Ridiculously Long Post About Trees

With fall officially here, we're looking to have the four large trees in the front trimmed. We had to wait until the first freeze (which happens nightly now at 20+ degrees) to assure the Emerald Ash Borer beetles that are invading our trees (to the tune of $150 injections) die first. If we trimmed the trees early, the sap would attract those little bugs and cause more issues.

We recently knocked the small maple we had in the front yard ourselves because it just adds to the amount of leaves, kills the grass, and makes our house feel more like we're in the middle of a forest...which would be cool if we actually were. It makes our yard look bigger without it, provides more natural light during the day-- which I must have in the winter, and is one less thing to maintain. It's just a bummer because we did love the tree itself... just not the location. It's the same tree where we planted Andrew's bulbs and we'll be replanting those this winter/spring. The only bad thing about axing that tree is that it's making the paint on our front doors bubble. That's for another blog post.

I called our regular tree trimmer to have him come out for a quote this week to discuss the four trees in the front yard. We're also looking to ax the gorgeous Honey Locust tree in the middle of our enormous deck this summer. Except, we are having a hard time parting with it. When it rains, lots of beautiful lichen show vibrantly. It provides shade during the summer that keeps the house {marginally} cooler. It's also lovely to look at instead of our neighbor's backyard and their questionable choice to put a blue tarp on the barbecue (get a cover!) and ugly plastic white chairs out that they never sit on. I'd rather look at this beautiful tree.

Except, there are issues. Three, specifically. The maintenance of trimming and cleaning the deck because it drops massive amounts of seed pods is less than fun. These pods are a favorite among squirrels and other rodents, which we don't mind seeing around, but don't want a commune of them either. With our fox den issue in the past, we are more concerned about the food sources our trees are providing. It's also rather expensive to have these trees trimmed on a regular basis and the gutters cleared multiple times a year.

Then there's the deck itself. The tree has grown over the 15 years the deck was in place and has popped up the boards of the deck, making it unsightly and unsafe. While it's unlikely the tree can grow much more than it already is at decent maturity, we don't want to deal with it ruining another deck when we replace the boards and re-frame this summer. I'm no tree expert.

And finally, the garden. The nonexistent garden, but one I hope we have in our backyard beginning this spring. We just don't get enough sunlight anywhere around our house because we do have so many lovely trees. If this tree is cut, we will get more natural sunlight in the house (hooray!) and leave a suitable area on the side of the deck for my garden boxes. Without the sunlight, I might as well forget about it. There are still hoards of trees in our yard and our neighbor's yard that provide decent shade still.

But cutting beautiful trees just seems so wrong. For people who love nature anyway. Instead, I randomly threw out an idea to leave the stump in the middle of the deck (killing the tree from further growth) and re-framing around it. I'd love to use the stump as a base for a DIY table in the middle of our deck and put a big, chunky vase on it that I'll add some rustic sticks and charm depending on the season. While the tree will no longer be there, the vase with nature-inspired fillers will serve as a separation from our neighbors. And the table will be useful in entertaining.

And look awesome. Something like this:

{source}

We love the stained and polished concrete top and would likely do one just the same. The husband has already watched and read countless tutorials. The cost of the above table according to its makers? $45. Chairs more, of course.

The current state of our deck now that you know the dream we're not even sure is plausible? Sort of, kind of The Giving Tree table, kwim?

Deck boards will be replaced/stained this summer. Can't wait!

The boards have been cut and fit like a jigsaw puzzle, but they were popping up feet in the air. Not bolted down. Unsafe.

Hello beautiful Honey Locust tree we want to turn into a table.

Left side of our deck (from inside of the house). Garden area will hopefully go behind the bench.

Right side of the deck with planters that will be taken in for the winter very soon. I kept those plants alive since June!

Anyone have experience with turning a tree into something more? We were getting excited about maybe even making end tables out of more pieces of the trunk, but realized our house already has plenty of tables.

*519 posts. Can you believe I have that much to say?

The Littlest Composter

We're in business, you guys. We're composting fools now!

