When you give a 5 Year Old a Hammer…

When you willingly give a five-year-old a hammer you better be prepared for this.

Fortunately for us, this was a planned demolition.  Yeah, the 3-year kitchen remodel is finally moving forward.

Yes, our remodel continues.  I’m so wishing I had some more before and after pictures to show you, but the AFTER is not quite done, yet the demolition, and remodel continues to engulf even more rooms as the list of rooms almost done, but not quite continue to grow.  Some how we are all surviving all the paint dust and paint fumes.

And in between all the chaos we did manage to find a little Christmas spirit.

See how high you can get on paint.

I never want to paint on a ladder that high again.  Can you tell I’m nearly crying with fear as Abner does the Please-don’t-fall-on-me-MOM, happy dance.

Between the mad makeover mess we were able to throw in a one day family trip to the quaint town of Leavenworth, WA.  Loved it.

 

We even took the obligatory family photo and true to form chopped off heads, arms and toes.  You know our typical snapshot.

The miracle was that we even put the tree up and decorated it with only a week to go before Christmas.

Ate some yummy food and way, way to much sugar.

And dreamed, and worked and dreamed some more of when this extreme home makeover would be done.

I’ve got a lot of sewing, tiling and painting still ahead of me.  And yes, the After rooms will knock your socks off.  Who cares of Myth Busters busted that myth. 

I’m loving being creative.  Found two broken lamps for super cheap and put them together to make this little beauty for my future fairy desk.  You are not going to believe how perfect it all turns out.

My kids are dreaming right along with me.  See here’s Abner dreaming of being a grown-up.

Thank you for being patient while I continue to inhale down more paint fumes than can be healthy for anyone.  I know I’ve been missing from blog land for so long, but I can see the light at the end of the remodel tunnel.  It’s still a tiny pinprick, but it is growing brighter.

Bah Humbug Averted

So towards the beginning of the month of December I was definitely channeling some Ebenezer Scrooge.  But thankfully, due in part to the multiple visits from various Spirits of Christmas, I finally caught the Christmas joy myself.

My first Spirit of Christmas came in the form of my wonderful husband who pointed out the whole dead dreams ordeal.  Thankfully that light-bulb moment has turned my whole direction around.  I am dreaming again – just not putting concrete time frames on those dreams – but definitely working towards them again.

My hubby also sent me to Idaho to visit my side of the herd.  The 30 plus hours in a car with 5 kids fortunately didn’t do me in, thanks in part to audio books.  And I got the bonus of seeing my kids dress up for a family nativity.  Abner, T-Rev and my brother Zippy make quite the impressive beardless Wise men, don’t you think?

 

Santa even made a surprise appearance and Hope had to bend his ear and then some… I mean the girl would talk to him non-stop, even as he was visiting with her other cousins.  She nigh near snowballed him with question after question about reindeer and his sleigh and everything Christmas.  But seeing her so into the magic of Christmas helped me gain a little bit of that magic myself.

Then it was back to the house to see how many grandkids it takes to tackle grandpa.  I got a workout just watching the mini-wrestling match.

All in all it was a wonderful trip, full of family visits, elf previews of Christmas, lots of nummy-yummy treats, digit numbing cold snow, Christmas lights, Iron port drink from the local drive-in, and Love.

Then it was back to our Pacific Northwest home for Christmas.  It was by far our most simple Christmas but the kids handled the low volume of presents with not a single complaint.

My husbands parents nailed me with one of the best gifts,  a dream necklace and CD full of dream songs.  I keep them right next to my dream journal when I’m not wearing or listening to them.  My kids thought I was nutty when I started crying when I saw the thoughtful gift, and they are right, I am nutty.  But it was the perfect gift.

Christmas day would have been perfect had the car not broken down.  But we are used to these unexpected bumps.  I have to say the downer of that break-down was more than made up for by this miracle.

Remember my redneck kitchen?

