I blame the garden

We recently received a letter that changed our lives. I won’t go into the details, but let me just sum up by saying we will be moving again. In five weeks or less.

Hubs left with the boys for scout camp the day after we found out. I was home alone for a week to look for a house. The only thing I found was that there is literally nothing available that meets our needs. Wah wah wah.

To cope, I did the only thing I could do in such times of stress. I did a project. I started refinishing my dining room table. It’s a great stress relief to sand and scrape. It took my mind off the worry. I’ve said it before but it’s never been truer than now: Projects help me cope.

Stripping, sanding, staining, sealing, painting all help to take my mind off my problems and helps me think of solutions in a way that I can’t do when I’m just focused on the problem at hand.

I wish I had left good enough alone when I had the table at the point you see here, but I messed it up. I used a combined stain and poly for the top and it’s awful. I need to strip it back off, but I’m out of time and energy to tackle it again. It will have to wait until after we move.

In the next day or two, I will show you the master bedroom that will never be. I finished the wood wall a week before the letter. *cough-swear word-cough*. It’s beautiful, too. Okay, fine. Here’s a sneak peek.

I also made a little shelf to hold the blessing gown I made back in the day for my babies.

I thought I had a new job lined up, but I ended up not getting the job. I’m completely okay with that, even though I would have loved the job. I am hoping that a house that needs our love and care is waiting for us to find it and my new job will be restoring a home for our family.

Finally, I really do blame the garden. Any time we have planted a garden in the first year we have been in a house, we have moved before we could harvest it. Yes, I am enjoying my tomatoes as they ripen, but my corn, my pumpkins, my WHITE pumpkins will belong to someone else.

It is the curse of the garden that has plagued us for 24 years. You’d think we’d wizen up by now, but obviously, you’d be wrong. Hope springs eternal for us.

I look forward to finding the blessing God has lined up for us this time around. I am trying, desperately, to hold on to that thought. It is hard. Very hard. But I do know that God can and will answer the prayers of our heart and I am hoping this an answer to some of our other prayers and that everything will work itself out.

While I have been riding the Panic Peace Roller Coaster for several days, I am settling in to more feelings of peace than panic. I do know that God provides. I’ve seen it far too many times in my life to doubt. I am definitely feeling the peace of the prayers that our friends and family who have been praying for us. I’m so blessed to have so many good, faithful people in my life.

In the coming weeks I’ll be packing and getting ready to move. We have Katie coming back in early August and I wish we could have been moved and settled before that happened. It will be a full month of change in August. Apparently, that’s a yearly tradition for us since our life kind of blew up in our face last August as well.

So, I may have to leave behind the bike planter, as well as the burgundy doors.

I will walk away from my pumpkins and the campground and the flowers and all the repairs and improvements we have made in the last year. The owners are welcome to them with our blessings.

They can keep their repaired chicken coop,

but my girls are coming with us.

I’m looking forward to a new future and to see the hand of God working in my life. If you are of a praying persuasion, I’d appreciate any prayers you want to send our way.

Suesan

master bedroom makeover - drop cloth subway art

As part of my bedroom makeover, I wanted to create some personalized art. I fell in love with the Subway Sign Art 95th from Restoration Hardware. I was not, however, $850 worth of in-love with it

I set out to create my own version and one that was more meaningful to us. I created a version that has all the places that Hubs and I have lived in over the past 24 years. Here’s what I came up with.

This wall is actually in my living room. I’ve made some changes to the master bedroom that I’m not ready to reveal, so you’ll have to wait to see it in it’s final spot. Let’s talk about the window frame.

Way back when I started my blog, I mentioned that I’d been given over 60 window frames from a guy on craigslist. I only wanted a few, but I had to take them all or no deal. I gave a lot of them away. I kept this one for myself and moved it from 3 different houses since that time. The wavy, bubbled glass that was in the window did not survive our move to Ohio from Utah.