The composter arrived last week and thanks to my (best friend's ex-boyfriend's old dolly he let me borrow once and I never returned) cart we just spruced up with new wheels, I moved that bad boy right where I needed him and popped the top. I added some fresh cut grass and Benjamin contributed by picking up some pine needles and a pinecone and throwing them on in. I added a bit of shredded cardboard and some green waste from produce and we are getting things moving!

I'm following the best advice I was given: don't stress about it. Add, spin, relax.

And so, we are. Wouldn't you know though, last week at the library, we found this little gem that fit right into my little lesson. I swear it made me squeeeee a little bit just thinking about connecting the learning as any teacher would do. Obviously my nearly 18-month old is a bit too young to really comprehend what the heck composting is, but he's not too young to make connections between a book and real life. How our library carries a book on composting but doesn't carry a single book or digital copy on Love & Logic for Early Childhood, I don't know. I digress.

My cute little nugget and a fun new book!

And for kicks, here's a video I shot just before naptime today. We usually wait until we have more than 5 scraps of lettuce, but for the video's sake, I wanted to show how great he's been at contributing to our dirt pile.

p.s. Glad most of you understood my humor about hippies-- I for one embrace my inner hippie and was just being funny. Hope that was obvious enough.

Bedroom Remodel

Not the expert photographer here, but I wanted to share all we've done to our bedroom! We started changing things a bit at the beginning of March and finished things with the dresser. It took about two months to add things here and there. We love it! Our goal was to upgrade to a more hotel chic space, but somewhat on the cheap because we have been working and plan to work on more house projects that were going to cost plenty. But we really needed a haven of our own and now we definitely feel like that goal was accomplished.

As you head upstairs, you see our bedroom. The left shows the canvas we were working with when we moved in 3 years ago. That's their furniture and horrid wallpaper! We stripped the wallpaper our first summer here and the right is what you see now.

We may have stripped the wallpaper, but we didn't do much decorating or matching. We moved in with early marriage furniture (aka: college furniture) but upgraded to a King for our enormous master bedroom. Except, it was just a bed frame. Embarrassing to admit it, but our mattress and box spring were on the floor for many months! Getting a cheap metal bedframe was an upgrade, sadly.

This is from the former owners on the left and what it looked like when we moved in and removed the wallpaper on the right. Neither are up to the times. I was halfway through my pregnancy with Andrew on the right, hence the teddy bear and baby swing.

The old office and the new office. Well, hardly new as the furniture in there remained the same. The desk is Pottery Barn and the chairs, Ikea. Lamp is Pier 1 and the big chair, Target. But since none of these were part of the remodel, I won't go into price details on those...

Standing from the office, you see the bedroom from another view. And a closeup of our upholstered headboard.

More headboard love. It's such great quality. We paid less than $300 for it, delivered!

Nightstands are from World Market and the inspiration for our dresser. They have a mostly classic, but slight Mid-Century Modern feel to them. I was stressing about having to pay shipping for these and then it dawned on me... um... call the store! Our local one had 4 in stock and we drove on over and picked these bad boys up. No shipping costs and they were on sale! Lamps are from Ikea, as are the lampshades. Those are Benjamin's sleepsacks under there because we dress him in our bedroom at night. And, a big ol' bottle of hand sanitizer from his newborn days...

More views of the whole bed area... and while we're here, I'll mention the new duvet and faux down comforter we bought for our bed. I feel like the comforter is a bit short for a King, but it is comfortable. Faux because my husband is allergic to everything animal pretty much. True story: When we met, he would always tell me he had huge sneeze attacks when he'd wake up in the morning. When I tried to crack the code, I discovered he had a down comforter, yet he was allergic to cats. While not the same thing, one thing should be a somewhat indicator of the other that you might have a teensy intolerance to pet furs and feathers. Gone was the comforter and gone were the sneezes! Also, that brown comforter from way above? Yeah, that was the replacement. Let's just say DKNY made it look way nicer about SIX years ago. Way past its prime and we even used that thing as a wrap for our items in the cross-country move! Needed to be retired BIG time. {embarrassing}

The canvases were made after our wedding and are not part of the remodel, but they did get switched around.

