Almost…

No I haven’t quit blogging.  I’ve just been consumed with the De-Hoarding.  Consumed!  It is the first thing that pop’s into my mind the second I wake up.  At night, as my exhausted head hits the pillow, the countless thoughts of upcoming projects swirl around as a blizzard, numbing me to sleep.  I’ve so many rooms that are Almost done.  So close to being perfect, yet the little un-done details constantly nag my conscience, and have prevented me from showing the before and after rooms.  Until now.

Since the little details won’t be looked at until the rest of the house is Almost Perfect.  I’ll go ahead and show you my last three big projects.

The Master Bathroom.  The Horror Before…

 

Even with a laundry basket in the room the kids would still drop their clothes and towels on the floor.  Frustrating.

Every surface on counter and tub, cluttered with bottles of what-not’s, toys, cups, clothes.  At least that is how it was a little over a month ago. 

And Today…

Not only is it clean, but it’s beautiful.

The biggest time consumer was painting the trim and the cabinet’s.

They had to be painted with and oil based paint, which was smelly and takes ages to dry, but is so much more durable.  New hinges & knobs too, because we couldn’t stand putting the old rusty stuff on our beautiful white doors.

Saved money with the curtains though.

Made the curtains with material from my old stash.  Humm looks like the leftover duvet cover ($4.99) I thrifted to make this little darling.   

I did have to get more drapery hardware, but that duvet cover went a long way.

Paint: $95  Hardware:  $73  Curtain Supplies:  $24  Total:  $ 192

Now off to the girls room.  Princess and Hope’s room was the cleanest bed room in the house before we started.

A bit stuffed, but not horrible.

But After:

A Perfectly Pink little girls room.

And I’m still in awe of the closet.

The girls let go over over 8 rubber totes and bags of clothes, bedding and toys.

Found two matching comforters at 75% off.  They were ended up costing $7. 98 each. 

And the darling bed skirt.  I raided my sewing stash again.

Found two other bed skirts that I bought for possible girly dresses and did something different.

Couldn’t make the traditional bed skirt because the beds are taken apart bunk beds. 

So I employed some Velcro and attached them that way.

 

The Curtain rods.  An Electrical pipe, Wooden dowel, and ends from another shorter curtain rod.

The silly wooden dowel was what I spent the most on.  $3.49.

First I screwed the finial into the end of a short piece of dowel then snuggly fit it into the pipe.

The curtains we found at a thrift store.

 

The vanity was gifted to the girls by a close friend.

 

And we were able to find some other thrift treasures to decorate with.

Best of all the girls are surrounded by their most favorite toys.  The ones they liked above all the other’s that they let go of.

This room did contain my first opps.  One of the paint colors we choose was a little too pink.  So overwhelming and bright that it made the room look smaller.  It nearly matched the pink ribbon on our curtain tops.   

So we changed the color on the top half of the room and now it darn near perfect.  I didn’t even grumble too much with painting the stripe in between the colors.

And NOW for my final upstairs room.  We took this monstrosity that used to be the boys room.

A cave of darkness, damage, and even more clutter.

Poor Lea inherited the room from the boys in April, but nothing had been done to it to make anyone know it was a girls room.

The walls were riddled with holes, dings and dents from my O.D.D. son before we entered him into treatment.

 

The Doom Room Before…

It was a very sad room.  But we poured a honking lot of love into it and today…

The picture doesn’t do the room justice.  It’s much lighter in person. 

More like this…

Again I made the curtains from thrifted sheets out of my sewing stash.  They are much more adorable in person.

 

And the bed skirt.  (This picture is truer to the actual colors of the room.)

Well, I broke the rules.  It’s not a bed skirt, but an heirloom table cloth spread between the box spring and mattress.

The closet before...

And After.

Lea’s desk is now in the closet.

She loves it.  Like everyone else she let go of over 75 % of the stuff she had.  Somehow the sacrifice has made it all worth while for everyone.

I think her room is one of my favorites after mine own.  Again the pictures don’t do it justice.  My point and shoot camera was acting up and bit the dust just yesterday.  Princess accidently dropped it and it died a horrible death.  So I just had to post these almost pictures to show you that we are still moving forward. 

There are still so many little, itty-bitty details I want to go back and change or fix in each of the rooms.  But they are a beautiful place to be while waiting.

It’s painful, and I’ve never worked so hard in my life.   That’s saying something because I’m a worker.  But this is the first time I’ve put all I have into something.  

I might have to borrow a camera but I promise to keep taking pictures.  I’ve so many more stories to tell of the process, the heartbreak, the miracles, the roadblocks, the generosity of angels, and the lesson’s I’ve learned.  They will come, maybe after I’m done being consumed by the process, but they will come.

Dream On - Updates!

Suffer through some updates and I'll give you a taste of my Halloween insanity near the end of this post.

So I finally tackled the Master Bedroom Closet. Remember how I threw out half of my clothes. That was just clothes and didn’t really involve any of the closet. But seeing as what a disastrous state the whole mini room was in I decided it was time to find the floor again.

It also worked to my advantage because it's where I hide Christmas stuff as well. (Shhhh, Don't tell the kids) You know, the place where you stash all the little things found on clearance in the after-holiday sales. Trouble is with the mess I wasn’t sure what I’d purchased and even which corner I’d hid it in.

So 3 tall kitchen bags full of clothes for charity, two full garbage ones as well, and lots of re-sorting and…

Ta-Da! Will you look at all that floor space?

