Color Me Rad 2013

August 24th I got up early, met up with some friends and headed up to Salt Lake City to run the Color Run 5k!  I’ve never done a “fun” race before. 

{Before the Race—still all clean!}

I ditched my treadmill this summer in favor of early morning runs outside.  I actually really learned to love it and look forward to it every morning.  With these runs I would run a 5k most days, so I wasn’t worried about the race itself.  Since it’s not a timed race I wasn’t trying to beat any personal records or anything, but we ended up a a PR time.  Our average pace was 10:09 min (my record ave pace) and we finished the race without stopping once.  I don’t have an exact time because my Running App said I ran more than a 5k…probably all that weaving around the people walking! 

A fun run it was—even funner was walking around the SLC farmers market after the race—we got a lot of comments about our appearance ;)

Meet The Kitty

I put this post off originally, because we weren’t sure if we would be keeping this cat. 

That was in January.  And we still have him.  We are definitely keeping him!

I read Cats for Dummies before we started looking in January.  There were a lot of people telling me things about cats that I came to find out weren’t true at all.  I learned a lot and feel good that I took the time to get to understand cats and their behavior so when we got one I would know what to do. 

We went to “Kitty City” a few times—it’s a huge kitty center in the SLC humane society.  And we did find a couple cats we really liked, but we ended up getting one through the KSL Classifieds. 

We adopted him from a couple who were moving and didn’t want to take a cat with them. He was a good age—not a kitten (not good for little kids) and not too old –He was about a year old (Sam’s age).  He came with everything we could need—including a big new bag of food, toys, carrier, litter box…and a bunch of stuff the kitty doesn’t even like (scratching post).  So it was worth the gamble of not knowing much about him to take him home.  He was a bit skittish and didn’t want to come out of the room to meet us…so it really was a gamble. 

We took him home and let him have the guest room & bathroom as his safe zone.  He came out of his carrier and immediately took refuge under the bed and didn’t come out.  That was 5pm. 

At 10pm before we went to bed we went up to check on him and he came out!  He was purring really loud and let us pet him.  And that made me feel so much relief—maybe he would like us after all.  We kept him in there all night, and the next morning we let him meet Luke and he seemed to want out of the room at that point, so we let him out to explore for a while.  Then back in the room he went. 

After the first day we left the door open and he could come out as he pleased.  And he did—he explored the whole house. 

He seemed like a good kitty, but there were some problems right off the bat. 

The first owners never clipped his nails so all of his nails were super long and sharp—they kept getting stuck in the carpet when he tried to walk around! It took some coaxing and sweet loving to train him to let me to clip his nails.  I did only 1-2 at a time at first.  Now he doesn’t even blink when I go to clip his claws.  

The next thing was he would also get SO crazy at night time after the kids went to bed! He was bolt up and down the stairs and then pounce on my shoulder at the top of the stairs—which hurt since his nails were so sharp!  He had never lived in a place with stairs before.  He still goes a little crazy, but we know now he’s just getting some energy out and he doesn’t do it when we are sleeping. 

The near deal-breaker was that he didn’t like Sam for a long time either.  It took about 8-9 weeks from the time we brought him home for him to accept that Sam was staying around and he better get used to it and stop trying to nip at him. 

We taught Sam how to be gentle and soft to the kitty so that Kitty wouldn’t get irritated and start nipping.  Kitty never actually bit, but he did some warning bites that don’t hurt.  Look at this in-action photo I got one time when Kitty had had enough!  He didn’t actually bite Sam, but it looks like he’s gonna!

That was taken in February when we were still on the fence.  Since then, we’ve decided to keep him, so we gave him a name {Cookie} but we mostly call him Kitty. 

He actually doesn’t mind Sam petting him and loving on him anymore. 

The other day I watched Sam drive his toy cars all over the kitty and Kitty just laid there lazily.

I love finding Kitty in new spots (in the closet, in the hamper, on random chairs in random rooms of the house). 

Kitty likes to lay on the stair right below the top one.  Sometimes he peeks up and watches me on the computer. 

