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Backyard movie night party for our girl who is 8!

Age 8 is sounding very big to me today. Maybe because it is. Maybe because she is my first baby and she will always be the first to do things in this family of girls. Maybe because I’m still getting used to the idea of having a child around here blaring her own music, hiding out in her new room, and asking to be around friends every single day.

This weekend was our first big kid birthday party – for our girl who is now 8!!! The music selection was big – all hand selected by her and songs that she knows every word of the lyrics. We are entering the days of boy bands and pop music at our house. It will be a long road, with three girls who will one day be 13, 16 and 18 all at the same time.

However this weekend we certainly had fun with it.

My daughter got the idea to have a backyard movie party from her cousin. I was not planning on having a party for her this year. She has had a party every year since she was born. My toddler girl will be 3 next week and I wanted to put my efforts into finally having a party for my baby girl. Not to mention our kitchen is being renovated and I have no way of making food for a party right now.

But I said yes. Because it was a fun idea. And I love creating birthday parties for kids.

I made the invitations in a Word document printed on white card stock. The stars are punched with a scrapbooking hole punch. We mailed them using regular 4″x8″ envelopes. Doing it this way was simple, cheep and it only took about an hour.

For our purposes here, I removed our phone number and address from invitation for security reasons. I left my daughter’s name, which I usually keep private in this space. Her and her friend made such cute party signs featured in all the decorations, that I didn’t want to alter those images. Since a name can not be Googled from an image, I’m making an exception to my rule in this post.

This is the first time I have planned an outdoor party because I always feared the chance of rain. I thew caution to the wind this year and hopped for the best. It rained that morning, the ground was still damp at party time, it was cloudy and on the cold side. But it didn’t slow us down from having fun! And now I’m a BIG fan of backyard parities.

Since the ground was a bit damp we took our outdoor rugs from our front porch and laid them in the grass for the movie. I put out stacks of blankets for them to snuggle up with, kid’s camping chairs and bales of hay to lie against. Some of the children brought sleeping bags. My daughters brought out the beanbag and red kid chairs. As well as a mini trampoline they saw as a perfect seat! But what the heck? It was their party!

From my side, this party was put together on the fly and on the cheep.

The projector is an old work projector a friend had from doing Power Point presentations in 2004. I borrowed a receiver and speakers from another friend who lives up the street. I asked several people if they knew anyone who had an old pull-down screen, like the ones schools used to use with an overhead projector for math class (yep, I’m old). A friend of mine’s church had one, which happened to be in our neighborhood too.

We hooked up our old portable car DVD player to the receiver and ran it all through the 2004 projector. It worked fabulously! I felt so amazingly resourceful. And I was incredibaly thankful for my husband who made sure it all worked, and was in charge of setting it up.

This is the first birthday party I have ever held where I didn’t make anything. Nothing! I didn’t sew anything. I didn’t craft anything. And I didn’t bake anything. What I did do – was make use of all the things we have used in the past.

Our Picket Fence Chalkboard provided an awesome board for announcing the movie and showtime.

The gazebo was decorated with these fabric chains I sewed together for my toddler’s Potty Party. The felt Happy Birthday banner was purchased from Chinaberry about five years ago. Hanging it is a tradition for all our birthdays. The small lanturn lights were a touch added by the kids, which were hanging in the basement. The birthday girl borrowed the disco from a friend.

My daughter had a friend over the day of the party to help decorate. They really took ownership over this task and had a great time. They made many happy birthday signs. A few of them used our chalkboard signs I made using old frames, boards and chalkboard paint. Again, they were made for my toddler’s Potty Party, knowing I would reuse them for occasions like this.

I LOVE that the kids made the signs this time. This really was a kid party, by kids and for kids. 

Most all the decor is in low lying areas, and on a child’s eye level. Some of that reason is because they put it there. The other reason is that when I’m looking for a table to put something on it seems all I can find are kid-sized tables. I suppose that’s just our way.

The basket of glow sticks (from the dollar isle at Target) and battery operated flicker tea candles (left over from Halloween last year) were a huge hit after the sun went down.

The girls also decorated our backyard Fairyland with signs and leftover decor from other uses, like the fabric chains I made for a toddler busy bag swap.

