We were there, moseying around when my husband came upon this gem:
Ahhh!!! It is a vintage stove!!!
It is a Tappan Deluxe, although we haven't found exactly what year it was made, its from somewhere around the 1950's. How cool is that???
Oh, and the BEST part? It was only $75.00!!!
There was another one (also for $75.00) that had a double oven, but it needed a lot more work, so we left it behind.
This morning my husband texts me and says, "Wait, see if they still have that other oven, too."
I knew he'd do that... he was regretting not getting that one ever since we left the store. I think we're going to end up with two vintage stoves in our house. One will be a work in progress in the garage, but still... $75.00 and if we can't get it up and working, we can sell it for parts for more than $75.00, so its still a good investment.
This stove, with double ovens would be a much more realistic fit for our family of 6:
We also bought supplies so that I could stretch some canvas and make some paintings for the new house. If I get my packing done, I will start with that tonight. I am SO excited!!!
Inspiration for the boys room:
I want to do a painting similar to this in colors that coordinate with the room... one for The Avengers and Possibly The Hunger Games that both of my sons love.
I would also like to find some corrugated roofing for one or part of the walls. Anyone have any clue where to get that without spending a huge fortune?
And some fun quotes from their favorite shows, The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Friends and favorite movie quotes.
I found it fairly difficult to figure out the decorating for the boys' room. Thankfully, Paris was a big help because the boys weren't sure what they wanted! I think it is going to turn out looking just amazing.
He's actually away at camp, so I don't get to do anything for him until he gets back. I've been working on some things for his soon to be new room, though, so hopefully he likes that.
At this point in life, he only has a few close friends that he wants to invite to his party. Basically, Laser Tag, food and swimming are his only "wants" for a party. Well, that and BACON. Food, food, more food, and most of it accompanied by bacon.
Here are some highlights from the past:
Once we move, I'll have to pull out the old photo albums and scan in from the old days as well:)
and, lets not forget The "Mike and Ike Birthday Cake" (the party was 'eh', but the cake was a huge hit!)
Kainan is SUPER competitive. So is his father, so he comes by it honestly. Here he is trying to best his dad's longest jump from the swings. Yes, maturity IS overrated.
Kainan's first love: Basketball
Here is is hugging his little brother Jaedin. They are just so close...
And here he is hugging his sister, Paris. Such a sweet , sweet boy. (He really is, actually, but he's also a beast)
Seriously, though, here is the "real" Kainan.
What are your favorite birthday memories/traditions? Do you have something special you do with your children?
So yesterday the last two of my kids left for camp. Kainan left for Iowa and Camp Grandma. Jaedin left for a state camp Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation about 4 hours away.
Patrick took Jaedin to camp yesterday, and said that when they got really close, Jaedin started fidgeting and said, "Well, I'm just realizing that this is the first time that I'm going somewhere all by myself. No siblings, no phone, no parents... and I'm really far away."
They finally arrived after driving 3 of the 4 hours with no A/C (yuck!)
The camp sounds like it was custom made for Jaedin, and Patrick said that the group of kids sitting in the orientation room looked like Jaedin clones. I don't know if that means they looked like nerds, science geeks or stereotypical rednecks. Jaedin sometimes encompasses all of the above:)
These are the things he gets to do:
What will you learn?
Rifle/Shotgun Training Muzzleloading Ropes and Rappelling Wildlife Identification
Archery Turkey hunting, management & enforcement Waterfowl hunting, management and enforcement Fishing Swimming Wildlife Law Enforcement Self Defense Fisheries Management
Yeah, I think he'll be just fine. That is basically a list of all of his favorite things to do! I guess I hadn't thought about the fact that it would be his first solo venture. My kids have pretty much always done things like this together. We traveled the country together, they go to Camp Grandma each year together... this was the first thing that happened to come up that was very Jaedin specific. We are very happy that he got the opportunity!
Meanwhile, I'm on a MOMMY VACATION!
