A Classic Housewife in a Modern World

I think,..I have realized how it is that a room which has been completely de-cluttered, re-organized and spiffy-fied can (right under your very nose!) suddenly find itself in a very cluttered, unorganized, sad state of very un-spiffy-ness.

WE COLLECT MORE STUFF.

I mean,.. it happens. Ya know? Someone gives you a shirt they don’t like, you get a new pair of shoes, you buy more books to collect on your nightstand and voila!!- where’s the bed? The dresser? The bottom of the closet?

Ok, ok, so it probably has a little to do with cleaning habits, also, am I right? But still, if you collect too much stuff for your space, your cleaning job is GOING to be more difficult than it has to be. Conversely, if you don’t pick up and put everything back in its place, it doesn’t matter if you have exactly the right amount of stuff.

It’s a very delicate relationship.

One that I have recently failed at. Again.

You may or may not recall our Master Bedroom makeover a few years ago. Oh, the purging, purging, purging!! (And the painting, painting, painting!!) Our new space was so lovely that I really did keep it clean (or mostly clean) for a very long time. I’m not exactly sure where I got off track.. I think perhaps it began last summer when I broke my toe and I got out of the habit and it was all down hill from there.

I can certainly say that it doesn’t help to “hide” stuff in your master bedroom when company comes over! Been there – done that – stop hiding stuff in your master bedroom, people! Take it from me!

So last weekend I’d finally had enough and I did it all over again. Well, minus the painting part. But this time I threw in some re-arranging. And over the last few years I’ve collected some more decorations for our room (largely through GIFTS & HAND-ME-DOWNS,..THANK YOU beautiful lovely people!) so our room is even more lovely than it was before. And the new arrangement of the furniture (and leaving off the footboard) makes the room more open I think.

I couldn’t resist taking a few (or 15) pictures of my favorite things about our “new again” bedroom! I mean, really, it’s ME, what else did you expect??

{The photo quality is a little low in some pictures because the lighting in our room is very ambient & soft, and if I open the curtains the sunlight is very bright. I’ve always had a difficult time balancing the lighting when taking pictures in here….any pointers? Moving on…}

This is my view from the bed now – ever so MUCH more lovely than the view we had before. There are so many little things over here that I love, and I’m definitely thinking that this is the way to do it – making sure that there’s more visual interest for you at the foot of your bed, rather than spending all your efforts at the head of your bed (which looks lovely when you walk over to your bed but then you turn around and you can’t see it!) Just a side note – I do have the glass votive holders for the candle sconce on the wall, I took them off to wash them. Here, let me show you more!

My little basket of books. I have two of these baskets, I love them! I got them with a gift certificate that my mom got me for my birthday or Mother’s Day or something, and so even though they’re not priceless treasures, they’re special to me. I did have a bunch of magazines in this basket – magazines that I never got around to reading! So I decided to put a selection of my books in it instead– books that I need to read, am reading or need to re-read. And I’ve already pulled a book out a time or to. I like having it here.

What you see here is our marriage license, which I framed and put up for display last Valentine’s Day. I like having it just leaning up against the wall behind some candles in a little arrangement, rather than hanging it on the wall – I think it makes it more inviting and less formal – don’t you? The candle holders are two remaining of a set of four that my close friend gave me. They look metal. Turns out, they’re glass. They break. =( The candle sconces on the wall?? I haven’t decided if I still like those anymore, if I want to keep them. I do, but do I like them ENOUGH? Are they me? I don’t know. The jury is still out on those sconces…

Ooh! Look at the pretties on top of the linens dresser!! I’m pretty sure my mom gave me the hummingbird candle lantern. I think. Didn’t she? Yeah, I think so. I’ve had it for AGES. And my sister-in-law brought that mask from Italy. I love it! The Easter lilies probably look better tucked behind this arrangement (hiding cables & cords) than they ever did in the vases. And I just really enjoy all the little touches of red around my room to accent the chocolate brown and soft green. It works! It really works!

My peacock feathers!! One of the newest additions to my room – my Mother-in-law passed on some extra feathers she had leftover from an arrangement. After seeing how well they work with my color scheme and seeing what they add to the feel & atmosphere of the room – I want more!! This arrangement stands in a vase (matching the green vase on the dresser) on the floor which hides the power strip all the electronics plug into. Hiding power cords — the only hiding you’re allowed to do!!

This lamp & the matching lamp on the other dresser, were passed on to me from my grandmother. I don’t think they’re very old, I think she bought them new, but I have always loved the look and style of them – and I also love that they came from my grandmother. Almost all of the special things in my room have been given to me by family members, or belonged to them at one point, like the green vase to the left, which was my great-grandmothers. My grandma let me have it when we got married and I’ve always taken special care of it.

Just a thought – I think I love these flowers in this arrangement more than I ever have in any other arrangement that I’ve tried. You can see many of them in previous bedroom pictures, in which they’ve always been divided between two other vases with a variety of other grasses or flowers I’ve tried. Combining these all into this one vase is the best it has ever looked. The purple flowers are flowers I bought early on after we got married, the blue flowers are some that we used to decorate the arch in my brother’s wedding several years ago, and the three white roses are my very own wedding bouquet! (More sentimental mush-mush.)

