The Chair!

Soon after graduating from college, I bought my very first antique item for my very first place in Boston - an old wingback chair with cute character and a tiny bit of life left for a whopping $40. I was quite proud of it, despite it's dated and worn-out appearance, and had grand plans to refinish it at some point.

Fast foward 9 years, through 5 moves, a destructive dog, and a busy kids' playroom, and here sat this old chair in our very tiny house. Torn and stained, on its last leg, and with no place to live in our 1200 square foot home without disturbing us (/me) with a significant amount of ugly.

Seriously people, I tried to GIFT it away on a free community resource site, and no one would even take it.

Then we moved it into the garage and waited for an opportune time for a run to the transfer center. While it sat there, sad and abandoned, I started to feel a strange pity for the thing. I mean, it had been with me for 9 YEARS and I had always given it the impression that I wasn't going to give up on it, and that one day, it'd be beautiful again. I simultaneously started to realize that we didn't have a chair for our 4th baby's nursery yet, since the one we've used in the past was being utilized in the living room now. But friends, I was ***9 months pregnant*** when I starting having all these feelings. (Which is probably why I started having them), and taking on a major reupholstery/refinishing project at this point was probably not the smartest decision.

So of course that's what I did. As opposed to the common "nesting" instincts that most women experience during a pregnancy, my friends affectionally call this phenomenon "messting."

The nursery suddenly became a warzone of glue, carpet tacks, paint, power tools, sewing accessories, and old, dusty, ripped up fabric. My plan was to do a "cheat" reupholstery, and only recover the existing fabric as much as possible by removing the edging embellishment, stretching the new fabric over the existing fabric, nailing into place with carpet tacks, and adding new matching embellishment around the edges to cover the tacks. This was my *PLAN."

Disclaimer: I have never, ever done anything remotely like this, and just kind of skimmed through a couple YouTube videos. Don't try this at home.

So, I got to work trying to remove the embellishment. And that didn't work because it was all glued into the deteriorating fabric and as soon as I pulled, everything just started coming off. There was actually kind of a cool vintage fabric underneath the armrests, so I left that there. All around the outside of the chair, I kept each piece of old fabric intact and used it to measure my pieces of new fabric.

Before replacing with new fabric, I sanded down and painted the wood white. I figured if a little paint got on the unfinished edges of the old fabric, it wouldn't be the end of the world. The white looked great after a few coats over the course of about a week, and a little sanding and cleaning inbetween. It was a careful process, but it paid off.

THEN I TRIED TO FINISH IT WITH A CLEAR COAT. Hugest mistake ever. Apparently, there exists NOWHERE on this PLANET a clear finish coat that will go over white furniture without YELLOWING the heck out of it!!!!!!!!! Sorry, but this was such a huge, indigestion-covered hiccup in the project. I'm still mad about it. I even used the recommended "crystal clear finish" stuff from Minwax and followed the instructions exactly. When that failed, I was in such denial that I actually started to reupholster the chair with the new fabric, convinced it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Needless to say, when all was said and done, I was left with a beautifully reupholstered chair and disgustingly yellow wood. When I finally came to my senses, I repainted the wood white again (with a small paintbrush to avoid ruining the fabric), and marched into Home Depot, determined to find something that would work as a clear furniture finish. They were basically no help because nothing like that really exists, and handed me a can of spray paint that said "non-yellowing" ....SPRAY. PAINT. Over my already-upholstered chair. The thought of having to move it to the garage, tape it off and cover it in trash bags, etc....was almost too much for me and my 37.5 week pregnant self.

So, I researched online like a madwoman (including Minwax furniture wax, all other options of paint that don't require a finish, etc. etc. etc...), and finally decided to try spraying the paint into a cup and painting it on carefully with a paint brush in an inconspicuous spot FIRST. It worked sufficiently well, and definitely didn't yellow as much as the canned polycrylic paint, but it did make it a tad off-white. I could deal with that, so while it's not the bright white I was looking for, I didn't spend a gazillion dollars or go into labor doing the stupid thing, so yeah. Win in my book.

For the new fabric, I found a soft heather grey linen type fabric at Joann's for 40% off, then an additional coupon brought it down by at least another 50%...all in all, I spent $20 on 4-5 yards of uhpholstery fabric!!! I WAS SO PROUD of my money-saving skillz!!! YES!

