Routines

I didn't really know until today how much of a routine person I have become.  There is that saying "When Momma ain't happy, no body's happy".  Yep, that would be me when it comes to my routine.(Thank you Flylady!)  Mess with how I like to do things and you may just have one angry Momma on your hands.  Now, don't get me wrong over the years I have learned to make adjustments and not be so controlling about said routines.  I am happy to bend when necessary for company, days of illness or just spontaneous fun. 

However, at this point in time I have a problem.........We moved here 3 years ago, this upcoming June and the only routine this Momma has is avoiding the things that need to be done.  I haven't been able to find what works for me now.  You would think I could keep it the same as before but it just isn't working.  A few years ago I was at a very special friends house and I noticed her to do list on her refrigerator.  It said "Love the House Day"(at least I think I am remembering it right) and I asked her what that meant.  She told me that her house needed to be loved just as much as her family.  So just like she set aside time to be with family, she set aside time to take care of the house.  For some reason what had always seemed like chores to me became something I did out love.  What a change that was! 

Today was a breakthrough day and I am on my way to finding my happy routine.  At this point in time.....Wednesday's mark my "Love the House Day", which includes the things I don't really like to do but need to be done.  Dusting, vaccuming corners and cleaning my bathroom.  Thursday's mark starting laundry and which gets finished up on Friday.  The whole goal of my happy routine is to be able to free up our weekends as the warmer weather approaches.   So looking forward to the evenings after dinner in the garden!!  

So please share with me, do you have a rountine?  What do you do that just makes your home happy?

Almost there

We are about 75% done with the deck! The stairs and railings are the only thing left to be put back together with screws. The front smaller deck has been painted with just some touch up that needs to be done. Then the back deck railings are finished(except for the stairs) and I have to do the main floor of the deck which I am hoping to do today. I swear the weather better hold out and no freak rain storms in the middle of the night!! Hopefully today we will finish the back deck.

Front Deck BeforeFront Deck After

The excitement is rising around here, 6 days and my daughter Angela, Michaela and Alex arrive! Gary and Jim are driving up from California so they will be in a week, then everyone else will either arrive Thursday, Friday or the day of the wedding. We are ready to have our feet hit the ground running and I've promised myself to take as much help as I can get!! We finally found a GREAT recipe for cupcakes/cake and I even found some reasonably priced edible butterflies to go on a few of them, if you are ever looking for them be sure you go to Sugar Robot. She is wonderful and very helpful!! I will post the butterflies when they are all decorated on top of the cupcakes and cake.

I was at my local Michael's a couple of days ago, picking up a couple of last minute things to finish the archway for the wedding. I was delighted when I walked up to the clearance shelf and found this.............

a new cartridge for my slice that I purchase this past spring! Ya, look at that price $9.99!! Yep, regular price $39.99 and this is one of the new designs that came out in June. So excited!!!! It is going to be so nice to be have some wonderful sayings!!

Fabulous Finds

So one of the things I made my husband promise to purchase after we sold our house in Yakima, was a new bed. After all, I think that sleeping on the same bed for 10+ years it is time to make a change. Getting that man to go out and go shopping for a bed was so difficult!

When I asked was asked what I wanted to do a few weeks back I told him we needed to go shopping for our bed. It wasn't like I was going to be able to go and pick one out by myself. He was going to have to come along because I was not going to be held responsible for picking out something he couldn't sleep on. He sighed, said okay I guess we will go get a bed.

He didn't want to drive around to compare so we ended up going into the mall straight to Macy's, they were having a great sale. It took us two hours to finally figure out what we wanted, thankfully the kids were willing to go mall walking and stop at some of their favorite stores.

When they delivered the bed last Friday I knew I was going to have to go shopping or I would not be able to sleep in my new bed. The mattress is like 15" deep and when I sit on it, my toes can almost not touch the floor. My fabulous find was this whole set up at Target with exception to the large green pillow, which was found at TJ Max. I bought everything here plus 3 sets of sheets for under $200, yep all the bedding minus the pillows were on clearance! I have always wanted one of those Extreme Home makeover beds, with lots of pillows. I can't tell you how happy this makes me!