My favorite thing the girls came up with, was how to set up the movie concession stand. I had big grown up ideas of how to make it cute using a festive green table I was going to haul over from the neighbor’s basement. But the kids had their own ideas. They saw the railing of the gazebo as a perfect spot where friends could stand and “order.”

My middle girl said she would run the concession stand, and put a chair behind the table with three pillows stacked on it for her to be tall enough to reach the customers. She never actually sat still long enough to do so. Which was fine.

This is what they came up with, enlisting a little grown up help hanging the signs and gathering supplies. I made the drink bucket ahead of time, using Chalk Ink – which is what the kids used to make their chalk signs too.

It seems my spirt of reusing things is getting passed down to my daughters. They decided they wanted games at the party. So they went searching for cans and containers for a ball toss game. The bunch even includes one with a 7 on it, from last year’s party.

They made up rules, drew chalk on the ground for a tossing line, found ping pong balls for throwing and gathered old things from their rooms to use as “prizes.” This game was a huge hit! My daughter went running through the house three more times during the party to restock the prizes. I loved that!!!

Since I didn’t have the option of baking a cake. I took a hybrid approach and ordered vanilla cupcakes with white icing (no colored food dies) and had the girls decorate them at home. I still can not believe their were 8 candles on that cupcake! 

And finally, once it got dark —- came the main attraction!!! It was showtime. It was SOOOOOOO fun. 

After the movie the children were picked up by their parents. For a takeaway gift we did movies I found on the discount isle at Target. They were all $5 each. We had 16 children there, including my three. I wanted to have enough movies for children to choose from, and for our friends with three siblings to not have to get the same movie. I’ll return the leftovers. I loved this idea, given to me by a mom friend. It was simple. It wasn’t wasteful, and I didn’t send kids home with more sugary snacks than they already consumed at the party.

Present opening was a blast. My daughter has a really great group of friends, from our neighborhood and from school –  most of which she has known since we moved here when she was one, or when she started school at age two.  She had a friend give her a box of cheese crackers because she always takes hers at lunch. I thought that was hilarious. The homemade cards from friends were precious and so meaningful.

When It comes to thank you cards, I’m the worst at making my kids sit down and write thank you notes. This year I took a group photo of all the kids at the party and will make an online photo card to send to the guests thanking them for coming to the party. I have the perfect picture! I can’t share it here, but I wanted to share that great idea with you, passed along to me from a veteran mom friend who helped me out lots with this party. She tamed my visions of a big Pinterest style over-the-top event.

It was a perfect party for a perfect 8 year-old. And I was happy to help her host it.

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A Simple Moment

A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.

If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.

My daughter shows me the “inventing table” inside her fort at school. And I have my ah ha moment #487 on why I love sending my kids to a Montessori school.

A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.

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Why I don’t like keeping to-do lists

When I start getting stressed I make to-do lists. When I’m not stressed, I will most likely loose my lists. When there is a lot going on, I get out my notebook of lists.

I’m mostly a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants gal. For example, when traveling through Europe with my husband in our younger pre-kid days, we hopped an overnight train to Budapest – not knowing much about the city, what we would do when we got there, how long we would stay or where we would sleep the next night. It was fun. That’s how I like to roll.

In college when life got too busy I dreadfully succumbed to buying a planner. I always said I would never be so scheduled to need such a thing. I was in my last semester of journalism school, working at a weekly newspaper where I was essentially serving as the arts editor, and planning our wedding. Time management was of the essence. Looking back at the pages inside my big black planner, I have no idea how I even found time to sleep.

I was a theater minor and one of my mentors was a theater professor.  During a conversation when I shared my discomfort with feeling so scheduled and needing to have a planner, he said something that has stuck with me all this time.

“I keep a planner so I can be sure to have time for the people who are important to me,” he said. He was a wonderful professor, inspiring and supportive of young students with big ideas.

At the time his response hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s what planning should be about. Today, it could not be truer.

Every year October sets off a world wind of crazy that doesn’t stop until January 2. Between those months all my girls turn a year older. There are birthday parties to plan, Halloween costumes to sew, Thanksgiving to think about, Christmas, shopping, crafting, cooking, traveling plus other family birthdays too.

This week I got out my notebook to start making lists.

Saturday marks the first birthday party of the season. It will be a backyard movie night with 20 girls. And I’m trying not to loose sight as to why I’m doing all this.

Sure it’s a good time to get the yard cleaned up, pressure wash the patio for the first time in the seven years we have lived here, and so on.

