feathering my nest and other nonsense

May was a whirlwind of a month for me.
I wrapped up a very busy Preschool year with a Water Day party, 15 sweet little scrapbooks, an end of the year music program and parent/teacher conferences.
And as if that wasn't quite enough, I agreed to host David's grandparent's 65th wedding anniversary party at our house.
I'm a glutton for punishment.
For reals.

Honestly though, we were totally honored to host the party here. And the it gave us the perfect excuse to get all the little projects completed that we had on our gigantic check-list.

So - in an attempt to ready my house for the big partay, I re-arranged things millions of times, eye-balled blank walls, hung things up and took them down again, stared at magazines, sewed a few things, cleaned a LOT of things, and painted some others...

With each picture I hung, each piece of furniture I found the perfect place for, each nasty cabinet I cleaned, I watched what was once somebody else's house slowly transform into our home.

It's kind of magical how that happens...

Anyway - One of the things that I've really been super excited about was being re-united with my porch swing. The porch swing that David bought for me when we were dating.

It got a new, darker coat of stain on it and I'm happy to say, has not collapsed.
Yet.
Nice work, David.
He's a whiz with the power drill, that one.

Another check-list item for me was to make some pillows for our Living Room couch.

And while some gals get jewelry or chocolates for Mother's day, my sweet husband knows that beautiful fabric will make me just plain giddy. So - that's what I got. Some really awesome, really beautiful fabric.

Originally, I discovered the awesome, beautiful fabric at a really snooty place here in town.

After what could only be described as a horrible, no good, very bad shopping experience, I decided that giving my hard earned Mother's Day cash to a snooty place wasn't really what I wanted to do.

And since Shopping Necessity is the Mother of Creativity ... and Snootiness is the Mother of Desire-to-Stick-it-to-the-Man-ness, I opted to try my luck with the world wide web. 

Lady Internet was kind to me. 

I found both fabrics I loved for waaaay less money.

So there, mean 'ol snooty fabric store.

I used some of the fabric to make these little lovely ladies:

I was hoping that they would turn our pumpkin of a couch into a beautiful coach.
Or at least make the toddler stainage less noticeable.
They didn't.
But I love them anyway.

I used some of the extra fabric to recover a lamp shade. And I painted my formerly red lamp robin's egg blue. 

Next up, I recovered the seat cushions in my kitchen.

They used to look like this:

And now they look like this:

And this...

The fabric is called Hip Dove by P Kaufman. I want to stare at it all the time.
I want to decorate every room in my house with it. I just loooove it.

This was the chandelier in my dining room when we first moved in.

David said it reminded him of the chandelier in Beauty and the Beast.

I'm thinking he meant this one.

...not this one.

She's creepy.

Anyway, now it looks like neither.

Just a regular, Oil Rubbed bronzish one. 

After a can or two of spray paint.

When we first saw the house, the kitchen looked like this:

Pretty range hood, eh?

Now it looks like this.

I know, I know, it's a subtle difference, but I painted the cabinets white (they were dark cream before) and changed the knobs.

Thankfully, the bank who owned the property put a microwave in place of the range hood before we moved in.
Hooray for that.

Cause y'all know I'm not even trying to living in a house sans microwave.

May is over.
I made lots of little checks all over my huge list.
And I feel totally happy.
And inspired to rest.
A lot.
But not until I finish just a few more things...
Specifically, Avery's bedroom. 

She requested a purple room, but I talked her into a subtle lilac-y color instead.

Does that make me a control freak?

Don't answer that.

house love

 I'm enjoying our house so much.

Look what bloomed in our yard during the month of April...

I only wish the blooms would have stayed longer...
It's been so fun to discover the things we have growing in our yard.

These little guys like our yard too.

I bought them at Hobby Lobby one day after Avery and Charlie completely freaked out over them. The boy gnome was quickly claimed by Charlie while the girl was scooped up by Avery. Charlie was totally confused and nooooot pleased about the "putting them in the garden" part. It was a real battle to get him to leave them outside.

So now, whenever Charlie walks out the door and sees the gnomes, he pulls the "Juliet" gnome out of the ground and throws her down on our driveway. Her head has been broken off and glued back at least 4 times now. I'm pretty sure he does it just to tick Avery off.
And it works.

