ridiculously easy project: DIY musical shaker eggs.

Just wanted to share a super-easy project I did last week! It was inspired by some online shopping, actually. A friend of ours sent us a belated wedding gift awhile back, and I couldn't be more pleased that we didn't get it until after Rowan was born: a generous gift card to West Music, a fabulous company with high-quality music products. This would've been a dream come true for me when I was a toddler teacher...so it's totally a dream come true now, since it means I get to assemble the perfect music kit for my girl. 

I combed their website for literally hours, adding hundreds and hundreds of dollars' worth of awesome stuff to my cart before eventually whittling it down to the gift card amount. One item that was originally in my cart? These classic egg shakers:

See them here.

They're a staple in the best early childhood classrooms and music programs, so, naturally, I waaaanted them. But I had to make some hard shopping choices, which meant anything I thought that I (or someone else close to me) could potentially DIY had to go. Good-bye, shaker eggs - along with some movement scarves, bell shakers, and bean bags. Don't get me wrong, my homemade shaker eggs aren't anywhere even close to the quality of the ones offered through West Music...but they were cheap, easy to make, custom-designed, and toddler-approved!

My sidekick and I took a quick trip to the grocery store to get everything we needed...which consisted of plastic Easter eggs and inexpensive rice. That's it. (We already had the duct tape and scissors.)

This project was so easy that the hardest part was choosing which eggs to buy. I started out with some glittery ones, but I wasn't sure how well the tape would stick to them, so I went with some ladybugs, some Spidermen (Rowan is obsessed with J.J.'s Spiderman pajama pants and even makes a web-shooting sound effect: "Fwhip! Fwhip!"), and some springtime creatures.

I needed to occupy the aforementioned esteemed egg recipient while I made the eggs, so I set her up in a plastic bin of bubbly water with some toys to bathe. Kept her busy well past the twenty minutes it took to make the eggs!

Get ready for the extremely-complicated directions I'm about to share with you:

1. Open plastic egg.

2. Put some rice in egg.

3. Tape egg shut.

Seriously, the part that took the longest was cutting the duct tape into thin strips with my crappy scissors. Oh, and craftier folks would probably use prettier tape, but I had duct tape on hand, soooo that's what I used.

The tape is actually really important, and for a couple reasons. First, if you don't tape the eggs shut, your little snowflake will open them within the first seven seconds, and rice will be everywhere. Ain't nobody got time for that. (Although it's still a possibility, so make sure you use a non-toxic filler like rice or dry beans.) Second, plastic Easter eggs actually pose a choking risk for little kids. I don't know about these eggs, since they all open along the vertical edge of the egg, but the ones that open along a horizontal edge split into two pieces that can easily lodge in a child's throat. Not exactly your goal with this project.

Couldn't get a good picture of Rowan with her new shaker eggs, since she was shaking them so vigorously (and made me turn on T-Swift's "Shake It Off" - or, as Rowan calls it, "MM-MMM, MM-MMM!!!"), but she loves them:

Hoping to be back tomorrow (pending a crucial Amazon Prime delivery) to share another easy project - not for kids this time. Here's a hint of what's to come...

(Oh, and I'll share what we DID end up getting with our West Music gift card when that package arrives...can't wait!)

please tell me we're not alone.

I had a kind of horrible wake-up call yesterday. I was printing out our W-2 forms and, for the first time since I quit my job last June, really looked at the big-picture numbers. That's how much money I made last year? And that's how much money we're bringing in these days? Oh. Shit.

Aaaand cue panic attack.

Now I really remember why I was freaking out about leaving my job: money, duh. I had mild concerns that I'd be bored being home full-time or would miss the work I once loved or wouldn't be setting an ideal example for Rowan. So far? I love being home full-time (minus her short-nap stints); I'm surprised to find I rarely miss early childhood social work; and it turns out that the example I want to set is one of following your heart and finding your bliss. To be sure, I've experienced bliss awareness - being deeply content and knowing it - more often since last June than ever before in my life. 