Since May we have been in a constant mode of moving, switching up, cleaning up, and regrouping as every new page gets turned in our journey of living through major renovations happening to our house.

But when I woke up and found this in my notebook of lists, I was reminded of exactly why I am doing all this. It moved me in a big way! 

You see, this exact time last year I was spending all my free time writing a weekly column for our daily newspaper. It was a journalism gig, nothing to do with mothering or natural living.

I spent at least one evening a week away from home, doing interviews or sitting in a coffee shop trying to meet a deadline. Each day I was juggling four separate to do lists. One for the newspaper, one for my volunteer and activism work for the birth center where I served as secretary of the board, one for this blog (a brand spanking new venture at the time) and one for my family.

I wanted so badly to be a journalist again, working from home, and showing my daughters I wasn’t just a mom at home baking bread. I felt like I needed to be more.

The girls and my husband got excited to see my byline and my photo in the paper, next to the weekly column I wrote from May until October in 2011. It was a community news gig and very different from the work I was doing before I had kids, reporting from the Georgia State Capital for a bi-lingual Latino newspaper where the Governor knew me by name.

But at least I was doing something, a mom kind-of-gig.

Then I dropped ball. I had too much on my plate. I made a few mistakes. And I got fired. Fired!  Via a two sentence email! I had never been fired from a job in my life. I was devastated, for months. That was almost a year ago.

I knew for a while that it was something I really didn’t need to be doing anyway. The writing job was putting added stress on my family. And after paying for childcare a few hours a week for my toddler, the meager amount money I was being paid was a wash. Really, being fired it was a good thing.

“I just want the old mom back,” my oldest daughter begged one day when I told her I had to leave that evening to report on a story.

It was a wake up call and it still weighs heavy on my heart. All those to-do lists and things I thought I needed to be doing were running my life and hurting the people who were the most important to me. Part of the reason I wanted to work again was to show my daughters the stronger side of me, to be a working role model (part-time at least). To show them I could do more than be a homemaker, and that they could too – when they grow up.

But really they just wanted the old mom back, whose main goal was to paint with her kids, let them lick the dough of the spatula and be happily covered in flour. With no lists and no planners calling the shots.

Like many people I assume, when I start writing lists it makes me think of more things to do, more errands to run, more stuff I think I need. Once it’s on paper I feel like I have to do it, like a meeting I suddenly have to schedule. Then, checking things off that list validates some sort of accomplishment for the week.

But in all honestly, that fact is far from the truth.

This week my biggest accomplishment is that my daughter appreciates all I do for her. She feels loved, that I’m there for her when she needs me and I understand that turning 8 is a BIG deal. We are on to bigger kid music now, bigger books, different styles and oh my – a new sofa in her room!

When my girls are home from school it’s all about them. The computer stays off, the lists lay quiet, and emails don’t get returned.

I’m trying to be more selective about what gets added to my lists, and not be afraid to shred them up or wipe them clean from my dry erase board. If it is something I really need to do, I will remember to do it.

If I forget, life will go on.

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Welcome fall!

Fall is most definitely in the air here in Tennessee. Leaves are falling, mornings are chilly and evenings are cool enough that no one wants to come inside until dark.

I do like the lazy days of summer. But fall has always been my favorite time of year. The boots, the scarves, pulling the pants out of storage, getting the fireplace going again, and catching our first falling leaf of the season. Yes I love fall.

My girls are embracing this change of season as well. Outside piano lessons this week, my little girl couldn’t stuff ENOUGH acorns into her tiny little purple pocket. Collecting acorns, and throwing them at the fallen sticks, kept us entertained for a full 30 minutes.

I can not, not say something about her wild hair! It was a tad windy. But more than anything, it was the nearing the end of the day and can’t convince her that she needs a hair cut. Welcome to age three! Which is coming very, very soon. Also, I’m savoring the fly away toddler hair.

She was convinced she could get MORE acorns into her miniature sized pocket. 

With our kitchen being renovated, eating outside in this weather is the perfect place for dinner. I am so very thankful for our friends who have taken us in, given us a quiet place to play, fed us snacks, made us soup, prepared our yogurt and boiled our eggs.

