The $20 Bill Challenge

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Spring Cleaning

We are loving this beautiful weather - with highs in the 90's we have practically been living outside with the hose.

Either living outside or decluttering inside. I recently read the book Power of Less by Leo Babauta and it was just the kick I needed to start my decluttering. I highly recommend this book - it is fairly short, easy to read and categorized by chapter meaning you can easily pick and chose the subjects that interest you. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

In the past few weeks I have been amazed at the amount of stuff I have piled together to pass on to others, send to the thrift store or toss. 

JD. Roth recently wrote an excellent post about spending based on who you are, not who you hope to be. Wow - it was a great post and I think it translates over so smoothly when trying to decide what items to keep and which items to get rid of - own items based on who you are, not who you hope to be. 

Have a closet full of clothes that are too small hoping you'll lose weight and be able to wear them someday? Pass them on to someone who can wear them now. 

Have a large pile of cookbooks but always use recipes from online or from memory? Consider passing the cookbooks on to new bride who might be starting her own collection of recipes

Have an electric wok in your kitchen hoping you'll someday perfect Chinese cooking but have no time to do it now? (cough Paul Morris cough) Pass it on to someone else who might be interested in such a hobby.

Money Saving Mom is running a great series right now encouraging people to downsize and declutter - it's been an inspiration to read and you may enjoy it too!

Happy Spring Cleaning!

You Have to Go Home Now

My sister came down here just before Christmas and has been here since then, living in our rather chilly basement in our rather uncomfortable-for-long-term-sleeping air mattress.

It has been so fun to have her here - someone to talk with when Paul is away for days - or weeks- on end. Someone to watch girly shows with. Someone to help me at the grocery store. Someone to watch the boys while Paul and I go out. Someone to help make meals, switch a load of laundry over or vacuum the floors.

Sometimes she makes me giggle to myself when she says "Wow - I just did the dishes and now there's more. This never ends." I know that feeling well. Only for the past 4 months I've had someone to share in all that and cut my work load in half and I have appreciated it so much.

The other day I realized that our boys don't remember a day when Aunt Essie didn't live in our basement. To them her living with us is as normal as bubbles in the bathtub or milk in your cereal.

I thought it was my motherly duty to warn them, particularly Judah, of her upcoming departure date - which is still a month away but I thought I should start early.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Judah, do you know Aunt Essie has to leave us in a month and go back to her house?"

Judah: "NO NO NO!! SHE CAN'T."

Me: "But she needs to. She lives in Canada with her mommy and daddy and they miss her and she needs to go back to live with them again."

Judah: "No! She can't leave me."

Me: "I know, it'll be so sad when she leaves, but you can talk to her on the phone and maybe we can go visit."

Judah didn't say anything more. 

Moments later I heard him in the other room talking to Esther. He said;

"Mommy said you have to go home now." 

Seriously. 

Don't ever take things my kids say I said literally.

Please.

Five Finger Shoes

I am so excited - Paul went to Charlotte for work today and picked us each up a pair of Vibram Five Finger Shoes. No where in our area has our sizes in stock and the orders are backed up online. Paul called 13 different stores in Charlotte before he found one that had our sizes in stock - and even then they didn't have our top color choices in stock.

I'll post a thorough review once I've worn them for more than three hours - but so far I love them and haven't taken them off since he gave them to me!

Happy Easter

"Because He lives, I can face tomorrow, because He lives, ALL fear is gone, because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives!"

-Gaithers

Forgetting What Simple Is

While the  boys slept I filled their Easter baskets with the simple items I had chosen for them and then made a ribbon maze around the house. Each boy had their own ribbon leading from their bedroom door and they wound downstairs, outside, under the table and all the silly places Paul and I could think up. The other end of the ribbon was tied to their basket.

Neither of them got it. They kept asking where their balloon was. 

Brilliant boys I've got.

They know what type of ribbon balloons from the Dollar Tree are tied with.

Their innocent request for a balloon at the end of the ribbon made me pause and think -

Why, exactly, did I set their expectations so high for all the following Easters when a simple balloon would have made them giddy with excitement? It certainly wasn't on purpose. In fact, I intentionally tried to keep it simple- all that was in the baskets was bubbles and books. 

But I missed the mark. 

Compared to the elaborate baskets being sold in the stores it was simple.

Compared to the pictures you see on TV and in magazines it was simple.

Compared to some of the plans I have read on varies blog posts it was simple.

But I was comparing. Not intentionally. Not judgmentally.

I just forgot what simple was in reference to two little boys.

My two little boys.

Next year we will do the ribbon mazes again.

It was a lot of fun!

But next year at the end of their ribbon will be a balloon.

*we did our Easter baskets Saturday morning as Paul has to work Sunday*

Our Living Room - Before and After

Once upon a time our living room looked like this. 

Once upon a time being before we purchased it. 

Here is another look at how the previous owners decked out the living room:

The day we got the keys to the house we tore up that carpet and a few months later this is what the living room looked liked:

And the other angle

(Sorry, don't know why the quality is so bad on this one!) 

