Dan's Clan

Saturday, March 28, 2009

the 1950's Have Been Erradicated

Yippee it is DONE!!! 9 days, 12-17 hours per day and I couldn't be happier (I think)

I love 7 matching door knobs instead of none the same shape, or color and these all WORK. Such a high expectation of a simple door knob. I replaced the kids pictures that I love with these cross stitch that I also love, but I find myself longing to look at those cute pictures, SOoo maybe this wall will have to revert back to the original, just updated.

This is how this wall looked starting out--4 layers of wallpaper gone

The wall was so badly damaged I had to put a skim coat of mud to fill in all the imperfections and there were loads. After a good sanding I was pleased to find this wall as smooth as a babies butt. Next came priming it and finally 2 coats of paint. I love it! Then the fun part of putting up this decoration I had seen in my head and been collecting pieces for over a year. I think I like this wall a lot.

The pictures of Christ are from a calendar that I send Stacy while on her mission, when she came home she threw it away. Well I dug it out of the trash knowing that someday I could find a great way to use the pictures. The rod I bought at a cute place in Utah called Iron Works for $5.00. The hangers were on clearance at JoAnns for $2.50. I gutted them out and put in more pictures from the calendar. The with $8.00 worth of spray paint I reclaimed some old 5x7 frames from storage for the pictures and hooks. Rachel found this great quote for me when in Utah last week for $7.50. (we can't adhere it until the paint cures for 3 weeks, thus the taping on the wall) Then another $2.00 for a spool of ribbon and altogether this great project cost me $25.00 and I like that part A LOT

I replaced our very old and slightly broken one it still worked but the glass shades were super glued together with this much softer new one.

This desk and fridge area were out of control with PAPER and PAPER and more PAPER. After much thought this is what I did to control the paper clutter. Fridge: everything came down, no more ward lists,calendars, wedding announcements, gym schedules, VT lists and it goes on and on and on. My fridge truly was a MESS and the desk was in close second place. With a wire file holder in place to hold all those lists, calendars and such, the bulletin board for wedding announcements, now the piles are gone. I dug out some magnetic picture frames that I made collages of Andrew and Peyton for the fridge and that cleaned up the 20 magnets holding up all those cute pictures.

I have had these pictures for years and I couldn't stand to part with them, they all give me something to think about when I am having a pity party. I reclaimed this cute holder my mom gave me many years and and it now holds the cameras, i pod, dry erase markers and reading glasses of all strengths.

The window area in the kitchen drives me crazy. It seems to be a catch all for meds, and other odd items and is always a disaster. Thankfully with no boys at home doing the dishes the window stays fairly clean as they are not tossing the dishrag from the dining room after wiping the table and trying to get it to land in the sink. Fortunately it mostly did land in the sink however the sink was usually full of water and yukky dishes so much of that splashed onto the windows. So my goal is to keep the window sill free all stuff except what you see here. The final touch was this great quote that Rachel brought back from Utah, (she brought me lots of great quotes which i really like, THANKS RACH)

At the end and beginning of each day this herb heat bag was my friend. My thighs and shoulders have been on fire for 8 straight days and this brought me some relief. However it was a sad day when the microwave wigged out and burnt a hole in my beloved bag. However a little time spent on a good friend patched things up and it is back to relieving the pain my shoulders and thighs.

Now I think I should spend time working on wedding plans for a great couple that we love.

Spring Sprouts

Flowers! I love flowers in my yard and Spring and Summer are not far away. Last year I spent way to much on flowers, although many were perennial and they are more expensive so hopefully they will come back. So this year I decided to try and grow my favorite from seed. Payton was cross 2 weeks ago and so to keep her distracted we planted my seeds. It was a cold and yucky day so we did it in the house and we made a mess but it cleaned up easily. So now it has been 10 days and almost everything is up. We have Black-Eyed Susan, Zinnia, Lupine, Daisy and a few others. I figure I am into this project about $15.00 for potting mix and seeds. If all goes well I will save about $100.00 if I were to buy all these. I'll keep you posted as to our progress. Yea for FLOWERS!!!!

