At first I thought I would get some decals, but all the ones that I liked were repeating patterns, and it was going to cost me $200+ to cover the whole area. Then I thought back to the Halloween party we host every year. For the party, I used red tempera paint to write in “blood” on the glass of many of our family portraits. It looks great, and washes right off with a little windex on November 1st.

Tempera paint dries to a matte finish that holds up pretty well, but then easily washes off, so it was the perfect solution. So I ordered some red tempera paint and an inexpensive wall stencil and I took this:

to this!

I love how it turned out! It’s not perfect…ideally you should paint a matte base coat behind the stenciled area first (obviously not an option for me with the glossy plastic sheets). This base coat keeps the paint you stencil on from running. So if you get up close, it’s far from perfect. But overall, I think the effect is great! And I love  it a heck of a lot more than the bleh grey! What do you think?

Bump 1: Nursing Issues

This may totally be TMI, so if you don’t care to read about my nursing issues, feel free to skip down to Bump 2. Yes, I’m still nursing. I’m very proud that I made it to 1 year! I didn’t even know if I’d be able to nurse the boys at all, so the fact that I’ve nursed them 1 whole year is pretty exciting for me. We’re down to three sessions a day, first thing in the morning, 3:00 or so in the afternoon, and right before bed. I’ve been lamenting the fact that I’m going to start weaning them soon, but Miles has started to wean himself…by biting. Ouch. I’ve done all the things I’ve read to do to counteract this, and he’s still doing it. Subsequently, today, he skipped both his afternoon and evening nursing sessions (my little chunk, Ollie, however, shows no signs of giving up). I know that Miles is still getting plenty of calories, so I’m not worried about him, but I just wasn’t quite ready for him to move on yet! Oh well…the kid is independent, what can I say?

Bump 2: Open Flames

I invited a couple over tonight who just moved to Japan. Because they were to arrive right after the boys went down for the night, I decided to make a chicken with veggies in the crock pot (my go-to company meal these days) and make some bread in my bread machine–then it would all be done right when they arrived. Genius right? Well, I had just started the crock pot  and the bread machine and put some squash on the stove to steam for the boys’ dinner. I went in the living room for just  a second and I thought I smelled something burning. I thought to myself–crock pot? no. bread machine? no. squash? no…I just put it on. But there was DEFINITELY a burning smell, so I went back into the kitchen to investigate. And saw this potholder in flames on the stove! Ack!

When I thought I had turned on the back burner where the pot of squash was, I had accidentally turned on the front burner. Oops. And guess what was sitting on the front burner? Lucking I easily smothered the fire and not even a smoke alarm went off (which now that I think about it kind of concerns me, because there was quite a bit of smoke–maybe I should investigate that tomorrow…).

Bump 3: Nearly Causing My Child to Choke

In the evenings as I sweep up after the boys’ dinner, I let them crawl around the kitchen. Tonight, I noticed Miles was being very quiet–which as you moms know, usually means trouble. I look over and see that he is sitting there sucking on a little candy egg. I keep a dish of  these candy eggs on my side table in the living room, and when I was opening the bag yesterday it spilled…

I thought I had cleaned up all of them, but apparently I hadn’t! And they are the perfect choking hazard size–and are pretty hard. Luckily, he was fine, but by the amount of color already gone from the candy shell, it looked as though it had been in his mouth for 30 seconds or so–made me feel like a stellar mom!

Bump 4: Dinner

Finally the boys were in bed, the couple had arrived, and I was ready to serve dinner. As I said before, I had timed it so that  everything would be done right around 7:0opm, when I had told them to come over. Well, 7:00pm came, and the whole chicken in the crock pot didn’t look quite done. I have made a whole chicken 4 or 5 times since I’ve moved to Japan, but I always get 3 pound chickens…this was a 5 pound chicken and of course I knew it would take longer, but it is taking a LOT longer. I saw is (not *WAS*) because it is 10:20 as I type this and that darn chicken is STILL not done! Seriously… No, the couple is not still here waiting for me to feed them. Luckily, I had made a huge salad with lots of goodies (including some nuts for protein!) and I had that loaf of freshly baked bread, so there was plenty of food to just have salads and bread for dinner and then yummy peanut butter brownies for dessert. I do want the chicken to be done soon though, because I need to go to sleep!

And that, folks, was my day…and why I may be up cooking a whole chicken in the middle of the night!

One year ago here’s where I was:

And the boys were so teeny tiny! Here’s Miles in the NICU (for breathing/eating issues–he was discharged a little over a week later).  Just look at all that hair!

And Ollie. Just feeding issues for him, but he was also in the NICU for a little over a week. It’s hard to believe that my little men who now devour everything put in front of them were hospitalized a year ago because they couldn’t eat!

And here they were yesterday. Aren’t these shirts adorable? They are from Touch of Gray Designs on Etsy. Love them (the boys and the shirts)!

