Day 2 of the Challenge
Well, I'm rather late in getting my challenge post up tonight. I was hoping to finish everything on my list first. But alas, that didn't happen. There's always tomorrow, though! I'm just trying to focus on what did get accomplished, not the things that didn't.
I started out the morning by reading Psalm 65 and 66 and dedicating my day to the Lord. What a blessed encouragement a short time in the Word and prayer was for me today. I need those little nuggets of truth and God gave me some special ones through the Psalms today.
After devotions, I set out to follow my morning routine. We seemed to have a number of setbacks this morning, but I finally made it through around 11 a.m. -- only a few hours late, but oh well! Such is life sometimes! Meeting the needs of my little ones is so much more important than crossing everything off my list or following my schedule perfectly.
After a few more diversions, I sat down and made up my to-do list. Knowing my tendency to be an over-achiever and seeing how things were already feeling off-track, I limited myself to only five things:
1. Cook barley for dinner.
2. Clean kitchen.
3. Clean living room.
4. Write two thank you notes.
5. Fold and put away all laundry.
While the barley was boiling, I set out to clean up my somewhat-messy kitchen.
The "Before" shot
...And the "After" shot
You can see my "home management center" on the counter to the left along with my timer and water bottles. I usually always keep my timer and water bottles there so that I can stay on track with the timer and stay hydrated with the water bottles.
Our daily schedule (with columns for each person) is currently posted on the refrigerator in plastic sleeves and I keep a dry erase marker handy to mark things off as we accomplish them. I used to just keep it in my home management binder, but we're testing this way to see if it works any better. So far, it's actually been very helpful to have the entire family's schedule posted for at-a-glance consultation.
Note: Kathrynne insisted she be in the picture above along with her doll named "Boy" (Did I ever mention that, according to Kathrynne, we currently have no girl dolls at our house only boy dolls? I guess she needs a little brother!).
With the first two things finished off my to-do list, we headed to tackle the living room.
The "Before" shot
After a quick pick-up, we vacuumed and dusted in the living room. It's amazing how much of a difference little things like that can make!
The "After" shots (Wow! Those windows really need to get some curtains on them! They look so bare in this picture!)
We had removed the sofa covers because of our stomach bug incident a few days ago, and since I was behind on laundry, it took me all day to finally get them washed and dried and put back on. So the After shot didn't get taken until tonight.
With the living room all cleaned, I let the girls watch a sign language video while I sat down with a cup of tea and wrote two quick thank you notes. I'd been needing to do these for more than a week, so it was good to finally get that done and crossed off my list!
Thank you notes accomplished, Kathrynne and I both sat down to have a "spot of tea." She just loves tea parties and is always asking if we can have them. She especially loves getting to use my good tea cups!
By this time, it was almost naptime, so I sat down to read with the girls and then put them both to bed. I was hoping to find time during naptime to climb Mt. Neverest (i.e. the massive clean laundry mountain in our room that had been building up all day), but once I had finished my other scheduled naptime projects, both girls were done with their naps and it was time to do a quick pick-up of the house and finish getting dinner on the table.
"Nevermind about the laundry," I thought, "I'll get to it after dinner."
But I never had a chance to get to it and now it's bedtime (er, past bedtime!). So I'm sure you can guess what will be on the agenda for tomorrow's Making Your Home a Haven Challenge!
Maybe I didn't get everything done off my list today and maybe I felt behind all day, but I'm thankful to have the best job in the world - being a help meet to my wonderful husband and being a mama to two precious girls. I'm so blessed!
I started out the morning by reading Psalm 65 and 66 and dedicating my day to the Lord. What a blessed encouragement a short time in the Word and prayer was for me today. I need those little nuggets of truth and God gave me some special ones through the Psalms today.
After devotions, I set out to follow my morning routine. We seemed to have a number of setbacks this morning, but I finally made it through around 11 a.m. -- only a few hours late, but oh well! Such is life sometimes! Meeting the needs of my little ones is so much more important than crossing everything off my list or following my schedule perfectly.
