Guess where my bed is? Or more importantly where it is NOT. My bed is NOT in my dinning room. My children are no longer smashing blueberries and buttery peas on my box spring. No more finding greasy smoked baloney between my sheets or dollops of pudding on my pillows. My bed is actually in my bedroom. My bedroom that has flooring and baseboards! That is all.

My bedroom is painted. I repeat my bedroom is painted! Not only is my bedroom painted but The Hubster is working on the floor. I’m so giddy I feel like I’m going to faint!

Yesterday I had a false alarm, one that seemed real enough that I ran around between contractions stuffing the kids clothes into bags and redialing The Hubster cursing the universe for crappy reception during storms. After 2 hours it petered out and I felt like an idiot for putting everyone on alert.

I’ve been pretty quiet around here because I’ve been feeling, um let’s just say a little uncomfortable and can’t manage to come up with a creative and entertaining way to bitch about it every day. Today I saw exactly why it feels like my spine is about to be pulled through my belly button:

this kid is totally hanging off the front of me.

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This week has been, uh, we’ll say interesting. Tessa flushed a tube of tooth paste down the toilet which resulted in a 2 day long toilet project, much cursing, and mass confusion. Tom’s of Maine’s kids tooth paste comes in a metal tube which when 1/2 empty is somewhat flexible with ridged corners so when it is flushed, it gets wedged in the S bend but yields and bends away from any type of retrieval tool one might fashion. This led to language not suitable for print. It was 230 am before the tooth paste was finally dislodged. Tessa celebrated the next day by saturating a tile sponge in the dog water and flinging it all over my dinning room resulting in a puddle rivaling the size of Lake Erie. She also managed to nail my walls which looked like they’d been slimed Ghost Busters style.

a wall color for my bedroom

ya know, before i pop

I’m sticking out way more in the front then last time.

The last video for My Lifetime Clean Start Challenge has been posted HERE - nearly 10 minutes of me gesticulating and rambling about this arduous and emotional journey. You may want to go look quickly because I actually APPLIED MAKE UP to make that video! I know not all of you can get the videos to work properly so I am happy to reveal photographic evidence that we tackled THE BEAST and won! Keep in mind we spent less then $200 to make this room happen. The crib, dresser and bookcase were hand me downs. The rug was re purposed from another room as was the giant rocket ship piece. The toddler bed was a gift and so were several smaller accessories like the cool stars pillow case and switch plate cover. You’ll have to click more to see photos as it’s very photo heavy and may blow up those of you on a slower bandwidth.

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How does a child, say a 1 year old boy, take a massive dump which remains fully contained within his diaper EXCEPT for the whole raisins that passed right through. These poo raisins instead of remaining in said diaper, magically migrate down the leg of his sleeper zip-up PJs. How is this accomplished when all other poo stays where poo belongs? I am mystified and disgusted all at once.

My dinning room table is back in my house. We at dinner AT THE TABLE instead of crouched around the piano bench with our knees up by our ears. I would take pictures but The Hubster seems to have misplaced it. The Hubster is dangerously close to ended up on the wrong end of a pregnant woman’s wrath.

There are only a few short weeks left to my Lifetime Television Clean Start Challenge (see my weekly videos HERE and vote for Erin in Oviedo HERE ) Had I tackled it the night the idea came to me, I would most certainly be hanging another Erin original in the nursery but food poisoning and a nasty cold mowed us down one right after another and gave me pause before beginning my project. Then today, I started looking around Etsy.com to see if an old blogging friend was yet selling her robot pillows when I stumbled across this shop and now have to make a decorating decision (Just HOW does Nate Berkus do it?) What would you do?

1) Go with the original plan of painting a large canvas for the wall and praying it comes out like I want it too

2) Buy and frame these oh so retro cool Rocket Prints

3) Buy and frame this nifty series of Robot and Space Prints

I have stated many times how I am trying to do this in a very budget minded manner and I am happy to say that thus far we have really stuck with that! I have only purchased the lamp, a hepa filter, bed sheets, a crib skirt, the curtains (plus decorative patches I added) and the star mobile. Everything else in the room has been re purposed from another place in our home, a used item that has been passed on to us, or a gift. This leaves me with some wiggle room when it comes to these final designing decisions. To help you help me, here are some sneak peek pictures.