Well my friend Good Enough’s Angel Husband decided to help rebuild part of our missing kitchen.  We salvaged the drawers and door fronts from our old cabinets and he built them into some more salvaged bases and painted them for us.

Poor guy had to endure me sitting in the kitchen, watching the cabinets go in,  grinning like an idiot cause I was so happy.   Wow, it’s beginning to look like a real kitchen again.

I love all the angels that made this year so special amidst all the unbloggable stuff.  Thank you Angels.  I certainly hope that sometime in the near future I can pay it forward times ten.  I would just love to share the happiness that they gave to me.

Not Again…

No way is this happening again.

100 Days Until Christmas!!!

Does this fact stress you out like it does me?

Ahhhhhh!   Can I just skip it this year?  I mean who really needs this pressure anyway.

If I didn’t have little ones who believe in magic I might be tempted.  But I do have kids and I so want them to hold onto that magic.  I find the harder life gets the more I need it too.

No I haven’t forgotten Halloween and Thanksgiving.  You’ll see me go overboard with those holidays as well

Once again I’ll be doing my holiday countdown.  Setting superhuman moderate holiday goals for the week and trying to pull them off without going Looney, and driving my family insane. 

I’m also going to match last years goal of Halloween (custom costumes for all eight of us & calorie-free goodies) for less than $100. 

Plus – Do you want to hear my goal for Christmas.  Six kids, 1 Hubby, 14 siblings, Parents, Neighbors and Friends, 1 dog, and a gazillion other things that have flown from my mind for the present...  all for the measly amount of $200.00 or less.  That’s it.  Not a penny more (I can dream, Can’t I?).  I guess that means I’ll finally be using all the sewing and crafting stuff I’ve been collecting over the past couple of decades.

Shah!  Don’t tell Prince Erik, he’ll have me committed for sure.  I know it might not be a realistic goal but it is practical for the situation we are going through.  Plus there’s nothing like a little challenge to light a little fire under my backside to get me creatively motivated into action.

I might not meet the goal, but I’ll give it a good old-fashioned try.  And let you know my triumphs and failures along the way.

First thing on my list.  Pull out the Holiday Planner and give it a go-over.  Click on the picture to see how I made it

Every Tuesday I’ll list my new weeks goals.  You can join in (PLEASE) and give me suggestions as well. 

More than anything I want this Holiday Season to be about Love and Family.   Because if I met all my other goals, but I didn’t have my Family or the Love there everything else would be meaningless. 

Winter Wonder(?)Land

We got another six inches this morning.

As of now we have...

A Really, Really, Really White Christmas. Our first White Christmas since moving to the land of Liquid Sunshine nearly 12 years ago.

And You're not going to believe this...

From the land of (It snows two inches and melts by the morning of the next day) rain...

22 INCHES OF SNOW!!!

And that measurement was taken from a part of my yard that is sheltered from the blowing snow drift stuff.

And thus, from the land equiped to handle (It snows two inches and melts by the morning of the next day so why bother being prepared for anything but) rain; we have gone two weeks without garbage pick-up and had a good week of not having mail delivered. That and the only people driving around are us Environmentally Un-Friendly Gas-Guzzeling 4X4's with monster truck tires. Arrr, Arrr, ARRRR! Doing our part to help the masses of little gas-sipping mini-car owners weather the storm.

I know, I know, I do enough knocking on my beastly big family bus. I have to say that I'm extremely grateful for it when it snows. For when there is snow on the road, it transforms from the Big Beast into a Big Blue Snow Angel Snow Mobile.

The Big Blue Snow Angel has put quite the miles on her wings over the past week. And spending so much time flying over the snow banks in her took it's toll. It meant my Christmas sewing suffered a bit, O.K. a lot.

I'm sad to say I probably only made it through half of my projects. But the most important ones got finished. And the others I will still finish just not for a little while. I'm done stressing.

By Christmas Eve the traditional new Pajamas were mostly done. Extra's like sleeves on the girls nightgowns and matching flannel pockets on the boys Tee-shirts can be finished later.

