Livvy Lara Turns Two.

Tomorrow this angel turns two. It was just yesterday that I was throwing up in my hair and giving birth to her. But anyway, here I am and here she is, in all her toddling, babbling new-two-ness. 

Speaking of Livvy's birth, and of our first few days with her, there's a memory that returns to me: While we were in the hospital after her birth, no one brought or sent flowers. After we had Tessa, there were at least six vases to load into the car when we left the hospital. I remember worrying they'd tip over on that first already-precarious ride home with my new baby. Of course, I worried about everything then. After we got home with Livvy, I confided in my mom that the fact of it--petty or not--made me sad. The second-baby effect, I guessed. Mom was over with roses before I could think another thought about it. There are pictures of three-day-old Livvy laid across our kitchen island with a swarm of roses behind her. To me, those photos are emblematic of how those of us who love her have always endeavored to make her understand how loved and how worthy she is. 

A few words about Livvy:

Don't leave her alone with a chapstick. She will eat it.

She has started throwing tantrums. About ridiculous things only.

She goes to a Mother's Day Out program four days a week--the same one Tessa goes to. Tessa will be in kindergarten next year so I relish their short-lived togetherness, my knowing that they are safe in one place.

She has started speaking in short sentences, stringing new words together every day. Words that reveal her personality in the most exciting way. (Spoiler alert for the big reveal of her personality .... She's the absolute best.) But she still talks in full-on "baby talk," which I would prefer her never to outgrow. For Livvy, there is no such thing as the letter "L." Ask her her name: She is "Ivvy," and she "uffs" you.

Ask her how old she'll be on her birthday, she'll tell you "two" but hold up four fingers.

Her hair is now long enough for stubby powder-puff pigtails, which she wears so well. See photos throughout this post.

I still carry her around on my hip as much as I can, even though my arms ache sometimes. I love the feel of her weight and her warmth and the way her head tucks toward me to rest against my shoulder blade. I love the velvet of her forehead on my cheek.

Even though this post is fragmented because it's at the end of my work day and it's her birthday tomorrow and Thanksgiving the day after that, the most important thing to know about Livvy, if you've made it this far, is that she's a mesmerizing spirit with a sweetness and tenderness that runs deep. All babies are. This one speaks straight to my heart, and my heart is better for it. I will spend the rest of my life bringing Livvy flowers.

Livvy Likes:

• Chapstick.
• Her sister/best friend Tessa.
• Babies.
• Oatmeal.
• Baths.
• Garlic knots (and all the marinara) at Five Points Pizza.
• Cupcakes, icing only.
• Baby bottles filled to the top with milk. 
• Swigs of beer, all kinds. (If left alone with a bottle, I feel confident she'd pound it.)
• Books.
• Puzzles.
• Shaking her booty. 

Livvy Dislikes:

• The car wash.
• Electric hand-dryers. Thus, public bathrooms in general.
• Having her hair combed.
• Most Halloween costumes and decorations.
• The suggestion that she should start pottytraining.
• The suggestion that she is too old for a bottle. 
• Anything to drink out of other than a bottle. 

What I Love About Livvy:

• The way her breath smells. 
• The shape of her teeth. 
• Ah, hell, let me just cut to the chase: Every single thing.  

Guest Bedroom/Office Redo.

This past month I've been focusing all my home project enthusiasm, efforts, and budget into my office-slash-our guest bedroom. Since I work from home (and from Ugly Mugs, a beloved coffee shop two miles from here), this is the probably the room I spend the most waking hours in. I think I also devoted attention to this space in honor of starting to write my novel here (and probably also to procrastinate from doing so).

This room had been feeling dark and gloomy; it was painted a deep blue-green that I didn't hate but that wasn't doing this space any favors and was sucking some of the energy out of it. And I need energy here, since this is the room in which I have to decide to write rather than, say, deciding to take a nap. Also, the old paint had been given to me years ago by a girl who I once thought a good friend who then blew me off fantastically for the craziest reason that I could never possibly blog about but for which you will have to trust me. Anyway, bad connotations with this old color. Had to start fresh.

There are four things I had been wanting to try:

1) Paint a ceiling blue.
2) Stripe a wall.
3) Use the famous, dreamy Benjamin Moore color, "Palladian Blue."
4) Make pompom trim curtains.

I did all four, over a period of a few weeks. Started by painting the walls "Alabaster" by Sherwin Williams, which I've used in other places around the house. It's also the color I'm slowly starting to paint all of my trim. (For the record, it is apparently exactly the same color as Benjamin Moore's "White Dove.") It took three coats to cover the green. The ceiling was actually easier to paint than I imagined, especially because I used this tool to tackle the edges. It is now "Palladian Blue" by Benjamin Moore.

After that was done, I waited a week and then went back to add the stripes to one wall. I taped them off to be 12 inches high:

I did that trick where, before painting the stripes, you roll the whole wall with the base color (the Alabaster) to "seal" the tape so that the stripes don't bleed. It worked great and I had really clean lines and barely any touchups to do once I pulled the tape off. The gray paint color is "Wickham Gray" by Benjamin Moore (the same color of my living room and hallway, which are right outside the door of this room.

