Take the cake

Last year we were in Greece for Landon's birthday. It was amazing, but I missed out on making him a proper birthday cake. So I felt that this year I had to compensate for last year's cop-out of a pre-made sponge cake and nutella. I think I succeeded, you be the judge:

Relent, Recoil, Reupholster!

I am so proud of myself! No really. I'm hang-it-on-the-refrigerator, I-deserve-a-medal, blinking-applause-sign, spell-it-out-pommie-style P-R-O-U-D! Proud!

Perhaps, this feels slightly over the top. And no doubt it is. But please, allow me to explain.

Just before we first moved to Denver, Landon's Grandma graciously gave us two chairs that she no longer needed. As we had almost no furniture at the time, we were very very grateful for anything that meant we didn't have to sit on the floor. This is what the chairs looked like.

I don't know if you can tell or not, but these are very comfy chairs. However, as you can tell they had seen some wear and tear. And so I decided that I would reupholster them eventually. A couple of weeks ago, when my fantastic friend Becky was visiting, we decided that "eventually" had arrived and it was time to attempt the task. Tear off the old fabric, slap on some new, a few staples and we're in business. Seems pretty straight-forward, right? Not so.

Truth be told, I had no idea how to reupholster before I started tearing the old faux leather off. (Thanks, Becky, for your help on this part). Only then did I begin to realize what I'd gotten myself into. Here's a picture of one of the chairs completely disassembled.

After I took this picture I realized that it's actually missing several pieces including the arms of the chair and the hardware that holds the buttons in place, along with two missing fabric pieces, but I'm guessing you get the idea.

This is Griffin laughing at me, he liked poking at the disassembled chair with a screwdriver and fought with me for whatever tool I was using at the time. Yeah, he thinks he's a big help.

I'm sorely tempted to go into the nitty gritty detail about sewing technique, staple guns, and unexpected hand-stitching, but instead I'll just say that this was a lot of detail-oriented work with a mean learning curve. Anyway, after a few weeks of work (the most productive work getting done during Griffin's naps) I'm happy to unveil the finished product:

DRUMROLL........

Ta-da!

Seriously, I couldn't be happier with how these turned out. Don't they make a nice little sitting area for our bedroom? Here's a close-up of the fabric:

And another angle, just for fun...and to stroke my ego a little. Tell me what you think.

Little MOUSE on the Prairie

One week ago I got ambitious and started a garden. We're planning to have a little vegetable patch outside our backdoor. I had visions of a bountiful harvest and delicious salads. I'm guessing most of the world agrees with me that there is nothing better than a garden-fresh tomato.

Since Colorado is still toying with freezing temperatures, we started with an indoor garden tray to cultivate our fragile little tomato and bell pepper seeds into plants before moving them outside. I was thrilled when a few days after planting we saw minuscule sprouts shrugging out of the dirt. "Hoorah!," I thought, "I'm a horticultural genius!"

However yesterday disaster struck sometime in the night. We woke to discover that something...some creature had dug up our seedlings. This disturbed me for several reasons which I choose to present in no particular order in the list below:

• I am not a filthy person and I was frustrated to have a filthy rodent in my home, which challenged my self-image of cleanliness
• My garden was ruined
• I really didn't like to think of Griffin 'discovering' a mouse in the house
• I disliked all of my options for disposing of the little beast
• I've heard that mice never come alone...they bring their friends

Ew! It gives me the Heebie Jeebies just thinking about it. Lucky for me I have a very chivalrous husband who bought traps and other mouse-exterminating paraphernalia. After Griffin went to bed we baited our traps and patiently waited...for about 15 minutes.

One quick snap and it was all over for our furry little house guest. Again, my knight in shining armor stepped up and disposed of the carnage and I didn't even have to look at it. I feel a little wimpy and ashamed of being so prissy but those mousey guillotine things really gross me right out.

Hopefully, there was just one. But we are not taking any chances, we've got another trap ready and waiting for any other potential house invaders.

What a helper

I've been meaning to post for several weeks now, but it just seems to fall to the bottom of my priority list. In a head-to-head competition sleep, dishes, laundry, diapers, and (let's be honest) a batch of cookies have won out over blogging for several weeks in a row.

