everythingistaken's Profile

The thing in her pocket is an M Card (ID card, gets you into buildings, etc) from the University of Michigan in one of the plastic holders they give you for it - I guess they haven't changed since I went there, I recognised it immediately. :)

Maybe it was for a college project? Looks like they're on the engineering campus and the poster is in computer engineering there; some of our engineering courses had you come up with crazy things for projects. Or she was just being a wacky, creative college student!

I really have to question the price of the GoToobs. What makes them so expensive for five little bottles?!? Does anyone know the reason?

I wish I could convince even my husband to take off his shoes in the house. He insists on keeping them on almost all of the time, even in the winter when he's tracking in snow. Our beige carpet is looking worse and worse. A little part of the problem is a lack of good shoe storage space since we usually enter and exit through the garage door which opens up into the laundry room (which is small and has no place for a bench of any sort) and then straight into the kitchen (where there is also no room). This means you end up at least walking through the living room to take off your shoes, which kind of defeats the purpose in the winter.

I forgot to mention above something I've been meaning to ask my mom about - she's kept a LOT of my childhood items (as in, most everything I ever had as a kid) including awesome stuff like Legos, Lincoln Logs, dress up clothes, books, classic kids games, almost new stuffed animals, etc. I'd like her to use some of these items in the future as Christmas/birthday/other times of year gifts. This will be good since she won't be spending extra money and my daughter will (hopefully) appreciate that not every toy needs to be bright and new and shiney to be fun and appreciated. I wish my mom hadn't kept so many of my things (especially since now I'm already dealing with having to discard some not-so-awesome-28-years-later items from my babyhood that my mother still loves), but since she did at least we can put them to use!

We're still more than a year away from our first Christmas with a kid (we'll have a 11 month old for next Christmas, we have a little girl end of January) but I've been thinking about this. I was an only child and my birthday was Dec 28th, so Christmas time was always presents galore. I know my husband's family will be reasonable about gifts (this is the third grandchild on that side), but I'm a bit concerned about my parents since this will be their first (and unless/until we have a second, their only) grandchild.

I love the idea of need/want/wear/read, at least for little ones. I think that might especially help since she'll have a birthday about a month after Christmas. When I was a kid, Santa always brought two gifts, usually a large gift (that my parents wanted to avoid wrapping, lol!) like a sled, sleeping bag, etc and one smaller gift that I had specifically asked for (Santa brought my first Barbie, for example). I like that idea and think I will keep it going.

Love their bed! THere are also plans for similar and other styles of beds (and tons of other furniture!) on ana-white.com. Building furniture can actually be easier and more rewarding than a lot of people think! I've built some shelves, a side table, our (king size) bed, and a changing table and feel like all of them have come out to be worth the effort.

anytown, I'd guess that's more of a "current" shoes situation. I'm like that; all of my shoes are either kept in the laundry room closet (boots on the floor, casual shoes in an over the door organizer) or my bedroom closet (dressy shoes in plastic boxes), but I tend to leave a couple pairs of shoes I'm currently wearing often right by the front door.

I vote for one of the bright colors from the pillow as well since most of the rest of the colors in your room are very neutral. I like the slightly darker blue/teal color from the pillow, but the navy would also look great if you don't want to go quite so bright or if a bigger dose of the teal might not go well with the off-white carpet/walls.

I would have preferred a darker stain for myself, but in general I love their console. When they first had it on their blog I really wanted one for my living room (I had been wanting one, but not as deep - I have a normal length couch and could buy one, but I'm frugal and handy with power tools so I would build my own if I built one), except that my husband complained that then he wouldn't be able to lean his head against the wall.

And as for the "$100", I could easily do that for the price. I do have a drill and a miter saw, but you could do it without a miter saw if you needed (I'd probably make the top out of solid length boards if you didn't, but otherwise it wouldn't be hard). I built our bed (headboard, footboard, and frame) as well as an end table with basically no experience, and right now I'm finishing up a changing table. If you are interested, ana-white.com is a great resource for project plans and help.

I'm all for throwing a divorce/break up/fresh start party, but not a "shower" where the intention is gifts and a registry. However, if someone puts out a request on Facebook asking if anyone has unused kitchen stuff/etc that they could have because they just went through a break up and are missing things, then I'd be gladly digging through my drawers seeing what I could find to help them out. But then again, I kind of hate showers in general; I just had my baby shower recently and while I'm so happy to have had a chance to see my friends and family as well as very (extremely) thankful for all the gifts, it still made me feel embarrassed/guilty to be receiving things from them.

Kind of reminds me of this: A friend of mine had a big graduation/housewarming party where the intention was that people would be gifts (she included her registry information when telling people about it) because she said she would never be getting married so it was only fair that she get all that sort of stuff. Now a year and a half later she's engaged. Opps.