The Hubby is off training again, so we just had a few baby friends (and their moms!) over for cupcakes, presents, and some playtime (and skyped the Hubby in). The boys LOVE Baby Einstein’s Old MacDonald video, so I went with that theme. These are just plain cupcakes (Betty Crocker yellow cake super moist from a box–soo yummy!), iced with homemade buttercream frosting (all in white except the piggies which were pink). And decorated with candy.

1. Sheep: mini marshmallows, a dab of pink frosting for the snout, a red hot for the nose, and chocolate chips for the eyes.

2. Cows: Strawberry marshmallows for the snout with daps of melted chocolate, chocolate chip eyes, piped melted chocolate for spots, and Hershey’s drops for the ears.

3. Chicks: Coconut shaken in a bag with yellow food coloring, chocolate chip eyes, 1/4 of an orange starburst for the beak.

4. Piggies: Strawberry marshmallow snout with dabs of melted chocolate, chocolate chip eyes, 1/4 of a strawberry starburst for the ears (These were my favorite!)

The boys each ate a whole cupcake!

What a wonderful year it has been! Happy Birthday to my little men!

Now that I have two almost one-year-olds (Ack!) who LOVE scrambled eggs, I decided it was time to introduce them to hard boiled eggs. That’s right. Yesterday afternoon I decided it was time to conquer my fear. I hadn’t tried to make a hard boiled egg in over three years (SERIOUSLY!). And I’ve done many things I’m very proud of in the past three years, so I decided it was time to try again. I googled directions. I followed them religiously and 25 minutes later–8 soft boiled eggs.

So, what did I do? I broke out the leftovers and I made some kick-a** chicken salad from a roast chicken I made on Monday (I doubt Martha wouldn use a** in her recipes either). Seriously folks, this chicken salad is A-MAZ-ING. It’s just chicken, non-fat plain yogurt, a smidge of mayo, grapes, celery, chopped pecans, a dash of salt and a tsp. or so of curry powder. I was going to have half of it for dinner last night and half of it for lunch today. But after I made a few lettuce wraps with the first half, I decided I needed all of it in my belly ASAP. I encourage you to make this now. Especially if you’ve just thrown out a bunch of soft boiled eggs.

After making that amazing chicken salad, I decided it was time to try again. I told myself “I can make soufflés! I can make crepes! I can hold a Thanksgiving dinner! Of course I can boil eggs.”

This time, I broke out my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and read the “recipe” for hard boiled eggs. They recommended letting the eggs sit in the pot for 3 minutes longer than my google recipe. And it turns out that those 3 minutes are essential to the success of my eggs. Because 28 minutes later–four perfect hard boiled eggs! Woo hoo!

In case you are wondering, this is how you properly make hard boiled eggs.

1. Put eggs in a pot and fill with cold water until the eggs are completely covered.

2. Put pot on stove and turn to bigh until the water boils.

3. Once the water boils, remove the pot from the burner, put on the lid, and let it sit for 15 minutes.

4. Once the 15 minutes are over (and don’t you let anyone tell you it’s 12!) plunge the eggs into ice water until they cool.

5. Peel and enjoy!

Back in California, we had an oversized clock that hung in our living room (a present from my folks). But alas, right before the big move to Japan, it fell off the wall and broke. We joked that “Mr. Clock” was Ollie’s first friend, because when he was teeny tiny, he would just stare at it. I think in his baby book I even listed “Mr. Clock” as his first friend. So sad. We miss you Mr. Clock.

After an appropriate mourning period, I knew that it was time to move on–we needed to replace Mr. C. But instead of getting one really large time piece, I opted to put up three little ones and set them to different time zones. This works out really well since our family is now spread out all over the world! It’s like Mr. Clock had babies! (Yes. I just said that.)

The first one is set to Atsugi, Japan, the second is set to wherever my Hubby is, and the last is set to LA time. When I know the West coast time, it’s easy for me to calculate midwest and East coast time. The clocks were uber-cheap from Ikea and the letters are just scrapbooking letters I had on hand in my craft boxes. Score! I love inexpensive little projects like this!

Our new place! It’s a end-until townhouse on base, so it’s a bit on the institutional side, but I’m slowly but surely putting my touches on it! Here’s the front door. On my list of projects out here: to make a new house number and to get a chair or bistro table or something to put in that little open area right there.

There’s also this little storage area just to the right of the front door. I really appreciate the storage area for our bikes/stroller/etc., but I HATE seeing everything right as you walk up! So, I’m working on some ideas to cover those little doors so it’s not quite such an awkward area.

When you walk in the front door you can walk straight back to the living room/dining room area or you can walk into the kitchen/eat-in area. And here is the eat-in area. This is where I feed my little monkeys every day.

