In Review… Last Year

I must start this post with one of the  blessing of being an early riser. You get to see humdingers like this.

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What a breathtaking sunrise to close out 2012.  As I pulled the camera down from my eyes and looked at the view screen this was one instance where the colors of the pictures accurately reflected the brilliance of the sky.  I even had to wake up the kids so they could see it too – and it was so good they didn’t even complain about being roused early.

So for those near and dear to our herd hearts, here’s a brief recap and a picture.

Our oldest, Abner, finally flew the nest.  He’s going to school full time, working full time and with that schedule we are lucky to see him for a few hours every weekend.  Lucky for us he is only 1/2 hour away.

T-rev graduated from High School and after months of pounding the pavement found a job pounding open freight boxes at Sears.  We are now waiting to see where he will be going to school.

Evo-man continues to be our rollercoaster wildcard. Ups and Downs rule his life.  The best thing is that his Crones is under control.  He has treatment every 8 weeks and get’s to set in a comfy chair for a few hours, while getting his remicade infusion at a local hospital.  I have to mention a huge thank you to my husbands insurance that covers this cost.  There would be no way we could afford the treatment without it, as they bill us over $20,000 per treatment..  $20,000 for 4 hours of treatment every 8 weeks.  I think there’s something fishy going on with that???

Lea is going through officially being a teenager with all the hormonal chaos that accompanies such ventures in life.  She did get a break from her stress inducing family while visiting with  family in CA last summer and going to girls camp.  She is also looking forward to Track and Field, where she hopes to continue her dominance of Discus.  She was the unofficial district champ for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade last year.  Unofficial, because she missed the district meet, but she won the event at every other meet.  My sweet little powerhouse is growing up.

Princess is still princess, and loves being in 5th Grade during the day and the world of imagination at home.  She is an aspiring writer and loves the make believe like only her mom.

Hope is still our beacon of happiness.  I can’t believe my baby is seven.  She loves everyone and is one of our happiest biggest helpers around.  She is also the major handler of our hyper kitten Meap.  Scratches everywhere don’t deter her from snuggling and might I add, manhandling that furball.

Prince Erik finally received the promotion at work that he’s been working so hard to get.  He is once again Cub Master in our ward and it’s fun to see the enthusiasm of working with 8-11 year olds has not waned.  He loves it.  He continues to love cooking – thank heavens for all of us.  And he’s the best Honey-Do Dude I know.

I finally finished De-Hoarding my home last spring.  Yes, you heard me right. It only took 2 1/2 years, over 30 loads to the dump in the truck, and another 6 loads to the thrift store.  It is something I’m so grateful for.  My mentor Mrs. Passion moved to Texas and I cried buckets when she left, but she gave me all the tools I needed to finish. 

Am I done?  Heavens no.  I’ve still got projects to do, more curtains to make, furniture to refinish and then we get to start on the jungle we call the back yard. 

My Prince let me fly away from the herd over the summer.  I went to Idaho and Utah to visit family and attend Education Week.  I loved seeing family, but I spent most of the vacation being taken care of by my mom as I hurt my back the day after I arrived.  Thank goodness she didn’t mind babying me.

When I got home my Prince had missed me so much he took me away on our first overnight vacation, without kids, I might add, in eight years..  We stayed at a bed and breakfast in beautiful Victoria, Canada.  It was romantic heaven!  He even let me bring home a crate of beach combed rocks for our future patio.  He spoiled me rotten and even replaced my wedding ring which had lost it’s diamond years ago.  I’m a lucky girl to be married to such an adoring Prince. 

My church calling has also kept me busy as a whirlwind.  I’m over the activities for all the sisters in our ward/congregation and there is always an activity in the planning or someone in need of service.

So there you have it, a long-winded recap of 2012.  The best part was last night at sunset we got to see this.

The two perfect bookends to the final day of the year. So when it’s not raining here in the Pacific Northwest we get amazing heavenly light shows.

Wrapping Up Christmas

I think I found all of Christmas and boxed it up.  No doubt I’ll find a towel in the laundry or a jingle bell hidden in a couch cushion next week. For now though, Christmas is put away.  It’s always bitter-sweet putting away the trappings of the holiday season.  I love decorating everything.

I won’t miss Meap, the Claw Kitten ransacking the Christmas tree or leaving scratch marks on my reindeer.

I won’t miss her derailing the Christmas train either.

But I will miss her sleeping in the manger.

