OK, so, you all know that woe is me, my dream couch, that I found on craigslist, ran off with another seller.

Here is that couch, Crate & Barrel Camden 69″, in Lichen:

This couch is normally $900. I almost had it for $425. Now, I was very sad about this loss. Because couches like these don’t come along on Craigslist every day. Usually it’s something like this:

Blech. Now, forgive me, if this is just the thing you’ve been looking for all your life, but this is the epitome of what I don’t want. My first rule is, no pillows – everything must be attached. Second rule- sleek and modern looking. No overstuffedness. How many sofas come along on CL that meet my rules? That’s right. 1, and I lost that one to a higher bidder, ergh!

But there are good things to think about. If I’m going to have to spend the entire $900 bucks, well, I could take a look at other colors, now couldn’t I? I do like the green Lichen one above.. and in the last few weeks, they’ve come out with a new “Spring Green”:

Pretty, isn’t it? A touch more yellow in this one than the Lichen one. I think I like the Lichen better. Moving on..

We have this beautiful Chestnut baby:

Isn’t that just gorgeous? So done. If I’m going to pay the full price, I’m getting the dark brown, ooh la la!

But now, a dilemma — with the rollout of these new colors, the Lichen couch is now ON SALE – for $700! Torn am I.

TORN AM I!

With the extra $200 bucks, I could buy a matching ottoman (normally $380, but now on sale for $200).

So..

What to do.. what to do.. Hmmmm.. That’s a stumper.

OH WHO THE HELL AM I KIDDIN. It’s not even a decision. I’m hemming and hawing just for the sake of something to post. (Forgive me? At least I included pretty pictures to look at!) My decision is made, baby (unless of course, James vetoes, but I don’t think he will) – It’s the dark brown! And all I’m thinking about now is what fabric to use for the pillows!

*cough* I could just make them all.

Do you think Jocelyn would mind if I cut up this dress and make it into pillows?

What? It won’t fit her much longer!

🙂

-amy might actually get around to painting the room in november.. le sigh…

I grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as the mormon church. My parents are mormon, my grandparents are mormon, my great grand parents are mormon. In fact, I come from a seventh generation mormon family. I have ancestors who lived in England and Ireland who were going about living their lives when they heard about this new religion from some missionaries, picked up their lives and moved to the United States. I have ancestors who trekked across the plains pushing handcarts to go to Utah. My roots run deep, and I am proud of them. I come from strong people. While my parents now live in Utah, along with my sister and brother, I grew up in Colorado (very young) and then Washington state (young through high school.) I just want to let you know, that I did not grow up in Utah. That may mean nothing to some of you, and the world to others 🙂

As a teen, most of my best friends were mormon, but I had plenty of other friends too. I was always encouraged to question and explore, and I used to love to discuss religion with friends of other faiths. It was always interesting to me to hear what others believed and why, and examine those principles and see how they fit together. It almost always was a rewarding experience, but there were times when I would run into people who, on hearing what church I belonged to, would try to preach at me, or would all out shun me.

I still remember the first time I was “shunned.” I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, and I met a sweet new girl in my class named Cassandra. We became quick friends and often rode our bikes over to the other’s house. She had a lot of animals at her house, rabbits, and a passel of dogs, and I remember being a bit awed about that. We always had to go to her house first after school so she could do her chores, which consisting of feeding the various pets. We only had 1 cat in our house, and I remember wishing we were more like her and had every animal under the sun.

We would play, ride bikes, talk, etc. One day, I asked her if she wanted to sleep over. Friday night turned up unavailable for some reason, so the option of Saturday night was thrown in there. My folks were fine with it, but I would have to come home in time for church. Church was at 1pm, so that was plenty of time. In discussing the plans with Cassandra, the subject of church came up and I told her which church we attended, she said she’d talk to her mom, and we parted for the day.

The next day in school, she told me she wasn’t allowed to be friends with me anymore because I was a mormon. I was totally flabbergasted. I asked her why, and she told me because we didn’t believe in Jesus Christ. I was especially flabbergasted then, because hello! We do! I go to the mormon church, and shouldn’t I know better what we believe than someone who doesn’t go? The first article of faith CLEARLY even says that we DO. I recited it to her, but she was unimpressed, and I remember she didn’t actually seem to be sad or anything that the beautiful friendship we had seemed to be ending, and for a reason that seemed silly. I think that that bothered me even more – she didn’t seem to mind not seeing me, whereas I had already invested my whole little heart in our friendship. Also, I think I would have enjoyed the drama of a “forbidden friendship.” Very Anne of Green Gables, after she got Diana drunk on Marilla’s elderberry wine on accident. (Except I didn’t read that until I was 12 or so, but you get the point. I was a dramatic child.) Part of that hurt was being robbed of that drama by Cassandra’s indifference.

