Dear Makers of Boys Swim Trunks,

My request is simple. Please be sure the drawstring is at least 6 inches long on both sides AFTER it has been laced through the suit, and please construct it so that the drawstring ties one the OUTSIDE of the suit.
Thank you.
--A Mother of Three Boys


 Seriously, people, who has not run across this problem? You first go to the trouble of dragging your kids through the store, wait while they debate and deliberate over color and style, finally pick just the right one, make sure it is the right size (perhaps even big enough to last through next year, too) only to get it home and realize what a pain it is to tie the darn thing with the single inch of slack the drawstring has on the INSIDE of the swim suit!!

We struggled with this issue for all of last summer, including two weeks of swimming lessons. When it came time to look at whether the boys' suits would work for this year, my oldest begged me for a new one. Why? Because he hated dealing with the miniscule drawstring. It wasn't just that you have to be nimble-fingered to get it tied securely. It was also the fact that if there was need for a restroom break (which there always is) you have to do it all again.

Well, the suit is still in great condition. I was not about to fork over good money for a replacement when the one we have can still do the job. My compromise? I checked the drawer for some extra shoelaces (you know, that alternate pair that came with your shoes, but you never used? Yeah, those). Then I sewed two button holes with my sewing machine through the suit, near where the drawstrings come out. I tied the new lace to the old lace and then pulled the old lace out, simply pulling the new lace in its place. I poked the new drawstring through the new button holes, and ta-da! New swim trunks, at no extra cost! I did this with both of the offending suits, and we are please with the result.

Obviously, they won't last forever. But they'll last another summer. And when it is time to retire them and purchase a new pair? We will be checking to see where the drawstring tie.

How to Create Your Own Rout of Snails

• Buy a tarp at your local hardware store-- blue is pretty standard, but any color will do.
• Take the tarp home.
• Go to the backyard and put a bunch of stuff that you want to keep dry on the patio or next to the back porch.
• Put the tarp over the items that need to stay dry.
• When you are ready to use the things stored under the tarp, drop the tarp on the ground.
• Use your items.
• Ignore the tarp.  
• A windy day will blow the tarp to the fence, where you will forget about it.
• A few weeks later, notice the tarp near the fence; make a mental note to get it "later."
• Leave the tarp by the fence for about two months. Be sure to notice it every so often, promising yourself that you'll get it "in a while."
• After a really rainy day, decide that it is time to get the tarp.
• Grab one corner of the tarp and gently lift the tarp (remember, it's wet).
• Let out a yelp in surprise at the round things attached to the bottom of the tarp.
• Laugh as you realize that it is not dog poop.
• Pull the tarp across the yard to the clothes line.
• Hang your tarp on the clothes line to dry.
• Step back and count. You should now have between 25 and 30 snails of varying sizes speckling your new snail habitat.
• Watch as your snails slither up and down the tarp, clinging expertly to the blue surface.
• If, when you go out later to check on your rout, you notice a few snails are missing, check the other side. They may have gone up and over.
• If your tarp falls down from another pelting rain storm, many of the snails will escape. If you hang the tarp again, as soon as the storm lets up, you will still have about a dozen snails left.
• Also note, that these critters are wild, the tarp is not a permanent habitat, and they will all eventually (within a day or two) escape if left unattended.
• Caution: if your snails are as big as your hands do not touch them, as they may be deadly.

Decorate Responsibly

To any person, professional or otherwise, who may choose to do interior decorating:

Use wallpaper with good sense.
Wallpaper can be a quick (if you know how to hang it) way to decorate a room. It may add a pop to a bland space, or perhaps some texture to a wall. It can be a lovely accent around the room. But, please, be responsible in your decorating.

If there is any chance at all that you may get tired of the wall paper, think before you hang it. If you might decide to move out or die before the wallpaper has served its sentence on your walls, think before you hang it. If that wallpaper is just so quirky that only you could love it, think of the people who will one day move into your residence after you have moved out of it. Will they love it, too? Or will it be the bane of their existence?