Our curtain story is rather interesting. We have narrow, tall windows and normal panels are far too much fabric for us to use both panels. I got the idea to cut each panel in half and no-sew (though I briefly considered a sewing machine purchase) hem them. I also had to trim the bottom because they were too long, which resulted in a lot of ironing and curtain work. We planned to buy two packs (4 panels) but as it was, we only needed 3 panels if I planned to cut and use only one panel per window. each set is $50, so it would have set us back $100. Not bad considering the quality and darkness of these curtains, but we'd have so much leftover fabric we paid for and didn't use. We resigned to being fine with that, but our Ikea has an "as-is" area near the checkout with a large textiles pile you can rummage through. And whatdoyouknow! We found a single panel for just $10 of the exact same curtain. So instead of two packages for $100, we paid $60 for the three panels we needed. Score. Savings, 40%. I bought three sets of curtain holdbacks and we had the look we wanted.

Little "helper"

These frames are Pottery Barn circa 2004 or something. Since we were dating, I had the same pictures and cards in them! We've been married almost 5 years, folks. Time for a switcheroo. After spending what felt like hours and hours on Etsy and Art.com, I followed my husband's lead and found two pictures we took and printed them. I used mpix because they have both great quality, and would print a 10x10 square like I wanted. Originally I wanted to select art and nothing related to our kids, but I kept coming back to this photos of Andrew's bulb we planted with a friend just after his first birthday and just before Benjamin's arrival. It sprouted for the first time that spring, just after Benjamin was born. I chose that picture to represent Andrew and the bottom picture of Benjamin touching the Pacific Ocean for the first time to represent him. If we have another child, the top picture will remain and we'll find another photo of Benjamin and that sibling to add to the frame and replace the beach one.

A local Kmart was going out of business, so I ended up heading in to see if I could snag a deal on holdbacks. They had some, but the deals weren't to be had. However, I did pick up a Bali brown blind to replace a PINK light-filtering shade that was previously there for three years. So. much. better.

Back to the dresser which I detailed in a previous post. All in, the cost was about $200. 

African man found a new home upstairs now that Benjamin can reach him. We bought $1 sticky felt and attached it to the bottom of the dish, wood boxes, and African man's feet so they wouldn't scratch up the nice surface on our new dresser. Note to anyone interested in refinishing furniture dark and using a high gloss finish. Don't. Dust can be seen much easier.

Cost:

Chambery Upholstered Headboard from Wayfair: About $280 (though now the price has increased!)

Werna Ikea Curtains: $50 + $10 panel from the As-Is area = $60
Ikea curtain rods, brackets, and finials: $9 per window

No-Sew Heat Bond Tape: $3

Going out of Business Kmart Bathroom Bali Blinds: $13
World Market Nightstands: $99 each, sale
Bran Lamp Bases from Ikea: $18 each
Jara Lamp Shades from Ikea: $15 each
Ivory Duvet & pillowcases from Overstock: Can't find it... but I think it was around $70
Down Alternative Comforter from Overstock: $40
Two King Size Beautyrest Pillows from Walmart: $15 each
Holdbacks from Menards: $8 each pair
Two 10x10 photos printed from mpix: $16 shipped
Sticky felt from Michaels: $1 each
Craigslist Dresser from my DIY refinishing project: $200

Total cost of remodel: $1,032 (though, prices above don't include taxes), so probably a bit more.

Foodie Resolution #14 of 52: Mexican Corn & Quinoa Salad & General Updates About Life

I'm what we call a huge failure when it comes to keeping this resolution. Fourteen measly recipes in 5 months? But, considering these are the least viewed of all my posts {sad posts about Andrew are always read & commented on heavily, just in case you were curious}, I don't think you're all too sad. But I do have a few loyalists and I'm pretty loyal to eating, so at least we've got that synchronized.

Dresser project #2 (aka: bane of my existence) will be done tomorrow if the weather doesn't dry the polycrylic faster than I can move my brush. I also owe you guys a bedroom makeover reveal and that's only being held back by my laziness to take photos and write out a blog. I blame the baby who walks over with approximately 241 books that he fully expects I read multiple times immediately.

