Mother's Day 2018

Hello to all the beautiful women who have sacrificed their bodies, their time and their own wants to the wants of tiny tyrants who call you Mama. This morning my own, not so tiny tyrants shared breakfast and kisses and hugs with me. My sweet, loving husband did all he could to make me feel special and appreciated even though he does that constantly and does not see the need for one day a year to do it. I am loved, and so very lucky.
I paused for a moment this morning and took a deep breath, as my three towering boys and my darling husband hustled and bustled around my bedroom where I was ensconced in mounds of crisp white bedding with a plate, a coffee cup and a champagne glass within reach. I paused because while if you looked into my room in that moment you would see my teenagers and my husband but you wouldn't see what I see, what I hear. Because when i look around today i see the others. The tiny voices i never got to hear. The sweet babies, i never got to hold. The twin girls who giggle and whisper to each other and would have brought me crayon pictures of flowers today. The little Angel's who would have turned our life completely upside down who would be 8 this year. You don't hear them but I do. The tiny little one who came after that could have been 6 and the apple of her daddy's eye. I hear them. I see them gathered around the bed looking up at their big brothers. I feel the soft breeze from the fan and think of them and the soft touch of their little hands. I think of what could have been but I know in my heart I loved them completely. Their tiny souls may have moved on to other families, chosen other paths but my heart will always beat to the sound of my children, including them. I hope the lives they are leading now, in some other place, with some other family brings them the love and care we had for them. The babies we never got to hold, to hear crying, to see their first smiles and figure out which one looks like daddy but got mamas sense of humor. I hold them, in my heart. My memories of the joy we felt the moment we found out they were coming. The devastation and heartbreak of the dream of them dying. The cold hospital recovery room afterward. The waiting for the pain to ease. The way our view of our world changed. I hold them. Every time we hear of the loss of a child and my husbands hand desperately seeks mine to cling to and squeeze, offering comfort in the midst of the most acute anguish a parent can know. I hold them when I see a pair of blond bouncing haired girls in the supermarket. It's Mother's day and I celebrate the opportunity to have been gifted the three amazing, kind, generous, inquisitive and thoughtful young men in my home to raise. I celebrate the sweet innocent babes who I never got to feel curl their fingers around my thumb. I am their mother, all of them. My heart is full. I can not be more grateful than I am today for the gift of them and for the beauty and comfort of parenting them with the big loving, always watchful, man at my side. Truly today is a celebration of more then what can be seen and only felt. The beauty of the mother/child bond and the exquisite pleasure of a devoted husband  who shares the joy and the bittersweet heartbreak of parenting.

He Hated the Curtains

Well, hate might be a strong word...he said he was tired of the curtains. Which I took to mean the Husband Darling wanted me to completely redecorate our dining room. That's what he really meant, right?!!

 So I pinned and pinned and pinned away for a couple weeks and then I looked at the budget and decided what I could spend and then I began pricing out the things I wanted. Sadly, like many of you I had to prioritize my wants. While I wanted to 86 everything in the room and start fresh with a vision of mirrored elegant glass tables and deep upholstered dining chairs I needed to keep the expenses to a minimum and all new furniture was not in that plan. So I decided paint and a new light fixture were top of the list. I knew exactly the curtains I wanted, I had been eyeing them for a year or more. Yeah, yeah, I could have just gotten new curtains  and left it at that but how is that any fun?
I picked my paint color....speaking of which have you seen the new stick on 8x10 color swatches? They are freakin brilliant! Why no one thought of this eons ago I have no idea. Then came the hard part....I wanted to do trim work, have always wanted to do trim work in that room. I priced out crown, chair and the supplies to add those really cool picture frame style  boxes below the chair rail. To much, totally blew my budget. Since I have promised to redo a specific teen boy's room this spring I needed to split my budget between the two spaces. Decisions, decisions, decsions! So I chose to do chair rail and hold off on crown  till later. I used the polysterene foam product from Lowe's because it is what our house has for baseboards so I figured since I was painting it anyway it would be a reasonable cost savings plan.



then............
                  came the hard part. Removing the grass cloth wall paper. It took forever to get it off, to  wash the walls of glue and repair the damage where I tore the wall board paper. I sanded, filled, sanded filled, cleaned and sanded and filled and cleaned for two days. Finally they were at least an improvement if not perfection. (gonna be honest perfection is not really in my vocab. Done always seems like a good option to work towards.) Then I primed and painted and painted and painted and taped and painted! Why people say this stuff is fun is so beyond me. I do not enjoy the process all that much but I do like the results. Oh and I managed to get hives from either the wallpaper glue or the drywall dust, no clue which but it just added to the fun.