If you did decide to go ahead and hang that wallpaper, no matter how awesome and shiny that textured wallpaper may be, realize that you may tire of it. Fast forward your life. Suddenly, the teenage kid who really, really needed that wallpaper has moved on. How do we fix this? We have walls marred with your decorating choice. What's that? Paint over it, you say? Easy. No messing with glue removal, no priming the walls, just slap a coat of your favorite grey tinted white paint and you are all done. Now you have painted walls with a nifty design in them! WOW, what a great deal! Who knew that textured wallpaper could serve such a purpose? Your friends and coworkers will be amazed at how easy it was to fix it!

Ahem. Are you kidding me? There is a much better way. I have a friend who told me that the easiest way to remove wallpaper is to spray it with vinegar. The wallpaper practically falls off. Unless, of course you PAINTED it first! Then, of course the vinegar cannot penetrate the paint layer, thus leaving you to tear it all down by hand and THEN scrape off the backing that remains. Don't forget to spray it with the vinegar. It helps eliminate the leftover scraps on the walls.

One more thing.
If you have hung a lovely wallpaper border around the top of your walls, and then later decide to change the wall color, while leaving the border hung, mask it off. If you are afraid that painters tape will later tear the border when you remove the tape, then use a putty knife or other straight edge to cover the border when you paint up to the paper. You will then have less chance of leaving the old wall color showing and also leave the paper unpainted. If, however, the border is slightly peeling at the seams or top/bottom edges, it is time to remove it (using vinegar) before you paint. Then you may purchase a new border to apply after the paint has dried--you may even use the same one!

These tips may help you enjoy the time you have with your wallpaper. You won't look at it and wish that there weren't paint blotches all over the border. You will be happy with they way that awesome textured wallpaper looks as it drifts to the floor before you repaint the room. And it will ensure that the future residents of your current home aren't spending hours (4) peeling and scraping off your mistakes. Wallpaper can be a good thing if used responsibly. But it can also be a nightmare if it is not. Thank you.

Phase 3 of the Bathroom

Phase 1 was the removal of the paint. Check.

Phase 2 was putting Spackle in all the holes and getting the walls sanded and washed. Check.
I've learned that I like to Spackle! But that makes for boring pictures. I used the pink kind that turns white when it's ready for sanding or refilling. Makes it easy for a novice like me!

Phase 3 then, was painting! CHECK! I spent yesterday morning/afternoon painting the bathroom. I really like the job. My oldest boy was not in school for the end of the quarter, while my youngest was at preschool. So my oldest sat in the doorway and hallway with paper and pen and we chatted while I taped and painted and he drew. I painted the ceiling, around the toilet and the sink/cabinet, and then a second coat on the ceiling before lunch. After lunch we picked up the preschooler and came back ready to paint some more. I taped around the ceiling, shower and doorway, and painted, painted, painted! I was finished (with 2 coats!) by 4:00. A fantastic job, if I do say so myself. I left part of the wall where the light fixture and new medicine cabinet will be unpainted. My dad is coming over next week to help with the removal of the old and the wiring and installation of the new. (Thanks, Dad!)


Such satisfaction comes from hard and careful work. I walk in there and it just feels nice. I can't wait to get a new towel bar and have the new cabinet and lights put in. Phase 4 will be the new fixtures and final paint touch-ups. Can't wait. This is so exciting! And for those interested, the ceiling color is called Crepe and the wall color is called Tea Time. It's quite the change. And at first look, I was thinking "It's SO brown!" But the more I look at it, the more I really like it.

The One Where Life Got in the Way

So, I've  been a bit distracted for the past week. I set up my blog with some scheduled posts, but haven't had a chance to sit down and read comments. And the weird thing is, the comments don't show up in my e-mail until AFTER I post them. Strange. SO, sorry if you have tried to comment and it didn't appear in a timely manner. All comments have been now read and taken care of. Thank you for your interest!

Why am I so busy? Story time.
Once upon a time, 3 years ago, my family purchased a home. In the bathroom, there was a tiny little spot above the light switch, perhaps an inch in size where the paint had been peeled off the wall. Just this little hole. I picked at it a little, making the spot about 4 inches across, in a sort of circle. I like to pick at things, and the paint came off fairly easily. My husband said, "Don't do that." So I stopped.

