The STUMP!

So I have been waging war with this stump in my yard for the past three days!

I told myself that i had to finish today b/c tommorrow begins the brushy pickup in my neighborhood and i didnt want to hold on to this thing for another 6 months.

Now let me tell you a little something about stump removal. Its easy, but its hard work. Now i had never removed a stump until last year, when My dad taught me how to do it on a tree that had died in our backyard. Heres the trick...Whenever you cut down the tree, you should leave at least 4 feet of tree trunk. This gives you something to push on or throw a chain around to hook up to your truck (you might be a redneck if...)

Well the probelm with this stump, is that I cut it down a long time ago when we first moved into the house, and i didnt know better at the time, and i had just cut it pretty low, about 6 inches to a foot off the ground. Lame

Well, it is now in the front yard, and a definite hazard for baby G.

Well, for those that dont know, heres a quick lesson on stump removal, and yes, I know, you could rent a stump grinder, but that costs money/time, its heavy and big, you got to get it to your house somehow/ blah blah

and yes, i know you can cut a grid into the stump with a chainsaw and pour some concoction and in it and it will eventually rot away.

Things you will need
1. gloves
2. steel toed boots
3. a big glass of water
4. safety goggles
5. a mattock
6. a shovel
7. a wheel barrow
8. more water
9. a chainsaw
10. a landscape bar (most important)


wait! this blog is about decorating! and baby! i dont know what came over me,
if you ever need help just ask me, i now have all the tools, and one less stump!

Mural Nixed!

whoa!

in what has been dubbed the most stunning revelation to come out of the nursery blog to date, We have decided to forget the whole Mural all together! I know that this saddens many of you, but rest assured that it doesn't sadden me!

Im going ahead with the birds instead! bam! done deal!



well, not quite really. i am still deciding on the positioning.

Heres the thing with the mural, it was going to be a lot of work. not that im afraid of that, but i am running out of time, and i dont want to be rushed and frustrated and working up till the last minute. And the other thing is the whole, sticking it up there. Eventually its going to come down, and i dont want to have to wreck the walls getting it off.

And there you have it.

The catch up

The Garcias see the Houston sights!

So I havn’t been blogging lately, no need to call John Walsh, I have just been busy/tired.

After our trip to Houston (don’t get mad Houston peeps we were only there for 2 days)
We came back and realized that we have entered the final month! What I have been referring to as “crunch time”. Theresa and I have sat down and really nailed down the more important things that need to get done in the next two weeks, and obviously the mural is not a priority.



We had a great time in Houston. We visited the BodyWorlds exhibit at the natural science museam and took time to check out the dinosaurs that were there on permanent display. I love dinosaurs if you didn’t know.





We also walked around the mall there in the design district and wound up riding this little train that goes around the park there in the museum district.


us on the train

We also took in the Rothko Chapel as well as the Meinl Collection.
I would have to say that the Rothko Chapel was the highlight, being as that I’m a big Rothko fan, but everything was great, even dinner at IKEA on our way out of town.

So back in Austin we decided to do touristy things. We went on the Austin Duck Tour,




Rode the Zilker Zephr around Zilker Park


us on the zephr


and had bad food with a fabulous sunset view at the Oasis (their famous for this).


sunset at oasis

Seriously, talk about oversized proportions.
This is a nacho appetizer for ONE TO TWO people. We couldn’t even finish 3/4s of it.

nachos of death!

Well then Theresa had a great baby shower (girls only) that she said was an awesome and fun time. T and I are very grateful to all the gifts that were given to us, And really appreciative of Charity putting it all together with some help from others im sure.


T and Micah (charity's son)





Not to be outdone, My good pals John and Tony took me out to dinner at Uchi , my fav place in austin




and then Cool River for cigar smoke and billiards. They also bestowed upon me a box of cigars to pass out for when baby G arrives. Look, the box is even blue.


Well, one of the things on the to-do list is to put up a concrete patio in the front of the house where some existing shrubs live. That, along with putting up a replacement fence on the right side of our house has been escalated to priority one.



Well I got as far as cutting down the shrubs, and then I thought that this might be best left to a professional, so I put down the home depot book and picked up the phone!

I am happy to say that my friend Crazy Aaron is available to do the work and work is to begin next week on Tuesday! Theresa and I are super excited.

So lets get back to decorating shall we.

The babycare lambskin throw came in! its sooo soft. We were also going through a nursery items checklist and came across the suggestion of a cd player. This meant I got to buy something electronic!

