Lights out

My husband thought yesterday was very "bloggable" and took pictures for me, so here goes.

The day was wet and cold. Around 6:00 it started hailing! There was thunder and lightening too, which was really weird. Then by 6:30 it was snowing and slushy and slippery...and then the power went out! It was kind of cool to be instantly plunged into total darkness...not to mention the silence since the basal hums of our home were also absent. It's amazing how much light one candle appears to give off when there is no other light source. The entire street was quiet and dark, with soft snow falling peacefully. The only thing missing was Christmas music. Leah was really fascinated by fire and candles. Aside from a tree, my Christmas decorations consist of a garland and two tall white candles on my mantle...I had no intention of ever lighting the candles, but they sure came in handy last night!

Over the course of the next three hours, we carried candles around the house with us and set up a game and played by candle flicker. Fortunately, Chris has no class or homework until January, otherwise it would have been stressful to be without power, but it was actually a lot of fun! When the power came back on at 9:45, we turned the lights back off and kept playing!

Unfortunately, I never cleaned up the dinner dishes or put away clothes and shoes in the dark, and it's no fun to look at now this morning. I guess I have my work cut out for me today!

Projects new and old

Okay, so the cabinet is UP! What a relief! It only took my neighbor half an hour, and he said he likes doing that kind of thing and that if I made him cookies, it wouldn't really count as service. Hmm...still considering that one. Here's the before and after:

Among the myriads of other things I've done this week (or should have done), I took the "what have I got to loose" attitude and submitted 5 stamped projects to the monthly Stampin' Up! contest for demonstrators. I submitted 3 cards, a decorated cocoa holder/pouch, and an embellished book. Here's the covered book I submitted that actually took me almost an hour to create (as my first attempt took me an entire day of General Conference, an hour was a significant improvement...good thing I had an idea of what I was doing this time!) Who knows, I could get 3 free stamp sets if I win, and now I have a better chance of winning than if I hadn't entered at all. Here it is:

What's in your Fridge?

Once upon a time, I bought Fat Free Ranch Dressing. Apparently, this is an abomination because it just doesn't taste good. I learned my lesson that it doesn't get eaten at my house, and have since adopted the practice of buying Light Ranch Dressing. It tastes much better and still has a lower fat content than regular Ranch Dressing (which is also very good).

Last night we had a green salad with our pork chops. I went to get some ranch out of the fridge for my salad, but all we had was that same 24 oz bottle of Fat Free that is still only 3/4 finished. I couldn't bring myself to eat it, knowing it would taste funny compared to my expectation of how Light or full-fat ranch tastes. I settled for some other creamy dressing and vowed to buy salad dressing the next time I'm at the grocery store.

About to put the inferior salad dressing back in the fridge, I curiously checked the expiration date on the bottle. 12OCT05. What? That bottle of ranch expired over two years ago? That was before our child was born! What's even more appalling, since October of 2005, we have moved twice. This means I have moved that particular condiment from refrigerator to refrigerator two times, and we still have no intention of ever finishing it. I threw it away. How liberating.

Do you know what's lurking in your fridge?

What it's like to be 8 months pregnant

I woke up at quarter past early because I was absolutely baking, threw off the sheets and removed a layer of sweats only to hear the furnace kick on moments later. I laid in bed for several minutes debating the prospect of getting up to turn the furnace down or staying put where I was somewhat comfortable. After a quarter hour I finally made my mid-night pilgrimage to the bathroom, got a glass of cold water, and turned the furnace down while I was up waddling around. Then I laid back down to go back to sleep.

Ugh...back pain. Although I was no longer hot, I still couldn't get comfortable. I'm supposed to sleep on my side and to facilitate this, I have a half dozen pillows to call my own, including a body pillow to prop up my belly. But sleeping on your side gets old and your hips start to hurt. Plus, your center of gravity is so out of whack that your back screams in protest day and night at having to sustain the weight of a nearly full-grown fetus. I thought I could try propping up all my millions of pillows to make a reclining kind of bed set-up and sleep elevated on my back. No luck. I still laid there awake. Exhausted, yes, but unable to get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep. (This coming from a girl who once fell asleep in gym class.)

Then the reflux kicked in. I downed a couple tums and another glass of water (sentancing myself to another bathroom pilgrimage in two hours).

Then the fetus woke up and proceeded his thrice-daily flexibility routine. No way of positioning my 400 pillows or curling or elongating my torso prevents painful jabs in the ribs, bladder, lungs, or other internal organs.

My two year old whimpered every half hour from her crib (did I turn the furnace down too low?)...My brain started to wake up and make lists of things to do the next day, and part of me wondered if I should just get up and set to work since I was already awake...Did I mention that I had the songs from the Winnie the Pooh movie stuck in my head the whole time? Then I began to recognize the all too familiar pangs of hunger...

By now its quarter to the crack of dawn and I have spent two hours tossing and turning for one reason or another. Soon it will be time to get up regardless of how much sleep I've gotten, and then I'll get to do it again the following night. Charming!