Fast forward to now. I went in the bathroom about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and turning on the light, I noticed that the circle of missing paint was no longer a circle. It had branched out into a weird shape. It was definitly bigger, to be sure. Now, I was curious, because I had restrained myself, and hadn't touched it in all this time. I asked my two boys if they had picked at it. Telling me it wasn't them, and believing them (lying isn't currently a problem in our home), my mind turned to the only other option, however unlikely it may be. So I asked my husband, "Did you pick at the paint in the bathroom?" To which he replied, "I'm thinking it might be time to paint."

 --A little back story. When we moved in, the upstairs bathroom did not have a shower. It had only the bathtub. Our basement bathroom does have a shower, but it's a metal, military-style shower (super small) that has been painted (that's right PAINTED--on the INSIDE!) several times. This made showering tricky, as the paint in the shower began to remove itself when water was applied to the surface. Pretty hard to avoid, when showering.
SO, father-in-law offered to tile and plumb a shower for us in the bathtub upstairs. In the process, a bit of paint around the edges of where the tile was put in was chipped off. When my father-in-law first noticed this, he asked, "Are you going to paint when this is done?" "Of course," we replied. He was relieved because that made his job a bit easier (not having to worry about the paint). And, he did a fantastic job. So, shortly after moving in our lovely new home, we now have a working shower/tub upstairs and a paint-peeling shower, that we have chose to ignore for the time being, downstairs.
But the upstairs bathroom has never been painted. Time, means, desire, all these have delayed the lovely project, and what's a bad paint job, when the shower works, right?

So, back to my original story. So, here I have found that my husband had started peeling away at this little hole. So then I picked at it a bit. Each time either of us went in there, the wall looked a bit different. One day, after a shower, I returned to the bathroom to dry my hair. The bathroom was still a little steamy, and I just grabbed a little piece of paint and was surprised to find that the humidity in the room made the paint come off in considerably larger pieces! Suddenly, it's a competition to see who can get the most paint off. By the end of the week, we had pulled off paint from the doorway to the edge of the shower.

In these pictures, we have taken down the towel rod and the mirror that was hanging on this wall. Because, now, it's time to get rid of the rest of the paint. It's not like we can just sand the edges and call it good. But the paint pulled off so easily by hand, I figured a few paint scraping tools would speed up the process and clear the wall in no time. Very funny. Turns out, the paint scraper (like a flat, metal spatula, sort of) mostly just chipped away the paint, rather than getting under it and loosening huge chunks like I imagined. The other scraper I bought has a sharp blade that scrapes the paint, but it needs just the right amount of pressure to get it right, and sometimes it scraped too deep. 

Finished Wall!

Saturday the 18th, I spent about 2 hours, with very little progress. So I put away my tools and made dinner instead. Not yet feeling discouraged (after all, this had to come down somehow) Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent clearing the bulk of the wall. In fact on Tuesday, I went from the bottom of the 'hole' to the floor, and Wednesday I did from the top to the ceiling. The thing that made those go much quicker (but still taking several hours each day) was that I remembered on Monday night that (duh!) it peels better after a shower! So, each day, I delayed my shower until after I took my son to school and then(keeping the bathroom door closed while I hurried to put on my working clothes) started right in while the bathroom was still moist. It came off SO much easier.

Thursday I spent the morning clearing the rest of the spaces that I didn't finish on Wednesday, and then started to pull down the wallpaper border that had been painted over. Last Friday, I finished off the wall paper border. Now we are ready for the next step. (Sanding, filling holes, removing cabinets) Hurray! We are only clearing one wall, because the paint around the cabinets on the other wall isn't as urgent to remove. In other words, we didn't pick at it over there.

We are also going to get rid of both wall cabinets. I am opting for a wider medicine cabinet with 3 mirrored doors instead of keeping the two existing cabinets. That way, I don't have to rehang the mirror that used to reside on the big wall that I cleared. (I can see the back of my hair with the side mirrors on the new cabinet!) We are also getting a new light fixture because the current one is attached to the medicine cabinet. And the wall space over the sink and toilet will feel a little cleaner. I don't know what color we are painting yet. I'm going to pick up some paint samples this week. And we still have to deal with the electrical.

