Saturday, January 30

Wherever Home May Be...

Precious Lord, take my hand
                                                               Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light

Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When my way grows drear
Precious Lord linger near
When my life is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall

Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When the darkness appears
And the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand

Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I'm tired, I'm weak, I'm lone
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light

Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home
(Thomas A. Dorsey)


Thursday, January 28

Wednesday, January 27

Laundry room progress

Some of you know that when we moved into our house 3 and a half years ago, we discovered that the foundation had been poured wrong. This resulted in a loss of 6 inches in the laundry room and 9 inches in the garage.  As a result my HE washer and dryer barely fit in the room. When opened the doors touched the wall. So we knocked out a wall and extended it down in to the garage bump out so we could place the machines at the end of the room. That was done soon after we moved in. Then I lived with it in an unfinished state until we found out we were moving. Suddenly it had to get done fast! My hubby and the boys have been mudding and sanding drywall for the past three weekends and they are almost done! Soon I can paint the walls and put in a new floor. The only downside is that I will only get to enjoy it for a few months.  At least it will look good to sell and the washer will not be sitting in the middle of my kitchen every weekend!
Poor guys they look so tired after sanding all day!
I can't wait to show you pictures when it's painted! Hopefully next week.

Monday, January 25

Lost

Our offer on the last house fell through. Another buyer came in and offered more and we decided not to start a bidding war. I wasn't as dissapointed as I thought I would be. Yes the house was lovely but it was not perfect. So we began our seach all over again. I can only be sure of a few things in this house search.

1. God is in control and he has the perfect house for us.
2. It's gonna take a miracle, and
3. my husband and I never agree on house stuff. :)

We went over to New Jersey yesterday to look at a couple of more houses, one was to small, and the other two were just plain scary! It just amazes me how rundown some people let their houses get. So we will keep looking and pray the perfect house comes available in our price range.

In the meantime I am going to take a couple days break from scouring the house listings, it just gets to be to stressful. Instead I am going to get out my spray paint and craft bin in the hopes of finishing a few projects, play games and bake cookies with my children, and forget about moving for a few seconds days.

Saturday, January 23

School room is done!




Welcome to our school room! I started this project back in November. It's taken me forever to finish it, and now we are moving, at least it will show well, although it never stays this clean! I took these photos on a Friday afternoon, just after school was over for the day.  I think it lasted just long enough for me to take them before the children all decided to start a craft project! That is what this room is for, we spend a lot of time in here, doing our lessons, reading, computer, crafting, coloring, and it also happens to be the warmest room in the house. It gets a lot of use. It started out as the nursery with striped yellow walls. I loved it, but it started to look like a circus tent when all the school things moved in and the crib went out. Here is a before picture.

 There were just to many things competing and it was very distracting. So I painted, which took forever, since I had to sand down every stripe or it would show through to the new color. I went with Behr's antique white, it is a lovely soothing color and really makes the accents stand out. The curtains are drop cloths that I edged with red trim, and tied back with soft cloth tape rulers.Most of the furniture is from IKEA except for the computer desk. That is an Ethan Allen yard sale find, I paid 20.00 for it. Someday I'll refinish it as the top is stained, but we need it to much to work on it.
The alphabet is from My Father's World curriculum and it just fits on that wall. My son found the cast silhouettes of Washington and Lincoln at the antique store when we were browsing and I "framed" them with empty frames I found at good will. The bulletin board I made using an old frame and a broken bulletin board I cut down and covered in fabric. I'll show you how I did that soon!
I love the flag in the center, it's an old parade flag that was missing it's pole so I used some spray adhesive and glued it to a piece of foam core and it just happened to fit perfectly into that frame I had in my stash. Behind the curtain is a large filing box that holds all of our paperwork, on top is more storage and office supplies. Inside are things like wooden puzzles, math manipulative's, lacing shapes, leapsters, and coloring books, all easily accessible, but out of sight.
It's so calm and peaceful that my easily distractable son gets his work done in record time, leaving us more time to do fun stuff.
This chalk board was given to me by a dear friend who homeschooled her children, on the shelf above are crayons, markers, colored pencils, pattern shapes, and paint. Below that is our little science shelf, it houses a dead lizard, rocks, arrowheads, feathers, fossils, and whatever else two young boys find fascinating.
Behind the door is the mess! That's where the puzzles, games, printer, teacher manuals, and whatever else one needs in an office goes. The little desk is for anyone who can't sit still at the big table or is staring out the window to much.
Some of the details. I made the pencil art based on something I saw in the Pottery barn catalog years ago.




Does anyone have any suggestions on how to rehab this chalkboard? It still works but had those white scratches making it hard to read through. I would love to fix it without painting over the alphabet.

