86'n It

We spent this weekend trying to wrangle a small cast-legged child in the backyard while doing landscaping/gardening.

Marc had to dig out about 3 feet of clay under his vine supports and swap it with good soil from the other side of the yard (which will be a pathway). He said he felt like he was digging his own grave, so we better get some tasty tomatoes!

I've had two small projects on my to do list forever. Lately, they have been getting in my nerves.
I had three little helpers this morning who were feeling crafty, so I put them to work!

FIRST UP, create a hanging basket for Franca's room that I can water in place.

I'm lazy about watering, and the hanging basket in Franca's room does not have a bottom, meaning I have to take it down and water it in the bathroom. I couldn't find a bottom for the current pot nor a cute replacement hanging pot, so I decided to make my own.

Marc has been teasing me that ribbon is my new duct tape and I had every intention of rehanging this with wire, but... wire snips and sharp wire isn't the best thing to use around kids, so ribbon it is!


SECOND was the completely overgrown ginseng ficus in the kitchen. I've been meaning to separate and repot this for oh, a year or so.

I even picked up a new pot on our last Ikea trip, but I've just been starring at it practically bursting out of its current pot for too long now.



We still were not crafted out, so we broke out some of the 'ACK, BROKEN LEG!' gift craft packages from Aunt Julie and made a lady bug and butterfly.

My friend and running partner is on a month-long Rotary trip to Finland. I miss her incredibly. This morning, she sent me the most adorable photos of this little nukkekoti (dollhouse in Finnish).

She is staying with host families while there and spotted this in one of the homes. It is a little more horizontal, and has a garage and deck, but I was surprised at how similar to Franca's dollhouse it is! Here is a side-by-side comparison shot:

Finnish (on left)          Franca's (on right)

Both have trunks in the bedroom (but check out the mini magazines on the floor.)

That cute white bird house is giving me an idea!

Franca may need a sun deck too. That's a really small car and a large gray trash can?

So, our 10 year old Malm bed from Ikea ($199) has been through 4 moves and has been having some issues lately. Namely, the new-ish wood slat frame we got for it has been slipping off the metal track sides. Super annoying. [Insert your "How did you break your bed?" joke here.]

A new bed is not in the budget right now, so Marc decided to do a quick fix with three 1x3's. They aren't supporting the slat frame, but just keeping it from slipping off the track. I told him if the fix was over $20, we were getting a new bed. The total came in under $9. Bummer.

Here's an amazing little before and after section drawing:

(Wow, those years of repaying architecture school student loans sure were worth it, no?)

A newly injured Franca got in on the action as supervisor. How hard can a job be when you have that  face sitting 6 feet away?



This is actually very close to the alteration we did on Franca's big girl bed (...that I still have not posted. All in due time folks!)

So it looks like my DIY George Nelson Case Study Bed (see left) is going to have to wait. Bummer.

Going down a 3-1/2 foot inflatable slide at a BBQ Festival on Saturday. Buckle fracture in tibia and fibula. Ugh. I've been feeling horrible about it, but just about have myself convinced it was a freak accident. Being a parent is REALLY hard sometimes and I'm not even the injured one!

Temp cast.

She's doing ridiculously well. It doesn't hurt and she is acting completely normal. Kids are amazing. If you ask her where she has boo-boo is she will point to the 2 small scratches on her other leg (from who knows what), and even when pressed to find more will not identify her leg as an injury. Crazy!

We went today to get her real cast on and had a heck of a time picking a color. Pink and blue? Red? Purple? She finally settled on blue and kept trying to convince the nurses to cast the other leg too.

Can you tell she has painted her toenails purple right before this happened? Nice.

She has to wear it for 5 weeks, but doesn't have any restrictions. I'm SO happy for that, because she's been trying to walk/crawl already! Another great thing is that her normal pants fit right over the cast.

The nurses gave her a shoe and told us to cover the cast completely, otherwise the fiberglass rubbing would ruin our hardwood floors. I never would have thought of that. I love nice nurses!

So send some fast healing thoughts our way, we'd appreciate it!





p.s. I now officially hate BBQ. ;)

Our office makeover got a feature on The Office Stylist. Check it out!

I was working my way thru blogs on my google reader while my computer saved a large file, while I saw that Chezerby looked up their house on the newly released 1940 Census. I gave it a quick whorl for our address and this is what I found:

Our alley originally did not go through the block. Huh. This has actually been a point of contention on the block since the people at the other end of the block illegally closed off their end of the alley recently. (This means we get all the traffic at our end. Stinks.) According to the new city records, the alley currently does turn and go all the way through the block.



