Painting Project

Anybody want to guess what time my girl woke up on this holiday off work? Approximately 6:30am. Phew… this girl kills me. She was cute and sweet for part of that, but she was also grumpy and whiny for a lot of it. And that was how she was allll day. It was actually kind of a rough day, between all the hissy fits and toddler tantrums and almost-constant whining. I know you other toddler mama’s have had days like this too, so you know exactly what I’m talking about.

She actually wanted to eat some of her leftover chicken finger from Zaxby’s for her breakfast this morning, so she sat at the counter gnawing on it for a bit, while I got the rest of the breakfast ready.

Then Jeff and I had Toaster Strudel’s and Emerson had one of her new waffles. Remember when she asked for the Paw Patrol ones the other day, the 2nd BOGO box we got was Mickey. And in the same end cap, they had BOGO Toaster Strudel’s which I grew up eating & loving these so much. One of my weird, random nick-names for Megan back in the day was Toaster Strudel, but I have no idea why!? But these were so good today!

After breakfast, we just hung out around the house, doing all sorts of things – looking up recipes, reading books, whining, playing with toys, loving on Pretzel, having little fits, throwing a tea party and throwing toys. She was back and forth from sweet to sour, the very definition of a Sour Patch Kid

This story about the inspiration for “Charlotte’s Web” just totally creeped me out to no end!

She had milk and cheese noodles for lunch, and then I put her down for a nap, hoping she’d wake up in a better mood after getting some rest.

This was one of her super silly & sweet moments, doing crazy little yoga moves after lunch.

While she napped, Jeff and I had grilled cheese & tomato soup for lunch, which was delicious and so perfect on this cold day.

Then we got started on a quick little project! My boss Tammy passed this old drawer down to us, that her niece and two daughters have used as a toy chest for the past 20+ years, and now Emmie gets to use it! You can only barely tell in the photos, but the top was a little beat up and scratched up and had some pen marks and glue. So we sanded it down a good bit, cleaned it up, and decided to re-paint the whole thing. We also picked out a couple of new drawer pulls (new ones not pictured below), to update it a bit.

Emerson slept for a little over two hours, and then we all got ready and headed out into the blustery day. We went to Home Depot for paint, drawer pulls, a new toilet seat (our super old one cracked recently), and we were looking for one of those extendable orange-picker things. Turns out, those things are like $50, and I’m too cheap for that, so we didn’t buy that…

Even after a two-hour nap, she was still tired, and needed to rest in the buggy while we waited our turn to get our paint…

We went with a super light gray, “thin ice,” and got just a small can of it, for about $11. I think we ended up using half of it, so we still have some left, if we find another project we want to take on.

We stopped by Walmart on our way home for our grocery pick-up order, including some stuff to try out a new Pioneer Woman recipe I found in my new cookbook this morning. Then we went back outside to work on the toy chest some more. We had to sand a little bit more, and then I painted on the first coat of paint while Jeff and Emerson worked on laundry together.

Then I got started on the new recipe for buffalo quesadillas. The quesadilla “recipe” part was super simple (just saute onions, garlic, celery in butter, add diced chicken, add buffalo sauce, then put it inside tortillas with cheese & cook), but there was also a recipe for a homemade ranch & bleu cheese sauce, that was delicious.

These two were being super sweet and cuddly while I was cooking, for one of Emmie’s sweeter moments of the day.

I have no idea what this face is about that she’s making, but she was so funny wearing my sandals!

These ended up being spicier than we were expecting, and I even used less buffalo sauce than the recipe said. It was also super filling, so neither of Jeff nor I finished our quesadilla’s. And we used the homemade sauce for the quesadillas, and we just had a side of fresh carrots with it. (I had also bought chips, but we didn’t even open them.)

This girl was all kinds of crazy during dinner, and we had to do all kinds of hoopla to get her to eat even one whole piece of her cheese quesadilla.

After dinner, it was late and already time for her to get ready for bed. She picked the same llama jammies again for tonight, and then read her books to Charlie Brown and Snoopy. She stalled and fought me a little bit, things weren’t too bad, and I only had to do one more lullaby than usual before laying her down.

After getting Emerson down, we brought the giant drawer/toy chest inside, so we could finish it the warmth of our dining room, instead of the cold, 39-degree carport. Jeff did the second coat while I washed a ton of dishes. We think it will need a third coat, so we’ll roll that on right before bedtime (since we have to let it dry for two hours), and then tomorrow we will put a coat of sealer over the top of the whole thing, before moving it to Emmie’s room.

Even though the morning was slow, from noon on it was busy and chaotic, and now that it’s 9:30pm, I’m absolutely exhausted! Time to make some hot tea, and settle in for some rest before bedtime. Also, let’s all pray my Tater Tot wakes up in a better mood tomorrow, so that she’ll have a good day back at school!