I'm working on art and home decor projects for the new house! I can't wait to show you the things I come up with. We've set up themes for the kids rooms and I'm working on making things for their rooms. I really want to make some chalkboard paint, too... I keep forgetting to get the stuff for it!
Do your kids ever leave all at the same time? What do you do during your free time?
Other than painting stuff, I have to finish packing because we CLOSE ON OUR HOUSE in 3-4 days!
One of my livjournal friends posted about "battle scars" today. About how we all have scars from things, and the memories she had of different scars... So, of course, I have to make a post about it, too! I have a scar on my face from when I was little and my dad threw me over his shoulder, as dads do... except my face hit the corner of the truck door that was open. We had just come from getting groceries and I vividly remember my mom grabbing a brand new package of paper towels and just holding the whole roll to my face. The scar used to be RIGHT under my eye. I was 1/4th of an inch from losing an EYE. I can't imagine how bad my dad must have felt! We rushed to the ER and I got it stitched up.
I also have a scar on my knee. My cousin and I used to run into our linoleum floored kitchen and slide on our knees across the floor. Until the day that I did so and ran into a fork that had fallen to the floor under the cabinets. I screamed, stood up, and there was a fork sticking out of my knee. That's all I remember. I got stabbed in the calf by a boy in 3rd grade with a pencil and the lead didn't come out until adulthood... but I don't think there was ever a scar, persay. OH!!! AND I have a scar by my eyebrow from one of the times we were moving and I had one of those heavy moving cart thingies. I had a huge box of books or something heavy... and I lost my grip just as I leaned down to put it on the thing. The box fell, and the handle of the moving thing came up and smacked me in the head. I nearly passed out. Steven took me to the ER and I got stitched up by a Dr with VERY shaky hands. I thought for sure he was going to poke my eye out. AND I have small scars on my hands from a vicious game of "mercy" in 8th grade with a boy... I think Gary something... who hated me because his best friend wanted to be my boyfriend and we got into a game of mercy. I must say, though, he was far worse off than my by the end of that "game". I was a girl, and therefor had even more vicious fingernails than he did. And, of course, I have the stretch marks. Hardly any on my stomach, but I have them on my thighs and breasts. Apparently my stomach was prepared for the growth involved with having five children, but the rest of me wasn't prepared!
This is the video I made for my husband last year for our 17th anniversary. It has photos from various times in our marriage... and makes me wish I had more photos!
This year, we're in the process of moving, and I've not had as much alone time as I did by this time last year. Anyway, I need to do an updated one of these soon:
Thanks to my friend Cari, I have an inspiration for today's post. She just posted "30 Things I Want to Do Before I hit 30" and I thought it would be a great thing to write my own "20 Things" Marriage style!
So, here it is. By the time we hit our twentieth anniversary... these are the 20 things I want for us to do together as a couple (I'll have to get Patrick to chime in here as well:)
1. Move to our new home!! (Okay, that's a given. I'm slacking because my daughter is visiting today with our future son in law, so I'm a bit distracted getting ready for them to arrive!)
2. Keep the sexy times hot. (Hey, this is an important aspect of marriage. It should be first on the list, but that just shows you how much I want to MOVE!)
3. Go out separately and pretend to meet in public (We did this one years ago with fantastically fun results:)
4. Cook together more often. Lord knows, my husband loves LOVES his food!!
5. Have parties with our grown up friends and socialize together (I'm good at the girl's night outs, but I miss social time with my somewhat anti-social husband... he's getting better, but sheesh, am I the only one with a total homebody of a husband???)
6. Have dinner together every evening. With odd, constantly changing schedules, I've gotten into and out of this habit so often. I really need to make this a priority as soon as we're settled in our new house because I know that he likes it when I do. Plus, he eats better when I have food fixed and ready to go.
Seriously, who enjoys their food so much that he scares his children with his exuberance??
