changes & cabinets

To think that this is what the house downstairs looked like only last year. Man this family has gotten a lot done!

We put in heated concrete floors in the kitchen that we then stained. I think they will look pretty good in the end. This is the corner where the kitchen is now.
These are the cabinets our friends, the Morrells, gave to us. They were in great shape for as old as they are. Thanks Morrells. Thanks Dad & Mark for helping us move them home. Thanks to the Dillon's home group for sanding and prepping them for us. Thanks Mark for helping us install them last week. Wow - we have had a lot of help on this kitchen!
Here is what they look like currently since I have primed them. Tonight we will start painting them inside and out. You will have to see a finished picture later....
This is all the doors and drawers laying all over the living room as they are being primed. Notice we still have flooring like a basketball floor...that was put off until next week. Kitchen was a priority to get moving on.
My hubby has trimmed out a great post and built some cool cubbies for books and games that I am excited about. I am looking forward to this breakfast bar too.
We got enough free cabinets that we put in a built in desk across from the kitchen. You will have to stay tuned to see the cabinets painted. This was the hardest decision in a while! I could not make up my mind. Dark brown or deep red???? I finally made my decision today and the paint starts tonight! I hope I like it.

time for playing

Yesterday our baby turned one! We started the morning with a bone, peanut butter and a candle while singing to our favorite furry friend! We thank God for this bundle of joy - who loves us unconditionally and is always excited to see us (even if we just walked out of the room for a minute or two!)

I am not sure about this photo! Who the heck are these kids? They did about 6 different shots being very strange. They had gone roller skating the night before and were having a restful Sunday morning. Maybe we need to do a little more of this relaxin thing!
As we headed out to the pumpkin patch Sunday afternoon I found this on the wall. Hello!! Excuse me, but spiders like this are not allowed on the wall of the house. If I find something like this on the inside of the house, I am outta here! Yuck!
When the kids were little we always went to pomeroy house for pumpkins, but then school field trips always took us to Bizi Farms. So this year we returned to one of my favorite spots to hunt for pumpkins. It was a beautiful day!!

Curtis wanted to give the kids a little love squeeze while we waited for the hay ride. Notice there is no line? It was fabulous!!!

The four of us sat at the back for the best view (according to our kids).

After they dropped us off at the pumpkin patch, Emma found one she liked right away! She likes the small cute round ones that are easy to carve and carry!

Cody on the other hand searched the entire field for the big one he wanted. He & Curtis make quite a masterpiece so it has to be just so. We tried to keep up with Cody but he was long gone!

Luckily, we brought along our muscles so we could get it back to the wagon...
We continued the hayride down pumpkin lane which is beautiful. It has several cool old barns and about 80 pumpkin characters along the route.

The ride is about a mile and the pumpkin folks were fun to see.
This is my ideal place for a pumpkin patch - nestled in the hills - I wanted to stay all day!
After the hay ride, we met a very friendly goat and some other animals at the barn.

One of these days when we can finish our outside fence, we want to get a couple goats.
We ended our trip by watching this rooster sleep on one foot on top of a stump. What is he thinking? Doesn't he know how dangerous that is?

Thank you God for fall and your creation. We are so blessed to live in the northwest!!

My Faithful God

"My faithful God, help me to call this to mind and therefore always have hope: because of Your great love, I am not consumed, for Your compassions never fail. They are new toward me every morning; great is Your faithfulness. I will say to myself, "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him." (Lamentations 3:22-24)

The main thing I have learned over this last year of uncertainty is that my God is faithful. It has almost been a year since we stopped getting regular paychecks. A year since our life drastically changed. And though there have been many many months where it on paper it can make no sense how we lived, God has been faithful. He has provided when we needed Him to. He has made a way for us to survive during this time.

He has provided more than just for our earthly needs. He has provided comfort when no comfort could be found. He has provided calm in the midst of many storms. He has provided rest when no rest could be found. He has provided hard lessons that have sometimes hurt. He has provided testing that always brought us back around to Him.

And while I have sometimes cried out for this season to end, it has been bittersweet. It has taught me that He is faithful. It has taught me that His heart toward me is good. It has forced me to know that His compassion's never fail. It has taught me to hope in Him alone.

I don't know when or even if this season will end for our family. The world is so uncertain for many - and thankfully this world is not really our home. Our time here is temporary. Thankfully there is more than we can see.

