Crystal Madrilejos

We got really lucky in this department with Q. He started sleeping through the night around three or four months. I have many friends and relatives with kids so I know this is not always the norm and something to be envied. So much so, that people give you the side-eye when you tell them that your baby sleeps through the night. I totally understand.

During those first few weeks I really understood why sleep deprivation is a form of torture. I was dead on my feet much of the time. But after awhile, the human mind and body really shows what it’s made of! By the end of those first four months I was able to sit up in bed at 3am, wide-eyed, and not be tired at all. And not only that, but I could function normally during the day on only four hours of sleep! Take that college days!

Last night, Q had one of his rare bad nights and ended up in our bed around 5 a.m. only to whine, and toss and turn and chew on my shirt, and smear his snot all over my pillow until 7 a.m.! It really made me appreciate that, in general, he is a really good sleeper. However, all those super awake-on-4-hours-of-sleep powers that I gained during those first few months pretty much disappeared after he started to sleep through the night.

So, since we’re on the topic of sleeping, I’m hoping to get better pictures of Q’s crib soon so I can post those. Made with love by his Papa! Here is a sneak peek:

Enticing, isn’t it?
-c.

I totally forgot that I never posted about this! Most likely because it happened during the worst drought of blogging that we’ve had yet. Slowly, things from that period are coming back to me that I wanted to post about but never got to.

Around Thanksgiving of last year my family decided that we wanted to start taking yearly photos of all the Grandkids. We figured Thanksgiving is really the most reliable time to take the portraits since we are all together. My brother, Tom, was the one who had the idea of taking the portraits and how they should be shot (he also handled the color correcting of the pictures.) Between my brother and I we tag teamed taking the photos and making sure the lighting was sufficient. With the help of sisters and husbands and grandparents we were able to wrangle this gang long enough to get decent shots.

I think they turned out really beautiful (though I am bias) and really show the personality of each kid. Falcon with his boyish, yet silly attitude (top row, far right). Arwen with a bruise on her chin (middle row, far left). Q looking like a deer in headlights with a cut on his nose. This year we’ll be adding another portrait of my sister’s new baby, Sofie, who was born in April.

Hooray for growing!

-c.

This weekend we finally completed the next step in Project Clean-Up-This-Old-China-Cabinet. In the first phase, we cleaned all the grime only to realize that the top would need to be stripped because the grime had pretty much damaged the finish. Phase 2 consisted of Citri-Strip, which looked like this while it worked its magic:

Followed by removal of the loosened old varnish with plastic scraper and lots of this nastiness:

Disgusting! So after that, we let it hang out for a bit, then the next day we gave it a cleaning with Mineral Spirits, a little sanding with extra fine sandpaper, another wipe, then a couple coats of Teak Oil. Voila! A long ways away from this mess.

Andrew decided that it needs a coat of shellac because as beautiful as the teak finish is, it isn’t as shiny as the rest of the piece so it doesn’t quite match. I trust his judgement. So! One to Phase 3! Hopefully, Phase 4 will be the phase where I fill it with all my junk!

-c.

The title of this post really says it all. You can find (almost) anything on the internet, especially creative inspiration. If you ever feel like you need a boost of awesomeness, check out these sites:

Designspiration

Creative Journal

Some of my favorites of the day:

Miss Marple lamp, by Elisa Strozyk

Sweat the Small Stuff poster by Alonza Felix

I could post a ton more photos, but I’m lazy and also, you really should check out the sites for yourself.  You could really get lost in there! Which is not a bad thing.

-c.

Ok, this is the last video I’ll post for a little while, I swear! I posted about Q’s First Birthday a little while ago and it’s overall success. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t take more video. This video might be a bit dull to a lot of you since there isn’t too much going on other than mood shots of the decorations and Q eating his cupcake in hyper speed! I had to get all artsy-fartsy with this one because of the lack of footage. Ah well, they can’t all be winners!

Enjoy (hopefully)!

