debor026

Please, please, PLEASE ignore my flood curtains. I am moving the green curtains upstairs (only cream down here soon) but I haven't finished their replacements yet and they're a little short. As many of you know I am completely over the moon about finding the KnockOffWood blog. I have SO many projects in the works right now, some from her plans and some of my own design, now that I'm inspired to be creative. I have just finished off one of my family room projects that I was inspired to create after going through the easy plans at KnockOffWood. Note, this is not one of her plans but I did adapt some ideas from there. If you're interested in doing something similar I have posted below the steps I took in making the shelves. If you've never built something yourself before I would highly recommend checking out Ana's site and looking through some of her instructions first as she gives some really easy to follow instructions and tips. I decided that I didn't ...

Still catching up on my backlog. Here are some shots I took of my oldest son's birthday party last month. He is very much into all things military (games, toys, etc) so I thought that an army party would go over well. I made sure all of the little soldiers were set up with helmets, binoculars and dog tags. Since the girls were revolting a little (not so into army stuff) I added little pink bows to their helmets/party hats and that seemed to make everyone happy. To keep the kids occupied I gave them a scavenger hunt, disguised as military "missions". As they completed each mission a clue for a new mission was waiting for them. They had to: ~ Rescue their comrade (I tied up a teddy bear and put him in the laundry room) ~ Observe and report (Tell me about some objects in a particular room) ~ Cooperate to help our allies retreat (Get 5 army men and bring them back) ~ Traverse a mine field (Obstacle course in the living room) ~ Sneak through enemy territory (Get to the k...

I'm still here. I know it's been a month since I posted and all I can say is I was fighting with being overwhelmed. I have enough to occupy 40 hours a day when I only get 24 and something had to give for a while. I felt much like the picture above. Like I had so much to get done and only this little window available to me. Anyway, so I am simplifying. If I have disappeared from your follower list please know that it is nothing against you or your blog personally. I have trimmed my list from roughly 130 sites down to 60 as I've found that to be a good manageable number. I am still taking pictures (and I'll post some of those tomorrow) but I won't be taking pictures everyday. The simple reason is that if you work all day, come home to do homework and make dinner, get all the chores done and then try to fit in pictures every night then at some point you have to concede that the rest of your life isn't possible anymore. And that's a concession that I ca...

Yesterday was Dr. Seuss' birthday. I don't really read many of his books to my kids (we only have a couple) because I never forgave him for being mean to me when I was a kid. I was in the 2nd grade and he had come to our school. He was signing books in the library if you bought one but if you didn't (and I had no money) he wouldn't even say hello, much less give you an autograph. As an adult I'm guessing it was because he didn't have a lot of time but I was very disappointed and didn't understand. And I realized yesterday that under the right circumstances I can hold a grudge for a very long time. Here it is, more than 20 years later, and I still remember that every single year. I was talking to Eric about it last night and today he wrote this for me: "Buy my books!" said the strange man. "I'd love to, but I have no money!" I began. "But someday I'll have a job, and kids too!" "You have no money today?" h...

In my last post I showed you an unfinished preview of the table I've been working on. I have finally completed it and can't wait to encourage you to check out the site I got the plans from, knockoffwood . A similar table is almost $400 from Pottery Barn and I made it for $25. Can't beat that. Plans for the knockoffwood table are here . To start with, cutting all of the pieces took me about 1/2 hour. It took me 4 hours to assemble it, so clearly I'm not very fast yet but I'm improving as I go. I went with two coats of stain and three coats of poly. The layers of finshing themselves didn't take long at all but it took me about a week just because of drying time (8 hours per layer of stain and 5 per layer of poly because it's been snowy cold here). When cutting the pieces I labeled the end of each with the letter from the plans to make it simpler later. I messed up a little on one of the aprons as I cracked the spacer apart even though I had predrilled. ...

Some of you may remember that a few months back I found one of my boys giggling over underwear models in a catalogue. Well, my other son plays computer games and when he wins the game it says that he's "Victorious". A few weeks ago, while we were in the mall, he saw the Victoria Secret sign and thought that Victoria is the same as Victorious... He REALLY wanted to go in there. I figured it would be bad form to tell him that Victoria Secret isn't the same as Victorious until he's much MUCH older, so I just said no. Between them, I'm doomed. GIVEAWAY : On a completely unrelated note, if you haven't checked out knockoffwood yet, do it now, right now, and enter for her $50 gift card give away. But do it today because she gives it away tomorrow. And after you enter, pick a project to work on because this is what's going on in my garage right now and it's all from her plans .

Today is my blogiversary and my birthday. I have been blogging for exactly a year, which I started on my 30th birthday . 1 year of blogging 31 years of life 200 posts So many new friends I have blogged about my kids and the crazy things they say (or the embarrassing things that I do). I've talked a lot about growing up , my sisters , and written several posts for "Life By Mom's Rules: A Survival Guide" . We moved and we painted . And painted and painted and painted ... There were a few scary moments with family, some turning out well and others not and one of those moments I'll even call a miracle even though I'm not really religious. I confessed 30 secrets , a project inspired by spudballoo . I dreamed about going to Blog Camp in Denmark but was unable to go so Julie suggested a camp here timed to match up with Blog Camp 2.0 there (a Blog Camp Reno ). Some great people ( Ali/McGillicutty , rxBambi , AnOpenHeart and Zena the "non-blogger" ) c...