Yes, We Do Love It, Don't We? aka Lazy Title

Inspired by Suburban Matron's recent post about how we decorate (or don't decorate) our homes, I shall share some favorite stuffs o' mine. I like to think about the little nooks and crannies that I enjoy most in our house. The very stuff that makes it our home.
I guess my decorating style is a little tongue in cheek.
So come in. Hang out with me. We'll talk, we'll have coffee, we'll have coffee talk.

And I'd take the tour from the front door in, but I'm sick of rearranging the photos in here. Blogger do you hear me? It's not convenient!

Anywho....

That is a Gen-U-Ine velvet painting of mallard ducks. It came with the house. Great Honor. Oh! And a gun cabinet. Yep. First thing you see when you walk in the house.

Now. The first time I ever came in our house, when we walked through with the realtor and got the Not So Grand tour, the house was basically a train wreck. I think the shock of how yucky it was left me with very little memory of our visit. Hysterical Amnesia, if you will.

We went home after that and I could not remember any of what I'd seen save for this tile back splash.

Thank God I remembered nothing else or we never would have signed papers. Boy, was I in shock again the first day we stayed here, wondering what in the hell I'd done signing my life away for a $#!thole.

Anywho! The tile could not be any more perfect for us. It is so representative of our family, it's almost spooky. I count it as one of those divine signs and a comfort.

I realize it's not all that remarkable for a house in the country to have farm-y decor, but this groovy tile stood in stark contrast to the red shag carpet, black poufy valances, and pee stains, among other really weird stuff.

See:

Fruit market:
Raising animals & processing ourselves. See, directions! "Butt" always makes me laugh a little when I'm washing dishes.Kitties!And much much more.

My view from bed. Aside from Mark's fancy TeeVee. Mah Baybehs. Mark's bookshelf. Bee books.

Cellar wall. Love that crumbly stone.

The stairs. Covered in wretched filthy turquoise carpet when we moved in. I painted the backs of the steps, but I'm letting the treads wear. I like it worn.

View from my typical reclining position on the couch. I can see the kids handwoven baskets on the cupboard in the kitchen. Dragonfly light reflected in the mirror- my substitute (the mirror) for a transom over the door. :(

Favorite painting. Painted by the father of the man who owns the horse farm our horses came from. That is Mark's dad on his horse Shebang.

Shebang!Scythes hung over the windows as curtain-less curtain rods. I just like 'em hanging there. "Painting" that always hung over my great aunt Shirley's couch. It is literally cardboard in a frame, but the picture has provided lots of staring time.

My great grandmother's afghan. Guess I could have done a more poorly lit photo?

Scotty dog cross stitch and oval frame that belonged to another great grandma. Deer head that was on the front porch of the house when we bought it. Barn painting from the second hand store. Turquoise hearth. Horse painting on the mantel from a home show at the convention center. Badly lit photo...

The ghost of a window on the living room wall.

Still in the living room. Three foot tall resin Native American chief? Check. It was a gift Mark gave to his grandmother way back when. I can't imagine how she's been living without it all these years. Chief Wakasorta they call him, I think. I don't call him anything. Maybe Dude?The paper barrel. For holding the furnace's snacks. The scale hanging between the kitchen and dining ?room? area breakfast nook place? The place where the table sits... We actually use the scale for weighing sausage and or kraut or whatever.

Cluttered letter/bill(/feather) holder. It came with the house.

Foyer Laundry Room. The whole house used to be Cracker Barrel-ed like this. Now the fun is all reserved for this room. Horse bits found here on the farm. Deer head wearing wampum imported from the local junk auction. I feel kind of daring for having such a ridiculous thing hanging prominently in my home. Makes me laugh inside.

Cross stitch of a pistol over the bathroom door. A gift given to Mark.

The bathroom floor made of pebbles.

The door to the cellar. Green glass knob. Door in desperate need of scrubbing and painting. Retired cat door.

Framed insert from the waffle iron bought at a local yard sale. The waffle iron works like a charm, too. It hangs over the washing machine for some reason?

The view that greets you as you enter through the back door. Which is kind of the front door now. The Foyer Laundry Room. Tre Fancy. (Ya, like I said, the photos aren't in order. Lay-ZEE!) That washboard belonged to Mawsi. She really used it.

A friend built this table and it is the gathering spot for pots of macaroni and cheese and people. Or people and pots of macaroni and cheese. I swear, there are no pots of people!

