Reaping God's Whirlwind

 Something happened in April.

I washed clothes.  

After that it was kind of a blur.  I mention that I washed clothes because that's where I can trace back this particular chain of events and changing our entire life course.

That day in April after I washed clothes I went to put them away in the little girl's room.  Her room was a disaster as usual.  I wondered why I even bothered with putting things away.  Then I decided to clean.  A deep clean.  The black Hefty trash bag kind of clean.  The kind of clean your kids live in fear of because you'll probably throw out all their treasures.

Once the cleaning was done I decided to finally redo her room.  When we moved into this house the little girl was 2 and other areas of the house needed more attention.  She also switched bedrooms several times.  Now she is getting into her preteen years and saying goodbye to all her "baby" stuff.

I painted her room and we got rid of so many toys and just plain junk.  She picked a pastel pink for her walls.  Two of her favorite things right now are Paris/French and horses.  That's how we started decorating her room.

 

We were working on her bedding because we also upgraded her bed to a queen size.  Her room is actually larger than the master bedroom.  That's kind of frustrating.  As we were doing that this arrived...

 

 

Yes, a baby kitten.  Then we went out of town for a convention. 

 

 Oops... I should have said 7 kittens!  While we were busy with those I kept working on the little girl's room.  Then I started getting ideas about the rest of the house.  I started tossing stuff and thinking I was turning into a minimalist.  We had a yard sale.  

 

 

We started home school for the year and took a trip to the zoo.  I continued cleaning and painting.  Cleaning and painting.  Cleaning and painting.  Why?  Why, why, why.  I had no idea.  

Things started coming together like the perfect storm.  The husband's job is ending.  The boss is retiring and there's no guarantee the company will keep him on.  We don't like the amount of money we will have paid for this house with a traditional mortgage.  We don't want to be paying a mortgage in 20 years.  We'd like to go back to the mountains.  

Things are moving quickly now.  We are officially selling the house.  We're not sure if we'll be staying in this area a little while longer or if we'll pack it all up and move right away.

Now my days will be consumed with cleaning and staging the house.  I'm bringing in help.  It's almost too overwhelming, which is why I'm eating Blue Bell and blogging.  Where do I start packing stuff for the storage unit?

All of this because I washed clothes one day in April.   

Sharing with:

A Delightsome Life

What's It Wednesday 

Cheap Summer Fun

Last year we started going to Movies In The Park.  This is a free activity provided by our Parks and Recreation department.  It's also sponsored by some local businesses.

We've continued going this year.  I think it's becoming a tradition.  There's no alcohol and no smoking.  Just good family fun.

We get there early enough to claim a good spot.  We bring a picnic dinner.  Last night we had fried chicken, potato salad, and some popcorn.  We ate it all before I thought to take pictures.

Last night they showed Despicable Me 2.  Next week they will show Frozen.  I can hardly wait!  Hundreds of children (and adults) all singing the songs.  I'm already menu planning for next week's picnic dinner.

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So Much At Home

Garden Flower

 A beautiful bloom found in the garden.

  

Homeschool Picture

Why do people think homeschool kids are weird?

Yep, just another typical day.  While she does her work I'm usually cooking.  We're going to the movies in the park so I was making potato salad.  She doesn't like the smell of boiled eggs.  This was her solution.  She also threw them away later.  We don't use erasers with boogers.

Sharing with...
Twirl and Take a Bow
The Gathering Spot 
So Much At Home

Teacups Part 1, A Yard Sale Find, Writing On My Old Blog Site

First, I will put the title all out of order.  I'm writing this on my old blog addy because frankly, it's easier.  I posted a lot more frequently here.  Honestly it's too tedious getting to my blog page through the host server on the other site.  I could spend time and learn some short cuts but I don't have time and in the end it's not really offering what I wanted.  So perhaps I will be coming back this addy for keeps.

Now let's move on to the first Teacup.  I wrote about unpacking teacups in my last post over here.

I decided I was going to pack some of them back up and rotate them out for different decorating themes.  My Granny was quite the traveler after my Pawpaw passed away.  Some of the cups are my only way of knowing where she went.

This teacup and saucer are from Estes Park, Colorado.  I didn't know she went there.  In fact, I bought my first collectible teacup in Estes Park 10 years ago.  Ha!  What are the odds?

There's nothing else particularly special about the cup.  No markings.  I never thought about buying a teacup and saucer with the location as a souvenir.

 

You see the elevation?  It's 7,547 feet...whenever the teacup was bought.  If you look up the elevation now it will tell you it's 7,522 feet.  So, Estes Park has sunk 25 feet.

I went to several yard sales last weekend.  I bought a microwave.  Right, we did not have a microwave.  We haven't had one for about 5 years.  The husband decided we should really get another one for reheating left overs.  I refused to pay the $70 I see a lot of them costing.  The yard sale I stopped by was given by a lady from a different congregation but within our same meeting hall.  Hence, she can be trusted.  The microwave was essentially new and works fine.  I paid $20.

One steal I got at another sale was a set, or most of a set, of Homer Laughlin china.  The shape, not the pattern, is Village Rose.  Trying to find the name of the pattern is not easy.  I've only found mislabeled pictures that don't match up with Replacements.com.  It is not Moss Rose or Fluffy Rose.  This set was produced over several years from December 1960-1962.  I considered it a good deal for $15 as I was looking for a nice set of dishes to use for dinner.

Sharing With:

Twirl And Take a Bow
The Gathering Spot
A Return To Loveliness
The Art of Homemaking 

What's It Wednesday 
Simple and Sweet Fridays 

 

Moving to WordPress

After the ambitious amount of writing I've done (all 45 posts), I've decided to move things over to WordPress.  I have pretty much the same address just without the "blogspot."

TheSmallestAcre

The first post is up.  Not terribly stunning, just informative and short.  I hope you'll come visit me.

Herb de Provence Bread

Happy April Fool's Day!

I'm doing my taxes today.  What better day I figure.  Afterwards I usually need some comfort food.  I decided to make some homemade bread with a little twist.

I bought a breadmaker at Goodwill a few years ago for the sole purpose of having it make my dough and saving me the hard work of making homemade bread.  It has worked out wonderfully.  I put my ingredients in the breadmaker, select the "Dough" setting, let it do all the muscle work, and then pop it into the oven to bake some fresh bread.

The breadmaker came with a book full of bread and dough recipes.

 

I'm using the French Bread recipe for 2 pounds.  The ingredients are as follows:

• 1 1/2 cups of water 80F degrees
• 2 TBL oil (I used olive)
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 TBL sugar
• 4 cups bread flour
• 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

To make Herb de Provence bread I simply added 2 tablespoons of Herb de Provence after adding 2 tablespoons of sugar.

My bread turned out delicious!  You can tweak the amount of Herb de Provence to your liking.  This bread goes great with dinner or to make sandwiches.  (Also good if you're sulking about your taxes)

If you like super thin slices of bread, as I've done here, I suggest a bread slicing guide such as this.  I own this one and I love it.  It keeps the bread from drying out.  I put the link below.

Expanding Bread Keeper

I'm sharing this with:

Twirl and Take a Bow Tuesday

Keep Calm Craft On
Home and Garden Thursday
What's It Wednesday