I don’t remember that I really told anyone about it. I may have told my mom, but it was something that I held with me for a long time. I was fairly young, and I think I turned it over in my mind a lot, trying to figure it out. I thought about Cassandra’s mom. I had met her and she seemed like a perfectly nice lady, I wondered and wondered why exactly she didn’t like me? She didn’t like mormons, but surely she liked ME enough to overlook that, right?

I don’t think I dwelled on it that much. My best friend Heidi lived next door, and she was always fun, always ready to play. She and her family belonged to the Lutheran church, and we often would do sleepovers. Her family was always accepting to me and my family. I remember once after a Saturday night sleepover, I went to church with her family. It was fun, and exciting, until I realized that church was church, and whether it’s mormon or lutheran, it’s always a bit on the boring side, until you get to the kid’s classes. Sunday school / primary.

The Lutheran church that Heidi attended was on the same street that the LDS church was, not more than 100 yards away, in fact. Heidi and I sat in her sunday school class, with about 6 other kids, and the teacher was giving a lesson that I wasn’t really listening to very much, when all of a sudden I realized she was talking about me, and my church. She mentioned the church’s “neighbors” (meaning the LDS church) and how they didn’t beleive in Christ. I felt like I was going to die. It was one thing to be told by Cassandra that my church didn’t believe in Christ, but here I was, attending church with a friend where the class was being TAUGHT the same thing, with me right there witnessing it. Was this why Cassandra’s mom thought LDS didn’t beleive in Christ? How many churches were out there teaching this to people?

I was not indignant. I was probably 9 years old, and I was embarrassed. I sat there silently, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. Did she know I was mormon? Would she be saying all this if she knew? I remember looking over at Heidi, and she was beet red embarrassed too. Neither of us said anything, but after the class was over, she told her mom, who told the pastor, who took me aside and apologized profusely. He said that they don’t teach that sort of thing in their church normally, and he was going to talk to the teacher. Later, Heidi told me that the lady had had a bad experience with someone who was mormon and didn’t like any mormons as a result. Heidi’s mom even talked to me and apologized for what had happened, and spoke to my parents as well. The entire incident passed, and Heidi and I didn’t mention it again. We resumed our sojourns pretending to be unicorns in search of the secret rainbow mermaids with no other issues.

What I really took away from both these experiences, is it’s the person that matters. The sunday school teacher was wrong to hate all mormons because of the actions of one person. Cassandra’s mom was ridiculous to censor her daughter’s friendships on the basis of faith (oh lord when I think of this now it just makes me boil). My young brain decided that every person should be judged on themselves. You can be a good person no matter what church you belong to. You can be a good person even if your beliefs don’t line up with someone else’s. Cassandra’s mom didn’t know me and didn’t even care to know me. She was close-minded enough to believe what she had heard or had been taught, and passed that prejudice on to her daughter, not even bothering to discover if I was a good person. I wonder if she would have also forbidden friendships with girls from (actual) non-christian beliefs. No jews allowed, perhaps? Heidi’s mom knew me, and my family, and she knew that we were good people, and just because we believed different things, doesn’t mean that we’re bad people.

I guess what I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter. Lutheran, Mormon, Baptist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim.. There are close-minded people in any group, any religion. It doesn’t make that religion close-minded. It’s a lesson I learned early, but one that the teacher in Heidi’s Sunday School class never learned. Moral to the story: Don’t be an asshole 🙂 Especially to little girls.

I no longer attend the LDS church, but that’s a post for another day. I think I’m closer to telling that story though, than I was when I started this blog. Someday.

It has come to my attention that I have been writing on this here blog about 2 years. I am not sure exactly when the first post was, because somewhere around 4-5 months in, our server crashed and I lost everything. I retrieved much of it through the miracle of google and it’s cached pages, but I know I started blogging after I went back to work (which was in September) and before Halloween. So I hereby declare today my blogiversary.

When I was up really late the other night, I started looking back through my archives and found some stuff that I had totally forgotten. Some stuff made me go, ‘Awwwww’, and some stuff made me laugh so loud I was afraid I was going to wake people up. Who were upstairs. With their doors shut. Yeah. That loud.

