Somebody somewhere in the cosmos knew I needed this site this week. Thank you cosmos, just thank you.

Sufficient for this day....

God gave me this song for today and this scripture: Psalms 25

Christmas time's a comin'......

Whew! The first two weeks of this month was totally dedicated to completing one of the biggest projects of my life, to date! Unfortunately it is a Christmas gift, so I can't share about it until after Christmas. It will be a great post, though!

Here are a few christmassy shots- the tree now has a sparkly gold star for the top!

Our Thanksgiving meal....

Roast Turkey crisped with butter
Mashed potatoes and turkey dripping gravy
Roast onions and sweet potatoes
Green bean casserole
Wheat pumpernickel stuffing with apples, celery, and onions
Cranberry salad
Crescent rolls
Homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream


I am so thankful for my family, both near and far/friends that gather and share a meal/ my dogs and horse who live every day simply as themselves/the never changing mountains that ring this place I call home/the everlasting, infinite goodness of my God who loves, protects, provides and disciplines. May His will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From 'blech' to 'not so bad'....

Here's a quick project I did while Ron was gone and the boys were at daycare/preschool. See that media stand? It was free which is great, but our TV didn't fit in it and all the wires were exposed to view. Seeing wires=irritated Faith. Nothing a saw couldn't fix!
I don't know what the name of the saw I used is, but it is handheld and has a round blade and gives me a small case of the heebie jeebies. My imagination supplies pictures of chopped off fingers all too vividly! But usually I need it for projects so I force myself to use it and act like it's no big deal. I've almost got myself convinced! Anyways- I sawed off the top of the media stand, leaving just the bottom cabinet. Then I sanded the top down.
I spray painted the knobs and hinges a copper color.
And painted the base in some paint I had left over from the trim.
Looks better, doesn't it? It also makes the TV a better height for viewing. I rearranged the furniture and am enjoying the fact that all wires/remotes/DVD player are hidden. No more mess!
See the metal bucket? That is the boys' toy bucket. I have decided if the bucket over flows, we get rid of some toys. We do have a few things that aren't in the bucket- a giant floor puzzle, a wooden train set, and a plastic light up tool stand thing, but so far we're doing pretty good with not having toys all over all the time.
(what you don't see is the 8 inches of Hot Wheels cars in the bottom of the bucket. We will NEVER get rid of these because the boys know exactly how many we have and what color and how fast each one goes. When they go to college I'm going to make a decorative wall hanging from them.)

Library to Office

Remember my 'library'? In my goal to maximize the usability of my house, I compressed the 3 bookshelves of books into 2 and moved them into my guest bedroom. The guest bedroom now functions as a reading and nap room as well as housing guests. With that project over, it was time to move to phase 2 of Operation Use Space Wisely. One of the things I dislike about our home is that the main entrance is a small laundry/office space. It is ALWAYS a mess and is the first thing to greet our guests. We are revamping the whole thing. Phase 2 involves moving the office to the old library. I wanted to get rid of the giant ancient desk in our office- it's uncool 60's flavor and inappropriately huge size needed to give way to some nice streamlined built ins. Here's how it went:
I first self tinted some paint and tried it on the walls. It looked like skin. Moving on. The desk was going to be one long plank of wood running down one wall. For the support structure, I started with a long 1"x2" and cut it the right length and then screwed it into the wall.
Then I cut another 1"x2" into 12" lengths and screwed those into the wall underneath the long strip. At this point I was going to cut more 12" lengths of the 1"x2" on 45 degree angles, screw them into the vertical supports and then lay the plank on top, but I found these metal "L" brackets in the shed. They don't look as nice as the wood, but if we want to move along our desk our knees will have room and won't bang against the supports. So I screwed those in and went to the hardware store. Lo and behold, they had this shelving that was 16" wide-perfect! It was pretreated in a smooth white finish and they cut it right there to the right length. Even better? It was only 25 bucks!
We had our desktop. Now, our house is OLD. Like built in 1900 to be the first school house in our town. That means nothing is straight or square. I decided I would cut some quarter round to trim out the desk and cover the gaps between wall and desktop. Also, I needed to settle on a paint color. I was thinking tan to tone down the room. This room will be primarily used by Ron and he liked the tan color in the bathroom so away we went. I got a satin finish which I am REALLY liking in here. To my surprise, in this light the color turned out a steely grey. There is just a hint of cool undertones that look fantastic with the cream trim. I couldn't bear to paint all that trim again, so I am so glad the wall color looked so great with it.
This is a new favorite color combo! So serene! In the below pic the quarter round hasn't been nailed down yet, but you get the idea of how it will finish off the desktop. I also like how the hickory cabinet that we hung plays off the floor and quarter round.
Up next is to hang two long shelves above the desk and move the filing cabinet in, then transfer all the desk stuff, but I feel great about how this room is coming along! I'll be taking more pics as we go so you can see the complete transformation.

Why are these questions so hard?....

Today I was faced with a parenting dilemma:

LB was playing on the couch with a partially eaten granola bar (which I have conned them into thinking are cookies) (which they sort of are-have you seen the sugar content?) when he dropped it and the dog ate it. He turned to me in horror and said
"I wanted that! Mama, I wanted that!"
His face proceeded to crumple and tears brimmed.

What do I do? Do I take this moment to teach him about loss and responsibility and why were you jumping on the couch with your food anyway? Or do I just get that little darling another 'cookie' cause it really was important to him and life is hard enough why am I forcing him to come to grips over a lost 'cookie'?

I just got him another one. Was I right? Did I miss a learning opportunity? I don't know. Big Picture people have a hard time with things like granola bars and dogs.