We bought the floors from Lumber Liquidators and Paul lay the hardwood floors himself and can I just say I am SO proud of him for figuring it out and doing it all himself?!?! 

When I saw Sarah was offering consultations I immediately signed up for it and (eventually got around to!) sending her an email with pictures and some ideas we had. 

We didn't really have a clue what we were doing and Sarah's suggestions were so helpful in giving us a direction! I'm not sure if her style has changed but it was so perfect for us - a numbered list of ideas for where things could go in the room, pieces we could add and ideas for decorating. I got her rates at a steal of $10 a consult and they've since gone up to $40 - still a great deal if you're looking for some personal insight for your decorating needs!

Our room is still not totally finished but it is close enough that I am ready to share pictures! 

This is  our room now and here it is from the other direction:

As you can see from the picture the couches are so new the tags haven't been cut off yet! 

We purchased the couches from a local store but they are Ashley brand couches. 

The cushions are a tad wrinkled as moments before this picture was taken two little boys were cuddling on it :) The cushions are all reversible - LOVE that! But our absolute favorite part about the couches is the back of them: 

We  knew we'd be floating at least one of them in the middle of the room and wanted to be sure the back of the couch was attractive to look at. We looked at TONS of couches - it is quite rare for a couch to be attractive from the back! 

We opted to go with two love seats instead of the traditional love seat and sofa. We haven't regretted the decision at all.

We picked out the curtains from Tuesday Morning. I will eventually get a thicker curtain rod as the current one is somewhat dwarfed by the curtains, but that is a down the road project.

I picked up these shelves at a yard sale last year for $10 each. They were the most horrid salmon color, but with built in lights I saw the potential and bought them both. We are avid game players and decided to display some of our games on these shelves.

This side table was $1 at a yard sale. It was brown so I painted it a couple shades darker than our walls, which doesn't really show up in the pictures. The drawers were broken and I have been putting off fixing them. We plan on adding more black framed photographs to this wall.

The final piece to our room is this beautiful piano we picked up at a yard sale last summer.  It fits perfectly in this space!

It's hard to believe that these two rooms were the same space!!

Interested in GREEN SMOOTHIES? Check out part 1 and part 2 in my series of Why We Eat 3 Green Smoothies a Day.

Boys Dress Up Clothes

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Going on a Bear Hunt

Dramatic Black and White

Paul taught Wesley how to do perfect push ups. 

The top photograph is my submission for I Heart Faces, but I couldn't not post the series of pictures I took of Wesley getting his lesson.

One Year

One year ago today we moved into our house. 

It would have been fun to have celebrated that fact, but I only just remembered this evening.

And Paul is still working.

So I will silently celebrate a wonderful year in our house.

A house that has become our home. 

I remember when we were waiting for the paper work to be final on the house - there were several issues with minor details and it seemed to take FOREVER to go through. In reality it was only a matter of weeks from when we first saw the house to when it was actually ours but it felt like months upon months of waiting. And now that we are in it the past year has just flown by.

We are so thankful for the beautiful house God provided for us.

These are some of the beauties growing in our backyard right now:

 

Favorite Places

I stumbled upon The Gypsy Mama's blog today and love her most recent post of her favorite places in the world. Inspired to play along I spent the last hour happily looking through my digital library of pictures spanning the past 7 years and picked out some of my most favorite places.

 

 

Beach Blanket

With the weather warming up and dreams of picnics at the park and trips to the beach I was inspired to make the perfect beach blanket for us. 

Perfect being water proof, not perfectly constructed! 

Given my impatience and lack of sewing skills it isn't quite perfect but apart from not actually being a real shape, each corner looking different from the other, a tiny bit of puckering and the back lining showing up on the front side in a couple places it is perfect enough for its intended uses!

What I hate most about blankets is that if you (unknowingly) set them out on damp grass or sand  it soaks right through the blanket and what should have been a cozy, dry place to sit is now damp and uncomfortable. 

I think I have figured out a way around that.

I bought 4 large towels at the thrift store, washed them and then cut them up and patched them together.

I added a couple decorations to some of the squares, including our last name initial:

For the backing I bought the largest vinyl table cloth that the store had - I'm not sure what the inches were but it was to seat 8-10 people so it was quite large. I ended up losing about 2 feet of length from the tablecloth as I didn't have enough towels. I made sure to pick out a table cloth that coordinated with the towels I had bought.

The final step was to put the front side of the table cloth against the front side of the towels and sew around the edges, leaving a gap so I could turn it right side out and then sew the gap closed. 

It took me almost 2 weeks to finish sewing around the edges because I kept putting it off as it is somewhat of a nuisance to have that much fabric following you as you sew. But I finished it today and am thrilled with my imperfect beach blanket.

From what I have read online the vinyl tablecloths can be washed in cold water and dried on the cool setting. I plan on washing in cold water and line drying when it needs to be cleaned. 

Sharing on My Romantic Home and  The Shabby Nest