Other things that have happened recently at Casa de Wilson: 2 trees got the ax. They were too close to the house. We chopped the majority ourselves and are having a tree guy come next week to stump grind them and pare down another tree. I freecycled our play yard/swingset and our yard looks so much bigger! They guy came and took it apart and hauled it away. The deck is getting a facelift soon and tons of yardwork has been done.

But right now? It's food time.

The other night I actually made a real dinner. One of the accompaniments was this salad that we really enjoyed. It just so happened I had the vegetables and ingredients all in my fridge. If there's one thing I hate, it's letting food spoil. So, I whipped this up and our bellies were pleased. I didn't add the jalapeno (because I used it all in my salsa... oops) or cotija because I didn't exactly have that obscure cheese just on hand, but the result was pretty spot-on. Raw corn just cut from the cob. True fact: Even with cooked or grilled corn on the cob, I cut it off the cob before eating it. I hate getting it stuck in my teeth and food on my face.

{Inspiration}

p.s. Thank you so much for the comments, suggestions, overall sympathy and empathy from my pathetic mama post about B's crappy eating habits. I really did learn some good gems of info. And for those who asked what my smoothie recipes are... I have none. Bananas, whole milk and peanut butter almost always make it in, otherwise the rest of the ingredients are a mixed bag. I fully intend to try some of those suggestions, so thanks. This is why blogging rocks so much. Complete strangers read and comment with their honest thoughts and we all help one another. I'd give you all a beer and have a toast if you weren't so... virtual.

I have 5 Minutes

Well, probably 20. Hopefully an hour. We'll see how long he sleeps. Random updates coming at you and maybe a few Instagram pictures because I totally failed to get that up and moving on Friday. I guess I don't like the routine as much as I thought. Maybe those will be sporadic from now on with just pictures I feel like re-posting.

• As I type this, a sweet little nugget is crib sleeping with the air filter (our white noise) on medium because our floors are being sanded and ground down to apply our first coat of epoxy. By Wednesday, we will have gone from concrete (carpet before our reno) to this:

• I'm working on a new naptime schedule. I used to nurse B right before naptime and then lay him down all groggy. But, I'd really like him to sleep without the expectation to nurse first. Instead, I now nurse him between naptimes and before bath instead of after. Eventually he'll need to be weaned, but more importantly, I want other people to be able to put him down to sleep without the milk requirement. Still no bottle, and don't even leave pumped milk for others at this point. My pump was shelved long ago as I hate the thing.
• He has been winking at us lately. It's adorable.
• We left B with friends for a few hours this Saturday to check out the Chicago Food & Wine Festival. I got freebie tickets from being a Yelp Elite! It was so nice to be on a date with just the two of us, even though it turns out we could've brought the monster. Here's a photo my friend sent me of B eating at his friend's house. Said friend's head is taking up 2/3 of this photo. Love it, Liz. :)

• Yes, he's a monster. He growls and everything. I'm re-thinking next year's Halloween costume from a dinosaur to a monster. One or the other. He will rock it, especially if he still growls like he has been lately when he's excited. I even had a friend ask if he was okay. Hah. 
• The army-crawler decided it was PARTY TIME (excellent) at 5 a.m. yesterday, so we all went downstairs and he played well after sunrise and then conked out again. But only for 45 minutes.
• Speaking of party time, his birthday is already being sort of planned. I have a few ideas (no themes, as I don't usually go for that method). He's being baptized at our house on his actual birthday. There's a lot of symbolism to that and I'll explain in more detail later. The grandparents have already booked their tickets!
• We're headed to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving and get to meet my sister-in-law's boyfriend! She's also meeting Benjamin for the first time. And, important food will be eaten at Primanti Brothers sometime on Friday. Yes, I would please like you to put french fries on my triple-grilled cheese sandwich. Obviously.
• Before Pittsburgh, we're staying in Cleveland, as it's about a 6.5 hour drive from Chi-town. New city for us! Anyone have recommendations for dinner?
• We booked another flight. Obviously. Because we can't sit still. And we're probably going to be booking a few more in the next month or so because we have tentative plans to get out of Dodge. Chicago in the winter? Brutal.
• I was chosen as a mom-blogger (omg) to go to an event downtown next month. I'll blog twice about it with more details. I'm pretty excited and maybe I'll meet some friends? It happens to take place on the identical day of the remembrance ceremony we attended for Andrew last year and planned to attend all years to come. I'm a bit sad, but we can still go hang his ornament on the tree another day. I might try to find another ceremony we can attend.
• Speaking of ornament... here it is. I also used this photo to represent Andrew on our Christmas card this year. First Christmas card ever, I think? Not the most uplifting card, but whatareyougonnado? It's reality. We wish he were here terrorizing our house like only 2-year old boys do. 

