I suppose I'm not really good at this blogging thing

I haven't posted in a while been pretty busy doing not really sure what.

Richard was home for his R&R and we did this and that and it was time to send him back. He should be home sometime soon.

Thomas got his braces on, well the top ones, we should be going in and getting the bottom teeth on the 12th. Pray for our Orthodontist, he fell two weeks ago and is still suffering from a concusion.

We should be, as long as everything goes ok be getting a new to us vehicle this week or early next week. There is a probably with the Air and they are supposed to be fixing it.

I've been looking at other houses to buy and well we just honestly don't have the money to move and all that so instead my idea is to add on rought 525 sq ft on to the front of the house. This will make the two front bedrooms larger and enlarge the livingroom. In that I am seriously hoping to be able fit a bathroom to one of the rooms to make it a master suite and if possible make a jack and jill bath for the children. I'd love to make three rooms down the one side of the house with the bath, but I think I would just end up with really small rooms and not sure I'm wanting to do that. So tomorrow a guy is coming out to give me an price for the concrete footing, the older boys and I will do all the prep work. I did get the price and amount of concrete blocks and mortar mix I'll need for the foundation wall. Just need to double check the height for matching the house and the porch. Since we are going to be doing this ourselves and as the money is available it will be long project but worth it in the end. And hey at the end I should be a bit slimmer. LOL!!

Still looking for a second mower or a nice used riding one. I am also in the planning and works stage of moving lots of rooms around so that we have a better flow to the house. Lots of people in a tiny house on a full time basis is getting rough on me. I feel like there are days when I can't turn around without a little person right behind me. I know that these days are precious and will be gone much too soon, but can't I go to the bathroom for two seconds alone. I love my children!!!!

So I am hoping to get up a few pictures in the next few days and then keep a photo and written journal of what I am doing and how it's going.

Off to go sit outside for a bit to see if there are lighting bugs out yet. It's been so warm the past couple of days they just might be.

Debi

Been kind of quiet here.

The children have been sick since we came back from our trip, Rachel had a double ear infection that required two rounds of antibiotics. Aric & Matthew had this sinus thing in their eyes so bad that their eyes would literally run like your nose, it was the strangest thing I think I've ever seen. Thomas, Noah, Matthew and Caleb all also had to take a round of antibiotics. Every time I think that they are better, Rachel seems to get a low grade fever for a day or two, she did this on Wed & Thur but seems totally fine today.

We've gotten the couch moved finally, boy was that an adventure. I had to move the refrigerator in order to make the doorway of this bedroom. I still have to finish painting this room, I am not looking forward to using the oil based primer again but it is needed since there is wall paper glue everywhere and it is very hard to get off, and latex primer will end up with ugly results and have to be repainted.

Thomas helped me pick out the color for the dining room, it is called antique peach and I think it is a Dutch Boy paint, which is a brand that I have not used before so I am hoping for good results.

Thomas & Aric are going to be moving into my old bedroom with Rachel. I am going to give our queen set to Mary and her girls, the bed is only 3 years old and really nothing wrong with it other than Richard and I don't like it. So for a little while the boys will use it, then I will set up the last set of bunk beds in there for the them, and Rachel will use her crib/toddler bed.

I am going to decorate the room for her, but not in a way that the boys won't mind sharing the room. I found some really cute drapes at Pottery Barn Kids, they are a green with white dots and match the back of her quilts, which are also PBK. I love PBK stuff I just wish that is wasn't so expensive, but we do live 2 hours from an outlet so that helps, A LOT!! We did see a really cool rug at Target that I might get, but might not with these drapes we shall see.

I finally have almost everything out of the storage stall in town, still need to sort through all of it. A tiny part of me says to just toss it all on the burn pile and call it a day, but then I feel that I need to go through all of it to see what is there. Stuff that takes up space, that I probably don't need, can't use or wouldn't now anyway.

