Archive for 2008
Posted by Tricia at 5:26 pm
As of today we’re halfway through our Cleanup Challenge, so I wanted to take a little break from the messy house pictures and share some more solid food for thought with you instead.
I was reading my friend Kristi’s blog awhile back and was quite struck by a post she wrote on Expectations. I loved what she had to say, and I think her words will likely ring home with more people than just me. Kristi has graciously agreed to my posting her thoughts here, but when you have a chance I highly recommend a stop over at Gently Led to enjoy some of her other musings.
A confession: when people don’t meet my expectations, I tend to blame them, not my own expectations. I think they could do better than this, if only they tried harder, or if they were more spiritual. (Condemning, aren’t I?) Not that I explicitly think this, but it seems to be my underlying belief. Why else would I be frustrated at them for not doing or being what I want them to do or be?
Probably the only person I don’t usually have unreasonable — i.e. often unmet — expectations of is my son. He is 22 months old. I expect a toddler to sometimes cry, have a low level of frustration tolerance, and to demand a lot of attention. And most of the time, he is lots of fun. Why, I wonder, is it so easy for me to love him and not condemn him, and so hard with other people?
Jesus’ response to the poor widow giving money at the temple offering box shows me the problem with my expectations. After “many rich people put in large sums,” the widow gave “two small copper coins, which make a penny” (Mark 12:41, 42 [+/-]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 500 requests per day.
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). Jesus said to his disciples, “this woman has put in more than all these who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (v. 43, 44).
How convicting. Jesus knows what spiritual and emotional riches other people have; I don’t. Where I see — and privately condemn — someone’s meager contribution, Jesus sees a heartfelt self-sacrifice.
I’ve always thought it sounded trite and unsatisfying when someone says about people who let them down, “Well, they did the best they could.” Perhaps this is just another way of saying that — but lately I’ve found it helpful, when I’m disappointed with someone’s behavior, to think, “Maybe this is their two cents.”
~Kristi, of Gently Led, September, 2008
As we are in the midst of the holidays, when we all likely be getting together with family and friends to celebrate in one form or another, our expectations of those we love can come to the forefront of interactions. Sometimes these expectations can be good and right, but oftentimes I think we are the most critical of those who are closest to us, and hold expectations of them that are neither charitable nor healthy. I have seen firsthand the damage and hurt caused by unfair expectations. Not surprisingly, I have been the one harboring the unfair expectations more often than I’d like to admit.
I appreciate Kristi’s reminder to me and all of us about viewing others through Christ’s eyes. If we were to keep this at the forefront of our interactions with family and friends this holiday, how much more grace-filled our Christmas would be! Thanks Kristi, for sharing your two cents.
Posted by Tricia at 10:16 pm
Ok, I admit it: after several days of a cleaning frenzy (on top of all other regularly scheduled programming around here, plus a sleepless night with a croupy three year-old thrown in for fun!), I am TIRED! But….also encouraged. I am learning a lot as I cull through, purge, and put back together various areas in our home. Thanks for your comments, those of you who’ve popped in to say hello, I look forward to seeing the progress you are making in your own homes this week!!
Since I didn’t have as much energy or time today to devote to massive cleaning out, I limited myself to fixing up the games cabinet. We have a great set of built-ins in our living room, the whole bottom of which are shelves that are perfectly sized for games and puzzles. This morning the area looked like this:
You can’t see minute details in the photo, but believe me when I tell you that behind that mess of boxes was a little army of lost game pieces, dice, cards, and puzzle pieces — all of them crying out at once, to be put back in their proper box!
Well, after some hard work with a couple of my Junior Cleanup Trainees we managed this:
A definite improvement, yes?? Games closets will always get a little messy with tiny kids in the house, but here’s hoping we can maintain order behind these doors just a little better from here on out!
Goodnight, Everyone!
Posted by Tricia at 11:46 pm
Ok, all you rabid blog fans out there, just waiting for some sign of today’s cleanup conquest…I’m back!
First, I want to share a small clean out I did, which netted a lot of paper for the recycling bin out back, in addition to helping our front living area/school room function better.
If you are like me, your stack of magazines and catalogs can quickly grow to mammoth proportions, even if you are picky about what you keep. So, after culling through a TON of these, I moved the periodicals into a smaller basket:
and voila! I had a wonderfully large basket all freed up. Into it went our many, many library books, and they fit beautifully, with room to spare. Now isn’t that nice?? Some folks prefer to bookend their sofa with tables to hold lamps, a drink, etc; we just throw baskets on the floor everywhere.