So I’m going to start a new thingee, which I’m calling Recycle Friday, but really, I think that’s kind of a dopey name, so if you can think of a better one, I’m all ears. See, it’s really a trick to not have to write, and yet still have a regular post! I find something I wrote PREVIOUSLY… and link to that! Brilliant, huh! I mean, I have all that content back there, why not just recycle? See, I’m saving my typing fingers from having to type something new, AND SAVING OUR MOTHER EARTH. Whee-ha!

So today’s is a look back is super short. And it made me spit out my diet coke when I read it. Again. Even though I read it a few nights ago at 1am and it made me laugh then too. Now that I’ve built it all up, here you go:

From this year, January 25, 2007: Funny HA HA

Have a loverly weekend!

-amy is a bill. just a bill. and she’s standing here on capital hill.

This is pretty good.

It’s five minutes til midnight and I’ve decided to post instead of heading up to bed. LUCKY YOU!

So, yesterday I took Jocelyn to the doctor, because she’s had this damn cold for over THREE WEEKS NOW. I usually have to kind of waffle and think this over, but I’ve been paying attention! She was congested when we went on our Labor Day Not Really Camping Trip, which was well over three weeks ago.

Our doctor looked her over showed me how to feel for her glands, and wrote out a prescription for antibiotics. Of course, one doesn’t want to do the antibiotics, but we’ve had a pretty decent spell of well ness in the household, and if you had been here the night before and heard my poor baby coughing and hacking, you would have throttled the doctor until she gave you something, ANYTHING to make your baby feel better too. Ahem.

I’m kidding of course, I did no such thing, and I was TERRIBLY saddened to hear from our pediatrician that she will be dropping our health insurance carrier in march. I was SO SAD. Our doctor is the best. she really is. She once stayed in her office for an hour because I was delayed in getting the kids from school and then getting from the school to her office (damn rock concert traffic) and she still smiled when we came in. The woman is a saint. I told her that maybe we could switch insurance (because now we use james’ and we could switch to mine) and she almost cried at the thought that we’d switch insurance just to stay with her. If it doesn’t happen, we will miss her so much!

Um, what was I talking about? Oh yes. Jocelyn. See, this is the other downside of writing in the wee smas. So she has had 3 doses of antibiotics now, and she’s still hacking pretty good at night. And we’re trying to give her lots of liquids, which means an increase in nighttime accidents, which has only been a recent accomplishment anyway.

So when James checked on her an hour ago, she had wet her bed, so I went up to change her while James pulled off the sheets, and the poor sweetie did fine, until I tried to pull her Disney Princess jammie shirt off of her, when she wailed and cried and said, “Noooo!”

She really likes that set of jammies.

I’ve been trying really hard to remember the cute Jocelyn things, because I think I write more funny Ethan stories than Jocelyn stories and heaven knows Jocelyn does super cute things too!

So here’s one:

She and I were alone in the car, going to do some errand. It was quiet, except for my ipod going on shuffle. A few songs came on, until The Beatles popped up, Yellow Submarine.

All of a sudden she hollers, “YES!”

Just like you would if you were playing your older brother in air hockey at your grandma’s house and he always beats you because he’s older and better and it’s grandma’s so you don’t get a lot of practice time in, and you try and you try and you try and still that bugger gets it past you and then FINALLY you smack that puck super hard and his reflexes just aren’t quite fast enough, and IN IT GOES! It doesn’t matter that you’re still going to lose the game, YOU GOT IT PAST HIM AT LEAST ONCE, EAT ON THAT, SUCKER! (BTW, Happy Birthday Joseph. You old geezer.)

“YES!” Jocelyn said, exactly like that. Surprised, and delighted, I glance back to look at her, and she’s grinning at me. “I wanted this song, Mommy!” I guess she really wanted that song!!

Today after soccer practice, me and Jocelyn got in the car, leaving Ethan and daddy to come home in Daddy’s car after Ethan’s practice was over. We climbed in, buckled in, and drove away, and Jocelyn said to me, “We have it all to ourselves, Mommy!”

When we got home, we settled down for a nice game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. We played for a while, alternating between popping one marble in at a time and going after it, and piling the whole lot of them in and working 2 hippos each to gobble up the veritable smorgasbord of marbles.

We dug out the marbles and plopped them into the middle, preparing to gorge our little hippos on their marble feast, and just as I was about to begin, she said, “NO! We have to sing God Our Father!”