It is the most we have ever spent on a bed. There was some compromising that had to be agreed on......firm(for him) and pillow top(for me).........he would have liked the extra firm but it felt to much like I was sleeping on a board even with the pillow top. After months of not being able to sleep very well and waking up sore every morning, I'm starting to sleep. It is so wonderful to actually wake up happy. Now, if I can only get him to stop hogging the bed, leaving me with 8" to sleep on and don't even get me started on the snoring!

NO School and more snowy weather!

So tomorrow marks the third day of no school for the kids. The weather just isn't being helpful. We were suppose to see a little bit of warming starting today but it is looking like a rain/snow mix. I'm happy that the school district is keeping the safety of the children at the top. With no side walks at this point in time, everyone is forced to walk in the road.

Our snowbanks are 8 feet high and most off all we are doing by hand with snow shovels. We NEED a snow blower!! No one to be found in Spokane or as far as Walla Walla....sigh. Snow shovels sell out as fast as they get in and if you need one you better be willing to stand in a long line to get it! The bottom photo is my son trying to climb up the snowbank....I think he is loosing! Snow level is 76" and counting.

I think tomorrow will be a good day to bake some cookies!!

If ever


If life ever takes you away from your current home and moves you to a better place. Don't EVER let anyone stay in your house, if you have to move before your house is sold! It can end up costing you thousands of dollars that you don't have. That is where we are today on the sale of the house in Yakima. We are just beside ourselves with frustration.

We had the people that were staying in the house move out. In there process of moving out they shampooed the carpet however they turned off the thermostat so it was 50 some degrees when Bruce got there. This left the carpets wet and spongy. Hopefully the moldy smell will go away if not.........sigh. If Bruce had not gone over yesterday and we had waited until next week......I can't even think about it! Oh and they turned off water inside the house. Hello, it is winter! You don't turn off your water! arrrgghhhh, I could go on but I won't.

So lesson learned, don't trust your home to anyone that you believe has your best interests at heart. That is what we did when we trusted the Home Caretakers of Yakima. God is going to have to show us what to do. After all He is the only one we can truly trust.

Finished and Cleaned, part 2

I'm glad I was able to get back to posting the rest of my corner for you today. So here we go, welcome again to my little corner of the world.

This wall took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to do it. It is the only wall that was long enough to handle all my Iris drawers except for two sets. I also wanted to utilize the track lighting as much as possible. The two things I've added to this space are two cheap curtain rods from Target, cost plus clips $15. Then a repainted box from Michaels that I got for 75% off before I moved. I actually got two but the other one is not shown here but is the same color. My goal is to take some of the paper that I've collected and cut paper to fit into the fronts of the drawers. I think this will make my dh happy as far as making it look pretty.

Nothing to special about my white cabinet that houses my paper. It is still to be organized by season so I am not going to show you the inside!! On the top of it was just enough space for a few photo boxes that don't house photos.....lol. The black ones are my newest Fun Find just this week........Photo and embellishment boxes from Becky Higgins and Lisa Bearson at a discount store I found for $5 each!!

I LOVE all my color and organizational stuff. It has been fun to collect pieces here and there over the last few months. Thanks for stopping by, it was fun to share with you. NOW just to get a few scrappy friends to come over and share this with me then my world would be perfect!!

Finished and Cleaned, part 1

Well, at least for the time being my scrapbook space is clean. I'm very happy with how it has turned out. Come on in and take a look around. There is still some fine tuning to do but everything is in it's general area. Tune in later today for the other half!

My two work areas, my oak desk which is going to be good for small projects and my 6ft table that replaces my 8ft. In moving into my new space I had to do some rearranging to make sure everything fit so out went my long 8ft table.

The wall above my 6ft desk is probably one of my most favorite things. It is built in so it made things go pretty fast when unpacking. Underneath the bottom shelf is a 3 1/2" space which I was wondering what I could use it for. Then at my local Michaels store I found these little tins for $1 a piece! Love Fun Finds! I also don't have my own computer and desk anymore so I these tins hold everything that would be in my desk. Everything is in my go to colors.

More Settling

The house is getting better! We are actually being able to have some down time from working every waking minute, that is even better. Through this move I realized I like order. I'm not a mental case when it comes to it but I LOVE having everything in its place. OOOOOooooo, I was even able to vaccum for the first time in 3 wks!!

My feet were so swollen the week of the move that I couldn't wear any shoes. I'm so glad they are back to normal and that my feet aren't in so much pain. I don't wish feet pain on anyone!!

