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Why I don’t like keeping to-do lists

When I start getting stressed I make to-do lists. When I’m not stressed, I will most likely loose my lists. When there is a lot going on, I get out my notebook of lists.

I’m mostly a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants gal. For example, when traveling through Europe with my husband in our younger pre-kid days, we hopped an overnight train to Budapest – not knowing much about the city, what we would do when we got there, how long we would stay or where we would sleep the next night. It was fun. That’s how I like to roll.

In college when life got too busy I dreadfully succumbed to buying a planner. I always said I would never be so scheduled to need such a thing. I was in my last semester of journalism school, working at a weekly newspaper where I was essentially serving as the arts editor, and planning our wedding. Time management was of the essence. Looking back at the pages inside my big black planner, I have no idea how I even found time to sleep.

I was a theater minor and one of my mentors was a theater professor.  During a conversation when I shared my discomfort with feeling so scheduled and needing to have a planner, he said something that has stuck with me all this time.

“I keep a planner so I can be sure to have time for the people who are important to me,” he said. He was a wonderful professor, inspiring and supportive of young students with big ideas.

At the time his response hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s what planning should be about. Today, it could not be truer.

Every year October sets off a world wind of crazy that doesn’t stop until January 2. Between those months all my girls turn a year older. There are birthday parties to plan, Halloween costumes to sew, Thanksgiving to think about, Christmas, shopping, crafting, cooking, traveling plus other family birthdays too.

This week I got out my notebook to start making lists.

Saturday marks the first birthday party of the season. It will be a backyard movie night with 20 girls. And I’m trying not to loose sight as to why I’m doing all this.

Sure it’s a good time to get the yard cleaned up, pressure wash the patio for the first time in the seven years we have lived here, and so on.

Since May we have been in a constant mode of moving, switching up, cleaning up, and regrouping as every new page gets turned in our journey of living through major renovations happening to our house.

But when I woke up and found this in my notebook of lists, I was reminded of exactly why I am doing all this. It moved me in a big way! 

You see, this exact time last year I was spending all my free time writing a weekly column for our daily newspaper. It was a journalism gig, nothing to do with mothering or natural living.

I spent at least one evening a week away from home, doing interviews or sitting in a coffee shop trying to meet a deadline. Each day I was juggling four separate to do lists. One for the newspaper, one for my volunteer and activism work for the birth center where I served as secretary of the board, one for this blog (a brand spanking new venture at the time) and one for my family.

I wanted so badly to be a journalist again, working from home, and showing my daughters I wasn’t just a mom at home baking bread. I felt like I needed to be more.

The girls and my husband got excited to see my byline and my photo in the paper, next to the weekly column I wrote from May until October in 2011. It was a community news gig and very different from the work I was doing before I had kids, reporting from the Georgia State Capital for a bi-lingual Latino newspaper where the Governor knew me by name.

But at least I was doing something, a mom kind-of-gig.

Then I dropped ball. I had too much on my plate. I made a few mistakes. And I got fired. Fired!  Via a two sentence email! I had never been fired from a job in my life. I was devastated, for months. That was almost a year ago.

I knew for a while that it was something I really didn’t need to be doing anyway. The writing job was putting added stress on my family. And after paying for childcare a few hours a week for my toddler, the meager amount money I was being paid was a wash. Really, being fired it was a good thing.

“I just want the old mom back,” my oldest daughter begged one day when I told her I had to leave that evening to report on a story.

It was a wake up call and it still weighs heavy on my heart. All those to-do lists and things I thought I needed to be doing were running my life and hurting the people who were the most important to me. Part of the reason I wanted to work again was to show my daughters the stronger side of me, to be a working role model (part-time at least). To show them I could do more than be a homemaker, and that they could too – when they grow up.

But really they just wanted the old mom back, whose main goal was to paint with her kids, let them lick the dough of the spatula and be happily covered in flour. With no lists and no planners calling the shots.

Like many people I assume, when I start writing lists it makes me think of more things to do, more errands to run, more stuff I think I need. Once it’s on paper I feel like I have to do it, like a meeting I suddenly have to schedule. Then, checking things off that list validates some sort of accomplishment for the week.

But in all honestly, that fact is far from the truth.

This week my biggest accomplishment is that my daughter appreciates all I do for her. She feels loved, that I’m there for her when she needs me and I understand that turning 8 is a BIG deal. We are on to bigger kid music now, bigger books, different styles and oh my – a new sofa in her room!

When my girls are home from school it’s all about them. The computer stays off, the lists lay quiet, and emails don’t get returned.