One thing which will help you in your house if you use the library a ton: have a rule that when a book is finished, or not in use, or whatever, that its natural home is in the library basket. Or on the library shelf, whatever you have in your house that works best for you. By keeping the library book “home” in a common area, you leave it available to all the members of the family. Not only does this encourage constant use of the books, since it serves as a visual reminder. But having our basket system has also saved me many a headache by preventing those frantic searches for lost library books!!
Ok, now to get onto the big stuff. Today I tackled a dark and forboding place in our home: the closet of Abigail. It was so cramped and crowded in there folks, that I got a little freaked out just contemplating cleaning it out - I think I may have minor claustrophobia issues.
Now, I must disclaim: it is NOT really Abigail’s fault that it is in such a state. Ok, it’s partly her fault, but more mine. Since she has her own room, and a fairly sizeable (for this house) closet all to herself, we have used it for storage of more than just her things. All my sewing paraphernalia as well as gift wrapping supplies need to fit in here, for instance. And lately, it’s just been a good place to toss anything for which we had no other storage spot. So, here is what the closet looked like yesterday (those of you who are squeamish may need to avert your eyes):
And now today, after a LOT of hard work…it’s not going to win any awards on Rate My Space, but it looks SO much better. For one thing, my little girl can actually walk inside it now without fear of being lost in there!!
And pore through her clothes to make very important wardrobe decisions!!
Even give a little karaoke concert, if she has a mind to!
As part of this cleanup effort, I revamped my system for storing wrapping paper, ribbon, tissue, etc. Down here is my wonderful Sams’ find today:
Rubbermaid containers to hold gift wrap supplies: rolls sit at the bottom, ribbon and tissue lie in trays which are inset a bit higher, perfect!! Everything fit beautifully…..well, everything except my stash of gift bags, which I’d love some advice on.
Do any of you have a nice, neat way of organizing your gift bags? What do you keep them in? Please share!! I threw away a BUNCH of sad-looking, rather outdated ones today, but still have a pretty healthy collection I need to store!
Posted by Tricia at 10:36 pm
I promised I’d check in with all of you about my own progress on the great Christmas Cleanup. After I cleaned out the fridge yesterday, I took a little time to scour the insides of our rather offensive-smelling trashcan, incidentally the very same one that Walker and Missy own, which obviously makes me totally cool!
Aside: if you haven’t ever read Missy’s blog, head on over there and have yourself some fun. I always love seeing what she has to say. While I’ve not yet had the pleasure of meeting her in person, her husband Walker was a college friend of mine and Pete’s at Texas A&M, her brother-in-law a roommate of my youngest brother’s a few years later, her Grandma-in-law a favorite fellow church member of Jay’s while he was a student at Rice. So many connections over so many years, it’s practically like we’re related, even though we’ve never met. Well, sort of.
Anyhoo….
Yes, the trashcan is now very, very clean and fresh-smelling. Almost clean enough to eat out of. But we won’t try that.
Then today, I spent some time tackling my tiniest set of junk drawers, the three atop my dresser. Here is how they looked before:
I know, I know, SHAMEFUL mess!! And after:
Please note I did not merely stack the mess somewhere else. Everything inside was either thrown out, or put away in a proper place, and the remains are organized as best as this pathetic organizer could. If the drawers look messy to you, well, please just withhold comments.
The far left drawer holds only the 4 ID bracelets my babies wore in the hospital plus a lock of hair from each one’s first haircut. Middle drawer is full (but not stuffed!) with all those extra buttons and bits of thread/wool we get for clothing when we purchase it. Do any of my wise readers have a strict way of organizing those button and thready-things?? Let me know!!
When it was all said and done, I even had one drawer on the far right which is empty, how ’bout that? Extra space, whoopieeeeeee!
Alright Friends, well that’s all I’ve got for you today. Check in tomorrow for another cleanup of some random area at House of Horne. I look forward to seeing what messes my readers might be tackling at their own homes as they prepare for the holidays!
Posted by Tricia at 10:38 pm
Upon arriving home today from Thanksgiving festivities in Austin, I opened my fridge and was overcome by how unbelievably disgusting it was inside. You know what I’m talking about - leftovers that have been leftover for so long we aren’t sure we even want to open the container they are in, let alone ponder eating the contents. Maple syrup, mustard, ketchup, and other assorted condiments which have literally become glued to the door shelves, because they haven’t been wiped down in so very long. Crisper drawers full of odd bits of vegetation: leaves of parsley, bits of carrot, a soft apple or two. And shelves, drawers, walls, every surface inside in just a total mess, needing a serious wipe-down and shining.