I have shared my boxes of my packed scrapbook room in an earlier post. So today I will share with you the continued moving of a scrapbook room. It looks something like this.........

My Iris drawers that I store everything in. They are getting ready to go into the truck

In the truck they go, along with everything else. The movers were giving me a bad time about all my stuff. How much stuff can a person have? I laughed and told them ALOT when you do a bit of everything.

Here we are in my new scrapbook corner. I had to open one of my boxes because it was crushed. I'm happy there was no damage to them, it would have been sad.

I've unpacked all these boxes and am in the process of organizing. I'm happy to report that things are shaping up quite well. The only tragedy I have had is my sun lamp for my desk was broken. I thought I packed it well enough but I didn't. I will have to make due with one of my other lamps until the other house sells. I found that my sun lamp really helped me during the winter months while I was working. I had found it a few years ago at Costco so maybe as fall approached they will carry them again.

So stay tuned later this week for my finished scrapbook corner. I'm sure you will find it a happy place!! I know I do!

Settling in

We are alive, sore and all around tired. We have managed to get everything into 50% of its finally resting place. Washer, dryer have been hooked up and I've been doing laundry for a couple of days. We used a lot of bedding to wrap things, then had a few things leak.....yuck! All in all nothing was broken durning the move. That makes me happy.

I will share more about the move in the next few days. I'm finally getting settle enough that I can actually sit down without the guilt of having boxes to unpack. The only major place that hasn't even been touched is my corner of the familyroom, which is my scrapbook space. I'm getting the itch to be creative so I'm sure it will happen in due time.

More Moving

Is there anyone in this world that really likes to move? To you I give you a high five! I've decided for me that moving just sucks.

My scrapbook room is 75% complete and these are most of my boxes. Okay, well maybe there are a few missing because they are housed in the garage.......lol. Yes, a lot of stuff but it will be time to do some serious sorting when I set up my new space. I just couldn't do it all before the move, so this just means I will have something big to do over the summer.

So it is official, we own our new home in Spokane, here's to owning two homes at once! Hope that doesn't last long. My step-mom was willing to drive the kids and I up to Spokane on Wednesday. I was just a little freaked out on driving by myself. I know, that I'm going to have to get use to driving it on my own so it was nice of her to be willing to do that. No sight seeing this time except for showing her the house. The kids love it and their rooms. The kids seemed mostly amazed about how green everything was and it really dawned on them that they are going to be 'real' city kids. I feel some ground rules coming on! Any advice?

This is our backyard, complete with trampoline left behind from the previous owners. Kids are voting to keep it, while dear hubby sees it as a emergency room visit waiting to happen. We shall see who wins out by next weekend.



The official moving date starts this upcoming Monday with our first load and the second following on Wednesday. DH thinks I have more than him because I have smaller boxes........hhhhhmmmm, not sure about that one. I did tell him at closing that he doesn't have any room to talk about what I spend on my scrapbooking supplies because of his two BIG hobbies, photography and music.(big amplifiers, guitar toys and at least 5 cameras) I guess we all learn to bend over the years for each other. This is just half of his room!

I will update more when I can. We make the calls to hook up the utilities in the new house today plus get our phone transferred, which means I will more than likely loose my Internet connection for a few days. I just have to remind myself that this to shall pass. I'll be back catching everyone up soon!

Moving

The day of moving is going to come faster than I think I am ready for, around the 30th. I sat for an hour and cried on Sunday night when DH asked me how fast I wanted to move. 10 years of my life has been in this house. I can walk into any part of it and see my grown girls at different ages, doing different things. It is crazy how emotionally attached I am to this house. It is easier to hand the keys over to someone else then to still have this house be ours until it sells.

When does the excitement come? Right now, all I can seem to think about it is not having 'go to' friends right away. Oh and the fear of getting lost, even though people have told me it is easy to get around. I've lived in this town for most of my life, at the drop of a hat I can tell you where the good places to go to shop are to get the best deal. DH asked if we were all getting excited yet. I told him I wasn't and he didn't like that answer. This all just takes time to get use to and you can prepare yourself for anything but when you are in the midst of it......well, it is hard.

I did promise pictures and I only have a few. I decided most of the photos I want to show you, are going to have to wait. However, these are among my favorites.