Moment of bliss.

But seeing those numbers yesterday sent me spiraling.

I texted my Person, my friend Kristen. She's the kind of friend who doesn't need any backstory or sugar-coating. She's the kind of friend who's been in your position before, but isn't so far removed from it that she inadvertently invalidates your worries. She's the kind of friend who won't one-up your fears and is somehow never too busy for a conversation that devolves into excessive use of emojis. She's the kind of friend who knows how to talk me down from this: 

Just printed out our W-2s and am having a panic attack. We are making nothing. Wtf did I do. :(

Her response - couched in comfort and support and emojis, but free of platitudes - contained this surprisingly reassuring nugget: Money just doesn't exist when you have small kids. 

Huh. 

Money just doesn't exist when you have small kids.

Is that true? I want so badly to believe it - that this is a temporary struggle while we have little babies in need of constant care. But I wouldn't know for sure, considering how infrequently I talk with others about money. It's funny: I've bonded with friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers in the last two years about bodily fluids, hormonal rampages, and everything nipple-related you can think of - but not money.

I also grew up in a socioeconomic culture where we didn't talk about money problems. Lots of people flaunted their money, sure, but conversations about economic hardship were few and far between - possibly because, in my town, the hardships themselves were few and far between. For all the financial wisdom I've gleaned from my parents, my experiences, and good ol' Suze Orman, I neglected to do the research on this stage of life. Is it really true that lots of families struggle during these early-childhood years, but can still come out on the other side and do things like help pay for college and adequately save for retirement? And...like...not default on the mortgage?

Sorry, kid, for making you clean up my mess.

The numbers staring plainly back at me from my tax forms lit a fire under all sorts of insecurities I thought I'd vanquished. Why are we struggling with money? Am I doing something wrong? Are my talents subpar? Is my work ethic too meager? Did I not adequately hone the proper marketable skills? Is this the just punishment for selfishly choosing to be home with my baby? Is (mostly) ignoring the figures a benign patron of bliss, or the edge of our downfall? I've only recently come to terms with all my new identities from the last two years: mother, former social worker, exclusive pumper, stay-at-home mom. It's difficult to add another to the list: financially unstable.

I know money isn't this tight for every young family. I have people close to me with tiny children who are shelling out for expensive preschools, not wearing clothes they bought ten years ago, buying new houses, taking vacations - and staying home with their kids. Maybe they're racking up thousands in debt or have mysterious benefactors, but it's more likely they're just in a different (better) income situation. Regardless, these are the families I've been comparing us to.

Maybe, instead, I need to tune into the memories nudging the back of my mind...memories of people saying things about it was so hard when the kids were little, or we had to make extreme sacrifices. I guess I just thought that's what other people were dealing with. I had a winning combo of being lucky enough to grow up well-off and turning into a financial conservative (read: cheapskate) in my twenties. Money was never an issue...until now. It is most certainly an issue now.

Maybe, too, I could stand to listen to the title of my own blog post. Please Tell Me We're Not Alone. "We." Even if no other family out there is struggling through extreme adjustments to income flow (doubtful), we are. The two of us - J.J. and me. It sometimes feels like it's me, because I'm the one who quit my job and I'm the default parent and I'm in charge of our bills and I'm the one who was always conscientious about money. But it's never just me, and that's important to remember. For richer and for poorer, because here's the thing I'm working on believing, thanks to Kristen: Money's just like everything else in life. It ebbs and it flows. There will be richer, there will be poorer. Part of the point of a lifelong partnership is agreeing to weather those vicissitudes together, and - importantly - taking comfort in the knowledge that you're weathering them together. 

I depend on my community, too, though, and here's what I know for sure: It would do wonders to hear that we're not alone. Part of Kristen's text read, "I imagine if you talked with other families about money, many would be in the same boat." Money is such taboo topic; I'm probably making a lot of people uncomfortable just by writing about it. But tell me: Isn't anyone else making sacrifices they never thought they'd have to make? Isn't anyone else crying over their W-2s? Isn't anyone else terrified of taking such extreme financial risks (by, say, staying home instead of working for pay)? And if so - what makes it easier? What helps you sleep at night?

