Shades of Grey

I went to the store in search of some moisturizer to fend off this winter dryness that was taking over both of our skin. I found what I was looking for, but out of curiosity, wandered into the clearance section to see what they had. I used to venture this beauty store all the time and they would have OPI nail polish on clearance for sometimes more than 50% off retail price.

Sure enough, there was a small selection of OPI available at reasonable prices. One line was a gel lacquer and I was curious to try it out and see how long it would last on my nails. I'm notorious for being careless with my hands and the worst person to get a manicure - I ruin it in less than a week. I've chipped nail polish while cutting vegetables with a kitchen knife, I've chipped it playing piano, I've chipped it working outside in the yard. Yeah, I'm not gentle or kind on my hands at all. But being that I hadn't had a new color of polish in about four years, I was curious to try this new line and try a new color.

At the last minute, I changed my mind and decided I didn't need to spend any money on nail polish, paid for the moisturizer, and left the store.

Well, I kept thinking about this polish and being curious to try it. I kept thinking about it so much that five days later, I decided to go back to the store and get it (if it was still there.) Hubby was with me this time and I told him to help me pick a color he thought would be suitable and nice to try. I showed him the few in the gel lacquer line they had and he approved of the color I wanted.

OPI Infinite Shine 2 Gel Lacquer in "Reach for the Sky"

Once I got home, I was curious to try it and see how the gel lacquer differs from their regular nail lacquer. Overall, my review of the product is probably mediocre.

Ease of application: I felt like this polish is no easier to put on than their regular nail lacquer. For some reason I thought it would be, but I guess that may have been my own misconception.

Appearance: It's a shiny nail polish. If that's the look you want, it definitely meets the criteria.

Likelihood of Chipping: So far, I think this nail polish does hold up better than the regular line. I haven't done anything super hands-on since putting it on, but it's held up to the times I've practiced piano and done chores around the house. I haven't been extra careful or anything and so far there's no chips. I'll have to update this one after a few weeks. 

Now besides the quality of the actual polish, I was quite enamored by this color. Maybe that's why I was willing to drive back five days later to take a chance and see if it was still there. After I painted it on, I instantly liked it. I tend to stick to darker colors because my skin is more tan than fair, and lighter colors make it look even darker, but I really liked this one as a lighter shade of blue grey. 

After putting it on, I also started to see more connections with the color choices around our house.

Our bath rug

Our kitchen backsplash

The bench in my studio

Our wall color

Inadvertently, it even matches the shade of my blog!

The lighting in the pictures don't do all the colors justice, but there's definitely a resemblance to be found around our house. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if a few months from now I completely change my mind because pregnancy tends to change a lot more in women than just their physical appearance. But for now, it's a nice refreshing color to have as a choice. And I might actually choose to take the time and do my nails. ;)

Paper Blinds

16 years ago when my family moved into our new house (which is still my dad's current house,) we had the builders install window blinds for us. However, before the blinds arrived, we asked them to cover up the windows so we'd have some privacy without people looking in as they walked past. They put up these paper blinds on all the windows until the blinds were delivered and installed.

After the real blinds were put up, we saved every single paper blind and shoved them all in a cabinet in the laundry room. My mother's mentality was, "You never know when they'll come in handy again." Yes, mother.

They sat in the laundry room cabinet for years, and years, and years, and years, and years. And it's a slight miracle nobody threw them out. I don't think anyone ever even opened the cabinet actually.

Fast forward about 14 years when my husband and I bought our house. It had its fair share of problems. The blinds were actually very minor in comparison to the other issues we encountered. They were mismatched between the rooms - 2 inch faux wood here, vinyl mini blinds there - as well as some that had been damaged and chewed up. The ones in working condition were yellowed with age and dated-looking.

The blinds in our bedroom were the ones which had been damaged and chewed up. Rather than leave them in their current half-functioning state, we took the blinds down altogether, retrieved the 14 year old paper blinds tucked away so neatly in storage from my dad's house, and taped them to our windows. (Yes, I remembered they were still there.)

As you can see in the background,
our paper blinds being put to use once again.

Blinds were one of the projects that constantly got shoved on the back burner because there was always something else needing work. I occasionally looked to see if anything was on sale, but the prices only seemed to be increasing. Also, with the paper blinds up, it was very easy not to notice them as a problem and just to see them as the real blinds in our house. Aesthetically, it was not the best, but when you've seen something day after day, it becomes your normal, and you accept it.

Recently, I stumbled across some blinds on sale and curiosity actually led me to go online and search the website for our sizes. I found some that would work for a few of our rooms and went ahead and bought them. We were able to get them installed in our bedroom and swap out the paper blinds.

Bye bye paper!

