Snow-maggedon

Oh wow, we have gotten an insane amount of snow since moving here! And we're expecting 3 more inches today and tonight, with 4 days of snow following. Friday we get a short break, then it's back for round 4 of snow-maggedon the following week!

I am learning the value of stockpiling food, getting things accomplished efficiently, and focusing on the home, because I can't go anywhere else right now.

Week 3 (letter C) of our learning poster will resume starting next Monday. I'll be re-vamping our learning time as a whole because we need a whole new routine here at the new house. Things are almost put away, I just need to set up my sewing station in the office and our living room is in desperate need of a new rug. Luckily I found one I might just be in love with:


It's awesome and will fill up most of the floor in the living room, giving T-rex some space to play.

Decorating-T-rex's Room

We focused on the easiest room to decorate and organize first--T-rex's. Kids rooms always seem simple to plan and decorate to me for some reason. Maybe it's because there are so many cute options available, I don't know.

The quilt in the first picture was a gift we got at T-rex's baby shower, it's just adorable and happened to match my ideas for his nursery.

I LOVE these cubes from Target, they are so useful! I even bought some self-laminating tabs to label the buckets. I printed out labels with pictures so Tobias could easily see where the toys go and they're tied tightly with yarn. Each bucket has a type of toy in it--books, pretend play, blocks, puppets, action figures, cars, etc. I stenciled stars on the buckets so don't go out looking for cloth buckets with stars on them at Target, lol!


He's still in his toddler bed (his crib mattress on the floor) but the bedding is basically what it will be when we get a twin sized mattress. I was inspired for the room by this wonderfully simple room over at the Leading Little Hearts Home blog. I fully intend for our kids to share bedrooms as age and gender differences allow so I wanted something clean, simple, cute, but easily changed and added to. Something that could easily accommodate two different children's tastes. We plan to build a trundle for under T-rex's bed eventually so the room can accommodate friends or family members.


To do:
-buy twin mattress (this is one of the few things we insist on buying new)
-sew twin-sized duvet cover in navy blue
-sew curtains for windows (I'm doing some combo of white, navy blue, and the pale green polka dot pattern I used for the pillow, I'm just not sure what exactly)

And lest you think it takes a lot of money to organize a room, here's the cost:
Rug from goodwill ($30)
Dressers from friend's outgrown kid set ($0)
Comforter from IKEA ($12) with duvet cover ($15 in fabric?)
Painted by church, but it cost them maybe $30 for the low-voc paint
Glider Rocker was a gift to me for mother's day when I was pregnant

Live Life as if It's Your Last Day....With Electricity

I've always struggled with an "eh, I'll do it later" attitude. Why do today what can be put off tomorrow, right? Hahaha, silly city girl that I was!

My new reality is that I have to live each day as if the electricity could go out overnight, in fact it could go out in an hour, any hour of the day. In case you misunderstand me, I don't mean a day without lights or TV, I mean anywhere from 1 hour to 1 week with no light, no music, no tv, no phone (not even cell phone), no running water, and oh yeah, no heat!!! You see, in this rural home everything is connected and if one thing goes, so does everything else. This week we've had record amounts of snow, you may have seen pictures on the news and I can tell you they don't even touch what we're dealing with here in rural West Virginia. The roads are beautifully deadly--icy tree limbs bow over the road, making an ethereal tunnel to travel through. Everything is black and white and looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting--except without any lights in the cute cottage windows. As we drove to church this morning I was conflicted between being terrified of the snow and ice-laden trees that were about to crash down any moment and being in awe of how awesome it all looked. The awe won out, so my husband got to drive in peace to church without too many exclamations of "watch out for that tree limb that might fall on us and kill us!!".


(this was our home hours before the power went out)

When we returned home tonight after a much-needed shopping trip to get warm, use a bathroom, and obtain food, batteries, and candles, we anxiously counted lit up homes on the way to the parsonage. When we turned the corner and saw our living room light on we downright shouted for joy and breathed a sigh of relief.

All day without power I had to sit idly as I looked at my laziness. Dirty dishes from the night before were piled in the sink, prepared food was scarce so lunch was at someone else's house, and I had to go to church with greasy hair and unshaven legs because I couldn't take a shower. We shivered through church (it was 45 degrees inside) and still I couldn't help but notice the dead ladybugs piled up on the windowsills. Why hadn't we vacuumed those up last week?! Kyle read from a sermon printed in pink during the brief period with power on Saturday because we ran out of black ink and were snowed in all day.

So from now on I will be living my days as if it's my last day with electricity. Right now I am doing laundry, I've already washed dishes, and I'm already contemplating tomorrow's meal. We have a touch-light for T-rex's room in case the power goes out overnight and I am going to take a long, hot shower right now!