And did you know you're not alone?

a day in the life.

My nosiness is flaring up again. Yeah, I like to creep on other people's to-do lists, and I regularly read blogs whose premises are "let me overshare about my mundane life" (yeah, exactly like this blog). What is it I'm looking for, exactly? Is it my natural curiosity and need for connection, but disdain for sustained human interaction? Am I seeking validation, or answers to unasked questions? Who knows, who cares, but it's how this post came to be: It's a day in my life. And, by natural extension, of that one baby who follows me everywhere. I figure someday I'll want to reminisce about exactly what goes on during a random Monday with a seventeen-month-old baby and her stay-at-home mama.

:: ::
Monday, March 2, 2015

5:46 a.m.: My eyes pop open. Every single morning, I wake up sometime between 5 and 6 a.m., and then try valiantly to stop the flow of thoughts and questions in my brain so I can catch the last little bit of sleep possible before...

6:19: Rowan starts babbling in her crib. I must've fallen back asleep, and now it's torture to wake back up. I roll over and check the clock...good, she slept past 6. She's been trending closer to 7 (after a horrid month or so of waking up at 5:38 every. damn. morning), but I'll take anything past 6, because that means we can feasibly do just one nap instead of two. I drift in and out for a while, listening to her ceremoniously toss the contents of her crib onto the floor: baby doll, Bunny, pacifiers, blanket.

6:40: She starts patiently calling out, "Maaaaama...Maaaamaaaa..." This is her warning call - "I'm patient for now, but in about two minutes, I'm going to get PISSED." I hear J.J. getting her milk cup ready downstairs. Hopefully he's feeling all better - he's been sick since Wednesday (the sickest either of us has been since before I got pregnant). I started feeling awful last night, but my sore throat is gone this morning, so hopefully I've escaped the crud. J.J. comes upstairs and opens Rowan's door; she's surprised to see him, since she was calling for me, and greets him with a delighted, "Dada!!" They snuggle in her rocking chair while she drinks her milk.

6:47: We always try to convince Rowan to snuggle in our bed for a while in the mornings, just so we can sneak in some extra rest. She used to play happily for a long time, but nowadays, it's about ten minutes, tops. She reads an Elmo book ("Elmo mama. Elmo baby doll. Elmo dada. Oscar!"), and she covers everyone's eyes when I announce I'm turning on the light and says, "Bright! Bright!" She trills her r's when she says bright, which makes it extra adorable.

Signing "daddy" for the picture of Elmo with his daddy

7:00: I brush my teeth, which sends Rowan tearing into the bathroom to get her toothbrush, too. I shower while J.J. and Rowan make the bed and put away a basket of clean laundry from yesterday. J.J. also gives her a clean diaper and a ponytail.

7:30: J.J. gets ready for work while I make pancakes, with my hungry and impatient sous-chef on her woefully-inept "helper stool" (a chair shoved against the cupboards). It's...possible she fell off her helper chair yesterday (I was holding her hand, so she never actually hit the floor), so I keep a close eye on her today. Difficult to do while making pancakes, but I only have to finish making one for her; then I can put her in her high chair so she can eat and supervise the rest of the pancake-making.

Made her get off the chair so she could eat. #meanmama

7:45: Rowan sits to eat (pancake with peanut butter spread on top, strawberries, blueberries). I make the rest of the batch and sit with Rowan to eat, getting up a few times to fetch other breakfast items for her (water and, randomly, the apple slices she is adamant that she wants).

8:12: We took our time eating, and now Daddy is leaving for work. She gives him a hug and kiss, tells him "work, happy" (because we told her he goes to work to "help the kids feel happy"), and then wave to him from the front porch. Rowan runs around to the window to give him an extra wave this morning, then settles in to play while I clean up the kitchen.

