Bedroom Makeover

As a birthday present to myself I gave our bedroom a makeover! I had saved some babysitting money and my parents gave me money for my birthday, and it was way past due for a facelift. We really didn't have the resources to do much to it when we were finishing the house so we just put our old stuff back when we moved back in. I've never really liked the comforter and bedskirt and we had nothing on the walls, but we had to make due with what we had for a while.

I got a new comforter set which ended up being really dark once it was on the bed, so I added the throw, and pillows to lighten it up a little. An ottoman to go at the foot of the bed and some wall hangings. We did get new nightstands (which you can't see in any of the pictures) when we moved back in, we had been using tv trays, can you say dorm room??? I'll still add some decorations as I find things I like, but it's much better for now. And I really want to get new sheets, but dang, king size bedding is expensive! Which leads me to the story of how we got our bed in the first place...

We had a full size bed for the first 5 years of our marriage. It was my old college mattress, it sunk down in the middle, it made our backs sore, we hated it. I survived through my pregnancy with Clae sleeping in that thing and vowed that I would NOT go through another pregnancy in that bed, well I ended up making it through my pregnancy with Lydia in it too (it actually wasn't as bad). But I just kept wondering how we were ever going to be able to afford a new bed, I thought about it every morning when I got up, to the point that I would drive myself crazy about it. One morning I prayed, "Lord, I am done worrying about this bed, I pray that you would provide one for us in Your perfect timing." And I was DONE with the bed thing, for all I knew we would have that bed for the rest of our lives.

Later that day, I am not kidding, the SAME day, my pastor's wife called and asked me "do you guys need a king size bed?" "Uh, yah," I told her. She knew someone who was getting a new bed and had a two year old king size Serta mattress and box spring and frame she wanted to get rid of. She didn't want any money for it, she just wanted someone to take if off of her hands to make room for her new bed. All we had to do was go get it. So we called her and arranged a time to pick it up. She even ended up giving me a set of sheets, so I didn't have to buy any. And I still had a king comforter and bedskirt (the ugly but useful ones) that used to be my mom's that I was holding onto just in case. So we ended up paying ZERO dollars, ZERO, for a king size bed that we absolutely LOVE. We have since gotten a memory foam pad to go on it, and I bought a pair of flannel sheets for $14.99. But that is all the money we put into it until now.

There is not a night we get into our bed that I am not so grateful for the blessing that God provided for us. And now it looks pretty too!

A Saturday in January

We really don't have anything 'post worthy' going on but I thought people were probably sick of seeing the pink applesauce post sooo...I just took some pictures of our day hanging around the house. This is a pretty typical Saturday for us in the middle of winter.

7:00am
I had just gotten up and changed and ready to hit the treadmill when I heard some little footsteps. So I made the kids some breakfast and did my workout while they were eating.

8:00a
done with breakfast and workout, the kids went upstairs to do their usual thing, playing, usually while a movie is playing in the background. Their favorites these days are, Tangled, Toy Story 2 or 3, The Man from Snowy River and Return to Snowy River.

I got in the shower and afterwards did some experimenting with my hair. I have been really sick of my hair lately, I have always had difficult hair, wavy on the bottom, straightish on the top, so I either have to straighen it or curl it, or something that always seems to take a lot of time. I usually straighten it, but I thought I might try the curly route again. I don't know. If anyone has any pointers, things that have worked for them, or products they like, I would take any advice. And I am determined to keep it LONG that's part of the problem, I could cut and and eliminate some of the problem, but I really want long hair.

9:00a-The Cheeto Incident
If anyone knows Toy Story 2, you know the part where Al falls asleep eating a bowl of puffy cheetoes. That scene even makes ME crave cheetoes. Anyway, the other day the were watching Toy Story 2 and Lydia asked me, "do we have any of those cruchy things." Cheetoes are not something I keep on hand but I thought we could have a little treat so I bought some when I was grocery shopping. Every morning since Lydia wakes up and asks for cheetoes for breakfast, of course I did not allow her to eat cheeotes for breakfast. So, yesterday I got out of the shower (after already being asked 20 times that morning if she could have cheetoes) and Lydia anounced to me "we eat upstairs." Before I could ask her what they ate upstairs (eating upstairs is not allowed by the way) I caught a wif of something cheesy. They had eaten 3/4 of a jar of cheetoes. And UPSTAIRS no less! Appropriate disciplinary action was taken.

