Everything I Own I Bought At A Garage Sale

When we moved to the Caribbean, we got rid of all but a handful of our things.  So moving to Kansas City was an adventure in furniture accumulation.  It was hard to have things (clothes, toys, books, etc.) but nothing to put those things in.  We garage sale-d like mad to accumulate chairs to sit on and a table to eat on (we did manage to squeeze bunkbeds for the boys and our rolled-up memory foam mattress into the van when we moved here!).

I think my sister gets a kick out of the fact that our house is basically one big garage sale - she keeps asking me to post pictures.  So here it is, our garage sale house:

This kitchen table we scored for $40.  The table top especially was in pretty rough shape but my man sanded it down and restained it for me.  I painted the backs of the chairs and all that's left to do (on my "I'll get to it...someday" list) is to re-paint the table legs.  My handman Jaron also built the bench.  I love having the bench since it leaves us more space to walk around the table and we have squeezed up to four children on it!

 In the living room adjoining the kitchen we have a lovely microfiber couch ($65) and chair-and-a-half ($35).  I think this'll be my first and last microfiber set - I do not love how every handprint, footprint, etc. remains on the upholstery's surface all the time.  But I do feel like we scored a great set for our price range.  The big black dresser ($20) stores our kid games, our family night supplies, and, of course, our swimsuits.   :-)  I love the big white lamp ($7) but it needs a new, more modern lampshade in my opinion.  I also am not loving the mirror ($3) above the couch.  I hoped it would bring light into the room but I feel like it's too small for the space.

 This end table ($10) next to the couch was a nightmare.  I liked the shape of it but when I began stripping it, I discovered there were three coats of paint and a varnish on it.  Then I discovered that the top was not all wood - the middle section is particle board.  Needless to say, it didn't strip fantastically.  My neighbor was nice enough to say it ended up with a "rustic" look. :-D

 On the opposite side of the living room we have our "office" with a fantastically old desk and chair that I got for $30 together at an estate sale.  I envision myself stripping the desk, restaining it, and putting new handles on it...someday (are you sensing a pattern here?!).

 And our last wall houses our most expensive purchase - a $100 armoire.  I love armoires because it means the TV is not always the focal point of the room.  They also serve as a nice way to protect electronics from little hands, feet, balls, etc.  As functional as it is, It's a particle-board piece so it probably won't move away with us when we leave the city.  I love, love, love old, real-wood furniture but I do not so much love the newer, flimsy stuff.

Don't mind my seriously unfinished photo wall in the background.  It has improved since this picture - the frames now have photos but I still need to spray paint some of them.  I love the photo wall but if I were to do it again I think I would space the pictures a little farther apart.

And that is my downstairs.  The upstairs is still in much worse shape and has yet to come together whatsoever.  I'm planning on tackling the upstairs as the weather cools off and we are forced to stay home more. :-)

I need some advice.  I think my downstairs is begging for some color but I'm just not sure how to add it.  All of the furniture we've accumulated is just so dark!  I have thought about painting the black dresser into a lighter, fun color.  I've also thought of adding some bright throw pillows to the couch.  Ideas, anyone, PLEASE?!

It's beginning to look a lot like Halloween!

 The kids and I have had fun decorating the house for Halloween for the last few weeks.  My kids are in a really fun stage right now.  They're totally into holidays but they're impressed by gestures as small as dollar store and homemade decorations.  (Although they were disappointed when they learned we weren't turning our house into a haunted house!)

You pinterest-ers will recognize some of the craftiness we put into our decorations.  I think my favorite thing we put up this year were the ghosts above the kitchen table because for days, every time cute little Gracen climbed into her chair at the table she would look up and say, "Oooo, spooky!"  It cracked me up every time. 

You can't see it, but I stuck some big plastic bugs in with the pumpkins in the vase on the table.  Unfortuantely, those pumpkins are not lasting as long as I hoped they would!  They may not make it to the end of the month, let alone through the harvest season!

Dollar store spider webs are always a classic at our house.

As far as costumes, I had hoped our whole family would sport a Star Wars theme with the boys as Jedi's, Gracen as Yoda, myself as Princess Leia, and Jaron as Darth Vader.  Unfortunately, the boys have other ideas.  Right now Alden wants to be an airplane and Eli wants to be Bob the Builder.  We'll have to finalize something soon - I can't believe how much time seems to be flying by lately!

Happy Birthday to Me

A few weeks ago, I had a birthday.  Which isn't a big deal when you're turning twenty-eight (*cough!*) but I had such a great day, I just had to share.

I'll go in reverse-order since that's the way I loaded my pictures!

