We took the girls to the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory, locally known as the Domes.  The weather here has been so cold and gray that it was nice to go there and pretend that we were in some humid paradise.

The train displays were set up and whole mini "towns" were woven into the landscape.







Plus, I enjoyed the added bonus of checking out all the plants there to get some landscaping/plant ideas for our desolate yard.

I have resurfaced.

The unfortunate tale is that we were robbed several weeks ago and all our technology gadgets as well as my jewelry were taken, hence the lack of blogging.  It was a discouraging incident, but we are thankful that most things that were taken are replaceable.  It did spark a new conversation about what sort of things we should invest in to prevent this in the future: motion lights? security system? large angry dog with pointy teeth? booby traps? wild chimps? and so on.

So I'm back on the blog and am excited to share some developments. As an extra special treat for today, here's Sage singing a song that haunt most parents in their sleep and Luciana learning to wink.





Thanks for sticking with me.

Spring may have arrived in Wisconsin at last.  Forget the groundhog: once you see me outside sanding or painting something, you will know spring is here.

I decided to ring in spring by buying some succulents (hard to kill!) from Home Depot.  I love the texture and shape of these little guys.  I put a grouping inside a pot from Goodwill that I spray painted and I noticed the colors of the plants just so happen to pick up the colors in the photo next to it.

So...still haven't done anything with the 80s chairs in the dining room.  I've been around to several fabric stores in the past couple weeks and haven't found a suitable fabric for reupholstering them.  Here's a couple options I've been considering:




The fabric needs to hold up to globs of oatmeal, spills, and general kid issues.  The last time we upholstered our chairs, I used a really pretty fabric, but it didn't hold up to what life dealt out.  This time around, I just want to live my life and stop scrubbing down chairs.

Also, our dining room feels really traditional with the cove ceilings & built in buffet so I have to find something that communicates "hey, we're hip & fun" and not take it too seriously.

So in other words, I want affordable, scrubbable fabric that will communicate our youthfulness & coolness in a subtle way that still resonates with the traditional vibe of the space. Let me know if you guys see anything out there like that, okay?

It's supposed to be around 50 degrees here today so I just may drag some chairs outside for a good sanding. Perhaps that will get me motivated.

So let's continue the house tour.

Our bedroom has never been a finished space.  When we purchased the house, it was an empty room with a chimney, a cedar closet (which is strange placement, considering that it was unfinished), and a flat, leaking patio.  The patio had been leaking for many years and actually rotted a hole in the ceiling of the bedroom beneath it.  I have a theory that this room was used as the "cat room" by a previous owner as there was a lot of fur and scratches all over the bottoms of the doors.

In other words, it was a pretty awful space.

April 2013

Flat, leaking unusable patio

The plan of action was to make this room bright, functional, and of course AMAZING, which first meant enclosing the patio and incorporating it into the inside as a dormer.  Because this is a historic home we had to style the dormer to match the one in the front of the house and stucco it to match (which is not cheap, people).  We also added skylights to take advantage of the southern exposure.

May 2013

Oh, that light fixture. There aren't enough words to describe its fabulousness.

We kept the original cedar closet and added a door to store off season clothing

Trapdoor laundry chute to basement