7. Build something together. (As in with wood/concrete, not as in "build a life together", I think we've already got that covered)
8. Take our kids to Hawaii, or at least on some sort of "real" vacation before they're all grown up and out of the house (we already have one moved out, and two more coming up really soon! We have to hurry up on this one!!!).
10. Have a big Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family.
11. Find a relaxing hobby to do together and nix some of our current TV/Movie habits. (Not all of our movie watching, just some!)
12. Go on a biking vacation with/without the kids. Take all of our camping gear on our bikes and go for a weekend.
13. Ride dirt bikes together
14. Learn how to acid stain concrete and make cool counters and a water wall for our house.
Here we are in 2012
15. Celebrate the fact that we have raised three High School graduates so far. (Three down, two to go!)
16. Kiss more.
17. Celebrate things more (ie: Birthdays, Holidays, Anniversaries, Accomplishments)
18. Write together. Be it blog posts, articles for publication or a book. We'd be great at it.
19. Get into the habit of working out together. He's a personal trainer, I was a fitness instructor for years, surely this is something we can do.
20. Have a 20th Anniversary Vow Renewal Party (I hate the word ceremony, it sounds so... not like us, so I'm just going to call it a party:)
Phew!!! I did it! There you go, twenty things I want to accomplish in the next two years! Now, I need to print this out and stick it on my wall. That's not a bad idea, put it in cool fonts, print it out on awesome paper and hang it on a wall where I'll see it all the time:)
What is your next milestone? What do you want to accomplish?
My oldest daughter is twenty. When she was 13, she decided to go the courtship route rather than dating. Throughout middle school and high school, she chose not to date, but to just have friends. She became good friends with some awesome guys who spent time with us and our family, but hadn't ever found 'the one'.
She has even brought home boys for the "grilling" before... but until now, she was never sure if "this was the one".
Now, she says, she knows. This is it. The One. The Happily Ever After Guy. Her Knight in Shining Armor. The man that God has put in her life, that she has been waiting (pretty much) patiently for.
We haven't met him yet. She lives out of state, and is bringing him home to 'Meet the Parents'.
I can not wait.
My daughter and I were joking that we should set up an interrogation table with the extra lights on him... I can't wait. The biggest question is...
Should we video tape it???
As we know, meeting the parents is great for entertainment value, and he should be prepared for the fact that we video tape nearly everything in life. Although I must say that the scene where Ben Stiller catches the whole house on fire makes me really glad that we haven't moved to our new house yet!
And, speaking of fire... this is THE best "Dear Lord Jesus, its a Fahr" video ever ever ever.
Do you have any kids dating? Did they bring home their dates to meet the parents before getting serious? What kind of questions do you ask your child's future spouse?
A 200 Foot water slide down to the pond? Yeah, what adventure loving child would say no to that?
June 21: Our 18th Anniversary (Whoo Hoo!!!) I'll post some romantic leading up to the wedding stories that day:)
June 25: (?) We close on our new house (somewhere around there) and our sons both leave for their two different camps (We're child free for a whole week!)
June 26: Our oldest son turns 17
*MOVING!!! Anyone want to help us move?
*Getting & setting up a big above ground pool (those moving people mentioned in that last sentence might want to come test out the pool if they get hot...)
July 4th: Chill on our new deck, maybe with some friends and hopefully a pool!
July 23: MY 41st birthday! (I married an older man:)
And another live appearance with Bean later in July...
We have such a good time meeting the kids in real life, and they rarely even notice that I'm RIGHT THERE, even if we don't have the set with us!:)
And of course, a Big House Warming Party on our new deck:)
So, between now and then, you can look forward to posts about all of the decorating and painting we plan to do in the new house, as well as some custom built in bunks that the girls designed for their room and I designed for the Master bedroom. We'll show you new ideas for organizing, how to build tutorials and step by step photos. Also, setting up for a big house warming!
We started to 'bud' in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find that anything that came in contact with those tender, blooming buds hurt so bad it brought us to tears. So came the ridiculously uncomfortable training bra contraption that the boys in school would snap until we had calluses on our backs.
Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we bloated, we cramped, we got the hormone crankies, had to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had."
Then HALFWAY DOWN THE PAGE... this same person says, "Then come their 'Teen Years.' Need I say more?"
This is quite possibly my BIGGEST PET PEEVE!!!! (I swear this isn't directed at any one person, the author of this piece included, I'm just sick of this mindset!)
I disagree vehemently with the "teen years" need I say more. Does anyone else find it ridiculous that they start out explaining why we are so crabby (including the teen years) and then halfway through are complaining about their teenagers being crabby?
Hypocrisy? Why are teenagers not allowed to have emotions and moods that we ourselves expect to be allowed to have??? I've been hearing this literally since my kids were born...
"Is s/he a good baby?" (another peeve)
"A good baby? s/he is just a baby, I don't think there is anything inherently bad about a baby... they eat, they sleep, they poop... that's about the extent of their life right now. Nothing terribly exciting."
To which the loving, helpful, put in my life to mentor me with their sage wisdom would put on the voice of doom and give me the dire warning, "Well, just WAIT UNTIL THEY ARE TEENAGERS! THEN you'll wish and pray that they were babies again" or something of that nature.
"Just wait until they don't want to hug you anymore! Then you'll wish they were at this cuddly stage again..." (Wait, when does this happen? Because I'm not a cuddly type, and at 17, my 6'2" big son practically breaks my ribs with his hugs multiple times a day!)
Just wait until the evil beast that is the teenager claws its way out of your sweet, soft spoken child and they turn into a MONSTER!!!
I heard this from nearly everybody. Relatives, doctors, strangers in the store, strangers at the park, neighbors ad nauseam.
I would always reply with, "No, I think my kids are going to be awesome teenagers. Probably WEIRD teenagers, but I think I'll enjoy those years too." And they would cluck their tongues at my naivety and shake their heads. I think they often wanted to pat my head as though I were a toddler trying to convince them that I wanted to be a turtle when I grew up.
I messed up this quote. What he actually said was, "The only difference between 3 and 300 are zeros,
and zero =nothing, so I still win.
Well sorry to say people... My kids are now well into teenager land. My youngest is 11, I guess, and maybe she'll suddenly turn into a raving lunatic werewolf who eats vampire placentas in the night, but I'm fairly confident that isn't going to happen. If it does, that video is totally going on my youtube channel.
As it is, my other kids are 14, 15, 17 (this month!) & 20, and they are amazing people. Yes, we had some rough times off and on where kids went through puberty and learned to adjust to the hormone shift (Proper supplements can be a life saver for all involved and don't let anyone tell you differently!) and even figuring out how to transition to adulthood.
Just like we, as adults have to do several times in life, when we go through life changing experiences. It doesn't have to be the living hell that some people seem to expect if you can treat your children as human beings, worthy of your love and respect instead of some sort of failed science experiment when it turns out that they might have a different way of handling emotion than you do.
I love my teenagers... perhaps partially because of the fact that I raised them with no preconceived notion that they were going to suddenly turn into demon spawn when the number 13 was on their birthday cake. Maybe its because we celebrated their 13th birthdays late (most of them, anyway) and they forgot that they were supposed to start foaming at the mouth, back talking and being a huge pain in the butt.
And yes, I realize the whole original article is supposed to be funny. I don't know where its from, but yes, its funny that we women tend to be crabby. Thank goodness that I can use the fact that I'm a woman for being so "crabby" about this subject.
We tease and torment each other, our love language is sarcasm, but we definitely have a lot of love... and a lot of sarcasm.
And no, as a matter of fact, I am not PMSing or in the process of menopause, I've just been waiting nearly twenty years to say "I told you so! I'm all grown up now, so na na na na BOO BOO! Take THAT negative mentory people from when my kids were babies."
Okay, so we're moving sometime in the next 2-3 weeks (***SQUEE!***) I am so excited!
The thing is that we're moving from a 900 square foot house to an almost 1,700 square foot house. We are going to actually have room for some 'real' furniture!
