a nice cursive font that I liked so painting it by hand it was! First I designed it in Word on my computer. I printed out three font styles I liked and then picked one. Next I rubbed the back with chalk. I then taped it to the door and traced it lightly. Now my paint was dry but still a little tacky and it being a latex paint I was afraid if I pushed too hard it would leave marks and then if I didn't like the look I'd still be stuck with it..Know what I mean??

 

I've been doing this a lot lately with pallet wood signs around my house so I'm getting pretty good at it and I like the hand painted look.

 

 

I then used my white paint and a little brush to paint it. After it dried I wiped it down to get all the extra chalk residue off and Ta-Da!!

 

Gosh you can really see the "texture" of the door in this picture...

 

I had fun doing this whole project and it really spruced up my front porch. But next time I say to Mr. B "Honey, lets paint that white door red.." Who am I kidding that's just never going to happen again!! The back door is going to be plain white!!

 

 

Next up a cute 4th of July craft with little C! Happy summer all!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Fathers Day Early!!

I wanted to make something special for Mr. B's first fathers day and what's better than something the little master had a part in. So I searched up a few ideas on the Amazing Pinterest and saw these cute tractor cards using babies footprints. Perfect! C wasn't too keen on sitting still but thought it pretty funny when I rubbed his little foot down with ink. Pretty cute don't you think?!

 

All you need is some cardstock, markers, stamp ink and a little foot!!

Then of course as I'm making this I realize that we didn't send cards to his dad's yet either..EEKK!! So I text him and I get the reply of "Can't you make something and I will mail it tonight?"

 

 Can you believe that? Like its SOOO easy for me to just whip something cute up!! I again turned to pinterest and searched "cute Fathers Day card sayings" and found "you're 'gggrr'eat!!" Okay so I can work with that...TADA!! on the inside it says "And I'm not 'lion'!!"

 

PHEW!! Card crisis averted. Next I was onto what to get my handsome hubby for his special day.

 

He never wants anything and is the type to go out and buy something when he needs it. I saw some nice "man bouquets" for new dads gifts and birthday presents on Pinterest awhile back so decided to come up with my own version. I loaded it with goodies like jerky, a Mother Earth News Mag, candy, nuts and a few mini-bottles of his favorite whiskey. I was then perusing the AMAZING mega-store Total Wine and More, if you haven't been grab your purse/wallet/keys, jump in your car and hit one up! That place is crazy sauce! It has hundreds if not thousands of different kinds of beer, wine, liquor and all the gadgets to go along with your habit. Then the cherry on top is they do tastings and you can buy growlers of the beer of the month..oh and did I mention the humidor of all kinds of nice cigars?!?

 

Okay so if you are still reading this and haven't headed to mecca..I was in there and found this perfectly named beer (for the holiday) by Rogue Brewery called.. get this, Dad's Little Helper!! I couldn't not buy it for my man-quet!!

 

 I had most of the supplies needed for this project; container to put it in, florist foam, skewers and ribbon (if you dare to add some girly to it). I know you can buy the foam, skewers and different containers at the dollar store so the only real expense is what you use for your "flowers" and you can be as cheap or as spendy as you want. I saw some neat ideas after I was done and decided to research this a bit better and people used a case of beer as the base. Some people can really think out of the box. LOL! the box, get it, beer box...I mentioned I went to Total Wine and More and bought a couple bottles, right?

 

Hope you enjoyed these ideas and they help you with a few ideas of your own!



I had the best of intentions..

Okay so I feel like I should apologize to you all..and well to myself. It was one of my new years goals to start blogging again and I had the best of intentions, but with a new baby life just got in the way. I hate to make excuses and I know most people could really care less that I haven't had a post in months and who knows maybe some of you have been asking yourself "where the heck is the farmers daughter and her awesome posts!?" I like the thought of the latter.. :D But for those who don't care that's the reason I'm apologizing to myself, because I let myself down and my goal. But in all fairness blogging isn't the only goal that has taken a back seat to my mommy and wife life. Let's look at the list:

• Working out..NOPE!
• Getting my etsy shop full..Nope!
• Eating healthier...eehhh kind of..who am I kidding..NOPE!
• Quitting soda..Nope!

I was in my craft heaven working on 4th of July décor and saw my goal sheet, realized that this year was panning out just like every other year and decided this was the week to change all that, or at least try. So I contacted a friend who is a photographer and set up a photo shoot to get pictures of the headbands for my etsy shop for next week, listed a couple items yesterday, drank more water today and now here I am blogging! Yay for me!

I'm going to take baby steps and try to post at least once a week. Hopefully it'll be some quality stuff! A few posts to look forward to; homemade baby food, my list of must haves for life with a baby, fathers day cards from a little one and a couple fun 4th of July crafts and recipes!