The inside sides of the chair were a little trickier because I didn't want to remove all the old fabric and lose the shape - I wanted the easy way out. So, I ended up nailing a few corners deep into the inner crevices, then used a curved upholstery needle (thank you to my husband for suggesting this) to sew in the new fabric along the bottom sides. That way, I didn't have to remove all the fabric all over the entire chair to pull the fabric through to the back, etc. It definitely saved a lot of time, and none of the sewing details will be seen because they are well below the seat cushion. But I definitely cheated ;)

For the seat cushion, I really loved the cording details around the edges that the existing cushion had. So I removed the cording (so it was cut to exactly the right length) and sewed it directly in to the new fabric to make a seat cushion cover. Again, first time doing anything like this, and I did it free of YouTube videos!! I'm sure there is a more technical way to do it, but this worked and it looks nice. I also used some cording detail on the front bottom piece of the chair.

I stretched the fabric, nailed in the carpet tacks, and then once all the paint was finished and I was decently satisfied, I glued the embellishment onto the edges (a pretty grey edging ribbon that matched the grey chair perfectly!).

And it was like the freakin 6th day of creation, my friends. I sat back, saw that it was good, and took a 

seriously 

majorly 

long

nap. (But not in the chair because I still need some sort of ottoman/foot rest to get the whole effect)

But really, I am pretty proud of how everything turned out. Overall including the cost of the chair itself, I'd say I spent about $75-80 on this project, and it's an absolutely perfect and personal addition to Micah's nursery. I'm kind of having a little Joanna Gaines moment right now, and feeling pretty thrifty, too. Ok Micah! We're ready for you!!

Just please don't get any ideas from the crazy pregnant lady.

The Work of a Child - Part 2

Probably one of the most ANNOYING (but unfortunately productive, educational) toys out there (and in "here") are

PUZZLES.

For the love of all things good in this world...

...we needed to DRASTICALLY reduce the number of incomplete puzzles and random pieces floating around in our house STAT. The "lovely" thing about puzzles is that you need to stinkin BUILD every one of them to figure out whether they are complete and which pieces are missing. 

Someone *may* need to look up a psychiatric facility for me when I'm done with this section of home/toy simplification. Or just buy me a vacation. Or a stiff drink...if it's after November...

 First step was getting on my hands and knees, and searching every square inch of our house for puzzle pieces. I combined everything I found with the few BOXES of mismashed puzzles that I already had, and got to work. I'm still missing about 30% of all the puzzles, but after about 3 hours....

What you don't see in the picture are about 15 peg puzzles stacked up along the side of the living room, and about 3 other boxes of all the other random pieces that don't seem to fit anywhere. How does that even happen?

By the way, I am begging all of you to never,

ever,

EVER

buy our kids more Frozen puzzles. They're all kind of similar to each other in the backgrounds/style, have a gazillion pieces, no picture to reference, and no cheat symbols on the backs. I came super close to just throwing them all away right then and there.

After multiple days of never having a long enough block of time to actually finish this project, necessitating multiple clean-ups and re-builds (and hours...and hours....of annoying kids puzzles and seizure-inducing colors/shapes), I ended up with about 10 puzzles to donate/gift to other kiddos, at least 5 puzzles that we simply had to throw away due to missing pieces or being ripped to shreds after so much use...5-10 beginner peg puzzles, and 10 (12-20ish piece) puzzles for the older kids. Of the ones we're keeping, I split them into 4 bags (including a variety of each type and difficulty level in each bag) for rotation. I also made sure to use a sharpie to add a small "x" "o" heart, star, or other symbol on the back of each piece of each completed puzzle before breaking them down and separating them into baggies. Hopefully this will help with getting rogue pieces into the right bags without having to build every last puzzle.

I can't tell you how relieved I am to be done with this. Now they will have access to 5 puzzles MAX during each rotation. And we're officially going to start tracking down and sorting all the pieces correctly before bagging and rotating out with the next set from now on - that's not a huge deal with only 5 puzzles!

Who needs a drink? (says the pregnant momma...)

The Work of a Child - Part 1

“Play is the work of the child.” – Maria Montessori

Recently I came across an article about reducing the toy clutter (of which our home is really...REALLY full - let me tell you), thereby helping your kids play more productively and imaginatively. I was totally inspired as someone with both a background in development, and a first-hand understanding of how easily kids become bored with an endless mudslide of toys.

Boredom leads to the inevitable dumping of containers, scattering of supplies, and entangling of every remotely long/stringy item available.