Plus I got to take down the old metal blinds we've had in here since we moved up and hang some curtains I love. I went with the Ikea Lenda panels, which I have in almost every room of my house because the quality is so good, they come in the 118"-long length that you can do floor-to-ceiling curtains with, and they're so inexpensive (about $17 per panel for the longest length). We don't have an Ikea in Nashville, but I get these from eBay. I always just cut off the top loops and attach them to clip rings, so they look more fancy-like. I recommend washing, drying, and ironing them, even though it's a pain in the ass, before hanging or hemming them since they shrink by at least four inches in the wash. This time I trimmed my Lendas with pompom trim from createforless.com. This trim isn't usually cheap in large quantities, but I got the smaller pompoms from this website and was able to pay $18 for 36 yards of trim (I did two colors, so paid about $40 for all the trim I needed for four panels). The time it took to sew two kinds of trim around all four corners of four panels? A lot. The curtain rods and clips are Martha Stewart Living from Home Depot.

I'm not showing you the "office" side of the room yet because there are still a few things yet for me to do over there.

Because the Alabaster was flat and the Wickham Gray was semi-gloss, the difference in sheens makes the gray paint look silver, which is kind of a happy accident.

The new room is a hit with the whole family.

The Thing I'm Most Afraid Of

The thing I'm most afraid of is the thing I want the most. Well, almost the most: what I want the very most is a happy marriage and two happy, healthy daughters who know they can always count on me and who outlive me. But beyond THAT, what I want is to write a novel. It's what I have always wanted. Since I was a little girl. I'm one of the lucky ones who always knew what I wanted to "be" when I grew up--a writer. Having Tessa 4.5 years ago gave me the courage to break away from the corporate world, where I was doing editing and writing work, and go out on my own as a freelancer. Even when the babies were little, I needed to contribute my fair share to our bank account or else go back to office work, so I have taken most everything that's come my way: most notably, I've written hundreds (thousands?) of blog posts about chimney sweeping. And while I'm proud to make a living with the pen/keyboard, there's been one blaring item on my bucket list that tops all other items. And I have let it scare the pants off me.

Around a bonfire on New Year's Eve 2013, some good friends and I all wrote down on a scrap of paper what we most wanted out of 2014 and then tossed our hopes into the fire. Mine said, "Start writing my novel." One of my best friends wrote, "Have a baby," and her baby is almost fully cooked now. But it has been a slow start for me, mostly because I started all wrong. At some point in January, I Googled "How to write a novel." Ha. Ha. How lame is that? I was looking for info about length and organization, stuff like that. I came across some dude who writes sci-fi novels like it's his job (oh, because it is) and he advised this really strict methodology for outlining all of your chapters before you start writing. That made sense to me, so I did a little bit of work on that, then put it away ... for months. I found it incredibly boring and also daunting to map out every plot point ahead of time. What I had/have was a pretty general idea of how I want things to go in my book, but most all of the details are outstanding. Trying to foresee all of it robbed every bit of joy from the process.

And then my friend Reid gave me the perfect book for my birthday, which as Angela Chase would say, "just fit into this empty place in my heart." It's Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True by Elizabeth Berg, and it's a book about writing. Which is basically the last thing I wanted to read, as I've read so many, and there comes a point when it's just like, OK, go write something already. But this book beguiled me right off the bat, and it appealed to my creative process, which I realized was not at all the same process of that sci-fi writer dude. When I read the following, why I had squandered the past nine months not writing my novel made all the sense in the world to me:

"I believe that fiction feeds on itself, grows like a pregnancy. The more you write, the more there is to draw from; the more you say, the more there is to say. The deeper you go into your imagination, the richer that reservoir becomes. You do not run out of material by using all that's in you; rather, when you take everything that is available one day, it only makes room for new things to appear the next." 

Oh, God, yes. So I just started writing. And it's been so very fun; I fall asleep at night thinking of my characters, and whenever I have a moment to daydream my mind goes to them (or else to home decorating and redecorating, which is almost as fun). I may end up writing a stupendously shitty novel and it may never be published and it may take me five years to write, as these kids take up damn near all of my time, but I promise I will just be glad to have done it and to be able to tell my daughters that I did it.

Finally, I read something else that has helped me get over my starting-to-write-my-novel hump, and it's this, said by Elizabeth Gilbert on, yes, Oprah:

"What you don't want to do is walk out of here and start treating your fear like a precious object ... If you cherish that fear and you give it all kinds of attention and you treat it like it's something very special, it's going to end up keeping you from what you really want. Here's what I'm going to tell you about your fear: It's the most boring thing about you. The most interesting thing about you is your creativity, your passion, your love, your joy, your faith--all that stuff is fascinating. Your fear is just as boring as mine is ... It is not precious. It is not special. It is not singular to you. It's just the one we all got wired with when we came in."

Which made me realize I really have been paying homage to my fear of getting started on this book--I've spent far more time telling my friends and family that I'm intimidated by it than I've spent actually sitting in front of my computer and doing something, anything, with that blank screen. Sometimes you've just got to shut up and go for it--even if, especially if, what you're going for is the thing you want the most.