After a few more diversions, I sat down and made up my to-do list. Knowing my tendency to be an over-achiever and seeing how things were already feeling off-track, I limited myself to only five things:1. Cook barley for dinner.
2. Clean kitchen.
3. Clean living room.
4. Write two thank you notes.
5. Fold and put away all laundry.
While the barley was boiling, I set out to clean up my somewhat-messy kitchen.
The "Before" shot(Note: For those of you who have been asking to see what our home looks like on a normal day - I took these "Before" shots without touching a thing to give you an idea. It gets worse than this sometimes, but for the most part, I try to keep our whole home "15 minutes to company ready." I don't always succeed, but that's my goal!)
...And the "After" shotOur daily schedule (with columns for each person) is currently posted on the refrigerator in plastic sleeves and I keep a dry erase marker handy to mark things off as we accomplish them. I used to just keep it in my home management binder, but we're testing this way to see if it works any better. So far, it's actually been very helpful to have the entire family's schedule posted for at-a-glance consultation.
Note: Kathrynne insisted she be in the picture above along with her doll named "Boy" (Did I ever mention that, according to Kathrynne, we currently have no girl dolls at our house only boy dolls? I guess she needs a little brother!).
With the first two things finished off my to-do list, we headed to tackle the living room.
The "Before" shotAfter a quick pick-up, we vacuumed and dusted in the living room. It's amazing how much of a difference little things like that can make!
The "After" shots (Wow! Those windows really need to get some curtains on them! They look so bare in this picture!)We had removed the sofa covers because of our stomach bug incident a few days ago, and since I was behind on laundry, it took me all day to finally get them washed and dried and put back on. So the After shot didn't get taken until tonight.
With the living room all cleaned, I let the girls watch a sign language video while I sat down with a cup of tea and wrote two quick thank you notes. I'd been needing to do these for more than a week, so it was good to finally get that done and crossed off my list!
Thank you notes accomplished, Kathrynne and I both sat down to have a "spot of tea." She just loves tea parties and is always asking if we can have them. She especially loves getting to use my good tea cups!By this time, it was almost naptime, so I sat down to read with the girls and then put them both to bed. I was hoping to find time during naptime to climb Mt. Neverest (i.e. the massive clean laundry mountain in our room that had been building up all day), but once I had finished my other scheduled naptime projects, both girls were done with their naps and it was time to do a quick pick-up of the house and finish getting dinner on the table.
"Nevermind about the laundry," I thought, "I'll get to it after dinner."
But I never had a chance to get to it and now it's bedtime (er, past bedtime!). So I'm sure you can guess what will be on the agenda for tomorrow's Making Your Home a Haven Challenge!
Maybe I didn't get everything done off my list today and maybe I felt behind all day, but I'm thankful to have the best job in the world - being a help meet to my wonderful husband and being a mama to two precious girls. I'm so blessed!
posted by Crystal Paine at 11:31 PM
26 Comments:
You and your little girls are soooo cute!
On a side note, since you mentioned needing curtains in the living room, one super easy and frugal idea is to use sheets! For my living room and dining room, I simply took a sheet and ran a curtain rod through the already existing selvage/casing at the top. Then I just marked with pins how long I wanted it to be (in my case I made valances). Then I took it off the rod, cut off the sheet, hemmed and pressed and voila had a lovely valance for each window! Walmart has their Mainstays brand of twin size sheets for $2-3 and for smaller windows that aren't too wide you could probably get at least two valances out of each. I used a queen size sheet for my windows because they are big picture windows, but for smaller ones you could get by with much less fabric. I found a creamy beige color that works perfect, too. Just an idea if you feel like sewing sometime! By the way, I love the jean pocket hanging on your fridge and plan to try making a few this week.
Wow, Crystal, I wish my place looked as good as your "before" pictures! LOL!
--SarahMay
That is such a great picture of you and your sweet baby girl! :) I am making use of your Challenge also! Thanks for doing it....my house has been on the slide, and this makes it a lot more fun to climb back uphill... God Bless!
Wow:) I consider my house almost spotless when it looks like your Before pictures! Your home looks wonderful:)
Smiling here... your "before" pictures look like most people's "after" pictures! :-)
You have such beautiful handwriting!