Which leads to compounding chaos...

Which leads to the failure to create, imagine, produce, or *really* play at all with the abundance of toys available for that very purpose.

After reading this article and another article that the author references along those same lines, I decided something needed to be done in our home. After all, if my kids cannot adequately play, they cannot adequately "do" childhood.

"Play is the work of the child" - Maria Montessori
“Play is the highest form of research.” – Albert Einstein
“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” – Mr. Rogers (one of my personal favorites!)

I immediately started brainstorming. There were components I liked and didn't like so much from the original article. For instance, I loved the idea of simplifying and rotating out toys to add novelty, which is a HUGE motivation for play! However I thought the extremely minimalistic environment in the picture was 1) A little drab and dare I say parent-centered (barely any chance to make a mess) - I don't mind a few messes here or there as long as they are productive and helping little minds work! and 2) COMPLETELY. UNREALISTIC. for a home with nearly 4 small children who are at different developmental stages and often require multiples of a similar kind of toy in order to play well *together* (another skill I am passionate about helping them learn). So I'm tweaking as necessary.

I set to work brainstorming a play space for the kids within the tiny 10x15ish foot room we have available to us right now. As it is we have plenty of toy storage, but most of it gets filled up with random assortments of unrelated, half-broken, barely play-able toys that all seem to need a "misc" box. I've done a decent job of labeling clear containers with words and pictures and currently have categories like "people," "vehicles," "food," "dishes," "music," "puzzles," etc...but each one is SO full, and only about 20% (max) ever get played with at one time. The rest ends up littered all over my house or in the wrong box - a symptom of too many toys being thrown into too many "misc" boxes that are much too deep and sneaky to really keep track of anything well. Still, I feel like I'm at least not starting at ground zero - we have a system; it's just inundated.

My initial brainstorming page started like this:

I basically narrowed down my general play categories using some help from her website, our own toy inventory, and my experience in a preschool setting. Then I starting separating out our inventory in order to get the best use out of each activity. For things like books or plush toys, I figure I will consolidate the massive amounts of what we have, and then break down the slightly-less massive collection into rotating groups. For some things, I thought a "theme" would be fun, so for a week or two, we could have pirate/nautical themed dress up clothes, fish/sea creature plush toys, and maybe an art activity that goes along as well (if I'm feeling particularly zealous).

Today I started with the dress up bin. It's currently overflowing and only a handful of things actually get worn. As I sorted through our collection, a few natural categories emerged (though I did throw in a princess/superhero dress/cape or two into each rotating bag since those are consistent favorites, and Lord knows my children can imaginatively incorporate a princess or superhero character into almost any play activity or theme).

After raiding the house top to bottom for any and all dress-up items, I finally came up with 4 rotating bags - loosely themed: "Pirates/Nautical," "Vocations," "Fantasy/Medieval," and "Animals." I labeled each trash bag, put the 3 off-rotation groups into the garage for storage until I come up with a giant bin for rotating toys, and re-filled the dress-up bin with the simplified Collection 1, which filled the bin about 1/3 of the way. WOOHOO!



I also assembled a clear (easily visible) accessory bag for smaller items like jewelry and shoes - which are (OBV!) necessary regardless of the play theme, or even whether one is dressed like a princess, a black cat, or a police officer. That bag will stay with the dress up bin each week as I rotate. It will continue to be the bain of my existence all over the house, I'm sure - but they are only kids once!











Time to cross the "dress up" row off my brainstorming list, and tackle another item...stay tuned!

Who Is Like God?

It's seriously a sad, sad fact that the last blog I wrote was when Abri was a newborn. But I'll spare you the first paragraph of remorse with which most of my blogs start, because we have something SUPER AMAZING to share with you!

The Bollinger family will officially become a family of **6** on/around November 17th, 2015!!

P.S. The kids are REALLY into Dumbo right now ;)

But what's really amazing about this announcement is the backstory, so please hear me out as I detail how this all came about, and what an amazing miracle it all is!

