Living Small

For our anniversary this weekend, we went to a bed and breakfast. We got to stay in a Texas Tiny House and oh it was so wonderful! I've been wanting to see inside one of those tiny homes for a long time. Saturday morning after breakfast, the owner gave us a tour of the other tiny homes as well as the other buildings they have on their property. He had done all the remodeling and building on the other homes (not the TTH ones) and S and he enjoyed talking woodworking for a while. It was way better than staying at a hotel!

We would absolutely love to live in one of these one day but....what to do with the children? Hmm. Details, details.

To the left when you walk in. 

Straight ahead when you walk in. 

To the right of that window. The ladder leads to the loft and bed.

A view of the whole living room from the loft. 

Looking back at the front door. 

To the very right when you walk in, is the kitchen. 

Looking up at the "bedroom."

The bath. River rock on the shower floor and ceiling tin on the walls. 

 One thing that sets the Texas Tiny Homes apart from other tiny homes is they use 90-something percent repurposed materials.

Salvaged sink.  When is the last time you saw 2 separate faucets?

Old windows saved from another house or building.

Old doors with doorknobs just like in my grandmother's house. 

All these antique details are really neat. 

And OH! the beautiful smell of all the wood! The hardwood floors were also antique. It was just beautifully made.

Good-bye Little House! We would love to live in you one day!

It's easy to imagine, while you are staying there, that you could actually live that small. Then you come home and walk abound your regular house and think HOW? Well, we don't need to go that radical with our simplifying right now, but I do wonder how much less we could live with.

I mean, instead shelves full of games, couldn't we just have a few decks of cards? You can play a lot of games with cards! Books are important, but you could get a Kindle or a Nook and do without shelves and shelves of books. (I don't want to, but you could.)

The bigger the area you live in, the more you fill it. If there is a shelf or mantle, you have to put things on them. We definitely do not live with just the necessities. And if we ever did get a tiny home, it would have to be bigger than the one we spent the night in. Still, I would love to go smaller. How about the Ingalls' home? That one would work just fine for me.

Except with A/C.

Hey, we're talking about simplifying, not losing our minds!

The Hobby I Didn't Ask For

Wanna know what I do in my spare time?

I talk to insurance companies, doctor's offices, and pharmacies on the phone. It's a load of fun.

You remember, I'm sure, that I was in the hospital twice last year? (Once to have Baby Bee, and 2 weeks later again.) Well. We owe a LOT of people money. Doctors, anesthesiologists, labs, etc. And of course many of them have, how shall we say, issues with the billing process.

So I call.

And now S has been put on insulin. That's a good thing! But since he works full time, it's up to me to make appointments, call in re-fills, ask questions, schedule things, etc.

So I call.

No, Important Lab Company, we do not, in fact, owe you $400 for blood work for my husband. We have insurance. Oh, it was denied? Interesting.

Hello? Insurance Company? Why were we denied? Oh, you never received a claim? Interesting.

Then we proceed to have a conference call between me, Important Lab Company, and Insurance Company. They have the wrong billing code. They didn't know that this one big insurance company bought the other insurance company. OK-we'll try again.

Repeat process the next month. Call also to get them to stop collections.

Oh its fun.

You should get a hobby like mine!

The Wisdom of Little Bit

She's been using my camera again. She was experimenting with turning the light off and on in her room to make the dollhouse windows appear like night and day. And this is what I found...in this order:

Still sleeping...

Good morning!

Making Daddy's lunch...

Getting ready for work...

Here's your lunch dear...

Mmwah!

And then....

Wait...what???

What does she know? She's asleep at that time of day anyway!

Party Time

My parents will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary next month. I am very pleased to be planning a reception for them. What a wonderful thing to have your parents make it to this milestone!

We aren't very fancy people, however. As my sisters and I were shopping around last weekend for things, we found there was a fine line to walk in balancing our casual nature with the need for a fancier occasion. Gold Solo cups are not really the look we're going for, you know? Even if everyone in our family would be just dandy with those!

The gold theme can be taken overboard!! Image from my Pinterest board. 

We've run into problems with the color gold. It turns out that gold doesn't translate well to paper goods. Some of the napkins and cups and plates we've found have a color on them which can only be described as "poo." Seriously. It's like mustard mixed with brown. It's very odd.

Or, you can really get fancy and go metallic with your gold. I think the cake pictured above is a good example of why you don't really want to do that.

And I kept joking about those honeycomb wedding bells. Turns out they really do still sell them. But, we shall refrain. In fact, there was a whole section of 50th anniversary decorations which looked to be better suited for use at a party in Granny's dining room than a reception at the church building. Oh it's hard trying to be dignified!!

