Barbie Hoarders

Now that the kids are in school, I'm tackling a few cleaning and organizational issues. First up, the girls' rooms. They share a bedroom and a playroom, and have about a billion small toys, which get sorted and put away periodically, but are usually all over the place. I wish this were a true "before" picture, but I'd already filled several boxes and put them into storage when Rob suggested that I should take a photo. The dollhouse was especially bad, every room crammed with furniture, clothes, Barbies, Polly Pockets, Littlest Pet Shop, stuffed animals, novelty erasers, play food and more. It looked like an episode of Hoarders, starring Barbie.

We decided to try a modified version of the Stringham's clean up. We didn't box up everything, just most of the small stuff. They still have some dolls, Barbies, stuffed animals and kitchen stuff, but if they can't keep what amounts to about 1/3 of their stuff picked up, we'll box it up too.

End-of-Summer Clean-up

We pretty much missed any sort of Spring clean-up, so our yard was totally overgrown. We came home from Bear Lake on Thursday afternoon so that we could go to SEP conferences that night, and Rob (who had to leave Bear Lake on Monday to go to San Francisco for a conference) took Friday off. So we spent half the day trimming bushes, weeding, and mowing & trimming the lawn. I wish I'd thought to take before and after photos, but I did get a few of everyone in action.

Then on Saturday we got up and did the same thing, but in the backyard. So nice to have it all cleaned up. Hopefully next year we'll do it earlier, in lower temperatures!

Speaking of home improvement...

We now have a front door that opens and closes without using the deadbolt. It's only taken me a year-and-a-half to fix this. No one will be happier to see this than Rob.

This Old House

I had to call Rob this morning with a bad news/good news report. The bad news is that our furnace had a five inch crack and was leaking CO2 into our basement, so had to be shut off immediately and replaced. The good news, of course, is that we found out about it from a service call, not a tragedy. More bad news? We replaced the upstairs furnace just a few years ago, as well as the water heater and water main. But the good news is, that furnace is working just fine, so at least we had some heat. Bad news—I meant to take a photo of the old furnace, and the now-clean storage room, but was too tired after getting it clean. Good news—Rob told me he'd buy me an iPhone 4 when the storage room was organized.

Keeping busy

I finally got around to hanging some pictures today. I was going to surprise Rob when he got home, but let's face it, he's not big on surprises, and I'm just not that patient. Hanging pictures in a grid is not easy, especially when you have to jerry-rig some scaffolding. While I was up there Joey said, "Um, Mom, is that safe?" I told him not to tell my grandma about it, but that yes, I was being careful. It feels good to cross that project off my list. 

General Conference Sunday

Our kitchen had been demolished before the October conference, so we were all happy to resume our tradition of crepes and conference bingo this morning. Conference was great, as usual—I especially loved Elder Bednar's talk, and the one just after, with the concept of spiritual home improvement. Hopefully that process won't be quite as traumatic as the physical remodeling!

The day we get ready for Sunday

It's almost eleven but my kitchen is finally mostly clean. Going to bed now. My version of the groundhog day routine will begin again soon. I'm not complaining.

The Not-Quite-Daily Photo

I'm just embracing my inconsistency. I do feel like I accomplished something today though, and if I had thought of taking a "before" picture it would be obvious that it was something big. Of course I couldn't have shown my face in public again if anyone had seen the state of the storage room before I cleaned it out.

Since it was an all day job, I didn't fix dinner. We had a nutritionally empty but delicious meal here:

This just in

Sorry, I'm going from not posting at all to posting way too much. But I'm very excited to have this new, super-comfortable sectional. Rob, forget what I said about cleaning out the garage today—I'll be taking supervising from the couch to the next level. There is some danger that I may become permanently welded. :)

59 days

Here's what things looked like around here before September 2nd. Not bad, but outdated.


Since I couldn't get any time off my full-time job as mom to work my second full-time job as general contractor, I really neglected documenting the whole process. Here are a few shots of the many steps that went miraculously fast: demolition, removing walls and building new ones, new windows, plumbing, electrical, insulation, drywall, redo of one wall and bar (thanks Davy & Dad!), paint, fireplace, tile, finish work, cabinet installation, countertops, shutters, and finally carpet, on October 24th.


We're still moving things back upstairs, and need to get furniture and curtains in the living room (I'll post photos later), but everything major is done!



In case you're wondering which food was first prepared from the survey, it was E) none of the above. After spending the day unpacking boxes on Saturday, I made the kids some oatmeal for dinner while Rob went to the store for groceries. We did have a spaghetti dinner on Sunday, and finally made brownies on the 30th, after getting the walls ovens connected. I'm looking forward to getting back to cooking and adding recipes here.

Quick photo update

As the general contractor of our remodel, I haven't had much time to document the whole process—maybe a few weeks from now, when everything is done and I've cooked a few fabulous meals so that photo scrooge feels like this was all worth it, I'll have time to do a recap. In the meantime, we now have hardwood floors:
and a front door:
a pantry, which I'm very excited about:
shelves in the new den, which photo scrooge is very excited about:
plus doors for said den, so he can shut the rest of us out: 
Tomorrow we'll have a railing and the cabinets will be delivered!

We should be cooking within two weeks, which leads to the all important question in debate around here: what to make first? Cast your vote in the sidebar poll, or leave a comment. 

It will all be worth it

Photo Scrooge is in danger of being renamed "Remodeling Scrooge." He is not dealing well with the chaos, as you may have read here, here and here. But now that the demolition is done, we will be seeing some progress—the new walls are in, the cabinets have been ordered, the plumbing will be done tomorrow, the electrical on Monday, and the insulation on Tuesday, so hopefully we'll get the drywall started on Wednesday. Anyone want to help me pick out countertops and flooring?

Am I Bizarro Rachel?

Okay, I don't think I'm her polar opposite, but reading her blog lately, I've decided that we are living parallel lives. Compare Rachel's post to my field trip to Wheeler Farm with Joey's class yesterday.

The biggest difference is that she went on a nice sunny day, while ours was rainy, cold and muddy. Joey didn't mind, and I loved spending some one-on-one time with him. Don't forget, this is the same kid who wiggles his teeth until he can yank them out (sound familiar?).

We just read the same book, too. 

Here's where I become the bizarro, though:

Not only are there no knobs on the closets in our room, but my front door knob has been gone for months now. And even if Rob happens to have a generous co-worker with a great doorknob collection, I'm holding out for a new front door first. Let's hope it doesn't take ten years.

Anyway...Rachel, keep up the blogging—maybe when I get behind I can just copy and paste for our family record.

Daily Haiku

Photo Scrooge has started a new blog, called Just Seventeen Syllables, where he will delight readers with his poetry. I told him that it would be even cooler to have a dueling haiku blog, with two or more haiku posted so people could vote for the best one, but I wasn't about to up against him. Although I did offer up this one last night:

Leaky foundation,

mold...who knew? The b@$!*#^s who

lived here before us.