All in all Five pair of Pajama bottoms cost around $15.50.

Three nightgowns, three bloomers, and three matching mini-nightgowns for the Build-A-Bear family members cost $6.25.

So P.J.'s for all eight of us was a Grand Total of $21.75.

Every year the kids get a new ornament. This year their ornaments cost me a whole .50 cents. and that was for the ribbon to hang the ornaments. Everything else we had on hand. We made them Christmas Eve.

Prince Erik used his manly saw to cut up a log from our wood pile into little disks. Evo-man then drilled some holes in each disk.

I digged up a 12 year old bottle of Mod Podge and had the kids slap on some of the white stuff to each of the wood disks.

We took old Christmas Cards that we've recieved in the past and cut them up. Threw on the pictures and applied yet another layer of Mod Podge liberally over the first. Let it dry overnight and Wa-la!

A Unique family craft that we'll remember for a long time. And it doesn't look half bad - just different.

Christmas this year was simple - but wonderful. And thankfully none of the kids complained.

I scored the most. Prince Erik gave me the fourth computer laptop that he bought at Best Buy on Black Friday. The other three he E-bayed and with money made on them combined with and something I e-bayed we didn't have to pay anything for it. A Free Laptop. I like free.

I went over my $100 Christmas Budget but I'm pretty sure I stayed under $200. That and we didn't go into debt for anything. So all in all it was the best type of Christmas you can have.

However the kids are going stir-crazy with not being able to go anywhere because of the BLIZZARD.

So what's a mom to do with a house full of kids going Bonkers?

Have them build a monster snowman - that's what. Topped off with a good old stew pot hat, tablecloth scarf, and charcoal eye's and buttons, he didn't turn out too bad.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

The Mental Yo-Yo!

I almost feel as if I can appreciate mood swings the likes of which my Bi-Polar son experiences.

Super duper highs one moment to feeling beneath the dirt on your shoes the next.

The highs are incredible and I hold onto them with fervor whenever the lows pop up (which is happening a lot more lately.

One of my super-duper bestest buds called last night telling me her contractor hubby was free Saturday to come help on our home. So we dropped all our less important activities and got to work.

Adios Kitchen!

I’d say it was nice knowing you but I’d be lying. Especially with discovering all the hidden secrets you’ve been keeping in your closet over the past couple of years.

Be warned – If it’s anywhere near meal-time you will not want to view these next few visuals.
You may loose your appetite for an entire week. I nearly lost lunch seeing this after we ripped the counters out. Eewwww!

The rot was so bad under the dishwasher that once the vinyl was up you could stick a finger through all layers of floor without really trying.

So the highs had to be that fact that we are actually moving towards resolving this mess, the lows are seeing how bad it is.

Highs – Good friends who volunteer to help. Yes there are angels among us.

Lows – It’s still ugly and we have no sink for the immediate future.

Had another whammy when Erik went to work to pick up our truck. We’ve kept it at his work for a couple of weeks to dry it out – it tends to get wet with no back window in it and you live in the pacific northwest.

Well the whammy came when he went into the parking garage this morning and the truck was missing.

He had forgot to leave his employee parking permit in the window and security had the blasted truck towed. They have our license number on file – you think they could have called. Nope.
So towing fee + daily $60 impound fee (And they are closed over the weekends as well, so we automatically have to wait until Monday to get our hands on it) Cost = $500plus!!! Poor Prince Erik is kicking himself so hard he might leave bruises.

I’m laughing right now – not crying like a normal person would be. I’m also grilling my kids to see who broke the mirror or walked under a ladder because you just can’t get such bad luck. This will be one year end that will live in infamy in our family’s memories. The Winter everything went wrong. EVERYTHING! But it will pass.

So I went to our church’s Relief Society party feeling all ‘Wo Is Me’, blah, blah, and cursing my horrible luck and making my friends suffer through my whining. I was channeling the Grinch to a T. My turning point was when our Ladies president started going piece by piece through the symbols of the nativity.

