I Heart Microfiber

For the first time in our marriage, (at least I think) I made a rather large purchase without consulting my significant other. And although he wasn't super thrilled with me, he seems to have come around in the end. One Friday morning I decided to wake up crazy early because there was a garage sale I remembered being particularly good last year. The lady holding it was an interior decorator for model homes and would sell all the furniture she used for bargain prices. Last year she had some beautiful leather couches and I was hoping for something similar as I was a little fed up with our old couch. My mom and I recovered it when we first moved to our townhouse, but failed to take into consideration the fabric's resiliency to stains when we picked it out. I'd spent more time steam cleaning that thing than I care to recount. Anyways this time, the lady had a nice microfiber couch for a pretty good price. And I bought it. It all worked out in the end as I sold our old couch for a really decent price (some frat guys bought it- I doubt they care about stain resistant fabric) and our new one was delivered (for free!) all in one day.

The first week we had the new couch I was replacing the license plates on one of our cars and Rowan decided he wanted to keep the old plates. When we returned to the house, Rowan promptly placed the license plates on our couch and to my horror stained the couch with a ton of black grease, oil, dirt- you name it. I scrubbed it twice and it was gone. I love you microfiber.

Rowan and his buddy taking a break watching Thomas


Here's a couple more pictures from this week of Rowan and his friends. He has a better social life than I do sometimes.

Going to a friend's sister's birthday party


Snack time in the "fort"

DIY should stand for "I'm a sucker for self-punishment"

I don't really care for blogs that have incessant whining in them. And yet, here I go. After several fruitless shopping trips for new ottomans, Mr. S and I decided to repurpose our current ones. The old ones had fabric that showed every little stain, the corners were coming through the fabric because the foam had receded, #1 has impaled himself on every hard edge, and they have no storage in them. I went to every store imaginable and either the ottomans were the wrong size or had no storage and all of them were crazy expensive. So I took a large foam mattress pad I bought at a garage sale and cut it to fit our old ottomans to give them extra padding. This went well except my beloved staple gun decided to die a slow death. You can get 2 staples in and then you have to wait 20 minutes until you can do it again. Mr. S made some hidden doors for the bottom of the ottomans so now we can use the hollow interior for storage- which actually turned out surprisingly well. Next I went fabric shopping. I don't know what it is about this town, but I can never find the kind of fabric I'm looking for. The stuff I did find is $40 a yard!?!! Bleh. I managed to score some fabric at a garage sale, but it's not really what I wanted. The only upside is it was practically free- I guess beggars can't be choosers. Today I proceeded to try and finish the project by fitting the fabric, but my serger's threads went wacky and I can't figure out how to rethread them. After deciding to forego the serging, I went to the sewing machine and that also went crazy. I came to the conclusion that I should just take a break only to discover Rowan with some pliers proceeding to rip up the new foam I had just put on. I really should have just bought new ones at this point. Maybe if I go wave a white flag and cry, they'll just reupholster themselves.

What's in a name?

Baby girl is still just baby girl and we are at a loss as to what to name her. When Rowan was in-utero we would constantly talk to him, about him, and he certainly got a lot more attention than this little one. I think part of the reason for that is because he had a name and this one is still generic "baby". I think it would help a lot for Rowan to have a name to ascribe to this unseen sibling. We recently took out quite a few baby name books from the library last week with the determination that we were going to solve this problem. If the process of elimination can be equated with success, then we definitely are making progress. No little Fidelma (Fidel as a nickname?!) or Gormlaith here.

Rowan isn't a big help either. Every suggestion we make is met with a resolute "NO I don't like that name." Today we were at the table pouring over books and Rowan kept saying "No, No, No." I turned to him in frustration and said "Well should we call her No then?" He shook his head- smart kid. His only suggestions have been Judson and Gwen, both friends of his and yes, one of them is a boy. I guess we just have to find a girl friend for him whose name we like and whose parents we don't mind antagonizing.

Part of our problem is we want something that is a little unusual, but not strange. If it's in the top 50 of popular baby names, it's out. Also, Steve is finding out that I know a lot of girls with names that he likes, and I can't stand the idea of naming my baby after them. I guess that says something about me. This is probably a bad idea, but here are some of the names we are currently considering. Feel free to name your favorite, but don't be offended if we don't follow your advice.

Nadia (our top runner and even Rowan has given his stamp of approval.  Only problem here is her nickname would sound like "naughty"- if you can think of a good nickname for this one, let us know!)
Eden (this is bordering on unusual and almost strange for us- also have problems with the nickname Edee)
Constance (hate the nickname Connie- sorry to all you Connies out there)
Ilona (Steve thinks this is too exotic sounding, but I really like it. It does remind me of someone Donald Trump would marry though)
Julia (probably too popular but I still like it)