However, here's a brief update on the goings-on here in the Huber house:

At the end of March we had a huge snow storm blow through and dump almost a foot of snow. Bummer, because that meant that it was freezing cold. My dad called me and told me that AZ was sitting at a glorious 78 degrees that week, I think he's trying to convince us to move back to the Grand Canyon State. On the bright side, Landon wasn't able to drive into work because of all of the snow. So he worked from home. We had a fun lunch break playing in the snow.

I'm sure you remember Landon's snow sculpture of George Washington last year. Well this year what started out as a snow slide for Griffin turned into a snow sculpture of a dog. Griffin is always saying "woof, woof" to our neighbor's dogs and so we thought it only appropriate to give him one of his very own. Sorry Griffin, that's about as close as you're getting to a pet for now. Feast your eyes on this:

As per usual for Colorado, three days after the snowstorm we were sitting at 70 degrees. And with the warmer weather, spring seems to be shrugging out of its oppressive winter coat. The grass has turned a promising shade of green and our neighborhood is sprinkled with budding leaves. As I predicted, this year the dandelions are back. Some of you may remember that last year I spent several hours and lots of energy weeding my backyard. Lucky for me, now I have a helper:

Yeah Griffin, that's how I feel about them too.

Stuff to do...

Tonight is book club night. I just finished reading this month's book called 2001 Things to Do Before You Die. The host for this evening also told us to bring a list of 5-10 things that we want to do with our lives.

I enjoyed this book for some reasons, but the person who wrote it had a distinctly different world view from me. I therefore felt that some of the things on his list I would rather die than do. But reading this book did get me thinking about my mental list of things I want to do before I die. Some of them I've accomplished, some of them I am working on, some of them are distant goals, and yet others are near impossibilities. Here is a sample:

• Become a published author
• Make my own pasta from scratch
• Live on the East Coast long enough to receive mail there
• See Michelangelo's Pieta
• Live outside of the U.S.
• Work in a press office
• Design and sew a wedding dress that someone wears in an actual wedding
• Visit the Taj Mahal
• Raise kind children
• Learn to make the perfect soufflé
• Learn how to install a toilet, a ceiling fan, and hardwood floors
• Reupholster a chair
• Live in a house with secret passageways and a hidden room
• Enjoy opera
• Get a pilot's license
• Finally become conversant in Spanish
• Get a Master's Degree...in anything
• Go on a cruise
• Own a Dyson vacuum
• Build a tree-house
• Grow a lush garden
• Become a certified rock climber

What's on your list?

Check that attitude!

I was taking pictures of Griffin yesterday and this is what he gave me:

Talk about attitude. This little guy's personality is coming in full force. He's often sticking out his tongue to be silly or laughing at himself for no apparent reason. Truthfully, I suppose this should not come as a great surprise to me. Griffin comes from a long line of easily-amused and self-entertaining progenitors. It's nice though for Landon and I that we have a built-in source of amusement with Griffin around.

On Wednesday this week the weather was gorgeous (for the first time in what feels like ages). So Griffin and I decided that we'd have a little picnic in our backyard. We spread out a blanket on our dead grass and ate popcorn for a while.

Then we put on our shoes and tromped around in the crunchy leaves and dead grass. Griffin loved munching popcorn and crunching leaves. The only problem was that when he fell, he wouldn't get back up because he didn't want to touch the pokey grass. So he just sat in the grass until I got up to save him. This happened several times over.

And speaking of personality, I really don't know where Griffin gets it:

I've mentioned before that I work in the children's organization at church. Well, this last weekend we had a church "So You Think You Can Dance" Party. This is the Primary Presidency all decked out for the kids' dance number (I'm the one with the tuft of orange hair coming out of the back of my head). The kids all dressed up like rockstars too. And you know that we took first place, with costumes like that how could we not? Actually, I think the parents' votes really pulled through for us. So far I've dressed up as both a pirate and a rockstar to fulfill my church calling...I wonder what's next?

Movin' and Groovin'

This one is especially for Grandma Huber. Enjoy!