We found this clipboard in the barn. It has slips for feed from the Hickory Feed Mill which belonged to Mark's family for many, many years. Actually up until a couple years ago when Pops sold it and retired. Mark working there kept us out of the poor house back in the day. Very cool piece of family history.

Weird little cubby shelf in the kitchen. Used to not be trimmed in wood. Used to be nothing but painted paneling. Soooooo ugly. But cute now, I say. My green chicken dish.

For Amy, Matron Down Under: my Australian calf liver tin. Do ya'll eat that with Vegemite?

Fetch me milk! Stat!

Not so favorite: The Steelers Head Band. It comes out every Winter. It originally came out of a rag bag I think.

No, he's not some big Steelers fan. He just thinks it's funny. And functional for guys with naturally hot heads.

Now Shoo! Mama, needs milk...(Shoulda been cream, but we'll settle for milk...)

...a couple final favorite things! :) We love farm fresh milk. And stuff. Cheers!

It's 7am. Do You Know Where Your Horses Are?

The phone was ringing all morning with the school's recorded message of "We are on a 2 hour delay" due to the snow and frigid temperatures, so when I did my nekkid dash from the shower to the kitchen to answer it once more, I figured it was just a repeat.

But it was my neighbor across the street telling me she was pretty sure my horses were in her back yard.

All I could think was How in the hecks did they get across the 45 mph state route so full of tractor trailers there are signs posted about their obnoxious jake braking.

Truly, the stretch of road in front of our property is dicey on a clear and sunny day, let alone in the dark and snow.

Then I thought, No way. Mark left the gate unlocked? He neeeever leaves the gate unlocked and Sam (and to a lesser degree, yours truly) is the usual culprit and there is a big stink about it. Understandably a big stink when you're talking about animals getting smashed on the road or causing dangerous traffic accidents.
So all that's going through my mind as I wake the sleeping grizzly in my bed and try to find clothes to throw on and a hat to cover my wet head. Ah, the 15 degree weather is refreshing right out of the shower!

Run to the barn for halters and head across the street for my little runaways.

I think they were very, very glad to see us and came right to us. They must've had quite a scary adventure and seemed lost. Mommy, you found us!

When we put them back in the pasture we found that the gate had not been left open. Phew!
But somehow Admiral had either run through the gate or slid into the gate, because the gate hook was torn from the post and the gate was dented with horse hair stuck in it. I couldn't find a scratch on either horse and they seemed none the worse for wear thankfully. It's kind of a mystery what happened though. Weird.

I'm very glad it was a happy ending. Horses alive and well. No ten car pile up in front of the house. None of the cows had the ambition to sneak out. Sam was not in terrible trouble, though he was unpleasantly roused from his 2 hour delay sleeping in after a late night skiing with The Older Boys. (Kind of a milestone event overshadowed by the escape; Sam took a trip sans parents to the mountains to ski with fellows in their 15's and one almost 20 year old. Pretty rad for a guy not quite 13 I thought.)
How's your Monday so far?

No Man's Land

Mah Boys are supposed to be returning from their mountain camping trip today. Thank goodness. I have been single parenting since Sunday morning and I don't really like it. Because it's hard.

I knew that already. It's one of those things I see other folks doing and I wonder how in the hecks they do it. Something I had a small taste of in the past and hope I never have to do again.

So anywho there's that and the added chores I have to do. In the dark. In the cold. After being at work all day.

And of course, as soon as the guys left town it did this:

That's 6 inches or so of snow. And it was 18 degrees yesterday morning and 12 degrees this morning.

When Mark asked me yesterday if it was OK for them to stay one more day because Sam was having such a fun time, it took all my power to not play my Girl Card and whine for them to come home as originally planned. In spite of my unenthusiasm, I really was happy they were having a good time, so I grinned and bore it.

My routine has been:

6am Wake up and lie in bed for half an hour pep talking myself into going outside.

6:30am Out of bed, put on the same stinky jeans I've been using for chores since Sunday and go directly outside to feed the furnace. So it's dark, snow is getting in my shoes and gloves, I'm hunting for logs I can actually heft, hot coals threatening to fall out on me. It's super dramatic.

6:45am Run to the shower because I hate the smell of wood smoke all over me.

7:30am Start the process of nagging the girls to get up so I can take them to Mawsi's house. Thank goodness for Mawsi...

