Mama's Thursday Night Out

Since around February of this year, Sam has been literally sending me out of the house to have some time to myself on Thursday nights. I'm a fresher Mama afterward, much more prepared to love on my family and home the way I want to. Alone time is a funny thing - it can go the entitlement route where it's all about me, me, me (which I do not want), or it can really be a way to love my family (which I do want). It helps so much that Sam really encourages this time. He knows it's good for all of us, too :)

Tonight I had a little less time out than other Thursday nights, but it was still restful in its own way - and cold! Brrr. Have I mentioned my feelings about winter, yet? By the way, I just had our little point and shoot with me. I know my photos are never great, but tonight you'll need to be especially patient with my less than stellar photo journalism. Thanks. First off, I ran over to Target...

I'm such a paranoid nerd about germs this year. Wipe down my entire cart with disinfecting wipes? Why thank you, Target management, I think I will!



I was there to pick up a few supplies for our church's holiday shindig, Thanksmas, and also to nab a few more curtain rods. What do you know! They were on sale :)



I know I promised photos of the curtains, but it doesn't do a whole lot of good to have them washed and dried if you don't have the hardware, yet. I took the only 4 rods they had left in that style. Still need one more. And I need to iron a total of 10 more panels. Fun. But I was able to get those four curtain rods for less than $60! Yay.

After Target, I headed down the road to my usual Thursday night stompin' grounds - Barnes and Noble. I pretty much beeline right to the interior design section.



Although the holiday editions of several magazines caught my eye, tonight I had an itching to look at some architecture. If you haven't figured it out by now, friends, let me tell you a little secret... I'm a nerd. A big one. I'm always happy if I'm learning something new :)

So, I sat down with two books, a piece of Pumpkin Cheesecake and a decaf peppermint latte and got down to studying. A reader asked last week if I really feel like I learn from taking notes. Totally. Not so much at the time, but I feel like it helps me remember what I've seen and reactions that I've had to what I've seen. Over time, my notes are beginning to come together into a cohesive style and a plan. I've been adding to my notebook for about 10 months now and also saving a lot of images on my computer. Tonight's agenda, though, was architecture. Namely, woodwork.

Look! A Black Door in a book about period houses! So very affirming :)

Sometimes I write down bulleted notes. Other times I draw little pictures of photos that inspired me in some way. Some of the things I jot down are actual ideas that we could implement some day. Others are pipe dreams that will probably never make it off of the paper and into our home. But, in my little notebook, experimenting with ideas is easy, non-committal, and free :)

It's a lot of fun to think about all of the changes we're going to be making to this house. In a way, though, it's intimidating, too. That's especially the case if I feel like I have to make decisions without much confidence in my choices. By the time this whole thing is said and done, we will have spent thousands of dollars. A lot of money. I want to do what I can to form educated ideas of what I want so that our money is put to good use. And not only money - but work, too! We're pouring a lot into this house, and I want it to last for a good, long while. I've probably studied 15-20 large books this way over the last 10 months, and plenty of home magazines, too, in an effort to make good decisions with our home. I'm not suggesting that everyone do the same. Not everyone needs to! It's not all work for me either, though - I think it's fun to read and think about this stuff! :) I'm a student in my heart of hearts.

Told you... a nerd.

I usually close Barnes and Noble down. I did tonight, too. Then, I ran over to the grocery store to get some ingredients for my Thanksmas dishes and headed home. A quick blog post and that's it! Mama's Study Night is over until next week :)

One Year Frenzy-versary, Part Five: Moving In & Working On The Previous House

One year ago this week, we were sleeping in the "new" house on air mattresses. At least, Sam and I were. If memory serves me correctly, my brother-in-law had helped Sam move the children's twin mattresses and box springs over in the van. Does that sound right? Maybe it was just the mattresses and not box springs. Anyway - we were sleeping here and it was a crazy, crazy week of back and forth, loading stuff into the van and unloading it again at the new house.

We had received the keys on the evening of the 7th (a Sunday) and some of my friends and I had started cleaning pretty much right away. We listened to Christmas music and scrubbed our little hearts out. Friends are so great, aren't they? By Monday evening, we were starting to move things over, and we were officially in the nasty, nasty "transition" period in which neither house is home.