I’m trying to be more selective about what gets added to my lists, and not be afraid to shred them up or wipe them clean from my dry erase board. If it is something I really need to do, I will remember to do it.

If I forget, life will go on.

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Welcome fall!

Fall is most definitely in the air here in Tennessee. Leaves are falling, mornings are chilly and evenings are cool enough that no one wants to come inside until dark.

I do like the lazy days of summer. But fall has always been my favorite time of year. The boots, the scarves, pulling the pants out of storage, getting the fireplace going again, and catching our first falling leaf of the season. Yes I love fall.

My girls are embracing this change of season as well. Outside piano lessons this week, my little girl couldn’t stuff ENOUGH acorns into her tiny little purple pocket. Collecting acorns, and throwing them at the fallen sticks, kept us entertained for a full 30 minutes.

I can not, not say something about her wild hair! It was a tad windy. But more than anything, it was the nearing the end of the day and can’t convince her that she needs a hair cut. Welcome to age three! Which is coming very, very soon. Also, I’m savoring the fly away toddler hair.

She was convinced she could get MORE acorns into her miniature sized pocket. 

With our kitchen being renovated, eating outside in this weather is the perfect place for dinner. I am so very thankful for our friends who have taken us in, given us a quiet place to play, fed us snacks, made us soup, prepared our yogurt and boiled our eggs.

On our perfect impromptu day of embracing fall, our neighbors congregated in our backyard for dinner. They brought a crockpot of chili for the meat eaters, I made a spinach pizza in the toaster oven, grill cheese sandwiches on the panini maker and a fresh arugula salad from Farmer Megan with homemade goat cheese from our dairy CSA.

Together with some help from our friends, this is how we are managing life with no kitchen. Because of fall, it’s not so bad. As you can see, we are fully welcoming the convenience of disposable plates, bowls and cutlery while on this no kitchen venture. Part of me is enjoying this time where I’ve given myself to full permission to fill my freezer and refigerator with prepackaged (organic) convenince foods. And the clean up is a cinch!

Except when I have to wash the blender in the bathtub after making smoothies. That is a bummer and makes me thankful for paper plates.

But still….I’m SO looking forward to filling our new cabinet with real dishes. Until then, fall picnics it is!

 

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Where we’ve been

In the beginning I didn’t think having our house renovated would take over everything.

I knew having our house turned upside down and inside out for an unknown amount of time, with contractors (the best contractors ever, but still, worker guys) showing up at 7:30 AM Monday through Friday since June, would be life changing. But I knew I could live with it just fine, keeping my mind on the end result.

Last week however, just about did me in.

I am thrilled to have the upstairs space finished and to move the girls up there. I am incredibly thankful we are able to have these fabulously talented and polite worker guys making my old house dreams come true. But getting everything – and everyone – settled over the past week was a A LOT of work!

I had the task of changing out the summer-to-fall wardrobes for three kids (it’s 44 degrees here this morning) and putting them all away in new spaces. We moved out of our kitchen so it would be ready for demo Monday morning and are adapting to cooking out of a toaster oven, as well adjusting to having the girls sleeping SO FAR AWAY FROM ME.

Okay it’s not THAT far. But for nearly eight years we have either had a baby or a toddler sunggled in bed with us. Or I was pregnant and waiting for the next little bundle in line to do the same.

The first two nights the girls were upstairs I slept on the trundle bed in my oldest daughter’s room, to be sure to hear my toddler when she woke up and catch her before she went tumbling down the stairs in a sleepy slumber looking for mom. Since then my husband and I have been taking turns soothing her at night every time she wakes up. We have both spent time sleeping on a crib mattress that we store under her bed as floor protection in the case that she did roll off her bed.

I know, some kind of baby proofing plan we have huh? But it works.  We did find a baby monitor from a friend to borrow. Which seems a little funny right? A baby monitor now, when she’ll be 3 (gasp) in 20 days!!!

So this is where we’ve been the last week. Moving, adjusting, reorganizing, tolerating the noise, and being very very tired.

On one hand it is really awesome to get the girls moved upstairs. On the other hand it seems like we are saying goodbye to baby days, moving on to big kid days. And that makes my husband and I both a little sad.

During our shuffling of stuff, I found an awesome local charity that runs a thrift store to fund a food bank for needy families. It’s called Ladies of Charity and my friend’s mom is a regular volunteer there.

I asked if they could send a truck to my house. And they did – the next day. The biggest thing to go was my beloved “blue nursing chair.” The chair I never thought I would get rid of.

