The girls New Bedroom ....

Once again, I've been busy painting in a bedroom. 

Once again, it's not mine. 

Once again I've completed a goal I set for myself.

Once again, the house is a wreck everywhere else.

Once again, dishes are piled up high, 

once again clothes are ALL over the house. 

Once again, school is going to start, and all this is okay ...because I was able to take this:

Which has only gotten this bad since I cleaned back in May.  My kids have way too much stuff!!!  Time to declutter and dejunk. 

So here I've managed after a  LONG, EXCRUCIATING week of clearing out the MESS and equally dispersing of it throughout the rest of my house, yard and garage, and a few trash cans, to finally clear out the room and get it EMPTY!!  Yeah for me.   (With some minor, and occasional help from the kidlets that reside in this humble abode).   The walls were NASTY ... marked up with just about everything one could imagine, and even popper exploded on the wall.  The last time this room was painted and had clean walls was right before I had Heidi 8 years ago.  All this happened in 8 years time... YUCK.

Of course, you can see their lousy place of a closet. And all the work materials sitting up there on top. 

We moved the beds all outside so that we could paint the room.  And paint the beds. So outside they sat for about 3 days. We got so lucky that it didn't rain while they were out there either.  Although on the last day we had several storm clouds above and kept hearing the thunder so we were hurrying to finish up the paint jobs on the bed frames so that we could get them inside before any potential harm from rain.  Luckily it never rained on us though. 

So after a long week... we moved the girls back into their bedroom....   We switched up the positioning of the beds. Actually they were just like this but flip flopped.  I wanted something a little different.

 

A great find of a dresser off from KSL.  I love it!!! So now all the girls share this dresser.  Should help contro the amount of clothing each one of them can have and hold onto.

We didn't have a real border or trim around the sliding glass door so I had to "MAKE" one.  I think I did a GREAT job if I do say so myself.  And I do say so!!  The only problem left is trying to find a good window treatment solution.  Vertical blinds are not it!!  We've tried curtains and rods... and they just get ripped out of the wall.  So now I'm going to try just using some velcro attached to the wall, with the other part on the "fabric/curtain" that I decide to use.

Here's the closet area.... With a MAD pile of books that we had to rush inside for fear of rain ruining them. We're waiting to get the book case painted and then I can organize their books again on the book case that sits inside this closet area.  

I seriously feel we've outgrown this house.... someday we'll find a new place to live that will be big enough to make me feel not so cramped. 

Makeover..... part 1

Okay so lately we've been thinking about getting the house fixed up and change the look and help it feel NEW to us again. The easiest way to do this is by putting paint on the walls. Well, I set out this last week, by cleaning out the entire room that my boys sleep in. Everything is OUT!!

Some of it is in the garage and other stuff is on the front porch (sad to say it looks BAD on my porch right now). And stuff is in the living room as well. My house is BAD... it's so messy everywhere. I cleared out the boys room and then had no energy or time to do the "OTHER" things I should have been doing. Like dishes, laundry (by the way I think clean underwear is highly overrated), making dinner and such.

But who cares??? Well, I'll confess I care!! It's bugging me that I didn't get the regular household chores done so that I could turn this:

Into this.....

Still not quite finished with it yet.  It needs one more layer on the trim and borders... but otherwise it's nearly finished!!  Chris and I make such a great team... although, he says that I'm doing the second layer on the baseboards and windows and such myself, because he wants it to look good!!  A compliment!! I love it.  

So this is a preview ... and basically what it'll look like as far as colors go.  

So it isn't like I was lazy or anything, I was just using my time, energy and effort on accomplishing something different.  

Your trash becomes my treasure.....

Since my husband has had his hours cut back once again, today was the first "day" off without pay. (Because he can only be paid for 32 hours a week for now.) We enjoyed the day being together, mostly. I had a playgroup at my house, where a few of my friends from the neighborhood came to my house for a few hours. These two ladies and myself just had a great time chatting away while our children played. My husband was doing family history on our computer while they were over and afterwards we went to the Distribution Center that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints owns, to buy him more Temple Pants. Afterwards, we decided to stop in at DI on our way home.

Bought a new little toy for each of the boys, and then while walking towards the big AS IS items we spotted this nice BIG LONG solid wood TABLE!!!

Okay so you may not think it's such a big deal, but WE DO!! Because it is replacing this one that has been with our family since we moved into this house 8 years ago. It was left behind by the previous owners and it was in better shape then the one that we did have so we just left it and have been using it all this time. But no more!! We were hitting elbows and fighting over space, and couldn't place the food on the table while we sat there to eat and when anyone came over there was never any room for guests, but not now!! And now with less room in the kitchen to "place other things" I'm hoping that the kitchen floor isn't a MAGNET for all things handled by "KIDS". I can pick up my floor 2 - 3 times a day and still have a huge mess by the end of the day. So just ignore that part for now. A good scrubbing is in the works for this weekend.