Once the paint was done, my darling husband arrived to help with the chair rail. We got it up in one afternoon, which considering our skill level and the miter cuts and lack of tools...calling it a miracle!
Then came more apinting. And touch ups, and painting.

The fun part of course is the shopping. Please stop for a moment to appreciate the irony of the fact that all that my darling one requested was new curtains and I had stripped, repaired, sanded, wiped and trimmed the walls and had not yet stopped to simply ORDER THE CURTAINS!!!  Thinking about it now it is a little funny but at thae moment it seemed perfectly logical in my mind for the way I envisioned the room it started with the walls. So I went to the Ikea website to order the curtains I had picked so long ago as the perfect next accessory for my formal (in relative terms) dining space....only to find they had been.............gasp... DISCONTINUED!! eeek!!! I needed those curtains! nothing else would do........dada da daaaaaaaahhhhhhhh Amazon to the rescue!

 And they were even prime! So my heart attack was short lived and I managed to score the curtains I had my heart set on!

Then while scrolling facebook one morning I stumbled across a post in a decorating group I am in of a new rug Target had, I NEEDED that rug so I hopped over to Target.com and discovered there was only 1 left in my area so I ordered it super quick! When I went to pick it up it had a big black oil stain on the outside edge and I was so sad, but luckily they did have more then one! So I still managed to snag me one!

 Really there was not much more shopping I needed to do since the furniture was staying the same. I picked up a new cream colored loveseat cover, hated it, took it back and got a grey one. I decided my shelving was not all going back on the wall but I needed some for basic storage so popped up to Ikea and found the color birch evidently has changed since my first one was sold so I had to buy two more to get them to match. Husband Darling made the husband face over that one but if the color had been off it would have bugged me endlessly. Sacrifices! ;) Then I stumbled across a couple chair covers for my parsons chairs in their as-is section. Then need some alterations to fit in the tailored snug fashion I want but I think that will be easy enough. I haven't done it yet so we will see but in theory...easy enough.


Then the piece de resistance! A new light fixture! It is such a big impact piece that changing it made it like a whole new room! This was my first experience installing a chandelier though and it took me a few tries to get the whole thing assembled correctly and at the correct height over the table. But I did it! yay me!

Sometimes you realize when you are almost done that something is just a bit off.....that is what happened here. I started putting it all together and it felt just a little plain. My old trestle table that I pulled off the curb and has been so many different thngs for us over the years felt a liitle blah. So I picked up some dark stain and gave it about a million coats of it and it started to feel a little more sophisticated.

  I had one more wall  to decorate and I wanted something special. A Facebook friend was kind enough to help me with an idea I had and couldn't make materialize on my own. She did an amazing job!

For Easter we had our first family dinner in the new space and it felt so calm, peaceful and pretty. I haven't even finished getting everything just right but we already are enjoying the change!

 

Spring Flowers

I love flowers! These were still in my hone from the spring but who could get tired of looking at them!?

Menu Planning!

Alright my friends I am back to planning menus in bulk quantities because I hate the 4pm "what's for dinner oh we don't have the ingredients" time of day. And I spend way to much on random shit at the grocery store if I don't plan and we eat way to many carb heavy dinners because it is fast and easy. So on to the plan. I wasn't going to share, mostly out of the thought that no one would care what I am eating but I had a friend ask for me to message the plan to her and my camera couldn't take a clear picture and she couldn't read my quick writing scrawl so here we are!

Some of these are quick and easy  to fit nights we have activities or I am cranky and don't want to cook and some are hearty wintery meals and some are just because it was a new recipe I found on pinterest this morning.

I planned 26 meals but some will make enough for leftovers so this should easily feed us a month or more without me having to put more thought into it. Yay!

