Ten years and counting.

Photo care of Nick and Natalie Foy. :)

Why is it called wedded bliss? Bliss? I mean, really. Bliss? That phrase was coined with sarcasm, right? Marriage is not a relationship with a house-trained, obedient dog. It is not a contract with a robot. It is one life shared by two people, people who can sometimes be stubborn, prideful, arrogant, conceited, and ignorant. What could possibly be blissful about that?

On December 29th, Scott and I will celebrate ten years of marriage. I know ten years is nothing, at least not in the real scheme of things. Scott's grandparents have been married for 60 years. We have friends whose parents have been married for 40 years. Ten years is barely a blip on the radar screen compared to those marriages that have stood the test of time.

But, we also have friends who divorced after two years. We have friends who are single and wondering whether the right person is out there or whether they are even meant to get married. In ten years, we've created a life for ourselves. We have two children who are miraculously well-adjusted (so far, at least). We have a dog who thinks we're better than a raw beef rib and a cat who sticks by our sides as if we regularly bathed in catnip. We've bought and sold one condo, bought a house, bought two cars, four Apple computers, a lot of furniture and we're only a little bit in debt. That is, assuming you consider a mortgage just a "little bit." We've encountered causes that touch our hearts and organizations that inspire us to give beyond our comfort level. We've made friends -- good friends. Friends whom we trust with our children and with our emotions. We've found a neighborhood that we love and a church where we feel at home. We are blessed.

Scott and I laugh together. We communicate through glances and raised eyebrows and nods and postures and occasionally a well-placed grope. Sometimes Scott can talk me into scratching his back and once he even rubbed my feet. That was a moment I'll never forget. We serve each other and balance each other's weaknesses. We listen to one another and believe in one another, we inform each other and broaden each other's worlds. We introduce each other to new things and we challenge one another.

Occasionally we slam doors. Once I threw a full Nalgene bottle at the wall. When Scott filled the hole left by the bottle, he repaired both the wall and my pride. Sometimes we call each other names and blame each other when things go wrong. Sometimes it feels like we are speaking different languages. We're not perfect. We're people.

But we're people who love each other. We're people who forgive each other. Over and over and over again.

On the day we got married, we believed that forgiveness would be the key to a long and happy marriage. We stand by that today.

Here's to ten more years of bliss!

The big birthday reveal, part three.

The cube bookcases. They are today's reveal.

All of Brynn's clothes fit in her closet, so we have no need for a dresser in her room. This leaves space for some other piece of furniture and, ever since she was born, she's had bookcases in her room. They were white laminate MDF bookcases that cost about twenty bucks each and you could tell. They were cheap, ugly, and not very sturdy. When we moved to Mexico last year I vowed that, upon returning, those bookcases would not go back in her room.

So for her birthday I built these instead.

These bookcases are based on Ana White's plans (which are based on a Land of Nod piece), only I added some trim detail to the top and took an inch off the height of the legs to be sure that the cases would fit under Brynn's window. The plans offer the option of adding backs to the bookcases, but I ran out of time and energy. In the end, I'm glad that I left the backs off, as finishing the inside of the cubes was much easier when I could work from both sides.


As you can see, Brynn has already made use of the "wasted" corner space by storing her Build-a-Bear box, filled with bear clothes and accessories, between the two bookcases. I was actually planning to build a little shelf to fit down into that corner, so that the top of the bookcases would continue through the corner, but now I'm having second thoughts. So far she's stored the bear stuff, balloons, and balls back there. It's a pretty good spot for that kind of stuff. But I can imagine it filling with dirty socks and underwear, inside out jeans, and sweatshirts that she doesn't "have time" to hang up.

When it comes to that, I'll build the shelf.

What I love about this bookcase plan is the cubes -- no more books falling over and looking messy. The canvas drawers (about $6/each from Target) are great for hiding her stuff. Jewelry, photos and photo albums, toys with lots of little parts (how I loathe those), and bedside necessities like kleenex and a water bottle all hide inside the canvas drawers.

Brynn calls this corner of her room the "art" area and has started posting her artwork on the wall to the right. She said that the corner seemed right for art because the lamp (from Ikea) "looks like art to me."

One of my favorite details in her room is the black and white photo hanging above the bookcase on the left. It is a shot of her from a ballet class a few years ago. I love the lighting, I love her positioning, I love her little tummy, and I love the concentrated look on her face. Such a beautiful girl.


The photo is framed in this cheap find from Goodwill. I just added glass and backing.


For tomorrow, the bed.

Edited to add: Here are a couple of close-ups of the cube bookcase trim, since a few people have asked how I did it. Besides that one modification and the shortening of the bookcase legs, I built the bookcases exactly as directed in Ana White's plans. See the comments for more info on what I did with the trim.