The large wall that the star mobile is hanging in front of, is the wall I will be hanging something from the above selections on. So, what are your thoughts? Which would be the best choice? Money wise, the canvas size I would use to create something would cost about the same amount of money as purchasing the above linked prints, making the budget less of a deciding factor.

And because of that food poisoning thing I mentioned, we ended up taking an unscheduled peek at one of the people inspiring this whole project:

aww he’s yawning and looks like the wittle spawn of a cartoon tryst! Then, they also confirmed that it’s not my imagination, there actually is something impeding my breathing

I hope he decides to bend his knees sometime soon.

The local reporter and photographer both stopped by Friday and we tidied up the nursery work zone for the occasion- Hung some art, pushed the dresser to where it will be living once we are done with it, tossed down the rug and hung some curtains. What do you think so far?

I made the artwork hanging over the dresser. Here’s a closer picture of it in poor lighting because you know I aim to please

Here’s our HUGE NASA rocket piece

and a little snippet of the curtains.

have I mentioned how much I adore iron on patches? I may hate to iron but my sewing skillz blow pretty hard right now so ironing is less daunting.

Don’t forget to vote vote vote HERE for Erin in Oviedo, and especially don’t forget to enter yourself to win that spa vacation (after you vote for me about 90 bazillion times in a row of course).

Oh man, what have I gotten myself in to??

These are both shots of the clean laundry

that all needs to go away. I refuse to show you pictures of my bedroom- it looks like my closet barfed all over the place. Let’s just say it’s a similar situation

Does anyone barter anymore? I’ve been on craigslist all day every day searching for someone who would be willing to barter some of my goods for a toddler bed or convertible crib. Things start out good, for the most part, with about 30% sending me a response asking what I have to trade. When I write back they seem to panic - why are you getting rid of that? Is there something wrong with it? Are you lying to me? What weird game are you playing?

I’m playing the I’m flat broke and doing my darnest to build a functional and good looking nursery for this contest (vote for me I’m Erin in Oviedo and it’s been confirmed that voting in UNLIMITED and you don’t have to enter the contest for the fabulous spa trip for your vote to count) so I have a shot at winning and really changing my family’s life. Of course, I haven’t mentioned that part. I’ve been trying to maintain some degree of anonymity during these negotiations. Maybe that is where I am going wrong? Maybe I SHOULD tell them about the contest. Do you think it will build trust or earn sympathy and open someone up to trading with me?

I’ve already posted on my local freecycle to no avail so I am down to bartering until next payday. I guess I could sell my barter items and then go to the thrift or second hand shop to buy what I need but I know with cash in hand, other things take precedence. I suppose I could always make up some ACEOs or Valentines cards and stand out at the major intersections with a tin cup trying to hock my goods for a few pennies- feed the birds tuppence for bread and all that.

Here is the room progression thus far:

First we emptied out the room

Next, The Hubster patched and sanded the holes in the wall (I’ve been banned from ever patching holes in the wall after DH learned of how I patched the hole in my college apartment’s bathroom wall after we punch a big hole to dig my hedgehog out of there. I thought it was clever but he was horrified).

Then The Hubster went ape poop and retexture popcorned part of the ceiling where it was damaged and retextured the walls

This week we need to paint and The Hubster wants to switch out the electrical sockets for all white ones that won’t zap the children. I suggested drawing bunnies on them ala Homer Simpson to frighten the children away but he always thinks his ideas are better then mine.

On to different things!

Yesterday a stranger did indeed come to my home. She needed to see far less of my butt then I had imagined so I’m not dreading next week’s butt baring quite so much. I’m sure you are wondering why, other then the fact that it is a beautious sight to behold, a stranger would be coming over to check out my assets. After some long hard thinking, lots of fretting, and a big leap of faith I decided to allow my doctor to order the p-17 injections in hopes of preventing another preterm birth. I am SCARED about this. There is no long term study outlining what, if any, risks there are for the baby. I laid awake for nights fearing that by allowing this I am potentially trading the problems associated with perterm birth for ones associated with cancer or developmental abnormalities. I came to the conclusion that there is no right answer in this situation so I need to do what I feel would put the baby at least risk. For the moment, that appears to be the shots.