Fast forward two years and I still have a couple of the remaining windows packed up in my garage waiting for me to put them on my to do list. Imagine my surprise to find the pieces of this window sticking out of a garbage can in the garage. Hubs decided that since I hadn’t done anything with this window and since the glass was broken, it must therefore have no value or purpose, ie, junk. Pffffft.

I fished the pieces out of the trash and put them back together. It was a matter of putting the joints back together and then securing the joins.

I had some hardware in my supplies that I could use. I think I had to pick up two more of them, though.

I used a square to make sure I got it put back correctly. I didn’t want a lopsided frame.

I had to remove some of the old glazing to get the broken edges of glass out of the frame. The old glazing is a putty-type material that holds the glass in place. It’s that white area you see on top of that broken glass.

The glazing was pretty hard. Years in the sun will do that. I used a hammer and chisel to get it out, but don’t tell Hubs. He gets annoyed every time I use a chisel because I don’t always use the tool for its intended purpose. Whatever. It’s a great tool and I’ve managed to make many projects work because of my trusty chisel.

With the glazing gone, I now had an edge on the window frame to put my new artwork.

I’ve already put a lot of money into this room, so one of the challenges I gave myself with the artwork was to do it using materials I had on hand. With that goal in mind, I recycled a piece of foam core board that served as a background for Buddy’s school project on How to Fold a Ninja Star (A+).

I took some leftover drop cloth fabric and duct taped the fabric onto the board using tape I had left over from my cast decorations last year.

I didn’t like the beige color of the fabric, so I busted out my jar of Behr’s White Fur paint (my favorite white color) and painted the canvas. Even in this dark cell phone picture, you can see the difference between the painted and non-painted canvas.

Once it was painted, I figured I could cut out the words with my Silhouette machine and all would be well. Um…yeah. You know those are famous last words, right? First of all, this sign measures 24” wide by 29” tall. If you are creating custom vinyl that is that big, it’s important not to mix up those two measurements. Lesson learned, but not until after I’d cut, weeded and prepared the entire sign. *head slap*

After fixing my error, I re-cut the vinyl. I used some contact paper I had on hand. Because I was going to paint over the letters, there was no reason to use good vinyl. Or so I thought. Imagine my surprise when I had my sign all correctly cut out and ready to go, only to discover the contact paper wouldn’t adhere to the painted drop cloth service. *double head smack.* Lesson for future projects: test out sample before cutting entire project.

In retrospect, I probably could have made this work. After two failed attempts, though, I just wanted it done already. It was time to start looking for a new solution. I contacted a friend from Idaho who had cut some vinyl for my windows back when I first got them. I showed her my artwork and asked her what she charged. When she replied a few days later that it would cost me $19 including shipping, I was more than happy to pay the amount.

Had I known that the vinyl would stick only marginally better than the contact paper, I may have skipped the expense, except for the fact that Jen’s cutter did all the aligning for me and that right there really was worth the money. My Silhouette could only do small sections at a time, so I would have had to align each section between the lines. Meh.

You can see by the shadows under the letters that they just weren’t sticking. I don’t know if it was the type of paint, the paint over fabric or what the particular reason was. I painted over the vinyl with another coat of White Fur, to try to seal the edges of the paint.

I didn’t take a picture of this step. I did this project by the glow and heat of a lantern while our power was out, so getting decent pictures was very hard to do. After the paint dried, I went over the sign with a deep teal color I had mixed at Walmart a year or so ago when I made my chalkboard globe.

I had planned to paint the background of the sign a solid color, but when I started painting, I saw this happen and I was instantly in love.

As you can imagine, I had some bleeds, but it was easy enough to clean them up.

I shot some staples around the edges to hold the board in place. You can see how ghetto the back of this is, but on the plus side, if we ever forget Step 3 or 6 in how to build a Ninja Star, we’ll have a handy reference.

