My Gallery Wall

For the most part it's done, I'd still like to add a few pieces to this wall, just haven't found the right ones yet. It's a combo of Illana's artwork, Justin's work, Africa art, photos from our travels and a Dollar Store gem.

The gallery wall in dinning room

Valentine decor comes down tomorrow

This is an area of the adjacent gallery wall, I have a few of my original redwork items to add as well as some of the boys artwork; I just need a ladder and to decide on the arrangement of items.

the start of my larger gallery wall project

This last week a friend, who we have nicknamed "NannyKin Skywalker", came over and in all her nannying glory helped hold Aubry down so we could create this jewel.

Micah 6:8 with help from NannyKins

Hi There!

It's been a busy month or so, I just sat down last night and began to re-evaluate what I have on my daily and weekly to-do list. Every once in awhile I come to a place where I have to sit down, look at all going on and make some changes, move around or get rid of commitments- you know what I mean, we all have to do it time and again.

I've been pretty good this last year about my time and commitments;

but as Aubry grows and the family dies down in size,

so does life, 

ever growing, 

ever dying,

new opportunities bud into life,

while others die off.

Birth of anything is hard,

death as equally so.

With the older kids gone so is a lot of activity around here. Shrinking from 7 people to 4 can certainly be heard and seen in the house. With two empty rooms I am a little beside myself; we've never been this way, at least not in a long time. One room will remain empty for the most part. I plan to add mirrors and ballet bars to one wall, making it a dance room; originally wanting to add a bed I am opting for an air mattress so it can remain an open space to twirl and stretch, bend and move! 

(now to decide on paint color-- errr...)

The other room currently houses my material and creative supplies, a treadmill and extra fridge.

Unsure of it's final shape I imagine it'll have a large table with a constant floor covering of string and fabric, paper, drool and sand, serving perfectly as a creative room with direct access to the sand box!

A third room, Aubry's old 6x9 mini-room is already transforming into our home office. We've spent the last 4 years running the business from the dining table, living room sofa and our bed -- it's time she have her own space.

With all that said here are some pictures, capturing some moments of this life thus far in 2013.

ENJOY!

Aubies discovers her toes!

She loves the puppies on Grampa Chute's 1944 high chair

Baby girl starts coloring, although she prefers pens and pencils over crayons.

Steve has traveled to Detroit twice this year, remodeling the 100 year old Polish Community Center and the NEW Detroit Love Inc fortress!! We FaceTimed while he worked!

My sweet baby girl moved out taking a little piece of my heart with her, oh how I love FaceTime to keep her near.

One of my desires is to blog a little more, so hopefully I'll be around here more in 2013!

6 Things For "Type B" Personalties

I am an A-/B+ personality
I can be very organized in small ways and mostly a cluttery butterfly in the rest.
Organization for me right now is 2 cutely decorated spiral notebooks, one keeping track of my personal life and the other for my current party planning job, now if only I knew where they were... just kidding

Some days I freak out at my clutter,
most days I don't.
One morning years ago while watching the Today Show some organizer said that if you could find something in under 3 minutes you were good. I'm sure she said it more eloquently but that is the gist of it and a theory I stick to.

So, since I can find anything in 3 minutes, I'm good.

But being a stay-at-home home for the past 19 years I thought I'd put together a small list of things that have helped me survive my days.

How To Survive as a "Type B" Stay-at-Home-Mom

1. Make your bed as soon as you get out of it, if not you'll probably go right back into it

2. Start 1 load of laundry every morning, since your a type B personality combining whites/darks and towels makes no difference, then every time you eat "push it through"

3. Think about dinner within the first 30 minutes of your day, that way you can get your meat thawing or int he crockpot before everyone is starving at 5pm

4. Be at peace with creating something over cleaning something

5. About 30 minutes before your man walks through the door freshen yourself up, you may not have showered in a few days and that's OK, do your hair, at least comb it or redo the pony, dust up your make-up or blush or lips and put on something cute- for me it's always jeans and a shirt

6. Know what household chore "settles" you the most and make it a priority; for me it's the floors. I do best when the main areas are vacuumed daily, especially the entryway and kitchen, when they're clean it seems to make all the other stuff not seem so bad

Especially with the holidays in full swing these 6 tips really help me. What top tips help you keep the house in working order?

You May Say That I'm a Dreamer

I am such a torn spirit.
Eclectic.
Classic.
Torn.

I see the potential in anything.
An old dresser,
curtains with a great pattern.
...Yet simple seems so clean.
Simple can be calming,
...so can a wall covered in art, photos and decor.

I've recently slimmed down my closet,
weeded out my fabric collection
and am in a state of re-doing.