It's actually quite nice to be able to sit at my desk and write this blog while having a slight view of our backyard outside. Before, the light was able to filter in through the paper, but it was still opaque enough not to see through. Now, I can steal glimpses at yellowing grass.

I can just imagine my mother's voice saying to me, "See, you found a use for the paper blinds! Aren't you glad we kept them all these years?" Yes, mother. 

I am glad we kept them, and I am glad we got a good two and a half years of use out of them. What I wouldn't remind her of is that home improvement stores actually sell those paper blinds...and they're not super cheap either! 

If we had the money and budget to buy blinds two and a half years ago, I wouldn't be here telling this story of how we reused old folded paper. So I guess the story credit would have to go to our frugalness.

Real blinds are still better. 

Teddy

This is Teddy.



Today is Teddy's 17th birthday. She's been through a lot with me these last nearly two decades, and she wasn't supposed to be mine to begin with.

Our Sunday school teacher at church motivated us with a point system. We would earn points for memorizing Bible verses, completing worksheets, and participating in class. The points could be used to trade for prizes at the end of the semester. I didn't particularly care about earning points so I didn't make an effort to do anything extra aside from going to class on Sundays because I had to go to church.

On the Sunday when we were trading in our points for prizes, the teacher pulled out an array of toys, games, and trinkets, and displayed them on the table. He called up the students first with the highest points earned that year to choose their prizes. After everyone with points had chosen their prizes, he was still left with a lot of toys and gifts on the table. He piled them all back into his bag but then changed his mind and pulled them back out again and set them on the table. He started calling us up one at a time to go pick something, not because we had earned the points to get a prize, but because he deemed us worthy of choosing one. He called me up to pick a prize and said I paid attention in class and didn't disrupt the class during lessons.

I timidly walked up and picked one of the few remaining teddy bears from the table and brought it back to my seat. From the very beginning, there was something so charming and so cute about this little bear.

Over the years, this bear has seen it all - the good days and the bad. Her wounds and scars are just a sampling of the experiences we've endured together. Her nose is no longer perfectly smooth and shiny, but chipped in small places from years of play and some abuse. There's a furless line running down the front from every time she's been through the washing machine, each time growing a little longer until it reached from her neck seam to the leg. She's missing toes on her left leg because the threads have pulled out. Her stuffing and beads are all mashed up and in the wrong places now. Both of her legs have been torn through years of ransom tug of war with my mother, and of course, I'd always have to let go through tears when I heard the seam rip. And my mother always sewed it up because she knew how I loved the bear.

I actually ran into my old Sunday school teacher at our church about a year ago. I mustered up the courage to walk up to him and say hi. He vaguely remembered that class and some of the other students. I told him about the bear he'd given to me and how I still had it. He met my husband and was a bit surprised at how early we'd gotten married.

Even now, 17 years later, weathered and worn, she possesses this same charm and cuteness. Happy birthday little bear. I've not forgotten that you were given to me through grace.

Happy Birthday

Today is one of my student's birthdays. He's a sweet little boy bursting at the seams with energy. When he first started with me, I really wanted to talk to mom about waiting to take lessons because he was bouncing off the bench at every lesson. I think part of it was also my lack of energy and not feeling well early on in pregnancy. Three months later, he's been one of my fastest students to learn how to read notes on a staff! He still has boundless energy and can't sit still, but I'm definitely more equipped to handle that when I feel like myself instead of nauseated.

Today is his birthday, and ever since I started teaching I told myself I wanted to do something special for my kids on their birthday. Most of them get a card. Sometimes if I know the student a little better, I can get them a small trinket. But even then, a card from your piano teacher is pretty special.




Especially when your name is embossed in silver glitter :)

As a piano student myself years ago, my teacher never paid any attention to my birthday. I honestly don't think he ever knew it, although it was probably tucked away in a contact info binder somewhere. My last birthday spent as a piano student, I remember being reprimanded because I was excited for my birthday party (and apparently wasn't practicing enough because of my excitement...) and wanted to try fake nails for homecoming that year. He gave me a look of disgust and told me they had to be gone right after the dance was over. Little did he know, less than 24 hours after putting them on, I spent the night painstakingly taking them off because as nice as they looked and as much as I loved the clickety-clack sound, I couldn't stand the feeling of my nails being so long after all. Being a pianist for 12 years had trained my sensations far too well, and even now, I keep my nails trimmed quite short.

This boy is only turning six. I hope he never has to experience the guilt of being overly excited for his birthday because his piano teacher wasn't satisfied with his performance. I hope he keeps his bubbly personality no matter how well or poorly he plays piano. And I hope regardless of how long I teach him, he will have a good memory of me. Because in the end I don't think it's what we offer to others that creates the legacy. It's who we are when we offer them.

