shiso mama

The to-do list, she is getting shorter. Here are some of the home projects we’ve been working on in recent weeks.

We bought this chair off craigslist for $20. It was an unfinished project that had been sitting in some guy’s family room for ages. It appeared for some time that the chair would suffer the same fate in our house, since I had originally intended to upholster some cushions as a present for F’s present. Last September. Or was it our anniversary? Last May? Well, it is finally finished, although now we’ve moved it into the baby’s room, and the fabric doesn’t exactly scream BABY or NURSERY to me. Oh well. We still need to refinish the wood, but at least it’s usable now, and that gives us ages more procrastination time.

Why does a person need to sew a laundry hamper, exactly? Hmm, it may be one of the great mysteries of the universe. But I did, and here it is. It velcros onto a wheeeled frame from Ikea (the Antonius, in case you were wondering), which is handy, since it feels like I do laundry just about every other day - Otis is just so dirty and by the end of the day, there’s usually the clothes he went to school in, and then the set they changed him into as well.

Remember how I mentioned I was hauling rocks in the backyard a while ago? Did you think I was kidding? Heck no, I really was hauling rocks, making a second makeshift vegetable plot to go with the more permanent one that F built for me last year, since I had all that excess pregnancy energy to burn. And the vegetables have really taken off! The tender ones like the mache have had to struggle a little more (since they require that a person be vigilant, and, you know, water them like every day or two) but the broccoli is absolutely ginormous! We’ve also planted radicchio, tomatoes, peas, corn, spinach, scallions and squash. I know virtually nothing about vegetable gardening - I’ve probably planted things too close together and have moved things repeatedly, but it’s been really fun to watch the progress.

Even more exciting, after more than two years in the house, we finally bit the bullet and hired some guys to come and do some of the big work in the backyard. They’re doing pathways, a patio, irrigation, the whole nine yards. It’s why you can see the mess all around the vegetable plot. It’s supremely satisfying to walk to the backyard at the end of the day, see the progress and know that it was accomplished by somebody else. It’s now a race to see whether they finish the yard first or I go into labor.