Then it happened, I got a wonderful Ah-Ha, Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding moment.

Sure my house has humbled me to my knees over the past few weeks. But in doing so I’ve received an amazing gift. For a moment, at the party, I gained an even bigger appreciation for how I’ve been given this amazing experience to share with my Children.

Grinch, “Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store”. “Maybe Christmas… perhaps…means a little bit more!”

Maybe it’s remembering the most humble Christmas ever. The first Christmas! You can’t get much humbler than giving birth to the Savior of the World in a smelly animal stable.

So believe it or not I’m excited, grinning my goofy grin because I tasted the true meaning of Christmas. And I’m going to hang onto it for all it’s worth. And I’ll try my darndest to help my kids see the beauty of a simple Christmas.

And what happened then…?
Well…in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart
Grew three sizes that day!

Copy Cat Christmas

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

All the creative talent you’ve been kindly accusing me of – well it’s not really mine. I’m a great copy-cat crafter. It sure beats trying to come up with wonderful ideas on my own. I love taking other people’s fabulous finds and tweaking them to fit my style.

So I’m back to the Christmas Countdown again this week.

If you’re one of the lucky few American’s that isn’t worried about the financial impact of our messed-up economy then this post might be too much work. However if you really need to focus on keeping those two pennies safely in your pocket, so you have something to rub together then these ideas might prove amazingly within your new price-range.

I’ve started up again, one of my favorite fall traditions. And what could that be? Well it's taking a walk after a storm’s blown through. You’d be amazed at all the FREE and useful stuff you can find. Pine branches, twigs, nuts, cones, wood.

This last weekend I was able to start my forest foraging and collected some of this…

And this…

No, I’m not a squirrel saving up my nuts for the winter. I’m a copy cat artist getting ready to repeat someone else’s crafty ideas. Maybe I'll try something like this.

Normally I'd also advocate for using reuseable shopping totes. However the one exception might be to use Brown Paper bags when shopping close to the holidays. They can be used for anything from wrapping paper to cards to crafts.

So the Main thing on my list this week is to…

1. Collect your Christmas Craft Supplies. – The Cheaper the better. I will definitely be trying the frugal crafts this year.

2. Decide on your Christmas Card Design – Handmade or Store Bought. Once you’ve come up with a design check your Christmas Mailing list and divide it into four groups. Then make yourself complete at least one group of cards every week for the next four weeks.

3. Start looking this week for your family’s traditional presents. Do they get an ornament every year Hummm, I wonder…?

Or Is it Pajamas? Well if traditional presents are part of your family holiday festivities – focus on earnestly looking for or making those items.

That, and keep working on Halloween as well. Have Fun!

I've decided that with the extra material from the Halloween costumes that I made for my girls, well, maybe I'll try and make mini versions of the same thing for their Build-A-Bears. FREE! Except for my time that is. I like Free.

Hassel-Free - Yeah Right!

So I’m keeping up with my Christmas checklist. I’ve almost completed everything so far on my list, Sooooo I’m expanding it to include these three new areas.

Last week I sent poor T-rev to pull out the Halloween decorations from the spooky, rat – infested, spider-webbed cavern other-wise known as under-the-house. While he was at it I had him bring up my two heavy boxes of Holiday Lights. So on my list to do now is…

Sometime over the next two weeks – warm, dry weather permitting I’ll let Evo-man help me hang some sparkle lights on the roof. I always envision it looking something like this…

But usually get something along this line.

But with a little extra time it might turn out o.k. provided I can untangle them.

I’m also going to have my little Elf’s write their letters to Santa.








Now’s a good time because they haven’t been influenced by all the holiday commercials brainwashing them to want the latest and greatest toy. It kind of helps that we have no cable, dish or antenna right now.

Plus if they write their letters now there’s a good chance that Santa will send them something nice in return. You know reward them for not procrastinating until Christmas Eve.