This bench/chest used to be in the bottom of Hubs’ half of the closet – it was supposed to hold all the throw pillows at night, but well, that never really worked. Can you guess why? Because things got piled on it! And then I couldn’t get into it. Imagine that. I actually REALLY LOVE it here. There’s still plenty of room to walk past the end of the bed. It’s really easy to get the throw pillows in and out and the kids like sitting on it when we all pile in here to watch a movie. (One of my shams is the perfect size to sit on the bench as a cushion!) This chest is one of the few things I have left from my early childhood, a toybox I received when I was about 4. The little brown picture on the wall (kinda hard to see) is a green hummingbird on a brown background, a birthday gift from the same friend as the silver candle pillars – I love hummingbirds!!

And a view of the other wall, just to prove that I did take a little effort in decorating over there, but clearly not as much as on the other side. The 4 tier stand now serves as my night stand (BOY that thing has had a lot of jobs over the years, hasn’t it??) which really helps to move the bed closer to the door, leaving more room on the other side of the bed than before. Which helps to make the room feel more open. It’s all good. Would you like to see that feather wreath up close? Of course you would!

Don’t you just love it?! My mother in law bought it on clearance after Christmas and then decided that it probably didn’t go as well with her stuff and she knew that I wanted to do a turquoise Christmas this year (I DO!) so she LET ME HAVE IT. She is so nice! I love it. Just love it. So yeah, it WILL be making an appearance with our Christmas decor this year, and the rest of the year — RIGHT HERE BABY. Where I can enjoy it the other 11 months of the year. I’m thinking about hanging it up with a wide satiny ribbon, though, kinda like this. What do you think? But definitely in a green/turquoise, not purple. =P

The curtain valance is the another thing in our room that I just love, that really takes everything up a notch. The beaded brocade valance and the brown velvet curtains were a Christmas gift from my Mother-in-law several years ago. She knew that I desperately needed to do some decorating in our room (at that point there was NONE) so she bought these for us. AGAIN – my mother-in-law is so nice to me!! I love the beads. I think I have a thing for beaded valances.

The green color in the valance plays off the walls perfectly, and the purplish red goes well with our red accents. And the brocade just makes everything in here look a little bit fancier. Love! Also, I still have the roses that my MIL painted on the closet doors, I just didn’t take new pictures of them (since they didn’t change) – I still love them, too. It all comes together so nicely!

So this is our new again sanctuary. I’m so very happy with it. The kids are amazed and I’m trying to convince them that our whole house should look this good – ALL THE TIME! I really do wish that it did. Thing is, it has taken me several years to collect up all these special gifts and decorations and find the right combinations for them. So, I figure, in about 3 more years I may be able to get my living room to the same point – right?

I think the biggest thing I learned from this, that I have to pass on to you today, is this: Be selective in your decorations, surround yourself with things you love, purge them if you don’t, take your time (it’s ok it if takes 2 or 3 years), and remember to purge regularly and clean frequently so you don’t lose your space you love so much under a mound of clutter you hate! Wouldn’t you agree?

Have I mentioned that it’s been HOT this summer? No, not hot. SCORCHING. We haven’t seen temperatures under 90 since the first week of July. We haven’t seen temperatures under 100 Since the last week of July. Two days ago we broke a previous daily record as we hit ONE HUNDRED AND NINE DEGREES.

Yowza.

Yesterday was our first sign of relief as we only got up to 98 degrees. ONLY 98. There’s something wrong when you say, “Oh it’s only 98! Yay for 98!” Twisted weird. Wrong.

Today is miraculously, wonderfully, amazingly only supposed to get up to 89. Ok, that’s still hot but after two months since we’ve seen it last I am SO glad to see 89 again!

This summer has warped me, I tell you.. WARPED.

Maybe that’s because this summer we roughed it out without central air conditioning. (WITHOUT. A. C.) The reasoning for that being the unit was so old and inefficient and the ductwork under the house just as bad.. that last summer even with the air conditioner running non-stop our house still got up to indoor temperatures of 93-ish at the peak of summer. And we paid an arm and a leg for an air conditioning bill that we weren’t experiencing. We turned our unit off last fall (a time when our unit doesn’t run at all) and watched our electric bill drop in half.

Let me say that again.

We turned the central heat and air OFF, instead of just kicking it off and just not having it running, and our electric bill for a month that the unit usually doesn’t run at all was HALF what it was from the previous year.

There is something wrong with that unit.

We haven’t turned it on since.

It would be crazy to do so!!

So we survived the winter with space heaters (and did just fine) and then we survived this summer with 3 window units. One in the master bedroom, one in one kid bedroom (they all slept in one room) and one in the separate office/school room. The living room and kitchen? They still got hot. TOO HOT. We spent all our time in an air conditioned room and came out here as little as possible. (Kinda goes to show you how little space you actually need to live, doesn’t it?) Anyway, it worked. We survived. (And P.S. our highest electric bill of the summer was still only half from the year before. SHEESH.)

