Manic Nesting Underway

Still recovering from the unnecessary but very cool Mini-Kitchen project, it donned on me that it is nice for Elliot to have a place to store her fake veggies, but we have no place to store Baby #2, arriving in just +/- 6weeks, who is planned to share a room with Elliot. As calmly (ha!) as any hormonal pregnant mama could, I shared this thought with Ben. Who started buzzing again. He immediately set off measuring Ellie's closet - in the dark, while she slept and then designing online; ultimately creating a list of materials. This time for our 3, yes ugh 3, trips to Ikea. We are really big fans of their installed closet systems and it helps that Ben can customize them for our wiley closets. Turns out, we should not have built a kitchen for Elliot, but a construction work bench (watch out, birthday is coming) since she took to this project like no other. She wasn't around for the kitchen project, so she jumped into this one. Literally. She had a screwdriver and every time we turned around she was like a little grease monkey looking for screws to turn and drill buttons to press. She was very good at hard-to-reach places!


Elliot is so excited to start a new project that she lost her shirt. She is starting a "take my clothes off if I can" phase.

BUT, she really loves her new robe. She gets out of bed pointing at her closet, "Ro...Ro...Ro..." until we put it on her. Then, she makes us wear ours too and will not let up until we are all in Ros. Hmm, and I thought she would never wear the thing!


So here is the closet "Before" picture. We accidentally deleted the really good one that showed this closet with all the stuff in it. Picture a closet bar packed to the gills with mini kid hangers of clothes and from the shelf above to the floor below otherwise just filled and stacked on top of each other with bags of diapers, supplies, outgrown clothes, baby items out of rotation, that practically fell out the doors every time they were opened. Oh, and Auntie Kassi, if we ever pick a name for Newby, you are going to have to cough up some new hand painted letters!



This is one of the 75 photos we have of Elliot helping out with her screw-driver. She preferred the hard to reach locations and did not like to be interrupted for photo shoots!


And, midway through the project, she let me in to pose with her. I've been accused of "Austin Powers"-style hiding my pregnancy on this blog - not intentional. See, I really am due soon!



And voila! Finished product. Who wouldn't want to spend New Years Eve doing this?

Christmas Continues

Somehow, this is the only picture we have of Elliot in one of her 3 Christmas outfits.  She and Zoe had quite a time sitting on the floor between the pews at church playing.  We brought Elliot up at Communion - not meaning for her to partake, and they gave her a wafer, which she promptly dipped in the wine as it passed by.  As we walked back, she was pointing to the front saying "mo mo more!"  That girl hates to miss a snack!

With presents mailed in from Grandma & Auntie Shannon, every morning seems like Christmas.  We took this photo with the fun new tri-pod Grandpa sent.  Not sure what we will do tomorrow when Elliot wakes up and there are no presents to open!

Elliot modeling all her new scrunchies - at once.  

Snow Days!

That lil' Nor'Easter that kept us from decorating Nana Spitzer's cookies did not stop us from fun at home.  Elliot donned her "Chef in Training" apron (and now requires all of us to wear them) and got to work.  First order of business is spearing and then biting a square of butter!  hmm, maybe she is not ready for commercial work just yet.

And don't despair, there were plenty of cookies to decorate at Ammi's with Uncle Jamie (et al) the next weekend.

Cooking is over and now it is time to go outside and shovel with Daddy.   She has been out in the snow once before and here is what she thinks of it.  

In spite of her sporty new snowsuit, Elliot refuses to move.  Not one step as the snow builds up around her.  She softens up a little bit only after Ben swoops in and holds her up high.

'Twas the Nights Before Christmas

And we realized that the toy chest we bought from an estate sale months ago to paint into a play kitchen for Elliot was shelved until spring when we could sand & varnish outside... do it properly, blah, blah, blah.  This seemed fine until it was the Friday before Christmas and we had no big fun toy for Elliot.  Ben's Heywood gene kicked into overdrive as he declared he was stealing my paint project and going to build the kitchen.  It would be done by Christmas morning.  No worries that we had a thousand other errands and fun we had planned to do during this crucial time that was now to be spent under heavy construction.  After several trips to Home Depot, Target, Marshalls, and the scrap pile at Jamie's, finally Santa's Workshop was created in our Den of Slack.   Ventilation be damned!  Noise in the middle of the night? Who cares!  Elliot will have a kitchen!  And by golly, it is going to have running water and heat!

Here is the bare toy box, with the lid already removed and the drop cloth in place.

Santa's Workshop has already sanded & primed, getting ready for the tough stuff...anyone spot Ben's favorite "tool" to accompany him on all projects?  Its in the picture, upright on the left.

Fast forward after documentary picture slacking and here is the finished product.  The oven door opens.  The faucets are real (and Kohler!  just kidding).  The sink is removable and the lid still opens for storage.  The only painting I was allowed to do (from a project that was not meant to be 3-D or this cool, and a paint-pretend kitchen) was the burner knobs, and I was micro-managed!  But it made it to the tree before Christmas morning. 

 

And Elliot went to work right away!