Thursday Thoughts

I’m thinking of changing this to Thursday To Do’s. Every time I sit down to write my ‘Thursday Thought’ post, I have to refrain myself from making a To-Do list, and all the goals I want to accomplish. But, I need a place to randomly express my thoughts… and this gets to be it, and if it turns into a to-do list, it’s my thoughts so it fits :) Not like I’m really that concerned about it not.

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about our home. It’s not ‘ours’ so to say as we are renters, but I would like to make it feel more like ‘ours’ as I’m sure we’ll be here for a while. So I think I want to go back to my last idea, a LONG time ago, where I wanted to take a room a month to paint, decorate, and make it feel like home - the home I want it to be, not a temporary establishment. I’m thinking of just biting the bullet and painting - it won’t cost that much and it would make it sooo much better. Granted I would have to pull the vinyl lettering off of the wall and then put it back, straight. Oh, and I would have to paint behind the fish tank… hmm that might not be so easy… I should do that before Mr. B leaves town so he can pull it out for me… I’m going to re-arrange the living room again, and I’m going to take all the stuff off of the walls to re-hang it differently.

Kitchen - repaint, and I need to figure out how to get hard grease off, it’s been there since we’ve moved in and I have tried EVERY THING and it’s just not coming off, any suggestions? I need to scrub the cabinets, and I want to take down the curtain over the sink and hang a pot/pan rack so I can have some more cabinet space. I need to clean the blinds - and organize my cupboards. I want to create one of these in my own style to go on the blank wall next to where the washer and dryer are and where the table is. I also want to hang some shelves in between the glass doors and the window above the sink.

Office - repaint, definitely. Find somewhere to move the coffee table to and organize the crap in and on my desk. Un-clutter the bookshelves and ‘fix the ceiling fan’

Living Room - paint. re-arrange the furniture (kinda back the way it was before). Paint the curtain rod. Make new curtains. Re-hang the wall hangings, spray paint the floating shelves. Hang some of my prints up, somewhere. Buy a new couch. Make a slip cover for the recliner, invest in a new rug. Can you spray paint in the house? I would like to paint the fish stand… but not sure that would be possible. Remove the old fish tank, paint the end table the same color I painted the chest. Get a low corner table for next to the door. Paint the window frame I have to make my key holder.

Man Cave - Print Mr.B silhouette on canvas and hang it, frame his posters, make a slip cover for the futon mattress.

Guest Room - Hang shelves, my prints, move in bed/dresser from master room. Organize closet for easier use.

Upstairs Hall Bath - I want to do something with it, but can’t because what I want to do would be more involved then ‘making it look like home’ as a renter :) So I’ll have to wait til we someday have a house of our own.

Master Room - paint. Invest in a new bedroom set (king sized, our full sized bed IS NOT working). New curtain rod, curtains, and re-arrange the furniture. I’d like to remove the door to the shower area, it just gets in the way, maybe just put up a ‘curtain’?

Throughout the whole house where  there is carpet I want to hire carpet cleaners to come clean it, it wasn’t cleaned before we moved in and well, it needs it severely bad. New carpet would be nice… but I don’t see that happening.

Mr.B doesn’t understand why I want to do all of this, but I just want a happy, bright, loving home. A place I’m proud to say I live. I want my home to be beautiful and reflect me, I’m tired of living in a hodge podge home. I’m thankful for what I have and that I have a home to live in, but want to make it beautiful, and I’m going to try to do it on a dime - so I can save money while doing it but still have it be the home I dream of having.

This is what I want my home to be:
”Is it a place of love, peace, and refuge from the world, as is the temple? Is it clean and orderly? As you walk through the rooms of your home, do you see uplifting images which include appropriate pictures of the temple and the Savior? Is your bedroom or sleeping area a place for personal prayer? Is your gathering area or kitchen a place where food is prepared and enjoyed together, allowing uplifting conversation and family time? Are scriptures found in a room where the family can study, pray, and learn together? Can you find your personal gospel study space? Does the music you hear or the entertainment you see, online or otherwise, offend the Spirit? Is the conversation uplifting and without contention?”

What changes do you want to make to your home?

There Once Was A Chest…

There once was a chest named… well it doesn’t have a name, I don’t name my furniture (even if I did I wouldn’t admit it here, in the open). But there was once a chest and it has lived in my room for the past 10 years - ever since my father built it and my parents gave it to me.

It used to house all the things I might need when I grew up: dishes, vases, blankets, cook books, silverware, journals, etc. Then I grew up got married and everything that was in the chest ended up in the places in our new home and it continued living empty with some stuff in it (random stuff) in my room.
 
The chest became lonely and decided that it wanted to living in the family room full of warm fuzzy blankets - so she moved to her new home, but felt a little out of place.
  
After moving the chest downstairs I thought it could use a little sprucing up, I spent quite a bit of time perusing the paint section at Home Depot trying the find the perfect not white white - and I found it: Behr Cottage White.  So I cleaned off the chest, wiped it down, and prepped it for painting.
  