So I started looking around for a small, white, cd player/radio, that also had an alarm and a dock for an IPOD. It was a pretty tall order. I wanted it to be future ready, to get the most out of my money. But thinking about it now, ipods will be old news by the time he knows how to work it, or they’ll at least change them so that it doesn’t work with my player.



I did find this player sans alarm clock, but oh well, and only $100! Shush, don’t tell Theresa.

So getting back to the tree Mural, I have had a couple of friends tell me about moj poj or something like that, I have been going back and forth on the whole thing. I saw these really cool wall application stickers at IKEA. They were bamboo stalks that you could put up. Wall stickers. I didn’t get em though. Not a fan of the bamboo. Id prefer the tree.

Whats more important than the mural is the doors.!!

I took off the doors in the nursery and the bedroom when I painted and have yet to buy new ones. I want some white ones for the bedroom and some natural colored birch ones for the nursery. This will be the very next project that I will be undertaking with the help of my friend Tony. Hmm….i should go give him a call.

Here is the Sunday picture from last week.

week 35!

New addition to the family

Please joing me in welcoming the latest additions to the family


These Vintage Eames Chairs were a steal off of Craigslist. I wont tell you how much i paid for them becuase i dont want to make anyone jealous!

They are low to the ground, and very baby friendly! perfect for the little one to cruise around the room and eventually to crawl into.

So this morning i went to a "dads and newborns" class at Connections
This class was free mind you, and offered little insight, but some pretty good entertainment from the cast of characters that HAD to be there because of Child Protective Services.
We were going around the room doing the normal introductions, and apparantyl i was the only one there on my own free will. It was pretty funny. but not really.


So lets talk about the mural


I have gotten a lot of feedback regarding my idea of foam core not holding up to the baby. Well i dont want it getting all torn up, so i think im going to glue the wood straight on to the wall. i will probably do a series of tests.

Theresa and I are going to Houston and will be back on Thursday, so no blogs till friday! see you then

Sunday Picture

WEEK 34!

And now from the front!


In case i have not said previously, We tried to have the Cesarian scheduled for friday August 25 but they were booked so its going to be on Aug. 24 (thursday)

Now, back to the Mural saga!

So take a look at the picture below of this double sided 8 foot poster.

Might you be thinking what Im thinking?

Well I saw this poster about to be thrown away and was like, HOLD THE PHONE!
i could make the Tree Mural out of cutout pieces of wood grain from the poster!

Talk about keeping it real!

Now the other side of the poster is a seperate sheet. and its ALL woodgrain. No text or nothing. I think if im efficient, i can do it.

Now heres the next problem. The texture of the wall is sooo think that i dont think that i can just paste the pieces on to the wall directly. So what im going to do is go to Miller Blue Print to pick up some 8ft by 4ft pieces of foam core.

Im going to spray mount the posters to the foam core and then cut the pieces for the tree out with an exacto knife, then flush tack the pieces to the wall.

stay tuned!

miniblinds be gone!

so today i wanted to knock out a few things that have been bothering me before I started work on the mural. One thing that has been bothering me is this big ol empty planter that has been sitting in my backyard forever. Its a bloom pot, unfortuanatly it doesnt work..hence the reason its sitting in MY backyard. We broke it at work one day when we fashioned it into a beer cooler for a party.

So i went to Big Red Sun to pick up a plant. I got a Cape Rush...a native grass to south africa. Well, since i was dirty i went ahead and planted the cactus that my dad brought me from my Grandmas house, like...a year ago. And as an added bonus, my friend Bonnie (who works at Big Red Sun) hooked me up with some succulents that were not "retail worthy"


when i retire i will pretty much just maintain a cactus garden and be a Mr. Miagi type.

So. with that out of the way i moved on to changing out the miniblinds in the nursery. Here is a before picture.


Now i had this idea to paint the inside of the window box purple. making a giant square. so i began with that. I taped things off and went to Home depot to buy new vertical blinds. Now Normally i would go with the 2 inch horizontal faux wood blinds like the ones in the bedroom, but the window was so big that i would have to special order them to the tune of $230. thats right special order. thats too long. But seriously i wanted vertical b/c they are safer. no cords to get tangled in., just the wand to tear off and use as a lightsaber.

Well i did it. painted, then put up the blinds. But the final look was not what i was going for. In my mind i pictured a square of purple surrounding the window. well. in the top picture you will see that with the valance. there is no purple on top at all,
so i took it off, and while you can see purple, it looks pretty ghetto.