Enough contemplating...better get to work. I am "the subs" for this remodel project. We are refinishing some old cabinets some family friends gave us. They fit perfectly for our space. I am priming them tonight and then painting them this weekend. Can't decide if I should paint them chocolate brown like my fireplace or a deep rich reddish color. Hmm..have to decide by the morning. Maybe it will come to me while I work tonight!

A Productive Day!

Today we were blessed by a home group from our church that came to help out for the morning. They installed shelving, started all the sanding of the kitchen cabinets, sanded windows for trim to be installed, and did a lot of painting.
Here is a group shot of them after the lunch they provided. It was so nice to have so much help. We got a lot done in the hours they were here and it definitely boosted our spirits!

Most of the interior wall painting is now complete. Here is a photo with the fireplace I started a month or so ago. We still have to do the tile in front of it. Right now it is the storage spot for our musical inspiration while we work!

This is Cody's room. He did two walls lime and two white. The contraption made of wood is actually a closet that comes down out of the ceiling with a remote. I am told this is pretty cool. We still have to paint it but it is close to being done.
Notice the window trim got installed today also. Andrew came over after the other crew left to help out for awhile.

Emma's paint and window trim was completed today also. The pink and tan looks really great together - but the basketball flooring has got to go! It should be a beautiful maple floor after this next week.

Our bedroom has a color I am liking more all the time. It has a bluish-green color on a couple walls and then the tan on the other two. Our floor is a stained heated concrete floor that I hope I will like.

It was so nice to get so much done in one day. It has been a slow but steady process and we are thinking we will meet our goal of Thanksgiving. Thank you to all the people who have blessed us so much this week. You have lifted our spirits more than you can imagine!!

the fun painting begins

The kids finally got their paint this week and started making the rooms their own. Emma is doing 2 pink and 2 tan walls in her room with all of her pink, brown and orange decor. She is really excited to unpack all of her stuff and get it back into her own space.
Cody is going for a pretty daring color. He is doing two of the walls a very bright lime green. I was a little nervous about it a first, but I really like it on the wall. He & Curtis are building a secret closet that comes down out of the ceiling since his room did not have a closet. It is going to be a "dream" for a boy I have been told. His friend that came to help paint thought the closet was the coolest thing!

We are having a work day this weekend and hope to have all interior painting complete. Then the hardwood will get refinished and the trim installed. The end is in sight!

Today I was blessed by my MIL and SIL who came and cleaned my apartment while I was gone. It was nice to have the space we are living in be clean since the remodel makes such a mess. Thanks friends and family for all the support!!

Weary to the core!!!

I feel like a walking zombie right now! I really don't remember a time in my life when I have been this tired. For some reason I haven't been sleeping well - awake constantly and just not feeling good at night. Then the days are so cram-packed that I feel like I can barely see straight.

We are trying to make a big push to finish the downstairs by Thanksgiving so we can move our kids into their own bedrooms. We finally got the sheet rock done and now the painting has begun. I painted the ceilings today in between my regular life and working so that tomorrow my kids can get their bedrooms painted. I like painting fine, but painting a house inside and out by hand in a year and a half is enough to give you arthritis in your hands! Honestly, I am so sick of it that I really don't even care any more how it looks. This weekend we are hoping to sand and seal our "basketball" hardwood flooring. I will be sure to post a before and after photo.

Next week we start refinishing the two sets of cabinets that we got for free. Which by the way, match each other perfectly - thank you God for providing. Doing all of this of this in the midst of taking care of a family, working, volunteering, etc is getting to be a little challenging.

We continue to pray for God's provision for us - for a peace in the midst of the storm - for a supernatural ability to trust Him. He is good and has taken good care of us over this last season.

I had better get to bed - I think I hear a Tylenol PM calling my name....

walking for a cure!

Sunday morning, bright and early, a group of us women and girls headed down to "big city" for a very cool fundraiser for cancer research. We stopped at pioneer square for a group photo.

We got to be right at the start line, under the cool balloon arch!

We took lots of combinations of group photos at this point. I think a few of the women around us were not too amused, but we had a great time taking pictures of each other.
Here we are walking down Broadway in the mass of people. It is cool to be a part of something so big!
Then of course, since we were so close, we had to treat ourselves to a little bit of heaven! My daughter will probably want to kill me if she sees this photo?!?!?
We love you saint cupcake!
It was a great time and it didn't even rain a drop on us.