Tippy Toes and Tantrums

Remodel: Day 152 - Bathroom Tile Time

I love the sea of penny round tile that went into my office bathroom yesterday. Now I cannot wait for the grout to be added because that means a vanity, sink, faucet, and toilet. Not that I'm getting ahead of myself. As a result of living with one bathroom for five months, getting close to having two or three bathrooms is thrilling.

The master bathroom tile is moving ahead, now awaiting the marble slab pieces to finish the shower and flooring. The cold weather is making us thankful we opted for floor heating in the master bathroom, but the kids feet will continue to freeze on their bathroom tile as a reminder of family hierarchy. 

Another decision that I'm told is radically unconventional is that I asked the two ends of the master shower be framed by vertical lines. I had wanted two rows of tile, matching the width of the pony wall, but I was out of town while the tile was placed. Still, it looks great, even though I was asked several times, including a text just before it went in, if I was really sure this was really what I really wanted. I am the Lenny Bruce of tile decisions. 

The kids' bathroom - or what Kevin calls, "the bathroom that the kids use," to make sure they don't get too comfy in bathroom ownership - is the closest to completion. That's the one with the shower/tub combo we use for everything from bathing to washing utensils. The twice daily annoyance of brushing teeth in a tub ended yesterday when the sink and faucet were hooked up. This is luxury living. Don't wait for a clog to realize how much you care about your faucet. 

Spotivate: Where the Local Families Go for Fun

This year, I'm optimistic our remodel will eventually finish. Not as optimistic as I was in November when I wrote on our Christmas cards that it would be complete in early January. I was so naive that I shocked myself when I reread our finished holiday card last week. So naive! But it will end, someday. I think. With a brand new house that sucked up all of our money, we're not going far this coming year, which puts more emphasis on local activities to add fun and excitement to our schedule. My goal is to create memorable experiences with my family that are memorable in a good way. Not memorable because we are all sharing one bathroom without a sink or because we sleep among dry wall dust. Those memories can be forgotten, I hope, without tons of therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. 

Enter Spotivate. This is good stuff that is happening now nearby. No hearing about what we missed over the weekend at school on Monday morning. I remember the depressed embarrassment I felt when I first learned about the May Fete parade in Palo Alto a few years ago. I was surprised I hadn't known about it when everyone else did. Spotivate's like an assistant who scouts out activities based on my interests that would have let me in on the May Fete secret. 

Spotivate comes to me, which is perfect for my new scatterbrained status (I blame the remodel). I follow Spotivate on Twitter and Facebook, which means that even when I am not at their site wondering what to do this weekend, tips come to me. Last night it was a tweet about how kids eat free at a local restaurant, which couldn't have been targeted better. Being kitchen-less, we eat out all the time and are thrilled anytime we stumble across family deals. 

I know what my friends are up to, not when it's too late after they check in on Facebook, but before, when plans are being made. The activity recommendations can be highly personalized. Spotivate knows which areas I like exploring best, and what we like to do, and highlights appropriate recommendations. It's not scrolling through a general calendar, looking for a golden nugget hidden among toddler activities. There's nothing wrong with toddler activities if you have a toddler. I don't. 

Find me on Spotivate as Silicon Valley Mamas to see what we've up to. I'd love to find out what you're got planned, too. Even if your friends haven't tried Spotivate yet, you can highlight great ideas on Facebook with the click of a button, rallying friends for an activity you discovered on the site. Maybe we'll run into each other at a place that isn't the zoo.

This post is sponsored by Spotivate. Want to learn more? Check out the Spotivate Video

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ESRB and How Video Game Ratings Help Parents

It's prime video game buying and giving time, which means it's time to get educated about the ratings. I'm in this video of bloggers talking about how we use the Entertainment Software Ratings Board ratings, and while it's an honor to be among this crowd of bloggers, it's almost embarrassing to share as I'm the one in the construction zone with bad lighting and giants bags attacking my eyes. The upside is that our house has progressed far from this time. 

A Not-Very-Normal Normal Day

My plan was to post a remodel update last Friday, following a crazy hectic week. Exciting things were happening at the house, and as long as I could get a work deadline out of the way, I was set. 

Soon after school drop off, I saw a Facebook post from a friend in Connecticut that marked the start of a dark day. What difference did a kitchen island installation matter when families with little kids Rocket's age were facing something horrific? I tried my best to work while refreshing Victoria's feed, expecting her to post that her nephew had been found safe. Today I stood at Target trying my best to pick out sympathy cards to send to Victoria and her sister-in-law, while feeling additionally hurt that none of them spoke to the pain of losing a life so young and innocent. "Sad time" didn't seem to cover it at all. 

The holidaypalooza went on as scheduled in Rocket's class today, keeping the kids in this perfect bubble of cookie decorating, card making, and storytelling. It was just as six year olds should be spending the day. The kitchen can wait until tomorrow. 

