THE Wall

This is the divider wall that we installed on the end of my scrap desk so you can't see is the desk is messy when you walk by the room. :) It's simply a piece of MDF (medium density fiberboard - WONDERFUL stuff!!) painted with blackboard paint on one side, framed out with 1x6's to make a frame, and make it sturdier. The other side is painted with magnetic paint (waste of money, IMHO), covered with the wall color. I had a hard time explaining what it was going to look like, so for those of you who were befuddled by my poor explanations, now you can see for yourself. We think it's pretty cool!

Standing in the bathroom looking toward the office. The whole thing is the same size as a regular door.

The girls had a blast this morning, drawing all sorts of fun stuff. I already knew they liked chalk boards, because every time we go to Poppi's to visit, that's one of the first things they want to play with. I'm excited about Hannah learning to write using this "fun" tool. The whole idea was to help the girls with learning to write, while we can use the upper part for notes to each other.

So, that's the latest re-do update. Whatcha think??

ABC's of Homemaking Tag

I posted this on my Xanga blog, and thought I'd do the same here. :)

ABC's of Homemaking

Aprons - Y/N? if Y, what does your favorite look like? No, but I'd love to make some!

Baking - Favorite thing to bake? Cakes and casseroles

Clothesline - Y/N? No

Donuts - Have you ever made them? Never at home.

Every Day - One homemaking thing you do every day? Make my bed.

Freezer - Do you have a separate deep freeze? Yes

Garbage Disposal - Y/N? Yes

Handbook - What is your favorite homemaking resource? My Magnolia Mennonite cookbooks!

Ironing - Love it or hate it? Or hate it but love the results? I hate it, but my husband like it, so I definately love the results. :)

Junk drawer - Y/N? Where is it? Nope!

Kitchen - color and decorating scheme? We're in the middle of redecorating it. The walls are a lime green-y color, white cabinets and cobalt blue accents. We're going for country/antique with a modern twist. The colors sound weird, but it looks great in person.

Love - What is your favorite part of homemaking? Being able to stay home!

Mop - Y/N? Not physically able to, but DH does it. Hardwood floors throughout, vinyl in the kitchen and bath.

Nylons - Wash by hand or in the washing machine? I wear knee highs and just chuck 'em when they get a snag.

Oven - do you use the window or open the oven to check? Open the door.

Pizza - What do you put on yours? Everything except anchovies!

Quiet - What do you do during the day when you get a quiet moment? Get online

Recipe card box - Y/N? What does it look like? No. I print all my recipes out and put them in sheet protectors in a 3 ring binder.

Style of house - What style is your house? 3/4 brick ranch

Tablecloths and napkins - Y/N? Tablecloth, covered in a clear vinyl sheet. When our house is a little more straightened out, I would like to make a bunch of cloth napkins.

Under the kitchen sink - Organized or toxic wasteland? Organized!!

Vacuum - How many times per week? Our vacuum stays out permanently and we vacuum when it needs it, sometimes several times a day.

Wash - How many loads of laundry do you do per week? Again, a task I don't care for, but DH loves to do laundry, so he takes care of it, although I do help fold. :) I figure with the girls, probably about 4 loads a week.

X's - Do you keep a daily list of things to do that you cross off? I try to keep a list, but with no more than five things on it, and not all of them hard things. As long as I keep the number under five, I do pretty well at getting them all crossed off by the end of the day. Any more than that, and I get overwhelmed and get a lot less accomplished. :(

Yard - Y/N? Who does what? Peter does all the yardwork

Zzzz's What is your last homemaking task for the day before going to bed? Go through the office and kitchen, picking up anything that needs to go into the sink or into another room, then check all the doors, make sure they're locked.

I think I'll tag: Lori and Jeni

Shoes!

Here's a complete shot of the shelves Peter put up for my shoes.

I absolutely love the color of the wall. Amber came in this morning and looked at the wall and said "Chocolate" over and over. :D Funny girl!

They're done!

Peter got my shelves up the other night, and we got all my shoes put up there. Here's a small shot of all the shoes I've collected over the years. I didn't realize that I had quite so many shoes, but almost all of them have a story attached to them, which makes them special. Since some of you have heard me talking about the shelves, I thought a pic of them was due. :)

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Finally got a chance to put a few pics on my blog, so just for your viewing pleasure, here they are!

I put Val (aka Mazie) in the floor to play with the other girls yesterday and when I turned around, she had crawled under a chair and was lying across Hannah's lap, and Hannah was patting her on the back. She didn't feel good - apparently she's trying to cut another tooth - and I guess Hannah was her comforter of choice. How stinkin' cute is that??

Yummmmm, chocolate! This is our "accent wall" in the office. Peter painted it today, and this shot was taken while still wet. It looks so yummy that I had him get a Butterfinger bar for me while he is out. Perhaps having this color on the walls will be dangerous??

You know your girls are growing up when you can put them both in the same spot to nap, and they actually go to sleep instead of aggravating each other!! Man, it's so nice around 2pm at our house! All the girls take a nap, and it's just MY time!

Apparently Miss Priss likes my new desk! She sat on the desk top for close to an hour, looking at her book and "talking" to me while I did things that had to be done on the computer. When I picked up the camera and pointed it at her, she immediately grinned. Looks like she's getting used to being around a scrapbooker! Yep, she's gonna be another little ham for the camera...