On our perfect impromptu day of embracing fall, our neighbors congregated in our backyard for dinner. They brought a crockpot of chili for the meat eaters, I made a spinach pizza in the toaster oven, grill cheese sandwiches on the panini maker and a fresh arugula salad from Farmer Megan with homemade goat cheese from our dairy CSA.

Together with some help from our friends, this is how we are managing life with no kitchen. Because of fall, it’s not so bad. As you can see, we are fully welcoming the convenience of disposable plates, bowls and cutlery while on this no kitchen venture. Part of me is enjoying this time where I’ve given myself to full permission to fill my freezer and refigerator with prepackaged (organic) convenince foods. And the clean up is a cinch!

Except when I have to wash the blender in the bathtub after making smoothies. That is a bummer and makes me thankful for paper plates.

But still….I’m SO looking forward to filling our new cabinet with real dishes. Until then, fall picnics it is!

 

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Where we’ve been

In the beginning I didn’t think having our house renovated would take over everything.

I knew having our house turned upside down and inside out for an unknown amount of time, with contractors (the best contractors ever, but still, worker guys) showing up at 7:30 AM Monday through Friday since June, would be life changing. But I knew I could live with it just fine, keeping my mind on the end result.

Last week however, just about did me in.

I am thrilled to have the upstairs space finished and to move the girls up there. I am incredibly thankful we are able to have these fabulously talented and polite worker guys making my old house dreams come true. But getting everything – and everyone – settled over the past week was a A LOT of work!

I had the task of changing out the summer-to-fall wardrobes for three kids (it’s 44 degrees here this morning) and putting them all away in new spaces. We moved out of our kitchen so it would be ready for demo Monday morning and are adapting to cooking out of a toaster oven, as well adjusting to having the girls sleeping SO FAR AWAY FROM ME.

Okay it’s not THAT far. But for nearly eight years we have either had a baby or a toddler sunggled in bed with us. Or I was pregnant and waiting for the next little bundle in line to do the same.

The first two nights the girls were upstairs I slept on the trundle bed in my oldest daughter’s room, to be sure to hear my toddler when she woke up and catch her before she went tumbling down the stairs in a sleepy slumber looking for mom. Since then my husband and I have been taking turns soothing her at night every time she wakes up. We have both spent time sleeping on a crib mattress that we store under her bed as floor protection in the case that she did roll off her bed.

I know, some kind of baby proofing plan we have huh? But it works.  We did find a baby monitor from a friend to borrow. Which seems a little funny right? A baby monitor now, when she’ll be 3 (gasp) in 20 days!!!

So this is where we’ve been the last week. Moving, adjusting, reorganizing, tolerating the noise, and being very very tired.

On one hand it is really awesome to get the girls moved upstairs. On the other hand it seems like we are saying goodbye to baby days, moving on to big kid days. And that makes my husband and I both a little sad.

During our shuffling of stuff, I found an awesome local charity that runs a thrift store to fund a food bank for needy families. It’s called Ladies of Charity and my friend’s mom is a regular volunteer there.

I asked if they could send a truck to my house. And they did – the next day. The biggest thing to go was my beloved “blue nursing chair.” The chair I never thought I would get rid of.

The nursery glider chair that I was so thrilled to find in just the perfect shade of blue. It was a semi-girly blue but a safe enough blue to use in the case of a boy, down the road. I still remember the day like yesterday, driving with my husband to pick it up in our tan Jeep Cherokee at New Baby Supplies in Midtown Atlanta. With my big belly, counting down the days to meet our baby girl and officially become parents. In 14 days that baby girl will be 8!!!

The chair sat here in the nursery. Where I thought I would be up at night rocking and nursing, and then putting baby girl back into her crib to sleep the night away. Ha! 

I never really needed that nursing chair.  I learned to nurse anywhere and everywhere and that nursery became a fancy storage room. And I never had a boy!

I know it will find a good new home. And the money someone pays for it will go to feeding poor people in need.

Now, if I could just find something to do with this fancy round crib from the nursery…the one I had to have. It was a special order deal that never met the safety requirements of railing hight, which I discovered when my babies looked like they would fall out of it at 18 months old. I think there is some potential for building a reading fort out of it – but who knows???

That fancy Bugaboo stroller, however, was HANDS DOWN the best baby purchase and is still going strong (not the basinet obviously, but the stroller) three kids later. The changing table my dad made beside it still rocks too! It HAS SEEN some diaper changing days. It now serves on as a night stand between my two youngest daughters matching twin beds, that he made as well.