Your pictures are beautiful and so is your house and little girl! I wish my house only needed 15 minutes before company calls!
Please accept this comment from an older SAHM with much experience in decorating a big old house. You could achieve a much cozier look in your living room if you were to move the furniture away from the walls. It is a classic decorating technique that makes everything looked "lined up" and makes conversation very difficult when you have guests. I would try the couch facing the fireplace and put the chairs facing each other in the grouping. A small table in front of the couch could accomodate beverages, etc. The rest of the room would then be sectioned off for another use, making it more like 2 rooms. You could arrange framed photos in groups on your walls to eliminate so much blank space. I love the suggestion about the curtains out of sheets from W-mart. That would most certainly "warm" up the room. Please accept my suggestions in the spirit of love from a fellow Christian woman.
I love your teapot and cups in your pictures. Where did you get them?
Also, I am SHOCKED that you consider your before pics "a horrible mess" since my house NEVER looks that clean even after I've slaved on it all day. I thought we lived clutter-free, but you take it to whole new levels. Where are all the toys/kid's books? Photos of your kids or family members?
I guess one reason I suffer from clutter is that we have our "office (computer desk)" our "craft room (sewing table)", "entry way (hats, gloves, and coats", and our diaper changing area all within our living room which is about 2/3 the size of yours!
I love your cozy fireplace! I loved Anyonymous' curtain tip and I agree that curtains would add the perfect touch to your living room.
Thanks for your suggestions on the curtains, Anonymous. I'm so not good with decorating and our budget's been very cramped this Summer/Fall due to my husband's job situation. However, things have taken a real turn for the better recently so I'm hopeful that we can once again start funding our little home decorating envelope so that I can figure out something to do about curtains. If I only knew what to do!! Anyone want to come over and help me?! I just do not have an eye for those kinds of things at all.
And thanks for your suggestions - the other Anonymous - I know our current living room could be improved upon. We tried moving things around, though, and neither my husband or I liked it. Plus, we've had a lot of big groups into our home in the past few months and have needed to have lots of open space so that is really the main reason we have the current arrangement we do. It's not the coziest, but it's been the most practical for right now. :)
I did a Frugal Friday post recently on budget friendly window treatments:
http://atime4everythingblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/budget-friendly-window-treatments.html
Mrs. Jo: I just said somewhat messy, not horribly messy. :) After I posted the pictures I realized they didn't look as bad online as they looked to me in real-life. :)
Some of my tea cups have come from RosesandTeacups.com. The rest of them are from various gifts I've been given (in addition to having a "thing" for aprons, I also have a "thing" for tea cups!).
We don't have a lot of toys - Kathrynne has a few dolls, some Legos, and some blocks and a few other odds and ends of toys. She's not really "in" to toys and prefers more to play in the kitchen or ride her bike in our kitchen or basement - I let her pretend to bake with a few kitchen things, or to draw, or to cut paper with child scissors... she's a pretty low maintenance child most of the time. All of her toys that she does have mostly stay in her room. And her books go in one of her dresser drawers. I've tried to instill in her from an early age about picking up messes, picking up her toys, putting things away, etc. and so far she's done really well with it. We'll see how things go as we have more children, though! Or what happens when we have boys!
We don't really have pictures up... I know our walls probably look really bare to some. Jesse and I are weird in that we like things really bare. We've always rented and been in places with white walls that we can't paint or do much to, so we've just grown accustomed to it, I guess!
Oh and we used to live in a tiny basement apartment which was smaller than one of the floors of this house and so I definitely know about having to have multi-purpose rooms!! You really have to get creative and it's almost impossible not to have some mess at all times since you can't really close the door on it. We are very blessed to have found our current home - it still feels huge to me. The biggest blessing has been to have an entire basement devoted to the business and business stuff. Not having to trip over that in our normal everyday life has been a tremendous blessing!
Kaitlynn's eyes are HUGE AND BLUE! So beautiful!! Reminds me of saphires, (sp?) beautiful home, beautiful and adorable children, Crystal!!
Lovely just lovely! What a radiant picture of you and the sweet little one!