For those that have stuck with me thank you and I've included some baby love!

 

P.S. I'm so proud of baby C, he just started crawling which surprised Mr. B and I because he wasn't even trying. He just woke up Monday and decided he wanted to crawl!!

 

 



Mommy Instincts

I guess I should start this post by saying sorry that I never got to my Valentines day post but it's been a little crazy around my house the last couple weeks. My poor baby got sick and ended up in the hospital for a night. Which leads to the reason for this post. I'm going to apologize at it's length up front.

 

Here's the story..

 

Monday morning we woke up and neither of us felt very good so we just lounged around. By Tuesday morning I felt better but I could tell C just was full on sick. He had his morning bottle but was pretty lazy with it which is new because that kid can suck down a bottle in no time usually! Then he fell asleep and slept..and slept some more; actually from 9-12AM. That's when I knew something was really up. I'm a firm believer in the saying "never wake a sleeping baby" but it had been so long I needed to check on him. I tried feeding him and he just laid there and let it run out of his little mouth. I started to get nervous but thought maybe he just wasn't awake enough. So I laid him down to change him and his eyes were red rimmed and being the ginger he is his eyebrows too. I figured maybe I should take his temp, so I did it under his armpit. (Now the ped said this was the best way and then if it was 99 degrees to try rectally, I'd been taking his temp by his arm pit since Monday) It was 97.4 but he felt super hot so I thought let's take it the other way and see what we get...Low and behold 102!! I instantly freaked because in the hospital they said anything over 100.6 or something was major in an infant. So I started crying and called the pediatrician (and a few other people) and they had me bring him in right away. Now here's where it gets frustrating..

 

I know my baby. We as moms KNOW OUR BABES. We know when they are having an off day or don't feel well. I take him in and I can instantly tell that the nurse thinks I'm an idiot and overreacting. She gives me the line, " we are all moms here so next time instead of rushing in just call and we will tell you if it's no big deal." Now this ticks me off..I'm a first time mom!! HELLO! I'm going to overreact and by the way I've only called once about something and it turned out to be something! I KNOW MY BABY. Anyways, the ARNP comes in and he looks C over and tells me that he most likely has a cold and possibly a sore throat and that's why he's not taking his bottle. He said try pedialyte because we don't want him to get dehydrated but can't tell me how much. He says give him Tylenol for the fever and throat every 4 hours for however long it takes to get him better. Then proceeds to tell me that the reason I don't like milk is my body doesn't handle it and I'm lactose intolerant..Nope I'm not. I just don't like to drink a glass of milk. I love dairy, just not a glass. He told me he had over done it on peanut butter when he was a kid so he doesn't like it..I should've said, well that must be your bodies way of telling you it doesn't handle peanut butter but I was in shock about how very little they worried about my child. But I digress.

 

I should say that I'm not wild about this ped office to begin with. I signed up for one ped when C was born and ended up with another and instead of checking him out I just stuck with him.

 

*Advice to my soon-to-be mommy friends..CHECK OUT YOUR PED FIRST!!

 

He told me I was over feeding C (he was just under 2MO, 3 ounces 3-4 hours) and would make him fat. I saw red. (I never saw him again and started with another dr. at that practice.) I swear that's one reason C is small is because I was probably under feeding him after that because I started second guessing myself. All because of that dumb dr.! I started seeing a new dr. there and like her a lot..some of the nurses and the office staff not so much.

 

But here's the reason for this post..I should've trusted my mommy instincts! I knew something was up with C and once again I let them bully me out the door and into thinking I was overreacting. I doubted myself. Now I know being a mom is tough and it's full of second guesses and wondering if you are doing right by your child, but under all that we really do know how to do this and what's right.

 

I took little C home and thought I'll just make him better with lots of cuddles. We got home and he slept and slept and slept some more. I put pedialyte in his bottle at my discretion. I fed him how much he told me he needed. He was fussy that night but not terrible. Wednesday he didn't seem any better but was taking his bottle a little better. Wednesday night I had a nagging feeling he wasn't getting better. My hubby thought it was at its peak. I thought maybe we needed to take him to the ER. His fever wasn't breaking even with the Tylenol (by no means was it sky high either) and he was crying inconsolably. I thought I'd rather take him in and have them say nothing was wrong than not and have it become something major. I begged my hubby to stay home the next day. I wasn't sleeping for worry over the baby and I needed his support. Thursday came and he slowly went down hill further. All he did was sleep and cry. I was feeding him with an eye dropper by Thursday night. He would just spit up everything I gave him and now he'd developed a scary cough. I made an appointment to have a follow up with the dr. I liked on Friday. So we wouldn't end up in the hospital over the weekend.