Well I hope I didn't bore you to death with all the photos, I am just so excited to have the room all finished, even the details!



Wednesday, January 20

Slow and Steady

Slow and steady seems to be the way things are going here. Every day something more gets crossed off the list. The laundry room is almost ready for paint, the dining room is actually useable again, and the pile for the good will keeps getting bigger. This past weekend I cooked up enough meals to last until the middle of March or a bit later depending. My goal is that the freezer will be empty and ready to move and I won't have to worry about what to eat when things need to stay clean, ALL THE TIME! not looking forward to that part of moving!

I drove over to New Jersey Sunday afternoon to look at a house. It was perfect, the yard, the kitchen, the bedrooms, everything except for the laundry room. I really had my heart set on a family laundry room space. The concept sounds lovely, such a time saver so I left the house with no intention to send David over to look at it. But the house would not leave me.

 I really thought through that laundry room issue. Having never had a laundry room fully functioning before there was so much to consider. I hang my clothes to dry outside most of the year. so that means I am all ready carrying them out of the laundry room anyway. I like a place to toss things I don't want to deal with. OK, I will have a garage and a basement if I want to ingore my piles. It will always be messy with piles of laundry in the hallway. Mabye, this could happen, but we limit how many items of clothing each child has, and dirty laundry is kept in the hamper upstairs, so it would only pile while I was washing it. Not a big deal really, I don't wash as much as I used to with limiting outfits. My children put their own laundry away, I just fold it, so I'm not carrying it upstairs anyway. I was beginning to see that I could live with it, if done right it will be just fine, expecially since the rest of the house if perfect!

Then our realtor called Monday and said there was an offer on the house and if we wanted it we needed to move quickly. You see this house was originally 130,000 more that the asking price, it isn't likely we will find something as nice for such a bargain again, expecially in New Jersey. David went to look at it on Tuesday morning and loved it, a little thing like a hall way laundry didn't bother him, the location is great, it has a lovely spot for a garden, is close to shopping and the train to Philladelphia and New York, has an awesome climbing tree,  beautiful detailing and nice big bedrooms. So we put in our offer.

Now we wait and pray! It could take as long as 10 days to find out if it is going to be ours. That doesn't stop me from planning though. If it is our house we will move in at the end of March. I'll keep you updated!

Edited to add: No 15 minutes after I posted this the realtor called and our offer was accepted. So now it goes to attorney review and until all papers are signed we can still get bumped by a better offer. Please pray!




Tuesday, January 19

Rubbing off

I have been so busy organizing and labeling things,
 I believe it is rubbing off.
 Fiona is busy labeling everything also.





Thursday, January 7

It's a sickness

These past few days we have all come down with colds. Between trying to manage 4 sick children and a sick hubby,while my own eyes are burning and my nose won't stop running, getting some form of a decent meal on the table, and school work done, my house has offically fallen apart. I haven't done laundry in, well, long enough for everyone to have nothing to wear, the dishes are piling up, and that organizing project I started. Yes, its still there. My dining room is offically a dumping ground for anything and everything you can think of.
So instead of wallowing in all this dirt and self pity(I hate being sick) I am creating a happy place. Forget the mess, I have a lovely mantle all decorated for spring, if it ever comes. Since I can't sleep without waking up multiple times trying to breath, I have slowly been putting new arrangements together. They even wake me up at night as if my surfaces call to me, "dress me, dress me". Yes I believe I suffer from more than one kind of illness. :) Those of you who also have this problem will completly understand.


I couldn't leave this alone either. It's an old tool box, perfect for my fake succlents. Yes, I use fake and I have a good reason. Last year I bought all sorts of lovely live plants and my cat proceded to eat them all one by one. So no more real ones for me, until kitty learns to behave! I stuck them in white pots from IKEA and filled it in with old shredded sheet music(thanks Liz!). Hopefully kitty will leave that alone. just looking at this makes me feel so much better!

Saturday, January 2

Cleaning house

These last couple of days I took down all the christmas decorations sorted through them, fixed anything broken, finished up a few projects for next year, and packed it all up in boxes. Extra carefully I might add so the movers won't break anything. Isn't is so pretty all piled in a heap?
Lovely to see it all organized and ready to go to storage in the basement.
So why does my dining room still look like this?
Well, I decided I really needed to go through ALL of my decorating things. So I piled  everything I own on the dining room table to go through and re-decorate and then get rid of things I haven't used.
Who knew dining rooms could be so useful for everything but eating?
And while I'm busy working on this project, here is a glimpse of what the children are doing.

"I'm playing 'puter Mommy."



Friday, January 1

Pretend

Pretending of days long ago. Fiona got the first season of the Little House TV series for Christmas and we have been watching them (and reading the books) every day this week while David is off from work. It has sparked some very creative play around here!


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