So basically lately we are feeling like we are moving on, with life, with our house, but also still very disheveled about it all.

I mean….this was our kitchen late last Sunday night, taken in the dark after it was all packed up and ready for demo morning. 

This was the cabinets the next day being hauled off by a friend who is going to repurpose them in his laundry room and workshop. Really cool truck, huh?

This was the kitchen on Wednesday afternoon, as the wall was getting knocked out, dividing it from the new mudroom. 

And this is what the girls are calling the “fake kitchen” that was set up in their old bedroom, minus the new Kitchen Aid toaster oven big enough to cook a pizza. This is another late night dark photo. Which I hate! But my toddler dropped my camera and my wide lens is no longer (big bummer). So a few of these are crumby iPhone shots taken with no sunlight.

This morning the renovation excitement continues. And so does the settling, among all the unsettling. And the birthday planning – oh my! There will be two birthday parties held here next month.

Soon, very soon, I hope to show you some finished rooms with some freshly sewn curtains. I have been very busy working on getting to that place. And painting and sanding furniture along the way.

This is what we did last week when the girls had a day off of school. 

And pretty much, that’s where we’ve been. And this little blog here has sat quiet. Waiting for me to return. Slowly, one post at a time, I’ll keep you updated with our creative happenings and life cooking in a toaster oven.

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When mothering gets tough, I eat chocolate!

It was one of those days with three grouchy girls in the house, and when I let the contagious funk get the worst of me too. It was an estrogen overload. No doubt about it. We needed a boy around to balance our act. But we had none.

What we did have was chocolate.

My husband had a swanky work dinner 45 minutes away that night and it was supposed to be a fun movie night at home.

But no one wanted to watch the same movie. I caved and put a movie on my computer for my oldest daughter to watch and a “little girl show” on the TV for the other two to watch.

With the girls getting older by the minute (which is what it feels like to me lately), I’m savoring the days when the little girls squeal with excitement to watch Bubble Guppies. I love this age where they are still oblivious to the Disney Channel and the dreaded pre-teen shows that I have all my girls believing “do not work on our TV.” Yes I lie about that. A tiny white fib I am completely okay with.

Then Bubble Guppies finished before McKenna. My toddler was done watching all together, buttons were pushed without asking, movies ended before they were supposed to, one girl was pushed, there was feet stomping and loud crying. We all shouted and no one was listening to me.

I was acting just like them. So it’s no wonder why things went from manageable, to needing chocolate.

It was bedtime. No one had bathed and the dishes from dinner were still in the sink. And everyone was upset about something.

I tried to explain that all of this behavior was really rotten, by all of us. There is never a reason to hit your sister. EVER. It is never okay. I apologized for loosing my cool too, for getting upset at my soon to be three-year-old for all the reasons that makes the age 3 harder than 2.

It took some time. But finally I got everyone on the couch to apologize. And I waited until they SHOWED each other some sister love and not just say “I’m sorry.”

Then I took a depth breath and surprised them when I said, “Now lets eat chocolate!”

Three girls jumped up and down with giggles and ran together to the kitchen. They were giddy, together. TOGETHER!

It made my heart smile.

It was a bar of organic milk chocolate (different than the one shown on the top of the post but still one of my favorites). It was my special chocolate that I keep hidden in the cabinet and rarely share it with anyone. The girls know if they get a square of my “good chocolate,” that it’s something special.

I had already been sneaking some through the night with my red wine. So I split the last 12 small squares between the three girls.

They all said I was the best mom in the world and quickly forgot what a grouchy mom I had been just 30 minutes before that.

My oldest daughter gave me her last square of chocolate. My middle girl looked me in the eye with a shy grin that said I’m sorry but this is too good to share. My toddler had chocolate smeared all over her face.

Yes sometimes chocolate does make everything better.

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A Simple Moment

A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.

If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.

They were doing a video shoot of Alice in Wonderland. I love the light, the innocence and the creativity from these kids. Right in the backyard.

A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.

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A week of simple, fresh food lunches for school

I have never been the mom to make the Pinterest-style lunches with celery sticks decorated like a caterpillars, crackers toped with cheese cut like ladybugs or a sandwich wearing a smile face. I think those lunches are adorable. I’m just more of a grab the fruit and go mom. Using a heart shaped cookie cutter for bread is about as decorative as I get when packing lunches.