Right across from the eat-in area is the kitchen. It’m not in love with the blonde cabinets, but it’s overall much better than I expected. I have a really neat plan for spicing up this area–so stay tuned!

Through that doorway is the dining room. I am really loving this area–it just seems so cozy! That little white shelving unit is new from our recent trip to Ikea (Yes, they have Ikea in Japan, and yes, it’s pretty much just like the Ikea in the States!). It’s actually empty right now, but I’m guessing as the boys get older, there will be more and more “stuff” to store downstairs, so it’s nice to have some space to grow into.

That is a sliding glass door at the end of the dining room which leads to…

our postage stamp of a backyard! Our backyard neighbors are nice, but as you can see, they have a lot of kiddo stuff in their backyard, and I find the block worth of fenced in backyards a little depressing. So I’m working on some ideas to cover the fence and make it a bit more private.

Our little patio area.

And back in the living room…here is our new sectional! I LOVE it. Our trusty yellow sofa and loveseat that we had in California were super comfy, but they were a bit saggy and would have dominated this room. So right before we left we opted to buy a new piece. We found a great lady in SoCal who makes custom sofas for a great price. And the best part? It fits in this space perfectly!

Heading upstairs, here’s the nursery…well one side of it…the other side just has another crib and a bookshelf. I still have to put up the starfish in here, but otherwise it’s finished. The boys really love it in here.

The guest bedroom.

The boys’ bathroom.

And lastly, our bedroom (don’t you love that 80s country fan?). We have a small (and I mean teeny tiny) bathroom off the master bedroom that I forgot to take a picture of, but other than the bathroom…that’s our whole house! I hope you’ve enjoyed our tour!

I’m working on putting some pics up of  the house now that we’re all settled in, but thought I’d put a picture up of the moving truck–because if you love logistics like I do, you’ll appreciate seeing a whole house-load of stuff in one truck!

After one month, two rounds of sickness in our house (including 3 trips to the doc for the kiddos and myself), a week of Japanese culture classes, a Japanese drivers’ license class, and a bit of exploring, I feel like I’m finally getting settled here. Last Monday we received our “unaccompanied baggage” shipment (1000 pounds of essentials–pots/pans/baby toys/ towels/etc.) and we just found out that we’ll be receiving our full shipment of everything else on Friday! Hurray! I can’t WAIT. It will be so nice to sleep in our bed, sit on our couch, have more than four place settings so I don’t have to do dishes twice a day…

And then the REAL fun begins–I get to decorate this blank canvas of a house! I’ve already got a few ideas in mind, but I’m waiting to decide exactly what I’m going to do until all our stuff gets here, and I see how it all fits. The townhouse we’re living here on base suits our needs pretty well, but it is quite a bit smaller than the house we came from in California. We ended up storing a lot of our furniture and such back in the states, but I’m still a little anxious about how all of our stuff is going to fit in this place…I guess we’ll see on Friday!

Just to give you an idea, here are a few pics of our townhouse (the furniture you see here is our loaner furniture that the Navy gives us until our furniture gets here):

The kitchen and eat-in area:

Living room/dining room and door to the backyard:

The master bedroom

It is kind of interesting that even though we are currently only living with what we brought in our luggage, what people have loaned us, and the small shipment of our personal stuff…life has been pretty normal. I mean, it doesn’t exactly feel like home, but it’s comfortable enough. (I say that, but as I type I’m sitting on our loaner couch, which is reminiscent of something out of my freshman dorm common room.) I’m such a nerd though, I love the challenge of decorating a new space, with less stuff, in a foreign country where I don’t have the foggiest notion where to start looking for some of the items I’ll need to “homeify” our little space. But I seriously CAN’T WAIT!

I’m off now, but you didn’t think I’d leave you without some pics of the boys, did you?

When I found out we were moving to Japan, there were many question I asked myself. Where would we live? Would I have a job? Would we take out dog, Paul? Will I ever be able to find pants that go past my knees?

As we started working on the details of our impending move over the fall, the answers to those questions became much clearer (on base in a townhouse, yes–I would begin telecommuting part-time, we had the option to bring Paul–but  because of our small yard we elected to send Paul to live with family in North Carolina, no–but  thank goodness Gap and Banana Republic mail to foreign bases). But one question that I was never able to find the answer to was “Would I be able to feed my addiction to spray painting?”

If you’re a longtime blog reader–you know that many of my home improvement projects involve spray paint. Don’t believe me? Check out the guest room, the nursery, and the man cave for just a few of the many items in our house reinvigorated with the elixir of life…ahem, I mean spray paint. Would I be able to continue repurposing? Friends…I now have that answer.

Ta Da!

Yes…only five minutes away from me right here on base at the Navy Exchange Depot (kind of like a mini office max/home depot) is a great little selection of Krylon Spray paints. Boy am I relieved! So you can look forward to many more spray paint projects over the next few years. It’s the little things…