It is nice to see some of your house. I would agree that things change as you have more children too. my boys have not been much into toys, but we do have some, but we accumalate more books than toys and tapes and CD's of books on tape.
Curtains do really make a room, I had none for a long time, but my sister helped me and we found some for about $7.99 that were long sheers that we could loop over a rod on the top. I had to buy one curtain rod and for the 2 windows it was still about $20. I found the curtains at Ross Dress for Less though discounted and it was cheaper than buying fabric at $1 a yard and they looked elegant. I also used stuff i had around the house to decorate with, pictures of our family even in dollar store frames are nice, kerosene lamps and candles which we use for emergencies anyhow.
It only takes me about 20 minutes in the main rooms to clean up, if I scrub the bathrooms and clean the office/everything room it would take longer.
Thanks for sharing, Crystal -- it's so motivating and encouraging! :) One question -- could you tell me if you like the slip covers you have for your living room furniture? I've been debating doing that for our family room, rather than purchasing new furniture just yet, but I was curious if they stay on really well, or if it's a constant 'adjustment'? If you like them, could you please tell me where you got them?
Also, I have found GREAT deals on curtain rods/curtains and such on the end of the aisles at Target. They have clearances on the ends and sometimes they're awesome deals! I'm not a 'decorator' either, so I can relate! LOL In fact, I just had a friend go to the store and pick out a new comforter and paint color for our guest room! She did awesome, got a great deal, and I love it! :) That's how my house gets decorated -- God sends me wonderfully gifted friends! LOL
Debi
I think your home looks great just how it is, Crystal. I really like your kitchen! And I thought Kathrynne did an excellent job of taking your picture with the apron on by the door in your previous post. What a photographer!
Always enjoying your blog,
Leigha
I love your slipcovers! Wow--I had no idea that they could look so nice and classy. :) I like the brown color, too. It makes the room look really warm and inviting. I'm also a minimilist when it comes to decorating. I have a few strategically placed decorations on the mantle and entertainment center and beyond that aim for clean surfaces. :) I love open space, too, so also have my furniture placed along walls. It just works best for this season of my life with little ones running around and needing space to play--and it's super easy to clean that way! I think curtains would be the perfect touch to your already charming living room. I love to sew and wish we lived closer so that I could whip some up for you! I liked your before and after pictures and hope you keep posting them. I've been doing the challenges every day and can't wait to see what tomorrow holds.
Debi: I've been really pleased with the slipcovers. They aren't perfect, but they do look pretty nice - at least much better than the couch underneath! I usually spend a few moments "fixing them" everyday, but they stay on quite well. And they are washable, too, which is a huge plus! I got mine brand-new off of the SureFit store on eBay. They are quite a bit cheaper there.
Hi, Crystal!
Thanks for posting so much and I enjoyed looking at all the pictures. You have a lovely home!
Thanks for the challenges. I have really enjoyed them. I hated that I couldn't join in this evening. Just not enough time.
MP
Thanks for being "real" with us :D Your home is lovely!
Oh, I was going to say, I like your living room also! It looks so nice!
Your place looks great! I am just surprised to not see Christmas decor up--I am not big on a ton of decorations either, but I do have my tree up (although it is only half decorated--the bottom by our 4 year old hee hee hee) and stockings hung by the fireplace and my Christmas scented candles burning about. Aghhhh I love Christmas time! Plus it's snowing here!
I dream of living in your "before" pictures! Great job, great series of posts.
Hi Crystal. Great meme you have going here. I've been doing the same thing in my home but not posting about it. I think I will have to post and link to you. Your home is clean before and after. I have the same issues with the cozy thing. We have church groups in our home so things are lined up too. One little thing I did was put a large bookshelf in our livingroom at an an angle in the corner and that helped a bit. I did the pictures in groups on the wall too. That helped. I'm not big into spending tons of money on decorating so I reviewed the book Use What You Have Decorating for some simple ideas.
I'll try and post a day 2 sometime to day.
I've been using solid color throws on the couch. We're ready to invest in either new ones or reupholstery (there were a college graduation gift about 17 years ago).
Post a Comment
<< Home