Thanksgiving High

Hubby and I are finally coming down from a wonderful Thanksgiving high. It was a great week all around. Hubby took off the entire week from work. Which means that when we spend too much time together around the house it could spell trouble. In my mind he's invading my domestic space and I'm not sure sometimes how to deal with it. We survived grocery shopping together and preparing the house for guests. I was on guarded behavior that week because I didn't want to send him running out of the house to work. I finally realized that after 13 1/2 years of married life he can't read my mind and know what I expect him to do*. I let him know how I do things so an argument wouldn't ensue.

The girls only had to go to school two days of the week, which allowed me to do grocery shopping kid free**. Then they headed to Granny's house for a couple of days leading up to Thanksgiving. I had the kitchen to myself to prepare everything.

When I started thinking of what we needed to do to prepare we started going over the house with a fine tooth comb. One of the things that has been bothering us since we moved in are the toilet seats. I kid you not. They should have been replaced eight years ago when we first moved in. The toilet seat in the master bath was one of those plastic cushioned ones. Just odd. The others had just seen better days. They were actually not as expensive to replace so we did it. It's truly the little things that get us all excited, and we were actually able to do it ourselves. That's impressive, because we can't do anything around the house.

Now on to the good stuff. Preparing the food. I put the turkey breasts in the crock pot. I also made green bean bundles that were to die for! I couldn't forget the macaroni and cheese fans, so we had plenty of that. Mind you there was no powdered cheese involved***! Honey roasted sweet potatoes were also being marinated****. Don't forget the gluttony of desserts. I made my first pecan pie. I also made a chocolate chip pound cake and cherry cream cheese tarts.

Thanksgiving was filled with food, family and a little bit of fun mixed in. My cousin said it best when she said that she enjoyed Thanksgiving better than Christmas. With Thanksgiving there's no pressure on giving the perfect gift. You're spending time with family and it's just that.

Isn't the greatest gift we can give time?

Sum up Thanksgiving like this: Full tummy. Full heart. Full house. Full fridge. Does it get any better than that?


*Seriously? What's taking that man so long?
**Kid free, but Hubby was with me so it could be a tie. I kid. I kid.
***It's just as easy as the box kind, so I think that's what I'll be making from now on. 
****I'm not a sweet potato fan but I thought everybody else was. Thank God my cousin brought regular mashed potatoes.

Thankful Tree

I've mentioned that my cousin is responsible for my new addiction. That new addiction being Pinterest. It is a great community of creative people that post their ideas to this web site and you can post your own, or re-pin their ideas.*

The above definition nails it. Even #3. But, I consider it more productive than facebook and I've actually made use of some of the ideas. It's where I got the ideas and knowledge to refinish my kitchen table. I made my NOEL piece. There are other ideas I can't wait to get started on. I could even get my kids involved with some of them.

There was one idea that I thought would be neat to try for the month of November. With Thanksgiving coming round the bend I thought my family could put what we are thankful for each day of the month of November. I saw where someone had posted a picture of some tree limbs in a vase and had some different colored circles tied with string hanging from it. They called it a Thankful Tree.

Who couldn't do this, right? I thought it would be a great way to remind myself and the kids that we have A LOT to be thankful for. Even in times when we don't appreciate it. I went out to my monster of a crepe myrtle in the backyard and clipped a few limbs. I printed up a template that had different leaf shapes. I grabbed a bunch of my scrapbook paper that hasn't and probably wouldn't be used anytime soon and started cutting leaf shapes.

I started it the first of November and we write on a different leaf each day.**

I even started one in our 5th grade Sunday school class. ***For the Sunday school kids we give them a leaf each Sunday and they are to write down something they're thankful for. This picture is from before I hung up the leaves. Another teacher took pictures of the kids and she wants to hang those from the tree as well.

When I was working on building the tree at church someone showed me all of the diecuts they have. They have a great leaf shape that was perfect.  I had to go back a second day to work on the tree at church and I took more of my scrapbook paper and made more leaves for my home tree. That was so much easier than using scissors!

I'm going to hate to have to take that tree down!

This is how the Thankful Tree is going at my home:

The leaves just cover the little excuse of a limb. Maybe next year I will just make circles for us to write our notes on.

This is definitely something I would like to make a family tradition!