All of my meals will use meat and dairy free subs but I am using the meat names for convenience

• Panera Copycat Chicken and Rice
• Chili fries
• Spaghetti and shirataki noodles
• Rosemary and Red Wine Beef with gratin vegetables served with green beans
• Rice noodle Peanut Butter sauce stirfry with Beef and Broccoli
• Roasted Vegetable Tarte Provencale
• Baked Tofu and roasted veggies
• Sweet and Sticky chicken and veggies
• Grilled cheese and tomato soup
• Lightlife Lean sausage Meatloaf, Baked potatoes with Broccoli and cheese, garlic mushrooms and strawberry protein powder ice cream
• Bean and cheese burritos green salad with fresh pico and sour cream sauce
• Chickpea Buffalo chicken Salad Sandwiches with choice of ranch seasoned tater tots or green salad
• Pizza wonton cupcakes and raw veggie tray
• Bean soup with bacon crumble,cornbread,side salad
• Tofu fried rice
• Lasagna, garlic bread, marinated italian dressing veggies and olives
• Sesame chicken asian chopped salad and mini spring rolls
• Siracha tofu and stir fry veggies over shirataki noodles
• chicken, spinach and mushroom quesadilla and crockpot refried beans
• Seasoned meatballs in brown gravy, parsley potatoes, garlic butter green beans, and carrot, raisin, pineapple tidbit salad
• Protein waffles with fruit topping and lightlife sausage and smart bacon
• chicken, broccoli and cheese with caramelized onions and mushrooms stuffed into spaghetti squash or baked potato
• Boca crumble ground beef lettuce wraps and brown rice
• Zupa Toscana with tofurkey italian sausage, olive garden style salad and crusty bakery bread
• Stuffed green peppers
• Broccoli Cheese Soup and Biscuit sandwiches with peppered tofurkey, sweet hot mustard and banana pepper slices

While I was typing this up I thought of a couple more, Boca chicken Parmesan, Reuben Sandwiches or a reuben casserole and fries with lots of pickles, tofu egg salad served over spring mix and a silken tofu "egg" frittata loaded with veggies served with the cooked winter fruit compote I made back at Christmas

So there you have it friends. Many of these recipes I found on Pinterest and adapted to fit my food needs with my food sensitivities. Bon Appetite!

A Life Saving Infant Technology

my friends, today I have a very serious post. I will be sharing a face book post from a friend, a fellow mom of three. It tells her story and talks about a technology that literally saved her baby's life just recently. I cried reading it because I am a mama.  I am so very thankful her child is safe and sound today after having this experience.
 My oldest son had asthma and we had multiple very scary moments when he couldn't breathe and we had to rush him to the hospital. A baby turning blue is a horrifically scary experience. I wish I had this technology back then!

Here is the post from my friend, Melissa Hayes:

 I may sound a little like a commercial here, but I wanted to let people know a little more about what led to Adarah's hospital stay this weekend.

She'd had a bit of a cough for over a week, but sometime last week the sound of her cough changed and we got concerned. We called the pediatrician's office, but they had no appointments available to check her out until this week, and she seemed pretty okay at that point so we were going to wait.

On Friday night she popped a fever. In infants under 12 weeks of age, that requires a trip to the ER and initiates a battery of tests. They all came back negative except for one- RSV. A virus that is just a cold for older kids and adults, but can be very scary for kids age two and under, and most especially little ones who were born prematurely or have chronic lung issues like asthma. Adarah was a healthy full term baby though, so it was thought that she could probably recover well at home, but we were given a list of criteria to bring her back if she showed. Basically it was to look for dehydration or respiratory distress.

So in the wee hours of Saturday morning we brought her home. Josh was up most of the night with her, then I took over sometime in the morning to get him some rest. We decided to use our Owlet monitor all day instead of just when we were sleeping, and I'm still thanking God for the foresight there.

She was fussy all day, which is very unlike her. She didn't want to eat even though she was clearly hungry. It was frustrating, but she was always just under the line for when to bring her in. Finally after many hours of dealing with the screaming, she was exhausted enough to fall asleep. We put her down to sleep in the living room and took the opportunity to tend to other tasks. She was 10 feet away from us, but we were attending to everything else in the house/ other kids. We weren't just staring right at her, and I guess reasonably who would be.

