Thursday, May 31, 2012

A Guest Post I Guess

This post isn't about any of my usual stuff.

A friend from high school, Dana, started a blog a little while ago called emBody. It's a blog about bodies, and our relationship with them. So far the posts are mostly about women, but it's meant to be a dialogue about all bodies, male and female, and how we see them from our own unique perspectives. 

Dana invited anyone and everyone to contribute their thoughts to the blog, so I did. It is not the greatest piece of writing that I've ever done, and certainly there are better articles on the site (seriously, y'all should check them out), but they are my thoughts on what is such a sticky subject in our culture. My post is here if any of you want to read it.

Gary will be writing something for it in the future as well, as soon as he collects his thoughts and figures out what he wants to write about.

And if anybody does read the things on this site, Dana would love to see your contributions as well! The more the merrier! Her email address is posted here and there is also some information on how to post anonymously if you so wish.

If you can't tell, I'm really excited about this blog! It's already helped me see myself a little differently than I used to. Thanks so much Dana!

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Bon Appetite!

We finally finished our table!!!

Did I mention we were redoing our kitchen table? Well, we were.

This is what it looks like!
Please ignore the bits of food Peri has thrown on the floor.


 I wanted to redo the tile on our old table top (we forgot to take a before picture of the whole table before we took it apart). It looked like this:


I really like having a tile table, because you can't do much to hurt the thing, and you don't have to worry about putting trivets down if you have hot food. I've been happy with this table for a few years, but it's kind of grody lookin', so I decided it was time for a change. Plus there were a couple of tiles with cracks in them, and the grout is the most beautiful shade of dingy gray you've ever seen (ick). We also weren't very in love with the color of the wood.

At first we were just going to chip out the tiles somehow and replace them. Then we wised up and realized that was a terrible idea. So we just took the table top off, kept the legs and Gary built a new table top.Basically, we adhered the tiles to a bit of plywood, and Gary made a picture frame that the plywood could sit in.

We got the tiles at home depot. They're just regular bathroom or kitchen tiles.


We found some with pretty designs on them! We really liked them but they were much more expensive than the plain ones, so we just bought a few. We like it better this way.

 

We went with Weathered Oak for the wood stain. It was strange though because the wood we used sucked in the stain in some places, and totally repelled it in others, which I think makes it unique and pretty. 


We were going to paint the legs a dark tan color, but decided a gray color would give it a bit more contrast and keep it from looking blah. We found a gray in the mis-tint aisle that we thought might look okay, and I really like how it turned out! It has sort of a brown undertone that goes perfectly with the wood finish. Plus it was discounted 50%, so the price was right too.


And of course my baby girl had to help show it off as well!


We really love our new table top! We'll get around to painting the chairs soon, so we'll have a matching set!

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Peri in the Park

We're getting outside and enjoying the warm weather for a change. Peri loves going for walks, and yesterday we went for a walk to the playground! There's a play structure that looks like a tugboat, and Peri had a great time playing peek-a-boo with me through the portholes. We also had a pretty good time on the slide, but we especially liked the swing set.


Mom put a bow in her hair earlier yesterday and it managed to stay in for most of the afternoon, along with her little baby ponytail.

Speaking of ponytails, I would also like you all to know that I can't get the theme music to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic out of my head. And Applejack is the best pony.


Monday, May 7, 2012

Look What We Did Today!

Peri has her first pony tail!


This is the first time I've been able to get enough hair and keep her still enough to put it up. As you can see, it still ended more on one side than in the middle, but it's still cute, so I'm not complaining.


She also insisted on keeping the comb afterward.


It's been something like an hour since I put it in, and she hasn't pulled it out yet, so I guess she doesn't mind. I just think she looks so super adorable with that little fluffy pony. And the bow is just the icing on the cake. Just too cute for words.

Also, Peri totally knows how to work the camera. Future Vogue model? I guess we'll see.


Here's hoping she'll leave it alone until Daddy comes home so he can see it in person and not just in a picture.