Music: “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence & the Machine

-c

I’m movie making crazy! Just try to stop me. I was feeling inspired and decided to go ahead and make a Q’s Christmas video AND a Q’s First Birthday video. I’m only going to post the Christmas video today since I need something to post about tomorrow (ha!) so I’ll save the Birthday video for then. See how I keep you coming back for more? Bwuahahaha… sorry. I’m tired.

So, in the meantime, enjoy!

Music: “Ghost” by Gregory and the Hawk

-c.

You may remember my post about my early Mother’s Day mid-century modern china cabinet present? That was a really confusing sentence. But come on people, it was just last week. Anyway.

This thing is beautiful but very dirty. I’m sure it’s just an accumlation of years of dust that has congealed into a nasty black grime. But part of me thinks it could be that someone never learned to wash their hands after handling crude oil OR Andrew’s hypothesis: A smoker with a china cabinet next to their stove where they fried fish all day. Whichever way you swing it, this thing has some serious build up issues.

Murphy’s Oil Soap to the rescue! Thanks to Morgan’s post on Refreshing Vintage Wood, we had an idea of how to start dealing with this mess. As you can see from the before and after pictures, we got a lot of the nastiness off but next step is the strip the top of the old finish. Everywhere else on the piece is fine, but the top could use a sand and a finish with some Danish Oil.

I can’t wait to just GET IT DONE so I can start filling it with all my junk!

-c.

Looking for the perfect gift for the little kids in your life? I think we may have figured it out.

There are lots of nieces and nephews in our family, so this means lots of birthdays and lots of present-giving. Andrew and I try our best to come up with original fun ideas for gifts for the little ones and this idea that Andrew came up with really takes the cake, in my opinion!

Introducing the “Box O’ Hats!” This was inspired by our niece Layla, who loves to play dress up, like most kids her age, and who received the Box O’ Hats for her 2nd birthday. So, you may be asking, where the heck does one buy such a multitude of crazy hats without breaking the bank? Party stores, my friends, party stores! Our local Party Station carried all the hats (pictured above) we could possibly need for a reasonable price. I think we spent about $25 (though you could potentially spend more or less depending on how many hats you choose and what styles). What’s better than pulling hat after hat out of a giant box? Not much!

If anyone goes the Box O’ Hats route, I’d love to hear how the little ones liked it. I’m thinking that the novelty of this gift probably wouldn’t work on kids much older than 6 years old, but I could be wrong? What do you think? Would an older kid like something like this too?

-c.

Ever since we posted about our co-sleeper, over the past year we’ve been receiving emails from readers looking to build something similar. Some people have even asked if we had thought about making them and selling them. We don’t have any plans of selling them for two reasons:

1. It doesn’t feel right. We based our co-sleeper on the Culla Belly design and it doesn’t feel like it’s our idea to sell.

– and –

2. Ideally, every one we make would have to be custom fitted to the bed it’s going to attach to and to the baby it will hold. It’s just not a construction that lends itself to mass production (at least with the materials and methods we are using). Maybe that’s why the Culla Belly has yet to be produced.

With that said, we are in the process of trying to put together a guide of sorts on how to make one yourself. It won’t contain any specific dimensions because everyone’s bed set up is a bit different. But the guide will lay out the things to consider and the options you have when building it yourself. Hopefully we’ll be able to get this together in a timely manner!

One last note. We are happy to share our process and make recommendations, but in the end it will be up to you to make sure it’s safe and secure for your baby.

Stay tuned…

-c.

Here are the last two installments of Q’s first year in video! Awhile back, after making a video of his first three months, we decided to do a video recap every three months for the first year to document his cuteness. And also as a reminder for when he is 16 and full of angst that for a brief moment he was our baby boy who needed us and wanted to hang out with us and wasn’t embarrassed by our weirdness.

Music: “Slow Dance” by Art Sorority for Girls

And here he is being all big and stuff.

Q: 9-12 Months from Crystal Madrilejos on Vimeo.

Music: “Go Outside” by Cults

If you haven’t seen the first two, you can view Q: 0-3 Months here, and Q: 3-6 Months here. Enjoy!

-c.