This is the entry way and my favorite here are the skylights. Everything in this house is open and I just love not feeling closed in anywhere.

And looking up from the landing. Yep, mirrors on the closets. It makes everything look bigger and I'm always wanted a banister like this!

This is going to be my scrapbook corner. For 10 years I've been in the family room so I didn't see any point in changing that now. I am in love with the built in shelves. Can't wait to make it my own!(no the TV doesn't stay, it belongs to the former owners.

Thanks for stopping by today and listening to rantings of a mean-o-pausal woman, Hot flashes included!

Series of events

So the series of events this week has left our heads in a cloud. It started out with two phone calls from my DH's boss. It made my DH nervous and he ended up not sleeping well on Monday night. This was one time I was glad he was working in Spokane! His boss was pretty general, asking how everything in his new position was working out. Only big stress is he isn't up there full time, so then that led to why. Truly there isn't much we can do about the sale of our house but in order to purchase a house in Spokane we have to have the equity from this house.

There conversation with my DH's company loaning us the down payment for the new house! What that says for my DH! He has been humbled this week, in relizing his position with the company now. They have faith that he can do this sales job, it is a big step. A job you work your whole life for.

So..............we made an offer on the house we love this week and it was accepted yesterday morning! We will have to carry two mortgages for a little while however I just exspect God to intervene and bring the buyers for this house, before we move completely to Spokane. No closing date yet, all I know is it will be soon! So I'm packing and doing more organizing.

I'm looking forward to taking the summer and moving into our new house. To be settled with everything in its place is important to me. It has been difficult the last few months for me to not have my normal things around me. I promise I will share more photos through the coming weeks!!

Just keeping busy......

Nothing new on the house. The weather around here has been weird which doesn't lend itself well to showing houses. sigh So we wait, mean while having to do everything we can to not get stressed out. It doesn't always work, it just gets to you not having a place to call your own. The kids are out of school offically Tuesday at 10am. So God if you are reading this.......please don't make us wait to much longer before an offer.

In trying to keep myself busy I am doing more sorting of things. This week the goal is to pack more boxes and my rolling scrapbook bag. That way when we do move, at least I can have a few projects to keep me creative at the new house. Speaking of being creative, I've been up to a few things and they have helped so much in keeping my stress level down. A few of the things I have been holding onto are dried flowers that belong to my oldest daughter from all of her dances. The decision was made to not take them with us when we move so I found these great frames with a felt background, mounted the flowers inside the frames then sent them on there way to my oldest daugther. Hope she enjoys them! The one to the right is a bouquet of flowers I gave to her for her 16th birthday. I had even found a teddy bear to match the coral colored roses. I think adding the picture of the bear was a nice touch.



At my local scrapbook store some wonderful paper came in! Well, most all of it is wonderful! My downfall beautiful and fun papers!! So here is to fun with some K&Company paper with the cutest mushrooms on it!! This is a stand up 5x7 arylic frame.

Have a wonderful week and thanks for stopping by for a visit.

Little bit of this and a little bit of that

So in the course of getting this house ready to sell I've been doing ALOT of reorganizing. One of my projects that I've been wanting to do for sometime is organize my chipboard. I LOVE chipboard but find it frustrating to remember where I stash it. Then I loose interest in finding just the right piece for my project.

I started by putting my chipboard into piles. On my clean desk I might add and that doesn't happen very often!

Then my piles went into these drawers. I put A-B, C-D and E-F etc. together. Drawers were purchased at Ikea and come unassembled. They are just plain pine boxes that you can do anything with. I LOVE them!! I'm so very happy with the result. They match my other drawers in my scrapbookroom which I painted about 2 years ago.

I drilled holes in the drawers and then tied on the tags.

Yes, my accessories are sorted according to color. I would never go back to them all in one drawer again.

Bottom two drawers here are my larger chipboard on sheets and rubons.

This drawer set I found at a business yard sale for $1. With each of these sets I painted the outside of it with Ceramcoat Caribbean Blue and the drawers with Americana Acyclic paint in Honey Brown. These colors with a few others seem to be my GO TO colors. They make me happy and that is why I've chosen to have them be a BIG part of my scrapbookroom. Tell me about your GO TO colors and why you GO TO them. I'll enter you in on a special drawing on Mother's Day for a special prize. Have a great weekend!!

