OUR LITTLE PAINTER

I'm so excited about having a little place where I can brag on my youngins.  Each one of our kids are showing different things that they are interested in as they get a little older and are blossoming into their on individual things they like.  We have a painter-artist, an inspiring singer, one that loves the taxidermy like his daddy, then one boy that just loves everything right now...2 that espescially like farming and being with his granddaddy anytime there is cows, or work involved.  We are proud of them all, but one at a time I want to start posting little things they do cause, if this is a site about being a MAMA and thats what I'm good at, then I must have braggin rights!

So today its dreary outside but at least the temperature dropped a little to make it feel a little more like winter.  Kylah decides that she wants to go spend a little time in her room on her new desk that Santa gave her and do some painting.  So thats what this post is about is the new picture that she painted.  She has been taking lessons around a 1 year, but she has been drawing and doodling as long as I can remember.  So here is her picture.

and Yes, I propped it up with my pot of turnip greens! lol But I do plan to do another post later about those! Anyways, How good is that wolf and his (smoke, as Isaiah puts it!) she is so excited about this, and I love that she has her heart wrapped in it.  She has many other pictures she has painted you can also see some of those on Instagram she has a board called paintforjesus! 

MUCH OF NOTHING

When my eyes opened this am I thought, "What will I blog about today?" As I felt bummed out cause I have other projects that I've completed that I could take pictures of and post I just couldn't really decided what to do.  I'm excited about this new blogging thing but yet I let little things like this overwhelm my mind.  Why as mama or as women do we do this to ourselves?  We put this mark above our heads to try to be on our game all time.  Hoping that someone will notice something we've made, something we've accomplished, something we did that was different, original, or just something of being noticed.  I for years have asked my husband over and over what is special about me?  How can God use me to make a difference?  I would do my normal whinny voice and say..."I stay at home, teach kids all day, cook, clean and then get up the next day to do it all over again, how can that be "Being Someone" for him!" I would talk to Him silently and ask why?

Ok, so my point is this, I would look at all the other busy people around me and say, "Wow they are a good teacher, painter, business lady, exercise queen, cook, sewer, creative person."  You know what I mean, like I would label people.  Say for instance as a example I would tell my husband, you have all these multiple gifts.  You are a top fireman(which he is cause he has awards to prove it, life saves and such) then he is a gifted taxidermist because he has been doing taxidermy since he was about 12 to 13 years old, he can dabble with the banjo, he isn't a professional in that area but is good enough to play at church occasionally.  I'm mean see??? Does any other mother feel my frustration?? I mean hey, I was in love with the fact that I was home everyday with my kiddos but on the other hand it was like I needed to be recognized by someone.  Why? Why do we do this, why do we feel this way? I would tell my husband, I can only dabble in everything I do, I'm not a perfect cook, cleaner, don't even get me started on the exercise part(huffs) are you kidding me, I mean I've had 4 kids, one which weighted over 10lbs(this body has road maps!),  crafter, teacher, musician (i like to mess around with a fiddle) or any of the above.  I would even cry at times and say how can God use me if I'm not really good at one particular thing?

So one day, I was listening to James McDonald at www.walkintheword.com its a really good pastor and his site, if you don't listen to him already, you should.  He was talking about how we all try to seek to see "who we are." That it even starts out young, for instance, are we the ball player, nerd, honor student, class clown? So we start out labeling ourselves at such a young age.  I was listening to this as I painted my bedroom. He talks about how to be really good at something, I mean good that the statistics say you must have had at least 10,000 hours of doing it!!! Did you hear that? I said, "Wow, the only thing I have that many hours at is just being a mama!"  As he goes on, he starts to talk about men and woman of the bible, Abraham, David, Mary, all these people that had issues way before God used them.  But He did!  So standing on that ladder I started to cry and realized that God had given me the best and hardest job that he could give to someone.  To be a mama and teacher to these kids.  Because believe me it is! Just as I write this my two boys are fighting with each other and fussing in my ear about how much they want to hurt the other one.  (frustrated face!)

So I don't really understand why I'm blogging, or why God has me doing this cause I've never thought of myself as someone who would sit down and right out things that go on in my home.  Actually that's why I'm not on face book cause I don't really like people in my business.  But yet I keep feeling this nudge to do this.  Maybe there is a frustrated mama out there just like me who needs to see that its ok being content right where you are.  I know that on the ladder that day, I realized that one day the fruit of this labor will show.  Its like I could hear his sweet voice telling me that it will all payoff one day and it will all be worth it.  To me that's better than any award, recognition, pat on the back for being the best crafter, cleaner, cooker, its just being a ruby as the book of Proverbs says, its being a God fearing, MAMA.  

HALL CLOSET PROJECT

Ok, So does anyone out there really use a coat closet?  Well, maybe I should say does anyone out there with kids use a coat closet?  Cause basically I think they hold a lot of junk.  Mine did anyways.  I never hung the first coat in it.  I kept it closed cause I wanted to stick everything I could think of in there and hope and pray no one ever opened the dog gone thing.  I had only shelves, paint buckets, old vcr's (yes I said VCR) in said closet.  So I decided with the holidays coming up, and my hubby wanting to have company to come here this year (sigh, tired face) that I needed a nice cleaned out area for people to hang their coats and it be cute and not cost much to change.

So yes, you can see it looked bad... and yes it had shelves inside that I had to rip out. Which I must say was harder than I thought to remove! But I did get them out.  It was just your typical plain jane coat closet.  

So the first thing I did, after the ripping and roaring took place, was to clean all the mess up. And remove the spider webs, which I absolutely hate because the kids will tell you mama loves animals, all kinds but NOT spiders! 

