How does your husband feel about taking in just the kids? My BIL and SIL are bipolar. We've seen so much with them! As long as your daughter is NOT taking her meds, she'll never have a "normal" enough life. She'll never get her life back on track. My first priority would be my grandchildren cuz they're too young to help themselves and have no choice but to live this life of hell. Maybe talk to your husband about taking in just the kids for awhile until your daughter gets her life together and starts by helping herself first. It must be really hard for her to do so with 2 kids. That's if she WANTS to help herself! My brother and his wife have full custody of their two grandchildren (3 and 6), been almost 2 years. Their son is a drug dealer (the father) and the mother is a bipolar drug addict. They are not together as a couple and never have been. The youngest child was born a crack baby. The son doesn't do drugs, just sells it. My SIL fought tooth and nail to get both the mother to sign over parental rights. The family has been through hell and is still going through it because no matter what the mother does to screw up her kids' lives, the law is on her side. The father, however, can only have supervised visits cuz of the way he treated the mother. He slapped her once to "snap her out of a fit" while she was high. He has "straightened" her out several times but she keeps going back to drugs. Fast forward to today.... the father is a good father to the kids (actually the oldest is not his bio child but he loves him like his own) and does everything for them. They are spoiled rotten! The mother calls the oldest and tells him lies about his grandmother (my SIL) and tries to get him to spy on them for "ammunition against them". My SIL then tries to explain to him why his mother is acting like this but that she still loves him. The poor kid is so screwed up emotionally that he wants to talk to a judge cuz he says he doesn't know who to believe anymore and knows a judge wouldn't lie. He's had counsellors before too but the mother is just damaging him so bad. So much so that just yesterday, in fact, my SIL went to court to get a court order for the mother to have "no contact" with her kids. She didn't win cuz she didn't have enough evidence. She has appealed. I told my SIL that she should have the oldest talk to this judge so she could see for herself. With Children's Aid, the courts, etc.... it seems that they protect the mother more than they protect the kids. Which is a real shame! It seems that Children's Aid, the court, etc., seem to "forget" that the youngest was born a crack baby! The mother has more drug charges then the father, including other charges, and still the law is more on her side! The only reason why my SIL and brother got full custody of the kids was because my SIL found out that the mother was using someone else's urine for her mandatory drug tests. Just before they were to enter the court room, my SIL's lawyer requested a drug test (hair) right away. Test proves positive and her lawyer told her she'd lose the case so make it easier and sign away her rights. And she did. All the best to you! Check out these sites. It might be helpful. http://www.raisingyourgrandchildren.com/ http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Grandparents.shtml

Congratulations! for the sake of explanation I'm going to assume you want it very light at the top and dark at the bottom. I would definitely add Floetrol to your paint before starting. You can get it about any place that's selling paint. It will give you a much smother look and helps slow down the drying time. You want to keep a wet edge when shading. Go ahead and cut in your paint around the top with your lightest color. Now go ahead and cut in you paint round the baseboards with your darkest color. Now I'm going to assume that the wall will be divided so that 1 third is dark (bottom) 1 third is medium (middle) and 1 third is light (top). Keep in mind that all you really need to do to create a nice blending job is maintain a wet edge where the blending will occur. It works really well if you have all your paint ready. By this I mean...your light, your dark and a middle tone between the two. You get the middle tone by mixing some of the light and dark paint together so that the color is .....well...in the middle. You can start at the bottom or the top whichever is easier for you. I like to start at the top and work down, so for this example we'll start at the top. With a roller paint 1 third down the wall, only go about 6 ft or so across the room until you feel more comfortable with the technique and can maintain a wet edge. Now, while still wet, switch to the medium color and come down another 1/3. Go ahead and slightly overlap the area you just painted. Now with a large dry or damp brush start blending over the area where the two colors come together until they are well blended. Now while it's still wet do the bottom 1/3 the same way, blending as you go. Now, finish the rest of the wall before the paint dries. It's not really very difficult and I hope this explanation helps

I also speak from experience. My two kids are 2 and 3. They are exactly 11 and a half months apart (no I am not crazy and did NOT plan it that way I swear!). I am a stay at home mom and we are living in and completely gutting and remodeling our home. We also added an addition. We are doing ALL the work ourselves, with the exception of the building of the structure of the addition, which we hired my brother in law to build the walls and roof. These are not little projects. You can handle what you are asking about. Your first few months are a complete system shock, so don't try to do anything all at once. Ease yourself in. Just concentrate on sleeping, feeding baby, and feeding yourself and hubby. Then you can start peppering in little projects here and there. I also agree with the poster who said not to break off too much at once with a big project. Even now, whatever schedule I think my kids are on (2 year old naps 3 year old doesn't) if I have a tile project my 3 year old will help, while 2 year old sleeps, but I will not do a large section of mortar because my luck is something will wake my son up from his nap early and he will try to "help" too. I also have no family in the area, we have no nanny or any other child care help. The only thing I do have is that our house is such an huge undertaking this is a joint effort between my husband and I. There are many very large projects, like demolition of old floors, building of cabinets, and hanging of drywall that do not get done until both of us are together and can tag team the kids. But I have laid tile, grouted, painted, taped and plastered drywal, sanded drywall, hung trim, and countless other tasks with BOTH my kids in my care (not in the room when painting or sanding that is for sure). What does make it easier to do a lot of this is planning my dinner schedules and things in advance. I do a lot of "pre" cooking things like making a large batch of homemade stuffed shells one week and freezing them in smaller dinner sized batches that I can just pour sauce over and bake. When dinner only takes 5 minutes to pop in the oven a leave bake for an hour I don't have to stop a project to prepare dinner. My husband and I also don't go all out every day, every week. Our house is going to take a long time to finish and we knew that going in. So I may start a project and work on it Mon - Wed alone one week, then Thur we go to the zoo and Fri to the park, then Sat work on the house with hubby and Sun family outing day. We don't ever want the house to consume our lives and make us miss these precious early years with our kids. But for all my rambling take this away, I am really not sure why anyone would tell you can't do anything just because you have a child. Yes, your life changes, and yes, it gets a bit chaotic, but there is not reason everything comes to a halt and you become incapable of doing anything except laundry and cooking. Especially with one child. I mean in the old days our grandparents and great grandparents generations raised many more children, farmed for themselves, tended the animals, put up food for the winter and did much more to keep up the houses and barns around themselves from falling down (without calling someone to come in and fix it for them). At least mine did.

I have a huge glass block bathroom window that faces south into the searing texas sun, and gets very hot to touch in the summer. We have "blackout" double cell celluar shades from american blind that work well when closed, but when you open them the heat is still there. 2 weeks ago I found the solar screen (90% block) material at a box store, along with the screen frame pieces, spline, and "L" shaped corner connectors so you don't have to mitre cut the frames. I made my own screen. The entire process took about 30 minutes. Last week we had a couple 100+ degree days, and I am TOTALLY AMAZED how much heat this screen deflects! I can place my hand on the blocks, and it feels cool. It does block out some of the light (maybe 40%), but I can guarantee it will pay for itself ($30 with leftover material for more) in a month of AC cooling. I plan on doing all of my windows this week...