While talking to a friend recently she asked me to do a lunch post showing what I pack my girls for lunch, as a bit of a reality check on what good old regular moms likes us are packing their kiddos for lunch. I thought it was a great idea! Especially since moms are always looking for new ideas for lunch? I know I always am.

I do, however, wish my girls would accept more variation in what they eat for lunch. But overall it’s fresh, usually organic, sometimes homemade and the lunch boxes usually return home empty.

The Montessori school where my girls attend encourages waste-free lunches and pre-packaged items are discouraged. So we have that in our favor, as I think the children they are sitting next to have similar fresh food lunches.

My girls don’t like all the same things and I understand that. So each girls’ lunch is not entirely the same everyday. They also balk at dinner leftovers showing up in their lunch, and I kind of side with them on that. I’m not big on leftovers either.

Here is what I packed for lunch this week. Friday is pizza day and the children have the choice of buying pizza brought in from a local pizzeria near the school. I gladly take a break from packing lunches that day!

Monday

My oldest daughter had hummus wraps, cheese, fruit, a raw carrot, corn chips and salsa. 

My middle girl had peanut and butter jam on a whole wheat flat bagels (the Rudy’s brand), plums, carrot, almonds and plain lettuce she calls “salad.”

My toddler had “baby humus wraps” cut in four quarters and made the right size for her mouth, fruit, “salad” and red peppers.

Tuesday 

My oldest girl had mini heart cheese sandwiches on homemade bread (from the Knoxville Bread Co-op),  apples and carrots, dried rolled dates, cheddar bunny crackers and a tangerine. The mini sandwich cutter is from Montessori Services and works better with store bought bread that tends to hold its shape better and be less crumby.

The two little girls had mini peanut butter and jam heart sandwiches, carrots, cheese and a banana that works great cut like this and left in the peel. My middle girl also had a few sweet potato chips.

Wednesday

The top two lunches are Rudy’s whole wheat flat bagels with a small glass container of cream cheese for spreading. I packed my toddler’s preassembled, with a dab of jam to help hold them together. My oldest girl doesn’t eat meat so she had cheese and the little girls had ham. I try to get a veggie in their lunch everyday. Carrots are the go to on that and packed almost daily.

Thursday 

My oldest daughter had a cheese sandwich, fruit, a zucchini muffin (from this recipe) and dried cranberries. The black fabric is the sandwich wrap that the sandwich gets packed in. This very plain sandwich is just the way she likes it. 

The two little girls had the same lunch, with fun shaped zucchini muffins, boiled eggs, cheese and grapes with berries. These are their preferred containers because they are easy to open.

For more info on these lunch containers, see my post Plastic free lunch packing containers and systems. To read more about our waste-free lunches, I wrote about it here.

Snack Day!

Wednesday was also snack day for my toddler and middle girl. At their school students rotate turns bringing snack for the entire class. It was a coinsidence that two of my girls were scheduled for the same day. For snack my toddler brought cheese and berries. My middle girl requested peanut butter pretzels, apples and bananas (non shown). In the 3-6 age room the students prepare the snack and cut the food, so we just send in a bag of organic apples. 

What do your children like to see packed in their lunches? I could use more hot food lunch options. I’d love to hear what you pack for lunch!

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Adventures in finding a local marble countertop

For seven years I’ve dreamed up ideas on how to renovate the kitchen in our 1918 craftsman house.

There were times when I wanted to rip out 1950’s metal cabinets with red the formica countertops and chrome edges. But I didn’t. I waited, and hoped for the day of finding a contractor (and the funds) to create hand built cabinets that match the original character of the house. I wanted to restore, not just renovate.

Keeping in mind the home’s the original cabinetry that lives in our basement, topped with its original pink Tennessee Dark Rose Marble by the Tennessee Marble company, I looked for design inspiration.

The internet, and my Pinterest board on kitchen renovations, are filled with white kitchens with white marble countertops. It’s what I really want.

There are some great websites I have found with real life advice, warnings, and amazing photos of people who decided to put in white marble countertops –  even through they stain easily, are very porous and every single person who knows anything about kitchen renovations looks at me like I’m crazy to want white marble countertops in a kitchen full of red wine, coffee and little people eating marinara sauce.

Here are are few good sites I have read.

