...the true confessions of mrs. olson...

It is now safe for Lily to come. The flooding has subsided, the house has now had a deep cleaning (well, except the floors... I despise cleaning floors), and her room is officially finished.

For the last few weeks, due to boredom and nesting, I have been found in the nursery fiddling with an already complete room. Something didn't seem quite complete in there. I decided my wood childhood dresser needed to be painted. Blame it on the countless hours of HGTV that I have watched, but I decided to crackle it... with 2 crackled barstools under my belt, I felt very confident. It was probably divine intervention when I couldn't find any crackle medium at 3 different stores. However, I stupidly persevered and made a special trip into Austin to the mecca of all craft projects ...Hobby Lobby. Not being able to wait, I began to test painting the dresser IN the nursery. When the test patch looked terrible, I felt I needed a bigger sample to truly give it a chance.

Before I could stop myself... I PAINTED THE WHOLE THING.

I didn't take any photographic evidence of my failure, but imagine a nice wooden dresser. Now imagine what it would look like if the marshmallow man threw up all over it... and that's pretty close. There were huge gunks and globs dripping of the sides and the "crackles' were the size of canyons... and all of this was happening inside the house on the new carpet. I heard Jeff's footsteps down the hall and must have looked up at him with the same expression I had at my mom in 1st grade when caught in the bathroom just after I'd cut my own hair the night before the first day of school.

Anyway, I have been totally stressed out for the last few days fearing that I'd go into labor and Lily would have to come home to the ugliest nursery ever that had been fine just days before. So my first neurotic pregnant woman moment... (well, one of the few)... was to call my mom to come over at 8:30 pm with her electric sander, scraper, and paint stripper. Seeing that it was a disaster... Jeff had to volunteer to fix it the next day.

I could see the bitterness growing with each flick of his scraper, then, even more with the deafening buzz of the electric sander. He had, in fact, advised me to leave the dresser alone. Next time I'll listen to him.

The good news is... Lily's room is complete! Last night, I was begging her to wait. Now, I've already spoken with her that TONIGHT would be a great time... with the weekend here and the house clean for the Olsons. Keep your fingers crossed!