After Abri was born, Jake and I were undecided about another child. I had always said I wanted 4, but we still needed to see how this whole family of 5 thing was going to work! Needless to say, I was starting to feel like we were missing one more (literally, like I would think I heard another baby crying upstairs all the time and then realize all 3 kids were already downstairs), like there was a void in our family - around when Abri was 7 or 8 months old. Knowing that all the other kids were 18 months apart, we decided that IF we wanted another one, we should either consider adoption soon, or try for another in the next few months. After a lot of prayer, both Jake and I agreed (separately, and then confirmed it together) that we wanted one more baby. For years we had been researching adoption, but we finally took the time to explore the local options (domestic and international), but no matter which route we took, it always ended up with a closed door. Either it wasn't financially doable for us, we couldn't be guaranteed a younger baby/toddler (which was important due to the age of our other kids), or we would be mostly restricted to children with developmental disabilities (which we honestly have no problem with and would seriously consider, if one of our children didn't already have a diagnosis and so many therapy needs). Ultimately, we just kept hearing "no." So in January, we decided to at least give another pregnancy a shot, and see what happened.

January was also when God revealed His "One Word/Attribute" which is a tradition I carry instead of choosing a New Year's Resolution. Basically it's a characteristic of God (not ME) that I want to focus on that coming year. Some of you may remember, but this is how 2015 started for me:

I felt led to remember that there is NONE like God this year, and oh my WORD, has He been faithful to show me that! However, for the first couple months of trying to conceive, it was sometimes hard to remember. Right away, I noticed that what had always been very easy for us (even with a strange cycle, I always knew right where I was, and have always conceived on the first "try"), was suddenly a huge roadblock. After having Abri, it seems my hormones were a hot mess, and not only did I have a shorter cycle, but my luteal phase (between ovulation and the next cycle - should be about 10-14 days) was only 2 or 3 days long. This is called a "luteal phase defect," and it's usually due to insufficient progesterone levels. The problem is that even if you manage to succeed in conceiving, there is NO TIME for it to implant (which usually takes at least 9 or 10 days) before you start your cycle again. I tried a variety of natural/wholistic remedies, and finally after a few months of unsuccessful attempts, I made an appointment with my midwife to possibly seek out oral progesterone (my mortal enemy because it makes me sicker than a dog), or some other method, and to be honest, I wasn't excited about the idea of very much intervention and started considering just "giving up" if it wasn't meant to be.

I was told I had to wait longer, have more blood tests, and then we'd try to figure out a strategy, but I was feeling heartbroken because time was running out for our kids to be as close in age as we had hoped given the spacing of the first 3, and I really for some reason felt this baby was supposed to come in 2015 as a testimony of that "One Attribute" God had so clearly spoken to me. We came home from the midwife feeling defeated, and wondering if it was time to throw in the towel. Maybe 3 kids was enough, and we were making the rest up in our heads? But still, the idea of never being able to hold the baby in my arms that was almost tangible to me already, felt like a huge...HUGE loss. Even after going through a miscarriage years ago, facing the challenge of infertility, even just for a few months, gave me a whole new perspective on the struggle that so many women face every day. I've felt that horrible, horrible longing and grief, and I hear your hearts <3 It was in that grief that night that we made love again - this time not expecting or hoping for anything, but just sharing in each other's sorrow and taking comfort in the partnership that God has blessed us with (sorry if TMI - you decided to read this, and at least I'm not describing milk spraying from my ta-tas like in previous posts).

And then, as I was preparing to go in for a blood test on day 1 of my cycle (a couple days later)...I realized that "day 1" wasn't happening. Suddenly as opposed to the typical cycle on/around day 25, I was at day 27 or 28 and still nothing. That was "late" for me, so I decided to take a home pregnancy test...JUST in case (in total, total disbelief and doubt - forgive me, God!).

Negative, right? Yeah, that's what we thought, too....but then if you kind of look off-center from the left "line"...you can almost....

ALMOST....

see it.

Probably mostly because we wanted to. But there was no line, right? I mean, how is that even possible? 2-3 DAYS after conception??! It had to be our minds playing tricks on us.

I was due for the blood test anyway the next day, so I went in and had it done, and lo and behold, it showed an HCG level of 3. T-H-R-E-E. In embryo language, an HCG of 3 is like....non-existent. That's like someone accidentally got a skin cell or something in the blood sample or didn't read it right. Usually these levels are in the hundreds the first time you test. But, it was SOMETHING, so we trusted that God can do anything


because THERE IS NONE LIKE HIM



and we started on a dose of constant prayer and oral progesterone. A week went by and even on the progesterone, I had no symptoms (SUPER unusual for my pukey self). Just in case, I made sure to take this picture (secretly) while Kate was out visiting JUST IN CASE we could later say that we were both pregnant together (she had no idea I was doing this).