Loving and hating IKEA

Before the Beehive State was blessed with an IKEA of its own, I only got to go when I was in Illinois visiting my parents, and of course I couldn't get anything big because it wouldn't fit in an overhead compartment of a 747 (of course, a limited budget contributed to that problem also). Now that we have an IKEA close by, I've had the chance to get some trendy things I've needed for my home, and to covet everything else!

I really like their household accessories. I got bamboo placemats for, like, $1 each. I got a folding wooden plant stand for $6. You can get ceramic rice bowls for 55 cents each, a small dustpan and brush for $1, a teflon wok for $8, a gigantic roll of butcher paper for $6, a set of matching kids cups, plates, and plasticware for under $10, trendy measuring cups and spoons for about $3 a set, and the list goes on. As for the big stuff, I recently got an attractive solid oak stand/shelf that we use for shoes and gloves by the front door for a modest $50, and a rolling utility cart for the bathroom for $13. I really like browsing through the catalog and strolling through the store and seeing all the coordinating room decor, dreaming of an unlimited budget and full shopping cart bag. I think the prices are good, at least on the items I'm interested in. I love IKEA!

On the other hand, some of their products and some of their ways make me wonder... First of all, I would never buy furniture there unless it was solid wood. In high school I had an IKEA dresser that was mostly particleboard and although trendy and attractive, it turned out to be a piece of junk. Then, whenever I do buy furniture items or other accessories that require assembly, I am thoroughly insulted by the poorly depicted pictorial assembly instructions. Can't they use words? (Then of course I'd be complaining about the poor translation into 14 different languages, right?) How am I supposed to tell which way is up based on the picture? And if all else fails, you're supposed to resort to the last instruction: it is an image of a stick man on the phone with the IKEA store...yeah, I'm sure that would be a great trick in an ideal world!

Last spring I picked up a set of three stainless steel saucepans for $10. What a great deal, right? Within just a few uses, I noticed that the handle on one of the lids had cracked, allowing it to accumulate moisture which them morphed into mold between the lid and handle; then the handle on the actual pot fell off. Oh, and there's the really cool idea of mixing and matching your comforter cover with the polyester filling inside. (Covers come from around $20 and the polyester fill starts at $6 depending on the thickness). In theory, you can change your bedding "as often as you change your clothes" and can put in the heavy winter polyester fill or the light spring one. My only question is how do you get it to stay inside? I frequently wake up only to have the polyester inside taking over my bed and the cover itself a forgotten memory on the floor. At a subsequent visit to the showroom, I examined the show model of this bedding accessory--I was surprised to find that the show model had snaps to keep the opening shut. What a concept! Why doesn't mine have snaps? (I know I could easily add them myself, or a tie, or could just sew it up, but it's the principle here!) So after trying and testing many of those trendy but affordable accessories I'd had my radar on for years, it turns out that some are just a total waste of money. I can't stand IKEA!

I recently bought a cabinet unit from IKEA. For less than $60 I picked out a white cabinet the same size as my existing cabinets (although my cabinets are oak and it won't match anyway). It has a cabinet with a door on the top and an open microwave shelf on the bottom and is meant to be mounted to the wall above the counter where there should have been a cabinet in the first place. Very functional, right? I was impressed that I could piece together this semi-custom item for a decent price. I love IKEA!

I went to pick up my order. The man gave me several flat boxes, a bag of hardware, and a 6-foot long metal mounting bracket. He saw my perplexity at the size of the metal piece. "All the mounting brackets come that length, and you cut it to the right size," he informed me. "How am I supposed to cut it?" "Oh, any metal saw will work." What? A metal saw? Why would I have a metal saw? What have I gotten myself into? I threatened to return the ridiculously over sized stick of metal on the spot and go home without it, but would have had to wait another 20 minutes for them to call my number again...

So I brought it all home and set to work being resourceful with a screwdriver, a hammer, and pictogram instructions. It was almost looking like a cabinet when I discovered the door to the top half was the wrong size. They charged me for the right one, but simply picked the wrong one. No big deal, I guess. Mistakes happen...I'll just go exchange it. Now the cabinet is put together in all it's beauty sitting in my living room (and as a horizontal surface out of a two-year-old's reach has become storage for all manner of clutter-ous things). Our home teacher did us a favor and sawed the microwave shelf to the right depth and bolted it to the bottom shelf of the cabinet, then drilled a monstrous hole through both layers where we can thread the cord for the microwave. (Marketed as a microwave cabinet, shouldn't that have already been done for me?) Hmmm...this is turning out to be a bigger project than I thought. I have an appointment for my neighbor to come by at 8:00 tonight and finally mount it for me. I would have attempted it myself but he said something about finding the studs and how to drill it properly, and I just chickened out. I can put things together myself if all I need is a screwdriver, but actually maiming my wall? I'm not super confident in my ability to do it correctly...it would likely be crooked or fall on someones head.

What began in September as a realistic and affordable solution to kitchen storage needs has turned into a perpetually unfinished project that demeans my own confidence in myself to solve problems. I hate IKEA!