At one point her Owlet monitor rang a red alert. I heard Josh's feet hit the floor upstairs and Vicki and I ran to Adarah. She was peacefully asleep, but her color was very pale and her lips were a bit blue.

We woke her up and her color got better, but we obviously took her back to the ER. At no point is blue an okay color for a baby! We explained what had happened and they rushed her back without any wait even though the waiting room was packed, and within 5 minutes a doctor (who was not a pediatrician) saw her and ordered supplemental oxygen. He advised us that he was seeing enough respiratory distress right there to admit, but a pediatrician had to make that call.

Now that she was pink and stable, it took a long time for the ped to come around, but she still saw significant respiratory distress even while on oxygen. (She was now having to work extra hard to pull air into her lungs). We were admitted for observation, and a few hours later when Adarah fell asleep, they cut off the oxygen to test and see if they could reproduce what we saw at home, and they were satisfied that her Oxygen levels were definitely dropping to dangerous levels when she was in a deep sleep cycle.

It all went downhill so fast, we put a sick but stable baby down for a nap, and only a few minutes later she was in big trouble. Without the Owlet monitor on her, she could very well have slipped quietly away in her sleep and none of us would have known until it was too late.

Seriously, best baby purchase EVER. I felt overprotective and silly buying this thing, but now I 100% recommend it to anyone! It's pricey, but it was my big splurge baby item and I'm so, so glad we got it! I'm not sure we would still have Adarah with us without it. 

Link to website for this product is below. 

http://www.owletcare.com

Christmas Sparkle Family Room: We Live Here

In every home there is a room that every one spends their time in, that you bond as a family in, that really embodies your family life. In our home it is our family room. We watch movies here, play games, eat dinner in front of our favorite shows sometimes. This is where we argue and the kids rough house and it is also the hardest room to keep clean. I have been known to refer it to it as a sock farm where smelly dirty boy socks seem to grow right out of the rugs and furniture. I mean seriously, where do all these socks come from and why are they always in this room??!!
 This is the room I have the hardest time decorating because it has to stand up to serious abuse! It can't be to fussy and certainly not delicate to withstand flying remotes tossed from one couch to the other, to withstand pizza paws on Friday movie nights and the wear and tear of muddy shoes and wet doggie feet.
 Delicate Christmas decorations and our cherished mementos do not feel safe in this room but it is where we will enjoy them most so I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to insure that we can decorate, enjoy our favorite things and the room will still function as it must.
 Today I thought I would share some of my decorations for this so so special area of our home.

The fireplace and mantel are the heart of this room and after last year's facelift with new surround, hearth tile and marble surround tile it is still looking fabulous! 

Our special family ornaments are all unpacked and ready to hang 

I know our gallery wall is a bit busy for most but I love family photos and all the memories they inspire! 

This is just a little wink to the past when my middle son was insanely obsessed with trains! 

The red truck seemed to be a big decorating thing this year, this is my version of it tucked in to our bookshelf in our drop zone.

I really loved the combination of white velvet wibbon, faux fur ribbon and red plaid that our family room tree had this year! 

Our family always waits to hang our special ornaments until we can do it together. Here are a few shots of my little helper elves! 

Well I hope you enjoyed my little tour of the family room. It is such a special place for our family. Merry Christmas to all from The House On Cover Ridge!

Cheers and Christmas Cheer! Dining Room Christmas 2016

Cheers my lovelies,
    Some years I go over the top with the decorating. This year I tried to practice a teeny bit of restraint. The dining room is one of the areas where I tried to achieve that goal. I went with a restrained color palette and I did not go overboard. I did a very simple tree this year. A adorable silver tinsel tree on a stand and very simply decorated.

I just love the way light colored trees glow! I only used gold balls on the tree and our beloved canvas photo ornaments I made a few years ago. I accented it all with a beautiful gold glass topper and some shiny red berries!

I love our family picture canvases on this tree. It just gives me warm fuzzies! 

I added shiny metallic red berries to tie in the touches of red in the living room and family room. I do love the warmth they add to my metallic tinsel tree. 

I think it works for our home to inspire happy Christmas memories and set the stage for all our holiday meals!