Prayer

For anyone that comes across this little blog, that doesn't get updated very often PLEASE, PLEASE pray for the sale of our house. We made the decision this week to drop our price by $10,000. Our realtor agreed with us and did take a look again at the prices around Yakima. They are right in line with everyone else so we feel confident that this was the right thing to do. Next week will be another realtor walk through and probably an open house.

I'm remaining creative and cleaning up after myself, which is a big feet in itself!! I tend to leave my projects out until completed......hello, doesn't everyone? I made a decision to teach at my local scrapbook store this weekend for National Scrapbook Day, so I'm looking forward to doing something for me. It gives me the warm fuzzies to help other people with what I LOVE to do! So four mini classes, three demos with the chance of some hands on for those attending. Then one with just a talk about color, how it pertains to our life as scrapbookers,which will lead into how to pick mats for your photos. A number of years ago I taught this same class as part of a workshop I did. It went over well so with a new group that it would be fun to pull something from my archives.

On my to do list today, which I will bore you with since I'm hoping if I write it here it will get all done!!
*Day starts with picking up the house in case it is shown.
*Onto a couple of errands
*Another cup of coffee to drink
*A a quilt to start on for my niece, fabric is cut just need to start sewing
*Pull everything for my classes together, in one place
*Figure out what projects I'm going to work on for National Scrapbook Day. I will be at the scrapbook store for 14 hours. So help me I better get something done!! lol
*Figure out a meal for this evening.......... I'm thinking soup.
*Love on the man of my dreams, who is coming home today! It will be so nice to have him around more often. Yes, an adjustment but such a long time in coming!! I am sooo ready!

Dang, I'm getting tired just looking over the list.......best get started!! Remember to pray!!

Waiting

This is the hardest thing!! Waiting, everything hinges on the sale of your house. I'm finding it sooo hard to look at the big picture, of all the things that need to be done. I've taken a bit of time off from packing to just be creative. It has helped me to focus on the tasks that I can do now, until moving day. It still doesn't make the wait easier.

Our house has been on the market for two weeks, we have had two showings, a realtor walk through and an open house. Which NO ONE showed up too!! This darn cooler weather has managed to take everyone back indoors so much for global warming. I know I've walked into exspecting our house to sell right away, after all everything else has fallen into place.

So we wait.........dreaming of our new home. Yes, we have an eye on one which we are hoping doesn't sell until we have our dollars. We talk about having a larger home so we can still have a music room and then I would get my own scrapbookroom. However, that would mean more to clean and if I wait just a few years we will have two more out of the house.

Things to think about, while waiting!! Why does it always have to be about the WAIT?

Well it has happened!
Today is the day that we have put our house on the market. It still is hard to believe we are leaving here in a few short months, starting on a new adventure. We truly do love it here but sometimes life takes turns and you just have roll with it. That is what we are trying to do, just roll with it!!

I've been cleaning, sorting, throwing and packing. It seems like a never ending job when you have lived somewhere for 10 years!! I do feel a lot lighter in spirit and have been able to let go of more things than I thought I would be able to. I've made 8 car load trips to my local Goodwill.

All last week the kids and I worked on the upstairs, durning their spring break. They worked soooo hard!! I am terribly proud of them. They have been highly rewarded for their efforts.

As you can see the most to busiest rooms in the house look wonderful!! They have even managed to stay that way!!! Now, to finish the family room.

Time

Time goes by so fast anymore, sometimes I just can't believe it. This past month since my brothers death seem to be just a blurr. I've done so many things but then can't really tell you what I've done! The days of the week just get lost and I'm constantly looking at my calendar to make sure I don't miss important appointments.

Cleaning and sorting my house is what is happening. The goal is to be ready by the end of next weekend to list the house for sale. I'm letting go of things that I can easily replace and having a chance to consolidate my other craft stuff. I've realized through all of this how much stuff I've learned over the years. I've tried so many things but FINALLY found what I LOVE!! My scrapbooking, it is my life and I'm always excited about it.

So the goal this week of Spring break with my kids, is to finish the garage, and start the process of going threw my scrapbookroom. At least the iris drawers I use can be packed the way they are for the most part. Then when it comes to moving I can just tape the drawers shut. That will make moving day so much easier!!

So to those who visit my blog, do you have any suggestions for moving? Things I need to avoid doing? or maybe things you would have done different in your move of your scrapbookroom?