The main source of stress this week was the invitations and guest list. Of course, I needed my parents' input for the guest list. And my mom's address book. I think they have figured out who all they would like to invite. I told them they have until Thursday to add/delete names from the list. They've done very well considering I only told them about the reception on Saturday!

Next up is the gift. I've just been stealing all my ideas from friends who have already planned 50th anniversary celebrations for their parents. (Yes, I think this DOES mean we are getting old, but not very many of them planned their parents' 50th while pregnant! Not sure what that says about me.) So one friend bought a beautiful wooden box with a picture inset in the top and an engraved plaque on it. It was lovely. Inside went all the cards people sent. But, we haven't been able to find such a box!

The other idea (from another friend) was rocking chairs. They were really cute sitting there at the reception for the honored couple to sit in and later to use on their porch. Then I looked at the prices. Hmm. We'll see about that one. Any ideas?

Here is my parents' wedding photo that we used on the invitations. Don't you just love it, even if you don't know them? You might can tell their wedding was not the fanciest in history. Which is good news for us if we decide to go with those gold Solo cups at their anniversary.

Living Small

For our anniversary this weekend, we went to a bed and breakfast. We got to stay in a Texas Tiny House and oh it was so wonderful! I've been wanting to see inside one of those tiny homes for a long time. Saturday morning after breakfast, the owner gave us a tour of the other tiny homes as well as the other buildings they have on their property. He had done all the remodeling and building on the other homes (not the TTH ones) and S and he enjoyed talking woodworking for a while. It was way better than staying at a hotel!

We would absolutely love to live in one of these one day but....what to do with the children? Hmm. Details, details.

To the left when you walk in. 

Straight ahead when you walk in. 

To the right of that window. The ladder leads to the loft and bed.

A view of the whole living room from the loft. 

Looking back at the front door. 

To the very right when you walk in, is the kitchen.  The bathroom door is there on the left.

Looking up at the "bedroom."

The bath. River rock on the shower floor and ceiling tin on the walls. 

 One thing that sets the Texas Tiny Homes apart from other tiny homes is they use 90-something percent repurposed materials.

Salvaged sink.  When is the last time you saw 2 separate faucets?

Old windows saved from another house or building.

Old doors with doorknobs just like in my grandmother's house. 

All these antique details are really neat. 

And OH! the beautiful smell of all the wood! The hardwood floors were also antique. It was just beautifully made.

Good-bye Little House! We would love to live in you one day!

It's easy to imagine, while you are staying there, that you could actually live that small. Then you come home and walk abound your regular house and think HOW? Well, we don't need to go that radical with our simplifying right now, but I do wonder how much less we could live with.

I mean, instead shelves full of games, couldn't we just have a few decks of cards? You can play a lot of games with cards! Books are important, but you could get a Kindle or a Nook and do without shelves and shelves of books. (I don't want to, but you could.)

The bigger the area you live in, the more you fill it. If there is a shelf or mantle, you have to put things on them. We definitely do not live with just the necessities. And if we ever did get a tiny home, it would have to be bigger than the one we spent the night in. Still, I would love to go smaller. How about the Ingalls' home? That one would work just fine for me.

Except with A/C.

Hey, we're talking about simplifying, not losing our minds!

I Have Located My Organizational Skills

Seems I left them in the nineties.

Y'all. On this hunt for the lost title, we have drug boxes down from the attic that haven't been opened in years. They were all labeled "Financial Records" or some other such important sounding title so obviously we have moved them from house to house with us.

One of them was a treasure trove. In it, I found all my old checkbooks and bills from 1992-1998. Let me explain what I was doing in those years.

1992--my senior year of college. Oh those checkbooks were a hoot. Had to call my old roommate and let her know what we did with all of our time. Dairy Queen, Texas Burger, Mazzio's Pizza, WalMart, Campus Bookstore, etc. Every check was written for $3-$4. Oh dear. We had a blast talking about that. We had an apartment at that time. WHY did we not feel we had time to eat at home? And how annoying were we with our $3 checks?

1993--this was the year I both got married and began teaching. The credit card bills from this year were cool. Every month had something insignificant like gas for the car and then a plane ticket. Always a plane ticket. S was still stationed in California and I was here in Texas teaching. One of us flew to see the other every month for the first 6 months we were married. After he got home, our grocery bill checks shot up to $70. Seventy dollars!