8:30: Turns out she was playing independently especially well just now because she needed some alone time with her diaper, if you catch my whiff. Or her whiff, as the case may be. We change her diaper (and the Diaper Genie bag, since it's full), and get both of us mostly dressed. She's too wiggly right now to attempt to make her hair look cute...we'll do it later.

8:40: We go back downstairs to play. Her riding toy (that I got for free last week!) has a broken edge, probably from when I dropped it outside yesterday, and Rowan is quite concerned about it, so I get some duct tape and we give the car a Band-Aid. 

8:45: Over the next hour, we get dressed in stages (still needed tights and a ponytail for Rowan, and contacts and jeans for me). I pack her diaper bag in preparation for our trip to the library, remembering to throw in a little baby doll - it helps her transition away from the library's baby dolls when it's time to go home. I check the weather - it's 20 degrees out! Amazing. Maybe we'll swing by the car wash on the way home, now that the temperatures aren't in the negatives.

9:45: We leave for the library. Rowan has her milk cup (her morning snack) in the car on the way there.

10:00: Library! Storytime doesn't start until 10:30, but they have tons of stuff for kids to do in the meantime - watch the fish, peruse the books, play with whatever table activity they set up (today it's pretend baking with fabric cupcakes and brownies), and poke each other's eyes in exploration. Typical toddler stuff. One of Rowan's best buddies and her mama are here, which makes both of us super happy - yay for friends! I also run into a child and his father from my old work. They're here because the center is closed today for a staff training, and I can't put into words how grateful I am to be here, watching my girl squeal at the library fishies eating their food, instead of running around like a madwoman to coordinate a training session that everyone's going to complain about for the next month. I file this moment away in my mind to pull out again the next time I get jealous about other families' vacation pictures on Facebook...because right now in the life of my family, I have to choose: the quiet contentment of staying home versus earning enough money for regular splurges. Quiet contentment, please. And hey. Splurge is kind of a gross word.

10:30: Storytime is from 10:30-10:45, and then the kids can play with the toys the librarians get out - a ball pit, rocking toys, shakers, baby dolls, etc. I mostly sit back and chat with the other parents, since Rowan needs minimal help from me for the time being.

11:15: The kids are still playing happily, but I need to round up Rowan and get her home so she can eat lunch before she gets too exhausted. We check out an Elmo DVD about going to the doctor, since Rowan has her 18-month appointment coming up in a few weeks, and I've been trying to think of ways to help her more comfortable with the doctor. She's seen Sesame Street (TV in general) less than a dozen times in her life, but she has latched onto Elmo and is obsessed. He's been a hot conversation piece lately, mostly because I can't figure out what makes him so attractive to toddlers versus the other characters. Is it the red fur? The annoying voice? His easily-pronounceable name? Whatever it is, she's hooked, and she manages to spot him EVERYWHERE. Here's hoping the DVD helps her feel better about the doctor's office.

11:25: We pull into a car wash on the way home. I've actually never gotten an automatic car wash...I'm too cheap and (real talk) afraid of lining up my car correctly on the tracks. But my friend Sarah told me that this one doesn't have tracks, and my car has literally never been this dirty, so I go for it. We have to wait in line for a while (Rowan has a veggie & yogurt pouch while we wait), but then it's quick and easy. I wasn't sure if the noises would freak her out, but I tell her the car is getting a bubble bath, and she loves it. Whew.

11:45: Home much later than I'd planned. I throw together the lunch she has 95% of the time - a cheese sandwich with mustard - and she deems the floor the only acceptable sitting surface for lunch consumption. She inhales her tomatoes and clementines and then takes her time with the sandwich. I'm hungry, but it's not worth trying to eat with her unless I'm eating the exact same thing; otherwise, my lunch becomes hers. I'm not in a cheese sandwich mood, so I decide to wait until naptime.