32.

A few weeks ago I turned 32. It was a Friday, and Nekos took the day off. The weather was just my style--sunny but not sweltering. I indulged many of my generic guilty pleasures--country music and Panera and pumpkin spice lattes--and we took the girls to the zoo. We weren't there long; mostly we walked around Grassmere, this historic mansion built in 1810 and situated to one corner of the zoo. It's encircled by old buildings, barns, cemeteries, and lazy, grazing farm animals, and it's almost eerily quiet so it feels that much more sacred. Later that day, after the girls had naps, I had a massage (a gift from my mama), and Nekos and I went to the mall so I could pick out some new Ray Ban Aviators. It had been a couple of years since my other pair had crapped out, so new Ray Bans were a big treat. To seal what was the perfect day for me (in a wildly imperfect life), my mom took the girls for the night and Nekos and I went out for dinner. I am all about the burger at Holland House. And the Palomas. So we did that, and then we went to bed early-ish. Because I am a granny now, being 32 and all. The next night a few of my girlfriends came over with vodka and wine and a "bruschetta bar" and we played old school jams and danced in my living room. A great birthday, full of love. For that I am very grateful. 

For the record, the ages of the other people in these photos is: 34, 4.5, and nearly 2.

Before & After We Cut a Doorway in a Wall And Doubled Our Living Room

Longest I've ever gone without blogging? Nearly three months. I think so. Been working my tail off and, also, enjoying summer. But I'm back with a good icebreaker--probably our biggest renovation to date. Essentially, we doubled the size of our living room and made our house feel bigger, airier, sunnier, and certainly more functional for us. The renovation happened a few months ago now, but I've been having fun all this time tweaking things and creating fun new nooks. Also, trolling Craiglist for the perfect petite midcentury sofa to go in what we now call the "music room," since it is home to Nekos' zillions of records.

Our friend T.J., who is also the realtor who sold us our house, suggested to me about six months ago that we cut a doorway in the wall behind our couch. We had just moved Tessa and Livvy into the same bedroom upstairs, and Tessa's old bedroom downstairs (behind the wall the couch was against) was pretty much useless to us. Plus, we were craving more space for dance parties and dinner parties and family hangs. Being a realtor, T.J. was sensitive to the notion that we wouldn't want to lose a bedroom and thus decrease the value of our house, so he said we should just cut a door in the wall instead of knocking down the wall entirely. That way, when it's time for us to sell one day we can just install french doors and call it a bedroom. Plus we still have three bedrooms, so once the girls decide they're done with sharing a room, we can separate them. Anyway, T.J.'s suggestion felt like a revelation, as it would be a relatively easy and hopefully inexpensive way to totally change the feel of our house.

Here's what our little living room looked like before. We live in a 1926 bungalow so the rooms are all small cozy.

On the opposite wall is our mantle, which had our TV hanging over it--blegh. Our front door is just to the right.

Here's one last look at the untouched wall, right before demo:

Here's the demo process. This guy estimated that labor and materials would cost around $500. It cost $1,700 total. Is this just par for the course with subcontractor people or what? I literally had to tell him, "Uh, I don't have that much money. I can pay you half now, half next week?"

Anyway, the work itself was really solid. He did an awesome job of recreating a historical doorway so that it perfectly matches the existing doors. And he said this demo part took much longer than he anticipated since the walls were like a fortress. It took him and another guy the better part of a day to clear away all the wood and concrete between these two rooms.

Afterwards, Tessa and Livvy and I couldn't quite believe it. It didn't look or feel like our house, as we could now see from room to room and the girls can run in a circle now through the rooms. Would you believe I had all of this done while Nekos was out of town? And the mess? It was profound. Dust like you wouldn't believe. But totally worth it. 

Before I show y'all the finished photos, here's one last mini-makeover I did with the fireplace. I painted the ugly pink-ish tile the same gray as our kitchen cabinets. And after patching the wall where the TV used to hang above the mantel, I painted it "Alabaster" (Sherwin Williams), just to brighten things up, though I still love the sky blue that the rest of this room is. 

And let me back up a minute. The very first thing I did, before any demo, is to paint Tessa's old bedroom (our new living room). It was a sunny yellow; now it's "Wickham Gray" (a watery blue-gray) by Benjamin Moore. The deeper blue in the "music room" is "Salty Tear" by Behr. 

So here's the new view from our front door:

Here's looking into the new living room:

And the new, TV-less mantel, which has been so fun to decorate:

I am loving this sailboat my mama got me for my birthday last month:

After this renovation, we realized we had basically no furniture to go in our old living room, so I found this sweet midcentury piece of ass on Craiglist. We adore it, and it is so comfortable.

I am dreaming of putting this CB2 acrylic coffee table in front of it one of these days. And I want a pair of these chairs (look how cheap!) In the meantime, my mama loaned me these two handsome armchairs for seating.

And here is our new living room/TV room. The TV is on the wall opposite the couch:

Thanks for having a look. I am always going for cheerful, colorful, comfortable, and eclectic. I think we got it.