Then finally when I think the hormones got to higher levels in my system, it got baaaaad. I basically couldn't move without throwing up, and that was on round-the-clock Zofran. I wanted to take this as a good sign, but I also knew how much progesterone messes with me, and was honestly kind of grumpy that it was probably just a miscarriage anyway, yet I had to deal with this nausea while trying to care for 3 young kids. Forgive me, God.

For weeks we didn't share with anyone except a couple close prayer warriors, who totally stood alongside me in powerful prayer and petition on behalf of this little one. It was seriously one of the most miraculous experiences of my life. Specifically, my friend Regine, who has such a heart for prayer and intercession, prayed these prayers over us from very early on:

God, I ask that you would increase her HCG levels massively so they would be at just the right appropriate level for this ovum to become a BABY! God, I ask that the oral progesterone that Sarah starts taking will have IMMEDIATE effectiveness and that she would suffer absolutely no side effects. God, thank you for this miracle child. Thank you for this ovum. God, watch over this ovum like it's Jesus, the most precious son of yours. God, hold onto it and through your hands let there be a transference of HCG to the necessary levels for the baby to be healthy and strong as all of Sarah's other kids are, in Jesus' name, Amen

God, protect Sarah's heart from disappointment but keep increasing the HCG so she can have this baby to full term as a natural healthy woman carrying a beautiful healthy baby, in Jesus' name, amen.

And then, something amazing happened...

Amen! We received word yesterday that the HCG levels doubled, which they should be doing every day right now. Good news, but still SO early in the pregnancy, and my temperature has been really low/dropping for a couple days in a row now, which can usually mean miscarriage...

And God, increase Sarah's body temperature so much that she literally needs a fan to keep her body from overheating. Keep this baby in your watch and on it in Jesus' name, amen

(Haha I LOVE how that girl prays!)

At what the midwife estimated was about 6 weeks (from the size on the ultrasound), I had a low-tech ultrasound done to check for a heart beat. Jake was there, and we braced ourselves to find out if this was a baby or just a blighted ovum. The ultrasound showed a yolk sack, but no "baby." Our hearts dropped. We were told it *could* be because it was still so early, but there was no way to tell right now. Usually there is at least an incling of a heartbeat at 6 weeks, and some visible form of a baby...so we tried not to get our hopes up, but we couldn't help but feel God's presence and peace over the situation, especially with all that prayer surrounding us. A couple weeks later, we braced ourselves for a more conclusive ultrasound - this would tell us for sure. I prepared by asking for more prayer from sweet Regine...

Hey lady! Thanks for the good word today! I know it will reach a lot of people's hearts! Also, I wanted to let you know that I have another ultrasound scheduled today! The last one was really inconclusive - there was no heartbeat, but that could have been because it was still too early. I'm praying for clear confirmation today, and a visible, healthy heartbeat!

Yes!!!! Thank you for letting me know that!! I've been meaning to message you to ask what's been going on with the update.. WOW! this is sooo exciting!!!!! What time's your appointment?

About to start now! (We both prayed)

....

Oh my word...

praise God!!! There was a clear, strong heartbeat!!!!!!!! 

Everything looked very healthy and amazing - this is such a miracle! I can't thank you 

enough for the powerful, effective prayers!!

Based on dating from the second ultrasound, it turns out that the first ultrasound was only at 5 weeks, which explains the absence of a heart beat. Only God had the power to cause successful implantation in a quarter of the time that's normally necessary. Only God could provide the right amount of hormones when my body was fluctuating, even on the oral progesterone. Only God could create such a beautiful, perfect little life from nothing...


because people. There is NONE like GOD!

AND THEN! We found out (early at 10 weeks, because of an amazing new blood test that is offered and didn't even exist during Abri's pregnancy that I knew of!) that it's a BOY!! 

14 weeks - Hi, World!

14 week profile

Seriously guys, who is like God? There is none like Him. It was funny, because before we even knew the gender, Jake and I agreed that God had already chosen a perfect name for this little miracle baby. And He told it to us way back before we had even decided to try for another pregnancy.

Who is a God like you,
    who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
    of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
    but delight to show mercy.

Micah 7:18

Micah (/ˈmaɪkə/; Hebrew: מִיכָה) - Hebrew variant of Michael - Who is like God? Gift from God

Please join us as we prepare to welcome baby MICAH into our family this November - a living testimony of the power and sovereignty of a God who can do anything!!