smiles

Lots of reasons to smile around here today. First, my mom came to town for the day which is always a treat. Also, I got to wake up to my freshly painted kitchen and redecorated office area. Love it. And last night as we were headed out to dinner to celebrate Pi'bear's potty training successes we ran into the UPS man who delivered our blog book. And it's stunning. Wouldn't these things make you smile too?

First, the blog book. Seriously you guys, it's so awesome. If you're thinking about doing one definitely go for it. I ordered it from blurb.com and they make it so easy. They "slurp" the info from your blog for you (their word, not mine) as long as you're using one of the main blogging sites - blogger, typepad, wordpress, etc. They go ahead and format it for you but then you can tweak things to your liking which is what I ended up doing. Because all of my photos have been resized for the web I can't get any images printed off of the blog larger than about 4 by 6 inches. For this reason I chose the 7 inch square blog book and it worked perfectly. I was a little worried that the type would be super small and hard to read but it's really fine. I'll be honest that I spent about three days getting everything just the way I wanted it but in the grand scheme of things that's really not that long to get such a great hard copy of your memories. The hardcover version comes with a book jacket that you can design and you can even insert pictures and text into the flaps. So cool. My only complaint about the whole thing is that whenever you use italics or links (which you guys know I do a lot), blurb takes out the space between that word and the words on either size. It's a weird annoying quirk but you can go back and fix it manually after the blog is slurped if you want to. I was too lazy and now it kind of annoys me but oh well. My book containing the first year of Princess Pigbear (2006) ended up being 258 pages. And it's 258 pages of awesome.

eta: my book was around $60 with shipping. You can order multiple copies and share the link with other people who can order copies too. You can even hike the price up and sell your book to other people, netting the difference for yourself. :)

And now, a little look at my new favorite spot in the house. I fell in love with this little kitchen office area when we first bought this house but the cold grey-khaki walls, the clutter atop the desk, the mismatch of colors scattered about and the wires and cords coming out everywhere left much to be desired. As always Brent was a sport and spent the last three nights helping me paint the kitchen, move shelving and hang things just so. I'm excited to show off the rest of the kitchen too (especially the orange we used in the tray ceiling!) but it's still a few weeks or months from being how I want it. I'm lovin' our new little corner though...

Check out the chalkboards from the store closing I mentioned on Monday...

I love them even more because they're magnetic and I now have a place to play with my motherhood magnetic poetry. With words like "bootie", "burp", and "breast" in the mix you know it's never dull!

I also love that I think I've found the perfect space for my poetry word cubes that I found at the now defunct Santa Cruzy flea market several years back.

And as long as I'm living up to my reputation and getting all crazy with the hyperlinking I might as well mention that the purty turquoise chalice is only there temporarily since the color isn't quite right for the space but the sentiment behind it makes me smile everytime I see it. So for now it stays. It was a Christmas gift from my mom to go with a book she gave us called The Blessing Cup: Prayer Rituals for Families and Groups. If that piques your interest then you might also like The Family Cloister and The Christian Family Toolbox (both of which are books by David Robinson and previous gifts from my mom).

And the piece de resistance...the little half wall right inside the door that we painted with chalkboard paint for the kiddos!

confession time: "piece de resistance" is a phrase I've always wanted to use and was never quite sure what it meant. While typing this blog I thought it was the right thing to say if it meant what I thought it meant and after checking it out on wikipedia (don't kill me Dad) I found out that it did! Hooray for my usually pitiful foreign lexicon! "French Mom", I know you're proud. If there was ever any question about how hopelessly dorky I am I'm sure I've now laid it to rest.