We’re not a religious household, but our kids’ school does sing a little blessing before the noon meal, and this is the song she was talking about.

“Go ahead,” I said, laughing, and she did. (To the tune of ‘Frere Jocke/Brother John)

“God our father, God our father, we thank you! we thank you! For our many blessings, for our many blessings, aahhhhh-men! ahhhhh-men!”

And with that out of the way, she grinned, leaned down, and the pink hippo could start his marble gobbling!

It’s too bad someone finally corrected her old way of singing “Aw man!” in lieu of the “Amen.”

-amy is a procrastinator.

Hi guys.

So, I’m famous! Another Shade of Grey answered my email to her on her website – go check it out!

The colors: I feel so relieved, because it’s what I was thinking myself, but was nervous I’d screw it up. Well, let me clarify. I was thinking “a light brown, but what shade that won’t clash with the floor?” Hi amy. The word you’re looking for is “NEUTRAL.” A-duh! 🙂 Making it a neutral is just the right idea, though while browsing through paint colors, I find my self leaning towards a slight green. I won’t decide until I have the paint cards in hand though, as who knows what computer monitors can do to skew those colors!

Here are some paint choices, all from Lowes American Traditions:

The bottom 2 are kind of what I was leaning toward before, and now definitely don’t like. Well, “Withered Moss” is all right, but I like the others so much more. I believe the color that is the closest match to the one Jules had, is “Willow Wind.” I think I’d like to take the darker shade in the same family, of “Grassland.” The greener shades appeal to me as well, so I’m sure there’ll be a few test squares going up to see how it looks.

So while I’m at it, here are some pictures of the actual basement itself. I’ve had to fiddle with the exposure/brightness/contrast to try to get the colors right, but it’s still looking a little dark, as well as yellowy. It’s a basement. And it was night when I shot them. What can you do.

Next, I have to update you on the chairs I’m recovering.

On the family front, we spent a horrible night last night due to Jocelyn’s unceasing coughing, the poor darling. She coughed so hard that she spit up/threw up a little bit 🙁 She has been congested since before we went on our little mini vacation before school started, so that’d put us at over THREE WEEKS.. She has never had a fever though, so that’s why I haven’t taken her in, but last night was pretty awful for her. I’m taking her to the doctor this afternoon.

-amy

woe is me.

The sofa I was going to pick up today from a craigslist seller, fell through.

I am so bummed. I LOVE THAT SOFA. It was too good to be true, I guess.

So, it’s not like we’re urgently awaiting a sofa to sit on or anything, the room isn’t even painted yet, so we can wait and see if something else comes along on craigslist.

But a part of me just wants to rush out and buy a sofa RIGHT NOW. I even checked the hours of the Crate and Barrel outlet nearby. I’ve no idea if they usually have furniture. And if so, how damaged it would be.

I scoured the Ikea website (I actually took the kids there today to scope out possible media center solutions) looking for a cheaper alternative. “Eh.” was my reaction. The Kramfors or possibly the Klippan are the only ones that slightly appealed to me, and I don’t like the WIDENESS of everything. that’s why I love the Camden. Narrow and sleek. No chunkiness whatsoever.

I just don’t think I can compromise.

Going to just have to wait a few months, save my pennies, and get the Camden.

It’s hard to be chipper about this, I was really looking forward to having the couch down there and moving it around to see what might work.

I guess on the bright side, if we end up buying it new, we will be able to choose a fabric/color we like the best (although the green worked fine for me.) Maybe chocolate brown?

So.

Yeah.

Totally bummed out. 🙁

My advice – if you convince someone via email to let something go for less than their asking — RUN and go pick it up. Don’t wait 48 hours. Because they’ll probably change their mind/get an offer for their full price/decide they like it a lot after all, and then you’re totally screwed.

le sigh.

So, I am having a hard time with this basement design stuff. We are getting our sofa on Sunday, and yet I still need to pick a paint color. Not that I’m going to have time to paint in the next few weeks anyway, but all I can think about (especially now that our sofa’s arrival is IMMINENT!) is how all the elements are going to work together? I’m deathly afraid of picking a paint color that isn’t going to WORK, and then James will sniff at me and tell me how fickle I am. I don’t want that! I want to be CONFIDENT! 🙂

Ergh.

So to help my brain try to bring all these components up, I tried to do a little design elements sheet thingee. You always see these type of things on the design shows, right? So with the help of a little photoshop… here we go (sorry it is so long!)

