site to store

I went this morning to pick up the bedding for my daughter's bedroom. Oh. My. Goodness. I think I am hearting site-to-store pick up at Walmart. It's a deal, lemme tell ya! I just walked in with my printed out email, they looked at my name and bar code and came back with my ADORABLE comforter set. I had read good reviews of it online and decided to try it. It is just precious and I know Boo's gonna love it. It totally changes the look of her room and really 'makes' it. The colors are so vivid. And I am seriously impressed with the polished chintzy cotton feel of the comforter. I have seen many along the search that cost much more but did not deliver the goods in the quality department.

Well... enough gushing. I need to go put her room together. There will be pictures soon. I have a couple of craft projects I want to complete before I declare it 'done' though. And a sewing project too. I need to make a window topper! Hopefully someday soon I can get it all done and post some pics!

cleaning house

I've been doing a lot of house cleaning. Lots of throwing away. Putting away the clutter. Giving things a way that we no longer need. And yesterday, I cleaned off enough dust to create a whole family of dust bunnies. Ick. No wonder my asthma was driving me batty.

Last night I was so tired, I could barely move. I had cleaned and scrubbed until I was sore all over. By 9pm it was Oh-vah for me. But I was so thankful. Not just for the clean-ER house, but to be so tired I couldn't do anything. That changes my frame of mind. It brings me to call out to God in a different way. A needy way. The way He wants us to call out to Him on a daily basis. But when I am up and going and doing, I feel self sufficient, although I know I'm not. I am needy all the time. That helpless all the time. And I need to call out to Him in that way all the time. (not just when I feeeel that way)

So I'm thankful for cleaning house. Not because it looks better, but because of what God was showing through it. I don't want to get to feeling so self sufficient that I miss out on all God wants to be and do and live out in the coming year.

it's quiet

School started again today. It's always a strange day. We've been up late alot. We've slept late. We haven't had much of a schedule and haven't done much that's productive.

And then... WHAMMO.. we've gotta get up and get going and try and remember just exactly what it is we usually do every day. After sitting on the side of the bed in the dark mumbling something about the fact that it is just. not. right. to be getting up at such a crazy hour... I got started with my day. And finally remembered what I'm supposed to do.

And now the house is quiet. It hasn't been quiet like this since the middle of December. I like it. lol I plan to linger in the quiet and enjoy it for a while. Sooner than I would like, the phone will ring or it will be time to go the grocery store (the list is already made) and it will be just another day.

cleaning out

This has been a very relaxed holiday in a lot of ways. We haven't had a schedule to keep to. We've stayed up way too late and gotten up way too late. Which for a short time, is so nice. And it's given us time to focus on other things.. things that get overlooked in the hustle of work/school days.

With all three of us home, we had time to tend to some things. We deep cleaned the Boo's room before we painted it. And were able to clean out and sort through and dust and rearrange and give away etc. It felt soo good. Every item of her bedding was deep cleaned. All her furniture was cleaned and dusted thoroughly. Even her window and blinds got the treatment. It's a very fresh start for her. Even she was excited about the changes.. and not just the color! Yay!

And we carried the cleaning out to the rest of the house. We had sooo many books and magazines etc just taking up valuable space and cluttering up our world. I was so glad to make stacks of things to get rid of. We took all of that to the book resale store today and made $14.. not a huge amount.. but hey.. that stuff's not in my way anymore.

One of the things I hope to do this year is buy less. I love to buy books and subscribe to magazines. And then I don't know what to do with them when I'm done. I feel like I have to hang onto them because I PAID FOR them, so I keep them and they just lay there in the way all the time. I've been trying to rediscover the library when I get a hankering for a book. My only problem is I tend to take forever to read one. But anyway, I hope to buy less this year. And have less clutter to move around later.

But for now, I'm just enjoying being able to put the things I DO want away.. and not stacked all over the place. Now that I have all these cleaned off surfaces, I need to dust!

it sounded like a good idea at the time

Every year for Christmas, Boo gets some cash. And now that she's old enough to decide for herself what she would like, she gets to make some of these bigger spending decisions for herself. With a little guidance, of course. Anyway... she's been talking about wanting lime green walls for a while now. I kept hoping thinking it would pass, but it never did. And with Christmas, she had money burning a hole in her wallet.

I am quite shocked she even wanted her walls to be lime green, since she LOVES pink. When she was 5 we painted her walls pink and she never looked back. She loved it. We loved it. It was perfect. And since pink is STILL her favorite color, I didn't think the lime thing would last.

But alas, it has.

So we made a deal with her. We told her that if she would buy herself some bedding, we would paint the walls. She said that sounded great. And we started hunting for bedding. We found some in two places. One is in hand. Cost a little more than I wanted to pay. Very similar one is on order. Much cheaper and from online reviews, seems to be of pretty decent quality even though it's not very expensive. (IMO, for a kids room, cheaper is always better since they aren't careful and 'live in' their space more than grown ups do)

So anyway.. we headed to Home Depot to look for paint chips. I just knew there would be loads of choices and I'd have to find the 'right' lime looking color. Nope! As it turns out, there were two paint chips that were specifically lime green only. What luck... she says with sarcasm! So we picked the lime-ier one and had some paint mixed. We started painting yesterday afternoon, and anticipated putting one more coat on this morning and being done. Weeeell... I neglected to read the back of the paint chip. Might take multiple coats to cover. Hmmm. Sorry I skipped that part! So here we are. Two coats down. And one more to go. Hopefully, just one!

I'm skeert. It's a pretty blinding color! But I think when all her pink stuff comes back in and her bedding arrives (and works and I can take the more expensive stuff back!), it will be really cute.

I hope! (she types with lime green paint under her nails!)

Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas
to all!
I hope you're able to see beyond
the hustle and bustle of the
season and delight in the wonder
of our risen Savior!

Hugs to all of you and see you soon!

better late than never, I guess...

Everywhere I've turned lately in bloggyland, somebody's been showing off their Christmas tree. I have pics I took of it the other day... but they're still in the camera. I haven't mastered the lesson on getting it from the camera to the computer and then to the bloggy.. so... this is a pic from 2006. Not much has changed, except the couch, which you can see a corner of in the photo.

Anyway, we used to have a fat tree. And yes, we're all about the artificial tree, since I've got nasty allergies and asthma. Anyhoo.. I think we had a real one once early on, and it only took once to realize it was a pain in the neck. But the old timey fake trees aren't much easier.. I'm talking before pre-lits came along, that is.

Anyway, we always had artificial trees and they were always pretty big around. But we live in a very small house and we'd have to rearrange our whole little world for the tree every year and that drove me nuts. It's hard to get into the 'spirit of things' when everywhere I turned, was a misplaced piece of furniture that stuck out like a sore thumb. I'd had my 'eye' on those skinny trees for a long time. And of course, pre-lits were making their entrance too. So we decided to go for it and get one with both. I knew if my tree was gonna be skinny, then it had to be tall to make up for it. And it is. It's 7 and a half feet tall. And every year, including this one, my dear hubby, Mr Daddyman himself, has hoisted the Boo up to put the topper on. This might be the last year for that though. Ahem.

But we love the skinny tree. I can't say enough wonderful things about it. When we had a bigger tree, it always looked sparse, no matter how many things we put on it. And now with this skinny one, it looks full of ornaments even if we only put half of them on. And it's tucked into a corner and I don't have to rearrange a single thing to have it. I love that!

One row of lights near the bottom is on the fritz, so we may have to work something out next year to avoid that striped look we've got going on right now. But other than that, I heart my skinny tree!