The best part, we bought it at DI ( a thrift store owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) for only $50.00 !!! It's AMAZING!!! We've been needing something bigger for a while and because we haven't quite discovered how to grow money on trees we haven't been able to buy a new one. So this is truly where somebodies TRASH becomes my TREASURE!!! Next thing to work on are matching chairs. But I'll just have to settle with all of my used DI chairs that don't match either. Oh WELL!! That's life in the poor house with a family of 7!!

And seriously trying to live off 16 hours less every two weeks is going to SUCK!!! This darn recession is going to kick our butt if we aren't careful!! So FRUGAL we still need to be, but now I can enjoy my at home meals better because of this new addition.

And this darned Daylight Savings Time Adjusting is kicking my butt at the moment too!! I better get off and go get some sleep before my kids tell me I didn't want to wake up in the morning.

So tell me, What is something that you recently came across and considered a "DEAL and A Half" and better yet, what used to be somebodies trash that you now Treasure???

Valentines Day 2009 -- Not much excitement here.

Our Valentines Day's are always pretty low key. My husband and I went on our date a week ago, so that we could spend time together as a family on Valentines Day. To start off our day we had the speech therapist that will come to our home once a month to help work with our nearly two year old son -- who has a delay in speech. She came by asking questions and just trying to get a feel for our family and our little boy. She seems nice enough, and I feel this is definatley a step in a positive direction.

So after she was done at our home she left and then we didn't have anything planned. Although we did watch Waterhorse as a family after the woman left. And Chris also went to the bank so he could pull out the money needed to pay off our little darling girls for their report cards. We owed them for the last three quarters (one being from last school year). The girls were way excited and asked if they could go to the store to "SPEND" this hard earned money. So they helped somewhat with the dishes (didn't finish them all- but like I ever do) They did however come to the aide of the livingroom and cleaned up the floor for the second time that day and vaccummed. After completing this task I had an 8 year old run up to me asking me if we could go to the store right NOW. She wasn't dressed for going outside so I came back with " NO!! You aren't even dressed, you silly girl"

So needless to say all the kids got dressed, and we headed for DI -- (Deseret Industries --a thrift store) They found a few treasures that they were glad to buy. I stocked up on a few more books, that I'm anxious to read, and a few more to collect to complete the series. Afterwords, we went to Home Depot. Why?? Well for two reasons, 1) we went to buy a new kitchen faucet. YEAH!! The current one is so OLD, and it leaks into the cabinet space below. YUCK!! 2) we needed to buy a repair kit for the toilet, so that we don't have to keep turning off the water valve when it is on constantly.

After Home Depot we ran to Walmart where we bought two more towel rods to match the ones my husband bought me for Christmas, and that we are so grateful to use now. We wanted to put two more in for the kids to have a place to hang thier towels at. (Hopefully this will reduce the towels on the floor issue). We also bought a new curtain rod to mount in the girls bedroom, seeing how their old one broke to pieces and they've been without a curtain on the "sliding glass door". This, of course, will be my project because Chris already has a few to work on. We also bought a wall mounting shelf-cabinet thing to put over the toilet. I'm excited to get that up.

After leaving there, we stopped at Papa Murphey's on the way home and bought one of those heart shaped pizzas and pineapple/ham pizza as well. So can I really complain?? No !! Especially when my husband started the day by giving me a sweet card.





On the front it said

For my Sweet Wife

The love of my life

Then open it and it says:

When we fell in love,

I gave you my heart.

When we got married,

I gave you my word.

And as long as I live,

I will give you my love.

Happy Valentines Day.

Then of course, he signed it.

I also got a box of chocolates!! YUM!! Can't go wrong there.

But for our date last week, we ate dinner at a local Chinese Buffet place

and then we decided to head towards RC Willey and DREAM AWAY!!!

I do have to admit that I was a little bit SAD afterwards because I liked

some of the stuff I saw in the store but knew it would not happen anytime soon

that it would ever be in my house. But we did have fun, and we enjoy being together.

And we're just around the corner from being able to let our girls watch the younger

ones while we go out. How exciting!!

I'm starting to feel CREATIVE !!

So I'm getting an itch!! What kind of itch?? Well -- I look around at my house and feel .... bored!! We haven't done anything to our house really since we've moved in and quite frankly it's boring me -- I'm getting really sick and tired of seeing WHITE on my walls. I've been getting inspired from several friends of mine, and they've been busy painting and now I would like to paint my HOUSE!! Do something to make it feel like MINE!!! So when the weather starts to warm up a little more where I can leave doors open -- I want to paint my daughters room!! I also would like to paint my sons room too!! So I'm going to look around for some bargains, on decorations to hang on the wall and really just transform the house through the spring and summer. I know it will be a lot of work, and time -- but I should really enjoy it in the end. So hopefully I can get going on this in the next month and find some cute paints and get an idea for the type of painting that I want to do. Once I do the kid's bedrooms then I want to paint the livingroom and kitchen. And then we'll work our way into the bathroom hallway and finally finish that project up that was started about 3 years ago!! I keep saying how I want to move into a nicer house, but really mine is just fine!! I think a few coats of paint to liven the place up will be the right cure for my boredom with the house -- that and like a total decluttering that needs to take place.