So that's what's going on around here. I've been up since the wee hours working, we've made a huge dent in the things that need to be done. Peter's gone to work and I'm exhausted. I think I'll go bag up my Avon orders, take a shower and call it a night. That sure does sound good right about now!

Becoming liberated

For as far back as I can remember, I've been a hoarder. It is just in my nature to save things "just in case". So we've spent money and time moving things from place to place, even though they were things that we've forgotten we had until we found them buried in a box or bag. Lately, I've become inspired to make a change, which has greatly helped me.

I've decided that all the paper clutter that I've been hanging onto is choking my creativity and my personality. Walking through my home seeing the disarray is overwhelming, and ultimately takes away the joy I should feel when I'm in my haven. A huge factor in the disarray is the fact we've been working on the house for months now. Our kitchen still isn't finished, yet we've been working on the office instead. But I digress...

I have a huge box for donations set up in the living room, and I've been purging ruthlessly. If it's something I don't absolutely love and use, out it goes. With each full bag that goes into the trash, I feel a little happier deep inside. I'm still far from done, but slow and steady wins the race. If we can do just a little each day, eventually our house will truly become a home, a thing of joy and comfort to us. No longer will we walk in and feel overwhelmed and depressed at the sight of clutter. We will persevere and we will eliminate everything that's not loved or used. And THAT is liberating.

Almost done!

My sweet husband has done an awesome job on our new desk/office/scrapbooking area. This is just a portion of the desk - there's actually more! He's planning to build another shelf under the desk, and we're planning to utilize rolling storage that will reside under the desk for some of my other things that we don't need to access frequently.

I'm really proud of him, since he's never done anything like this before, so it's been a collaborative effort. I drew up the plans and did the measuring. He did the actual construction, with a bit of help from me. It's amazing how much it opens the room up. We've already been able to get rid of two pieces of furniture, with one more leaving as soon as I can get a photo taken of it.

The room is still only about half done, but at least we can see the light at the end of the tunnel! :) I'm SO ready to get back to scrapbooking - I haven't touched any of my paperstickyfoldystuff since Christmas. I've got everything put together for three separate albums, but have to find the time to put them together. Hopefully in another couple of days, it'll be done. I'll share more pics as we progress...

Stripes!

My sweet honey did such a good job painting last night! These stripes are going to go all the way around the room. The ceiling is the same color as the walls, which makes the room feel a bit bigger. The colors of the stripes are a bit lighter in person, but I couldn't figure out how to get it to look right on the computer.

But anyway, he's off to one of his favorite places - Lowes - to get bolts and such so we can put my scrap area together. Yay! :) I'm SO loving these colors together, and I'm SO loving that my sweet man is so willing to build something special for US, not just me. He's chomping at the bit to get it completed so he can work on the kitchen again. When we get finished, we'll have a whole new house!

More pics coming up later...

Goodbye, Red...

Not quite four years ago, when we bought our house, I wanted a gorgeous red Victorian room. We had the antique furniture to put into it, so our guest room was painted a lovely dark claret red, with a beautiful border.

Now, however, the whole purpose of the room has completely changed. Lori took the furniture back, and the room is now our office/playroom and my scrapbooking area. So the time has come to update and refresh the room to reflect the new purpose. Not to mention building new storage options so we can better use the space.

We began the process of painting this morning, and we've gotten the wall that's going to hold my dedicated scrap area primed, ready to put the wall color on. My scrap area is going to be built-in, with rolling carts underneath the one end for my printers. Here's a pic of the wall before and after priming.

I will post more pics as we progress. Our goal? To have it DONE by the end of Saturday. :) Think we can do it??

Dreamin'

Running through my mind are luscious visions of warm creamy ivory, rich chocolatey brown, yummy pink & cool turquoise... mmmmmmmmmmmmm

In our garage is a really great assortment of brackets, standards, L-brackets, and castors. Thank you to Mom for the gift card - I think that may be my favorite gift of the year! Thanks to the website that allowed me to earn a Home Depot gift card just for reading my emails! We only had to spend a little bit of cash to get everything we needed.

Tomorrow we hope to buy lumber and paint, along with magnetic paint and blackboard paint.

Soon I'll have a whole new place to get creative and room to spread all my yummies. And hopefully newfound inspiration to get all my memories and photos into albums again.

Will post before & after pics soon....

Can you tell I'm WAY excited??

Brrrrr

So it's FINALLY gotten cold.... yippee!!! Wish it would stay like this for about two months, so it would kill off all the ukky bugs that have been making their rounds. Alas, that probably isn't in the cards, considering how little winter we've gotten the past few years.

We've been out and about the past few days - we're finally getting to put down the new flooring for Mom. I have to say that although Peter has never done anything like that before, he's doing a smashing job. Not to mention he's doing it only with what little help I'm able to give him, along with some assist from Florabeth tonight. Mom and Lori were busy doing other things that HAD to be done, so together, we've all gotten a lot accomplished the past couple of days.

We hope to have it completed by Thursday night. I am sure Mom and Lori will be glad to get their kitchen/dining room space back that's currently being occupied by all the furniture from the living room. Can't wait to see it when it's finished. It would have been really nice if he'd had help, but hey - when he gets done with the other two rooms, he should be a pro at it! :)

So that's what's going on in our world. I'm off to bed now - have seemingly gotten my days and nights mixed up and it's playing havoc with my daytime schedule. Someday, I hope to get back to going to bed at a decent hour so I'm not so groggy when I wake up early.

Be good, stay warm, and leave me a comment! Please.....