So this week we are going to finish with the the new living room, I still have a ton of stuff in here but we are going to take it all out to the barn building. Speaking of barns, this fall I plan on going through all the stuff that is up in the barn loft-which should be fun as our barn is old and sometimes when you are up there I really feel like the building is moving ever so slightly. But it needs to be done as I truly have no idea what we have out there. Which is so sad, that we have so much stuff that I don't know what I have.

Finally have an address for Richard, yeah!!! Now we can start sending him boxes, letters and fun stuff. I also found out that I can mail a footlocker to him with a pad lock, it can't weigh more than 70lbs, which I think that right now it might, so we will probably have to unpack it again to lighten it up some.

So that is what I've been up to, trying to get everyone on the mend. Have a great day.

Planners-all digital(iPhone), paper or a mixture???

I am trying to decide if I want to invest in new planner pages for next year or if I should just get the best apps for what I am looking to do and just get really nice journals for the hand writing that I feel I must do daily.

Some of what I am looking for:

Grocery shopping/menu planning
freezer/pantry inventory-to stop over buying
budget pages
bill paying schedule
savings plan
school resources & planning
goals
attendance record
homeschool planner/daily schedule
ideas-for what ever
appointments
trips-and all the necessary info for them
van maintenance
a total inventory of what we actually have

all the stuff that I need to try to keep in one place and not loose.

I know there is a calendar already on the phone and I do use it, but there really isn't enough room for everything that I tend to try and jot in a day.

I was thinking of 2 pages per day that way, I have a small daily log of what we did for school, plus appointments, and just what ever notes. But then I want to be able to get to this stuff a year from now if needed. How can I get stuff off of my phone? I love that I can go back over the years and either pull my F.C. storage binder off of the shelf or a school yearbook/planner down. But I'd like to have them all in one book. I am also struggling between the Classic and full size sheet binder size. I have the classic, but everything else is a full sheet of paper.

I have several different homeschool planners, or software things where I can print out all the pages I need and make my own. Which I have done several times over the years. I just can't decide what I want.

I usually end up with two or three single subject spirals full of stuff-thoughts, bible verses, ideas, planning, just my journal, bills. You name it it ends up in there. But then I also have my planner where I tend to try and write a short synopsis of what we did for the day, even it was really nothing.

I have my bills under control as far as storage and I will be doing that again from now on. But I need a paper or list of what is due and when, where I can look at it often.

I like my phone and I using it all day, but I also like paper and pen very much. What would you do?

Being crazy lazy today

I was all set to go outside and get another day of mowing done, but then my FIL called to say that he wouldn't be over as he wasn't feeling well.

I am sore, tired and just totally being lazy and I know that.

I really need to be emptying out a bedroom so that I can move Rachel and I into it. Once that is done. my old room with be empty. What I would love to do is gut it to the studs, which really won't be that hard since my house has wood walls, yes there is actual wood over the studs through out my entire house. Then it was all covered including the ceiling with WALLPAPER!!!!!! But the worst part was since this is supposed to be a tongue and grove type wood, most of the boards have shifted some or something, but the couple that we bought the house from thought the best thing to do was take dry wall mud and fill in the gaps. UGGGGGGG. So here I have this cute tiny house that was built in 1939 that has no insulation, drafty old wooden windows and beautiful wood that has been ruined.

So what's a girl to do???? Why, pull all the wood out, run electrical wire and plugs where needed, insulate, slap in two windows, then drywall, mud, and paint. I can't wait, well except the insulation part and maybe the windows as I've never put in a widow before. But hey, there is always a first time for everything. I will probably have my mom & dad come out to help when I get to that point. I may also only replace the front window as the side one is where I plan on adding a new bathroom, but then I suppose that window could be reused in the bathroom. Need to think about this.

Now that the room is done in my head and life is good, the boys are going to go in there for a while, and they will only be sleeping in my newly remodeled room, but then again I might just move out remodel and then move back in. We shall see.

