Tickled Pink

While perusing our local furniture store a few months back, I was startled to turn a corner and run right into this Victoria's Secret shopping bag display wall.

"How adorable!," I thought.
"Kalynn would love this for her room and it would be so simple!," I said to myself.
"I could knock that out in a couple hours tops!" I said to my husband.

Away my cocky self went to the home improvement store and I showed my picture to the paint man while ordering in my most matter-of-fact voice: 

"I need two cans of pink paint please. The first needs to be a shade lighter than the color of ham, closer to the most intimate cavern of a queen conch shell. The second needs to be like a dirty stripper, stiletto heels, ripped fishnet stocking, Friday night sort of pink." 

This was the very first room to paint in our very first house and I wanted to do the whole thing without my husband's help because this was a girl's room which reasoned that the girls should do the painting. 

I popped opened the can with the enthusiasm of champagne on New Years Eve. I had my rollers, I had my tray, I had my tarp, I had my hyped up daughter with her own miniature version of a brush and we were ready to disco. 

As we approached the half hour mark, I noticed I was missing my tiny doppelgänger with whom I was collaborating, so I poked my head out into the loft and found this display of pure slothfulness. Vivacity for paint was out and in its place was a new allegiance to the latest Sophia The First episode.

It was clear I was on my own.

2 days and a mere half wall of taped trim later, I was apologetically and soulfully begging my husband for help. My carpal tunnel couldn't handle my 80's Pandora station any longer than my brain could take more paint fumes. Administering perfect vertical lines on a textured wall frustrated me more than my 3rd failed Algebra class in college. 

I was in tears, I was drunk, and I was donezo.

I quit.

With Jason to the rescue, I happily tootled off to work while he finished up the closet, the trim and the insides of the window sill. 

I never even made it to the Stripper Pink, just left her hanging upside down on the pole.  

Eh, such is life. 

As a result of too much wine and too little patience, Kalynn now has a blinding monotone bedroom the color of a newborn naked mole rat.    

I think the room looks like a royal dream. Jason says it looks like a little girl exploded in here.

She's beyond thrilled with the results and she's the one who has to live in it so I suppose that's all that matters. 

I'm pleased with the way her ballet barre turned out considering it and the mirror were both scores from our local Habitat For Humanity store. She's taken up such a love of dance this year, I know it'll be something she'll continue to pursue. Every time she outgrows a pair of slippers, I'll hang them. It'll be our version of her growth chart. 

Jason moved the closet organizer, which was originally in the guest room, and we somehow managed to hang all 23,000 of her dress up princess costumes and tutus. 

Her Josef Original Through The Years figurines have a new shelf to set up occupancy and show themselves off as the collection grows one doll larger each birthday.  

Now that Kalynn had been rewarded with a room fit for all the majestic tea parties her budding heart could desire, it was time to attend to our much more furry, 4 legged daughter.

Like many houses with a set of stairs, we enjoy a small curious storage space underneath.

As it turns out, our "storage" is really the opening to a 4 foot crawl space complete with built in descending ladder.  

It creeps me out. 

I don't want storage bins where spiders could potentially be setting up a Dexter-type laboratory and waiting for me to fall asleep. I'm afraid I will go to grab a box of Halloween ornaments and a million hatched mass murderers will jump on my face and eat me alive. Are there realistically more spiders in the garage where all the storage bins ended up? Probably. Is my fear of an under-the-stair, spider-run slaughter house logical? Nuh uh. But, it is what it is. 

So we had this unused space. The trap door was covered with a piece of wood and there was a roll of surplus carpet in the garage which Jason cut and laid on the floor. I used the remainder of the pink paint to cover the patchy dry walls. 

Once we put Guacamole's bed and basket of play pigs inside, she quickly staked claim to the room and we knew it was a match. 

After a new welcome mat and valance, she had herself a puppy house. 

Her name plate has since been added so the spiders know who's territory this is.

I've taken the liberty of hanging Molsey her very own sexy fireman which she can now gaze at with her one non-blind eye. No good bachelorette pad is complete without a little smut, you know.  

Now that both of our girls had the bedrooms they've always dreamed of, it was time to start working on our own. 

But more on that next time.


(For now, find me on Instagram! TheBrighterWriter)

Ink A Bink A Bottle Of Ink

We go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong. Together forever like fricks and fracks, Franny and Zooey, In-n-Out, Bill and Ted, Limbaugh and Percocet, ass and Kardashians, Garfield and pizza, Harold and Maude, hippies and patchouli, warm cookies and cold milk, pestles and mortars.

You guys are catching my drift. Presumably.

These are the exceptional godparents to our tiny Sassy Pants. On her 3rd birthday she was gifted a book of temporary "tardoos" and ever since she's been strutting around preschool like the bad ass, inked up, queen bee that she is. 

Now that she's ripened to the age of 4 and a half, my husband and I have decided she needs to start pulling some of her own weight around here. After all, 34 pounds takes a week's worth of pay to feed. 

She has designated chores like feeding the pup, dusting the tables, making her bed, re-roofing the house, re-wiring the dimmer switches, paving the driveway, and tiling the kitchen floors. These things earn her about $5 a week which she immediately tosses into her treasure box for safe keeping. 

Last month she earned enough to buy herself the much sought after Barbie Pearl Princess dress (which rocked high fashion runways around the world) and this month she has her eyes on its matching scooter counterpart. 

Once one gets that taste of success, one often finds it difficult to go back.

Enter- The Traditional Summer Lemonade Stand:

Yeah, no.

If you're going to do a stand, then do something amazing. 

Go big or get outta here.

There are lemonade booths on every corner of every suburb around America as we speak. But my kiddo is a savvy trend setter, a think-outside-the-box entrepreneur, and a fashion icon. She looks other kids in the face and laughs at their mediocrity due to her badassness. She never cries, she eats broken glass for breakfast and she knows how to work the system. 

Look at her game face. 

Stern yet fair, approachable, and totally relevant. 

"Keep your eyes on the prize," she says.

"They won't come to me?" She says. 

"That's fine. I will go to them," she says.

The girl waved down every passing car and eventually had a waiting line down the street. Motorcyclists pulled over, couples came from their houses, kids ran over from the neighborhood park. Our security was breaking up fights, people were bowled over to get to the front, elbows were thrown, punches were bountiful.  It was an anarchy situation behind the red rope. 

She made $14 in 45 minutes. 

"That's enough for now," she says. "Maybe I'll come back out tomorrow when I need cash for that My Little Pony I've been eyeballing."

She's so cool.