We’ve all been there. Or at least that is what I am telling myself in order to feel better about my utter neglect of the fridge the past couple months. Please humor me if your fridge is always clean and sparkling with nary a spill or scrap of outdated food inside.
Well, during the long afternoon that it took me to cull through, clean out, empty, remove and wash every shelf and drawer in addition to scouring every square inch of the inside of my sad fridge before reloading it, I had lots of time to think about things. Not surprisingly, my mind turned to other spots in my home which I am none too proud of; places that need a touch of organization, cleanup, attention. A couple of my closets are looking pretty sad, I have so many “junk” drawers, I feel shameful admitting the number to anyone, and my “pantry” (more like a large cabinet) is a wreck. Now, I do not think it is wise to dwell too much on our perceived failings and thereby travel down a dangerous path of self-loathing and discontentment. But perhaps if one can keep it to contemplating certain short-comings in an effort to do things a little better, it is not time poorly spent.
For me, after thinking through several significant messes that I really need to attend to, it seems appropriate to take time before I get those Christmas decorations up, to tackle some real problem spots in our home. So, in the spirit of taking dominion (this is a favorite phrase of Jay’s!) of some areas around here that need some serious attention, I thought I’d try to make it fun, and see how many of my faithful readers would care to join me in a little pre-Christmas de-cluttering and cleanup - maybe, just maybe some of you have some places in your house that are wanting your attention too!
Sooooooooooooo…….If you care to get a handle on some problem areas of your own, please join me this week in my very first pre-Christmas Cleanup Challenge! I am even going to sweeten the deal by offering a giveaway to one of the lucky participants - call it an early Christmas present from me.
Here are the rules for the Giveaway:
1. If you have some spots in your own home that need some cleaning up, then for heaven’s sake, stop reading blogs (lol!) and get to it!! Clear out, clean up, organize, make it shine!! Take pictures of your space both before and after if you can, to help you see just how much progress you have made!
2. Then leave me a comment with either a link to your own blog entry chronicling your cleanup conquest, or if you don’t have a site of your own, just leave a note about your particular area you spent time making pretty again. You can comment once for every cleanup, and the more comments you leave, the more entries you put into the contest.
3. I will randomly draw one winner next Monday, December 8th. The winner will receive ONE of these books, their choice:
Organizing From the Inside Out, by Julie Morgenstern
12 Steps to Becoming a More Organized Mom, by Lane P. Jordan
Organizing Plain and Simple, by Donna Smallin
Until that time, to cheer you on, I plan to post pics and accounts of my efforts here at House of Horne to tame the mess. I hope some of you will join in with me! Here is my “after” photo of the fridge - I didn’t think to take a before picture. It may not be the newest refrigerator - check out the blue duct tape holding the meat ‘n’ cheese drawer together! - but at least now it’s a whole heck of a lot cleaner!
Posted by Tricia at 1:32 pm
Given I have stayed fairly busy recently, combined with a serious lack of fodder for interesting entries, I have not posted much this month. But here are a few little updates from House of Horne:
*I have had great intentions of starting the promised House Tour. But several weeks ago I (aided by our stupid computer) accidentally fried the SD card from our camera which made taking new photos a bit of a challenge. We just purchased a new card, so I hope to get to that little task soon. In the meantime, to all three of you who have been waiting anxiously for “after” shots, thank you for your great patience!!
*While frying the aforementioned card, it would appear I also inadvertently destroyed ALL the video footage taken during the weekend surrounding The Wedding. We are so diligent about downloading photos very regularly from the camera; but apparently not so much with the video. There is an effort underway to locate someone who might be able to recover this precious film for us. Here’s hoping….
*We are very much enjoying home schooling (most days!), and are thankful for this blessing in our lives.
*Soccer, Football, and Volleyball seasons have all wrapped up: Basketball is now upon us, and both boys are planning to play for the first time.
*Abigail and Jonathan are delighting us with Christmas duets at the piano…ringing in the season a little bit early.
*Nicolas’ reading skills have taken off, and we are thrilled to see him starting to plow throw simple chapter books at a startling pace. Which reminds me anew what a blessing it is to be able to read and discover whole new worlds via good literature.
*Potty-training efforts are underway with the youngest. While our older kids were all fully trained before age three, I just have not felt as motivated with Josiah. Maybe it’s a case of the Mommy desperately holding onto the last vestiges of babyhood? Regardless, I calculate that we have almost three years before he’ll have to go to Kindergarten..hopefully he’ll have the potty thing figured out by then!
*Even in Texas, winter is approaching, and we are cooking appropriate cool-weather fare. This past weekend, Abigail and I baked the first apple pie of the season. It is so much more interesting-looking than any pie I’ve ever made, thanks to our little artist:
*Another harbinger of the winter season (not nearly as pleasant as apple pie) also appears to have manifested itself in our home: the dreaded stomach virus!