Baby was hungry, too. And required a bib.

12:18: We cleaned up lunch and she's playing with J.J.'s shoes. She has a shoe-related meltdown (it's too big or too unwieldy or too shoe-y or something), which signals naptime. She chooses a baby to take with her, and we head upstairs, change her diaper, close the curtains, turn on the fan and humidifier, and walk around the room with her (and Baby...and Bunny) in my arms. She's asleep quickly.

12:30: Things I intend to do during naptime: Answer emails, sign up for Rowan's spring classes, figure out if I can do our taxes or if I need to make an appointment at H&R Block. Things I actually do during naptime: Eat lunch and then all the Hershey's Kisses; check Facebook; upload and edit some pictures for this blog post. It strikes me that I don't have the space heater blasting in my face while I sit in the family room; it really must be warm out. Yesss, it's 30 degrees! Maybe we'll go outside after nap. Ugh, but I hate going out when it's wet and sloppy and not 60+ degrees. And we have a grocery list a mile long...we'll see.

2:54: I hear a baby doll hit the floor upstairs...and then a paci. Rowan's awake. A disoriented baby voice floats through the monitor: "Mama. Mama. Maaaama. Mama." I let her wake up for a few minutes before going to get her for snuggles, milk, and books. As usual, she's turned her sleep sack into a cape and has tossed everything out of her crib:

3:33: We took our time waking up. Now we're in the car on the way to the grocery store, and Rowan is chattering about the car wash earlier: "Vroom. Bubbles. Bath. Yeah!" At 29 degrees, it's practically hot outside, and everyone we walk past on the way into the store is in a good mood. Rowan loves the grocery store - the people-watching, spotting random Elmos (they're everywhere), picking out food, and getting stickers. Today, she's in luck - an employee spots her by the veggies and gives her an extra-big sticker.

4:15: We're back from the store, and I need to distract a suddenly-grumpy Rowan while I put away the groceries and the morning dishes. She settles in at her little art table with a fruit bar and some apple slices.

4:30: I wanted to take Rowan outside before dinner, but I haven't even started making it yet, and she eats at 5. More importantly, she's happily occupied at the moment with toys in the other room, so I put the quinoa on the stove and start chopping vegetables.

Part of "happily occupied" = pretending the dish rag is a blankie for her nap.

5:00: Dinner! Tonight it's Mexican quinoa - quinoa with black beans, grape tomatoes, avocado, and cheddar cheese - along with some drinkable yogurt (transferred to her sippy cup). She devours everything except a random half of a tomato.

God forbid I ever forget to feed BOTH of my babies.

Hands > spoons

5:25: Finally...outside! We run into some friends from my new-moms' group who live around the corner, and Rowan and her little buddy take turns with her walking toy. After they go home, Rowan walks up and down the sidewalk, mostly excited about everything thing that she spots in the "up up sky": airplanes, birds, the moon, clouds. Just when the cold is starting to really seep through my clothes, J.J.'s car comes up the street, so we follow him back home.

6:05: We all come inside. Rowan has a seemingly random meltdown when J.J. asks if he wants to go upstairs with her so he can change out of his work clothes; turns out she thought she was going upstairs for bedtime. Once we get that straightened out, she's happy to go up with him and bounces on the bed while he and I both get our pajamas on (yes, before our toddler is even in her pajamas. That's how we roll). J.J. and Rowan play while I relax.

6:30: It's bath time. Rowan and J.J. clean up all her toys while I get her milk cup ready. She decides she wants it before bath, which is fine by me, since otherwise we don't brush her teeth in between her drinking her milk and going to bed. Once the milk is gone, J.J. helps her get in the bath while I get everything ready for bedtime: bring her jammies and diaper to the bathroom, fill up the humidifier, close the curtains. We do the post-bath routine together: lotion (she gets pretty bad eczema), diaper, pj's, brushing teeth (a new Elmo toothbrush from the store today!), brushing hair. Then J.J. and Rowan sit in her rocking chair while I sit on the ottoman and read stories (tonight it's "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle, and "The Going To Bed Book" by Sandra Boynton). I head downstairs while J.J. sings Rowan a couple songs and kisses her good night.