The Last will be First and the First will be Last

The ones hired in the morning agreed to work for one denarius. The ones hired in the afternoon who worked fewer hours were still paid one denarius. There's nothing unfair about this because each individual agreed to what was arranged. Although still just as important, my title is inferring something just a bit different to Jesus's parable in Matthew.

We bought our house with three full bathrooms ranging in size from small to medium to large. The only one considered updated at the time was the small bathroom. Seven months after closing, we embarked on our first full-on DIY bathroom renovation and worked on the medium bathroom. It took us about three weeks working late nights and weekends along with our day jobs. After completing this project, this bathroom now became the nicest one in the house.

Obviously, we were still using our master bathroom. The original toilet seven years older than us and a super skinny shower door were nothing compared to the convenience of having an attached en suite.

Three and a half months ago, we made the decision to do our last and largest renovation project on the inside of our house - not completely DIY. We said goodbye to our 80's bathroom which is now remembered solely by these pictures alone:

Vanity Before

Take 2: Goodbye nasty cabinets that previous
homeowners did not take care of keeping clean

Shower: Goodbye 18 inch shower door that's
almost too skinny for a 24-inch-waisted person
to walk through straight-on

Bathtub: A very inefficiently small oval tub in a large space

And then came the fun but physically stressful part: Demolition. Last we left off, everything was boxed up and placed at the curb outside in a limited exhibition. Here's what the inside looked like.

Look at that him go with that 20 pound tool. That was no joke. 

Even just blogging about this and seeing the in-progress pictures is already making me tired again. We were thankful to have been able to move to a spare bedroom in our house and use the other bathrooms to completely clear the space so it didn't really feel like we were living through a renovation. We also had the luxury of a door to the back patio from our bedroom which the contractors used, so they stayed out of the main living area of the rest of our house so I could teach and live somewhat normally. However, I won't downplay the amount of cleaning we had to do in our bedroom and bathroom after the contractors finally finished walking in and out of our room and bathroom. There was a lot of vacuuming and a lot of mopping.

In the end, our bathroom, which ended up last to be renovated and took the most patience (in waiting for contractors to come and finish their parts) and money, is now the nicest space to bathe in our house.

New vanity with double the storage as before and a much more refreshing color scheme.

New tub - takes up just as much space as the last one, but double the bathing space
with a much more spa-like appearance and style.

We borrowed about half of the space which used to be that giant cabinet
and enlarged the shower. Frameless glass makes the shower open to the
rest of the bathroom and gives it a clean, sleek design. The door is
the proper width and built to today's code.

We haven't finished the shelves to the left of the shower yet (as you can see from the empty space in the last picture), but we're not in a rush. And having tapped out of the project halfway through due to other priorities....I'm definitely giving my husband a break on that one.

We also don't have mirrors yet because we haven't found ones that are the right size which we like. If you have any ideas, please let us know where to shop! We've scrounged Homegoods, Ross, At Home, and Kirklands.

I've also mentioned to Jonathan several times that I will not be attempting anymore large-scale DIY renovation projects around the house after this one. Not sure if it's the pregnancy stealing my energy and motivation away, or if my first-house-energy is truly drained. Either way, we will definitely be taking it easy for a LONG time in terms of house projects. However, we will not be taking it easy in terms of life for the next 18 years.....

Bye Bye AIM

Recently, AIM announced that in December of this year, they will be completely shutting down. For most of us who hit our teens around the turn of the century back in 2000, AIM was the way to communicate. Since most of us didn't have cell phones yet, we'd get home from school, log onto the computer, and sign onto AIM for hours at a time. It was a huge distractor from getting homework done, and definitely the coolest way to communicate at the time. Our buddy lists were organized in a certain fashion and the VIPS were listed somewhere up at the top. We could even set alerts for when specific "special" people signed on. And invisible mode to avoid those we didn't wish to talk to.

Most of us remember using AIM to talk for hours with our BFFs, BFs, GFs, or just to have a social life. We remember starting and ending relationships over AIM. We remember asking each other for help with homework or doing group project meetings in a chat room. We remember creating multiple screen names so we could sign on secretively and simply talk to those we wanted to and avoid the rest. But one of my most fond memories of AIM (because I have plenty of memories I'm not fond of) was using it to complete a project in the 10th grade.

In Humanities, we had a project....somewhere in our Greek/Roman unit. It was near the end of the school year and we had to showcase our knowledge of five important people from the time period (I think.) For my project, I created a yearbook and had my five important people attempt to work together to complete a year-end project in their creative arts class. I made them each a screen name on AIM and signed into all five at once and created a chatroom conversation between the five of them. Thinking back, it was a lot of fun to create, but a lot of work to play five different characters all at once. I had to make sure I was typing in the right AIM window at the right time so the right person would be saying the right dialogue. The entire conversation ended up being eight pages long.

