I'm still around....barely

October was a wild month.  And not necessarily in a good way.  Honestly, I'm glad it is over and I'm hoping November will be better.   I'm not quite sure what happened but here is what I managed to do and not do.

-Worry, stress and fret about our cabin getting finished before the snow falls. That's always productive right?  Especially when you can do nothing about it.

It's coming along and our builder is optimistic...but now we are literally going day by day and watching the weather.  I'm not sure though....although the stuff that needs to be completed on the outside is making progress it is still not completely done. 

-Spending an unbelievable amount of time on the HOA board for our cabin development.   It has turned out to be an absolute nightmare trying to deal with all the issues and problems up there along with having to work with different personalities on the board, some harder to get along with than others.   To be honest, it has taken a lot out of me. 

-Volunteering my time working with a refugee family from Rwanda.  Although I am very grateful for this opportunity that I have, it has been a challenge to meet with them once a week.  Initially I thought I would be going up to Salt Lake in the mornings to help them when my kids are in school, but they like me to come late afternoon when their children are home to help translate.  The parents know very little English and my Kinyarwanda and Swahili are a bit rusty.  Late afternoon is not an ideal time as my kids are also home and needing to be parented.  So, I try to make it work.

-Being a mom.  That's right.  I do have 4 kiddos that need me around to help with school work, carpool them here and there and everywhere. A house that needs to be cleaned on occasion and laundry that needs to be done.  Home lunches?  Nope not a chance this month.  Even dinner has been pretty sketchy lately.  Kids that struggle being responsible and like to throw fits.  Yep, got that as well.

-Soccer x 3.  Just finished our last soccer game of the season last Saturday.  I will admit.  I am relieved.  No more games, no more practices for now.

 

-Halloween - Sketchy this year at best.  Chase's costume consisted of a last minute stop at Smith's and grabbing Captain America off the rack.  Owen settled on wearing our black morph suit that we've had for 3 years.  I didn't even get a picture of Owen.  The other 2 boys were on their own.

This is a downer post I know, but October wasn't a great month for me.  Simple as that.  The good news is that the HOA board just made a few decisions that have taken a huge weight off me and even though I have no idea about a finish date for our cabin, I feel so much better.

Here's to a better November!

Halloween Craft

Between my regular duties, building a cabin, being on an HOA board and doing some volunteer work with a refugee family, this fall has been crazy for me. I didn't plan it this way.  The volunteering was supposed to start last spring.   The cabin was supposed to be done in the summer.  And I had no idea how time consuming this board position would be.  But, sometimes these things happen and you just have to roll with it and do your best.

Despite my schedule, I had a crazy desire to do a Halloween craft.  I don't have a lot of Halloween decoration because every time I decide to go buy some I come home empty handed because everything I find is either cheesy or gory.

I saw these adorable ghosts on my beloved Pinterest and decided to make them with the boys on conference weekend.  They were quite easy to make and turned out really well.

Now, I can put my crafty side to sleep again.

Cabin Update

Are we done yet?  No.  Not even close.  The combination of super slow county departments and inspectors and workers that won't show up, we are in desperation mode now.  The snow is coming soon and if we can't get the outside of the cabin complete and the septic and propane installed we are in big trouble.

We finally got our cedar siding delivered a few weeks ago.  Guess who got to stain it all?  Me with a very amazing helper.  We stained over 400 boards in 3 days.  I haven't been that sore or tired in a very long time.

We had quite the system going.  A staining area followed by a drying area that continued down our driveway.

This is a lot of wood drying.  The worse part was not the staining.  It was moving all that wood to the different areas and then stacking it back up. Those boards are heavy!

 

All was going well until we got a call from the builder telling us that we are required to spray flame retardant on pretty much everything up there that could possibly start a fire.  Not only is it outrageously expensive, it makes all your stained wood look like painted wood.  Not what I want in a cabin.   But I won't go there anymore as the story gets even more ridiculous.  Let's just say we are required to follow application instructions that are not even on the bottle.  I was close to tears at one point.

 

 

 

The hangers finally showed up to hang the siding.  Yeah!!  It looks really good and was going
smoothly,  until another worker doing another job decided to dig up the main power line to the house. Everything came to a halt until the Rocky Mountain Power people decided to come up and re-pull all the power line and inspect it. But of course, they had to get lost which set us back another day.  At this point, nothing surprises me now.

 

  

While I'm working like a dog outside staining wood, Scott is working like a dog inside laying down flooring (which looks great) and hanging cabinets.  He was going up after finishing work, working until the wee hours of the morning and then driving back home.   We didn't want anyone telling us we were the ones slowing down the process.  There were a few hiccups (of course) but those 2 jobs are complete.  

So that is where we are at.  The hangers are still hanging.  Our builder is putting up trim.  We've got another guy who is working on the septic and propane outside and the weather is supposed to turn bad this weekend........ To be continued.