7:00: J.J. and I make dinner (Mexican quinoa for me, like Rowan's dinner, and some pasta creation with homemade peanut sauce for J.J.) and eat while we watch Lost on Netflix. We started watching it sometime last year, but we totally burned out during the last season. Turns out we only had, like, nine episodes left to watch, and we've been tearing through them.

9:04: It's a judgement call when we see that the finale is up next, because it's almost two hours long. We're usually in bed reading by 10 or 10:30. I convince J.J. that we HAVE to watch it TONIGHT RIGHT NOW, so we do. This is also why I don't have a picture of Rowie asleep with her beloved Bunny...was too engrossed in not getting answers to a ton of my questions about the show.

11:30: In bed...falling asleep reading viewer reactions to the Lost finale on my iPad. (Maybe it's just because I didn't watch it in real time, but...did you all not see that ending coming from a mile away?) Definitely glad we stayed up to watch it! Totally! For sure!

:: :: ::
:: :: ::

5:04 a.m. this morning: Why. did. I. stay. up. laaaate?? Now I have a chirping baby who's awake a full hour and a half before anyone should ever be awake. At least I know whether they got off the island. (Sort of.)

crawling along.

Okay! After a morning of hot chocolate (from scratch!) and Girl Scout cookies with a friend, I'm at least partway back to feeling like tackling some work. Know what else helps? Before and after pictures!

Oh yes. The dudes came last Wednesday to encapsulate our crawl space. Ahhh...a whole week of knowing that the spider hotel down below (note: not a vagina euphemism) has been eliminated. The difference is intense:

Doesn't it look ready to become our indoor pool?! THAT WOULD BE SO COOL. At the very least, it's completely prepped to house our hot tub, which would be built into the floor of the family room above the crawl space. THAT WOULD BE EVEN COOLER.

Anyway. Obviously, part of the huge visual difference is that we haven't put anything back in the crawl space yet, so it's not currently a wasteland of unwanted furniture and old closet doors. But I hope you can tell from the pictures how much lighter and brighter it is. Turns out sheets of spiderwebs and black-papered insulation really ruin the view, you know? 

The crawl space dudes were here for about three hours. Yep, they worked fast. Good thing, too, because Rowan and I were confined to the front playroom pretty much the whole time, and we ran out of fun activities in there after about an hour. Plus, it was freezing. Not only were the dudes coming in and out of the front door constantly (and it was all of, like, six degrees outside), but our furnace chose last week to try to die, and our space heater also quit. (Can't blame either of those appliances. I've never been so over winter in my whole life.) The upshot is, it was pretty chilly in the house while they were working in the basement.

Overall, I'm really happy with the work they did. Not 100%, though. Here's the breakdown:


What I love: 

• How quickly they worked (8:45 a.m. to noon, finishing just before naptime, thankfully)
• How much lighter, brighter, and warmer the basement is
• That the gross insulation from the walls and ceiling of the crawl space is gone (it was super smelly and moldy, as I discovered while they were removing it...yuck)
• No more zombie holes in the plastic ground covering; the new covering is thick, durable, and has a 25-year warranty

What I don't love:

• The dudes weren't the friendliest (four guys total) or the most professional (inappropriate music blaring the whole time)
• Subpar job with the floor grading - I knew it wouldn't be laser-leveled or anything, but the guy who came out for the estimate oversold their capacity to grade the dirt. I haven't actually walked on it yet, but it's not nearly as level as I'd hoped.
• The random chunks of the old insulation they left hanging from the ceiling - not a big deal, but it would have been easy for them to double-check and make sure they got it all
• The huge muddy mess left on the floor - they covered the upstairs entry area and the basement stairs with plastic, but not the floor in front of the crawl space. Between the snow outside and them standing on the bare earth to grade the dirt...well, it took five rounds of mopping to clean it all up. They warned me it would be messy, but it was more extreme than I'd anticipated.
• The fifteen bags of debris (plastic sheeting, insulation, spider colonies) and twelve or so sheets of Styrofoam insulation they removed from the basement and dumped into/next to the garage. Again, they told me they wouldn't be removing the garbage, but I underestimated how much it would be. Not sure how to get rid of all of it!

