I. Have Made Curtain.

(It works best if you say that title like Tom Hanks in Castaway.)

There is only one window in this house without some sort of covering, and that is the tiny window in our laundry room. This window looks directly into our neighbor’s house, but for a long time no one lived there so this wasn’t an issue. Now someone does live there and this window lines up directly with one of their windows, and every time I walk into the laundry room I expect to see someone there staring out at me. (That has yet to happen.)

Anyway, it’s on my list of  little house projects that I wanted to tackle this summer and this seemed like an easy place to start. I followed this no sew curtain tutorial from Young House Love, to cover up this naked window.

I needed to hem all four sides of the fabric, so I ironed the edge first, so placing the hem tape and ironing would be easy. I know it doesn’t look like it in this picture, but that is a straight edge, much unlike the edge where the fabric was cut.

I wish I had some fancy advice for making your edge straight. Oh! Here’s my advice! Go with a geometric pattern so you can line your fold up along the same place all of the way down.

Here are all four edges hemmed. I used Stitch Witchery which is a fusable webbing, but you can also use hem tape, which is similar (I think) but has two sticky sides so it sticks in place until it has been ironed. This might be an easier way to go with a larger project. Here I was only working with a yard of fabric, so keeping things in place wasn’t a problem.

I apologize for the iPhone photography from this point forward.

Two things: 1)We rarely use that ironing board, so I don’t really think it needs to live right here. I think I want to get something to hang it behind the door (not pictured because I’m standing in the doorway) but I wonder if it would bang against the door every time I open it. 2) I knew this was a small window, but it was bigger than I was remembering it in the fabric store. When the curtain is opened it’s almost flat, and I kind of wish I had gotten more fabric.

All together this cost roughly $15. The curtain rod, curtain rings with clips and fabric were all under $5 each.

I have spent entirely too long trying to come up with a fun way to end this post, but we’re talking about a post about a curtain. In a laundry room. So.

Vacation Part 2: Shark Week

First of all, have you seen this picture? OMG.

There was a shark sighting off of Chatham while we were there, so we stayed out of the ocean. I say that as if I would have been frolicking in the waves if the waters were shark free. No. We live 20 minutes from the beach, and I can’t remember the last time I waded in above my ankles.  I’m the type of princessy girl who’s just fine looking at the water from her shaded beach chair with her kindle and cold beverage, thank you very  much. Can’t get me, sharks!

This is the part where I should tell you about all of the things we did for the rest of our vacation. We had such big plans. We were going to rent bikes, and take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. We were going to look at lighthouses and eat at all of the fabulous places I had researched ahead of time. If you’re planning a trip to the Cape you should definitely do those things!

We did none of those things. I mentioned that we slept for 16 hours on our first full night there. We were tired. We haven’t slept in since Bubette was born. No, seriously. Maybe  we’ve slept until 8am once or twice. She’s TWO. Unfortunately, staying in bed  until noon meant that we weren’t able to fall asleep until well past midnight, which meant that we slept late again. Lather, rinse, repeat. By the time we dragged ourselves out of bed most days, we just wanted to find another place to sit our lazy bones down and not move.

We did walk to Main St., which is a quick and easy walk past perfectly adorable houses from the Chatham Bars. Main St. is adorable. Shops, restaurants, book stores, more shops. My mom would have shopped herself into an early grave  here.

One night we went to a Cape Cod Baseball League game. YOU GUYS. This was awesome for so many reasons. 1. We walked there. 2. It was free. 3. There is something really fabulous about watching people do something because they just love to do it. 4. There are no advertisements on the field. 5. Don’t make me defend the awesomeness. It was just great, I promise. I mean, it helps if you actually like baseball, but I could totally get behind a small town baseball team, especially if their name isn’t STUPID like my own local baseball team, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. (It’s not just stupid, it’s wrong. Can’t anyone read a map? It’s impossible to be a team both from Los Angeles AND Anaheim.)

We did do a lot of this:

Sitting, lounging, reading, napping, both pool side and on the beach. It wasn’t productive, but it was so wonderful.

Week 8: The End

The weight loss challenge is over, and this is the last I will speak of it.

Week 8: –1.4

Final Weigh In: –1.8 (the challenge ended July 1, so it was eight weeks and change.)

 Total: –13!

I have to say that the difference is not noticeable, but I did buy a pair of jeans in a smaller size so all around this was a success. My plan is to keep going through the summer, but to completely forget about my 1200 daily calorie goal because that was crazy-making. Also, I don’t think I can work in my RDA of s’mores on a 1200 calorie budget.

Oh, and I didn’t win, not even close, but I did come in 6th out of 33 so excuse me while I pat myself on the back for a minute.

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7

Vacation Part 1: Cape Cod

This will forever be the vacation that will ensure that I never travel without a sleep aid ever, ever again. Whether it be Tylenol PM, or melatonin or Benadryl, I will pack something, because there were three full night of almost no sleep, and one night where I was awake for four (FOUR!) hours after my husband went to sleep. But we’ll get to that.

