Happy Campers!

We've been on 3 camping trips so far this year.  Vera has quickly learned what camping is, and she really loves it!

The first trip was at Ft. Loramie with grandma and the rest of the Bertke family.  Blake came to visit for an afternoon, and they did some swimming together.

Vera's hat got wet, and then it was more like a blinder than a hat.  haha

Our second camping trip was to Huggy Bear in Van Wert.  We borrowed uncle Brian's camper and we went with grandma, Mandy, Jeff, Blake, Karen, and the Bruns family.  Brian's camper was perfect for our family.  Aunt Karen slept with Vera in the bunk.  It was hot and we had lots of fun swimming.

Aunt Karen with two cute kids!

It was really hot on Sunday as we were cleaning up to go home.  We put Vera and Blake in the camper in the A/C to play around for a while.  They were out of the sun and out of the way. 

Our last trip was with the Magoteaux family to Natural Springs in New Paris.  Uncle Brian was nice enough to lend us his camper for this trip too.  It was a memorable trip filled with good food, swimming, bike rides, "time-outs," rain, ball games, bumps and bruises, sand castles, a bee sting, putt-putt golfing, vomiting, and plenty of playing. 



Vera is playing with the toy that was the biggest hit of the weekend, a tape measure.  Reece is playing with one of his favorite things, baseball.



The guys did a great job doing all the cooking!



We did find a little time to relax.

Ryan, Vera and Reece getting their technology fix for the day.

Vera and Ryan played puppies a few times. 

She has him eating out of her hand already.  :)

Putt-Putting was fun.  The Magoteaux family had the perfect sized putter for 2 year-olds.

Here are the puppies again.

After the rain, the sun came out for a short bit and we went to play in the sand at the beach.



Ryan, Vera and Angela made this sand castle...

...but the little ones thought it was more fun to stomp on the castles they made.

We had a good time on all of our trips.  Thanks to Angela and Mandy for some of these pictures.

We Love Swimming!

We haven't been to the pool as often as I would like, but we have a few weeks left of summer to try to make it there.

I took Vera to the pool one evening last week and we had the baby pool to ourselves.  Vera is finally getting brave and will go under the mushroom waterfall.

A few weekends ago we went to Barga's pond on a Friday evening to swim.  Vera didn't like that she couldn't see her feet.  She was kind of afraid to stand up; she preferred to float in her life jacket. 

However, she was not afraid of the diving board.  She barely let me hold onto her as I walked her to the edge and helped her jump off.  She actually went off the diving board twice, and would've gone a dozen more times if we would've let her. 

A New Old Bed

This post is for my mom and her sisters.  :)

About 5 years ago, my mom and her sisters went through the huge task of cleaning out my grandparents' house and preparing it to sell.  This was the only house that my grandparents ever lived in, so you can imagine the amount of "treasures," as we call them, that were packed into this house. 

As a result, my cousins and I all had the opportunity to choose treasures that we wanted from the house.  Along with many other nice family heirlooms (and a few silly ones), I received a bedroom suit that my mom and her sisters had in their bedroom as kids.  It has 3 pieces all in a blonde finish: a bed frame, a desk, and a make-up vanity-like dresser.  (Is that what it is?  It's hard to describe)  We put the desk and vanity in our house and we put the bed frame in the attic.  Until last week.

This is before.  I hadn't touched the surface at all.

Vera has a big girl bed now, so we decided to get the frame down and use it in her bedroom.  Since it was blonde finish, I decided to refinish it before we put it in her room.

After some research, I bought this kit.  It has four steps and doesn't involve any sanding, priming or stripping.  You can choose from about 20 different finish colors, most of which are really pretty. It was $35 at Home Depot.  Seemed affordable and easy enough.  I measured my square footage and determined that I'd probably need 2 kits--$70 is still cheaper than buying a new bed frame.

I read the instructions a few times and got to work.  The first step is a deglosser.  It removes all the grease, grime and shiny finish.  It was hard work, requiring a lot of hard scrubbing and elbow grease.  Here it is--less shiny, but much cleaner.

As I scrubbed, I spent a lot of time thinking about the story this bed could tell.  If it could talk, what kinds of stories and experiences could this bed share?  I scrubbed off red crayon and wondered the story behind that.  I noticed a few drips of the peachy pink paint that was on the walls in the bedroom where this bed spent it's previous life.  I wondered who slept in this bed.  There were a few dents and dings, all adding to the character and history of this furniture.