He finds all the comfy spots to snuggle in and take a nap…     

Including in my laundry when I’m folding it on the bed.  He likes to attack it if he’s in the mood and that gets him thrown off the bed.  

Back in March when I was de-cluttering my fabric stash, I had it all on the guest bed and he thought that was a fantastic spot to hide out in. 

Sam took all my batting out of the cupboard and the kitty snuggled right in and fell asleep…

Until Sam thought he’d lay down on top of him. 

He’s a good kitty. 

I’ve trained him to stay off the counters, and to be patient while I clip his nails and brush him all the time.  He is very patient with Sam now.  Today I found Sam “driving” his cars on Kitty and Kitty just laid there and let him do it. 

There’s still some things that bug me sometimes—like when he waits for me to wake up in the morning and then come and snuggles right on my face.  At least now he waits til I’m awake—he used to do it all night long!  He also is DIRECTLY underfoot in the morning when I get out of bed and he stays within tripping distance until I feed him.  He also sometimes pushes open the door when I’m trying to get Sam down for a nap and that is a big no-no in our house.  I have to just shut the door all the way now. 

He still jumps up on the computer desk and stands there until I pet him.  He always blocks my view and it gets really irritating when he won’t leave me alone everyday around 2pm.  I give him lots of loves, ear scratches and then pull him down on my lap so I can see the screen to work.  He usually then goes to find a new place to nap for the rest of the afternoon. 

He’s such a good kitty otherwise.  If those are the worse things he does—I’ll take it!!  He could be scratching up my furniture and peeing in my closets!  So glad we got lucky with this loving kitty for our family!

Playroom Loft Update

This is what our playroom area looked like for the majority of the last few years:

Ok well, actually it looked more like this…

Yeah.

Anyway…

Not a whole lot on the walls, and not that much storage for toys which always seem to be multiplying. 

The couch belonged to my sister, and she took it to her new house (she didn’t have room for it before in their old house).  It is a family heirloom, so the longer in my house it stayed the more worried I got about Sam destroying it.  I already had to scrub pen mark artwork off the back once.)  Once it was gone, it left a lot of raw space to work with, so I decided to redo the entire space!

So now it looks like this:

We moved the toy bin unit to Luke’s room to hold his dinosaurs and a few other toys that were just his.  I got rid of the other two tables and then bought two 2x4 Expedit units from IKEA.  We added legs to the bottom of each of the shelves to add some height and character to the shelves. 

Then the hard part…finding bins for the toys.  You would think that with the popularity of these shelves and people’s ever-growing need for storage and organization there would be tons of options.  Not so.  I didn’t like any of the IKEA options except for the basket-type, but they were kind of pricey at $14.99 each.  That was basically my probably through-out the whole search.  The baskets I liked that were the right size, were either not the right color, or too expensive.  Other baskets that were good prices were usually too small.  I eventually found these bins at WalMart.com, but I really wanted red ones.  After thinking about the design of the room some more I decided to pull in more black, so I went with the black bins.  Turned out to work really well in the space!  I did bite the bullet and spend more than I wanted at 12.97 each, but in the end the bins are huge and hold a ton of toys.  I think they will hold up to the kids wear and tear, too. 

I had Scott install the curtain rod, and I used these curtains that used to hang in my kitchen once upon a time.

Nothing fancy, but the colors worked well in the space and it blocks out light when I want it darker up there. 

Then I made custom 20x30 posters to fit IKEA frames.  

These by themselves were quite the project.  I made them all myself in Photoshop, but getting them to fit in those weirdly sized Ikea Frames from prints that weren’t the same dimensions was a bit more math and measuring than I care to do.  They turned out great, though and I love them! 

Now I just have to refinish or paint the little kids table and find some chairs that I like to go with it.  I think Sam will love having a little table to sit at and color and play.  I also need labels on the bins so that Luke has an easier time putting toys away on his own. 

So what do you think of my new space? 

Luke started Preschool

Luke was pretty excited to start another year of Preschool!

{Mommy was too worried that he wasn't ready for Kindergarten yet, so we did Preschool again at a really fancy preschool}