I've also worked on slimming down my life,
no longer hosting weekly woman's gatherings and lunches,
said no to some teaching requests
deciding to simply focus on 
youth ministry and my home.

Which brings me to my home.

Our home.

We've lived inside these walls for 9 years
and I think it's time for some changes.
Changes on the walls,
changes to the furniture and fixtures.

Eclectic in my thinking and in my decorating
I hope to tell a story between our walls.
A story of who lives here.
A story of our lives.

I plan to take you along on this journey as I am inspired by Pinterest and blogs,
who knows maybe you'll get an idea or two along the way.
I'd love to see your place.
Your ideas.

I'd also love to actually DO what I plan to do.
You may say that I'm a dreamer,
no-
I am a dreamer.
Dreamers can sometimes dream outside reality.
Dream instead of do.
This time I plan to dream IN reality
and actually DO what I dream.

With that said I am off to settle down and do some dreaming,
I even have the notebook and pillow to prove it.

Happy dreaming to you too,

Vertical Pallet Garden

My vertical pallet garden

more pictures here

More Easter Pictures

We saw this idea on Pinterest and since it was a last minute find tweaked the idea using cedar clippings to cover the tomb. Before we went to bed our table centerpiece looked like this:

Then since Nik and I were the first up we quickly went to see what had happened to our tomb and found this:

 Aubry has been sick and teething so she slept a lot in the day and stayed up and "partied" all night, I did pick out a cute little pink dress for here and some bunny slippers.

 Getting a still shot of Illana is a miracle in itself, these two are so cute together.

Happy day!

Organized Pantry

So when I bought triples of some pantry items I figured it was time to clean and organize the pantry.
So here is my Takle it Tuesday post.

BEFORE:


AFTER:

I scanned the pantry and the house for any container to hold like items, baskets, rubbermaid items with missing lids to name a few. Then I labeled each container and viola! an organized pantry.


More Tackle it Tuesday posts here.

That Darn Cat!

I could write a whole children's series about my cats.
It wasn't long after I hung the pinecone bird feeders that I saw this:

I couldn't leave him there, I had to grab him and put him on the ground.

The birds ate the seeds and survived!

Boys and Their Toys

I cleaned out the entryway recently and found this stash.
I will list these items left to right.
Kenyan rock, piece of wood, machete, larger machete, umbrella, gold club
The hunter/gatherer in them shows through.

Progress

I had a chance this morning to fill the planter and put some plants and seeds in the ground. You can read more about the process here and here.
At the far back right I planted my oregano and next to it the thyme. At the front left is the mint and I managed to get 1 and a half rows of carrots in and a row of lettuce.

Another shot of the garden and where it lies in terms of my house, that door... that's my front door. I know they say a nicely presented front door and front of house is a must, well for us it's a work in progress as well as a staging ground for all things explosive. I have big courtyard plans in my head. If you look close enough you'll see the multi-colored house we call home. I think we are ready to paint, one day.

I also thought it would be fun to show pics of our home school in action, my one student however thought differently. So I'll post this one anyway even though there is no student in the pic.

The dining room gets taken over during the weekdays with school. I usually sit in the chair on the right and Justin on the left, he keeps a nice stash of water nearby!

This year I didn't want to hang a dry erase or use the portable one I've used in the past so...

This is a hutch that holds our china and other fancy dishes. I taped two large pieces of paper together and taped them to the inside of the plexi-glass door. Now I can write with a dry erase and when I want my dining room back, voila! take the paper down!

We also like to keep some formulas hanging around.

These all have to do with circles, circumference, radius and diameter.
So that's that on the physical home front.

As for the internal one: I am finding it challenging transitioning back into home life after working, not to mention finding my "fit" again at meetings I use to "work" at. Student Ministries is developing great for this fall, I am super excited but I'd be lying to say it's not challenging. My old job, now someone elses,
and me around to watch it.

Bottom line: I am having some internal struggles with the change of jobs.

Don't get me wrong, I have never been so thrilled to be home and schooling and doing all things home, it's just I got alittle bit of worldly satisfaction with an "outside" job.

Plus I'm like a gerbil,
I don't care much for change.

Well I really need to run, I have to do a limo airport pick-up for my father-in-laws limo business; this will be the 4th job I've done for him, usually I am excited, today?
not so much.
Oh well, I'm sure the QT in the car will do me good.

Lord may I focus my mind on You.

-Michelle

It's Done!

Steve completed my raised garden bed!!!!
I love watching him work, he has my favorite hands *smile*

Here is the completed garden bed!

I got up this morning first thing and weed-whacked the heck out of the grass to expose the roots, then I spent a good chunk of time pulling the roots up.

I needed some dirt therapy, so I filled a small portion of the bed with some nice soil. I plan to get the remainder of the soil on Tuesday or Wednesday. +relief+

If you read the original post over here than you know I originally wanted two beds, one would have been higher than the other but we decided it was better use of the wood if we made one big one!