The Magic of Tidying Up

About a month ago as I was perusing Pinterest, I happened upon this delightful little book.  It looked cute and was on a subject that I have no fear of....tidying up and purging.  Plus it had the words "magic" and "life changing" in the title.  For only $10 how could I not buy such a book?  With about 3 clicks on Amazon it was mine.  It was only after I read it and googled it online that I realized it is an extremely popular book right now with quite a cult following.

I'll spare you a review on the entire book, but let me tell you what I found life changing and magical.   It's a fairly simple idea.  I have always folded my clothes, stacked them on top of each other and then put them away in either a drawer or shelf.  This method is different.  You roll/fold your clothes in a "special" way and line them up in your drawer so you can see all of your clothes at once.  No more rifling through your drawer trying to see what is in there.  Your drawer stays neat all the time!

Example 1: Chase's shirt drawer.  Before I started rolling his shirts,  his drawers were always messy.  I would put the folded clothes stacked on top of each other in the drawer and by the end of the week they were a mess because he couldn't see all of his shirts.  I have been rolling them like this for about a month now and his drawer stays neat.  All he does is open the drawer and pick out his shirt for the day.  He can see them all at once.  Amazing!  And I can say that for all of my other drawers in the house that I have converted.

"What if I have too many shirts to fit in the drawer?" you ask.  You know the answer to that right? It's really the key to keeping anything tidy. 

 I am seriously blown away by this idea.  How on earth have I never thought of this?

Is it a perfect system?  No.  There are a few things I've had to tweak a bit, but I am completely sold on this idea.  I will not fold and stack anymore.

Although this lady focuses more on drawers, I have a lot of clothes on shelves.  I decided to fold my jeans and sweaters the same special way and line them up.  I know these shelves aren't that bad to start with, but what do you think?  Better?  Yes!  And I don't disturb anything underneath. 

This lady has a very specific way to fold things and there are a multitude of YouTube videos and websites devoted to her method.
Google either of these and you will be overwhelmed by the information out there.  Happy Folding!

The Marie Kondo method
KonMari folding method

Laundry 180

Have you ever done something a certain way, convinced it was absolutely the best way to do it and then all of a sudden you realize maybe it wasn't the best way?   That has happened to me a number of times.

Here is the latest one.  Laundry.  Up until a year ago, I was completely convinced that doing a load of laundry a day was the best way.  I was always caught up and I never had to look at piles of dirty laundry growing almost minute by minute.  In fact I almost felt snobbish at how good I was at doing a load a day and getting that load folded.

But here is the bad part.  I hate putting away clothes.  Hate. It. So. Much.  Although I was great at washing and folding I totally sucked at getting them into the drawers.   Add to that hate was the justification that I was just going to do another load the next day so why bother, the folded clothes would just stay piled up in baskets in the laundry room.  2 things happened.  My laundry room turned into the changing room and every day I was faced with the reminder that the clothes needed to be put away and I didn't want to do it.

Last year on a whim I decided to try a different way.  I picked Monday as my laundry day and I did all of it on this day.  Dreamy I tell you.  It makes for a lot of folding but it gets all done and put away.  I can totally put away clothes (or have my boys do it) once a week, knowing that I won't have to do that awful job for another 7 days.   I don't even think about laundry for the remainder of the week.  I initially thought the piles of dirty clothes would bother me.  Nope not at all.  Couldn't care less.

Now, all those crazy people that do laundry every day.  What are they thinking?  Clearly this is the best way to do laundry!!



 

A punishment

The other night Owen got in trouble and was not allowed to play with friends for the day.  I thought this would be a punishment for him because he loves to play with friends and doesn't seem content if he doesn't have one over. 

After a few minutes of casting about trying to figure out what to do, he decided to look up a Lego gun tutorial on YouTube and build one.  He spent most of the evening building and finished it right before bed.  It's quite an impressive gun.   I don't think that was really a punishment at all.

A much loved recipe

Many years ago, we received a Christmas gift from one of Scott's old mission companions and his wife.  It was a small bag of granola with the recipe attached.  We loved the granola and still make the same recipe to this day.  Can you tell it's been used a lot?  It is such a good basic recipe.  One that you can add things or take things out or exchange one thing for something else if you feel so inclined.  And it always tastes good.  We make it often and have found that we still stick with the original recipe except for a few small changes.  We add 1 C. unsweetened coconut and instead of sliced almonds, I buy whole ones and chop them up.  I love chunks of toasted almonds.

The best part is how easy it is to make.  I buy a lot of the ingredients in bulk and store them in my freezer.  When I'm ready to make some it take me no more than 3 minutes to dump all the ingredients in my kitchen aide and mix it up.  It is on the cookie sheet and ready to go in the oven in 5 minutes.