He's a tender, gentle lamb, my Charlie Boy.

Should you be tempted to feel the slightest bit of jealousy over my lovely front yard, allow me to take you on a tour of the back.

This is our super awesome pool.
That's filled with super awesome frogs.
And surrounded by our super awesome dilapidated fence...
Which a gigantic, super awesome tree branch is lying across.
That's still there after our last crazy bought of super awesome storms.

Like that broken diving board? It's still hanging out in my backyard if you'd like to have it.

We've affectionately named our pretty little swimming hole the "Frankenstein Pool". Since, after several diagnosis from various pool experts, it'd been discovered to be a total and complete enigma. One man who has been in the pool business for over 20 years told us that he'd never seen anything like it before.
Awesome.

Bottom line: It's a hodge podge, crazy nightmare of a pool.
A breeding ground for Botulism and the Black Plague.
And it must go.
Next year. When we have more money.
But for now, we've decided that we'll just clean it, cover it, and pretend it doesn't exist.
So that my kids don't get Malaria this summer.

Gross.

We've been working like crazy around this place to get things in order and livable. Look for pictures soon.

there's no place like home

I've been happily enjoying an amazing, awesome, incredible, and totally over-the- top gift from God during the last month.

 

It's been...beautiful.

At least once a day, David and I look at each other and say in disbelief, "...this is our house...".

I'm going to go ahead and say that the moment our Realtor handed us the keys to our new home was one of the top 10 best moments of my life.

The house we bought was a foreclosure, so there was definitely some work that we had to do to get things up to par. Especially in the cleanliness department. 

Cleaning up someone else's mess is not fun.
Especially a total stranger's mess.
Every single drawer, cabinet, shelf and corner was covered in dirt and/or hair...and stuff.

Gross.

Groooooosss.

Thank you God for shelf-liner.

And rubber gloves.

The fans in our screened in porch had at least 2 inches of black dirt caked on top of each blade.

Some Krud Kutter, a grout brush, and some serious elbow grease later and...

 It's safe to breathe in my screened in porch again.

I have an unrealistic amount of soap scum on the shower doors of our bathrooms upstairs. I've really never seen anything like it. It has to be from years of build up. It grosses me out. Really bad.

I've tried everything to get rid of it. 

After getting Chemical Pneumonia a few times, I decided to check out my other options. 

Did you know that you can literally watch hours of you tube videos just on cleaning a shower door? 

Unreal.

Still no success. My final solution may end up involving a large jack hammer. I'll keep you posted. 

Cleaning was bumming me out, so I decided to move on to to something more challenging...Furniture refinishing.

Last year, I spilled some bug spray on my kitchen table. In case you were wondering, bug spray and wood don't really mix...

I've wanted to refinish it forever... and our new move seemed like the perfect excuse.

Here's the before pictures:

 and after...

We've still got a few boxes sitting around, and a seriously daunting to-do list, but I've never been more thrilled to be working my hiney off.

Cause... "this is our house..."

waiting is the worst.

I have this daily conversation with myself.
It goes something like this:

Not much longer.
You can do it.
Just hang in there.

And every time I realize that something I need is in our storage unit, or I trip over one of the giant plastic bins in our bedroom, I repeat it to myself.
It's my new mantra.

It's not really working.

We've been living at my mother-in-law's house for almost 6 months now.
It's been a long, hard, six months.
Not because of her...she is wonderful to us.
Because I miss my stuff.
All of it.
I even miss my sofa that's covered in Mod Podge.
And I really, really missed my kid's sweet little handmade ornaments at Christmas. That was a biggie.

I'll be honest. I'm struggling.
I know that the end result  of all this waiting will be wonderful, but getting there has definitely been hard.

We've found a house we really like, but it's a foreclosure. And although we've submitted an offer, we have yet to hear the first word in response. And it's been 2 months.

I think that I can handle hearing "no" better than I'm handling "wait".

God loves to teach me the same old lesson on patience that I've been learning my whole life.
Maybe He doesn't love to teach it to me. Maybe I'm just super hard-headed.
Maybe I like to talk about having joy in my circumstances and being faithful to Him, but just don't like to actually do it.