The big birthday reveal, part two.

Okay, I promised furniture in part two of the big birthday reveal.

Ahhhh...so much to say. Let's start with the reading loft. It's bound to be the wordiest.


Whatddaya think? Brynn's pretty stoked about it.

Scott and I built this one mostly together -- I'm pretty sure this isn't a one-person project. The hardest part? Besides painting all those inside corners? The ladder. Those are some wicked angles. Not that we couldn't handle it. We managed. We based the loft on this twin bed loft plan by Ana White, we just shrunk it to fit our space. And added a desk. Ana's directions were, as always, superb.


Actually, I should tell you the story of how we got stuck building the loft in the first place. It has something to do with a husband who sometimes speaks out of turn. We were in Brynn's room measuring for a desk. Just a desk. When we finished measuring, Scott blurted out something like, "Brynn, how would you like to have a second story in your room?"

I smacked him.

Brynn jumped up and down, giggling.

Fabulous. She has a bed already and we're not replacing it with a loft bed. Because it used to be my bed. And it is beautiful. So we decided the loft would have to be a reading nook, not a bed. Many sketches, internet searches, and calculations later, we decided on Ana White's loft and we're really happy with how it turned out. It is super sturdy (Scott says it could hold an NFL offensive line, though I'm not sure how they'd all fit up there), big enough to accomodate Brynn, easy to assemble and disassemble. It is just right.


The loft is definitely Brynn's favorite part of her new room. When she held the room "ribbon cutting" ceremony at her birthday party to show off her new room, there was an immediate line of ten little girls taking turns climbing up the ladder, sitting in the loft for a few seconds, and then climbing down. Look at them, streaming in to check out the new room!


The cushion on top of the loft was a bit of a challenge. I bought foam to make a proper cushion, but Scott was with me at the fabric store (big mistake!) and just about passed out when he found out how expensive foam is (we spent about $78 on foam and a few pillow forms, and it was all 30-50% off). I bought the foam despite his, um, reservations. Then we realized that the $19 Kirkland Signature dog beds at Costco (the rectangular ones) would fit the loft perfectly, so I ran to Costco where I found out that they're only stocking ROUND dog beds at the moment. Bummer, because both my kids love a good dog bed. At some point Scott remembered that we had some foam left over from my last upholstery project, tucked away in a box in the attic. He brought it down and, well, the contents of the box weren't exactly what I needed.


But we're resourceful. Scott brought me a bag of shipping peanuts from the garage and the box of 1" thick foam. I figured I could do something with it. I sewed a quick box cushion cover out of a flat lilac bed sheet from Goodwill, lined it with batting and 1" foam, filled it with peanuts, sewed the end closed and...voila. A recycled shipping peanut bean bag cushion.


Don't tell me about the chemicals in the shipping peanuts and foam...oh, the irony, I know, especially after the search for a non-toxic floor finish. The irony isn't lost on me, I assure you. The cushions surrounding the health-and-eco-nightmare recycled cushion are king sized pillows in Target pillowcases. And the green pillow is made out of an old Eddie Bauer sweater that I used to love...until it shrunk and became about two inches too short. The welting on both the cushion and the pillow are made from silver and purple Costco Christmas ribbon wrapped around some old nylon camping rope that we don't use.


What eight year old girl wouldn't love to have that desk? So much potential for creativity. It's like a blank canvas! Sharp new colored pencils, unblemished markers, her first ever ruler, her very own stapler and (gasp! because she has a bad habit of cutting her own hair! and bedsheets!) scissors. Brand new scissors. All in upcycled salsa and jam jars.


And, of course, there is the $4 Goodwill bulletin board, which could have taken on a much more dramatic change, had I not been overworked and running on empty. My friend Susan suggested turning it into a French memo board, with some cute fabric and ribbon. I considered it but couldn't muster the energy, not with all that needed to be finished before the big birthday party "ribbon cutting" (which was absolutely not my idea). So, here's a little detail of what I did do. A painted border, painted frame, and hot glued welting. Not much, but, enough.


The one disappointment is the light fixture above the loft. Scott bloodied his head up in the attic to drop wires for a hardwired fixture. I found an $8 contractor-grade ceiling fixture at Lowe's that I was stoked about cannabalizing and re-making into something fantastic. Something that looked like this, only smaller:


This pendant lamp is covered in...brace yourselves! Coffee filters. And I love it! So after I used Krylon High Gloss White to spray-paint the base of the ugly brass contractor-grade lamp, I took the glass shade and prepared to make it look like a fluffy white pom-pom. I spent an hour in front of Oprah (you can't go wrong with the Favorite Things episode) hot-gluing 100 coffee filters onto this glass shade. It was a masterpiece. I loved it. I attached it to the wall in Brynn's room, admired it, and walked away. I left the light on so that I could see how hot it would get. After all, I didn't want those filters catching fire.