It went on and on. In 1998 I got pregnant with Sweetheart and that is why, sadly, my organizational skills ended in 1998. This box was IMMACULATE. Discover Card bills? All in chronological order and rubber banded together. Each set of bills was stored like that. Each bill was stamped "PAID" with a stamp I used to have. Each checkbook register was reconciled and each bank statement marked up from the reconciliation. Each booklet of check carbons was stored in order in the original box they came in. And neatly labeled on top with a marker.

What has happened to me?

The box that is storing stuff from 2007-2010 doesn't have much in it. I pay most of my bills online now and don't get paper statements from the bank anymore. That's sort of sad. I will look back in 10 years (or the next time we clean the attic) and have no idea what we were doing with our time. Checks gave a record of our life.

A record that is now shredded, by the way.

Anyway, I'd like to travel back in time a bit and get my old self to teach my new self a thing or two about organizing. Besides having kids, and if you are as old as me you can appreciate this statement:

we have had to learn to do things completely differently than when we first became adults. I truly think that is one reason I lost my skills. We don't pay bills the same way, we don't write checks for everything, I check my account all the time online--I don't wait for the statement at the end of the month...things are just different. My mom taught me very well how to take care of bills and my checkbook but things have changed.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, it was encouraging to remember that at one time in my life I had it together. Gives me hope that I can get it together again.

And maybe find that title along with my skills.

Seventeen Years of Sleep

We have a queen size bed. That should be plenty of space for two people.

And it would be, if we slept like this:

But we don't. We both like to sleep kind half on our stomach and half on our side with one leg hiked up.

Which works fine when we face opposite sides:

But not so well when we face each other.

The strategy is to be the first one to face the inside of the bed. Then you can get your leg hiked up first and the other person will have to adjust. Kind of like the armrest at the movies.

It's better than when we were newlyweds. We bought a double sized mattress for $99 from a little furniture store. A "double" mattress is slightly bigger than a twin. Even though we were thin back then, this is what sleeping was like:

No kidding we had to turn in unison.

I dream of one day having a king sized bed. This is what I think it will be like:

But this is probably more accurate:

Oh well. I'm not complaining. This is how S thinks we sleep:

But he doesn't have any proof.

Helping Our Husbands With Work

Before I start in on today's topic I just wanted to give you an update on my pajama situation. I finally got a chance to ask S about my pajamas and to my surprise, he said my pajama pants were fine. He just would rather me wear a tank top than an old t-shirt. OK, that makes sense. My friend told me where they sell lots of cute tank tops (not just undershirt-looking ones). Also, JulieMom is planning to put up a tutorial on sewing pajama pants. If it looks easy enough, I might try it. She's going to sew some for her and her girls out of feminine fabrics. I think that would make a difference. Nice, new feminine print pajama pants and a matching tank top. Sounds like a plan to me!

Now. My husband works a lot. If you read this blog there's a good chance your husband works a lot too. I just happen to know that a lot of my blog readers (well, the ones I KNOW OF anyway---ahem lurkers) stay at home or homeschool or are trying to make it on one income. That naturally means that your husband works hard. If you also work outside the home, this is even harder for you. But I still think it's important and biblical.

The Bible says that Eve was created to be a helper for Adam. I believe that when I married S, I became his most important helper. And, this is the hard part, me helping him is more important than him helping me. See, when I was a full-time working mom with a little one I was angry inside. I remember kneeling beside the bathtub bathing Sweetheart, after fixing supper, still looking forward to stacks of papers that needed to be graded, and a house that needed to be cleaned, counting how many times I had bathed her since she was born. What I was doing was making a mental list of how many times he had NOT bathed her. In my mind, I deserved a husband who helped out more since I was so busy all the time. Heaven forbid one of my friends or co-workers should mention some thing that their husband always did for them!

I'm wiser now. I read Debi Pearl's book Created to Be His Helpmeet about 4 or 5 years ago and it REALLY changed me. It changed our marriage. I know some will say that book is controversial but I'm here to tell you that it blessed us tremendously. No one had ever opened up scripture and just flat out explained to me what it said about being a wife.

So, now that I had a proper perspective and knew that helping my husband pleased the Lord, and that my husband wasn't put on earth to help me, it got easier.

This weekend my husband will be working both of his jobs. I can't actually go to work with him (and would be precious little help if I did) but there are things I can do to help him this weekend:

1. Make sure he comes home to a clean house.
2. Have meals ready and be flexible if he doesn't want to take time to sit down and eat. (pack it up for him, etc.)
3. Have the clothes he needs washed and ready to go.
4. Go shopping with him for supplies he needs for a job.
5. Take care of things around the house that he won't have time to attend to.
6. Show and teach my girls a grateful attitude for Daddy's hard work (instead of teaching them to pout because we are alone "No. We can't go do fun things because Daddy has to work.")