*Lastly, Jay’s company is having a real “Start-Up” moment… and it is not clear what the future holds at all. While this is admittedly worrisome, I am reminded especially at this time of year to be so thankful for the many good gifts in our lives. We are indeed richly blessed.
“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever.”
~Psalm 118:29 [+/-]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 500 requests per day.
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Posted by Tricia at 12:48 pm
Here are all the photos from our night out and around the ‘hood. This year we were not thematic about our costumes; each child chose their own very individual characters, or in the case of the boys, the same character!!
We had a great night trick-r-treating with some awesome neighbor friends. The evening ended on a humorous political note when we stopped by the last house and were served red and blue slushies (representing the two major parties) by a neighbor dressed up as Sarah Palin, asking everyone to please vote for her and McCain in the upcoming election! Too clever.
Posted by Tricia at 2:24 pm
These are not amazing photos, but they are fun for grandparents to look at anyway. We visited the fair last week; sadly it began to pour only a couple hours into our day, but we had fun all the same. Here’s most of us posing with the official animal of the state fair (or something like that):
Posted by Tricia at 6:47 pm
Spoken quite adamantly by the six year old today because he was feeling exasperated at his three year old brother who had said one thing, and then turned around and did the complete opposite…
“Josiah!! You’re nothing but a hippogriff!!”
Posted by Jay at 2:35 pm
Tricia posted a sweet entry about home schooling Jonathan recently. Here’s the picture she used of Jonathan.
Is it just me, or is there a striking resemblance to a slightly better known character from Christmas past?
Posted by Tricia at 12:36 pm
So….we are loving our Singapore math curriculum. To better prepare for our year, I spent the summer months working with the two older children on a review of third and first grade, respectively. If you have not used Singapore math from the beginning, jumping in midway, especially if you are wanting to begin “on level”, present challenges. It is an excellent math program, but it requires mental conception and thought that other curriculums, even highly rated ones, do not. Our school had suggested the summer work, and I am glad we did it; it has made the transition into this year much easier.
Mostly easy, I should say. When one is working with a little boy whose brain likes to skip ahead, there are some challenges, as I saw today. This morning, Jonathan and I began a unit on “Subtraction With Renaming”, that is, borrowing ten ones from the tens place to stick in the ones place, borrowing ten tens from the hundreds place to stick in the tens place, and so on. We looked at our first problem:
92 - 68 = ?
And before I could even say anything, my child did the subtraction in his head. Brilliant, but you still have to learn this renaming “thing”, Jonathan.
So, I began explaining the concept that since we cannot take 8 from 2, we must “borrow” ten ones from the 3 in the next place over. And Jonathan stops me once again, this time with an almost incredulous-sounding, “But Mom, you don’t need to rename the 2 at all!! Don’t you know: 2 minus 8 is negative 6?!?”
Posted by Tricia at 7:04 pm
We have lived in the house with the red door for two years now - having moved in partially on Josiah’s first birthday, in 2006. Before buying this house, we watched the neighborhood for a couple of years (someone, and I’m not saying who, has a little realtor bug in her!), so we had a sense of what houses were worth. Spring Creek offered reasonably sized 3 and 4 bedroom ranch-style homes (22-2800 square feet in general) on flat, generous lots, beautiful trees and an active, involved neighborhood with more of a small-town feel than one usually finds in Dallas city limits.
However, as is usually the case with good value, lots more folks than just ourselves recognized the appeal, and we soon learned that houses available for purchase in this area were a rare commodity, and in some cases, even passed from parent to child (many folks living here now grew up in the neighborhood back in the 70’s and 80’s). Prices were also increasing well above our budget ceiling, so we waited patiently for a “deal” that was the right situation. And, while the acquisition of this house was more of a saga than we’d have wanted, we are very thankful to be living here. The process of fixing this place up has been fun (mostly) and very educational. Our neighbors are truly the nicest we’ve ever had - we feel so blessed to be in such a friendly place. I have even taken the plunge and signed up to be a block captain this year, and am happy to be involved just a little bit in the runnings around here.
Buuuuuuuut. I digress, for my true intention in this post is to begin what I have wanted to do for sometime: post some before and after shots of our home remodel in progress. I have waited to do this for so long mostly because as you well know, no project ever seems to get completely finished. There is always something still left to do and I hate to post a picture without the truly finished product.