*I've noticed that the most creative people I'm following are LDS. Is creativity a requirement of their faith? It must be a spiritual gift for them.
**The kids have been much more faithful in this than I have because some days I have been in an emotional pit. We took our house off of the market and it just sort of feels like a dream is dying. 
***Yep. Hubby and I are teaching in a 5th grade class. Pray for those children!! =)

DIY NOEL

I have Pottery Barn taste without the PB budget! Pottery Barn rocks the cozy, classy, comfortable style that I love. From furniture to chandeliers and wall art to the needless knick knacks.* The holiday season is definitely no different. There's been one item that they've featured in holiday catalogs the past couple of years. 

NOEL. Something fun for the fireplace mantle for the Christmas season. Made of iron with a hand pounded bronze finish. With a PB price tag to boot!**

I'm all for a hand pounded bronze finished piece of metal like the next lady, but seriously? Let me have a hammer, soda cans and some paint and I got this one.

When it comes to some things decor around our house, if I want it bad enough I have to use my play money. It usually has to be something totally wonderful for me to spend it on stuff other than what it's really meant for.***

I started googling images of the wall art. I came across some crafting blogs that have their own versions of the NOEL piece. One was so close to the PB version that I had to read up on it.

I went to my favorite craft store and found wooden letters. The size of the letters isn't quite as big as the PB version, but it's close enough.

So. Let me think about this for just a moment. The PB version is $149. I went to my favorite craft store and spent about $8. Then I went to the local hardware store to get paint. That was around $10 because I couldn't choose between two different colors, so of course I bought both!

Once I chose the color I wanted to go with I spray painted both sides.**** Then I used craft sticks (popsicle sticks) to hold the entire piece together on the back side.

 I let the glue set overnight. And voila!

 I used a metallic spray paint for a look similar to the PB version. It's sort of hard to tell in this picture.

Now I can chalk up under my DIY belt:
-2011 girls Halloween costumes. They wanted to be the Statue of Liberty. I  made the torches out of yellow, orange and red tissue paper and craft foam. I also made their crowns.
-refinished our kitchen table
-NOEL wall art

There's a certain amount of pride that goes along with completing projects. And for just about the same results as spending too much money at the store of my inspirations. I won't hold it against the store! How could I?



*makes you think of the song that includes knick knack paddywhack doesn't it?
**$149
***haircuts, pedicures, clothes etc can add up
****Yes. Both sides. Because I know people who would turn it over and look. Then they would say, "You didn't paint the back side?" Isn't a properly finished piece of art better, anyway?

A Day In The Life

Has there ever been someone you wish you could walk in their shoes for one day? Just pop in and experience what it would be like for a few hours and then go right back to the one you have. I have to admit there is someone I wish I could trade places with*.

Maybe it would be better asked if you would like to be a fly on the wall.

One of my new favorite shows on television is Selling New York. It features real estate agents from Core, Warburg and Gumley Haft Kleier. It details the riggers of the wheeling and dealing of New York real estate. These are people I would love to have on my side anytime when dealing with real estate.

One of my favorite properties that they've featured on the show this season is the Clock Tower in Dumbo. It's an area of Brooklyn that used to be a cardboard factory. The penthouse.

Gumley Haft Kleier got the listing and offered it at  a cool $23 million**. Wowza! It's definitely been one of the more expensive properties featured on the show.

The apartment was gorgeous. A little (or a lot) on the contemporary side, but still beautiful. It had a very lofty, open feel to the space. Limitless views of New York City.

The agents held a party in the evening to show off the views from this apartment. It was fantastic! It was as if you were above the clouds looking at a sky full of millions of stars. 

There's just never a dull moment on this show. It's a different world in New York real estate, that's for sure!

Yes. I wouldn't mind just one day in Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern's gorgeous Louboutins***.  Until then, I'll keep watching the show. There will come a time when I'll make it to New York. But, I'll be wearing my sensible athletic shoes and most likely looking like the most giddy tourist there ever was!



*Only for a few hours to see the things that they get to see on a daily basis. I wouldn't trade (on a permanent basis) my life with anyone.
**It ended up selling several months later for just over $7 million. 
***With a lengthy foot massage afterward.

I Finally Did It!

When Hubby and I put the house up for sale we had to do a lot of staging. We had to pack stuff up and re-arrange everything else. It was fun but at the same time exhausting. One table ended up being taken apart and stored in the garage. And another table was put in its place because it went better with the color scheme of the room. Well. This table did go better with the color scheme, dark brown with black legs. But it was a table with deep crevices. Several rectangles as part of the design.