Did I mention all this wood was free?

It was.

Well,

Happy Hand Washing!

-Michelle

Sunday's are pretty relaxed around here.
Today I felt nostaligic and took few shots to reflect on this particular Sunday.

First of all Steve is sleeping.
He had a very busy end of the week this last week and didn't get any sleep on Friday night so sleep was/is high on his/our priority list right now.
While it has been a while since he's pulled an all-nighter it certainly isn't new to his schedule; but like I always tell my friend Rhonda, "He's still young!"

When he does wake from his slumber I have a few square-foot-gardening containers to be built. The box closest to the bird bath is where I plan to plant the carrots and lettuce, the other box will hold my oregano and mint. You can see the oregano and mint in containers ready for the ground. The below layout is a roundabout one but I think you can see the two boxes.
Justin and his friend headed out to meet some other friends, that's his new backpack one his back; it is made to hold his skateboard; and while Justin doesn't have a cell phoen I am thankful his friend does. Our rule: call when you get there, call when you leave.

Vaughan is doing something around technology. I think he said he was putting music on his X-Box. Also look at the TV, remember the big one we got given to us earlier this year? Well it kicked the bucket last night. Fortunately Steve got a deal on a flatscreen at one of his jobs last week., so I suppose that will need to go up soon.

And I have done some reading up on planting carrots and lettuce, ready to get them in the ground tomorrow. I am hoping to plant in such a way that I have an ongoing crop ready to be harvested. deep breath

Wish me luck!

So what about you, what did you do this Sunday?

-Michelle

First Fruits

This is what I picked from my garden this morning!

Yummy.

And I have many more still on the plant!

Happiest outside,

-Michelle

It's Been 2 Days So...

... here we go...
OK, so why does it seem like we have 804 things going on all the time?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not feeling stressed, that week has passed this month already- hehe, but really I'm not stressed just a little perplexed when looking at my calendar this last week.

It's been crazy.

Mainly because of this this piece of information...
This year our middle schoolers are going to be on a local summer mission trip...
which means... someone here on our end has to line up and plan the service projects.

That person would be... you guessed it - ME!
So my week has been crazy, busy, fun and frustrating getting that together as well as preparing my house for me to be gone and then the regular mom/wife/daughter duties.

Luckily I can come home or just escape to my bedroom and see these little jewels.
Baby kittens!!!
Who isn't filled with instant joy when they see a baby anything?!
OK some of you need not answer that, but for me I love little babies- especially kittens.
Here's a shot of 3 of the 4 living in my closet.
This one has pretty coloring but he always looks scared.

Now on to outside things around here....

Red!!!

When growing tomatoes red is always a fun color!

I ask myself why I have cherry tomatoes again- I gotta plant some big ones!!! But don't these look juicey and yummy?!

There's nothing like a fresh bud growing, and for those of you whose mind went to a gutter I am talking about a flower bud like this one. Although... *smile*

Well that's it.

I hope you all have a great day, remember

"This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it."

Psalm 118: something

Peace, love and pale skin,

-Michelle

Weekend Happenings

It's been a busy weekend here at the Span Ranch.
Beside the middle school "Quadruple Yuk Squared" event at church, I spent a lot of time in my garden and on the phone with a good friend!

It's also rained a bunch!
I don't mind the rain; I just put on comfy clothes and head out into it.

Here are the start of some tomatoes.


This is my bean tee pee. You can see the beans in the ground at the base- I'm wondering if I planted bush beans though? Hmm. We will see.
To the left of the beans, I mean the right, are 2 of my cucumber plants. I still have 6 waiting to go into the ground.

I moved some rocks and got some landscaping going; below is the beginnings of a flower bed. I used coquina rock as a border (still in need of some) as well as bricks from various clean-up jobs after Hurricane Katrina. I use to have 1 large broken pot amoung the greenery until that pot mysteriously broke into 4 pieces? boys

In case anyone forgot about the car blowing up incident in 2008 here's the remainder of that vehicle. It has become a punching bag for many children and adults over this past year.

Rocks, sticks, bats, rakes, cones, shovels.

Kicking, jumping, running and kicking.

I've even nicknamed one of Justin's friends Anger Management because of the time he spends whacking at this thing.

With all this rain our driveway washed out. We really need to invest in some a bunch of sand and a ditch to fix this. Anyway Steve and a friend worked on it today.

Well, the summer is shaping up to be busy so I promise to keep you updated, plus you know me and blogging... I so prefer it over Facebook and all the other sites I belong to.

Hope you had a great weekend, I'd love to hear what you did, comment or link here.

peace out

-Michelle