Then time starts to blur. We're looking for shoes, we're forgetting things, arguing about who sits where in the car, complaining about how cold it is, etc. And then somehow I end up at work.

4pm Mawsi drops the girls off at the office so they can come home with me. They climb the walls in boredom for the next hour.

5pm rolls around and we head home.

Back into my stinky jeans, Mark's muck boots because I can't find mine (I think they took them to the mountains by mistake?,) and coat hood tied tight around my head because it's booger-freezing weather out there. It's a very sexy look, also.

To the barn, feed the cats.

To the van, which is parked a city block away and uphill both ways, where the steer feed is temporarily stored. Two full 5 gallon buckets of feed carried down to the troughs with a bit to spare for the chickens.

Back to the barn for the horse feed. Haul it down to the other gate where they are nickering impatiently and Nikki is wringing her neck at my slowness.

At this point the yard looks like a Family Circus cartoon of Billy's dash-dash-dash through the neighborhood, my footprints in the snow telling the tale of of where I've been.

It's damn cold and dark by the time I close the barn up again and head to the furnace for its second feeding of the day. Temperatures in the teens means I'm not about to skimp on feeding the furnace. By that time, I'm over the coldness because I'm coming in the home stretch. Sort of.

From then on it's all about the coon dog 'til she goes to bed at 9pm. I take her out, beg her to pee, she won't. We come back in, she paces in front of the door, I take her out, beg her to pee, she won't. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I'd leave her tied out for a while but it's just so dang cold I can't do it. Why won't she pee?! 9 o'clock can't come too soon after 3 plus hours of dog potty training paranoia. So far we've had no accidents, but I'm pretty sure the dog thinks I'm a loon putting her out every 15 frickin minutes.

And it makes preparing dinner a little hectic. Including Jill's dinner which requires me to mix her fish oil supplement with peanut butter to pour over her food. The dog gravy Mark bought her just wasn't quite cutting it. Ya.

Speaking of dinner, I've nearly accomplished my goal of personally consuming all the turning fruits & vegetables in the refrigerator. Two nights of squash & jalapeno stir fry. Just as good reheated the second day?

I did try to talk the girls into going to the little restaurant up the road last night, but Lily wasn't having it. She'd rather make me scrape together a sad dinner of tater tots and venison burger for her to complain about and refuse to eat.

But there's light at the end of the tunnel I think. Jill peed without me begging this morning. Lily did eventually fall asleep after coming downstairs at 10 o'clock to tell me about all the nightmares she was having. Thanks for that, Lily, because you halfway had me creeped out. Sheesh.

And the boys might be home in time today to relieve me of my stinky jeans duties. That wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit.

There's A Stranger In My House

Several things have come to light in the last 3 months or so that have fairly rocked my world. They all have to do with my husband not being the man I thought he was.

First, there was a lovely lunch Mark and I shared at a hidden gem of a restaurant. Yummy soup and a big basket of homemade potato chips between us, we sat nestled in a pretty little wooden booth. I was quietly, sneakily I thought, picking all the folded potato chips out of the basket because they are my favorite (because they are superior to flat potato chips) and leaving Mark the flat ones. It was an intimate atmosphere and I decided to share my innermost secret love of the folded potato chips and how I was picking them all out of the basket. Self-sabotaging, I know, but I was all lovey-dovey and sharing. Plus I was expecting to hear that he prefers the flat crisps, which would just reaffirm what a perfect couple we make because we each eat what the other doesn't prefer.
Anyhow, what I learned was that he too believed that he was sneaking out all the good folded chips and leaving me the flat chip dross. How rude! Talk about a bombshell.

Then, there was Thanksgiving over at my Dad's house. The house used to belong to my Dad's Dad who recorded our measurements on the wooden trim of the doorway betwixt the kitchen and dining room. There you will find measurements not only of all the grand kids, but parents, cousins, step-relatives, neighbors and dogs.
After some good food and cocktails we decided to update some measurements. We learned that Sam is now taller than me, but I was happy to discover that I was not lying when I've completed questionnaires with my height as 5'6", 'cause I'm 5'6 1/4"! Woo!
The disturbing thing I learned is that my supposedly 6 foot tall husband of more than 7 years/been knowin' for like 10 years, has really been 5'11" this whole time! We've been living a lie, and I told him as much.

