Dream This Home

Building and Maintaining your forever home.

Children’s Library

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Books are my favorite gift.  I read to my kids throughout the day and try to read a chapter or two from a non-picture book every night.  Because nothing is more relaxing than being transported into a story for a beat of time.  My younger one at the age of 2 usually falls asleep to my voice.  The kid’s library is important to me.  Always accessible, always offering a chance to teach them the importance of literacy.  No Dewey Decimal system in my house.  Just simple organization at their little fingertips.  Board books for the little one on one shelf.  Japanese books in one area, hardbound books on one shelf with paperbacks grouped together.  Yes, sometimes there are moments of, “that book again?”  I mean how many times can I possibly read about the frickin’ Pout Pout Fish or battle against the Four Leggers on Hoth?  But it’s ok.  I take a deep breath when the littles bring me a book to read.  If they willingly picked it and brought it to me, I oblige.  Every time.  Even when it means putting whatever I’m doing aside no matter how pressing it seems in that moment.  It’s just another way to show my love.  When a small body is nestled into my lap for a quick read, I’m theirs.  And they are mine.

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Keep reading with your kidlettes.

-K

Shared Bedrooms Build Character

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My husband and his two brothers grew up with their own bedrooms.  I shared a bedroom for over a decade with my little sis who is six years younger than I am.  So when it came to designing our own children’s spaces for the new house, the husband and I had “some discussions.”  Of course he wanted separate bedrooms for the kidlettes and I wanted a shared sleeping arrangement . In the end, I won.  Because shared bedrooms build character.  And… we didn’t have the space for separate bedrooms without chopping our already tiny footprint into a mess of  hallways and unnecessary closed doors.  We needed to be smart about our first floor layout.

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Children are adaptable.  They get what they get and they survive.  It’s a first world problem really.  Some families share one bedroom.  Heck we did it for 3 years!  Our kidlettes currently share a bedroom, they always have.  My older one at the age of 4 going on 5 cuddles in his brother’s bed almost on a nightly basis.  The younger one, who just turned two just graduated from his converted crib into a big boy bed and he loves having his big bro’s foot or butt in his face every night.  Ok, no he doesn’t like it and usually ends up curled up on the floor.  But again, building character.

Of all the rooms in the house, I designed the kidlette’s bedroom first.  (In my head.)  Theirs will be a small, yet perfectly curated room.  Black and White schemed.  Simple.  I know it will not always look perfect as our daily lives commence, but gosh darn, when it is made up for move in day,  it’s going to be amazing.  The beds will be made-up with crisp white sheets with perfect matching accent pillows.  All the toys will be concealed behind closed closet doors.  The walls will be smudge free and devoid of “artistic” crayon markings.  The curtains will hang effortlessly and the rug… (which I have guiltily already purchased – thank you Anthropologie!) will be devoid of sand and dirty footprints.  Soft and inviting for their little feet to plod upon.

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Dreams.  I know there may be a smirk on your face as reality is quite different from a magazine photo existance.  But I’m going to dream a bit longer, because as much as this new home is for our whole family, my children running through its spaces is the mental image that warms my heart the most.  So within their four shared walls, my children will grow, and build their individual characters, and dream side-by-side.

Just a bit longer.

-K

Ants. The Bane of my Existence.

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If you live in Southern California, you know what I’m talking about.  I swear I live on an ant hill.  Summer is the worst when those pesky suckers are looking for water or whatever they are doing, but I’m already battling them in trickles this spring.  And let’s not even mention the swarming A-holes that I had to thwart this past winter when we had our “torrential” rains…  I am not an exterminator so I have no clue how ants colonize, but there are definitely ant colonies in our walls.  (I’m pretty sure they share space with the termites that live in there too…)  The ones that come up from under our raised foundation find their way through tiny cracks in our ancient hardwood flooring, but last year, we had an incident where ants were actually coming out of an outlet in the kitchen.  Ghaaaaaa! Writing about them gives me the serious heebee-jeebees but I have to share a few things.

Keep your kitchen clean.  I wipe down the countertops and the stove every single night and there are very few occasions when there are dishes left in the sink.  But ants smell everything.  I mean, I don’t know if they can actually smell, but the little f-ers that live in our house have radar or something.  If there is a rogue dish with even the tiniest scrap of food left in the sink, they will find it and come morning, I’m raging with the portable Dyson, and cursing (not so discretely) under my breath. The hardest part about “keeping it clean” is that when you have kids, there will be crumbs.  And undetected crumbs bring in the troops.  Last summer during the height of my battle with the ants, I kid you not, I saw one carrying a 1/4 of a cheerio.  One ant!  It must have been five times its body size and it was trudging along in line with the thing.  WTF?!?!  I admit that I don’t have the energy to vacuum every night so undetected crumbs happen, but if you are serious about the war, keeping your countertops and the floors wiped and swept at the end of the day will save your sanity – because I feel like ants do most of their scouting and heavy lifting in the dead of the night.

Check your potted plants.  I always have orchids in my house and for some reason, ants looooove to live in them.  Why?  I don’t know.  But just be aware that if you spent a fortune on that rare phalaenopsis or prized cymbidium, that ants don’t discriminate and can ruin your investment in a flash.  You can set the pot outside and flush the colony out with a good dousing, but several times, I was just so fed up that I threw a few perfectly good plants away.

Opt for natural extermination if you are going to call an exterminator.  For obvious health reasons.  But honestly, we did this and the ants still proliferate amongst us.  It seems like a losing battle and it drives me ABSOLUTELY bonkers.  I think we were ant free for a few months but like what they say about cockroaches, ants seem to be bomb proof.  I don’t have a sound recommendation for annihilating the unkillable.

My current battle strategy.  Sevin.  I swear by the stuff.  I sprinkle it around the house perimeter at the beginning of every summer and it keeps the outsiders out.  The ones that live in the walls and under the house, I can’t seem to control, but at least I know there are no newcomers from the outside.  If I find a line of ants in the house, I remove the bait, vacuum the line, find the source and sprinkle Sevin where they are coming from, then I vacuum again. This usually stops the assault.  I know I sound like a crazy person.  I guess when it comes to ants, I am a stark raving lunatic. It’s because I feel like I am constantly cleaning and I don’t have a dirty house, but they still manage to infiltrate and I feel angry and hopeless about it.  If you are an ant, you are on the “other side.”  I feel zero remorse for the thousands of lives I have ended and probably as retribution, their brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and 5 kabillion children keep haunting me.  Spiders, flies and other pests are just as gross, but nothing gets my blood boiling quite like a black line of marching evil.

Our new house…  We are going to have a boat foundation.  That’s the type where you basically pour concrete across the entire breadth of your home.  Because we are building on sand, it’s typical.  I. Can’t. Wait.  I can’t frickin’ wait to tear this old, ant ridden house down, haul the debris and the ants that live in it away and bury the ant hill we currently sit on under the glorious, crushing weight and expanse of concrete.  I imagine a celestial beam of sunlight will shine on our property the day the cement trucks pull up.  The remaining survivors better retreat to… wherever… because I will make for damn sure that the new house is sealed from the ground up.

I don’t want to put it out into the universe, but how much do you want to bet that there will be ants in our future second floor kitchen.  I can’t quite fathom what I will do when that day comes…

May you win the battle.

-K

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