 

I also tried to figure out how old this bedroom suit must be.  I figured at least 50 years old, and then I discovered this:

I'm not sure if I'm just "making this up," but I'm going to guess this refers to either 1-1-1960 or maybe 11-1960.  In January of 1960, Paul and Lucille were on their way to having three daughters.  In November of 1960, Paul and Lucille Bertke had 3 daughters--a 4 year-old, 2 year-old and a baby.  So around that time, the Bertkes could've very well purchased this furniture for their daughters' bedroom.  Maybe it's just some sort of ID number too.  There's no other markings on the bed indicating who manufactured the furniture.  But as it turns out, I was totally wrong about my assumption on the 1160.

Recently I talked to my mom and aunt Shorty.  I initially thought this bed was purchased by my grandparents, but I found out that it actually belonged to my great grandparents.  They bought it for one of their daughters--either my grandma Lucille or my great aunt Mary Ann.  When great grandma sold her farm, my grandparents got this bedroom suit.  To justify my calculations, if my grandma were alive today, she'd be 79 years old, so I'm going to say this bed is about 70ish years-old.  My mom was pretty sure that this bedroom suit served as a spare bed for most of the time it was at the Bertke residence.  It's pretty crazy to realize that this bedroom suit has been unused for so long--30 years, maybe 40 or 50?  For five years it's been in our attic.  And now, Ed and Viola May's great-great granddaughter is going to use the bedroom suit they purchased.  Kind of cool.

Back to the refinishing...
The second step is a bond coat.  It's kind of like paint.  I put it on in two coats with a paint brush. 
Here it is after coat 1:

It's pretty streaky.  Definitely needs another coat.

And after 2 coats:

 

I was happy with the progress up to that point.  I was a little worried about how it'd look with the paint brush strokes, but it was even and smooth with no streaks.

Then was step 3, a glaze coat.  I was really worried about this step because you have to brush this on, and then wipe it off.  I was afraid I wouldn't wipe it off evenly. 

That's when the major hiccup happened.  In a haste, I grabbed the wrong can.  It was actually step 4, the finish coat, instead of the third step.  The finish coat dries really fast.  I started brushing it on, and then I went to wipe it off and it was all rough and gooey-looking.  It didn't wipe off smooth at all.  Crap.  Then I saw the can.  I got this sick feeling in my stomach.  I went to get a wet rag and started to scrub off the layer before it completely dried.  Too late.  A lot of it was drying and didn't wipe off smoothly.  As I wiped, I started to wipe off the bond coat too in small chips.  The chips were down to the original finish.  I wanted to throw up.  I said a lot of bad words then almost cried.  Now what?!  The worst part?  It was on the headboard--at the top--right where everyone's eye will go.  Of course.  That's how my luck goes. 

I decided to strip the bond coat off and start over.  I got the deglosser out and started scrubbing.  It was such a mess.  The paint ran off every where.  I had brown goo running and smearing all over the headboard.  It was the 4th of July, raining and humid.  How would I get this to dry?  I scrubbed until my hands felt like they weighed 1000 lbs.  The varnish started flaking off.  I started worrying about stripping it down to the bare wood.  It says in the directions that this product doesn't work well on bare wood.  It had to be primed first.  Great.  I just wanted this project to turn out nice.  And, to make it worse, it was a family heirloom.  I decided to let it dry really well and see how it looked.  Plus, I needed to walk away from it before things got even worse.  Here's the screw up:

You can see how the varnish stripped off to make an uneven surface.  This isn't supposed to happen.

I took a chance and decided to try to redo the bond coat without priming it first.  It worked out to be just fine.  I put three coats of the espresso-colored bond coat on this part of the bedframe.  I was pleased with how it worked out. 

Next was step 3, the decorative glaze.  I double and triple checked the can before I started to make sure I had the right one.  Then I decided to start on the rails of the bed instead of the headboard.  This way it was an inconspicuous area, especially since I wasn't sure how this was going to go.  The glaze was tricky to work with.  It was very thin, which seemed uncharacteristic of the word "glaze."  I expected something thicker.  I brushed it on, and then used rags that were similar to cheese cloth to wipe off the excess.  I had to work in large areas with even and straight strokes.  Not easy.  I expected more of the wood grain to show through, but it didn't.  It mostly gave some texture to the finish.  At first I didn't like it, but it definitely grew on me.  I had to do a few touch-ups, but I was able to do only one coat of this step.

Finally came the protective finish step.  This step is similar to a varnish.  It really "made" the bed.  It put a shine on the bed, and made it smooth and professional-looking. 

 

We let the frame dry really well before we brought it in the house.  When we disassembled the bed to bring it in the house, the finish didn't scratch off anywhere.  Huge plus.  We put it up in Vera's room this evening.  She was so excited.  We were pretty shocked to realize how high off the ground this bed is.  I'm guessing in 1940 mattresses weren't as thick as they are today.