So its clean, and the painting begins.  I used some old grey paint from where I had just finished my pallet wall project in my bathroom. Then once the paint dried, I added some pallets to the middle to give it a little country look :) and some plain hooks from Lowes Home Store.  

I moved the same shelves I had carefully removed from the top down to the bottom to give it the little seat for the kids to sit on when they tie their shoes.  I used a old chair cushion and recovered it with some cool looking material from Walmart.  Then I attached some of the left over pallets with the nail gun to give it a finished look. 

I was really tickled with how it turned out.  I did get a old tub, small stool and wall art all from hobby lobby. But with the coupon I think it was around 60 to 70 bucks.  The basket for gloves and hats came from Walmart.  The old lantern was one my husband had from long ago.  Here are some other views. 

This is the view from the front door.  I also have a little fake light that hangs in there that is battery powered so at night it looks like the lantern is lit.  So what do you think?

CURTAIN DOOR FOR THE PANTRY ON A BUDGET

Ok, So I absolutely love, Love farmhouse style kitchens!  I want mine to be this huge thing you see on something like The Pioneer Woman or anything that you could find on pinterest, but lets admit it, that cost lots of moolah!  So I do what I can on a budget and try to make it as cutesy and farmhouse as possible.

Today I'm posting a picture of what I just recently made for my pantry opening because I had double doors there but of course when you have 4 children running in and out of them all day eating snacks or cooking the next meal, the door handles and doors stay dirty! So I was constantly wiping down or doing the handy man thing, like putting dead bolt locks or any other kind of locks we could try to keep them from sneeking and getting food when they weren't  supposed to.

Well, after the doors were left with holes and filthy looking I decided to sew my on little country curtains to give it that farmhouse appeal and keep the pantry from showing my clutterness to everyone that walked in and out of the house.

It was very simple to do, material and tension rod came from Walmart and was up within about 2 hours time.  

MY FIRST DAY

Well, I'm new to this whole new blogging thing... But excited to try and start to journal fun things about our family and hopefully learn neat things along the way.  It has been a crazy winter for us here.  The weather can't make up its mind if it wants to be hot or cold. Today its 75 degrees which is weird for us in December.  We were coming out to go to church and the frogs were chirping in the creek. So now we will have all these crazy viruses and colds going around because it hasn't been cold enough to kill all the germs that are going around.  Which leads me to my first topic.. GERMS....my husband "the taxidermist" is a germ-a-fobe! We must keep hand sanitizer in every location in our home, pockets, vehicles, ect.  This is a must! But i guess if you look at some of the things he looks at all day you would want to keep your hands clean? right? my 2 younger boys don't think so.  LOL

To explain a little bit about us, my husband works for the Greensboro Fire Dept every third day and then runs a full time taxidermy business that his grandfather started back in 1984. You can check out more about that at www.brokenarrowtaxidermy.com  I have 4 kids, 2 girls, 2 boys.  My oldest Kylah is 12, Emma Grace 10, Jonah 9, and Isaiah the baby is 6. (I'm not just the mother to the last one, I'm more of his attorney my husband says since I always come to his defense when things go wrong...hahaha) One thing you will learn about our crew is that we love animals.  All kinds of them.  What is really nuts is that I'm super, I mean SUPER tender hearted towards them. Which my husband thinks is wacky since he is a taxidermist, but yet loves me anyways. My sons on the other hand, do not share much of the same sympathies.  We do have rule here--you only kill what you eat.  So that way the boys understand we don't go around just killing any animal we see. It must be something that we are using that God provided for us to feed us. My boys have a excellent example set before them in their father. I do not even like any movies that has animals that get hurt, injured or dies in it.  I will not watch it, my husband has to watch those with the kids.  Even though I do love a good movie.

Sundays are always our relaxing day.  We both work in classes at our church Osborne Baptist in Eden, NC. and then come home and rest or play with our kids, then its diner at my moms every Sunday evening.  Christmas has wore everyone out and its actually peaceful in our home for 5 mins because everyone has something new to play with or they are asleep.  I have so many things I want to start to post or talk about! I can't wait to see how all this is gonna play out!

SOMEWHAT CRAFTY...I THINK

So I'm so excited about a project that I just finished in my home.  I had been researching on pinterest (oh, pinterest? frowny face, my husband says) and found all these walls that people had been doing in there bathrooms or just a neat area in the home with pallets.  So of course, I had to try it!

 I worried my dad (who is still farming and I bug like he has nothing else to do) to get me some pallets from one of the grain places he goes to sell wheat.  I told him I wanted really old ones that would look like they had come from an old barn.  We really like the white washed old barn style wood.  I wish that I had started blogging before I done this project that way I would have taken pictures along the way.  But anywho, I didn't so therefore I'm going to just post a picture and tell you what I done and then next time I will know better!

I had about 5 really old pallets, I had my tough as nails boy Jonah (who is 9, I have to brag, cause I mean dang, what 9 year old wants to run a pressure washer!) he washed all them and we left them out to dry overnight.  Next, my hubby and I pulled all the pallets apart and laid them out on plastic. I bought stain from your local Lowes Home Store, grey and whitewash colors.  We used a really cheap brush and just ran it over the boards until we liked the look.  The next day after they had dried, I used liquid nail and some black screws here and there and made my pallet wall.  I wanted my boards to be all scattered, in other words I didn't want each pallet to line straight up and down so I had to use different boards and make cuts based off where the last pallet ended.  The project took me most of the day because I was making all the cuts by myself.. But overall, I absolutely love the finished look because I have a beach theme in my bathroom so I didn't want the typical pine look.  I plan to hang something on the wall but haven't gotten that far with it yet.

So yay! I do like the way it turned out.  I think I spent around 25 for the total project.  Stain, liquid nail, and some cheap brushes.... I have some other projects I have done with the boards also that I will post soon!