I had no idea that raw pine sucked up so much! I primed it once and after an hour it was almost all sucked back into the wood - so it was primed again…..

Then after waiting and waiting while it dried it was ready to get it’s new makeover.

Can I just tell you how much I really like painting? I like the smell, the consistency, the way it glides onto the item your painting, I really like paint.

But I don’t like it when I pick up the paint gallon and tip a quarter of it out and it seeps into the cloth and below onto the wood floor…. that is not very fun to clean up - that is for certain, but it still is pretty and glossy and still smells good even when it’s on the floor….
 
The first coat is done and drying overnight, just to make sure it’s dry, and I’ll finish painting it tomorrow. Now, to figure out what hardware to put on the front for the knobs? I want to change the ones on the new TV stand as well.

In Progress

 

It was the night that I was up till 2 am trying to figure out where to hang things and what to do - it was around 11:30pm that I decided I shouldn’t be hammering into the wall - especially a shared wall, where I’m sure our neighbors were sleeping. On MLK day - I woke up (after taking Mr. B to the airport at 3am) I did almost all the laundry, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, swept, mopped, and while I was in the middle of sweeping the UPS man knocked on my door I opened it and lo and behold there was a replacement door on my front porch begging me to put it together.

So I did.

Of course that caused a chain of events - mainly me moving a 10 gal fish tank while on a stand and full of water across the floor - only spilled a little bit but while I was doing this I kept thinking I was crazy. If I spilled this I would have gravel, water, plants, etc. all over the floor, thankfully it made it safely to it’s new corner. So I moved all the furniture around and I couldn’t be happier, I will have to take a picture and post it, I don’t think I have any before images, which I wish I did but don’t doesn’t matter though because - I like it…. a lot.

Now I’m just working on hanging all the stuff I have to hang on the walls - halfway done, halfway to go. You can’t see it very well but I brought my hope chest now blanket storage downstairs (it’s what the pictures beneath the ‘D’ are standing on). I really like it. It’s an unfinished plain pine - and I have plans for it. I bought some paint Behr 1813 Cottage White and some primer and I’m going to paint it and put new hardware on it. If I get the nerve I’m going to try a stain wash on it after sanding/roughing up some of the corners, we’ll see. So look forward to those before/after.

I’ve decided against painting the walls as it’s not my home and I can make it beautiful with what it’s got and what I own.

Remember the broken door? I’ve decided what I’m going to do is remove the glass / paint it the same chocolate brown my letters are painted add some cute little hooks probably 5 of them, and add some cream/red rice paper behind and hang it on the wall behind our front door - I think it’ll be adorable.

I never thought in a million years I would turn this… homey…. decoraty…. etc.

Something New

Time to freshen up things around here as I’m freshening up myself, schedule, house, and my little world here in the world wide web. I’m setting myself on a path (the blog post for this is still in a draft).

Today was a productive day – I can’t believe that it’s already 6pm – did 5 loads of laundry folded and put away. All the dishes are clean and put away. My living room is all arranged and my new TV stand put together. I’m just trying to figure out how to put things on the walls – I have the items, just not sure how to. I’ll figure it out….  eventually.

Thursday Thoughtfulness

I decided that most of the time I read some great meaningful stuff or hear a great quote on a movie or a show, and then I forget about it later on down the road. So I’m dedicating Thursdays to thoughtfulness  - to contain all the random lovely things that I hear/read to share with all of you!

Lately I’ve been reading a book that Mr. B’s mother gave us last year for Christmas, “Simple Abundance’ it’s a daily read self-help type book, so without further a do I present the first installment on the first Thursday of the new decade… (ok, maybe I am being a little cheesy this evening..)

Time is the New Year’s bountiful blessing: three hundred sixty-five bright mornings and starlit evenings; fifty-two promising weeks; twelve transformative months full of beautiful possibilities; and four splendid seasons.

I totally love how pretty and romantic it sounds. But…

This is so for me this year. I have dedicated this year to one resolution and one resolution only and that is: Find out about me. What makes me happy? What do I like? Learn to love me. I know this might sound crazy and a little hard to believe for some of you but it is true - and it’s something that I want to dedicate this whole year to, and hopefully at the end of the year I will be someone that I love.

Many people, namely women (even me), today feel a sadness we cannot name. Though I somewhat accomplish much of what I set out to do, I sense that something is missing in my life sometimes and –fruitlessly-search “out there” for the answers.

What’s often wrong is that I think I sometimes become disconnected from an authentic sense of self.

I know on several occasions after looking in the mirror I have wondered (sometimes out loud) at your reflection, “Who is this?”. Perhaps the heart of my sadness is that I miss the woman I thought I was meant to be. I miss my authentic self, and then ponder if I really knew her. The good news? 

My authentic self hasn’t abandoned me, instead she is the patiently waiting for me to let her out, and by the end of the year, hopefully, she will be out.