Hard to appreciate the scale here, but these bags are too big to
fit even one at a time into our garbage can (pictured below).

Huge sheets of Styrofoam insulation just covered in spiderwebs and who knows what else. :(

The good news - great news - is that it's done, and at a reasonable price (made even more doable by some generous help from my amazing mother-in-law). Despite my recent motivation stagnation, I really am excited to whip the basement into shape and make it a cleaner, brighter, happier space. J.J. and I brainstormed and came up with ideas for the different "zones" we want to create:

• Storage: Obviously, the crawl space will be the primary storage area, but we also need some easy-access storage for bins we use frequently. The Christmas decorations can be shoved in the back corner of the crawl space, but the boxes of clothes/toys that Rowan isn't quite big enough for yet - we dig through those often. Not sure if we'll just put them in the front of the crawl space, or if we'll keep the shelving units and utilize those.

• Laundry/cleaning: It'd be nice if the area around our washer and dryer weren't so dingy and cold. Still, not much will change here for now, except for making sure that hazardous items are out of Rowan's reach (they aren't right now because we've never used the basement as a play area for her, but that's in the works).

• Exercise/video games: J.J. has a TV, video game system, and exercise equipment set up on the old work bench. I'd like to make it a little more comfortable - and attractive - by adding a carpet remnant on the floor, and we definitely need to organize all his stuff. (So. Many. Xbox. Controllers.)

• Tools/paint cans: Right now, all our tools are in an old bureau, except for a few bigger power tools that are stashed under the work bench. I want to move those power tools out of Rowan's reach...but I'm not sure where, exactly, that would be. We also have two entire shelves of our huge shelving unit dedicated to paint cans and painting tools, which all need to be consolidated and organized. I read a tip about transferring paint from the huge gallon cans to mason jars to save space, so that's the plan...but still, where to store them?

• Rowan's zone: I'm thinking a little art table...some of her more bulky toys...and some open space for her to ride a little trike or run around doing her signature dizzy dance. 

• Sell/donate pile: It's becoming clear that there needs to be a dedicated space for this crap, which I always think will just be gone with once it's sold or donated...but it comes back every time. Might as well have a home for it so it doesn't end up forgotten in a crawl space corner or infringing on the fun zones.

Clearly, there's a lot to be done! The crawl space alone still needs some work - cleaning up the ceiling and hanging cables, sweeping up a little bit of debris left behind, disposing of all the garbage bags and insulation, and then actually moving our stuff back in, hopefully in a semi-organized fashion. Plus, the tool bureau needs some love; I have a bunch of items pending sale on Craigslist; and I'd love to figure out a curtain system to block off the entrance to the crawl space. And a few projects are just going to have to wait for warmer weather - spray-painting a little table we have that can become Rowan's art table, transferring all that paint to mason jars, and participating in our neighborhood-wide garage sale in the spring to get rid of even more stuff (where does it all come from?). 

Overall? I'm so, so happy we got the crawl space done. I'm really hoping it helps keep the house warmer and cuts down on our pest population. The best part, though, is that it makes us feel like we have a halfway-finished basement. Yes, I know it's not actually halfway finished, but at least we're inspired to make the rest of the space better-looking and more functional. What's the point of having a huge basement if you're not going to make good use of it? Also, I'm definitely looking forward to not having to make the always-difficult tornado warning decision: Face the spiders and zombies in the basement, or risk loss of life and limb by staying aboveground? Oh, Michigan. The feeeeeeeling's foreverrrrr.