The nursery glider chair that I was so thrilled to find in just the perfect shade of blue. It was a semi-girly blue but a safe enough blue to use in the case of a boy, down the road. I still remember the day like yesterday, driving with my husband to pick it up in our tan Jeep Cherokee at New Baby Supplies in Midtown Atlanta. With my big belly, counting down the days to meet our baby girl and officially become parents. In 14 days that baby girl will be 8!!!

The chair sat here in the nursery. Where I thought I would be up at night rocking and nursing, and then putting baby girl back into her crib to sleep the night away. Ha! 

I never really needed that nursing chair.  I learned to nurse anywhere and everywhere and that nursery became a fancy storage room. And I never had a boy!

I know it will find a good new home. And the money someone pays for it will go to feeding poor people in need.

Now, if I could just find something to do with this fancy round crib from the nursery…the one I had to have. It was a special order deal that never met the safety requirements of railing hight, which I discovered when my babies looked like they would fall out of it at 18 months old. I think there is some potential for building a reading fort out of it – but who knows???

That fancy Bugaboo stroller, however, was HANDS DOWN the best baby purchase and is still going strong (not the basinet obviously, but the stroller) three kids later. The changing table my dad made beside it still rocks too! It HAS SEEN some diaper changing days. It now serves on as a night stand between my two youngest daughters matching twin beds, that he made as well.

So basically lately we are feeling like we are moving on, with life, with our house, but also still very disheveled about it all.

I mean….this was our kitchen late last Sunday night, taken in the dark after it was all packed up and ready for demo morning. 

This was the cabinets the next day being hauled off by a friend who is going to repurpose them in his laundry room and workshop. Really cool truck, huh?

This was the kitchen on Wednesday afternoon, as the wall was getting knocked out, dividing it from the new mudroom. 

And this is what the girls are calling the “fake kitchen” that was set up in their old bedroom, minus the new Kitchen Aid toaster oven big enough to cook a pizza. This is another late night dark photo. Which I hate! But my toddler dropped my camera and my wide lens is no longer (big bummer). So a few of these are crumby iPhone shots taken with no sunlight.

This morning the renovation excitement continues. And so does the settling, among all the unsettling. And the birthday planning – oh my! There will be two birthday parties held here next month.

Soon, very soon, I hope to show you some finished rooms with some freshly sewn curtains. I have been very busy working on getting to that place. And painting and sanding furniture along the way.

This is what we did last week when the girls had a day off of school. 

And pretty much, that’s where we’ve been. And this little blog here has sat quiet. Waiting for me to return. Slowly, one post at a time, I’ll keep you updated with our creative happenings and life cooking in a toaster oven.

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When mothering gets tough, I eat chocolate!

It was one of those days with three grouchy girls in the house, and when I let the contagious funk get the worst of me too. It was an estrogen overload. No doubt about it. We needed a boy around to balance our act. But we had none.

What we did have was chocolate.

My husband had a swanky work dinner 45 minutes away that night and it was supposed to be a fun movie night at home.

But no one wanted to watch the same movie. I caved and put a movie on my computer for my oldest daughter to watch and a “little girl show” on the TV for the other two to watch.

With the girls getting older by the minute (which is what it feels like to me lately), I’m savoring the days when the little girls squeal with excitement to watch Bubble Guppies. I love this age where they are still oblivious to the Disney Channel and the dreaded pre-teen shows that I have all my girls believing “do not work on our TV.” Yes I lie about that. A tiny white fib I am completely okay with.

Then Bubble Guppies finished before McKenna. My toddler was done watching all together, buttons were pushed without asking, movies ended before they were supposed to, one girl was pushed, there was feet stomping and loud crying. We all shouted and no one was listening to me.

I was acting just like them. So it’s no wonder why things went from manageable, to needing chocolate.

It was bedtime. No one had bathed and the dishes from dinner were still in the sink. And everyone was upset about something.

I tried to explain that all of this behavior was really rotten, by all of us. There is never a reason to hit your sister. EVER. It is never okay. I apologized for loosing my cool too, for getting upset at my soon to be three-year-old for all the reasons that makes the age 3 harder than 2.

It took some time. But finally I got everyone on the couch to apologize. And I waited until they SHOWED each other some sister love and not just say “I’m sorry.”

Then I took a depth breath and surprised them when I said, “Now lets eat chocolate!”

Three girls jumped up and down with giggles and ran together to the kitchen. They were giddy, together. TOGETHER!

It made my heart smile.