Now, before we get into “after photos”, please understand this is not a drastic home remodel such as you would get if you hired a contractor to gut a room or two in order to achieve what is virtually a brand new space. Nor are we the types who are brave enough to tear out kitchen cabinets, floors, counters ourselves and build a new room out from the studs. It might be nice to fantasize about, but it’s not happening.
Personally, I think Jay could TOTALLY do this type of thing and I would be a happy and willing assistant, but in actuality his schedule is so packed with work these days that what little time is left would never suffice for such major projects. Despite being a busy guy on top of daddy to four busy kids, he has made time for being pretty handy around here, has learned to rewire electrical sockets, change toilets, replace plumbing (both pipes and fixtures), install and repair major appliances. But, so far we have not been brave enough (or stupid enough, depending on your point of view) to undertake a project which is truly massive in scope.
That said, we will begin our tour of House of Horne at the beginning, as in, we are going to show a few of the scenes we saw on that first evening we ever toured it ourselves (accompanied by some family, who were admittedly not so crazy about the place, right Jamison!!?!!). Next time we come back I plan to have photos of the front and we’ll proceed through the house in a somewhat logical manner. Ok, here goes…
This is what we saw as we drove up. Good bones, simple ranch style, pretty trees (in back) but obvious signs of neglect: rotted wood shutters hanging askew, or in some cases completely fallen off and never put back up, rusted out light fixtures, landscaping gone absolutely wild, including vines all over the front of the house, grass beginning to die due to lack of watering.
Here you can see the butchering done on the two front elm trees. So sad, little stumps for branches.
Entering the house, you can see the lovely shade of brown that greeted us.
Stepping into the main living room. For whatever reason this area really bothered me: it was ALL beige: ceiling, trim, walls, built-ins, fireplace, and carpet. And while the pictures don’t convey it well, it was all very dingy and sad, not your calm soothing sort of beige. I kept thinking to myself: what could we do to possibly help this room?
Turning to the other side of the room:
From the living room were two sets of french doors leading to the deck, which could sound romantic if it hadn’t looked like this:
And this. Three layers of paint were peeling off the deck, a tree was dying in the back corner of the yard, and the brick around the deck area was filthy, courtesy of the previous owners’ dogs who lived out here:
But in my mind I could see the possibilities of this indoor to outdoor living space, if only….
Back inside for now, and heading down the hall on one side of the house to the secondary bedrooms, here is the first, in a bilious shade of yellow:
Other secondary bedroom on this side of the house, with um, artistically decorated wall?
The bathroom between the two rooms, its wall and ceiling paint adding to the slate of how shall we say it, vibrant colors?
I love this shot: it shows the full color palette in all its awfulness:
Traveling across the hall to the master we were greeted by walls and ceilings the color of silly putty (hat tip to Katie) and blue carpet that was very old and stained.
Stepping into the master bath we saw what was probably the most updated space in the entire house, complete with flashing strobe lights in the soaking tub - YEAH! Yet even here the blazing red walls, dark brown ceiling and absence of lighting needed attention.
Back to the kitchen, which was a pretty good space and layout for a house of this size and build era. But there was no oven/stovetop. It appears that a previous owner converted the space which had housed a double wall oven, to a large cabinet, and stuck a freestanding range in a slot they literally sawed out of the cabinets and countertop. And then took that range with them when they moved. How ’bout that?
You may recognize the shade of brown again.
And again here, in the third little bathroom off of the laundry area and 4th split bedroom (they must have really LOVED this color):
Inside the shower stall, more evidence of basic work needing to be done before things could run properly, let alone be cosmetically pretty:
Much of what I have shown you may look like a decent enough home which someone just painted with less than pleasing paint colors. But there was work to be done besides paint: all the carpet was in very bad shape: dirty, stained, matted, and worn - it would eventually have to go. The gas lines beneath the house were made of copper, not up to code, and needed to be replaced. There was no insulation whatsoever in the attic. There was no electrical grounding anywhere and the circuit box was so old and deemed a fire hazard by inspectors, so it could no longer be used. The grass around the house, after three months of no watering, was largely dead, especially in the back yard. The picket fence in back, while charming-looking, was rotting like the shutters on the front of the house. One of the toilets was completely unusable, another went out just after we closed on the house. There was no vanity lighting of any kind in any bathroom, and two had hardly any light to speak of. There were bad cracks in the walls of every room, not unusual for Texas but nonetheless unsightly. Miraculously, both inspections showed no foundation concerns.
After re-reading the above laundry list of issues, I am feeling daunted even though most of those problems listed have been resolved by now. I hope to return soon with evidence for you of the improvements in the form of photos, and then little by little continue to show you some of what we have done and are still doing to make this house our home. Hope you enjoy the tour!
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