Let me give you a little tip. If you plan on making a move from one house to another house that's only 30 minutes away... you still need to pack as though the move were across 3 states. It doesn't seem like that should be the case, but trust me, it's the case. From Monday through Friday, we decided I would just go back and forth from the old house to the new house and take things as I could. I would just put them in laundry baskets and storage bins. I'm not kidding. Remember, now, Sam would be at work at this time. And my sister, although close, had a 6 week old baby and really wasn't available to help (plus, as my poor mom reminded me, she and Daddy had their own hands full an hour north - a flu bug had her in the hospital to get an I.V.!) So - the children and I were going to move the small stuff. What on earth were we thinking? I'm usually so good at visualizing details and working through a plan systematically in my head beforehand. Apparently, those powers failed me last December. It all went down like this...

We'd arrive at the old house, all the children would pile out of the van (then ages 7.5, 6.5, 4, and 22 months) and I'd hurry and put as much as I could into my various containers, load the containers and the children into the van, drive back to the new house and unload it all in the kitchen/entryway, and then drive back and do it again. With the driving, the loading, and the unloading, each trip took about 2 and 1/2 hours. I did that 2-3 times per day for those first 5 days. Friends, believe me, this is an insane way to move. Never, ever try it. Pack and use a truck like normal people. Good grief.

We did rent a truck on that Saturday, December the 13th. We brought over some of the larger furniture, but not all of it. We were planning on leaving some of it so the old house (which still wasn't quite on the market, yet) wouldn't have to show empty. I think we had chosen a realtor at this point, and we had still been working on the old house, getting it ready to sell. Remember my yellow paint swatches on the kitchen wall?



Well, they were in the family room, too.



Which meant we had some painting to do before the "for sale" sign went up. We planned on getting to it during the time Sam was taking off of work around Christmas and New Year's. While we're on the topic of getting the old house ready to sell, here's what I was doing the week before we moved...



Because our previous home was a new construction, we had had plenty of landscaping work to do after moving in five years ago. This little area was planted the spring of 2008 - we never even got to see that sweet redbud bloom. This was the first half of a pretty long bed. The second half curved around the corner of the house and met up with the deck. We planned on planting it the following spring. Woops - but then we bought a house. Better figure out a quicker plan.



So, while the little ones napped (you can see SweetP watching me through the window), I covered the area with weed barrier fabric, put some stepping stones down (which we already had - score!) and...



...filled in around the stones with pea gravel. Sam connected the area to the existing flower bed later on by filling in between with topsoil about 3-4" thick. There you go! Suburban Ohio landscaping in December, ha. It would certainly show better than a weedy, muddy mess, anyway.



So, the gravel project was on the 3rd, I think. We got the keys on the 7th, moved in the most inefficient way possible from the 8-12th, and rented a truck to move some larger things on the 13th. I don't have any more photos of the whole process until we get to Christmas Eve 2008. I guess we were busy or something. It was nuts. We made it, but it was nuts. By the time my in-laws were visiting on the 27th, I looked like this -



Let's just say that I am very thankful we aren't moving this Christmas :)

So, the next Frenzy-versary post will be a look back at our first Christmas in the new house and (finally!) putting our previous home up for sale! By the way, for those who are concerned, it did sell. We don't have two mortgages any longer, praise God. More on that later...

Hope you're staying warm!

~Jacci

P.S. When I write Frenzy-versary posts, I hope you know I'm not after some kind of weird pity. It was a wild time that, honestly, didn't seem nearly as wild *at* the time. Looking back, though, I wonder exactly how we did everything that we did. The answer, of course, is that the grace of God is sufficient. He is our Strength and our Song. We're the ones who decided to jump in with both feet. The Lord graciously gave us what we needed to carry us through and let us come out smiling on the other side :) Our One Year Frenzy-versary celebration is about looking back at this time last year and remembering all the craziness that went on in 3-4 months time, but even more than that, it's a testimony of the Lord's faithfulness and provision.


Thanks for celebrating with us!

Winter House Plans: When It's Too Cold To Paint

November was unusually mild in our part of Ohio this year. We were able to get some painting projects in before the cold snaps really started snapping. Now, however, the cold has come (we scraped the ice off of the van windows for the first time this morning) and it's probably not going anywhere for a while. The forecasted high temps for this week (without accounting for windchill) are in the upper 20s and low 30s. That means that with windchill, it will be cold. It also means that painting season is over for a little while.

