Our Cone Zone

Archives for September 2013

$30 Bathtub Makeover

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Bathtub 1

When we bought our house a few months ago, we made peace with the fact that both bathrooms were smaller than we’d like. Our downstairs bathroom had been completely gutted and replaced by a waterproofing specialist contractor prior to our move in, but the upstairs one had some original fixtures remaining, mainly, the bathtub.

After a month or two, the bottom of the tub started to peel. We also began to notice (check this out if another post) the mold/staining on some of the window caulking.

Bathtub 3

Neither of us are in the mood for a full-scale bathroom remodel. We have other things that need our money and attention, after all. But a peeling bathtub and unsightly caulking were hard to live with.

Bathtub 8

After reading a few reviews and also contacted bathtub reglazing in toms river NJ. After which we took our chances on this $30 Rustoleum product. It’s a bit hard to work with, I will warn you, so DEFINITELY wear gloves and have lots of ventilation!

Bathtub 6

But for $30, the results are SO worth it!

Bathtub 2

As for the caulking, I tried a white caulking marker, and got nuthin’. Then, I tried a paste made mostly of baking soda and a little bleach, and after five minutes of work using an old toothbrush, leaving it overnight to soak, and voila! Bad staining 90% gone!

Bathtub 7

 

If anyone is looking for a cheap/quick bathtub refresh, I would definitely recommend this process! Once we got the hang of the epoxy, it was pretty quick (although the smell is STRONG!). And the baking soda scrub down couldn’t have been easier.

 

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Homelessness

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It baffles me how many times Jesse and I have been homeless in our 7 years of marriage. We are the kings and queens of homelessness.

1. Who can forget our housing saga this past year, where we had to move back in with my parents TWICE? With 2 kids in tow?

2. When we moved to Dallas, TX, we knew NOT a soul and had never even been there before. We were 50/50 about trying to buy a house as well, so we spent the first 30 days in a sub-lease situation, where we met the guy from Craigslist, got his keys, and paid him $500 in cash to stay there for a month, all utilities paid. We kept our stuff in boxes the entire month, living out of our suitcases while we looked for our permanent place. We ended up deciding to rent, but the place we really wanted wasn’t available until a week AFTER our sublease was over. We didn’t know anything about the area, so we picked the Extended Stay Motel nearest Jesse’s Grad School.

BIG mistake, turns out. They didn’t allow pets, so we had to hide our cat and her litter box in the bathroom for an ENTIRE week. Jesse was allergic to the detergent they used on all the sheets. Our smoke alarm beeped incessantly, but we couldn’t have them fix it for fear of them discovering our cat.

Not only that, but we had people knocking on our door at all hours of the night, looking to buy drugs! Turns out, the person who’d lived there before us was a dealer. We were smack dab in the worst part of Irving, and we didn’t even know it!

This was one of my very first blog entries, 6 years ago. I tried to make light of a bad situation by writing about it. Enjoy!

 

Ugly-ette

So here we are at our little “Homeplace Inn + Suite”. What a lovely name. There were some major selling points in choosing this place, like the abundance of ants, the grubby neighbors knocking on the door at ungodly hours of the night, the low-on-juice smoke alarm that keeps beeping in a random manner, the room deodorizer that can’t decide whether wants to cover up the moldy smell or one-up it, their lack of tolerance for pets of any kind, oh, and the lowest price on the market. Get expert mould remediation with mould removal services.

One of their biggest selling points is that their rooms include a “kitchen-ette”. Such a lovely word. Like a dinnette, for instance, is a nice word for a nice thing- a small, cute, European trademark. Or Paulette. Reminds you of that sweet diner waitress who served your first Georgia waffles and called you “Hun”. Adding ette onto the end of a word should automatically imply that it’s fancy or wonderful in a modern way. It’s referring to the fact that precious things come in smaller packages. Things that have “ette” on the end should have unrealized, undiscovered potential.

Let’s look at the suffix “ette”. Here are the definitions that I found.

-ette

suff.

1. Small; diminutive

2. Female

3. An imitation or inferior kind of cloth

I would have to say that our “kitchenette”(let’s just call it this for lack of a worser name) takes after #3, minus the cloth part. Our kitchenette is just enough of an imitation that it feels like a joke, like it’s mocking us with its semblance of potential without any of the usual perks, like convenience or usefulness. We have just enough cupboard space to make me want to put stuff away, only to realize that none of it fits. There’s also enough counter space on which to rest a teaspoon, but of course, that would be exaggerating.

Basically, this kitchenette is like camping without the trees. Like a slip-n-slide with just a belly flop. Like Oreos without the lard.

But all in all, it will get us by for five days. As long as we can hide Mirabelle and keep her from sitting on our windowsill (THAT would be a dead giveaway). Perhaps we need to see the potential as it lies in the future- the promise of our nice, luxury apt. awaiting us on Friday. Perhaps all of this is meant to be dissatisfying to make sure that we appreciate what is to come.