I'm sure there are others. Just knowing that things are taken care of here, and that I'm a phone call away if he needs me to do anything for him (I'm willing, and able since I'm not busy with my own job now) is a great help. He can relax and focus on his job knowing that he has an awesome helper at home.

I might have added in the adjective there. But I'm SURE he's thinking it.

How do you help your husband?

A Place for the Husband

Dads get a bad rap on TV. Sitcoms as well as commercials depict husband/fathers as really big dolts who can't think past the end of their noses.

And many women are really willing to agree that it is so in their life.

If you don't watch out, you can find yourself rolling your eyes at your own husband although you would certainly be VERY UPSET if he were to roll his eyes at YOU. Attitudes are contagious. I don't want my girls growing up thinking "girls rule, boys drool." It won't play well into their future marriages.

This weekend my husband was sitting on the couch with the laptop, Bibles and commentaries spread all around him as well as the coffee table, studying for the Bible study he leads on Sunday evenings. The fan was blowing every page so he had various heavy objects trying to weight down the books and Bibles he had open. It wasn't a very comfortable study spot.

He said something about, "I sure look forward to the day when I can have a study or a home office."

Hmm. Poor man. The dining room table was full of my sewing stuff. The homeschool table is always covered in stuff. There really isn't any other place in the house for HIM. He leaves to go to work and we take over the whole house.

Instead of lamenting our little house and feeling discontent, I prayed. I prayed for help thinking of a solution. The sewing room, even if it were clean, is really too small for him to work in. He has the garage for his woodshop. We really need the homeschool room. Hmm. Hmm.

Then I got an idea! I was very excited. I told the girls my idea yesterday and they cannot wait for Daddy to come home tonight and see the surprise we have for him. All it took was a little rearranging.

My nightstand goes to the toy room to put Little Bit's dollhouse on. I don't use a nightstand really. Sweetheart's old desk comes out of the garage and into our room. The dresser and small bookshelf switch places.

AND.....TA DA!!!!

A study for Daddy. (S, if you are reading this you better fall over with surprise when you get home!)

Why is it so important? Because we think he is important. He isn't some useless dolt who wanders around our house. He is the head of our family. And he deserves a place to study.

At The Top of the List

As I am planning for next school year......


I must remember this.

It's an oldie, but a goodie. I found this link I had sent to a friend via e-mail a few years ago. I am so glad I re-read it.

And somehow I lost her blog along the way. SO glad I re-discovered it!

What I Remember

My college roommate spent the night at my parent's house with me.

I woke up with a HUGE pimple arising on my chin. We iced it all day to keep it at bay.

My room was really clean because we had already moved my stuff to the apartment.

A lady from our church did my mom's hair, my mother-in-law's hair, S's Nanny's hair, all the bridesmaid's hair, and my hair for the wedding. She was busy that day.

S went fishing that day and I implored his friend's wife to make sure he wore sunscreen so he wouldn't look like a lobster in the pictures. All she had was Water Babies.

The lady doing the reception showed up on crutches and also with a wheelchair in tow. I had doubts.

My college roommate and I caught a glimpse of the groom's cake just before we started getting dressed. We hoped it wasn't finished. But it was.

The colors were teal and peach. I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

I was kind of sad I couldn't have a bridesmaid dress. I loved them so much.

We got dressed in the 2 year old's Bible classroom.

The wedding wasn't at our church because our church was under renovation.

I had to pee after I got the dress on so my friends held the dress up while I perched on a 2 year old sized potty. There was much laughing. And there are pictures.

I sat on a little chair and spread the dress all around to keep it wrinkle free before it was time for me to go out. The hairdresser finished my hair and told her 3 year old, "Tell Miss Brenda bye and we'll see her in a minute!" Her 3 year old then proceeded to walk across the front of my entire dress to come hug me. No one could even get a word out in time, but she didn't leave any muddy footprints on it. Whew!

I remember thinking that I was missing the whole wedding. So much happened before it was my turn to go in.

Finally, as I was waiting in the foyer for my cue, I caught two friends coming in late. They were kind of embarrassed.

My mom had told me that our preacher had gotten something in his eye while mowing that day. I tried to figure out which eye it was the whole time he was talking.

I don't remember very much of what he said.

We lit the unity candle and then forgot to blow out the individual ones. Can you say Unclear on the Concept?

Anyway, it was 16 years ago and I still love talking about that day.

The day I married my best friend. The day God chose to bless me with this man for my husband.