It was a bar of organic milk chocolate (different than the one shown on the top of the post but still one of my favorites). It was my special chocolate that I keep hidden in the cabinet and rarely share it with anyone. The girls know if they get a square of my “good chocolate,” that it’s something special.

I had already been sneaking some through the night with my red wine. So I split the last 12 small squares between the three girls.

They all said I was the best mom in the world and quickly forgot what a grouchy mom I had been just 30 minutes before that.

My oldest daughter gave me her last square of chocolate. My middle girl looked me in the eye with a shy grin that said I’m sorry but this is too good to share. My toddler had chocolate smeared all over her face.

Yes sometimes chocolate does make everything better.

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A Simple Moment

A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.

If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.

They were doing a video shoot of Alice in Wonderland. I love the light, the innocence and the creativity from these kids. Right in the backyard.

A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.

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A week of simple, fresh food lunches for school

I have never been the mom to make the Pinterest-style lunches with celery sticks decorated like a caterpillars, crackers toped with cheese cut like ladybugs or a sandwich wearing a smile face. I think those lunches are adorable. I’m just more of a grab the fruit and go mom. Using a heart shaped cookie cutter for bread is about as decorative as I get when packing lunches.

While talking to a friend recently she asked me to do a lunch post showing what I pack my girls for lunch, as a bit of a reality check on what good old regular moms likes us are packing their kiddos for lunch. I thought it was a great idea! Especially since moms are always looking for new ideas for lunch? I know I always am.

I do, however, wish my girls would accept more variation in what they eat for lunch. But overall it’s fresh, usually organic, sometimes homemade and the lunch boxes usually return home empty.

The Montessori school where my girls attend encourages waste-free lunches and pre-packaged items are discouraged. So we have that in our favor, as I think the children they are sitting next to have similar fresh food lunches.

My girls don’t like all the same things and I understand that. So each girls’ lunch is not entirely the same everyday. They also balk at dinner leftovers showing up in their lunch, and I kind of side with them on that. I’m not big on leftovers either.

Here is what I packed for lunch this week. Friday is pizza day and the children have the choice of buying pizza brought in from a local pizzeria near the school. I gladly take a break from packing lunches that day!

Monday

My oldest daughter had hummus wraps, cheese, fruit, a raw carrot, corn chips and salsa. 

My middle girl had peanut and butter jam on a whole wheat flat bagels (the Rudy’s brand), plums, carrot, almonds and plain lettuce she calls “salad.”

My toddler had “baby humus wraps” cut in four quarters and made the right size for her mouth, fruit, “salad” and red peppers.

Tuesday 

My oldest girl had mini heart cheese sandwiches on homemade bread (from the Knoxville Bread Co-op),  apples and carrots, dried rolled dates, cheddar bunny crackers and a tangerine. The mini sandwich cutter is from Montessori Services and works better with store bought bread that tends to hold its shape better and be less crumby.

The two little girls had mini peanut butter and jam heart sandwiches, carrots, cheese and a banana that works great cut like this and left in the peel. My middle girl also had a few sweet potato chips.

Wednesday

The top two lunches are Rudy’s whole wheat flat bagels with a small glass container of cream cheese for spreading. I packed my toddler’s preassembled, with a dab of jam to help hold them together. My oldest girl doesn’t eat meat so she had cheese and the little girls had ham. I try to get a veggie in their lunch everyday. Carrots are the go to on that and packed almost daily.

Thursday 

My oldest daughter had a cheese sandwich, fruit, a zucchini muffin (from this recipe) and dried cranberries. The black fabric is the sandwich wrap that the sandwich gets packed in. This very plain sandwich is just the way she likes it. 

The two little girls had the same lunch, with fun shaped zucchini muffins, boiled eggs, cheese and grapes with berries. These are their preferred containers because they are easy to open.

For more info on these lunch containers, see my post Plastic free lunch packing containers and systems. To read more about our waste-free lunches, I wrote about it here.

Snack Day!

Wednesday was also snack day for my toddler and middle girl. At their school students rotate turns bringing snack for the entire class. It was a coinsidence that two of my girls were scheduled for the same day. For snack my toddler brought cheese and berries. My middle girl requested peanut butter pretzels, apples and bananas (non shown). In the 3-6 age room the students prepare the snack and cut the food, so we just send in a bag of organic apples. 

What do your children like to see packed in their lunches? I could use more hot food lunch options. I’d love to hear what you pack for lunch!

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Adventures in finding a local marble countertop

For seven years I’ve dreamed up ideas on how to renovate the kitchen in our 1918 craftsman house.