And so, until then, we will continue to stuff all the food we can into our refrigerator. Or should I say, “refriger-ette” .

what Tiggers do best

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Sometimes, I'm a good mom and we READ our movies instead.

Sometimes we READ our movies instead.

Just in the past 2 weeks, Gregory has added Winnie the Pooh to his movie request list. For the concerned parents, yes, I melt my children’s brains with TV. 20 minutes in the morning while I make them breakfast, and 20 minutes before dinner while we cook. If they are unusually ornery and hitting one another or fighting, but not yet ready for a nap, I make an exception and let them watch something again.  I’ve adopted the motto, “It’s me or them.” If I’m going to cook healthy things without them hanging all over my legs and sobbing with hunger, I’m going to have to melt some brains.

Anyways. Gregory’s brain-melting show of choice lately has been Winnie the Pooh. THANK GOD we’ve moved on from 100% Thomas the Tank Engine, 100% of the time. If I have to listen to one more engine whine about “not being really useful”, I am going to only show boring documentaries about Abraham Lincoln. Now HE was a very useful engine.

Through watching my boys watch Winnie the Pooh (because I’m a proactive parent, duh!), I’ve come to two conclusions: 1., AJ is super afraid of rocks. 2. Gregory is smitten with Tigger.

And I started thinking about Tigger’s character in a way that I never have before. He’s always in trouble for bouncing and having too much energy. He wants everyone to play with him all the time and cannot understand why they need to prepare for winter or clean up the garden. He gets his feelings hurt and reacts irrationally. He acts on rash impulses, and while he feels sorry for the messes he makes, he doesn’t realize that he could’ve avoided them by waiting or calming down.

For those who are parents, does this sound familiar? I can see why Gregory is fascinated with Tigger’s character. As a 2, almost 3 year old, he identifies with him. He struggles with the same sorts of things.

Most of the time, everyone acknowledges Tigger for who he is in an annoyed sort of way. They love him, deep down, but they can’t stand being around him when he’s wild. They continue to do their chores in spite of his antics, working around the messes he creates. Rabbit, in particular, just tells him to run along until the chores are done.

As a parent that also sounds familiar.

In ONE story, “The Tigger Movie”, the animals start to realize how lonely Tigger has become, seeing as he is the “onliest one”. And for a day, they attempt to be “Tigger-like”, bouncing and partying. They go back to being themselves in the end, but the effort speaks to Tigger’s insecurities, and he promises to only bounce in special places and to be more aware of his surroundings.

I got to thinking about this and decided to adopt the same sort of philosophy with Gregory. I ask him if he wants to “be a Tigger” with me, and we go bouncing around the house. He is absolutely exuberant about this, as he realizes that sometimes I’ll do things “his” way, instead of allowing us to play our separate parts.

I read somewhere, a long time ago, that if we ignore or are indifferent to our children, they actually become MORE clingy. It isn’t just in our heads that the more we have scheduled, the more the kids act up. They can sense when our minds are on other things, and they want instant reassurance, even if that means whining and getting negative attention. It’s tough, because, as a mother, the more annoying they are, the less I want to be around them! I have to deliberately go against my instincts in order to pay MORE attention when they are the most annoying.

I’ll end with the most hilarious conversation we had with Gregory about his “Jonah and the Whale” video from the other night.

Me: “Tell Dadda about Jonah and the whale!”

Gregory: “Jonah was swimming with the fishes. Then, he rode on a starfish. AND an octopus! And then he met Spongebob!”

Me: “That sounds more Free Willy than Bible.”

 

See? TV education at it’s finest.

 

 

Our Breakfast– Protein Pancakes

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pancakes 2

 

A Lovely Lark is doing a series called, “My Everyday”, starting with what typically counts as breakfast in your house.

For us, it would have to be these protein pancakes. I found a recipe of sorts on Pinterest, and my friend Stephanie recommended using a few tablespoons of almond flour to make the pancakes more “flippable”, and less sticky. They work like a charm! So easy, so cheap, and so filling!

Basically, the ratio goes like this: 1 banana, 1 egg and 1 tbsp. of almond flour per serving. That’s it. Blend them together, fry them up as pancakes!

The best part is that the bananas make the pancakes so sweet, you don’t need syrup! We top ours with blueberries. Also on the recommendation of Stephanie, we add Honey Greek Yogurt at the very end (which also serves to cool off the pancakes, since the boys can’t help but shovel them into their mouths like wild beasts).

Here are the boys’ servings, Round 1 of 4. I HAVE to get a small portion on their plates right away because they wake up ravenous. The moment they smell the butter on the pan, they book it into the kitchen and stand at my feet, whining like hyenas until I’m done. Breakfast is the hardest meal of the day, in my opinion!

pancakes 1

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