And I’m already planning for next year.  I’ve pulled out my Christmas Planner only to discover the web hosting site where I stored all the pages went down.  I’ll try and find a way to post them again.  I love what Organized Christmas does.  They have a Rudolf Club that works on Christmas on the 25th of every month of the year.  I’d love to do that this year.  So every 25th I’m hoping to get one step closer to a more relaxing season next year.  I’ll probably follow my own schedule.  So far I’m planning on May being my Power Tool Present Fest.

This Christmas was probably my most relaxing so far.  Mainly because I turned it all over to Prince Erik and my Angel Mom.  I’ve been recovering from surgery.  Nothing tramatic, my plumbing just needed upgrading after 6 kids.  So why not have it in the busiest month of the year?  I like doing things that defy reason.  But, it needed to be done and I’m sure blessed to have such a Knight in Shining Armor Guy for my husband.  Double Bonus is that he cooks and he’s good at it too.  I’m a lucky girl.

And special thanks to my Mom who braved a winter blizzard to come stay with me for a week and chase all my wild herd from one Christmas activity to another.  I owe her big time.

So I’m planning away for next year with all the excitement of a child on Christmas Eve.  I’m sure it will be here before I know it.

Christmas Lights Bingo

Every year, usually the Sunday before Christmas, we take our family on a drive around town to view the beautiful Christmas lights.

Having a large herd of kids, there tends to always be one or two who just don’t have the patience the rest of us have.  So a couple of years ago my husband started rattling off Christmas objects for the kids to keep their eyes peeled for. That helped them enjoy the ride a bit more. 

This year we made them a little Christmas Lights Bingo Page.  I’ll try and link them soon.

I printed them out and glued them to a colored piece of cardstock, then laminated the sheets.

They loved them.  I let them use dry erase markers to cross off the Christmas objects that they did spy.   And the teenagers were just as engaged with our Christmas lights adventure as my little ones.

Viewing the Christmas lights was never more enjoyable.

When we got home we used a little magic eraser and wiped our  bingo sheets clean.  That way we won’t have to create them again next year.  I’ll just slip them in my Christmas planner and they will be ready to go the next time we take a light adventure. 

Tootles,

FawnDear

Every time a bell rings…

It took us two days to talk with our kids about Newport, Connecticut.  Two days of only watching TV when they were not. Two days of reading statements from the experts ranging from our local school district, from online new sources, and friends on Facebook.  But it wasn’t until I read what Kathryn at Daring Young Mom Posted Here, that we finally knew how we were going to talk to our kids about this. Thank you Kathryn.  You said what I needed to hear as well.

My mom happened to be with us when all of this happened and we were reminiscing about how in the olden days people hung mourning wreaths on their door when a loved one passed.  Now a dark and dreary wreath isn’t too helpful.  It might encapsulate the somber feelings and hopelessness that accompanies such tragedies, but I can’t live in that state of mind without sinking into depression.  Then this movie came to mind.

‘Every time a bell rings an angel gets their wings…’

And seeing how there are a couple dozen/plus new angels in heaven we thought we’d combine Kathryn’s thoughts with bells.

Kathryn mentioned that we can do something.  We can fight darkness and despair with light.  For every act of evil or frustration that threatens to pull us down we can counter this darkness with light and love.  The key word is ACT – Do Something.  Smile, lift those around you that are down, render service to those in need.  Might I add reach out with kindness to those who are alone or struggling.

Being Christmas time I happened to have enough bells laying around that I could make a little wreath.  I put a bell on a simple string representing each of the victims of this latest act of evil.  Sparkly silver for the kids and pink for the adult women.  I’m no great wreath maker.  I strung the bells on a string and then wrapped the string around a wire hoop.  Then, I wrapped the wire with ribbon to hide the string.  It’s simple, but now we can remember those newest angels.

Our family wrote down the names of all the victims and committed to do an act of service or reach out with love in honor of each of them.  And every time we do we will jingle our little bell wreath.  Yes, I know a bright jingle bell wreath can’t take away the hurt and heartbreak that comes with such tragedies.  But our family is choosing to make the world a better place in honor of those lives lost.  We are choosing to act with love and light.

Little Hope came home from her first day of school after the weekend and the first thing she did was reach up and ring the bells. 

“Mom, guess what, I choose to make the world better today.’ she told me as she jingled the bells.  ‘I was kind to a kid at school that was feeling bad.’  

Thank you Hope.