And something more interesting too, in 1940, four people lived in this house:
Daisy Davidson, 53, no job listed.
Fred Jones, 60, husband, police detective.
Maude Jones, 59, wife, no job listed.
Robert Jones, 38, son, accountant.

I showed this to Marc who already knew this because he dug through the old city phone books right after we bought the house. From what we can gather, Daisy lived here with her husband who died(?), then the Jones family moved in. About 5 years later, Daisy is listed as the only person living here again.

Marc just assumed that after her husband's death she rented the house to the family and then moved back in. Now we aren't so sure. We think she may have lived here with the family, otherwise the census would not have listed her, right? Interesting. Now I wonder if they were strangers? friends? family?

Now Marc is going to try to dig up where he wrote down all the past residents of this house. I'll post when he does.

If you want to find out the history of your house, go to the National 1940 Census, or better yet, your local library's old phone book section (you can look up by address which makes it easy!).

No Silver Bells here, just lots of veggies and herbs.

It might be a tad early to plant in this area, but we've had a very warm spring and the next month is INSANE for us (bbq fest #2, birthday party, Indy half marathon, NYC,...).

We used a mix of small starter plants and Asheville's own Sow True Seeds (open-pollinated, non-hybrid, & GMO-free). Here's is what we planted:

Marc also planted tomatoes and snap peas on the vine. We have some rosemary that is going in the "rock garden" area too.


Franca got in on the garden action in a big way. Well, until she discovered that her wheelbarrow could also be a foot bath. I grew up helping my mom with our garden and I can't wait to share that with Franca. (Oh, who am I kidding, I'm really excited to teach/make someone else to weed!)

In other news, I cut myself bangs. Scary with curly hair right? I really like them. If I'm feeling brave, I might post some pics on facebook tomorrow. Go on up to the FB link up there and "like" 86n' It to see them.

Have a great week!

We went sort of nuts with Franca this Easter, mostly because the look of pure joy on her face is amazing.

I know that look won't be around forever.When she's 15 she'll just be mad that I got her the wrong hover board or whatever.


Franca gave us the best gift though, she is sleeping in her big girl bed in her big girl underwear. No. More. Diapers. Amazing.

Marc got me a paper towel holder.

Honestly, this is a great gift. I HATE paper towels, but I HATE our current paper towel dispensing situation even more.

We will have to take it down (and remount it?) when we do the wall wood, but for now, this is going to save my sanity.



What did I get Marc? Just a little ole trip to NYC. That's all. ;)


I'm going to ICFF for work (!, right?!) and he is going to come up, help us do some of the heavy lifting and booth setting up and then tool around the city with Franca while I'm stuck in the Javit's Center all day, everyday.

Seriously, I need a Best.Damn.Wife.Ever award.

I figured instead of showing only photos of plants, it would help to show a plan of the backyard. But because I understand that not everyone loves a plan as much as I do, I'll make it all fancy.

It also might help Marc and I organize ourselves. Imagine that!
(click to enlarge)

And here are some photos of what we have done so far (with the grey pointing to where I took the photo).
(click to enlarge)


It is actually shaping up really nicely and it is AMAZING to spend time out there. Franca loves it. More than loves it actually. It's been fun laying out all the outside rules, like:

What you CANNOT touch: spiders & snakes

What you CAN touch: roly-polies, worms, ants, slugs, snails, beetles, moths, centipedes, etc.

What can I say? The girl loves bugs.

Sometimes we will have come inside and I find her playing in the living room with one hand clenched around a poor roly-poly all curled up just praying for his life. Last week I had to let her drive a dead stink bug around her train track in a matchbox car. She still asks, "Where's my stinky bug?"

Anybunny, it's great to see how close (and above-and-beyond) the real thing is compared to our original plans (check them out here). Now we just have to: plant a garden, make lawnmower path, make a bench, remove last piles of junk, and make some dang real gates.

Should be a fun spring/summmer!






p.s. I'm only calling them roly-poly bugs because that is what people around here call them. I grew up calling them potato bugs and I think Marc calls them pill bugs.

With this beautiful weather we have been having, we have been exerting most of our renovation energy on the backyard. This involves mostly moving things. I move plants and Marc moves grass.

I call it the poor man's sod.

Very effective.

It's not all moving stuff around. We did build something new for the backyard.
We are going to have a kick-a** garden this year which will include lots of vine plants growing on this:

Marc's handy work. He's going to add some paint? or something to spice it up a little.

Well, I guess I can't claim that this is all new. We did reuse old garden edging wood for the two tall posts.

I have to say, landscaping may be my new love. It combines my three favorite renovation tasks: tearing things up, eye-balling it and getting dirty!





p.s. Are allergies kicking anyone else's butt this year? Ugh.