But now that the worst of the summer is behind us, now that we’ve melted and deep fried and lived to tell the tale, I find this wonderful, cheap, easy, simple solution: Space blankets and velcro.

S p a c e B l a n k e t s and V e l c r o. What are space blankets? Highly thin, heat reflective, durable, CHEAP emergency blankets that cost under $2.00 a piece. And we all know how inexpensive the peel and stick velcro is. I am truly tempted to go ahead and do this to our windows anyway.

I’ve been resisting the whole “tinfoil on the window” suggestion all summer … I guess the space blanket and velcro is just a little bit classier, or maybe after sweltering through the summer I’m more willing, I don’t know. But doesn’t it really sound like a good idea?? What do you think – would you do it?

You know that age old rule: “Don’t laugh when your child does something wrong no matter how terribly cute or funny it is”?

I broke that rule today.

Shoot, I took a sledgehammer and smashed it all to smithereens when I turned to hubs saying “Watch him! Do it again for Daddy!”

A teensy moment of bad parenting.. I’m not perfect.

My son may have thrown all table manners to the wind when he took off the top piece of bread to his sandwich, held the other half in his hands and then dove in face first, nom-nom-nommed on the deli turkey, swallowed satisfactorily and then pretended to burp sheepishly… but:

1. He was eating his meat (which is what I told him to do, and what he didn’t want to do.)
2. He was doing it joyfully and agreeably.
3. He was awfully darn cute.
4. And it was the last thing I was expecting, the playfulness catching me off guard under normally frustrating circumstances until I giggled like a little girl.

I guess sometimes you just gotta laugh!

Hubs just stood there and shook his head at me. “You’re probably going to regret that later.” Yeah. I might. Remind me of that tomorrow.

Sometimes motherhood gets a bad rap. I mean, we are the ones that have to make our kids eat their veggies, do their chores and go to bed. We have to learn to say “No,” and “No,” and then some more “No.”

And we know that’s a good thing, that kids need their veggies and they need their sleep. But sometimes you can see it in their little wimpery faces:

“You’re the meanest Mom, ever!”

And you know what? I’m okay with that. Really. I have a force field that shields me from Mean Mom comments. I am impervious.

“Dear Child, you may think I really don’t care. Okay, well, I really DON’T care if you don’t want a shower or you don’t think you need to sleep. But I DO care about whether or not your body gets what it needs and whether or not your heart learns to be obedient and thankful and whether or not you feel taken care of. Because I care. I CARE. But it’s bed time, and that’s that.”

So have at it, darling little child of mine, whom I love enough to feed broccoli and brush out tangles and clip fingernails and send back to bed repeatedly (with a pop on the rear if your behind forgets where it is supposed to be)– go ahead and think I’m just being mean. But it’s not true. Because I love you.

A whole heckuva stinkin’ lot.

Love,

“The Meanest Mom – EVER.”

P.S. – One day you’ll have your own kids who think YOU are the meanest mom EVER — and it will all make sense. Pinky promise.

Photo Credit: From Flickr via CC 2.0

This week I went to the grocery store armed with sale information, a specific list, and a mission! I didn’t take any coupons because a.) I haven’t bought a paper in a while and b.) the computer that is hooked up to the printer was being worked on.

Oh well.
Next time.

At any rate, I took my info and I marathon shopped through both grocery stores as quick as I could and now my freezer is stuffed (literally!! I couldn’t fit another thing in if I tried,) my fridge is full and my pantry is stocked. And my wallet? Is happy.

I saved over 33 dollars just by shopping the sales items and using my store card! I say “over” because the other store (without a store card) doesn’t tell you how much was saved on the receipt. Kind of a bummer, but I know that I spent only slightly less at the other store and only bought sales items there so I wouldn’t be surprised if my savings was actually double that. Imagine what I could do with coupons.

Anywho… all that to say, that is definitely going to affect our menu for the week, because (for example) Sunday night’s supper? Every single item was on sale. OH YEAH. So here goes:

Sunday: “BBQ” sandwiches (with ground beef & bbq sloppy joe sauce), potato chips. Dessert: ice cream.
Monday: Hamburgers, potato salad, watermelon
Tuesday: “Healthier” Chicken fettuccine alfredo, mixed greens salad.
Wednesday: Tacos
Thursday: Spaghetti & meatballs, salad, bread
Friday: Grilled chicken, salad, steamed cauliflower
Saturday: Meatloaf, mac n cheese, salad, ranch beans

For breakfasts: cereal, bagels, english muffins, fruit, cream of wheat, yogurt, eggs, bacon
For lunches: leftovers, sandwiches, nachos, hot dogs, tuna salad
For snacks: fruit, veggies, string cheese, yogurt

Menu Plan Monday is hosted by Laura the Organizing Junkie.