So i have decided to try and paint the valance purple. not sure if this will work. b/c the valance is just vynl. not sure if it will take paint. and I also dont like how the window sill is purple on the front. im thinking i should just paint that white again, but then..ohh we'll see. i might just wind up painting a big square around the whole thing.

so the dresser comes with different colored panels to use with it. so i grabbed the pink ones which i will never use, and painted them purple too


So i was going to paint all of them, but im kinda liking the multi look.



mural later.

Mural Showdown!

I have been racking my brain over the mural lately. What color. What design. I think i will have it,and then I'll get another idea. I had it figured out, but then my friend Bonnie says, "so basically you got 3 upside down peace signs squinched together."

Yeah, thats what I got. I couldnt shake that thought. That I was subliminaly trying to make my kid a hippie. So i started looking at the mural, and I was like...these dont even look like trees. they look like wheat or something.



Three pieces of wheat.

So then this next design comes to me...



And I decide to do it in purple. So after looking at the swatchbook forever trying to decide on which purple to go with I decide that this is the design, and purple is the color. So today I head down to ecowise and pick up the paint. Then its off to see my friend Bonnie who's going to give me some pointers and tools to help me out. I break down the project for her, and tell her how i originally was going to do two trees that i saw in an issue of Wallpaper a long time ago. She asks to see a sketch. So I sketch it out, and the sketch looks really good, and bonnie likes it.
So now I'm like, "great! now I'm thinking I should do this!" So i go home and start sketching it out on the computer. Now my friend Amy had tracked the actual issue of Wallpaper for me when she heard that I was desperattly in search of these trees. She scanned the pic and sent it my way, but i had already designed the "peace sign mural" so i didnt even think about it. But today I did a very similar adaptation of it and i like it a bunch.



Now i have also been trying to keep in mind whats best for the montessori method. Montessori says that the room has to be soothing and calm and that all decoration should be as life like as possible. Montessori keeps it real! And while tress arent really purple...

Now both of these designs look like trees, i think i have sold myself on the design i came up with today. I was originally going to ask my readers which one they liked most, but i have already decided. I really am liking the 2 trees.

In the morning i will begin!

WEEk 33 Sunday Picture

Here we are, the Sunday picture.


Week 33

Oh and if I did not mention it before, We are going to try and schedule the baby for Aug 25. thats a friday. We still have not checked to see if this day will work for our doctor who will be delivering the baby. I will keep you posted.

Well theresa got mad that i didnt mention that The Salvation Army came and got her old car wich she called "Free". Theresa personifys things that way, especially cars. She was all, "i figured out the camera and everything, and you didnt even post a picture"

Well here it is!



So i think im going to try and paint the mural on Tuesday.
Here is a previsualized rendering.

Explicit

So there I am, sitting at the computer about to buy a song off of the internet, and I have the choice to download the "explicit version" or the "clean version". You can see where this is going...But its true, I already think about everything differently...how does this affect baby? I dont think my parents had this problem, Can you imagine. going through your parents stuff and coming across a naughty mp3 called "Drop it like its hot".

Cuzz you know, that will be babys first medium, the Ipod and computers. Like, should i teach my kid "old school" by first introducing the CD? NO, I dont think so.

Anyway, so im trying to figure out how all these parental controls work and what not, not that clean versions even make a difference. Even if its clean, its bad, (speaking of hip-hop music anyway)

so I think I am going to have to limit my hiphop jams to the Ipod, hmm, but that won't stop him either, he'll want to play with that too, maybe i should get two Ipods. mmm, i like that idea. One can be a decoy with nothing but Sting and classical, while the other has all the dirty jams.

I wonder if the little one will pick up on my bad spanish slang...well of course he will. Golly,
im going to have to figure that one out too.

I think my next project is going to be the mural, so im going to pick out paint colors ASAP!

Sunday Picture

WEEK 32!

We just got back from another class, this one on "what to expect for those first couple of days"
all very good information.

Earlier today Theresa and I ran some errands. I took back some pillows to TARGET wich no longer worked with the new bedroom color pallete. Luckily, they accept returns for up to 90 days!
How cool is that!

We also went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore to donate our interior door that were in the bedroom and the nursery.

I think the doors might be the next project. Speaking of Donating...

Theresa donated her car to the salvation army. Goodwill will only accept running cars FYI.

We are loving the new car!

bed made

yay! the bed is now complete! took long enough!