Stairs and Food

We got our stairs done FINALLY!!!!!!!  It took a while, but they are finished and I love them.  Here's my step by step.

This is my before picture looking upstairs...   

...and from upstairs.   The original plan was to strip the paint off, sand them and stain the top and pain the risers white.  Well...

This is three strippings and two sandings later and you know that stain is just going to look horrid.  These stairs are so old and banged up, the paint wouldn't come out of the pock marks, so I had to devise a new plan.  

Plan B:  Use a Dark Walnut floor paint and paint the treads of the stairs.  (I painted every other one so we could still get up and down the stairs.)  Polyurethane them  (3 coats) and add a coat of yellow on the walls, and it's looking better...from this angle. 

But not lookin' so good from this angle.  Let me make a side note and tell you to never use blue painter's tape when you have polyurethaned.  I polyed them and let them sit for four days, then put bits of tape on the stairs I had already done so the kids would know which stairs they could step on.  When I pulled the tape off the stairs, it took my polyurethane and one of my coats of paint off with it!  Thankfully, it was only on one stair, but still...BUG!!  So, use green Frog tape.  Comes off much easier.  Anyway, I couldn't paint the risers white, you can see why.  So plan C...

Plan C was to get some bead board and cut it to fit the risers.  Then put molding on the walls to make it pretty.

After cutting, painting, caulking, painting some more, etc. etc.  Here is my molding on the walls.  The wall on the right has brick or something behind it, so when we nailed it in, the nails wouldn't go all the way in.  They were all wonky and curled up so Cameron had to dremel  the heads off so they were flush and then I went in with Spackle and my trusty sandpaper.  You can't even tell!  For my birthday we got this awesome mirror at Home Goods for SUCH a good price and hung it up above the stairs.

Here's the view from the bottom.  Do you love my bead board because I do!!  I am really proud of myself that I did most of this project and it turned out really nice.  Not quite what I had pictured in my head, but I still love it.  Now we need to get our handrail back up and I can hang some pictures and make a window box and...I guess I'm not quite done yet.

Then, on Sunday, I was sitting on my bed relaxing with Reagan when I heard a humongous CRASH followed by glass breaking and breaking and breaking.  I thought it was the mirror falling off the wall, (even though that guy is on there forever) so I ran downstairs and saw that the mirror was fine.  Kept running, because now my thought was that one of the kids were hurt.  Nope.  It was all my canning and food storage crashing onto our concrete floor because the shelf it was on collapsed.  

This was after I had started cleaning it up and Cameron said "Hey, let's get a picture of this."  I wasn't in the mood for thinking about pictures, but I'm glad he thought of it.  Here is is.  The shelf running horizontally had food on it too and the one that's down was full.  My grape juice and grape jelly were sitting on the counter with all the stuff on it. 

We lost pears, peaches, applesauce, apple pie filling, apple jelly, and one jar of grape jelly.  The grape juice survived.  There was glass all over the floor and counter.  We probably lost about half of what we had, but we did manage to salvage some. 

It really was a blessing that we saved this much.  We got three laundry baskets full of jars that didn't break.  We had to take a bunch of stuff out on the lawn and hose it off.  I cleaned it up and got glass splinters all over.  We lost food and jars, but were blessed to save some and have it break so close to the drain in our floor.  We just cleaned it up and mopped it and washed the soapy water down the drain.  Que cera huh?  What can you do now but shrug and laugh.

And Now it's March

Our February was a busy one.  We had lots of things going on, even though it didn't seem like it at the time.

We celebrated Cameron's birthday.  We didn't do much, just a cake.  Isn't it funny how as you get older, your birthday becomes just another day?  Happy Birthday Cameron.  Lobe ya. 

Then it was Valentine's day.  Liam had to make a mailbox and decided on a monster.  It turned out pretty cute.  Both he and Erin had parties in their classrooms.  Grandma W. had a tea party for the grandkids, so while they were there, we went to Arby's.  I know, don't hate 'cause we are ballers!

 The kids had literacy night at their school.  They had classrooms with different themes.  In this room, we got to meet Captain Jack Sparrow, talk to him a little, and get his autograph.  Cinderella was also in the room, but the kids weren't interested.  I made Liam be in the picture.  I can't believe he's getting old enough to be all embarrassed about being in silly pictures.

 Another room had an Arabian nights theme.  You sat on pillows in a circle and got to tell a story.  You could say whatever you wanted, then say "and then..." and the next person had to pick up where you left off.  After telling your part of the story, you could get a mustache, beard, eyebrows, whatever painted on your face.  Erin opted out of both the storytelling and the face painting, but Liam was all in.

It was a fun night.  If you visited six rooms and got your card punched, you could turn the card in the next day for a free no homework pass on an assignment.  Reagan got sick of it, so Cameron took her and Owen home and I stayed with the older two to get their cards punched.

We also went to Vernal to see my family.  It was a fun time, and it was really good seeing everyone.  As we were packing and getting ready, this is what Reagan was doing.   Yes, those are Erin's underpants.  She thought they were great.

Owen, Reagan and I went out and played in the stupid wish it would go away snow the other day.  It was a fun time. 

Reagan is our outdoor girl.  She would stay outside all day long if we let her.  Even when it's cold and snowy. Her hands will be freezing off, yet she cries and cries when you bring her inside.

I also did a couple of projects.  This one was supposed to be for Cameron for Christmas, but it didn't get done quite in time.  So Happy Birthday to Cameron.  I took his old t-shirts, cut them out, and framed them with old Levi's.  It is the hugest quilt ever and very warm at night.  Thanks to Mur for helping me sew it and Mom for binding it for me.  I hate binding quilts.  My least favorite part. 

I also decided to finally get the flooring done in the dining area.  This is what it looked like before... 

...and after.  Ta-da!!  I did it all by myself too.  I was very proud of myself.  We have really liked it a lot.  My project right now is our stairs.  We're almost done!!!!  Hopefully, it'll be done Saturday, then I can move on to getting the living room done.