I originally thought the palette would be a nice chocolate brown on the walls, greenish touches in the furniture (the sofa is green, some green pillows on the chairs, maybe a greenish rug..) and then some real pops of bright color – I originally thought turquoise, but for some reason now I’m leaning towards yellow, or even a bright red. Maybe because there is already a good bit of turquoise in the amy butler fabric?

The deep shelves pictured to serve as the TV media stand I like, but not necessarily in white – and I also envision floating shelves on the wall above the TV as well.

Obviously there’s a few elements missing above, we’re not going to do a coffee table, but a large flat ottoman might be just the ticket, we’re going to need a rug, and some side tables, and I’m thinking a table on the backside of the sofa. I feel like these will come together after I get the basics down (like establishing the color palette). I also have to remember that this is a BASEMENT with only ONE tiny window, so maybe a dark brown on the walls is NOT a good idea? Any thoughts on that? As well as being our prime TV viewing area (while I dream about sofas and paint chips, James is currently dreaming about Visio and Samsung) this room will serve other functions as well (toy area, mommy’s craft/sewing/office area). There’s a floorplan of the room on this post, although we’re now picturing the sofa and tv rotated 45degrees clockwise from what is on that picture.

I still have some time, but it is ticking away. I can’t wait to make this space FUNCTIONAL again! Any thoughts and ideas you have, please comment!

I’m also going to send this post along to one of my favorite design blogs, Another Shade of Grey – she has a keen eye for color and design as well as awesome vintage pieces (she has a store with her vintage finds), and has helped many others do little mini make-overs of their space.. maybe she can help kick me off in the right direction for mine!

Some other folks she’s helped:

M’s Bedroom

Annie’s bathroom

And Julietta, who’s black and white kitchen I ADORE.

Check out Another Shade of Grey – you won’t be sorry 🙂

-amy

Ethan loves us. He likes to tell us this in a variety of ways. His favorite, is the measuring of love. There are a variety of measurements.

By bigness,

“I love you bigger than a HOUSE! I love you bigger than the WHOLE WORLD!”

By speed,

“I love you THIS FAST!” (He takes off running.)

Comparatively,

“I love you! I love you even more than the SANDBOX!”
“Even more than legos?”
(he has to think this one over, but only for a teeny second.
“Even more than LEGOS!”

And on a scale of one to ten,

“I love you TEN!”

I love the comparative and scale of one to ten ways, because you can kind of mess with his head a little bit:

“What about Daddy?”
“I love Daddy TEN TOO!”
“How about Pookie Bear?”

See, now he’s torn. Because Pookie Bear is his most beloved object in all the world. (even more than the sandbox. Even more than legos. Even more than *gasp* GARBAGE TRUCKS!)

“I love Pookie Bear a 10 too!”
“How about the sandbox.”

Now he’ll start to get all introspective and thoughtful. It’s terribly amusing.

“I think I like the sandbox an eight. And legos too.”

And as he gets all introspective he’ll lose track of where certain things rate.

“And I love garbage trucks ALL THE WAY TO TWENTY!!”
“But hey, I thought you loved me to ten!?”
“Well, I can love you to A HUNDRED!”

One last way he likes to show his love is to run at you with roughly the speed of a bullet newly escaped from the chamber and plow into you like a linebacker. You see, in his mind, speed is equivalent to his love. So it doesn’t matter how much I tell him to slow down and be gentle with his mommy lest she fall backwards and smack her head on the pavement, he is unable to slow down. Because that would mean he loves me less. And he just couldn’t have that, now could he?

The very cute thing about Ethan is these eloquent profusions of his love, which can come at any time, right in the middle of any conversation.

So it was especially cute when we sat down to Papa John’s pizza on Sunday night.

“I LOVE PAPA JOHN’S PIZZA! I LOVE IT A TEN!!”
“What do you love us?”
“Oh, you’re a 9.”

(James and I had to try to control the cracking up.)

“Only a NINE?”
“Yes! Because PAPA JOHN’S is the BEST PIZZA IN THE WOOOOORRRRLD!”

A minute later,

“You know what makes me grow?”
“What?”
“Pizza.”

Ahh, to be five.

I have a lot of news from the weekend, cute things the kids did, tales from the soccer games and lots of crafty activity to report on.

But last night we got some terrible news. A friend of James and I, was expecting a baby girl very soon. She was born and died after just a few hours. I just can’t stop the tears. I’m so, so terribly sorry. My heart goes out to them and their wee little lady. May they have strength to face the days to come.