oVeRHauL

I have lived in my house for almost 12 years....it's hard to believe at times! There are things I would change about this house and even at times, I get so irritated with how small it is. Then I remember that at least I have a house with all the creature comforts. Anyway, the basement has been a constant irritation of mine. It has been the "dumping" ground for all our crap stuff. I swore to myself that I was going to spend the summer organizing, trashing, rearranging and cleaning up the whole basement. It was very daunting and sometimes discouraging BUT alas I think I have reached some sort of semblance of an organized space. Here are some before pictures. I show you with much agony because it's shameful! the images could be mistaken for someone on Hoarders....no joke!

AFTER

I know it still looks like I have a ton of stuff but trust me, I made a lot of dump runs and recycled a bunch of stuff and gave a away a lot too.

It feels great completing projects of this proportion.

I'm still working on different parts but for the majority of the space, it turned great!

popularity

I never was popular.....not in elementary school, not in middle school and most assuredly, never in high school.....and not much has changed since then.
and another thing.....it goes along with popularity......life is not fair......never has been, never will be....
why am I mumbling about popularity?
because I experienced a life lesson this week, that merit and hard work and committment and loyalty will never guarantee you a better position in life's sticky situations.

how will I get past this "injustice"? Only with God's help and a fervent prayer to understand His timing, His will, His plan, His ways, His peace, His love for me, His unfailing and unchanging ways.
Our lives will change, our ciircumstnaces will change, people come and go, friends come and go, jobs come and go, but God and his infinitee wisdom will never change!

one of the many songs that has helped me thorough this has been "These are the Words I would say" from Sidewalk Prophets

You Capture ~ Cute

Friends Forever

Jengo Fet & Little Red Riding Hood

My Guys

This past weekend was PERFECT for takin some fall family pictures, here are a few my very favorites!

it's just me and my Guys!

praise God in the storm....

Have you ever felt like you are the only person in the world with so much hurt, so much despair, so much worry, and so many problems. You feel like the emotions could just pull you under a wave of depression. A never ending despair.....that is how felt on Sunday. Then God delivered the most amazing message to me through my Pastor. Essentially, it was about praising God amidst the "wars" we face. A portion of his sermon came from Joshua 6. If you grew up in a church where biblical songs were taught... you will know the song "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down"....well, that's the main chorus but you get the point.
God called on Joshua to lead his people in praising God before the battle of Jericho. He was telling them to do what we would think is ridiculous! There have been several situations where praising God is the last thing I want to do. I want God to fix it or make it go away! It isn't in our selfish nature to do the Praising before the victory. We want a victory over whatever is weighing us down, and all we want is for others to pray for us (which isn't necessarily bad) and for God to answer our prayers quickly!
There are so many opportunities in my life where I should have been praising God before the victory. Now, I'm starting to realize how the praising of God in the bad times is just as important as Praising Him in the good times. We all have those days where we are the only guest at our pity parties. We get distracted by all the circumstantial stuff of life. We think it will drown us. We begin to believe the enemy is going to win us over. But, there is hope, there is a God. He is the God of Heaven and Earth. He knows our deepest thoughts, our sorrows, our joys, our problems and even holds the answers to it ALL! This week, my heart is set on praising God through the stroms I am facing. It will make the victory even sweeter!

Caravan Kids

Camping with kids can be challenging but these kids are a reall hoot to be around! It is a church tradition of sorts where we go camping with the Caravan kids. Caravans is a scouting program with the Church of the Nazarene in case anyyone out there is wondering.
This year, since I'm the 'director', I made the rule that kids must bring a parent and camp out in their own tents. Well, just four families showed up which was fine with me. The kids played really well together and we played a game where I asked different kinds of quesitons for each person to answer. It was fun and interesting to know what other people would say. We had the traditional s'mores and our fire kinda burned down quickly but it was fine because by the time we did allthtat, it was time to hit the sleeping bags.
Satruday morning came quick for me....I think I fell asleep sometime after1am? Apparently other campers don't knwo what quiet time is at 10pm. Saturday morning, we ate crockpot breakfast casserole, cereal, milk, juice, and banabas. After we straightened up a bit, we took off to explore a cave. Then we went to find a geocache. That took FOREVER! actually it took a little over an hour but the hike was a good 2 hours long. We headed back to our site, ate lunch, packed up and left! The kids had a lot of fun....I hope! Until next year......

a new front look

It has taken me forever to get this little project finished. For two weekends in September, I had planned to paint the door and the shutters on the front of the house. The weekend of the 24th, Bill went out of town for a weekend retreat so it was the perfect opportunity to get it done.

the door before

You can see my sample paint colors on the upper right of the door

shutters before

painting the trim a fresh color too

there is this hideous vinyl paneling under two of the windows

the caulking was terrible and dirty and ugly

I thought to myself, why not paint those too!

I chose the same color I used for my bedroom on the shutters and vinyl panels

Toffee Crunch

Behr Premium

THE BEST PAINT EVER!

My 'derduhder' moment came when I realized that I was painting with interior

latex paint (my leftover quart from the bedroom was going to save me some money!)

I had to run back to HD and get a quart of exterior

$15.00

The trim color (Lightweight Beige) was another $15.00 and

the Red Delicious for the door was $15.00

for less than $50.00, it was well worth the money

Somebody was just DYYYYINNNGGGGG to paint!

He was relentless

I told him where to paint

that lasted a whole 10 minutes

then I secretly went back over the flaws

I love my fresh Mums....I love the Autumn season!

my cute little Welcome sign....had it in a drawer waiting for the perfect place!



The shutters and the trim look fantastic!

don't ya think?

I didn't take a before of it, but I removed landscape timbers that ran along the front of my beds of mulch, that project will come sometime in the spring with tax refund money!



the best picture I could get while the sun was still shining...

Side note as I was paining, I couldn't believe that I had never thought of doing any of this sooner.

I guess I was insecure in the thoughts of what I should do to make the front look a little better.

Sometimes, all it takes is just taking the risk to do something different and to heck with all the insecure thoughts about what is right or wrong. This was so inexpensive and for the most part easy. I usually don't toot my own horn, but I think I did a great little job at sprucing up the front of my house!