10:00a-Balloon Drama
They had both gotten a balloon at the bank the day before, Clae's balloon popped. Big fits were had. Clae holds VERY tightly to possessions and gets very upset when something gets lost or broken. We are trying to teach him how to grieve for the lost/broken thing and move on, not let it haunt him for weeks. And trying to help him not to put so much value on material things.

10:30a-Cookie Baking
Clae wanted to make cookies, I didn't see any reason not to, so we did. He wanted to make the kind with frosting. That's too much work. We made chocolate chip.

11:00a-Clean-up
The loft is usually a mess, I included a picture of what is usually looks like. And pictures of them helping clean it up. Lydia is pretend vacuuming, Clae is real vacuuming. The loft looked much better, now I think it's a mess again!

11:30a-Chill out time in the reading corner & a visit from Grandma
Aunt Melissa got them each bean bag chairs for Christmas, so now we have an official reading corner. Their favorite books right now are the "My First Little House" books. We got several of them for Christmas and read them ALL THE TIME. Every book starts out the same "Laura lived in the little house with her Pa, her Ma, her big sister Mary, her little sister Carrie, and their good old bulldog JACK." They have this part memorized and when they recite it, they always have to put A LOT of emphasis on the JACK part.

My mom hadn't seen them in several days so she stopped by for a quick visit.

12:00p-3:00p- Lunch and Naps
LOVE nap time!

4:00p-Laundry
Always plenty of laundry to be done around here on a Saturday

5:00p-Make dinner
I knew we were going to be home all day so I put a ham in the oven earlier in the day. And for dinner made one of the heaviest meals I make. Ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, noodles, and green beans, and of course pink applesauce, what meal around here is complete without pink applesauce.

6:00-8:30p
dinner, baths, family time, bedtime prep, bedtime.

9:00p-Daddy and Mommy time
There is a rare occasion that the kids go to sleep in good time and Kirby and I actually have time to watch a movie together, and tonight was one of those nights! We watched Moneyball, I had never heard of it and had no idea what it was about but Kirby had ordered in from Netflix and it was really pretty good.

11:30
One of my favorite parts of the day...crawling into my warm, comfortable bed and lights out!

Pink Applesauce

I made my first batch of pink applesauce in my new sauce maker. We LOVE homemade applesauce at our house, it is so much better than the kind you buy at the store. My mother-in-law would make it a lot and give some to us, but I could never get mine to turn out like her's, so when we were staying at their house she taught me how she does it.

This is the Sauce Maker she got me and my sisters-in-law for Christmas.

In the past when I tried to make applesauce I would always peel the apples, cook them, and mash them and my applesauce was always lumpy and the consistency of mashed potatoes, it wasn't very good .

The way she taught me to do it is to leave the peeling on while cooking the apples and when they're cooked put them through a food mill.

This is what she uses and what she taught me to use. Her's is old but I found one on amazon.com and it's called a chinois. This works great, you just have to stop every once in a while and scrape out the peelings because they will clog it up.

I asked for on of these for Christmas, but someone recommended the sauce maker to her (pictured above) so that's what she got us and I LOVE it. You don't have to peel or even core the apples, just quarter them and cook them. The machine pushes the sauce out of the strainer and all of the unused material (peeling, core, seeds) come out the side, it's so easy.

It does take a little bit more work to put it together and then to take it apart and clean it, so I will have to plan to make a lot of applesauce at once when I do it, it's not worth making small batches, it would end up taking a lot more time. With the chinois it is easy to clean, so I could make a small batch if I were in a hurry and clean up the mess quickly, but not so with the new machine.

My two favorite choices of apples are Golden Delicious and Jonathan (Jonathan apples have red skin and that's what makes the applesauce pink - the kids LOVE the pink) I know there are a lot of different kinds you can use, those are just the two I prefer. And, depending on the apple, I do sweeten it with sugar some. If you get a really ripe Golden Delicious they are sometime sweet enough that you can get by without using any sweetener.

I lived on this stuff when I was pregnant with Clae, so before I get pregnant again I wanted to make sure I had this process perfected so I can be prepared. Now I just need to get good at making homemade bread and I'm all set!

Cookin'

Lydia cookin' in her new pink kitchen. This was before the post Christmas toy organization, you'll notice the huge mess in the back ground.

Aunt Sissy got her the apron and chef's hat