I did not attach any hardware for hanging the window frame. There is a nice ledge and a couple of well-placed screws in the wall have us in business. I love the texture in the canvas and I didn’t want to lose that by putting glass into the frame.

I love the this all put together. The dark teal is a nice pop of color in my room and looks very nice against my new wall color. The aged appearance of the canvas with the old window frame compliment each other very well.

Most importantly, I love the reminder of the journey that Hubs and I have been on since we got married. I grouped our places by state, but if you want to know the chronological order it would go: Provo, Denver, Lake Stevens, Quincy, Stanfield, Hermiston, Yreka, Visalia, Orem, Troy, Meridian, Sandy, Lexington, Bellville. That’s 14 villages/towns/cities, 7 states and 20 homes in 24 years of marriage. Sheesh. It makes me tired just typing it out!

Still, it’s been a great adventure and I’m glad I’ve had such a wonderful man by my side through it all.

Cost Breakdown:

• Frame – Free
• Posterboard & drop cloth – Free
• Vinyl – $19
• Brackets for back – $4
• Paint, White Fur (Behr) Sample – $3
• Paint, Teal – Free
• Duct Tape – Free

Total Project Cost: $26

Total Project Time: About 5 hours, but mostly from all the messed up vinyl cutting.

Have you created any meaningful artwork for your home or bedroom? I’m making a big push to finish up the room and get to a reveal for the project. If you want to see the other projects I’ve done on this room, go to the FruGal Projects tab at the top of the page and scroll down to the Master Bedroom section.

Suesan

I’ve got the power!!

On Friday when I last posted, I had high expectations of the power being restored some time that day. As the temperature soared towards the 100 degree mark, our hopes faded just as quickly. By Friday night it was pure misery inside our home with temperatures in the mid-90s. Hubs and I took a hose shower outside in the driveway to cool off and get clean. I really didn’t even care, either. When the choice is modesty or heat exhaustion, I now know which one I will choose.

On Saturday morning, we were in for another scorcher and I woke up convinced that if we hadn’t seen workers on Friday, they were indeed waiting for a part and it would be Monday before our power was back on. It was 82 degrees by 8 a.m., and I was so thankful to get a call from Noah at scout camp that he’d be done early.

You would think that a 2 hour round trip drive to scout camp would not be that fun, especially since I’ve made the trip a dozen times this summer. You’d be wrong. A trip in the car was a welcomed break from the heat because my car has air conditioning.

Noah, our 16-year-old son is working at the aquatics program at the lake teaching the rowing merit badge to hundreds of scouts this summer.

Hubs and I headed up to the camp around 9:30 and then did some errands with the boy before coming home. Imagine our delight to find this as we came down our road.

I was so excited, I think I may have cried just a bit. It took them until about 3 p.m. to run the new line out to our pole, install the new transformer and get us running again. Our house was 88 degrees when the power came back on. Eight hours later it was all of 85 degrees. Cooling off a hot house when it is ridiculously hot outside is not an easy task.

When I woke up at 6 a.m. and needed a blanket, I really did cry. I was just so grateful. I was beyond exhausted and my body was not happy with me at that point. Dehydration, leg cramps, some heat exhaustion and nearly 9 days of constant sweat pouring from your body takes it toll.

I’m doing better now. Hubs was a bit bummed because he couldn’t use the outdoor shower he’d made for us now. He did create some videos for his readers (Hubs is a newspaper editor) to show how we were surviving during this time. Feel free to watch them if you are interested in how we got water. He made a video about the shower but hasn’t posted it yet. It’s basically a bucket with a valve out the bottom, hung from our garage frame.

In times like this, I am more than happy I married a man who knows how to do things like this.

In that second video, you get to see the chickens. I haven’t shared them with you yet, but we’ve had chickens since March when I went to Las Vegas with my sisters and Mom for Sister Palooza. Hubs finished the coop while I was away and filled it with six chicks. We bought six more chicks in May. I call the little ones the Girls and the big ones are the Ladies.