 

Friday morning..he wouldn't eat, when he cried no tears and he had a temp of 103.6. Thank God I had a dr. appointment! I took him in, a new nurse who I'd never seen weighed him (he'd lost more weight again) and I broke down telling her about my week and my first visit. She looked at me and said, "we are medical professionals but if your mommy instincts tell you something's not right with your child, listen to them!" I loved her instantly. My favorite dr. came in took one look at him and in his ears and sent us to the ER immediately. He was crazy dehydrated and had a raging ear infection. I knew something was wrong, he'd never tugged at his ear but I knew he was off. I should've listened to my instincts.

 

Now I know there are people out there who believe a low fever is nothing and doesn't need to be treated. But a fever is indicative of something being wrong. And I'm of the mind that if he's uncomfortable and in pain it needs to be addressed. There is a fine line to walk with reaching for the meds too quickly or treating things holistically without medications. I know that we now live in a world where our food, clothing, medicine..basically most everything has chemicals and preservatives and more crap in them than necessary. But you can go too far in one direction.

 

*standing on soap box* I get it..breast is best but for those of us who tried EVERYTHING aside of medication (which cracks me up because most of those types are anti meds and can't believe I would stop there at being able to feed my child the "right" way)we don't have the option of rubbing every pimple or scrape with breast milk..or giving a drop here and there to treat everything ( don't you know breast milk will cure anything) Don't think I haven't agonized over this enough! I would LOVE to feed him the natural way and be able to do that but my body just wasn't up for that. I had an amazing pregnancy and a pretty easy delivery with few complications so my luck was bound to run out somewhere. And YES I had an epidural but even if I hadn't I would've ended up with one. But because I couldn't feel the pain of a stuck shoulder I was able to keep pushing and not end up in C-section which I would've ended up medicated for that anyways. No, I don't think that the epidural is the reason my body didn't produce enough to feed my babe. I guess I'm just over this idea of formula is poison or women who don't breast feed didn't try hard enough. Don't be so quick to judge, you don't know the reason that woman isn't doing it. Yes, it may be because she thought it was too hard but it could also be her body failed her. If I see one more picture that shows a medicine cabinet full of meds with the label that says "non breast feeding moms cabinet" next to a picture of a women pulling down her nursing bra with a label saying "built in medicine cabinet" I'm going to scream.

 

I'M SO PROUD OF YOU! And so very jealous..good for you, your body works! blech! BTW I vaccinate my child too. *getting off soap box now* Sorry about that..guess I have something new to talk to my shrink about...

 

We ended up with a great ER doc. He took care of C and got him started on fluids and antibiotics. I have to say we are so lucky to live in Spokane and have access to a pediatric ER at Sacred Heart. It was a blessing! But because C's pulse/ox levels wouldn't stay up where they needed to be we ended up with a slumber party on the pediatric floor of the hospital. It wasn't all that bad..glad it was only one night though! C is a champ, he passed everything with flying colors. They thought as bad as it was he'd be there through the weekend with a possibility of going home on Monday but he must have not wanted that because he was doing great by Saturday afternoon and they sent us home. His only reminder of being in the hospital is a little pin prick where his IV was.

 

My point to this besides just needing to get it off my chest is to listen to your instincts. You know your child best and if something doesn't seem right push the subject until you get the answers you deserve, be loud! C has a follow up with dr. Jen tomorrow to check that his lungs are still sounding good and that will be the last time we go to that office. I will be interviewing new ped drs immediately. It's too bad that because of a crap staff dr. Jen loses a patient but I need to be at an office where I trust everyone. Now who knows, maybe it was just a cold and possible sore throat on Tuesday and it blossomed into something worse or maybe it was bad to begin with and because I was "overreacting" and cold/flu season they just blew me off but it doesn't matter. I'm his mom and I should have pushed harder.

 

Lesson learned.

 

P.S. If you made it this far and are reading this..thank you for sticking with me. Here's some baby love of my little champ.

I'm Back!!

First off I have to say I'm sorry I've been MIA for almost two years now! How did it go so fast...?! I'll tell you..First off we moved into a cute little rental house. Had an amazing busy summer.

 

 

Then we bought a house!!

 

AND..if that wasn't enough we had a baby!

 

I found out I was pregnant just several month after we moved into the house. I was pretty lucky to not experience any morning sickness but I had ZERO energy so I didn't get much done. But I'm Back! One of my New Years goals (I don't like the word resolution..they are made to be broken) is to start blogging again and another was to get my etsy shop going again.

 

Step one etsy shop, check!

Step two blogging again, check!

 

Well two out of my many goals isn't bad..now if only I can keep up with the others I'll be in good shape..literally! That's a hint to what my other goals are.

 

I can't wait to show you what's coming for valentines day!!

 

This time signing off from my couch..sitting next to my handsome little man!