There's no way Vera can climb in the bed by herself.  Adam is thinking of how to make some sort of step to help her get in.  His comment was, "She's going to be 6 years-old before she can climb in the bed by herself!"  We weren't too concerned about her getting IN the bed alone, it is falling OUT that would be terrible.  Adam measured and the bed is 34 inches from the ground...almost 3 feet!  We decided that a safety rail would be essential.  Adam's parents had some extra rails, so it worked out well for us.  Here's the finished product, now known as "The Pink Bed."

All in all, I'm really happy with how the project turned out.  I'm considering refinishing the make-up vanity-like mirror to match.  I only used one of the kits that I purchased, and I can't return the second because the bond coat is tinted.  But for now, I'm going to take a break from refinishing projects!  Here's the "before" and "after..."

 

 

A Big Girl Bed

Vera still sleeps in her crib.  It's time for a big girl bed.  She will not fall asleep in her crib anymore without an outrageous fit of screaming, kicking, crying and flailing.  We've tried to let her cry, but after listening to her scream for over 30 minutes, we end up getting her up.  One night last week, I was still up with her at 11:45!  That's way too late for a 2 year old, even if it is summertime.  She loves to sleep in our bed.  For naps, if I lay down with her in our bed, she is asleep within 15 minutes.  So, for the last 2 weeks, she basically goes to bed with Adam at night, and when I come in 20-30 minutes later, I carry her to her bed where she'll sleep the rest of the night.  Ironically, in the mornings when she wakes up, she's very lazy and doesn't want to get out of bed.  She's a lot like her mom there. 

So we decided that we'd had enough of her in our bed, and it was time for a big girl bed.  We started "talking up" the bed a lot for about a week.  She was all about it.  Every time we talked about a big girl bed, she'd say she wanted a purple bed.  Sure thing Vera.  If that's what it takes, I'll gladly buy you purple sheets. 

I did some shopping for a bed for about 3 days, and we bought one last night.  In the meantime, Vera and I went to Kohl's to look for some bedding for her new purple bed.  We did a lot of searching for purple sheets, but sadly, the only purple sheets they had were either a hideous purple color or else they cost $100+.  I found some bright pink sheets that were on the clearance.  I asked Vera if she liked them and she was all about them.  I asked her if she'd rather have pink or purple, and she said pink.  So the purple bed went to a pink bed within a few minutes.  If she's ok with it, so am I.

Vera and her dad went to Greenville to pick up the bed last night.  She was so excited.  When she got out of the car when they came home, she was thrilled to show me her new toy. 

Vera named him Vanilla.  He sleeps in her bed now too.

Adam took down the crib, which I will admit, was a little sad.  For me, it was a true realization that Vera isn't a baby anymore.  Adam carried in the new mattress and put the bedding on.  Vera kept saying she loved it.  At 7:30 pm, she was ready to go to bed for the night. 

We kept "talking up" the pink bed the rest of the evening--no crying in the pink bed, go to bed like a big girl, no standing on the pink bed--over and over again. 

By 9:30, Vera willingly went to bed.  This hasn't happened since summer started.  I took her back to the pink bed, she laid right down and I laid with her.  Within 15 minutes she was sound asleep, and there was no fuss, no tears, and no fit.  Hallelujah!  When I got up and came out, I told Adam we should've bought this bed two months ago!

I was a little nervous that Vera would wake up in the middle of the night in a strange bed, and try to get up and wonder around.  I also worried a little that she might fall out.  But, I'm happy to report that the first night in the big girl bed was a success.  She didn't wake up and wonder, she didn't fall out, and she didn't wake up crying.  At 7:00 this morning, she came into my room and woke me up.  She'd been sleeping in until at least 8 or 8:30 previously, but I'll take it.  Seven a.m. is better than six or five or four...

This is the temporary look of the pink bed.  A bed frame is soon to come.  More on that later...

 

These are all Vera's buddies that sleep in her bed.  Monkey, Nelly, Baby and Blanket have slept in there since she was really little.  Recently, Pink Bunny joined.  The newest member is Vanilla.  Good thing this bed is big enough for all of them.  It's funny how's she's acquired all of these.  Nelly is a Nelly Cuddle, which was a baby gift.  Monkey actually belonged to Vera's dad for a long time, and I think he's hung around because a monkey was the first animal sound Vera learned to make.  Monkey made the trip to Spain with me almost 10 years ago.  Baby and blanket were gifts from Brian and Kristina.  Pink Bunny was Vera's first birthday gift from her great grandma.  And of course Vanilla helps mark another milestone in Vera's life.  The two favorites, besides the blanket, are baby and bunny.  I'm curious how long Vera will hold on to all of these in her bed.  As long as she sleeps in the pink bed without any fit, they can stay as long as they like.