I am going to put the boys in there and take their room and make it our dining/school/my sewing room, I might even put the tv in there. They have to sit at the table to watch, might not be so tempted to spend the day watching sitting on that wooden bench of theirs. They have two closets in there and they will be great for storage of everything that I don't want them getting into which lately seems to be everything.

We need a larger home, but until the Lord opens the doors on that one, I am going to make the very best of this one. Even if it means getting rid of almost everything.

I have always said that if you took all of the school, craft, and sewing stuff out of my home it would be empty. But in that same thought what ever would I do without it all here.

So instead of doing what I should be doing I am sitting here writing about what I should be doing. It isn't going to get done if I don't get up and do it.

Off to clean some more, I just don't think that I am going to make it outside today. Probably save it for Mon after my eye Dr's apt.

Downsizing, organizing, and planning

I am getting ready to downsize in a huge way. I am just feeling more and more that we are to give away things, but not somethings.

The children have way to many clothes, like buckets and buckets and buckets. I am not kidding. How this happened I really don't know because honestly I haven't really bought anything for anyone in the last 3 years. Socks, underwear, a pair of jeans for my supper skinny guys and shoes.

But even knowing this does not explain why I have at least 20 totes and that many large garbage bags full of clothing. Richard is just as bad, he has so many things that he doesn't even know what he has.

Now my clothing is pretty simple, I have two skirts that I wear on a regular basis and about 6 tops. I have a new work skirt laying on the ironing board waiting for elastic and to be hemmed.

I want to get everything cleaned sorted and just give it away. There is a few boxes around here for Hannah House and Kings Ranch that I could put the stuff into, there is also a church over in my Mom's town that has a thrift store that is currently asking for donations. Then there is always the 25 cent yard sale. Just put up a huge sign that everything is a quater each, might make a fortune. LOL probably not.

But then there is the stuff that just gets in my way, all the kitchen gadgets, the movies, and the tv. As much as I would love to send the tv away, there are good things about it, like those Planet Earth DVD's, we don't have Directv any more and I will probably leave it that way. We just have a Netflix subscription and what I find a Walmart. I finally bought Wall-E the other day and it is really cute, I might get them Bolt in a month or so. We are also looking at getting some fun DVD's for school work. I have seen where you can get all of the Magic School Bus. But before I get these things I need to get rid of a ton of others that we no longer watch or just don't want. Perhaps I will make a DVD box of movies and send them to my sister in Germany.

I would rather spend my extra money each month on books, puzzles, games and other things that are going to have a purpose. I love the fact that the boys can be doing something and they are learning but don't realize it.

So my goal for the rest of the month is to go through all of those bags first since they are really a pain to store. We are going to pull out 7 outfits each, once they have their 7 they will be able to change with a new bag if they see something else that they would like to keep, but other wise it is all going away.

Oh and I didn't even mention all of the books that we have. I am wanting to sort our books by subject, so that we have science, history, math, and so on. A lot of the books that we have are things that I was able to pick up for our school board back in FL. So they are old library books, most already have the Dewey system stickers on them. I have thought about using that to organize our books which would be a great learning tool, however our little library here doesn't use it. You can't even look up a book yourself you have to ask the librarian to do it for you. And the picture books are just there. The other library they have their books color coded based on the authors last name, that way you atleast know which cubby the books belong into.

The bonus here is once I get all of this done I will have a lot more space in that new storage barn. The faster it gets cleaned out and organized the faster I can make it our school house. The hardest part will be figuring out how to put AC out there without making a whole in the side. See I just ordered a stock building, you can have windows and such put in, but I just wanted a building to get us started. Richard has already mentioned something about getting a second one later. So what I will do is get a larger building with windows and a normal door.

The best part will of course be all the extra room in the house. The boys have been double bunking with Thomas & Caleb sharing, and Matthew & Jadon too. We really need to get that third set of bunkbeds up. I am praying that we will be able to add on or something in the next year or so. That would be the biggest help, to make a large boys bedroom, a smaller girls room, a true school room, and a family room. I can see in my head what I want, I just don't know if it will work.

Oh well I am off to sort clothing.