That and I’ll have a better idea of what they want so I can expand my simple Christmas list.

And the last thing I’m working on is starting to tackle those Christmas lists.



I found this darling little pencil holder on clearance in an after-school shopping supply sale and I thought it would be perfect for My Holiday Planner as a Holiday Shopping Helper.




In it I keep a smaller version of my gift list, coupons, pens, and pencils. I always try to keep it in my purse this time of year so that I can pull it out when ever I’m in a store and looking for sales.
The first thing I’m going to try to accomplish on my list is gifts for family and friends that I have to mail. I’m also looking for shipping supplies and hope they go on sale.

Recap:

1. 
   Hang some Holiday Lights.
2. 
   Write Letters to Santa
3. 
   Organize my Gift List and Shopping Helper.

Only 79 more days to go...

Hassel-Free Holiday Week 2!

It’s begun, Da, da, da, dum, toodle-lou da do... The Final Countdown.

Last week I focused on collecting information for my mailing list. I’m about done making sure it’s current and should definitely have it done this week.

I also made a go at a simple quick Christmas picture, but who was I fooling. There is no way on earth I can take a simple quick picture of all my kids at the same time. The odds are greater that I’d win the lottery than get that perfect family picture. So today I just tried for the normal goof picture. How’s this? We Double-Dog Dare you to have a Merry Christmas!

Don’t worry - I probably will make another go next weekend at a more suitable holiday portrait – providing the weather stays reasonable. And maybe I’ll luck out and not dress my boys in the exact same shirts that they wore in our Christmas picture last year.

I don’t think they have wore those fetching clothes since last year either – maybe that’s why they looked halfway decent and devoid of stains. I still want to get a really nice family picture (might need to recruit a friend who either looks funny or can entertain my picky rag-a-muffins, so the picture won’t look like a torture session. But if I do a newsletter I think this here little snapshot might be o.k.

Here are some more pages for the Holiday Planner. Just click on the page and through the wonder of my husband's computer genius you'll be taken to a PDF file that you can print for your own planner. Thanks Honey! Or you can go to my other work in progress to see all the holiday pages at once.

The first one is a little Holiday Countdown To-Do List that would be perfect to start in January or even the day after Christmas this year in order to have the Ta-Da Holiday you’ve always dreamed of. I put this behind my Calendar in the Calendar section of my book.

This next little page is where you can keep track of your gift orders, be they internet or catalog.

I’ve also included a little Holiday Tradition worksheet for you to write down some of your family’s favorite traditions. Once I’ve written those precious memories down then go out and start collecting them. In my planner I have copies of the poem ‘A Night Before Christmas,’ I also have copies of some strange ritual my husband brought to us from his home and that is the famous reading of the poem ‘The Cremation of Sam Mcgee’. Yes, there are strange things done in the Midnight Sun but the queerest you ever did see… our kids get this morbid little ditty spouted off to them every Christmas Eve.’ No wonder they need therapy.

Here’s yet another page for your Holiday Planner but I’m not really doing anything with it before Christmas. It’s for after when I pack everything up. That way at any time I can find any Christmas bauble I want and I’ll know just which numbered box it’s stored in.

So this week for Christmas - Here’s is what’s on the To-Do List for, yours and mine, Ta-Da Christmas.

1. Gather poems and favorite holiday recipes to copy for my Holiday Planner. I’ve already got my poems but I’m looking to replace some of my Holiday Recipes with similar but healthier options. Some things are too sacred to fiddle with so the Danish Rice Pudding Recipe will not change. But I’m hoping to find a reasonable Thanksgiving Dressing or Christmas punch substitute.

2. Then I’m going to really tackle my bedroom closet (THE GIFT CLOSET) I know I bought some stuff last year on clearance after the holiday’s, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. So I’m going to do a little digging to find out.

3. Then I’m going to start compiling a Christmas Wish List on my Christmas Gift page (in pencil of course)

4. Oh, and finish finding those mailing addresses.