• "Visit funeral home" is officially on the whiteboard in our laundry room. Not exactly what you'd expect to see next to the grocery list, but we really need to make things right. I hope I can erase that soon. It's just mustering up the emotional energy to do it that will make the 2-mile drive a tough one.
• My culinary creativity has been sparse lately. Mostly because we've been working on basement stuff (by we, I mean mostly Ray, but that means I spent many days on 100% Benjamin duty.) That leaves little room, or energy to whip up fancy foods. I did manage to make this avocado bean dip. It was... okay. Turns out I prefer my beans and avocado separate. They can be in the same burrito or dip, but preferably not blended. Ingredients were minimal (white beans, avo, EVOO, cayenne, lime, salt). I used it as a high-protein spread for inside quesadillas last night. If eating like that, it was awesome. If as a dip, I'll stick to separate dips. I did use my Blendtec, and the texture was right on.

• I need to do a deep clean soon. One reason is because the basement floor guys just made a huge mess of dust in our house (I've barricaded us upstairs for the day), and two because Benjamin is managing to find all the other dust and dust bunnies and specs of dirt and everything I have failed to clean since he was born. Exhibit A:

• Champion eater is still on his game. We're thrilled. My friend Molly has scared me with her Instagram pictures of her daughter not wanting to eat a single vegetable on the planet. I fear toddlerhood. But also crave what I'm missing.

tomatoes, avocado, hummus, lentils.

clean plate club member

• I feed B an entire scrambled egg (with ketchup, gag) every morning. I know it's on the list of things you shouldn't feed your kid, but we let him try a bite a week ago and he dug it. Off to Trader Joe's I went to buy up a dozen and the kid has been taking them down. It appears no food allergy in sight. I was not too worried as he hasn't had a single poor reaction to anything thus far, or my breastmilk.
• We bought a bed and mattress for the basement. We also bought this art print to go on the wall covering the breaker box that used to have a random wood door covering it. When we realized the door would no longer fit the breaker because the drywall opening was cut too large, we decided to go for a piece of art to cover the space. $70 later to Art.com and $12.50 for a HUGE frame steal at Michael's and we'll have that bad boy covered in no time. Made me think of my design-savvy friend, Alli, who would've totally done something similar to cover up a gaping (but necessary) hole. I'm channeling the inner designer in me, my friend.
• We love Many Glacier at Glacier National Park. It is our dream to go back and stay at that lodge. Favorite national park, hands down. And from a family of travelers who have seen a whole lotta them, we sort of have good credential on the matter.
• We Skyped with my parents last night on the iPad and I walked around our entire kitchen island with B crawling to grab the iPad screen. Army crawling still, but he definitely gets around when motivated!
• We are going to be on the fast track to babyproofing very soon. Any recommendations on easy-to-use gates? I want one I can go in and out of via door (not stepping over) and pressure mounted. Any other recommendations on proofing items to buy or avoid?
• More pictures to end the post, because I hear the wee one stirring in his baby cage. Off to rescue him for more chewing on every cord he can find exploration!

Hi Mom. Totally proud of my skills.

I spy a little guy...

Hey Ma, pretend like you don't see this, mmmkay?

Baby, turned little boy.

Checking out the flooring guy's truck.

