Playroom, New Friends and Art Shows

I actually attempted to take clean up the playroom before I took this picture. However, whatever I show "interest" in, my kids are right behind me and want to do it too. I sweep, they want the broom. I empty the dishwasher, they want to stand on the door. I go to the bathroom, they want to watch me. I want to check the mail, they run straight for the road. In this case, I just touch a toy to pick it up and they automatically want to play with all of them. So, this is what you get. At least you can see it in it's practical glory while it's being used.


I have leftover yellow fabric from the kids bedroom curtains that I would love to use on a cornice board in here although I'm not sure how that would work. It seems kind of long to do one across 3 windows so I might have to resort to a little valance. I really don't want to cover up much of the windows view at all, but I do want to hide the blinds while they're up, especially the annoying one on the right that refuses to be cinched up all the way. If you have any thoughts or advice, let me know. I'm all ears!


The adorable little alphabet cards are from Land of Nod. I originally ordered them for baby shower gifts. For a great price of around 20 bucks for the box, I would take the baby's initials and frame them in 3 separate picture frames. It worked for about 2 people before I started running out of letters. It would've been perfect if I knew a baby named Quinn Xylophone Unevercall. Plus, being flowers and fairy's I was somewhat limited to girl babies too. Anyway, the leftovers found their way into the playroom and I plan to replace the missing ones with modpodged letters from the craft store.

NOW, onto one of my original reasons of this post...did you notice the beautiful circle rug in the playroom? It is so incredibly soft and fits the space perfectly with it's multi-colored goodness. The best part? It didn't cost a dime thanks to these two people below on the left.

Chuck and Glenda, some new friends of mine and old friends of my in-laws (pictured on the right,) invited us to their house nearby to give us some things that they weren't using anymore. One of those things was that gorgeous rug. They've been following my blog for some time and could appreciate the house renovation since they were in the middle of their own! They had a beautiful house filled with distinguished furniture, a gorgeous wooden curved staircase in their entryway and meaningful artwork. That last one was my favorite and Glenda shared a great tip with me about it. I wish I had taken pictures of them now, but 2 pieces of artwork that stood out to me happened to be painted by high-schoolers. She used to work in a school and approached the art teacher one day to find a talented artist in the class that needed some encouragement or a nudge in the right direction. She showed the selected student a picture she had taken of a nearby river and asked if they could do it in the style of Monet and then gave them whatever specification she wanted: size, color, etc. When the product was finished, she got a large beautiful oil painting to the tune of $25.00 and the high school student probably made his first ever sale. Both parties win!

And speaking of student artwork, I was asked to judge a local Christian school's art show last week to which I responded with an enthusiastic, "Are you sure?" Of course I love any art show, but as to my qualifications, I wasn't sure they had the right person. I was paired up with another local school's art teacher to co-judge with and I went about judging from the "appreciation" point of view and for her's, it was more technical. We made a good team. I can tell good art when I see it and I thought I'd show you some of their stuff.
This was some of the 5th graders work. Amazing stuff, huh? They made their designs on the paper using glue and then once it dried, they oil painted the rest. I'm a sucker for anything birds (as is the case with much of the blogging world it seems) so I loved that little bird on the bottom right.

I also loved this bouquet of flowers created by a 4th grader! I thought it looked very "Van Gogh."

This was part of the high school exhibit and we kept looking at it saying, "This is not high school work." It was a tough competition, but this piece was one of my favorites and ended up winning 1st place. It was a collage of painted paper cut out to create the image on the print. I so want to hire this girl to do a collage of my house.

The same girl also did this church (bottom right) which was also so very impressive with the shading. I seriously felt as if I were standing on the front lawn watching the sun rise over the steeple.

So there you have it! You never know what kind of talent could be in your neighborhood. Might be worth checking out sometime!

Laundry Room

This was the laundry room as of a week ago. Adam has since added chair rail and baseboards and I'm in the process of painting those. The blue is something "Aquatics" from Valspar...I'll post it in the final laundry room post.

As of Saturday, we got this baby delivered to us from Lowe's with it's matching counterpart. Back before Christmas Adam came across a deal where it was practically a buy one, get one free deal for the Whirlpool Duet frontloaders. We been using this set at my in-laws during the year that we've spent with them and I LOVE them. I just never thought we could afford them! Even better, our delivery date got pushed back week after week (apparently we weren't the only ones who bought them and they ran out of dryers) and they upgraded us to a STEAM dryer! They were actually doing us a favor by delaying the date so we could finish as much in the laundry room anyway and we were the ones who benefitted!

Keepers of the Home

We had a group of kids and their moms come do a service project over at our house a couple weeks ago. Never would I ever thought I would end up being a service project one day, but we were so blessed by these kids and their moms willing to serve us in this way. They raked leaves, cleaned out our flower beds, swept, mopped, dusted, cleaned windows, picked up trash, hauled off sticks and broken branches, sprayed weed killer on the driveway and cleaned the bathroom all in a matter of 2 hours. It was such a morale boost for us to just work in a clean area as far as the interior was concerned and not have to worry about the exterior for now. It was even better when one of the girls was like, "Thanks for letting us clean your house!" Um, you're welcome!

Prosperity and Adversity

Luke 12:22-31

And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

The other day we were talking with our small group from church about worry and how we often worry even though God ALWAYS provides. We get to the point of fretting about something, God provides, and then we tell ourselves never to worry again. Then, the vicious cycle begins all over again.

Last Monday, we had insulation guys scheduled to come that morning and pump insulation into our exterior walls. With all of the sheetrock, trim and paint work we are doing, we figured we better beef up for the winter and pay the big bucks to get the insulation in beforehand so we didn't have major heating bills come January. The only catch is is that we are at the end of our budget and this was not something we had planned for and all of our monies were accounted for other things in the house. We have pinched and pinched on this budget to make the money stretch as far as possible, but we finally realized we might just have to put this insulation cost of $1,200 on the credit card. Early that morning, we found out that the insulation guys didn't take credit card so we had to regretfully cancel our appointment because we just didn't have the money in the bank.

Would you believe that by the end of the night I had two seperate members of our family call (unknowingly to each other) and with the two combined had offered a total of $1,700 towards helping us finish this renovation. Praise God for these generous families that so willingly gave. We love them. And we love insulation which came later that week. Our babes can sleep in heat. :)


That blue tank was a big insulation hopper that pumped through the tube into all these little holes in the wall. It looked like a carpet cleaners vaccuum.

Little holes were drilled on the tops and bottoms of all the exterior walls.

These were all the holes after Phil and Adam mudded over them.

Major progress happened this week with Phil in town. I'll have some sweet before and after pictures to prove it later.