Birthday boy in his new "Cool" shirt. He said "This makes me look handsome, doesn't it?"

Thanks to preschool, Robbie caught on to the concept of the birthday party sometime in early September. By party, I mean one involving lots of kids, sugar, balloons and possibly a clown, or a rock band or a troupe of circus performers. Up until then his birthdays had consisted of close family coming to share cake and ice cream. But once sparked, his imagination had no limits and he began a five month journey of planning his birthday party.

When he was angry with a friend, he would say “You’re not coming to my party!” and, conversely, when he was happy with me or Toby he would say “Oh you can come to my party!”

We decided to let him have his first “real” birthday party with friends but with obvious limits. Four or five kids, a $100 budget, and no paid performers. He settled on the bowling alley and, not wanting to subject the grandparents, aunts and uncles to this level of sugar-addled torture, we decided to still host the much tamer “cake and ice cream” event at our home….and that is how Robbie’s party mania blossomed into “TWO PARTIES!”

I include the punctuation like this because this is exactly how the words were spoken each and every time they came from the lips of Birthday Boy himself.

Let me just say this. If you’re going to have a “kid party” do go with the paid performers – but not clows. Get babysitters to help wrangle the children.

Are you gonna eat that?

The usual suspects.

Just one lick. It is MY party, after all.

Mmmm! Sugar filled sugar with sugar frosting. Just the fuel I need!

You'd think they were checking their stocks or something, but they are always like this.

This year my new  year’s resolutions are:

• Continue to eat right & exercise. I would say “lose x pounds” but since we’d also like to have a baby this one could get blown out of the water faster than you can say “the plus means you’re pregnant.”
• Earn more, spend less. I know. It makes me want to cry too.
• Take Spotted Owl Soap from a hobby to a business.

Toby has no resolutions other than to continue what he’s doing.

Robbie’s new year’s resolutions are:

• Learn to read
• Learn to ride without training wheels
• Learn to use a pogo stick

You tell me who’s going to have more fun in 2010?

Since the weather has gotten cold, I have really struggled to find my motivation to get into the gym. Because diet and exercise are so intertwined (when I work out, I eat healthier) the food part has been taking a beating too. Pile on the holidays and a lot of year-end deadlines and you have a recipe for diet disaster. So far we’ve managed to avoid a total backslide but not without major effort.

It’s become kind of a tradition to have my friend Kim take our family pictures each year. This year I was blown away by how good I looked (modest, aren’t I?). I remember last year when I looked at the pictures I thought “gosh I look pretty fat” but it took another six months for me to do something about it. This year it was so wonderful to look at pictures and see something better than I expected.

I think I’m going to print both the 2008 and the 2009 pictures and put them on the treadmill in front of me to remind me how much working out has really paid off.

I can’t wait to see what we’ll look like in the 2010 pictures.

2008

2009

The hobby room is done and it is more beautiful, bright and functional than I imagined.  I’m one happy girl but I’m not alone. Robbie is pretty thrilled too.

There’s so  much space in the new room than he can happily color, build with blocks or “help” me. The original soap room was highly functional but at 5′ x 10′ it was too small for more than one person and definitely not kid-friendly. In general, he wasn’t even allowed inside so I didn’t make soap if he was awake.

I mentioned in my last post how much work and time (and money) Toby committed to this project. He is the reason the project even happened. I considered myself really lucky to have the old soap room and hadn’t asked for anything more. It was Toby’s idea.

Toby’s uncle Kip, however,  is the reason the project plan went from “quick and dirty” to “just plain gorgeous”. He’s the one in the family with all the construction know-how and he’s helped us out a lot in the past with remodeling and finishing basements. If you need a referral for someone to help you work on your house, let me know. He’s amazing.

This is the scrap booking and sewing side. I’m loving all that counter space and especially all those big drawers!

I put my label maker through some paces getting everything organized. I’m also very lucky to have done a lot of work for clients that make organizers…and let me keep the products after I photograph them.

This is the wet/soap side. I still need to paint the dishwasher panel, but I wouldn’t care if the thing was fluorescent green or covered in shag carpeting. Having a dishwasher in the soap room is a miracle on par with electricity, indoor plumbing and satellite TV.

Did I mention my label maker? Love that thing. I also put all my Mason jars to good use…which almost makes up for not canning anything this year.

Drawers! Before you judge me for the sheer volume of my pencil, marker and pastel collection, know this: much of it was acquired in college for art classes. They were required supplies. I’m afraid I can’t say the same for the stamps.

These are some labels I’m making for soap gifts. That’s not miraculous in itself, but I made them while Robbie was hanging out with me and we were building ramps for matchbox cars out of his blocks. That kind of cooperative play between mother and child? That is a miracle.

The details:

Cabinets: purchased used through online classifieds. Painted with Behr premium plus latex paint.
Foam Floor: recycled from our old workout room – it comes in panels that lock together like a puzzle. It is pliant and a great thing when you’re on your feet all day.
Counters: Premade lengths available at (you guessed it) Home Depot.
Drawer organizers: Dial Industries (buy them at Staples)
Dishwasher: included with the cabinets
Wire shelves: mostly recycled from the old soap room, originally from Home Depot
Yellow wall paint: “borrowed” from Kip’s stash of salvaged materials.

This blog isn’t called Holly’s Hobbies by accident. I have a lot of hobbies – some of which become business. Perhaps there is a name for my condition but I am interested in almost everything if it involves making something. If my husband only knew the number of hobbies I have considered and and let go, he would be eternally grateful.

Because he is the greatest husband in the world, he made me a little soap room last year. Because he was shooting to outdo himself, he is now making me an even bigger, better soap room that will also be an all-purpose hobby room.

It was going to be done today but some schedules didn’t align…now I will have to wait til tomorrow but in the meantime I am daydreaming with the aid of photoshop.

I’m so excited I’m doing the pee pee dance – but in a soap room kind of way.

The East side of the room will be the soap, or wet, side. it will have a sink and….drumroll please…a dish washer! Soap making is messy and it involves about a half hour of dish washing for each batch. Now I’ll be able to spend more time on creating and less time on cleanup.

The other side of the room will be for the “dry” hobbies like sewing and scrapbooking. It will also be extremely useful for doing the packaging and labeling for all the bath and body products.

Through this all, I have to say my husband has been a paragon of patience, indulgence and selflessness. He has used four or five of his days off work plus weekends to help with this project. He has given up evenings to drive into Salt Lake to pick up cabinets and a dishwasher I found with online classifieds. He has helped me paint said cabinets. He has put up with my congenital condition that makes it painful for me to get rid of junk – all so we could clean out the space in our basement to make this room possible.  He has taken three loads of junk to the dump, three or four loads to DI (like Good Will for you out of staters) and a load of old documents to Shred-It. He cashed in his precious debit rewards points to get Home Depot cards to help fund this project.

I owe him big time. He knows it.

As you can imagine, he’s just as excited to start collecting as I am to start moving in to the new room.