So, I'm sure you've been wondering what we plan on doing to the house all through the cold, gray Ohio winter when we can't have the windows open for ventilation to paint. You haven't been wondering? Oh, well I'll tell you anyway :) If you've read about our plan to complete a foundational "first layer" in each room of the house before moving on to the fun stuff (wall art, pillows, accessories, etc.) you might have a few guesses. If we won't be painting, what's left? I'll give you a hint, we aren't replacing any floors, either. Here's another hint, Shug and I went to IKEA yesterday and came back with six packages of white Ritva curtains. Okay, that was a little more than a hint, wasn't it?



I'm in the process of washing and drying all of the curtains now (I like to pre-shrink them before hanging). Tonight, I ironed the first pair and Sam hung them around the living room window. I'll show photos soon! The other 5 pair are going around the living room sliding doors, 2 pair in the master bedroom, and one pair in each of the remaining bedrooms (bedroom 3 already has these curtains).

Then... Sam's been working away on getting the trim going upstairs. He was off from work two days last week for our window installation. He was able to get a ton of trim up! Right now, literally, he's down in SpareOom cutting and hammering away on another "header" (I cannot for the life of me remember what I should really call it) that goes above each door. Trim is going to be a BIG part of the next few months. I cannot believe how much of a difference it's already making.





And, finally, I think we're going to be able to get around to some of the overhead lighting fixtures, too. Although we're still planning on a few special lighting purchases like the one in our kitchen, we also think the house could really benefit from some old-fashioned charm in the way of something like this...



"Since about 1915, the Jefferson has been an all-purpose household lighting star." Yup, that's what we need all right - an all-purpose household lighting star! These guys are a little pricey, but our thought is that since they are period lighting they are more likely to last for a long time without looking dated. In case you're wondering, we purposefully chose a trim style that corresponds to the same time period as the Jefferson. Here's a preview...



We're really hoping for a big character boost with these choices. Because of the cost, we probably won't be able to buy too many of these lights this winter, but I'm hoping for one in the entryway, upstairs hall, and possibly in two of the bedrooms. We'll see!

By the time some warmer weather starts rolling in, we should have the upstairs hall and bedrooms in great shape for some paint on the walls and on the new trim. I'm not going to fib, it is a little hard to not just skip right past things like trim and doors in our enthusiasm to decorate, but with every checkmark we make on these foundational steps, I'm more and more convinced that they are going to make a huge impact on our finished rooms. We both know our style well enough to know how much we are drawn to a little architectural charm. More on the new curtains and trim progress coming later this week!

Thanks so much for coming back to read about our bit by bit gains, guys :) We really love to read the comments you leave!

Have a great one :)

Style Injection: Kitchen Door Project (Part Two - Reveal!)

Thanks so much for the kind comments about our new windows :) We are really loving the way they freshened up the look of the entire house. It's a big blessing, too, to have those aluminum sliders out before the chilly Ohio winter sets in!

Okay - down to business. The kitchen door. Before the holiday weekend, I shared the kitchen door project that had hit a little rut. I'm happy to say that, after some of Sam's mad wood-putty skillz, the "rut" is barely noticeable. Two coats of paint later, and she looks great.

You'll remember how the metal door that leads from the kitchen to the garage started out...

Chipping paint...

Worn-out hardware...

It needed some love, didn't it? A new door was beyond our budget for the time being, so Sam and I put our heads together and came up with a plan for next to nothing. We had an area lumber yard (yes, the old school kind!) rip some lattice boards to our specs, picked up some chalkboard paint and Liquid Nails at Home Depot, and used primer and trim paint (plus screws and wood putty!) we already had. The wood was $18 including labor, the spray paint for the hardware was around $6, and the chalkboard paint was $12. So, for a grand total of around 35 beans...

We made our old door look like a new door!

See? You can just barely see the marks from the screws now :)

Sam caulked to keep the chalk dust from settling behind the lattice, too. He did such an awesome job on this whole project. (((Thank you, Babe!!!)))

Tah da!

The photo is a little crooked, but we couldn't be more please with how the real door turned out :) We hope you like it, too!

The first post about this door project has more details about the process. You can read it here!