After a long time it just got gunked up with food and arts and crafts. There was no amount of scrubbing that could get all the gross junk out. You can almost see some of the gunk in the picture above.

 Here's the  table before:

It's the basic butcher block wood color with painted white legs with chairs to match. It had to go! But not to the curb.

So. I let my new obsession go to my head. Pinterest has a LOT of neat ideas and creative tutorials. So off I go to my local home improvement store to make the second table look a lot more pleasing to the eye and go with the color scheme.

I bought some liquid sander, stain and spray paint. Off to work I go. I started with the table first. Wiping on the liquid sander and shortly after, wiping off. At first I got the plain liquid stain. It doesn't give you much time to work with. I had some gel stain leftover from when we had our kitchen cabinets stained and that's a lot better to work with.

It was actually a little bit fun! I sanded with a fine grit sand paper between two layers of stain. I used a flat enamel spray paint for the bottom part of the table and legs. I did put a thin coat of polyurethane on the top of the table just to keep it as nice as I can for a kitchen table.

I was a little bit nervous about doing the chairs. The best thing I could think to do was to spray paint the legs first. I just propped them on top of my garbage can and sprayed away. I worked my way up from there. Next I stained the seat.

I took Hubby's bike down from the ceiling and hung the chairs upside down to avoid getting too much paint on the seat part. Thank God it was a very windy day when I did this!

This project maybe cost around $100. That's a lot better on the checkbook than a whole new furniture set. It's not perfect, but I'm very happy with it.

Lesson Learned

Is there something you've thought you would never do, but faced with possibly having to do it? I had one of those moments recently. I was mortified! 

I had taken off my wedding rings to put lotion on my hands. I carefully put them on the arm of the sofa*.  Well, time got away from me and I just forgot they were there. Bedtime rolled around and I walked away to run through the bedtime routine. After brushing my teeth I remembered that my rings were on the arm of the sofa. 

Or so I thought. They weren't there. I didn't think too much of it at first. I just thought I knocked them off onto the floor. They weren't anywhere around. I panicked! My mind automatically thinks that the Goober dog that resides in this house has found them and eaten them**. Oh Crap***!  I walked away to tell Hubby I might have to be sorting through some steaming piles of dog poo soon. With a puzzled look on his face he asks, "Why?" 

I told him what happened and he said, we're not going to be digging through poop to look for your rings.  Here I am faced with my wedding rings possibly in Goober's system and I am contemplating mashing up dog poop in the next few days to get my rings. I never thought I would have to do that. But, I was at that crossroads. Thinking that I will. 

I like my wedding rings. The new mounting that I got for my thirteenth wedding anniversary sure doesn't hurt either! In my head I could justify sorting through poop and disinfecting it many times over before going out and finding another. It wouldn't be the same and it's not in the budget at the moment. 

I went back to the living room and gave it another try. I stuck my hand through every nook and cranny of the couch and dug up all sorts of stuff. Including my wedding rings****. Relief quickly set in! 

I faced a decision that I wouldn't wish on anybody. And thank God I didn't have to go through with it*****!

Is there anything you would sort through dog poop for? 

*Yeah, right

**He's eaten and passed socks and underwear before, so why not?

***Literally!

****Not to self: never put rings on arm of couch. EVER. AGAIN. 

*****Yes, it's a material object. I'm not placing the value of it over anything, but poop can be washed away. I've seen some of the rings out there. I bet others might be doing the same thing! 

What is My Life?

For the past several weeks I've been doing  a bible study with one old* friend and a couple of new friends. We've been going through Kelly Minter's No Other Gods. It's been more than fascinating! Then recently Hubby and I have been reading through Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life**. Technically it's not really A LOT of reading. Each book takes maybe 30 minutes each out of my day.

After reading chapter five of Purpose Driven Life I was curious.  The title is "Seeing Life from God's View". As Rick puts it we can see our lives as a circus, a minefield, a roller coaster, a puzzle, etc. Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down and sometimes you go round and round. What's my life metaphor?

Am I the rabbit racing through life just to get to the finish line? Or to rush through motherhood? Am I the tortoise taking my time while life speeds past? Warren says that we need to challenge conventional wisdom and replace it with the biblical metaphors of life.

Romans 12:2 says "Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-His good, pleasing and perfect will". Warren mentions two biblical metaphors that teaches God's view of life.