A1exand3rth3Gr8t
Mich31ange1o
Arist0tle says
Stuck 1nLimb0
Egyptian Qu33n17

I went back to my dad's house to retrieve this gem of a project, which is now over 10 years old, and revisit their chatroom conversation. I read the entire thing aloud to Jonathan, and through it, I was quite surprised at how witty I was for a 16 year old doing a high school project. (I also found a few typos and missed words, but hey, that happened in real life AIM conversations, too, right?) Amidst the mandatory "this is a school project and I need to cram in the necessary information to score points on my rubric," there were a number of moments scattered about which made me think, "Man, this was a well-executed project."

In addition to being a school project, I was able to add some hints of entertainment throughout and use real life anecdotes to keep it interesting.



I rode the bus to and from home that year, and someone really did throw a can out the window one afternoon on our way home. Our bus driver wasn't the friendliest guy either. He literally stopped the bus in the right lane of a rather busy main street, walked all the way down to lecture this kid and closed every single window on the bus. We were all about 45 minutes late arriving at our stops that afternoon.

One of the two Humanities teachers was also the person who inspired the title of my first book I self-published years ago. Ever since he mentioned it in class that day, the phrase stuck with me and I still haven't forgotten it. Depending on who actually graded my project - since we had two teachers and they usually split the work - if it was indeed him who read through this conversation, I hope he had a good grin at the reference.




I don't know how many students ever incorporated the use of AIM for a school project, but after December, nobody will ever be able to. I'm glad I thought of this 10 years ago and that it turned out well. Unfortunately, this class was definitely my lowest grade...probably in all of high school, but I got an A on the project. :)

Capable and Efficient

*I've had so many thoughts over the last few months, but things have just been so chaotic and I haven't had a chance to really process. So here's the first of catching up on months worth of blog posts.*

Jonathan and I joke around that my middle name was efficient. That's just the way I like to do things: very orderly, in an organized fashion, efficiently, and well. If I didn't know how to do it efficiently, I would figure it out. I would even joke with him that he married me because I was capable and efficient. We all know that's not true.

Well, after I got pregnant, I learned very suddenly and very quickly that I was going to be neither capable nor efficient for a while. I was not one of the lucky women who breezes through first trimester without feeling sick. I didn't wash the dishes. I didn't cook. I couldn't look at a computer screen for long periods of time. Any hint of smells sent me running. I didn't want to eat anything. We couldn't eat meals together or even in the same room. My stomach felt like it was churning constantly. I could barely get myself to shower. I went from being the wife who could work an eight-hour day, leave the office, run to two grocery stores, come home, and have a home-cooked meal ready by 6:30 pm, to this slob of a person who only changed when she had piano lessons to teach, and spent the other waking hours of the day in bed sleeping or hugging the toilet.

There was one lesson when one of my younger students even commented, "Is that your kitchen? It looks messy." I just politely smiled back and said, "Yes, that is my kitchen, and yes, it's a little messy. I haven't had time to clean it lately." Of course, in my head, I was secretly muttering, you have no idea what my life is like right now, kid. 

Despite my inefficiencies and lack of capability to do much of anything for myself, my wonderful, sweet husband stepped it up about 500% and took over at home after working a full day's work. We were blessed with friends who shared food for us him so he didn't have to live a bachelor lifestyle of PBJ and cold cut sandwiches for weeks on end. He washed the dishes, or I got used to living with dirty dishes piling in the sink for a while until he had time to load the dishwasher - this is where two people having 12 sets of plates and bowls and silverware for eight is NOT excessive. He fetched things for me when I felt too sick or too afraid to move for fear to get sick. He went out a countless number of times to buy things for me to eat or drink because I just had to have that specific item right then and there, and because hardly anything was staying down, we tried everything to find something that would.

Not only did he take over the daily household chores at home, but he singlehandedly finished the remaining DIY parts of our bathroom after the contractors did their part. He painted the cabinets, patched and painted the walls where we had removed old shelving, installed two vanity lights, two faucets, two P-traps, two towel rings, one toilet paper holder, and one towel bar, swept the floor, mopped the floor, and re-caulked the baseboards and crown molding. This doesn't even include the night he exterminated an ant infestation in our kitchen at 10pm at night.

And he did it all without complaining or getting irritated at me for not being able to do more.

I'm very grateful to be finally feeling better after what feels like a very long two months. It's refreshing to be able to get up and do things around the house without feeling like a complete potato (which we joked I wasn't even comparable to a potato because at my lowest, I probably had less nutrition in me than a potato). I'm slowly feeling more and more like myself, although some moments of queasy still sneak up on me here and there.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever go back to being my old, normal self, but I don't think our normal will ever be the same again. And honestly, it's okay. What needs to get done will get done whether efficiently or messily. And everything else finds a way.