Next there was our hardcore IKEA shopping adventure. I had 3-D sketches, lists, and measurements. I dragged him all over the store, while I touched, tried, and inspected all sorts of things. I was still puzzling through how the whole thing would work, if the whole thing would work, so I was questioning the salespeople, questioning myself, and questioning Mark, who just. wanted. to be. done. with the whole thing. But Mark was patient and did his best to pay attention to things that mattered not to him.
As we sat in the warehouse waiting for our things to be brought out, I posed some sort of question or scenario to him, to which he immediately nodded enthusiastically. Too soon he nodded enthusiastically, because in the very same breath I totally changed my mind and said, no no no, that won't work, and I caught his head full of glazed-over eyes mechanically start shaking no, no, no. I said You're totally not listening to a word I say, are you? And he was caught. I think he even surprised himself a little at how instinctual the nodding and headshaking agreement was. So what I thought was this great team effort was nothing more than some sort of evolutionary husband self preservation mechanism. I'll give him a pass on that one, because I'm actually a little impressed.

However, most recently, I learned something so sad, so shocking, that I'm not sure what to do with the information. We were chit-chatting ourselves to sleep one night, all cozy and content in our bed, when somehow we came upon the subject of smells. Smells we prefer, smells we hate, you know. It's a conversation we've had countless times before for whatever reason. Naturally I say that one of my favorite smells my whole life through has been the smell of a horse. Everybody can appreciate horse smell. It is unmistakeable, the fresh grassy, horsey smell. It is aromatherapy for me to go sniff the horses, and I do not have a problem with smelling like one myself after a nice long ride. I mean, not to go out to dinner or anything, but still, I like it.
But Mark, after growing up around horses his whole life, humoring me with my horses, tells me that on a scale of 1 to 10, with pigs be a mega-stinky 10, and baby, I can vouch for that, he would places horses at least as an 8. What? And he said that when he tells me that I smell like a horse, no matter how gently he says it, it is most certainly not a compliment and he thinks I stink. It's a sad state of affairs indeed.

I'm trying to look on the bright side though. I figure things shouldn't get dull when we have so many enthralling unknowns to discover about one another. And he's already told me about the biggest tree he's ever known, so what more could there be to tell?

I IKEAed the hell out of that room.

Whoop whoop. Merry Christmas and all that jazz.

Go 'head and laugh. Isn't this just so tender vittles? The family business. Awwwww. (Not sure why I look scared-ish. Look at all those fiveheads!)Oh, but hey, we went to see Avatar opening day. Loved it! The effects, that is. Fun time with the fam.
But before that, I decided it would be a good idea to rip my entire house apart right before the holidays. I thought Let's paint. Let's tear up carpet. Let's put a new kitchen counter top in and swap bedrooms around. We can pile garbage and debris 4 feet high on the porch in front of the door. Let us grossly underestimate the amount of time everything will take and make our house barely liveable for a few days. Yes, now is a good time to do these things.

I'm kind of exagerating (who me,) but not much. And as always, I don't have true before and after shots to illustrate the makeover-ness of it all. So picture the entire room that sickly flesh color shown inside the closets. The closets we left unpainted because we were at the end of our painting rope.

Also picture the most dastardly, wickedly ugly striped! (in shades of crap) carpet and you're halfway to imagining the Before. This was my bedroom (well, Mark's, too,) but now it's Sam's. He selected the wall color. It's very soothing.

This is the girls room pre-carpet. Aggie picked out the wall colors. I was a little scared about the colors, but I like them ok now. This room had pinky pink walls and a turquoise piece of carpet which didn't fit the room. It was super nice of the previous owner to leave it behind for us. I just covered that square hole they cut in the carpet with an equally ugly area rug. Way pretty! The girls even helped paint a little, which is a test of patience after spending all day prepping the room, let me tell you.

Not sure if you can read this: but Mark, ever the role model, painted "Aggie Stinks" on our newspaper window blinds.

"So-in-so Stinks" is like our own family grafitti. I don't get involved too often, but it's not uncommon to find this sentiment scrawled on homework, the newspaper, or a scrap of paper towel left for the allegedly stinky person to find. But Aggie fixed it to say "Dad(ie) Stinks." And there it will stay until JCPenney's sweat shop (kidding!) sees fit to ship my Roman blinds.

So this is basically an after shot. I didn't stage this so well, what with the busted handles on the shabby dresser (I'm gettin' to it!) and the not quite made bed.

