Braces

On Monday Yin had braces put on her top teeth. There is a trip or two to the oral surgeon before the bottom braces can be put on. The child has 5, yes 5 teeth that have no room to come in; so we are pulling a few and moving the rest around.

Yin is of course a bit ADHsquirelly, as I have mentioned before. This child has never stopped talking once she started, seriously she talks in her sleep. When we were at the orthodontists office they put this medieval torture looking device in her mouth and she couldn't talk. She then began to wiggle, just a bit and was told to hold still. Yin struggled but managed. Then wonder of wonders they painted her teeth blue, yes blue!

It was too good to resist. I grabbed the phone, jumped up and snapped a picture of her..mouth stretched wide, teeth blue and her looking a bit like a donkey.

BLACKMAIL money shot I swear. I also promised to show her husband the picture the night before her wedding; because I am evil like that.

After the torture was over and braces were on, the dental hygienist is giving her a goody bag. This woman had yet to crack a smile at anything. Not the jokes about Yin being silent for the first time in a decade, not the picture, nope she was so stoic I actually texted my husband about her missing sense of humor. She told Yin about "goody bag" contents: the toothbrushes and wax and timers ect and then said "and you get a t-shirt, what size would you like?" and Yin deadpans with perfect pitch. "Five thousand dollars and I get a T-shirt." I laughed out loud, the hygienist even almost broke a smile. I may have gotten the mouth money shot, but Yin won the day with her one liner.

Ahh the cupboard!

Okay so here is the finished cupboard..the one I kept redoing until I got it almost perfect. It was an ugly mess when my brother in law gave it to me. I don't know what possessed me to keep it other than I kept thinking the Yin needed a little piece in her room.

I need a better camera for these pictures; but for now just make do with me please.

Here it is..I wasn't kidding..ugly and it smelled bad, so bad I didn't even want it in the garage..it got to live on the back porch.

And the top notice the levels of paint?

The entire piece had layers and layers of paint..inside and out.

But now it is so pretty!

 

 

 

Here is a close up of the clear cut knob, Yin loves her bling.

 



 

 

The new top illustrates the techniques I used.





I left the inside the original hummingbird egg blue.

 

 

As I wrote yesterday I had painted a light yellow dry stroke coat over the color you now see inside. I then made a wash of the turquoise and did two coats over the yellow. The door is slightly more blue than the actual cupboard itself now but not too much so. I let the paint dry and then roughed up the paint job a bit and applied minwax's provincial stain, wiping it off almost immediately. Two coats of poly and it was done. I choose to use poly because it is going in Yin's room and this will provide a better protective barrier than wax.

 

What do you think? Any questions?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

 



The cupboard is finished!

Okay, so the cupboard, or tiny cabinet, is almost finished. About 6 months ago my brother in law gave me this little cupboard; one door, three shelves, in rough shape and it smelled horrible. But I kept looking at it thinking that it would be wonderful in Yin's room. In the next month or so I am going to be redoing all her furniture and I thought I could refurbish the cupboard to complement what I intend to do with her furniture.

 It took me 2 days to sand and sanitize it. It was covered in 3 coats of paint, each one uglier than the next, on top an army green, under that a maroon, and finally on bottom a white. I sanded and sanded and sanded. I filled two funny little holes in the top of the cupboard and then I sanded some more. The real crazy of the last seven months began and I walked away and into my caretaker role in our family.

Back in December I painted the cupboard a hummingbird egg blue, turquoise really; but no, it didn't work for me.  I then painted one dry brushed coat of yellow over it and it got better but still wasn't what I wanted. Who knew that one tiny little cupboard could be so difficult. Creative inspiration hit finally this week and I went to work. I just put the last coat of poly on and it should be dry by tomorrow morning and after church I can reattach the door, put a cute knob on the door, and pictures!

I can't wait to show y'all and explain how the final product came about! Just had to share my excitement and tease you a bit. Come back tomorrow for pictures!

Spelling

I am not the world's greatest speller, but once upon a time I wasn't a bad one either. I also used to get horrible week long migraine headaches and my doctor prescribed a medication, that no joke, had the side effect of me forgetting how to spell, not completely; but enough so that I had to keep a dictionary close by, at all times, to look up simple spellings. I spell better now than I did 6 years ago, but not as well as I did 10 years ago.

My girls are dyslexic and dysgraphic. Spelling is a nightmare. With Yang, the oldest, I could reasonably help her with spelling. Poor Yin, we spend a lot of time looking up words and memorizing spelling words. Yin's homework for spelling this week, which she forgot(ADHD at your service), was a list of her spelling words...MISSPELLED. This was a nightmare for the kid who moves letters about and adds E's where none are needed. It was also a nightmare for me because she remembered it, in the car, driving to school. Thank heavens for smart phones!

I explained how the phone will correctly spell words for you if you type in the general gist. I'm driving and she is trying to look up words on the phone. We ended up sitting in the parking lot for 10 minutes using the phone to correctly spell the misspelled words. 10 years ago I could have rattled them off, but today, nope just like my girls I need assisted spelling.