Life on earth is a Test. He tests our character, faith, obedience, love, integrity and loyalty.  Adam and Eve failed their test, as well as David on several occasions. But there have been many who have faced and passed their challenges such as Joseph, Ruth, Esther and Daniel.

God is constantly watching my response to people, problems, success, and conflict. I have to admit that I've felt like God has drawn back and let me have control. I don't like it. I joke with Hubby that God isn't speaking to me right now. I'm not even sure if He ever has.

When life is a test nothing is insignificant for character development.  And I'm feeling like I'm failing that test miserably.


The second biblical metaphor that Warren mentions is Life is a Trust.  God has entrusted to our care opportunities, relationships and resources. We are stewards of what God gives us. Psalm 24:1 says, "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him." Warren says that it was God's property before I arrived and God will loan it to someone else after I die. I only get to enjoy it for a little while.

At the end of my life I will be evaluated and rewarded according to how well I handled what God entrusted to me. Uh oh! Some days I feel like I am failing that test miserably, as we have struggled with debt, giving God our first fruits, spending on what the needs of the day are as opposed to the wants. I hear over and again that I should not lust after the things of this world, even when I just want to have fun talking about nice things with friends or family. But then I look at all that we have been able to do on one salary that most friends do on two: we are raising two beautiful girls who have everything they need and a mother who has been at home raising them for the past ten years;  we have a decent-sized house that is not too big for a family of four; we take nice vacations every 3-4 years; we have been through a round of house remodeling. It's not as much as many of our friends have done, those who go on vacations every year AND have twice the amount of house with a pool. But we are happy and healthy, and we are all friends. Drama is kept to a minimum, and we live in the shadow of God's loving, divine will.

God moments don't feel as dramatic in our household as they might in the lives of others, but our moments with the Devil are few and far between. Tests have been present, and I think we need to do better with what God has entrusted us with (still working on that 10% tithe). But God has been quietly faithful to us all through our lives, giving us what we need and enabling us to follow Him. He has just been there, and in the end that's what friendship and relationship are really about. *Being* there.

 And isn't that something?




*I mean we've been friends for a long time, not that she's ancient!
**Very rarely will you ever find me reading through more than one book at a time. One usually ends up being put aside til later or I have no interest in it.

Fall Fun

My cousin recently introduced me to the world of Pinterest. It's basically a web site that acts like an electronic type of bulletin board. At first I couldn't figure it out. But the hardest part was getting the "Pin It" button to attach to my Google task bar. It has replaced my file folders full of magazine clippings, recipes, types of hairstyles I might want to try one day and decor for any season.

Recently a friend posted on facebook a picture of a pumpkin topiary that she had made for fall. It was simply fantastic! She has great taste. She's very much a Do-It-Yourself type of person. Here's a picture of her topiary:

I was in awe! It was fun and creative. It drove me to go to one of my favorite garden centers and pick up a few small pumpkins and get to painting! We're saving the carving for Hubby for next weekend. He wants to do it anyway.

Clearly I wasn't going for the topiary look because this was my first time at the pumpkin painting rodeo. I wanted to ease into it.  I got a pumpkin for me and one for each of my kids. I just wanted to see how mine would turn out with just painting first.

Well, it's not THAT bad. I just stuck with an all over metallic color and a black fleur-de-lis and some other embellishments. Hold your laughter:

The metallic color doesn't show up that well in this picture, but it's the best I've got. Yes, I know I could have done the fleur-de-lis straighter. Some people could probably nit-pick this to death. But, it doesn't matter, because I kind of like it!

  You'll notice the other two pumpkins are blank. Well. The girls decided that they didn't like how theirs turned out so they washed the paint off and they said they wanted to try again next weekend. I'm thinking glitter may be in their future! We had fun in the process:

 
I'm enjoying Pinterest a lot these days! It's taking over my time that I used to spend on facebook.  It's some of the good parts of facebook, but better. With none of the crappy stuff of facebook. Pinterest is just a place full of inspirational ideas, projects and style. Here's to more projects!

I Have to Get This Off My Chest

There are just some things that have been eating at me for a long time. I need to get them off my chest or I might just have to start slapping people. Or saying some things that I might later regret. Here goes.

*I'm really tired of people being a$$holes.  Why can't people just be nice? I understand that people have an occasional bad day, but some have had a lifetime of bad days and it's exhausting.