Sam's room didn't photograph so well either. Plus I didn't include his sweet TV/PS3/Wii setup hidden in the closet. He has revealed his inner neatnik also. He had this room whipped into shape in no time. The bed is YoYo approved as you can see. (Pile of laundry wasn't supposed to be in the photo.)

And this represents 10 lbs of $#!t in a 5lb bag.In moving our bedroom down to Sam's former room we lost about half the area and nearly all closet space. We also increased the size of our bed thereby taking up even more room.

Why do it then? Well, because this room sits right on the porch giving easy access by window to the bedroom. Usually all the kids camped out in this room. I should probably be embarassed to admit that I've let the girls sleep on the floor in Sam's room for years, but it's been going on for so long that I've grown numb to it. Eh, so sue me, right? Point being that I was way upstairs at night and all my chilluns was down in that room where someone could break right in an' snatch them.

So I've been puzzling these many years how we could create storage and a livable space in an approximately 9 foot by 9 foot room.

Enter IKEA, land of "affordable" (cheap? flimsy? nah!) furniture. We've never really invested in any good furniture to date figuring on heavy use and abuse with 3 children and a somewhat occasionally careless (no offense Darling!) man in the house.

So for our purposes IKEA works wonders. It's functional (if you're selective,) versatile, and you aren't totally heartbroken if it breaks because it didn't cost a fortune. My only beef with IKEA is that they (purposely, I swear) don't tell you everything you'll need for some projects just to force you back into that store where ohmygoshhowcuteisthatthingIdidn'tseetheotherdaywhenIwasjusthere jumps up at you and you buy something else.

Not to mention it's a good half hour away. Totally incovenient when you've unloaded a van load of boxes of unassembled furniture, had a remodelling-fueled meltdown with your husband and then sat in a teary heap on the floor after opening the very first box to find that they gave you the wrong damn colored cabinet.

But anyway, the final result is swell. I love having a small but efficient bedroom. It forced us to get rid of even more excess stuff, something I've been working on for the past year or so. Mark also bought a big honkin' tv to put on the wall. Probably horrible fung shui but awesome for watching movies in bed.

Also made a decision on the kitchen countertop. It's white with teensy black stippling (word?) dots? that give it a grey appearance. It looks like the silestone sample I was coveting but it is good old formica. I did splurge on the integrated sink though. Love it! Loved it even more when they finally delivered the damn backsplashes on Christmas Eve. Retrofitted to preserve our crazy tile backsplash. Very important.

Not the Taj Mahal, but pretty good for a formerly almost condemned 100 plus year old house!

So all this stuff meant we kept putting off getting a Christmas tree. There simply wasn't any place to put it because the living room was our stuff receptacle. We kept saying Tomorrow we'll get the tree, tomorrow but then tomorrow was Christmas and we had no more time. So thankfully we had Lily's beautiful fiber optic tree from the dollar store. Perfecto!

See that Santa's hat up there? On it is a peel of the clementine Lily left for Santa. No milk and cookies this year. Her only regret was that she forgot to leave something for the reindeer. I told her I'm sure they had plenty from all the other houses, no worries.
I think it was still a good Christmas.I even surprised Sam with his gifts. Mah Boy needs a hair cut!Mawsi is thrilled with our Christmas gift to them.Christmas breakfast brimming with pork and biscuits.

That's Fluffy Fluff Fluffbug sleeping in the crook of Lily's arm. Cat is weird!

Laughing at Lily's mechanical cockroach toy.

And now here I sit as the satellite guy installs a cable for our new tv (lot's of tv's in this post huh.) Mark, Sam, & Pops are in the mountains for the Men's Christmas Trip. Aggie's at a friend's, Lily's at her grandma's and I'm here babysitting a coondog.

Miss Jill is learning to be a house dog but she needs attended to like a toddler. It's very tiresome because I'm so out of practice! Crate training, potty training, don't leave me when I'm eating, I'm bored, Can I play with the cat?, can I eat the cat?, pet me, where's Mark?, where's the other dog?(camping with Mark,) wipe my feet when I come in from outside, whoops I peed on the porch....

I want to sit in the rocking chair, crap, I'm stuck in the rocking chair, help me off the rocking chair...Thank goodness for stuffable kong thingies. I swear to you, she just sat down beside me and farted 3 times. Fartingest dog I ever met. Husband, you owe me!!! And it snowed last night. Don't you hate when you have to go scrape your windshield and brush all the snow off your cow?

This is the view from my new bedroom. And we love it, don't we, yes, we do!

Better Than A Bratz Doll