But I'm really excited about all this. And now you know why there was no Bradbury Friday last week (sorry!) and a lateness in the comments. In addition to the bathroom, I also had PTA stuff and 2 Young Women activities to supervise. All in a week. Fun stuff!

PS, the Book Club has a bit more time to finish the Scarlet Pimpernel. I have been delayed in my reading time. I may have to re-learn how to read.

Lessons Learned from a Wind Storm

 On Thursday, winds reaching 100 mph ripped through our area. It was an incredible storm (especially for those of us who've never lived anywhere near hurricane country). There was an amazing amount of destruction. Ours, thankfully, was minimal. There were about 7 patches on our roof where the shingles were roughed up, or completely ripped off. (I have some neighbors who lost nearly half--if not more--of their roof shingles) I spent much of Thursday morning and afternoon gathering up the scattered shingles (and trash) from my yard in hopes of salvaging some of them. That afternoon, my mom called to find out how we fared from the storm. I told her of the shingles, and she offered to pass the message to my dad.

When my dad got home that evening, he called to hear my estimation of the damage, and later drove by to take a look from the street. He called me back, told me to buy a packet of shingles and some roofing nails and we would patch it up on Saturday. I invited my father-in-law to come help out--because he's handy, too, and "many hands make light work."

The lovely folks at our home improvement store were more than happy to help me find the materials I needed. (There were lots of people at that store, out buying stuff to replace the things the storm took from them--nothing like a storm to boost the local merchants!) Wondering if I'd handled the shingles wrong and snapped them in half while getting them into my car, I drove home. When those handy men arrived, we borrowed the neighbor's extension ladder and up we climbed. I was glad for the calmer winds and a blue sky. (Please note: I volunteered to climb up. I wanted to! My hubby was more than glad to stay in with the little monkeys. His vertigo would have landed him in the ER if he'd attempted to join us.)

And then, I learned a few things about roofing and roof repairs:
You've got to find any loose shingles that didn't come off and put in a new nail or three. Remove or pound in any nails that were once securing the old shingles. Make sure to work from the bottom up. Be careful not to bend back the existing shingles too far, or they'll break (especially in the cold weather!). If the package says "Standard Shingles," it doesn't necessarily mean the shingles on your roof are "standard." Color does matter, but close enough is good enough. A roofing hammer is different than a regular hammer. When re-roofing over existing shingles, use 3 inch nails, not 1 1/2 inch nails. (This was partly why we lost some of our shingles!) Roof tar may be dispensed with a caulk gun to add extra security under the shingles. The plastic strip on the back of the shingle should be removed to expose the tar prior to nailing to the roof. Nails should not be hammered on top layers because it lets the water in. Two layers of shingles is the maximum allowed. When a roof has 2 layers and requires a new roof, it must be stripped bare to start again.

After spending around 3 1/2 hours on the roof, I am grateful that we didn't lose more than we did. I saw much damage around my neighborhood, and many people were worse off in our neighboring cities. We had to cut some shingles to fit, and the color isn't exact, but I think we did a pretty awesome job. I had a lot of fun! I don't mind heights, and I always enjoy learning more about how to be a little handy.

We had one other adventure because of the wind. Our carport is a metal structure that is secured to the concrete. It has a canvas roof. The feet on the leg poles are plastic. The wind was so strong that day, that it was trying to remove our carport. The plastic feet were no match for the wind and they broke around the anchor point on two of the legs. It was violently bucking in the wind. My next door neighbor happened to be outside when I was gathering some shingles. He noticed the threat of losing the structure, and kindly offered some rope to help me tie it down. We tied it to the fence, my patio, and a tree. Later, my dad traded some of the feet so that it is now anchored to the ground again. (Whew!)

I learned much from this storm. But I was also reminded that we have much to be thankful for. I am thankful for family who knows how to do things and are willing to help when things need fixing. I am glad for the ability to learn new things. I am thankful we have neighbors who look out for us. I am grateful that we were able to afford the damage, and repair it quickly. And now that we are ready for it, Let it Snow!