Winter Winter Winter

Winter finally arrived in Broomfield and it was great. Thursday morning we got up at 5 am and there was not a hint of moisture of any kind, anywhere. We thought, maybe it will still come. Dan headed out to work and I started one of the last things in our re-do of the kitchen/dining room the floor, (ugg) By 7am it was snowing lightly, very lightly and then all the sudden we went from absolutely nothing to 8 inches on the ground by 11am. Then the wind started howling and the drifting began. I truly love to hunker down and watch a blizzard, they absolutely mesmerizer me.

I started out to DIA at 8:15am to pick up Rachel but gave up. Dan took over in the 4 wheel drive Durango. I-36 was a disaster, as was all of Boulder. Finally after having the road he was driving on closed and re-routed a different way not once but twice, he made it to the tollway and was happy to pay their highway robbery tolls. Rachel was on one of the last planes in or out that day and we are so thankful she just happen to chose an early departure from SLC. They made it back to Broomfield about noon. We had missed them and were glad to have them home.

Friday the snow stopped early that morning, the final official total was a whopping 16.5 inches. By 9am Dan went out to shovel, Rachel and Peyton to play and I decided it was just a wasil sort of day.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

This Old House

Well the time has come for this old house to be up-dated. When we moved into this house 21 years ago this wall had the UGLIEST wall paper I think I had ever seen, (well the wall paper in our bedroom and living room might have been a close rival) After about 5 years we hung the wall paper that has been there for about 16 years. I am SICK of it. However I never had developed the stamina I knew I would need to strip it all off and paint that wall. You see it had 3 layers under mine with a coat of paint between each one. However 16 years of looking at the same wall has been enough to make me persevere through this.

The wall as it looked few days ago and then after 5 hours of intense labor, 1/2 gall of wallpaper remover and gallons of water in a steamer this is what it looks like now.

There are 7 door frames,jams and doors in this area. This is an old house with old trim and thus they are painted with OIL based paint. Since it was 76 degrees today it was the perfect time to paint them all. When I last did this end of the house the guy at the paint store sold me exterior white swearing it would not yellow inside. Like a sucker I believed him and within a few months they were yellow-ish. Now they are the white I always wanted. You can see how yellowed they became when the door next to it was painted white.
Tomorrow the rest of the wallpaper will be gone, either that or I might be gone. and then it will be onto patching, priming, sanding,varnishing and painting to make it look delightful.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

A Cleaning Frenzy

So the last few weeks I have been engrossed in sewing, tending, playing, working, working on Trek & Primary and have sorely neglected my domestic duties of CLEANING!
Dan took Friday and Saturday as play days at Winter Park and I took the time to clean, de-trash, de-grout, re-organize and clean up.

We created Rachel a work space moving Dans laptop, printer etc... from UCAR to the trunk of the Aveo to be returned to its rightful owner. This piece of junk was feeling sorely neglected and refused to turn on any more. Rachel doesn't much like her new work space, well mostly the SLOW computer, she has been spoiled. In that process we cleaned up the other 2 work stations, dusted, filed, threw away and other wise made our work space a little more tidy.

Next came my sewing area which has seen heavy usage the past 2 months and about to see much more in the coming 2 months. I don't think my sewing area has been so tidy in years.
The nice part the drawers are tidy as well.

Now to the improved Dans Office, which he rarely uses. He prefers the family room, warm fire, TV on the History or Military channel to do his work. But at least now all his papers, manuals, books, software etc... are in one place for easy access.

I even spent a lot of time in our bath room which need a very deep cleaning, so deep in fact that I discovered once the dark things were gone in the shower we need the tile re-grouted.
I dislike tile. Ugggg, maybe you should not clean so deep.

The living room was covered in stuff that needed to find its proper home, The dumping ground was cleaned up, vacuumed, dusted, mopped and deemed clean enough to eat from its floor. However we are encouraging all eating to be done in the kitchen or dining room.

Last but not least the kitchen also got a through scrubbing from the cook top to the oven to the ugggg sinks and floor. Yes it took hours just to clean off the table, counters and desk to be able to clean them. We have got to stop dumping our stuff when we come in the door.
I love this new look and shall try much harder to keep it.

Jays Hut 2009

What a great trip. A complete opposite weather conditions from 2007. Then it was the coldest day on record plus 35-50 mile per hour sustained winds that brought the temps to about 30-40 below. This year little wind and temps hovering about 25-30, a beautiful bright sunny day.