Being Productive

If you've ever done one of those personality tests, you know there are 4 main personality types and each person is a blend of two of those.  The two I score highest in are both task-oriented while the two I score lowest in are the people-oriented personalities.  I LOVE getting stuff done!  So this weekend was great for me.

We had no where to go except church on Sunday so we were able to work, work, work!  Ahhhhhh.  I love it.

Saturday we worked in the front yard pulling weeds and trimming plants from the landscaping; straightened up part of the garage; mowed; and did a few loads of laundry.  I can't remember what else we did except play Scrabble.

Sunday I had a photo shoot with the kids.  Dowloaded those pics then started working on a photo book to send to the kids in Ethiopia whenever we're allowed to do that.

Monday was awesome.  I wanted to get our games cabinet cleaned out.  Here's the before...

...and after.

I needed to find space on the bookshelves for all the books I bought at the used curriculum sale.  Roddy did that for me.  See how they were just sitting in stacks before.

The girls and I worked in their room...

cleaning out bins and drawers of toys that have gotten mixed together.  We still have a lot more to do.

In the afternoon, I worked on cleaning up my garden.  It had become overgrown with weeds and pests. 

Rodents like this one have been eating my tomatoes and cantaloupes before we can pick them!

Worked on some of our adoption paperwork.  It is sooo overwhelming.  I had to get it organized so I made this notebook with dividing folders.

We have only four weeks left until school starts!  I've gotten a lot done but still have so much more I want to do before the majority of my energy is required for that. 

~Here is the stack of books I'm working on - some myself and some with the kids. 

~I also want to read my camera's manual and get a better handle on my picture taking.

~There is storage under our stairs that I would like to clean up. 

~I need to get a schedule planned for school. 

~I want to purge the closet room of clothes that are too small but still hanging up.

~The top drawer in my nightstand is a disaster.  Whenever the kids have their computer time, they look for paper in there to write down their time so they can remember when it is up.  And, well, this is the result. 

~I have stacks of papers to be shredded and removed from the guest room.

~I'd love to get some pictures enlarged and put up in the office/school room or in the hallway.

~And when all that is done, I'm sure I'll find more to do.

Hope your summer is productive or fun or whatever your personality type enjoys!

The Dress

Here is the dress Mom and I worked on the other day. See the cute flower?My sister made it! Isn't it pretty?

Strawberry Jam-Preserves

Look at what my friend brought me...

When I saw her last Wednesday night, she told me she was going to pick strawberries the next day and asked if I wanted her to pick some up for me. I gave her $4 and this is what I got!! I estimated about 11 pounds all together.

What do you do with 11 pounds of strawberries? I froze a bunch. We ate a bunch. And Mom came over today to make a bunch of strawberry jam-preserves. (We couldn't decide what the difference is between jam and preserves so we're using both names.)

So yummy!!

Sewing Fun with Mom

What do you do when it's just too beautiful to stay inside and your mom is over to help you get some things done?

You do what any normal person would do, you take "things" out!

My mom retired a year and a half ago (YEA!!!) so she tries to come over one day a week ~ usually after her Tuesday morning Bible study ~ to help me do whatever I need to get done.

It is my favorite day of the week!!

She usually brings lunch, so I have one less thing to think about. Very nice! And I usually have a short list of things I want to get done. That list usually includes organizing something, cleaning out something, or sewing something...or all of the above.

On this particular day, we were having some gorgeously warmer weather. Neither of us could bear to be cooped up upstairs with our sewing project. So we moved everything outside.

I have this dress that I love and wanted to see if we could make another one similar to it. I had some pillow shams that I picked up at a garage sale a year ago that I was going to make into an apron. That is until I decided to use them to make my dress.

Iris helped us...The dress isn't finished yet. Hopefully we'll wrap it up this week and I'll reveal it in my Easter pictures (I'm going to put in on after church!).

Trading Spaces

During our 2 week winter break from school, we did a little rearranging of rooms. This is the girls' room before we moved them across the hall into the old playroom. This is their part of their new room. We still haven't finished hanging wall decorations. After I do that, I'll take more pics. Emma and Iris picked out a new color for the walls: Purple Dragon. Everyone helped paint. We turned their old room into a closet/dressing room! All the kids clothes are now in one place, organized, of course, by color! Dresses, skirts, pants. Short sleeve shirts, (forgive the lighting)...long sleeve shirts and coats. The dressers hold pjs and shorts. And the empty rack on top is for hanging clothes to dry. The closet is holding clothes being stored for future wear. I love it!

We divided the toys from the playroom between the boys' closet and the girls' closet. They share, though, because the girls like Legos and the boys like the Littlest Pet Shop and the kitchen stuff.

Hand-Me-Downs

Gotta love 'em!

One of my summer projects was to go through all the hand-me-down clothes and shoes that I've gotten from my sister for Iris and from a friend for Emma. Both love to shop and have great taste. So I have a ton of clothes for the girls. In fact, I really don't ever have to buy them anything!

I also had some clothes and shoes from my sisters-in-law for the boys and Emma.

This is a picture of almost 200 pairs of shoes (this does not include the shoes in their closets that they currently wear!)This is the pile of clothes we are giving away! The guest closet is full of totes with clothes waiting to be worn.

The Wagner Library

A year ago, Roddy said I could splurge and reorganize/decorate our office-school-craft room. I bought the paint I wanted then called in the expert, my friend Tiff, to get her opinion on fabric for the curtains and pillows.

We painted. Roddy put up floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-door shelves. I organized the office-school (curriculum)-craft supplies in these perfect sized tubs from Walmart. {They are much cheaper than baskets at $1.88 and in my opinion more durable. And since the shelves were going to be covered with curtains it didn't matter how pretty they were.}
I recovered a bunch of old pillows for a reading area and got the shelf curtains and one window curtain sewn then pretty much stalled. I don't know if school started or what but I made no progress after that.

But, summer is here again! And I am so excited about everything I've been able to accomplish in this room. Mom came over last week and we added a topper to the boring window curtain I had sewn last year. Then made a cute little window treatment for our tiny window AND made a table cover to cover the ugly gray folding table!

Also, Saturday when I got back from an all-day Bible study, Roddy surprised me with 2 new 6-shelf book cases!! I had a ton of new books that I bought at the used curriculum sale and was trying to figure out how to make them fit. Now they are oh so organized.

The first 2-shelf bookcase is for science magazines and books (non-curriculum). The second 2-shelf bookcase is for history. There are biography books and autobiographies, history readers and historical fiction.

On the first 6-shelf bookcase (top to bottom) are old readers that I've collected; classics like The Wind in the Willows, Little Men, etc.; and then books that are a series like Little House, Boxcar Children, etc.

The next big bookcase has more of my old book collection; big kid readers; Bible and character/virtue books; and little kid readers.

Here are the before and after pictures:

the view from the door...
the view from the window...the view of the wall before shelving and curtains...I still have this wall to work on. It's on the list! Otherwise, the Wagner Library is open for business!