Up a tree but still moving

I’ve been meaning to pick up the blog pen again, for quite a while now.  There is, of course, so many wonderful, and not so wonderful things I could tell you about that happened over the course of my absence, but I feel it would be best to start with the here and now.  Sometimes the past can hold you back, and sadly all the things I’ve been meaning to tell you about have held me back from letting you into my wild and crazy life now.

So I’m back. Wild and Crazy as Ever.

Thought now would be as good a time as any to introduce you to the newest member of our herd.   Last year Pumpkin, our Ninja Kitty disappeared.  We’d like to think his stealthy moves led him on a secret adventure to someone else’s home and that he didn’t meet his demise at the jaws of a ferocious beast in the wild.  But none the less, Pumpkin is no longer with us.  And missing our mouser led to this wild and crazy fuzz ball joining our family.

Meet Meap.  The furriest pouncer on the planet.  Miss Meap, is such a wildly active little feline we’ve had to rework the whole ankle bitter definition. Yes, she really does bit ankles.

Nothing is safe from her curiosity.  This wild and crazy kitty has done more damage to breakables in my home than all my kids combined.  Within five minutes of putting up the Christmas tree here is what she did.  Then she proceeded to stay there for another two hours and would pounce on ornaments the second we hung them on the tree. 

So, in an effort to protect memorable family ornaments, we did something we never had to do with our toddlers.  We placed the tree in a alcove above our stairs.

The kids were digging the adventure of decorating the tree from the top of a ladder.

Our newest tradition this year is our 25 Days of Christ Advent Ornaments. The sweetest lady designed this and sold out this year but when she picks it up again next year I’m going to get more for family and friends.  Here’s her website.

I made some little bags to hold my 25 ornaments.  I used a scrap sheet and some leftover blue fabric that I had laying around in my craft room.  The numbers happened thanks to t-shirt printable that you can print on your printer.  Iron the numbers onto your fabric and your done. Then I hung them on twine with clothes pegs on my fireplace mantle. 

I thought of hanging little snowflakes on the bags.  Next year, maybe.  Love them.

It’s good to be back.

Ain’t that a Kick in the Pants

I received a lovely email a little over a week ago about wanting to feature one of my previous de-hoarding posts.  I felt honored, of course.  So many thanks to Cassity from Remodelholics.  Amazing sight for gleaning DIY ideas.

She kindly featured my Nightmare Sweet Dreams Room!

It really got me to thinking about how much I’ve accomplished over the past year.  The post is nearly a year old (hence the beautiful autumn leaves outside).  It was such a breakthrough in my recovery. 

And one year later…

It’s even better. 

I guess I should prove it by posting pictures right?

Alas, my camera battery is dead and I really wanted to give a shout out to Cassity.

But until all the pending pictures come out, please rest assured that my bedroom has been clutter-free every day since the original post.  That means…

Are you sitting down Mom???

FawnDear made her bed every day for nearly a whole year!

I know… Incredible right.

Probably made my bed more in the past year than in the previous Forty(cough)ish previous years put together. 

See I’m not hopeless.

And as for the kick in the pants.

Sadly the recovering hoarding has been in a bit of a rut lately.  Other than painting the trim on the outside of the home (which is only 2 hours away from completion), things have drastically slowed down.  Well, 2 painting hours away once the rain stops.

I’m trying to figure out how to motive myself to finish.  I’m so close to being done.  Only three rooms left, including one you can’t even walk through. 

On the bright side – I haven’t slid back.  Just stuck in a rut.  But shout out’s like Cassidy’s help remind me of where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I’m going.  I’ll get there.  One lousy garbage bag at a time.

Tootles,

FawnDear

Slow and Slightly Unsteady

One Year ago, plus eleven days, I began the biggest transformation my home has ever experienced. Dehoarding doesn’t happen in just an hour like on TV.  It takes a while.  My mentor, Mrs. Passion, warned that it would take 6-9 months.  I’m at the year mark and still not done.  I blame it on life.  Six kids and a crazy schedule tends to shoot the best laid plans out of the water.  You know the whole two steps forward, one back. 

However, I am still progressing – in the right direction as well.  I’ve been itching to show you progress, but I’m such a fruity-tootie perfectionist that I want to wait until everything’s done.  Then you’ll get the WOW effect to the oomph degree.  Now I’m kicking myself, because makeovers don’t happen in one post.  Unlike ‘Hoarding, Buried Alive’ on TV, the work to declutter can take weeks, and sometimes months, and in my case I’m now in it a whole year.  One of my biggest lessons:  Procrastination equals Pain… and anxiety.  Neither of which is fun to deal with.  In the past I’d bury them with more projects and stuff.  Now I’m confronting them head on.  I still don’t like pain.  But getting through it is finally worth more than letting it fester.