Remodel: Day 137 - The Cabinets are Here

Good news: the cabinets are here! Bad news: most of them are on our front deck. Nothing like seeing custom cabinetry exposed to the elements. 

Extra bad news: the drawer faces are slab. The whole process I've chanted "no slab, no slab, no slab," and they show up with slab front drawers. The cabinet guy even had no slab circled in red on his order. The drawer fronts have been reordered, will need to be rebuilt, repainted, and redelivered. Thankfully drawers aren't important to the installation, but still a disappointment. 

I don't know where half of these things belong. Stain is island, and white is either kitchen, laundry, or my office. 

Extra, extra bad news: our builder felt the house was too crowded with the number of workers and the amount of cabinetry, so he told the painters to go away until Tuesday. Paint was the one thing that felt like progress was being made. So much for getting our rooms somewhat complete until next week. 

The Third Wheel Continues the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Saga

While looking for sketchbooks on Amazon, I noticed the list of similar items others had searched and four were sketchbooks, but one was the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid. This book is everywhere. My daughter has devoured each book in the series as soon as they hit the book shelves, and The Third Wheel (Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 7) was no exception. She picked up her package after it arrived in the mail, went into her room, and stayed there reading until dinner time, when she'd finished the book. 

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are ones she wants to own, not check out from the library. She will read each book a few times, and will eventually pass them down to her younger brother, if we're lucky. He tries to sneak peeks of the books, even though they're above his reading level. 

The books are funny for all ages. I picked one when trying to determine if it was a book, a graphic novel, or what, and I found myself laughing, and reading page after page. I can see why it's so easy to lose an afternoon in these books. 

If you're looking for a holiday gift or a stocking stuffer, this is a clear winner. 

Disclosure: We were given a complementary copy to review.

How to Pick Paint Colors (or 50 Shades of Gray)

Last night, I emailed the Excel spreadsheet with all of my paint decisions over to the builder and I felt relief greater than when I turned in my thesis in grad school. Much like with grad school, the deadline didn't stop the stress dreams. I woke up a few times, mid-dream, freaking out over a color decision.

Here's what I learned about picking paint colors:

• Don't paint swatches on your walls like they do on TV shows. The swatch colors will bleed through unless you hit those spots with 30 layers of primer. Instead, you need a brush out.
• Make your own brush outs. You can pay your painter or paint store to do a brush out for you - which is taking a sample of paint and painting it onto a special type of poster board. It's generally $5-10 here for someone to make a brush out for you, but with a few supplies, you can make your own for much less. Our paint store sells tiny 3 inch paint rollers packaged with it's own tiny tray and the special brush out paper, all conveniently near the register. I used about three of those, plus four sheets of special poster board that I cut into smaller pieces. The little Benjamin Moore samples cost $4 at my paint store. That was the biggest expense, and we went overboard. I think I bought 20 different 2 oz containers, which still seems a little crazy, but colors that look nearly identical, can look very different when painted out. The $4 jars cost less than a ton of regret. 
• Look at your brush outs during different times of day in the room they will be used. It sounds simple, but colors change so much in different lights. What looks like flat gray, may actually be blue in better light. Or that blue may actually be a gray. This blue/gray dilemma occurred in nearly every room of my house. 
• A single comment on Apartment Therapy can really get into your head. It may have been made by a pseudo-hipster commenting on a non-iPhone from a cafe serving only hand-pressed sustainably-harvested coffee with intricate designs in the foam that are then Instagrammed immediately, but that comment will stick. 
• Use Houzz.com like a real authority. Not the comments - please, not the comments - but real life photos of the paints you are considering are incredibly helpful. 
• Ignore the paint names. I stuck with Copley Gray a little longer than I should because I lived near Copley Square in Boston. Sometimes it's not a sign, but a coincidence. Move on. 
• If you're going to let your kids pick their room colors, then stand back and let them. I violated this when Rocket asked for a black ceiling, one black wall, one red wall, and one blue wall. The fourth wall color kept changing. I said no, this was not a crack house. We negotiated and he settled with San Francisco Giants orange on two walls. It turns out that orange is bright - and truly the best match for the Giants' orange appeared to be called Oriole, which was all wrong. I bought four orange samples and he went with the one I picked up by accident for their bathroom: August Morning. I keep calling it cantaloupe. I thought about overriding him, but a jumble of child psychology got in my head and I let it go. It's a happy color, probably the happiest in the house, which makes it appropriate for this kid. 
• Bring whatever item you are trying to match into the paint store. Lighting makes a huge difference, and bringing a key item to the store saves many trips back and forth, trust me. Major League baseballs are not white, they are more Mountain Peak White.
• Accent walls are dead. Sorry if that hurts, but that's what a commenter on Apartment Therapy said.