Sealing Marble: The acid test – at The Perch House and the follow up she did on it next day showing even less signs of staining.

Would I be Crazy to Choose Marble Countertops for My Kitchen? Marble Countertops Pros and Cons – at The Kitchn. I found the comments on this post, and the links bloggers provide to their own sites, to be very helpful.

Best Advice: White Marble Countertops Pros & Cons – at Apartment Therapy.

After reading these sites and visiting two stone warehouses, I still needed to see more. To do more research. These places stock very little marble and barely any soapstone at all. But I knew going into this search, that I was not their average granite buying consumer.

I always try to shop local when I can. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d much rather have countertops that did not have to be shipped across the world using the earth’s resources of oil – to bring a shinny piece of earth to me from another continent. The big company Vulcan still blasts at a quarry on the other side of the river from where I live – very close to downtown Knoxville. What they get from there is a gray marble, which I believe is a viable option for our kitchen.

The Knoxville area was HUGE back in it’s hay day of harvesting marble from the local quarries. The Candoro Marble Company, now just a museum, is a few miles from my house where they showcase marble that was used to build monuments in New York in Washington D.C. It all came from quarries just miles from where I live now.

While pretty marble from Italy seams to be THE THING to have, to restore a home with, to be period correct, to be beautiful. In 1918 they put pine floors in my kitchen to save money since guests were never invited into the kitchen. Oak, a more expensive wood, was used throughout the floors in the main living area. They used marble because it was readily available, not because they were showing off their fancy kitchens. These were working kitchens. 

The average home owner was NOT importing marble from Italy, where Carrara marble comes from and is showcased in so many kitchen photos I find myself drooling over today.

All of this desiphering about marble countertops sent me traveling down this road Monday morning.

To this place, the Tennessee Marble Company. 

Where local workers still ocassionaly blast marble out of this quarry, forty-five minutes from my house.

I even got to tour the warehouse, wearing safety goggles! Tennessee Marble is not open to the public. Now days it does mostly all commercial work, building beams for industrial buildings and restoration work on exterior buildings made of marble.

After looking at their gallery of offerings online, I called to ask if I could come look at the slabs of marble. I also called Stonecraft, the countertop business I have been working with who would cut and instal the countertops, to make sure they could instal the marble if I found something I liked. They said yes. So I started driving. Seeing the facility was facinating.

On the way home I realized it made perfectly good sense, me hoping in the car to visit a marble yard on a whim.  I like to know where things come from, from my food to my clothes. It only makes sense that I know where my countertops are coming from too.

I like taking the scenic route. Embracing something a little different. And yes, even stoping in the middle of the road to take a picture of a cow who was looking at me oddly – as if this was not normal. But I’m okay with that.

Here are the samples on my old red countertop, and me trying to decide on a new countertop. The 1×1 tiles are samples from Tennessee Marble. One of the three is actually from Tennessee, taken from a quarry close to my home. The other two are from quarries they own and operate in other states, but process the materials at the location I visited near Maryville. The darker grey piece is soapstone from Brazil, and then the white Carrara marble from Italy. The soapstone will become more black after it is sealed using mineral oil, which pretty much rules that one out for me. Except that I like the use of a natural sealer, opposed to chemicals used to seal marble. 

Next I decided to do my own stain tests – using coffee, red wine, tomato sauce and cold things that would leave a ring. I found they all wiped up fine after about 45 minutes. The more acidic foods did leave etching. But I think I’m okay with a little wear and tear in a 95 year old house. That’s what we do here. Live in this old house they way it was meant to be lived in.

I’ll update on the finial choice soon….as I have more to reveal on the renovation front.

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A Simple Moment – with color!

A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.

If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.

The faces of little girl seeing color going up on their new rooms was priceless. With no camera in hand, I soaked up the moment. And I went back later to take a quick shot of something to remember here.

When my middle girl saw the fuchsia pink walls in the bathroom her eyes lit up in a way that she could not believe what she was seeing.

“Ohhh my gosh mom, I love it. The whole upstairs is G-r-e-AT,” she said. It was a moment when I felt like I got it just right for my girls. Where they knew, that I know what they want and I’m willing to give it to them.

And there is still more color to come. Yes I like color. Rooms should be fun, especially when they are for three little vibrant girls. Even if it did require 10 different gallons of paint. I can see the thankfulness in their eyes. And that makes a mom smile.

A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.

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