There were times when I wanted to rip out 1950’s metal cabinets with red the formica countertops and chrome edges. But I didn’t. I waited, and hoped for the day of finding a contractor (and the funds) to create hand built cabinets that match the original character of the house. I wanted to restore, not just renovate.

Keeping in mind the home’s the original cabinetry that lives in our basement, topped with its original pink Tennessee Dark Rose Marble by the Tennessee Marble company, I looked for design inspiration.

The internet, and my Pinterest board on kitchen renovations, are filled with white kitchens with white marble countertops. It’s what I really want.

There are some great websites I have found with real life advice, warnings, and amazing photos of people who decided to put in white marble countertops –  even through they stain easily, are very porous and every single person who knows anything about kitchen renovations looks at me like I’m crazy to want white marble countertops in a kitchen full of red wine, coffee and little people eating marinara sauce.

Here are are few good sites I have read.

Sealing Marble: The acid test – at The Perch House and the follow up she did on it next day showing even less signs of staining.

Would I be Crazy to Choose Marble Countertops for My Kitchen? Marble Countertops Pros and Cons – at The Kitchn. I found the comments on this post, and the links bloggers provide to their own sites, to be very helpful.

Best Advice: White Marble Countertops Pros & Cons – at Apartment Therapy.

After reading these sites and visiting two stone warehouses, I still needed to see more. To do more research. These places stock very little marble and barely any soapstone at all. But I knew going into this search, that I was not their average granite buying consumer.

I always try to shop local when I can. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d much rather have countertops that did not have to be shipped across the world using the earth’s resources of oil – to bring a shinny piece of earth to me from another continent. The big company Vulcan still blasts at a quarry on the other side of the river from where I live – very close to downtown Knoxville. What they get from there is a gray marble, which I believe is a viable option for our kitchen.

The Knoxville area was HUGE back in it’s hay day of harvesting marble from the local quarries. The Candoro Marble Company, now just a museum, is a few miles from my house where they showcase marble that was used to build monuments in New York in Washington D.C. It all came from quarries just miles from where I live now.

While pretty marble from Italy seams to be THE THING to have, to restore a home with, to be period correct, to be beautiful. In 1918 they put pine floors in my kitchen to save money since guests were never invited into the kitchen. Oak, a more expensive wood, was used throughout the floors in the main living area. They used marble because it was readily available, not because they were showing off their fancy kitchens. These were working kitchens. 

The average home owner was NOT importing marble from Italy, where Carrara marble comes from and is showcased in so many kitchen photos I find myself drooling over today.

All of this desiphering about marble countertops sent me traveling down this road Monday morning.

To this place, the Tennessee Marble Company. 

Where local workers still ocassionaly blast marble out of this quarry, forty-five minutes from my house.

I even got to tour the warehouse, wearing safety goggles! Tennessee Marble is not open to the public. Now days it does mostly all commercial work, building beams for industrial buildings and restoration work on exterior buildings made of marble.

After looking at their gallery of offerings online, I called to ask if I could come look at the slabs of marble. I also called Stonecraft, the countertop business I have been working with who would cut and instal the countertops, to make sure they could instal the marble if I found something I liked. They said yes. So I started driving. Seeing the facility was facinating.

On the way home I realized it made perfectly good sense, me hoping in the car to visit a marble yard on a whim.  I like to know where things come from, from my food to my clothes. It only makes sense that I know where my countertops are coming from too.

I like taking the scenic route. Embracing something a little different. And yes, even stoping in the middle of the road to take a picture of a cow who was looking at me oddly – as if this was not normal. But I’m okay with that.

Here are the samples on my old red countertop, and me trying to decide on a new countertop. The 1×1 tiles are samples from Tennessee Marble. One of the three is actually from Tennessee, taken from a quarry close to my home. The other two are from quarries they own and operate in other states, but process the materials at the location I visited near Maryville. The darker grey piece is soapstone from Brazil, and then the white Carrara marble from Italy. The soapstone will become more black after it is sealed using mineral oil, which pretty much rules that one out for me. Except that I like the use of a natural sealer, opposed to chemicals used to seal marble. 

Next I decided to do my own stain tests – using coffee, red wine, tomato sauce and cold things that would leave a ring. I found they all wiped up fine after about 45 minutes. The more acidic foods did leave etching. But I think I’m okay with a little wear and tear in a 95 year old house. That’s what we do here. Live in this old house they way it was meant to be lived in.

