cooling off

work on our casa continues. before koruna was born 2 years ago, my dad came to austin and installed central a/c in the top floor of our house (the part we live in) so that our newborn wasn't dripping with sweat from day one. since we are now moving our bedroom downstairs in preparation for marvel and will be taking over the entire house in the coming months, my pop returned recently to cool the downstairs.

at the last minute, my dad's partner couldn't come to help with the install so ian was drafted. it was a helluva job, but they did it in a weekend. they worked morning, noon, and night in the triple digit temperatures. i am typing this in the luxury of my cool downstairs studio. thanks, papasita. and thanks, ian.

bathroom renovation

i mentioned in an earlier post that we would be doing some renovations in our casa. those days have come. our house is pretty quirky. it was built in the 1930s as a duplex with a bottom floor apartment and a top floor apartment. since we bought the house 4 years ago, we have lived on the top floor and worked in our studios on the bottom floor. that is all about to change.... in the next few months we'll be building a structure out back that will house both my and ian's studios. that means we get to live in our entire house for the first time! and there is LOTS of work to do on it.

we started with our upstairs bathroom because it was teensy tiny and the thought of a family of 4 sharing it was maddening.  we had to scoot around each other if we happened to be in there at the same time (even before i was big and pregnant) and it had only makeshift storage and fake wall tiles.  below are pics of the old bathroom from outside the bathroom door.

we knocked down one of the walls and engulfed our (ridiculous) hallway into the new bathroom. in doing so, i had to say goodbye to some of koruna's "wall art" that was sprinkled all over the bottom half of the hall wall. until the renovation, i just couldn't bring myself to clean it off because it reminded me of the morning that it happened - i learned a lot that morning. (i'll have to write about that in another post.)

that is the only thing i miss from the old bathroom setup. below are pics of the new one.

i love the new bathroom. we spend lots of time in there now. at 34 weeks pregnant, i pee about 25 times a day. the whole family can now participate in runa's baths. we can all brush our teeth together. and koruna can actually see herself in the mirror.

i don't know if all of the coming home improvements will be such life improvements, but i hope so.

vegetable sticker art

one of ian's pet peeves is finding those little sticker labels on the fruits and vegetables in the compost heap. i usually try to make an effort to avoid annoying those i love, but for some reason i have a ridiculously hard time remembering to take those damn stickers off. these pictures are of the inside of our kitchen cabinets. it's ian's creative attempt to motivate me to REMEMBER THE STICKERS. and it works. sometimes.

out with the old?

i love our old house.   it has all of the good things that come with old houses -  and some of the bad.  i love it all.  our house was built in the 1930's and living in it makes me feel connected to the generations that lived here before us.    when we moved in, we bought a 1930's stove on craigslist because it complemented our old house.

it has been a lovely and quirky companion: we light the burners with a lighter or a match, its little switch-light casts a lovely glow on mid-night trips to the kitchen, and we get to store pots and pans in the broken bread warmer.  (our house has very little storage so this is a real perk.)  but it has its downsides, too.

and so we move on - tomorrow we get a brand new stove.  despite my nostalgia for the old one, i am THRILLED.  a constant and predictable temperature in the oven?  yea.  i'm ready to bake!  ian is not as excited.  he loves the old stove and could go a lifetime without baking.

every time we decide to GET RID of something and GET something else, we try to weigh out the pros and cons.

*we ask ourselves if we need it (ian and i often differ on this point.)

*we live on a pretty tight budget so we usually have to ask ourselves what else we could/should do with that money.

*we consider what is going to happen with the old piece.  we can't just throw it away - we all know there is no "away".  can it be resold?  can it be recycled?

in this case, i don't think we're getting rid of the stove at all.  i'm pretty sure it will become our outside stove - good for using occasionally.

as our family grows, we're changing things up around here and we are trying to make these changes with integrity.  i'll be posting about it all in the coming months.   tips or advice are welcome.