Spend $10 get $20

Yep- clip the coupon at the top of page 22 (left side) and buy 10 tubes of crest toothpaste for $10 and you'll get a $20 register reward to use on your next purchase. I don't think it will roll, otherwise I'd tell you to then do it again and again and again. Have fun. You know the store- if you've been reading me long enough you know what I"m talking about. newcomers, speak up or search the archives. What's my new favorite store?

I moved

M bedroom, that is. The bedroom MrH was building in the basement is finally finished and last night we moved our bed and a dresser into it. Hooray, it was so nice to finally sleep in here. Now I have my work cut out for me rearranging the kids' bedrooms and everything, I am sure I will get no "paid" work done today, which sucks because I didn't yesterday either. Or the day before. Whatever- they don't approve them right away anyways, I fear that whatever I've done over the past week will sit in limbo for months. Anyway- I took a few pictures of the finished room, I'm working on 3 different computers right now, so once I get into the one that has the before pictures, I'll post the befores and afters together.

Dust & More Remodeling.

We're ripping out more basement walls, the painting in that bedroom is finished, and the bathroom is finished- I just need grout for the floor tiles. But before we put the carpet into the bedroom, we want to have the walls in the "kid cave" finished and painted. It's going to look so nice down there- I wish I had taken a before picture. I wish I could believe that the after picture would have pretty furniture. Anyhow, the dust from ripped out walls is driving me nuts. It is absolutely disgusting. And the bottom part of the wall has mold on it, so we've been spritzing it with bleach but really, it's just so icky. What to do, what to do?

Eating Popcorn in the Living Room

Why are kids so into this? Don't they understand about greasy fingers? Crumbs?

yeah, they have no clue why it's such a big deal for us and the reason is because dammit I don't want to clean it up. So I found a solution.

Throw a picnic blanket (old King Size sheet) on the Living room floor and allow them to eat their snacks on the blanket. It will be easier to clean up the mess just by bunching up the sheet and shaking it on the back lawn. Any spilled popcorn will become bird food, or melt away whenever it gets wet.

Have fun on your Family Film Festival

And Garden

I think I have to rename this blog mrs Hannigan's Home & Garden because otherwise I'd have no place to share my garden excitement (Didn't think of that in the middle of Winter)

Here's the current excitement:

-Yesterday's snow didn't freeze the ground
-Bulb flowers in front are up & I see a bud on one of the daffodils
-Our lawn is so green
-Roses I trimmed are looking great, I better do the backyard soon.
-Family friend has started bush beans & tomatoes in her greenhouse & offered us some once they're ready. Yippee, G1 will be so excited.
-I should start something
-MrH has done some yardwork fixing planters and clearing the playground / treehouse area of dangerous things to step on, now we need to lay some sod down or something, because we have a hill of dirt and the kids keep coming in the house filthy.
-I left some snapdragons and daisies in the ground and they have new growth.
-Peonies are coming up, too.

Kitchen/ Dining room Floor Tile (cool pattern)

Ok so it isn't truly a before picture because you can see there's no wood paneling on the walls, and the house is covered in drywall dust. That's OK, though, because it isn't truly an after picture either because some of the edge tiles aren't done. Notice, though, how we took an ordinary looking tile (boring, plain, white) and made it extraordinary by staggering it in a diagonal pattern. The walls (it's an old house) aren't perfectly straight along the floor and putting the tiles at an angle helps disguise that. Also, by staggering them, we can avoid the criss crossing of grout that makes my head spin. We ended up using a very light cream colored grout and a spray-on sealer. The grout color is great, it looked wonderful for 2 whole weeks. The spray sealer sucks dirt, I do not recommend it. We took a shortcut & now we regret it because it loks like we used a dark grout, exactly the contrast I didn't want. whatever, we get compliments on it all the time, the pattern is really cool. Now we just need moulding. I think the entire project was around $800 for 600 sq ft.

We have a play room

Part of our basement remodel has been to create a little "kids living room" where they can sit down and read a book or watch TV and store their toys. When I was a kid our rooms were always such messes because we stored our toys there and policing the space was impossible. My goal is that no toys (save for a small shelf of sentimental items or recent gifts) be stored in their rooms. So this rec room space we've made is mostly a playroom. Their computer is down there, too. Reclaiming my living room has been nice.