I Can't Help Myself, I Made More Onesies

Once I discovered how easy it was to turn all my old t-shirts that didn't fit anymore into onesies, I decided to go crazy. I still had many other shirts that could be transformed.

This...

...turned into this

This...

...turned into this

This..

...turned into this

And this..

...turned into this

And soon, there were a bunch of adorable little onesies that made me giggle

I didn't hem the bottoms of them because I was even more lazy this time. And I made all of them in "6 months" size. I figured that was a size that would last longer than 0-3 months.

The last step was adding the snaps. I bought a pliers tool on Amazon for pretty cheap that came with a few snaps

I started reading the directions and thought, "what the fuck is this talking about? Ummm, I'm waiting for Chris"

Even when Chris came home to help he was a little like, "what the fuck is this talking about?"

So we did a test on a scrap piece of fabric first to see what the hell was going on

We thought we had a pretty good handle on it so I made 3 little marks on the first onesie to put the snaps on

It went pretty okay

But one of them didn't get placed all the way properly and when Chris tried to adjust it, it came off of the shirt, whoopsie. Because of the nature of how they get put on, after it came off we couldn't reuse it. Oh well, no big deal. With one side of the snaps on we put the other side on, but accidentally put it on the back of the side you snap onto, instead of the front. Whoopsie again

Eh, what are you gonna do?

The little pack that came with my pliers only had 4 snaps in it - we used one for a tester and another one got detached from the onesie and we got frustrated by putting another one on backwards so we resolved to finish later. Plus, these snaps are SUPER heavy duty and because the fabric from all of the t-shirts isn't very strong (they're just simple cotton) I think I'll order more snaps that don't mean so much business so that I can actually unsnap her onesie when we need to change her diaper.

Aaaaannndd, today I'm 40 weeks, hooray! I celebrated by spending 4 hours out in the sunny backyard yesterday painting trim, cabinets, drawer fronts, doors and a couple other things for some handyman projects of ours. I also painted the awkward closet door (what, you don't find this yellow exciting?)

No sign of the little lady yet, but man is she moving around all. the. time. Still, she seems to get most excited on days when I work a lot. For instance, she was calm, cool and collected all day yesterday and then when I was done working around the house and was running errands for work and sitting in the car she went completely bonkers. Clearly she likes doing housework and was wondering why I was being lazy sitting down. She also seems to like to rest her head and shove it against my pelvic bone when I'm seated (she's been head down for the past 2+ months), which doesn't feel the greatest. But overall I am so thankful for her giving me a really simple pregnancy. I keep on fearing a really dramatic labor or the fussiest baby in the world because overall I have seriously been beyond lucky while pregnant: I am still getting work done around the house, I haven't had heartburn, my ankles only started getting a little swollen if I'm on my feet all day about a week ago and I'm not terribly fatigued. I'm already a pretty disrupted sleeper (weird sleeping patterns for the last couple of years), so if I sleep strangely and then spend the day being busy she cooperates by usually letting me get a nap in the afternoon without swimming around too much keeping me up. Obviously that will never happen again very soon so I'm taking advantage of it while I can :)

Her room is nearly complete waiting for her arrival

And seriously I just can't wait for the little lady to come out so we can meet her. And then you can all virtually meet her as well. Can't wait to see you little Miss Cashew! :)

Yup, Totally Killed the Coreopsis

Remember how I was afraid when I split and transplanted the coreopsis that I might kill it? Well I did. It went from this

To this

No question about that. D. E. A. D.

The one on the other side of the yard I split it from looks like it's on a path to a similar fate

It hasn't completely left us yet, but it certainly looks like it's about to. The other coreopsis are very happy, which makes me feel awful for killing this guy. My first attempt at a green thumb obviously did not work out. I'm trying to look around the rest of the yard and smile at all the wonderful things blooming to cheer me up.

For instance, the Shasta Daisies have officially gone fucking insane

Would you like the official definition of "fucking insane?" Between the two plants there are 63 buds that are about ready to pop. I counted. Yup: nerd.

In other sad yard news, this guy (I think an emerald arborvitae?) is looking a little not pleased

But again, let's look at the happy. Ruby clusters: insane

Just 2 weeks ago they looked like this

The garden pinks I planted in place of the ratty looking Arizona sun blanket flower are soaking up the sun

When I planted them a couple weeks ago they looked like this

And the lily of the nile I planted at the same time went from this

To this

Not any craziness, but it's nice to know how hardy they are. It survived in a container for nearly a year with possibly a dozen waterings, got replanted and now is about to bloom. I consider that a success. The other lily of the niles are extremely happy and blooming up a storm

Last year Chris really liked the purple cone flower and it's been building up momentum on the way to exploding

I'm still in awe of the abelia kaleidoscopes. They are HUGE compared to when we planted them. Here's where things were in July of last year

Isn't that comparison crazy? In 10 months things have filled in SO much.

Like this shot from when we planted

And now

And this one from the other side of the yard when we planted

It was so cute and sparse then. Now, it's officially a full blown garden (but let's ignore the dead coreopsis please...)

Nature is a pretty magical thing.

Chris Can't Stop Building Things

Chris really can't stop himself when it comes to building things. And neither of us can really stop ourselves when it comes to trying to organize things. And now that we're taking on more and more handyman jobs (and clearly working less and less on our own house because we got NO trim work done this weekend), Chris decided to complete another building/organizing project. While on handyman jobs it seems to always be the case that there is one tool you don't have that you need. While at someone's house there is generally this request, "Oh, while you're here could you do [enter task I didn't bring tools for here]?" Chris set about trying to remedy this by building a handy little go to carpentry case where he could keep many of his hand tools that might come in handy for that random request. There were a couple plans and inspirational ideas he cobbled together, like this one

(found here)

The idea was that Chris would build a small "toolbox" that would then fit in a Festool case. All of our Festools stack together and he could stack it with his other handyman cases and bring it along with him on the job.

Once he was inspired he brought all his desired tools inside and started mapping out a plan for each layer of the toolbox

Chris always gets excited about building things and I always get excited about how cute he gets getting excited :)

Once he had his plan and his Festool case came in the mail (he needed it to finalize all his measurements) he got to building

While the Festool cases always cost a decent amount of $$$, the nice thing is that other than that, Chris didn't pay for any of the materials because he used leftovers from other projects (plywood, cabinet grade plywood, sheet metal, etc.) All in all the project took a little bit of an afternoon, some evening time, and some fine tuning here and there, but not too long. And in the end, he had a pretty handy little go to carpentry toolbox

It fits snugly right inside the Festool

And it stacks and snaps perfectly with his other Festool cases so he can just wheel them to our jobs

It's a pretty awesome little case

All the tools fit in their little spots he carved out on the top

And he's got 3 little drawers filled with goodies as well

Pretty nifty, huh? That Christopher, he's pretty handy :)