Last night, one of the ladies produced her first egg and this morning we found another one.

On Monday morning, I woke up feeling a bit overwhelmed. If you missed my news, I was told my services were no longer needed with my job. My thoughts have been racing now that I have all this time to do things I have wanted to do.

Should I finish up this project?

Or perhaps I should finish up the trim in my master bedroom? Repot the plants? Rearrange my craft room now that I no longer need it as an office? Do the dishes – wait, why do chores when there are so many projects I can immerse myself in? Maybe it’s time to start the ol’ diet and exercise routine.

Obviously, I have some choices to make. I need to sort it out. Right now I’m doing a bit of everything. I’m taking some time for me to focus on improving my health. I’m doing some projects and I’m cleaning my house. Those are my priorities right now. That and finishing the master bedroom. That project has dragged on long enough and I did get the trimmed finished yesterday. I need to do a few more things and I’ll be ready for the big reveal.

Also, since I had to send back my work computer to my boss, I need to find a new one to replace it. The boys are sharing their computer with me while I look around. I have to rebuild the church bulletin that I do every week. It’s going to take me several hours to rebuild it in a new program since Microsoft Publisher is only compatible with itself and I can’t afford the $350 price tag for the professional version of Office that includes Publisher. I’m teaching myself how to use OpenOffice for now.

I will be growing my blog. It’s something I have wanted to do for a long time but simply never had the time to do before now. I’ll let you know as things progress but I’m looking forward to pursuing this adventure.

Life changes. Whenever you think you’ve got it figured out, sure enough, it will change on you. I’ve lived long enough to see it happen more times than not. I plan to embrace this new path I’m on. It feels like a good one and one that will help me pursue some personal goals and not be constantly torn between competing responsibilities.

Thanks, again for all your love and support and comments. I am truly blessed and grateful for all that I have.

Suesan

I'm Still Standing

Hi, Friends.

I'm popping in to let you know I'm still here, still kicking, but just barely. We are going on 8 days with no power and water. Thank goodness the local library has A/C and internet.

The storm that roared across the US hit us hard. We had a tree down in front of our street.

The power was out on our street until Tuesday, but ours didn't come back on. We found this:

Transformers work better when they are on the poles where God intended them to be and not on the ground.

Both power and cable lines are down.

The utility workers finally showed up last night to cut down the trees that hit the line and to put a new transformer up. However, they need a part. It's supposed to hit 100 this weekend and I'm not a happy girl.

We bought a generator and it powers the 2 fans that we have, plus our fridge. Since we are on a well, though, we do not have water, either and there is no way for us to run the pump. We are currently using water out of our rain barrel up by the chicken coop. Since it's up on the hill, we get a bit of water pressure to push the water to the house.

I love to camp as much as the next girl, but when your kid that is living at Scout Camp for the summer has a higher standard of living than you do, something is wrong.

I'm trying to keep my sense of humor and to count my blessings. It's a challenge, I'm not even gonna lie. Oh, and we also had several tree tops come down across our driveway.

When we finally get our power and cable back, I will tell you more. On top of everything else, I was let go from my job yesterday. On the plus side, I know have more time for my blog. I don't want to think about the downside right now. I've already got too much in that column as is. It's part relief and part fear, so I'm trying to focus on the relief and pray that this is one of those blessings in disguise.

Oh, I did want to share a couple of pictures with you from our trip to DC. It was such a wonderful time. I loved being with my menfolk. We biked through the city for 2 days to see the monuments and other sites.

It was a great way to see the city and it made me remember how much I love to ride. Also, check out my youngest son, Sam and his cousin, Anthony, both 14 years old. They are a month-and-a-half apart. This is what the opposite ends of the height scale look like.

While life always has its challenges, it also has many wonderful blessings. I'm so grateful for all of mine and will be even more grateful to once again rejoin the land of modern conveniences.

Thanks for all of those who have been such a sweet support. Your words of encouragement mean the world to me.

Suesan