Wouldn't you know it...

Of course Amelie is sick. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, but at least we got a couple of days in between the end of my sickness and the start of hers. During that time we met Abby and her kids at Open Gym for some well needed play time. The kids went bonkers. Sam was playing basket ball for a good portion of the morning while Amelie rode around in the cars and ran through the gym at maximum speed.





Sammy just turned 2, but I swear he already looks too big for that trike. Poor guy is sick too. What a bummer to big sick on your own birthday!

My crafty little kid was trying to escape from her booster seat and ended up busting the tray off and smashing her lip on the kitchen table. She cried and her mouth bled and she got a fat lip, but she was fine about 5 minutes later.



Very Angelina Jolie-esque.

So, she got sick on Friday night. Feverish, runny nose, sneezy, coughing... I felt so bad leaving for work. I went in and checked on her when I got home and I just wanted to crawl into her tiny little bed with her. Then she woke up at 4:30 and was shivering and super hot so I took her into bed with me where she slept (tossed and turned) for about an hour until she climbed out and went back to her own bed.

In order to keep her from driving her fever up with her never-ending energy, we let her watch TV so she would lay still. I still can't get the Care Bears theme song out of my head. Her fever finally broke yesterday and when she got up from her nap she was a sweaty mess. You should have seen her hair. It was so funny, she took a bath and laid around dripping boogers everywhere the rest of the day.

Poor kid still has quite the cough still though. She actually coughed so hard today that she threw up a little bit on the living room rug. The other day I bought some Honey Syrup stuff that eases her cough and gave her some. That helped immensely. She's been napping 2 times a day, went to sleep at 6:45 last night, and didn't wake up today until almost 10am.

We had a horror movie moment this morning. I could hear her up in her room at 4am, so I went in to get her and lay her back down, but went to the bathroom first. When I came out, she was standing in the dark hallway staring at me. If I hadn't just come out of the bathroom, I probably would've peed in my pants.

So, I have essentially been trapped at home for 2 weeks now and I am going stir crazy. I was content laying around and watching TV for a while. Then I got bored and spent a few days doing laundry and dishes and minor cleaning. Now I'm just climbing walls. I got an email from the Offbeat Bride (which is a site I LOVED when I was doing our wedding planning). They just launched a new blog called the Offbeat Home I saw a post yesterday called

"Turn a shitty corner of your home into an altar for an awesome thing"

The funny thing is, I have been thinking about all the shitty unused corners that I have in my house, so I took the challenge. This corner is usually occupied by lots of crap. The vacuum cleaner, baby clothes, a few weeks back it's where we stored the Christmas decorations...

Here are before and after pics.






It's not really an altar to anything, except maybe fruit which I have been craving during this pregnancy, and I guess I do love incense and plants, but really, it's more of a storage area. It's an old dresser of Tyler's I believe. I dragged it upstairs and filled it with all of our office supplies, cd's, computer and printer stuff, photos and photo albums. It looks much nicer that the shit that was piled there before. I used to think of that corner as the "place where I put stuff until it gets taken back to the basement" corner. Now it's the "stuff hiding, fruit bowl holding" corner that makes our dining room look much more cozy.

That super simple and fast project got me thinking that our house still looks like we just moved in. I've been afraid to put nails in the walls and have been waiting for the perfect idea before accidentally fucking something up. So this morning I went to the internet for some inspiration (and also because I love reading DIY blogs). Somehow I came across my new favorite blog, Young House Love. It's great. They got my mind racing with ideas and I immediately wanted to run out to do some thrift store shopping. The only thing stopping me was my poor sick little girl, but since I need instant gratification, I went down to the basement to find some things that I could use for free.

So, this morning I cleaned out the coat closet and the entry way, and gave the BIG EMPTY wall in our living room a new identity. I was inspired by the post "Create and instant mud room" since I have been meaning to do that since we moved in.

Here is what the closet looked like. Pretty bad.

Here is the top shelf filled with unused diaper bags, a backpack, jumper cables I was not aware that we owned, and hats 'n mittens galore.


Here is the floor, hard to see but just imagine shoes piled upon shoes with adult snow pants piled on top, extra tile, umbrellas, and some windshield washer fluid.

And all the coats smashed in haphazardly.



and after!






That closet cleanup was a lot of work. I don't know how we managed to shove so much junk in there. I brought a whole laundry basket of shoes and boots to the basement as well of lots of other crap we don't need in the closet. The big blank wall was much easier because I was mostly adding things to it.

Here is before, pretty plain and blah.



and after, much better. I'm going to add a couple of things over the shelf later, another shelf or a photo of our tandem bike. This summer I will paint and reinforce the shelf to make it a bit studier No more big naked awkward wall!


This will be my makeshift "mudroom" My dad made the shelf when he was a wee lad, I painted it white, flipped it upside down and added the hooks on the bottom. I'm thinking about putting a couple hooks on the wall above the stool for scarves and bags. We already have a spot to hang coats.




My favorite things about my projects are:
1. that I was able to store/hide a bunch of stuff creatively
2. we got our closet back and it looks neat
3. we finally have a place to hang our keys near the door
4. I am living my dream of having plants infesting every inch of my home
5. that it was all FREE and I put a bunch of junk we had in storage a new life
6. there is finally a place to put that pesky cord that connects my phone to my computer!



There are still a few more spaces and corners in my house that need to be remedied. In particular, this one.

I'll let you know when that happens.

I'm also on the hunt for the perfect hutch for the dining room, something smallish that I can paint and make awesome. I want to relive the large Ikea shelf of it's dining room duties once and for all. Maybe put it in the baby's room once we move our stuff upstairs.

I'm going to go cuddle with my sick little mouth breather now.