We left on a red eye for Rhode Island. Unfortunately you can’t fly directly from Orange County to Rhode Island so we had a lovely stop in New Jersey. For almost five hours. (Next time, if there is a next time, we’re flying to Boston. It’s a more expensive flight, but you can fly direct. WORTH IT.) I was delirious from several hours of falling asleep juuust long enough for my head to drop toward my chest and startle me awake over and over again, so I was content to stare at a wall until our next flight. My husband wanted to do something! Let’s go to New York for breakfast! It’s RIGHT THERE.

For anyone who’s new here, I’m highly neurotic and never arrive less than two hours early for a flight. I most definitely was NOT going to chance early  morning rush hour traffic from Newark to Manhattan AND BACK.

We did finally make it to Rhode Island. From what I saw from the airplane it’s absolutely charming. We rented a car and drove to Plymouth. Also spelled Plimouth some places without any regard for continuity. I would have driven straight to our hotel as we had been awake for a lot of hours at this point, but we were (relatively) close and it wasn’t (really) out of the way (much.) My husband will be teaching 8th grade next year and couldn’t pass up this first hand view of his curriculum.

I would like to say that I had the appropriate level of appreciation for this wealth of United States history, but I did not.

I abandoned my husband in the middle of the Plimouth Plantation and hiked  back to eat trail mix in the shade. I would never make it on Survivor. Had I had a shower, or even a NAP in a non-upright position, in the previous 24 hours, I probably would be telling you that it was pretty cool the way that the plantation is set up, and if you’re into that sort of thing it’s totally worth stopping by. You can skip the Mayflower 2, however. Just look at it from the dock.

When my husband emerged from the woods I nearly tackled him and begged him to please take me to the hotel, where there are showers, and a place where I can dig through my suitcase for something that I haven’t been wearing for two days now.

He did.

We stayed at the Chatham Bars Inn. Cape Cod isn’t the land of the sprawling hotel, so many of your choices are small B&Bs or inns, which would have been totally fine with me.  My husband took one look at some of the places that I was looking at and declared them “grandma’s house.” The Chatham Bars is a full service hotel and more his speed. It was beautiful, but since the Main Inn was built 100 years ago, the rooms are tiny. Immaculate, and adorable, but tiny.  It should be noted that they have bigger rooms, but we booked a bit late, and some of their room rates rival my mortgage payment, so we opted for cozy and cute.

By the time we were checked in we showered, and walked down for a dinner on the beach.

This is where it felt like vacation really began for me. Because there was food, of course. (Hello to my first ever lobster roll!) This really is the point where I completely relaxed. The kids were fine, I had survived our tiny airplane seats (there was a bit of a melodramatic moment where I was convinced I couldn’t possibly sit so close to so many people for so long) and we were officially on vacation.)

About an hour later we would go to bed and sleep for sixteen hours straight, which would prove to be the best and worst decision we made all week.

Little Bits

I still feel like I’m in a vacation fog. I know there’s nothing more annoying than someone saying they need a vacation to recover from their vacation, but that’s exactly what I need. The kids are still recovering, too. We were going to spend a few hours at Disneyland before church this morning, and Bub cried. He sobbed in fact, and begged to stay home and spend time with me. HIS WORDS.

Let me direct you elsewhere, away from the insanity.

I’m sure you’ve seen this, but if you haven’t take a look at 23 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity. Even if you’ve seen it, look again and weep along with me.

And this one: 40 of the Most Powerful Photographs Ever Taken

In a much lighter direction, I point you toward a post from last year about the easiest summer dessert that is a serious crowd pleaser around here. When our freezer suffered a meltdown (get it?) on the 4th of July, I went out to buy ice, specifically to preserve the ice cream for dessert.

Sharing YouTube videos isn’t usually my thing, but you really should watch, or just listen to Andy Davis sing Unchained Melody. He sang this on Drop Dead Diva and even my husband came into the room to ask who was singing, and he’s not easily impressed. This just makes me swoony.

Home Sweet Home

Usually, when people write these re-entry sort of posts, they’re all about how they wish they could leave their boring homes behind and be back on a beach. There’s laundry at home, and no one makes your bed every day, and I was really annoyed by the lack of bedtime chocolate and fresh bottled water on my night stand last night. Even so, we’re home and I’m never leaving again.

We had a great vacation, and if you pointed me toward an empty lounge chair and told me to keep it warm for the next several hours, I wouldn’t turn you down, but MAN am I happy to be back. I love my house. I love that it was 65 and all but raining when we walked out of the airport yesterday morning. I missed my kids so much that I all but ran from baggage claim to our car yesterday.

Again, our vacation was fabulous. I have so much to say about it, but for now I’ll just say that we needed it so much. Before we left, every little thing put me that much closer to the edge. I was screamy and sleep deprived and I needed to be the neediest person in the room for a few days. My mom had our house cleaned while we were gone and I walked through every room just appreciating all of our stuff, right where it belongs. Our fridge and freezer were… not cold when we came home, and we ran out of propane while barbecuing for guests last night, and STILL, none of that made me want to head back to the airport. (I need a serious break from airports. I’ve been in five in the past week, and they all smell exactly the same. How is that possible?)

My kids are all shiny and new; Bubette says new things, (“ten toes, two feet!”) and Bub seems so charming and grown up, and my mom’s housekeeper even cleaned the inside of my toaster over. It’s good to be home, be-Legoed kitchen table and all.