you’ve been patiently waiting for 37 weeks…waiting for a name, for a heartbeat…for your mother’s kiss…for your father’s arms.
waiting to be.
and in a time that feels so long ago, a time where the rainclouds tried to block out the sun, keep me from breathing, the knowledge of you startled me, shook me down past my core, somewhere so deep that the universe resonated with what was coming, the way our lives had suddenly changed. The world whispered strange things, things that at the time didn’t make sense, always hushed, always about you. And those whispers…those whispers terrified me, made it hard to sleep at night.
I want you to know I’m ready now.
You have a place to lay your head, tiny clothes and blankets. A swing that sits empty, a car seat waiting to bring you home.
I feel you growing anxious…and each passing day becomes more urgent.
weekend breeze. decaying leaves. chili cook off. squeaking shoes. hair unwound. baby’s getting bigger now. fritos and beer. candy and kisses. love notes on my windshield. watermelon lollipops. crickets and burning branches. best friend and a lost friend…tiny dirty feet running through the grass.
standard 2-color chevron stripes are pretty straight forward.
but two colors are boring, so lets use four….or five or six or seven.
I promise this is super easy. the hardest part is the math.
paint the wall of choice with a base color – this color will act as a small chevron stripe in between each large chevron stripe. let it dry then tape up the baseboards.
you need to decide a few things: how many stripes you want, how big you want them to be, and what your color pattern will be. draw it out until you find a design you like. this is what I ended up with:
write down your colors if needed and any other notes for yourself.
measure your wall and write the measurements down on your sketch. now dissect the sketch into boxes. place vertical lines at each point – high and low – and horizontal lines between each stripe so that you have a grid of boxes. count the number of boxes and divide the wall measurement by that number to decide how big each box needs to be on the wall.
Example: my wall was 94 inches tall and I had 6 horizontal lines – so each box had to be 15.6 inches tall. The wall was 132 inches long and I had 8 vertical lines, so each box had to be 16.5 inches wide.
write down how big each box needs to be so you don’t get confused.
*make sure you measure from the ceiling to the top of the baseboard – if you measure all the way to the floor it will throw off your entire measurement.
starting from the ceiling, mark out points with a pencil that match the measurements of the height of your boxes and mark points going across that match the width of your boxes.
Now take a chalk line and matching it up to the points you marked, snap lines on the wall to make a grid.
It should look something like this when you’re done:
the genius thing about this is that where you tape to separate the big stripes, the base color will stay and act as a divider between the large stripes – so you can choose as many colors as you want. each large stripe can be a different color and it will be just as easy as if you were only using two. and the small stripe adds a different dimension to the standard chevron pattern.
so, tape. use scissors on the tape to make sure you get a clean edge as opposed to ripping it. line one edge of the tape up with the top corner of the top left box and match it to the bottom corner of the box so that you divide the box in half – choose either top or bottom of the tape, it doesn’t matter, just stay consistent. Now you’ll start from bottom to top on the next box and repeat until each box has been taped. Make sure the tape overlaps so that you have clean points. Your end result will look like this ( the boxes are visible towards the top of the photo):
once you get into a rhythm, the taping goes by really fast. I taped the entire wall in about 35-45 minutes.
now you can paint.
paint in between the tape with chosen colors – as many as you’d like. do two coats and pull the tape as soon as you’re done painting the second coat.
This will be your end result:
(I used 3 colors for the big stripes)
My point is that chevron isn’t scary.
it’s actually really easy, even with lots of colors.
now go forth into the world and paint shit chevron.
I still have lots to do in B’s new nursery before I do a tour of sorts or enter in any more contests.
But it will be even more glorious than his first room.
sitting in a dark hallway, surrounded by glass, water reflecting on our skin. tiny fingers pointing, tiny eyes open wide. the perfect laughter of my child echoing in my ears, bouncing off the smoky walls in crystal prisms. sharks and turtles and coral, stingrays and fish and all the things he’s never seen, infinite wonder waiting just below the surface. running in the dark, back lit by a wall of blue, of swimming shadows.
sitting in a dark hallway, surrounded by glass, water reflecting on our skin. tiny fingers pointing, tiny eyes open wide. the perfect laughter of my child echoing in my ears, bouncing off the smoky walls in crystal prisms. sharks and turtles and coral, stingrays and fish and all the things he’s never seen, infinite wonder waiting just below the surface. running in the dark, back lit by a wall of blue, of swimming shadows.
this is what we’ll be listening to this weekend with the front door open, the records playing, drinks flowing. all the boys will be here, together, in the same place, for the first time in a long time.
this is what we’ll be listening to this weekend with the front door open, the records playing, drinks flowing. all the boys will be here, together, in the same place, for the first time in a long time.
so. this is what the living room looks like now. we primed the fireplace – I still need to paint it white and stain the mantle darker. also, the toy box is being made over and I’m making a cushion for the top so that when people are over, we can hide all the kid crap and make it a bench. and the tiles will be gone and the concrete painted dark brown. and I want to get (or make…?) some painted tiles and line the inside of the two cutouts in the wall that separates the living room and lounge. and one day I would like a purple couch. and we need a rug. and I need to hang up some stuff on the walls and make the beaded curtain for behind the TV. and we talked about replacing the sliders with french doors down the road. and I have a GIANT chandelier sitting in the garage that I want to paint green and hang up…but husband already vetoed that idea.
red hearts. candles burning. homemade heart pop tarts. breakfast in bed. a little note. true love. heart shaped dream catchers. happy baby. red glitter. extra kisses. fondue party. milk steak. rose petals. bad tv.
“I love you Jamie Dunn, words and actions will never be able to express the amount.”