We're going to refurbish our two dressers that we own, but other than that, we're going to be furnishing the new house almost solely with garage sale/auction or used vintage furniture, DIY stuff (thank you, Pinterest) and our own artwork.
My daughter Paris LOVES going to garage sales with me, so we have had a blast. Here are some of our recent finds and favorites!
We are VERY much looking forward to having a house that is PERFECTION for entertaining. We found several cute entertaining things for a quarter here and there.
I LOVE these little storage ottoman type things. Going to garage sales later in the day, we get a lot of deals. We got this and the (very long, very pink) curtain in the background for $6.00
This chair belongs to a table and four chair set that I got for $6.00! It will be turned into our art table in the dining area of the kitchen. The game box on top has two game boards on each board and the pieces are all in the bottom drawer. We love to play games, so this was a steal for $3.00.
Paris got this silver mirror for $3.00 for her vintage black, white and silver room (with teal accents). I got this stack of pressboard shelf board for $5.00, there are twice what is show in this photo. We will be building a lot of custom storage, so this was a great deal!
A nice little dish drainer for the kids and some more 'party' stuff!
A gorgeous colander for the kitchen and some silver tea set stuff that Paris is going to use on her vanity for makeup type things.
A 3-4 ft silver tree for Paris' room come Christmas! She is SO excited to have a room with a real theme and decor that matches!
Again... for Paris. She owns a record player and vintage speaker, so she collects records at garage sales and this magazine rack will be perfect once its spray painted silver.
These are adorable candle holders that Paris is going to use in the main bathroom.
LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE LAMP!!! Paris saw it first, or I would have snatched it up. It will look so cute in her room!
Some pretty jars for our living room. The "red" one is actually very much raspberry... the prominent color that we'll be using in the kitchen.
We found this 7 piece dining set for $150.00 at Aldi!
We are all so excited to MOVE!!! If we can get the rest of the stuff out of this rental house and into the POD storage container this week, I will be doing some big stretch canvas paintings for the new house NEXT week. And then we'll MOVE!
I found this AMAZING blog post through the magic of Pinterest, and I am SO SO glad that I did! It was SO much fun and I couldn't be happier with the end product!
When I saw these on Pinterest, I fell totally, instantly in love. I knew I had to have these for my kitchen! I'm hoping that it works out to use them in there, that the colors will match up nicely with the living room colors, but if not, they will go in my bathroom. I just LOVE how they turned out!
We bought the inks at Hobby Lobby and the tiles at Lowes for practicing. There is a Habitat for Humanity used housing store here in town that I just found out about after living here for over a decade... and they sell boxes of tiles for SUPER cheap, so we will get the bulk of our tiles from there for less than ten cents a piece.
You need inks, a toothbrush and Alcohol blending solution that you can purchase at your local hobby/craft store, or online here.
First coat the tile with the alcohol blending solution. You don't want puddles, but you have to give it a good coat and work fast because the stuff evaporates quickly!
Then, you just put drops of color and watch it explode into amazingly cool patterns.
We experimented a little with using other things like q-tips and whatnot, but really we just liked the basic patterns it created all by themselves.
The best part of this is that you can't "fail" at it! If you end up with a pattern you don't like, just use the alcohol blending solution to wipe it off and start over again!
You can also put small drops of the blending solution on the colors and it will leave "white" spots. You can wait til that dries and just keep adding layers. There are some awesome effects!
My husband made on that looks almost tie dyed, its pretty awesome, too!
I finally found the best way to clear coat them to protect them from scratching on the blog with Aimee's Comment. It sounds like it will be a bit time consuming, but I'm thinking that on a hot summer day in the garage, it will go fast enough. (With some good ventilation, of course!)
So, what do you think? Looks fun, eh? I LOVE them and can't wait until I get to use them!
ETA: I actually changed my mind about these colors. I am going to use these in my bathroom or something. I used more berry colors for my kitchen:
