progress of our new homestead

This is our actual house under construction. The windows are in. The nice landscape in the forefront is our neighbors front yard. This angle of the house shows the very front alcove window of the room that will be my "thinking spot", then the little high windows of the jack and jill bathroom, next are the two windows of the third bedroom, and then the dining room window.

the simple joys of food

I have been putting more effort into meal preparation and care. Sundays have become my most focused meal of the week. A good Sunday meal requires a purposeful dessert. I choose to make an angel food cake served with strawberries and whip cream. Fred loves angel food cake. So I baked it last night. Fred had a piece last night before bed.

See......... He made me proud.

vacuum buddy

On Friday there was no school, no work for me. I got up and sat around not feeling too motivated. I watched several episodes of Friends and finally made myself get up to do something. I picked vacuuming. I vacuumed the kitchen and then went to change out the hose to attach the beater bar....no go. No electricity to the unit. That was the end of that. Fred looked at it and determined it was electrical. We found ourselves at Costco Saturday night. There was a Dyson rep there and we bought a new vacuum on the spot. Certainly not the way we typically roll, but it seems we aren't rolling the same way lately... So this is my new vacuum buddy. There was an alarming amount of dust and fuzz after vacuuming last night. Eewww....

My Dad

Here is my Dad. He is 87 years old. He has his own home repair business. The last several months he has had very little work. We did some brainstorming and decided it was time for him to do some actual advertising. All his work has been word of mouth. He was able to barter to get this sign work done on his truck. Isn't it Awesome! He is also putting up his own website. I hope I have some of his longevity, energy and work ethic. I need to start working on it now, if I want to catch up to him.

Need home repair? Give this guy a call!

A New Bundle of Baby Boy

Here's my Shannon. Baby is due August 4, 2012

feng shui/memory lane

I've been puttering around the house this afternoon and found this book I bought several months ago. I started leafing through it. I was reminded why I bought it. It is very insightful to what clutter can do to our home. Of course, I'm reading it in Fred's behalf. I declutter all my stuff constantly, but Fred is the master of cluttered feng shui, but he doesn't even know it.

So anyway on with my story....as I'm headed out the front door I see this little wall decoration that I made in homemaking when Corinne was probably two years old. I asked Fred what it was doing on the stairs. He said I needed to fix it. The lace on her skirt has been dangling for years. I thought to myself that I had been thinking of fixing it for years, but never bothered.

This is Corinne's first writing of her name in history. See the C O R I N N E Naughty Corinne for ruining Mommy's homemaking masterpiece!

I felt I was obligated to fix it and continue to save this little part of our history forever....even to hang it in the new house. BUT the thought came to me TAKE A PICTURE and blog it.

So here you have it. Now I can throw it away and be at peace with that decision. Sorry Corinne.

I believe in decluttering. I read in this book today that holding on to past clutter and things prevents us from moving forward with our lives. I'm totally into moving forward!

personal revelation or the feel good moment

This morning as I was driving to work and having my morning prayer in the car, I came upon a thought process that was quite revealing and comforting. Too often I hear many of us (me included) saying something to the affect that people are trying to portray how ideal their life is and hiding their miseries or challenges. That we don't want people to see our weaknesses or problems...well there may be some truth to that, but this morning part of my prayer was gratitude for people (whose blogs I follow) who post fun and happy moments of their daily life. As I read some posts sometimes I catch myself thinking "yeah so you are sharing this perfect picture, but I know your life isn't perfect".....Quite honestly how wonderful is it that as we are drudging through our day we recognize our moments of joy and fun and then want to share it with others who care. That is how we get through our day to day moments. I don't know if any of us experience a perfect day, but everyday I know there are glimpses of joy, gratitude and hope.

Thank you friends for caring enough to share your joys and not shying away from sharing to avoid making others feel bad that their life is not as perfect or fearing someone might think you are trying to prove that you are. We are all the same.