Want more? Well even if you don't I'll still show it. From This...

To This...

Oh I'm not done yet. I'm still trying to talk Prince Erik into letting go of my fat scuba equipment. It's been 8 years since I last used it and I just am too small to fit in it anymore.

O.K. it's still there but someday. Meanwhile - Look at all the hang space I freed up.

O.K. that was the last one.

So while I was knee-deep in the closet clutter I found some nice surprises. Holiday shirts I purchased for the girls last year at less than $2 each in the holiday clearance aisle at Target. I’m excited because I bought them guessing at my girls shirt sizes this year. I think I’ll save them for our Dream Disneyland vacation. My closet was pretty empty in the gift category but I was able to knock a few things off my to-get list.

I took the Holiday Inventory Page I told you about for my Hassel-Free Holiday Planner and listed the items on it that were located in my Master Gift Closet.

I can look at that list now and see who I haven’t located ornaments for, and start to now come up with a Gift List Idea sheet using my Gift List Planner Page.

So yep my Holiday plans are moving ahead, the house is a little less cluttered.

Good news on the Accountability to the Max area as well. After two weeks of the dial on the scale not moving I finally lost 2 lbs, all in the past 2 days. I think it’s a hormonal thing, but I’m tickled pink that it’s moving again in the right direction.

This week I’ve also logged 13 miles of mostly jogging and tomorrow I’m going to attempt 4. It so helps that there is a motivational reason for me to run in the rain. I really want to beat my abysmal time from Last Year’s Half Marathon.

Oh and look what I found while cleaning out the closet. Proof that I'm an insanely addicted to Family Theme Halloween costumes.

I took these pictures six years ago when I was overly obsessed with all things ‘Lord of the Rings’. This was the year I went all out with expense, and time trying to get every detail right. Each costume is handmade and although you can’t really see from these pictures, full of details. From Gimli's Helmet to Galadriels crown it's all made from scratch because I could find anything in the stores or online seeing as how the movies were still coming out.

A then much shorter Abner as Legolas.

Prince Erik as Gandalf, and Evo-man as the perfect sized hobbit Frodo. No that is not a wig it's his hair.

I have to say the T-rev's costume of Gimli was my most challenging but also probably my most rewarding. I loved how he walked around and announced himself as 'Gimli the DORF' (unintentionally, of course).

So have fun looking at them and thank your lucky stars that you’re not as obsessed about Halloween as I am.

I found some other pictures of Halloween past as well. Those I'll post some other time through-out the month.

As you can see from when I posted this I'm not doing to well with cutting back on computer time. So this weekend Prince Erik agreed to help me brainstorm and figure out how I can do better.

Dream On - Accountability

Well we survived our first two days of nothing but needs and did pretty darn well. The only thing I did that I probably I could have done differently was maybe rode a bike around the neighborhood to look for the dog instead of taking the car. But my legs were in no shape to pedal(see why below) so I took the car.

So here are my accountability dreams in a rather large nutshell.

Nothing but Needs? – Good – Everything I did purchase over the past two days came from a list and were definitely needs.

Dream Make-Over? - Don’t tell Smiley but that $100 wager is all mine. Don’t hate me because I’m so awesome. You always lose the most weight the very first week your on a program. I’m tactically consuming between 1300 and 1500 calories per day. Meal tracking, well I didn’t miss a single meal. So all is good there.

And I was rocking the exercises too. Monday I attempted my bogus Bogus. Prince Erik and I went on a 30 plus mile bike ride...

through some gorgeous country and bike climbed a pretty good hill (the big-ish one in the background). So about 6 miles of the 30 was, for me, serious climbing on a bike, of course. This is me on the climb thinking about what a stupid thing it is to ride a bike uphill.

Even though I think I could complete the Bogus Basin Bike race this Saturday in ID (14.5 miles all uphill). I would rather wait until I’ve trained a bit more for it and am 25 lbs lighter. So I’ll do it next year when I’m super skinny and a real fast mama. Prince Erik is still going to go and do it though and I’m sure he’ll have a super speedy time.

And for the Dream-On Clutter crusade – well we made another go at the old laundry room.

We tried to tackle it last spring but never turned it into the mud room we wanted it to be. So Monday Prince Erik found the boards I bought last spring, cut them, splashed some stain on them and slapped them on the wall.

And Ta-Da! We have a mudroom folks. For the first time in the 12 years my kiddos have been going to school, their backpacks now have a home. It’s probably going to take some getting used to because those backpacks still have floor magnets attached to them. I had to remind the kids about four times that their backpacks now have a really swell spot to call home and they better find it fast. It may take a few days to become a habit but I’m excited. Of course I plan on adding more shelves but I’m good for now.

So my three dreams of losing weight, de-cluttering and needs only had a great couple of days.
And I did while dealing with Hope bringing home a new friend….

And we had to deal with Itchy taking a three day vacation from our family. That there almost drove me to my emotional eating self. But every time I spied a overly tempting candy bar I thought which would I rather have? That mouthful of comfort or $100? The money won.

Hope let Itchy out of the house over the weekend. Because it was the weekend there was no one to talk to at the local found pet shelters to see if she had been turned in. Here’s where my needs took a backseat as I drove around the neighborhood searching for the rascally mutt. Fortunately a Good Samaritan apprehended Itchy after seeing her play chicken with some cars on local busy road. They finally saw the flyers the girls and I smacked up around the neighborhood and gave us a ring.

So Itchy is back home and under house arrest. And I'm psyched about following my dreams.