But until then I take one week at a time. In the last post I showed my goals for this week, well one of my goals for last week was to make my ‘office’ (which is really supposed to be a dining room) ‘officey’. So…

One day the books won’t be all over the place and the desk will be cleaned… but for now, there it is.

This Weeks Goals

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I feel like taking things on a ‘yearly resolution’ basis is too much at one time for me to accomplish at the moment and weekly goals are so much easier to attain and achieve.



So this weeks goals are:

Get new matte for Temple Pastel (and remove barcode)
Find Portrait 5x7 to put in double black frame
Hang pictures/shelves/sconces on wall
Remove the A & D from my attempted monogram (all I can see now is “doing business as”)
Hang up vinyl saying by the “B” on the picture/shelf/collage wall
’Family – One of God’s Masterpieces’
Exercise 4x this week for at least 30 minutes
No Soda
No Sugar
Write in Journal 2x
Get to work on time everyday

So far all of these are going exceptionally well.

I finished the first season of LOST – love it, which is strange I never thought it would be a show that I liked, at least not as much as I do. Saturday my friend and I are going on a ‘Photographic Hike’ to go on a hike and to play with our new cameras – two birds with one stone right? On another note I’ve decided not to paint.

I believe that with my awesome new consistently growing skills in the home decorating/improvement genre I can make it look like a home. That is with help from all sorts of wonderful blogs, ie: The Nester, A Little Sussy, Remodeling this Life.

I’m working on remodeling my own life this year, in a few different aspects – week by week.

Next week you’ll see a new wall done up all nice and cutely like. And just because I don’t really have anything else to take pictures of while I’m shooting all on manual (BIG BIG step for me) here is the lovely spoiled feline that resides in our house (and likes the organic milk too!)



P.S. I’ve fallen head over heels for Multigrain Cheerios, why did it take me so long to find that wonderful 110 calorie delight?!

New Tank

 
You can’t tell the size very well, but here is our 55gal (4’ x 2’ x 2’) tank. It’s where our time seems to be focused lately.

Warm Fuzzies

So for this month the Visiting Teaching message at our church was ‘Service & Love’. So I put together a little gift to each of them to remember to share and enjoy thier ‘Warm Fuzzies’ – it was a hit and it was probably the most craftiest I’ve ever been. I’ve learned that I really need a hot glue gun… all of the below was done with double sided tape… for some reason lately I’ve had this little craft bone… I went to JoAnne Fabrics for some little jars, pom-poms, and ribbon – I won’t tell you how much I spent but I will tell you I saved $140. Ha! But I ended up with some great things to decorate my wall with and so excited about getting them up this weekend, especially now that I have re-arranged in here a little – and purchased a new TV stand (so we can be rid of the 10 yr old $5 dollar Wal-Mart stand – don’t get me wrong it’s been great and served it’s purpose, it’s just time to upgrade) we’ve also purchased a new 55 gallon freshwater tank and will eventually start a 14 gal Marine Tank (yes, we are turning into aquarists, and it’s fantastic!).

Here are the Warm Fuzzie’s and Happy New Year to everyone – remember my Project 365 starts tomorrow! (hopefully it will start on time and last longer than 3 days)!

 
{click for a larger view}

Minnie wishes you a Happy New Year as well!

Decorating

So remember my updating the bedroom post? I am purchasing new things for our home to decorate it little by little, here was todays:
I have been looking at these dishes FOREVER and have finally just bought them. I'm in love with them, except I wish they would all fit in our cupboard.

Decorating

I finished that A.W.F.U.L green room! It's beautiful and calm... I want to spend all day in there. Right now it's just a random furniture collecting room.

Here is the wonderful room: Finished Product!

BEFORE
AFTER:

Weekend Update

I guess you could say I've had a pretty eventful weekend. Friday after Mr. B and I both got home from work, we drove down south quite a ways (got a little lost on the way). When we got to Dave and Busters to celebrate Dawns birthday Mr. B dropped me off while he went to find a parking spot. I opened the door and started to walk in and the bouncer (no one told me the grown chuckie cheese had a bouncer) stopped me and asked me for my ID... let me interrupt and say whenever I go out with my husband I don't take my purse because I don't need it, as he has the cards and keys and whatever else we might need... yes, I proceeded to tell this to the so-called 5'6" 120lb bouncer. He said it didn't matter and kicked me out. I went outside and hysterically called Dawn and she and Dave (Kims husband) came out to get me, cause I apparently can get inside with a chaperone over the age of 30. We had a blast. I found I really like the coin drop game... if that's what you call it. We and I played for awhile and gave Dawn our tickets as it was her birthday.

Saturday, I finished painting the upstairs room!!! I'll post pictures when I have it all back together. Then we just read and hung out all day it was nice. Today we are driving to Roseville so I can meet my grandmothers nephew so he can give me all of my moms side family history! I'm so excited... I can't wait, that's the extent of my weekend.... not much of anything but hey it's something! Also, I really like www.ldsjournal.com ... it's a neat website.