I’ll update on the finial choice soon….as I have more to reveal on the renovation front.

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A Simple Moment – with color!

A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.

If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.

The faces of little girl seeing color going up on their new rooms was priceless. With no camera in hand, I soaked up the moment. And I went back later to take a quick shot of something to remember here.

When my middle girl saw the fuchsia pink walls in the bathroom her eyes lit up in a way that she could not believe what she was seeing.

“Ohhh my gosh mom, I love it. The whole upstairs is G-r-e-AT,” she said. It was a moment when I felt like I got it just right for my girls. Where they knew, that I know what they want and I’m willing to give it to them.

And there is still more color to come. Yes I like color. Rooms should be fun, especially when they are for three little vibrant girls. Even if it did require 10 different gallons of paint. I can see the thankfulness in their eyes. And that makes a mom smile.

A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.

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Winning the after school snack cunundrum in the car

I’m putting a stop to eating in the car, actually it’s the van – Betty the Bus.  But after three years I still have have time saying I drive a van. So I don’t say it. Even though I just did.

But damn that van! It gets crumby, and sticky and nasty with food. So much so that when we our dog sees the door open and has a chance to bolt from the yard to the sidewalk, she makes a beeline to see what kind of snacks she can find on the floor. Honestly, the basset hound Scout does the same thing to us during piano lessons.

My husband (the saint that he is) vacuums out the thing every weekend for me. So don’t think it’s crazy nasty and we never clean it. There are just three hungry kids in there everyday after school. And the one thing that cures cranky kids the best is FOOD.

That’s why being the mean-ey mom who says no more food in the car feels like such a hard thing to do.

That is why when my oldest daughter was got grossed out by the crumbs in her seat last week and declared we should no longer have food in the car – I jumped on the opportunity to side with her make a new rule. Knowing not all the little Simmons people would agree it.

This is a big deal because our afternoon school pick-up schedule goes like this – 2:15 for my toddler, 2:30 for my kindergartener and 3:00 for my second grader. This equals lots of waiting time, and being in the car time, in addition to my twenty minute drive to school and then home. This is why saying no to food in the car feels like such a brave mommy move.

At pick up time instead of packing a basket full of apples, bananas, cheese, hummus wraps, snack bars and such – I now pack three drinks. And that is it. 

So far the smoothie in a mason jar with a hole poked in the lid for a straw has been a winner. I put them in a small cooler for the trip, and for the wait time from one kid’s pick up to the next. They are all happy to have them. They all smile and say yum.

And I am SO thankful to have one less bag to unpack when we get home – when the dishes from three lunches practically fill the dishwasher as it is. And then snack happens at home, at the table all together, conveniently located next to the dishwasher.

Unless it is piano lesson day. Then we share our snack with Scout. It’s a good thing we like dogs.

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Laboring on Labor Day

The upstairs renovations in our house are getting close to being finished. Which means I’m busy trying to complete, or at least get started on, all the homemade-ish touches I want to add to the girls’ new rooms, bathroom and play nook in the hall landing.

On one hand I’ve known it’s all coming for a very long time. And on the other hand I can not believe it is becoming a reality. I have kept a list of wants and dreams for this old house since we moved into it seven years ago. Minus a few emergency plumbing repairs, not many of them have gotten checked off until now.

So yes, I’m wanting to make this move a special one. As my little munchkins flee upwards, and sleep just a tad bit farther from mom and dad.

We spent our Labor Day weekend at home, playing, planning and dreaming of exactly how we are going to use the new space.

Here’s a peak into what I worked on during Labor Day – sanding this small, sturdy table I bought at Goodwill for $8. Or maybe it was an ottoman missing the foot cushion? I have no idea what it was supposed to be.

Soon it will have a two pairs of happy feet standing on it while the little girls use it as stool to brush their teeth.

While I was in Goodwill I stood on it, jumped on it, jumped off of it (because you know that’s what they do), and determined it was a perfect footstool. I was excited about the find! An elderly couple contemplating a sofa purchase just found me odd, I’m sure. But oh well.

Also in that garage is an oak school desk and chair that I am refinishing to be stained. Along with an unfinished shelf to file papers (because my oldest daughter is a HUGE  packrat of papers, cards, school work and such), and an unfinished bookshelf that well get a coat of orange paint.

Then, the list goes on and on and on. And the ideas keep coming. And my sewing machine is waiting. And there is another round of canning I want to get done before my kitchen gets dismantled.

Good thing I have helpers! Well, sort of. But their cuteness surely keeps me going, in the best creative way possible.

 

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