That might be it.

So, I'm still here.
Slightly depressed, but here.
And once I figure out how to load pictures to my blog again, I'll catch everybody up on what I've been doing while I've been waiting around.

Later.

Mommy's Little Helper

One step forward, two steps back.

If I could sum up my week, that'd be the phrase I'd use.

For every one thing I get done...

Somebody - and I'm not naming any names, but his name rhymes with "Marley"- helps me take at least 2 steps in the opposite direction.

The direction of Disaster. And Destruction.

We'll get it all packed eventually...

I hope.

Have I ever mentioned how much it helps that he's intensely cute?

'Cause it does. It really does.

Dude, where's my sippy cup?

Things you do when you're trying to sell a house:

1. Clean the tile grout with a scrub brush.

2. Wash the windows.

3. Organize the pantry.

4. Ruthlessly purge all unnecessary clothing

5. Actually put clothes away after they've been folded

6. Clean out and organize closets

7. Attempt to clean the gunk off the microwave in a timely manner

8. Dust

9. Make the beds. The right way. Or even at all.

10. Remove 1/2 of everything you own so that the house looks...not as small as it really is.

All are things that you feel totally and completely required to do when your Realtor adds this sign to your front yard:

Talk about pressure...

Sheesh.

You may be the type of Mommy who manages to do those things everyday - between homeschooling your nineteen children, grinding your own wheat to make bread, and growing your own organic vegetable garden- but I'm... not.

In fact, I can't even manage to find the extra time to investigate where the heinous sour milk odor is coming from in my car. I just know there's a sippy cup in there somewhere...

(Last night, Avery aksed me to pray that God will make our car not smell anymore. Fantastic).

So, I think it's pretty clear that cleaning out the Crisper Drawer in my fridge isn't a top priority.

Especially when most of my day is spent cleaning up messes like this one:

...A.K.A. the aftermath of Hurricane Charlie.

That picture is the hard-hitting evidence of Charlie's fondness for dumping Gunner's water bowl all over the floor.

It's also evidence of Avery's fondness for her Hello Kitty rain boots...and her equal fondness for stomping in puddles in her rain boots.

And there you have it.

The reason that Mommy's next house may be the Nuthouse.

Good news: We have a contract on Itty Bitty House and should be moving out soon.

July 25th to be exact.

Not to a new city, just a new house.

Hopefully one that isn't so...itty bitty.

SO  - with the inspection over and contract signed, my house looks like a Tornado/Bomb ripped through it again...Ahhhh...back to normal...

Can't wait to see what God has in store for us next.

Finding that sippy cup may need to be step one.

Followed closely by packing.

I'll keep you posted.

Goodwill Party

I gave it another go.

Because I'm crazy.
and because I love a bloggy party.
AND because Sarah called me a wus.
Me.
I'm sooo not a wus.
and just to prove it, I faced my fears head on and went back to the scariest place on earth.

The place where you can actually purchase things like this oh-so-modish piece of art:

or this faaaancy shoe doo dad:

this creepy head thingy:

or the ever present Goodwill staple:

You can get your very own foot-fungus-making machine:

or perhaps something a little more practical...

ugh. I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Just when I thought all hope was gone, like a beacon of light, a lovely little gem entered the room via squeaky rolly cart.

No. Not that.
That is the picture that you would see if Avery were writing this post.
She was so pumped about that crazy cash register. Especially when she found DORA play money inside.
Jackpot.

No - this is what I'm talking about...
Helloooo Little Lady!

$9.99 seemed a little steep for Goodwill to me, but it was too cute to pass up.

The best part? Since it was already painted, all it needed was a little cleaning, a little sanding... and a little more sanding.
So - I put my little munchkin to work. Kathy Lee style.

What a busy little worker bee!

Keep working! More sanding! More!

So easy even a two-year-old can do it.

I found myself covered in white dust after the sanding was over, but felt some serious satisfaction with the end result. I really enjoy painting and sanding furniture. It's kind of fun.
Every piece of furniture I "antique" brings me one step closer to getting the nerve up to distress my armoire...

See? I'm not a wus. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not!