Jimmy D (Again :)

I thought it was time for another Jimmy post, are you all sure you aren't tired of him yet???? :) He has really started smiling and "talking" a lot lately and I have been hoping to catch it on film so that I could share it with all of you but up until now the camera hasn't been anywhere nearby when he has been especially talkative until this morning so here is a clip for your viewing pleasure...

...sometimes he just has to tell me something whether he is eating or just laying on the couch by himself he just HAS to talk, it is SOOO cute even if I do say so myself :)



Lounging, looking cool in his bumbo :)

Of Foam and Curtains

I thought you might all like to see/read about a few changes that I have been making to various things around the apartment. First of all our living room has been rearranged again... I think this makes it the 4th time, but you didn't know about all of them since they were mostly done before I ever took pictures to share with you. I think it will now remain the way it is for a little while, at least until Christmas when we have to make room for a tree that is :) Curtiss thinks that I am nutty for actually liking to do these kinds of changes.

The next change is actually a piece of furniture that my in-laws gave us.
a few years ago they were at a garage sale and they bought a chair and dubbed it...

THE HIPPIE CHAIR

Now this chair is quite unique and we think you would have to go a long way before you would find another like it. It sits quite low to the ground and the shape of it is not a common one.
But we needed furniture and since the chair had been sitting in the garage unused for quite some time we were given the option of taking it and fixing it up.

The biggest problem was that it had no cushions and since it had a spring bottom it was quite uncomfortable to sit in besides the fact that it meant that you were even lower to the ground.
So I thought "no big deal, we'll buy some foam and some nice fabric and I'll make some"
So sure enough I got the measurements and after a call to my ever faithful sister, Trina, I had the information I needed for a trip to Joanns.

I never before knew how expensive foam is, I think my jaw just about hit the ground
when I saw the sign that said 4" foam $56.99 a yard.
I quickly decided that I didn't like the chair that much, it would've cost us about $100.00
to fix the chair up. So we figured that the chair would just have to
go back to the garage where it came from.

This is where my mother in law comes in.
It seems that there were some ugly porch cushions that belonged to Curtiss's grandmother and she was just going to get rid of them so Mom asked me if I wanted to take them and see if I could use the filling to make some cushions out of. She also had some curtains that had been hanging in the living/dining room of the house in St- and she was replacing them so she wondered if I wanted the material. So I figured "nothing ventured nothing gained" and set to work...

The first thing that I did was take the foam
(it was actually more like think batting that had been layered)
out of the plastic like fabric.



(you can see the chair in the background there)

My next step was to take the curtains and remove all the meddle hooks and pleats that were all along the top, and wash them. To tell the truth I felt kinda like Maria Von Trapp when she is making clothes for the Von Trapp children. I still have lots of fabric left so if any of you want a dress or something let me know :)

I don't have any pictures of the next few steps but suffice it to say I pieced the foam together so that it would be the right size to fit in the chair and then I layed them on the fabic and cut them to size. I didn't have any zippers or elastic to finish off the back of the covers so I made them with a flap that folds over the end.
And here you can see the finished product.

The next thing that had to be done with the chair was to stain and refinish the wood. What had been on there years ago was completely worn off so I took an old sock and some varnish and went to work.

Personally I think it looks like a completely new chair
and instead of $100.00 we spent about $5.00.
(and yes, I did get the stripes to line up just about perfect on the two cushions :)

I also spray painted a floor lamp that Curtiss's grandmother gave also,
it was one of those pieces that has been around since the time when everyone thought you should paint all the furniture gold and some thing..
most things that I have seen are green with gold but this lamp was off white and gold, well to make a long story short it is now a nice black and it is vastly improved :)

Fame, Wealth, Love and Health

That is what the four leaves of a four leaf clover stand for according to Wikipedia.
Shortly before Curtiss and I left Romania we were visiting some friends and we were all out in their back yard picking cherries (they gave us a Wal-Mart sized bag full of them) and after wards we were standing around talking (or rather everyone else was talking and once in a while Curtiss would fill me in on what was being said:) and I looked down and staring right back up at me was this:

A four leaf clover. It was the first one that I had ever found or ever seen in person for that matter.
I have always wanted to share a picture with you but up until now haven't been able to since it was put into one of my books to dry and has been packed ever since :)
But now we are all unpacked and all the books are on shelves and I can get a picture for you:)

Our Apartment

I was going to wait until I had pictures and decorations on the walls but I don't know when I am going to get to that and I don't want to wait any longer before showing you where I live :)
So if you want to see how it will end up when everything is done (does that ever happen for any housewife???) you will just have to come and see it in person :)

Picture My World

THE WATER CLOSET
Other wise known as the bathroom

is going to be the first room in the house that I tell you about.
Yes, we do have indoor plumbing (for which I am very thankful)
and we have one of the two water heaters in the whole apartment building
(at least as far as we know, something else I am truly thankful for)
The shower and toilet complete the list of things for a working bathroom
(in most American minds anyway)

The bathroom also holds the reason for this room being the first on the picture my world list.

THE WASHER

Why is it the first you might ask?
Well, because the washer is an adventure every time we use it.

As you can see from the picture it really is most interesting, this was probably a week ago when my mother in law and I were trying to get the laundry done and I opened up the washer after it had finished it's cycle and my feet got all wet.

As you can see it is a front loading washer
(which most washers are here since there isn't much extra space in any ones home and there is usually something above the washer, in our case the water heater)
and it never drained so we got to wash the floor as well as the clothes,
such a handy multi use machine :)

So we tried to find the spot on the dial that was suppose to drain and ended up with a VERY full machine.

That line across the top, do ya see it?
that is where the water was.
It was so full that water was coming out of the drawer that you put the soap in.
Any way we ended up getting our laundry out (eventually)
and now every time we put a load in we wonder "what's it going to do this time???"
Today Curtiss called someone who fixes them and he is going to be coming sometime Monday or Tuesday to see what needs to be done with it.
In the mean time I have all the laundry done
(I only washed the floor one more time while using it:)
and we shall see what happens now.

Picture My World

I got enough "GOOD IDEA" comments from everybody that I thought I couldn't let you all down now :) After thinking about it, I decided that the best place to start would be where I live while on this side of the pond :)

THE BLOC

(pronounced bloke)

This is the apartment building where we own a small, three room apartment.
Consisting of:
one living room
one bedroom
one den/family room
a kitchen
bathroom
and hallway connecting it all.

It is about 700 square feet and is considered large for living space here.
In the picture above you can see our porch where the clothes are drying on what we would consider the second floor.

It is the only apartment building in the village and is right in the middle of the town,
it is hard to see from the picture below but the other side of the apartment building is the town park. This spring we got permission from the mayor to care for and spruce it up so that everyone can enjoy it.
In previous years the only time it had the grass cut was when someone wanted it for hay.

The people here have no idea/no desire to care for much of anything that isn't their own
(and all too frequently they don't care for that)
So it is a very different idea for them to see someone picking up and caring for something that if they don't have to.


(Next time I will move inside the building:)