Case in Point:  Never, and I mean never let your house scream at you for a paint job like this.

Twelve years ago we paid an arm and a leg to have a professional paint it.  Within 5 years we noticed the paint bubbling, and three years ago we really knew it needed to be done.  But the unbloggable happened and stuff like painting the home retreats to the back of your mind.  When we started the whole transformation process a year ago we knew that our first outside order of business was to paint the home.  This summer we realized that if we didn’t tackle the project now we would be forking over thousands to replace the siding as well.

So began the most painful home improvement project we’ve tackled to date.  Believe it or not twice as stressful as retiling the kitchen floor.  What we thought would take a week has turned into four weeks of nightmarish adventure.  Add in the fact that we’ve never attempted a project to this magnitude which played into the tension as well.  We helped a friend paint her home and it only took 6 1/2 hours from start to finish.  Yes, a lot of people showed up to help.  It gave us a false sense of confidence that it would be easy-peasy.

We pressure washed our home for nearly three days trying to knock off all the chipped paint and not tear up the siding.  The results were disappointing.

Sure we got a lot of paint off but there was still too much chipped paint hanging on by a thread waiting to be scrapped.

  Some of the siding didn’t survive and had to be replaced.  In replacing some of the siding we also discovered shortcuts taken by the original builders where they had cut corners, not laid down the vapor-barrier in full which led to rotten wood underneath the trim and siding near the bottom.  So some lower trim had to be totally ripped off.  Our efforts to save money by doing the job ourselves ended up costing us as much as paying someone else to do it.   But only because we had to replace damaged sections caused by our procrastination. The only redeeming note of comfort is that I don’t think a professional would have fixed the damage, just covered it up.

Abner, my boy, was my rock.  He and his friend Chet put in hours daily for nearly two weeks scrapping the paint down to this.

Our favorite tool of choice was an angle grinder with a steel wool bristle brush.  The paint sander attachments made for chipping off paint didn’t last nearly as long.  So we were thrilled with the recommendation of the steel wool attachment. 

Another hard lessons to learn was don’t buy cheap tools.  We burnt through the motors on two angle grinders and even a paint sprayer before we bit the bullet and bought the proper equipment.

Poor Abner had to also deal with the nasty heights.  Our home sits on a hill which makes two stories nearly three on the backside.  Thankfully we’ve the best friends in the world who loaned us scaffolding and ladders, ropes and harnesses.  Friends are the best.  So glad I’m not a recluse.

Triple glad I’ve got a son willing to help.

Then there was another couple of days spent caulking every corner, window, door,  and siding seam.

Since we were down to bare wood on two sides of our home it only made sense to prime before we painted.

We were blessed with some more wonderful help our first day of priming.  Our church was wrapping up a community service project for Northwest Day of Service and many members stopped by after the community project to give us a hand with our adventure.  It’s amazing how many hands can make quick work of taping up and priming.

And another lessons learned was…

Teenagers all will volunteer for any work if they get to be on a roof.  I had to pray like crazy that no one would get hurt.  I think I drove a couple people bonkers with my worry.  Sorry Prince Erik.

Here’s my manly men priming the back side of our home, while dancing on boards in the effort of trying to give me a heart attack.  I am not a fun person to be around when I’m worried.  Yet they survived me.

And as for the what our home looks like now…

Well, it’s painted…

mostly, except for the trim…

however… it’s raining…

but we beat the rain.  Our home is safe and protected and we learned some valuable lessons.

*  If you want something done right – do it yourself or find someone you really trust to do the job correctly.

*  Plan on it costing more than you thought.

*  Don’t skimp on tools.

*  Plan on it taking three times as long as you thought it would.

*  You’ll also be amazed at how many wonderful people there are that are angels on earth.  To the S.V.’s of the earth and especially to Abner’s friend Chet and his family.  They are the best sort of friends one can every hope for.   

*Abner learned he wants to get a great education to land a great job, earn some big bucks to pay someone else to do the work so that he will never have to ever do something like this again.  That’s my boy – he’s a dreamer like me after all.

There, now you know the before and during part.  I’m praying the liquid sunshine lets up so that I can show you the after pictures by Wednesday or Thursday.  Until then I’ve got to tackle the housework and laundry that’s been piling up while I was distracted outside.

Tootles,

FawnDear