Around the House Randoms

We moved into our home in March 2010. Last month, I uncovered this from the top shelf of our coat closet:

The brown paper = brown paper. I know, exciting stuff. I was hoping to uncover a secret treasure map by their two boys, Joe & Jacob. How do I know their names, you ask? Well...

They left their mark in our garage. We half wondered if we'd add to the madness and paint Andrew's name. Then he died. Now we just want to paint the whole darn thing.

Moving on. The large white scroll is a layout of our entire property and the landscaping. Thank goodness they invested in that because we have close to no creativity in that arena. I did, however, pull a grip of weeds today. Why doesn't anyone use "grip" anymore? Dang. Miss that word.

The notebook? It turns out that the two boys wrote a journal together on a family trip to India. They are an Indian family and they now live in Florida. They were the second owners of our house. The first owners also moved to Florida. I can assure you we will not be moving to Florida. I already have my sights set on retiring in the Pacific Northwest. You know. In 30+ years. Until then, we're staying put in the flat-as-a-pancake state.

My favorite entry: January 15, 2003

"Few minutes before landing at Ohare. I am ready for home, for my N64, for my toys and for my friends. But it is sad to leave behind my family. My favorite part of the vacation was climbing the mountain at (?). I am leaving behind in India crowded streets, sales people that never stop asking you to buy their product, bars on the windows of every single house, the kitchens that are too big (who complains about that?), driving on the opposite side of the road, the Indian food except for Dosa, the heat and the dirtiness and the way you wash your butt."

Doesn't that look like a woman's writing? Nope. A boy.

 My favorite is how he writes quite sophisticated and then switches over to crappy kid writing at the end as he writes about wiping his butt. In his defense, the context of his writing suggests that the plane might be landing. That could cause for anyone's writing to shift gears a bit.

And here I go shifting gears. This is the blueberry banana walnut oatmeal from...................................

McDonald's! Anyone else surprised? It was awesome and there were at least 25-30 fresh blueberries on top! The best part, it was free! McD's sent me a freebie promotional coupon for this new oatmeal and I tried it out. It was no steel cut as I'm normally used to eating, but it was pretty darn good.

Want more freebies? How about this! My friend Liz sent me an email yesterday telling me that if I were to drop off a bag at my local Goodwill store, I'd get a voucher for a pair of free Tim McGraw lawn tickets! I sent that bad boy in yesterday. We'll see if two tickets show up in my mailbox now.

We have a huge deck and animals love visiting us. We get raccoons all the time (ick), Orioles, Cardinals, Robins, squirrels, foxes, and bunnies! Here was a little guy I spotted yesterday. They enjoy living underneath the deck so we always have quite a few around to enjoy. True Wilson fact: we can't stand house pets but love wildlife.

Closeup with this baby bunny.

And finally... this almost needs its own post.

We have a plant that has died and has come back to life many times. We received it as a condolence gift after Andrew died. It's about 6 months old. Ugh. It's actually a Peace Lily but the main lily was looking pretty shabby so I chopped it. There's another small one, but it can't be seen in these photos. We treat it much like a houseplant and don't really like to associate the plant with Andrew. As a matter of fact, we held onto most plants we were sent for a couple days and then had a friend come pick them up and take them to the nursing home she works at. They likely enjoyed them more than we did.

Here's what I noticed at about 11:40 a.m. yesterday. Peace lily was looking quite dead.

This was about 3-4 hours later after I fed him water.

And an hour after that... around 5 p.m. yesterday, no joke.

It's somewhat nice because it always tells us when it's thirsty unlike most plants we attempt to keep that end up wilted, yellowed, and broken. Weird, huh?

That's all, folks.

It's ON Like Donkey Kong

I don't get the saying, but whatever.

Continuing on with the our baby-is-supposed-to-be-here-but-he's-not Distraction projects #'s 2 &3. Popcorn ceiling scrape and wallpaper removal of the family room. This is going to be one classy space once the entire 70's decade is removed.

Sometimes I just want to go back in time (okay, I want that a lot) and just ask the former owners what on earth they were thinking...