About 45 minutes later, I returned with my camera and to my horror, all of the coffee filters were on the floor, hot glue cobwebs the only thing left connecting them to the glass shade.

Duh. Hot glue. It melts when it gets hot.

Yeah, um, oh well. It was a nice idea. I picked the mess up, threw it in a bag for later, grabbed a glass globe off of a much older contractor-grade fixture in our closet, washed it and put it on the wall in Brynn's room. So much for that idea. Now we have this ugly little guy which is better than no light but has zero character. My plan is to replace the 40-watt incandescent bulb with an LED bulb (which won't be so hot) and then do the coffee filter treatment again, but with different glue. Maybe Aileen's? Maybe E6000, or whatever that crazy epoxy stuff is called? It probably doesn't matter, since it is not likely to happen for a good 6-12 months. Oh well. It COULD have been really cute!


I think that's it for the reading loft. Tomorrow, on to the bookcases!

The big birthday reveal, part one.

Brynn's room is finished. Well, mostly. I've still got a bedside table to build and possibly a very simple mural to paint, but she's moved in and to anyone else, it seems finished.

The first part of re-building/re-modeling/re-decorating Brynn's room was the floor. I'm not a fan of carpet. Not one bit. Hard to clean, always seems grungy, made of plastic, held together with chemicals that I don't want in my body (nor in the bodies of my kids). Bleh.

So I tore it out and replaced it with hardwood. Cheap hardwood ($1.09 Lumber Liquidator utility grade oak, to be exact), but hardwood nevertheless. Using a borrowed hardwood nailer (thank you kind neighbors!), Scott and I knocked the floor out in a few days. While I did most of the work myself, I was super happy to have Scott there to swing the hammer in some tight spots. That's not my forte and if it were left totally up to me, we would surely have several holes in the walls from my hammer backswinging skills (or lack thereof).

Utility grade oak is a pain in the rear, but I'm happy with the varied look of it. The bundles were 95% short boards (like 8-14 inches), and almost all of them had big knot holes, cracks, or other issues. It took a lot of studying boards before picking the right ones. And then lots of filling. And some more filling. And lots of sanding and then more filling. I used Timbermate (or TEEM-bah-mayt, if you want to be authentic) wood filler from Woodcraft, which was AWESOME. It is super easy to use, very maleable, and when it starts to dry out, you just add water to thin it back down again. Seriously the best filler I've used in my very short carpentry life. It kicks Elmer's butt, that's for sure. I filled the knots with black Timbermate and the cracks with Red Oak Timbermate tinted with the stain I used on the floor.


For the stain, I used a greenish oil based stain made by Minwax called "Nutmeg." Hoping to neutralize the orange and red tones in the Oak before finishing with tung oil, this seemed like the best option. Now that I've finished, I think I'd probably do it differently next time. The floor is still too red for me (despite the green stain and several coats of greenish brown-tinted tung oil). If I were to do it again, I'd probably go for a super-dark espresso stain which would maybe wipe out that red/orange tone? A bit of a change from my original vision, which was to pickle the floor or paint it white.

Halfway through staining the floor.

So far I love the look and feel of the tung oil finish. It is completely matte and looks antique. The tung oil application required one coat every 24 hours for about five days, so the whole finish took me about a week. You mop on the tung oil, thinned with orange oil or these green-ish mineral spirits (I alternated between the two, depending on what I had on hand). Let the oil sit for fifteen minutes or so, and then go back for your day's leg workout. It reminded me of volleyball practice in high school, where we would have to run up and down the court pushing a towel-wrapped two-by-four along the ground? Bottom up in the air, hands and feet on the floor? Torture. And I did it with my feet wrapped in plastic bags. Really fun stuff. You can walk on a newly oiled floor in bare feet within a few hours, but it takes at least a week to harden up enough for the kind of abuse that heeled shoes or scraping chairs might bring.


There are a few scrapes and scratches under Brynn's desk already (I have no idea what she's been doing down there) but they will go away with a new coat of tung oil. The great thing about a tung oil finish (at least, a 100% tung oil finish) is that it doesn't require re-sanding before finishing it again. Every few years, it requires a coat or two or three of tung oil to keep it in tip-top shape, or so I've read. I guess we shall see.

Psst...for more on the hardwood floor in Brynn's room, check out this post.