*I have learned that it's not my job to be the chain of communication. I am no longer going to assume that you want so-and-so at your get together. If you want someone there, ask them yourself please. I have had times when I was selective about who I wanted at my gathering and therefore didn't ask them. I let each person know individually.  Plus, if I was the chain of communication the other person gets all huffy and  says, "Why didn't they ask me themselves?"You know how those people can be.

*Please don't call me in for a 15 minute meeting and then 45 minutes later we still haven't covered what we really need to talk about. At dinnertime.

*Please don't come in to my home and complain about the dust or the smell in the backyard when you don't even clean up your own home/work place without the help of your mother. When you have outside help to clean, your opinion is just about null and void.

*Snobby people are driving me nuts at the moment. Seriously, you have nothing to be snobby about. You are no better than the rest of us.

*Why are college educated people still misspelling the simplest of words?

*Hubby left you TWO voicemails. You can't say he didn't try to find out what was wrong. I think he at least deserved an email back if you were too chicken to call him. So just be wrong. Sit there in your wrongness and be wrong.

*Stop coming up with excuses. Just admit you can't do it anymore. You can't do everything on your own. You need help. AND IT'S OKAY!

I'm not whining. I'm just tired of certain behaviors. I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means. But couldn't we all try a little harder to be aware of the ripple effect we have on others?

Buy My House. Please!

After the long, hot summer we just endured Hubby and I decided we'd really like to have a pool in our backyard. The problem is we cringe at the $45k price tag installing a pool comes with. So the subject of selling our house came up. After sitting around wondering whether or not to sell, we finally put our house on the market. What do we have to lose?

Let the good times begin*! I've gone through closets and packed up boxes. I've spit and polished just about all I can. We hired a handyman to fix odds and ends. It is show ready just about twenty four hours a day. 

It's been a couple of weeks now and it's been a roller coaster. Our realtor gave me access to the comments that the realtors who come through have. It comes to my email after each visit. 

This is the time I'm going to take out my frustration on all of you ignorant realtors out there. 

1.  Comment: beautiful drive-up, but the den is too small and the bedrooms are all on the same side of the   house. 

     Well, I can't do anything about that one. You and your kids are too old for this neighborhood. It needs  

      young blood. I can't change the floorplan. It is what it is. For this area you either need small children or  

      be empty nesters. 

2. Comment: beautiful drive-up, clients favorite of the day. Will discuss an offer. 

     Please. Don't insult us with ridiculous offers. We want to move. We don't have to move. We're not          desperate. 

3. Comment: Clients are looking for more contemporary. They would need to decide if they would want to  remodel. 

     Contemporary? Had the client or the realtor looked at any of the pictures online they would have known  that there is nothing contemporary about this house. There's plenty of contemporary crap out there. We've seen it. 

4. Comment: Client thought the house was beautiful. They are moving here from Brazil and this would be their first time to buy a house. The only thing they didn't like was that the fireplace was too big. 

     Seriously, if that's the only flaw you can come up with you don't need to be buying a house in this area. We don't use it either, but it's just there. I didn't know that fireplaces came in different sizes. 

5. Comment: Beautiful drive-up and fabulous colors on the inside. They liked the updates then saw some of the paneling and wondered why we stopped updating. 

     Look here beyotch, had we not stopped updating we either wouldn't be selling or it would be priced much higher. We've put in granite in the kitchen and painted over a TON of pathetic wallpaper. We've put in a fence, new a/c, new hot water heaters. We've stained the cabinets to rid this house of the deplorable golden honey cabinet color that was popular in the 80's. All of our light fixtures and ceiling fans have been updated and there's no sign of the gold fixtures that again, the 80's dumped on us. Did I mention the buttload of energy efficient windows we put in a few years ago. Cha-ching!! We've seen houses priced much higher than what ours is and we've done much more than they have. We've made the necessary changes. The rest isn't broken. It still works just fine. It may not be the latest and greatest, but that's for someone else to change if they see fit.

Yes, people are entitled to their opinions. But so am I. This has been a short road that in some ways seems like it's already lasted forever. There are some moments when I think, "What are we doing?". The market is saturated with houses for sell. There's always the springtime. Hopefully someone will come along and think this is the perfect house for them. At one point, we thought it was perfect for us. Who knows? 

God knows.  It's in His hands. I have to be okay with that.

One realtor we met at an open house said not to get discouraged. "People are moving all of the time" is what she said. Here's to people to moving all of the time! Here's to hoping what she said rings true. 

*sarcastic tone intended here