This week in Guam...

Eva

Alexander

Well if you can't tell these are pictures of Alexander and Eva yesterday. I like this picture of Alexander because he actually looks related to us. Yay for that but it makes him look so old. I haven't blogged for two weeks now because I was waiting for Daniel to do it and he didn't. Also nothing exciting has been happening. Daniel and the kids got sick again. Maybe we are a family of sickies I can feel it in my throat. Its burning and has been all weekend. Eva has been sick 3 times already and she is 2 months old on Tuesday! Its all just colds but you would think in a tropical climate you wouldn't get colds as much.

Family Projects

Yesterday we found a kitchen table I really love and now Daniel love/hates it too. Its made of something called Manchu wood (I assume that means some tree from Manchuria)

We were sanding it and put a chemical on it to take the dark brown paint/stain/lacquer/ everything else these people could think of adding to the table to see if we wanted to stain it ourselves or paint it.

Everyone says staining is a lot of hard work and I believe them but Daniel told me whether we paint it or stain it we are still putting 2 layers of lacquer on it either way so the prep work is what is making the difference in time. I am thinking I still want it white so I can have my cape cod beach themed kitchen but we will see.

I am also trying to redo my bar stools. (Believe it or not these are really tall like a bar stool, it looks like a chair but its not)

First I bought the exact same colored paint as the walls are in the house. (I don't want camouflage chairs) Then I bought hospital white (as you can see in this picture) and they are both just wrong and so I have finally bought one called Satin Ivory. I haven't put it on yet and I call the other wrong colored coats primers because they were originally wicker color. Then I was going to cover the cushion part. (Don't worry that is not the final product, I was just trying to see how the material looked and if I liked it) First I couldn't find the plastic cover stuff (I need it for Alexander) in the right size. Once I found that I went and bought a staple gun and the WRONG STAPLES (these trips to the store are one a day because the kids don't last). So this small project has taken me a week already with nothing accomplished.

HOME DEPOT MORE LIKE LARGE TORTURE CHAMBER

I really don't like hardware stores to begin with but going there alone with Alexander and Eva makes it a real chore so I am not looking forward to buying the right staples. I was at Home Depot yesterday getting sand paper (with a different variety of grains ranging between 60-400) Daniel wasn't with me so I called him 20 times asking about the sand paper. Then I bought paint thinner (Daniel's instruction) so I could strip the table (paint thinner is for wet paint not stripping). Then I sent Daniel to the store to get some new strip stuff and it was a spray on kind, well it was too thick to come out of the bottle. We were very sick of going back and forth to the different hardware stores on Guam so we ended up having to pour it out of the bottle and spreading it with my frosting spreader thing (don't worry it is now an outside tool). That was our frustrating day of projects yesterday. I didn't put the picture up but the top of the table is completely back to its original wood look. I will post the final product pictures when there is a final product to photograph.

You may all ask why we bought a table to redo. Well if you are like me you like to keep busy and have projects. I live for my to do lists and I need new things thrown in every once in awhile so these house furniture projects are just what I need to keep my repetitive schedule appealing.

It was a fun day outside even with all the project headaches and these are pictures I took from different sides of the house at 7 last night. The clouds looked beautiful so I couldn't help taking the pictures. The Green leaves are the top of our palm tree.

This one looks like right after a storm

This one looks like a volcano erupting