In the evening, sweet little Billie Platt from our church treated me and Christal to frozen yogurt at one of those new-fangled shops that seem to be popping up all over America (well, in both Idaho and Kansas, that is).  We couldn't decide which flavor to get so we each got a little bit of a lot of flavors. :-)

Christal and Billie are on my "neighbors I want in heaven" list. They are both unbelievably good and inspiring.  I love being around people who make me want to be better.  We talked for hours this night, long after our frozen yogurt had disappeared. 

Earlier, Christal had given me several hours off to spend a day on ME!  At first I thought I'd seize the opportunity to finally catch up on my class, but then the weaker side of me won and I went to Hobby Lobby instead.  I walked around Hobby Lobby for ages, just looking at all their great home stuff,  I ended up spending $10 on a few little pretties to help make our new house a home:

I just love the tinted blue vase and flowers that I placed in the corner of the kitchen counter.  The other item I got is a scripture from Psalms (which is also in our church's book of scripture called the Doctrine and Covenants) and is one that I've loved for a few years now.  It first struck me right after I had my second baby and Jaron was in his last year of his first doctorate and I was serving in a demanding church calling.  I loved how it told me to "Be still" and then followed it up with, "And know that I am God."  It reminds me to slow down for a minute, and take stock to evaluate what I'm doing and where I'm headed.  It also reminds me that God has a plan.  The subway art-ness of it may be a little "in your face" for a decoration on top of the microwave but now I can't miss it.  I look at it several times a day and it never fails to lift me up. 

Thank you to all my friends and family who made an old woman's birthday fabulous!

Some Thoughts About Nothing

I have no pictures this time - sorry folks.  I use this blog primarily as our family record - keeping track of our comings and goings and of the growing of the kidlets.  But sometimes I get caught up in the "photo album" side of it and neglect the "record" side of it. 

At this moment I am first and foremost procrastinating homework - which I seem to be really good at lately.  The class I'm in right now started right after we moved and I've been playing "catch up" all along.  It's been really, really tough to motivate myself.  I just want to veg at the end of the night, not pick apart scholarly articles and research!  Curse you scholarly writing!!! 

On the other hand, I really do love learning.  I'm taking a Lifetime Development class right now and much of it is a refresher of things that I learned as a Child Development major in the undergrad years.  It's really interesting to me to learn how people learn and what factors contribute to optimal cognitive and socioemotional development.  I also like how reading and interpreting all this scholarly stuff is slowly pulling my writing up to a new level.  What I do not love is that it is always there - I think I need a summer break!  Only two more years... :-)

Life seems to finally be taking on some semblance of normalcy around here.  Our family has eased into a pretty consistent routine and the running around of getting settled is for the most part over.  Our house is now fully furnished, just not fully put together.  Stuff is in the cupboards, drawers, and closets, just not in an orderly manner yet.  Furniture is here but needs to be refinished.  I have some pictures, they're just not hanging yet.  Sometimes I feel like I'll finally get it all together just in time for us to move again!

Alden's being in school has really helped regulate our days.  A typical day for us goes like this:  We eat breakfast and get dressed before getting out the door to drop Alden off.  We come home and I exercise while the kiddos mush their brains in front of the TV (actually - I just read research that says that children who watch mostly "educational TV" often show higher cognitive abilities in school but children who watch a lot of "entertainment TV" often have cognitive and behavioral problems).  Then I shower and might get started on some house-something (cleaning up breakfast, laundry, etc.) when *poof* three hours have passed and it's time to pick up Alden from kindergarten.  After we get home from that, it is lunch and naptime for Gracen.  While Gracen is asleep I usually try to get the boys busy playing outside or doing something else while I sneak in some homework.  This more often is unsuccessful than it is successful.  After naptime, the kids play in the yard with their friends who are always around and I get to tidy up the house and get dinner going.  Dinner and cleaning up the kitchen quickly turns into the bedtime routine and after the house is QUIET, I really get down into homework.  I've never been a strict scheduler but this seems to be more or less how every day has been planning itself out and it's fun to get into some predictability. 

For the first time in our life as parents, Jaron and I are trading off nights to put the kids to bed.  This is the first time since we've been married that he's been home consistently in the evenings to take this on!  The rotation he's doing now has him home every night around dinner time and it's nice to have that consistency in our life as well.  Hopefully this "consistency" lasts longer than the 12 weeks this rotation lasts!  Jaron really enjoys being at the hospital and all the things he's experiencing there.  The first day of his rotation, he came home and said, "Internal med doctors don't make enough money."  This rotation is non-stop all day long, to the point that eating takes the back burner.  He's downright exhausted at the end of every day.

Alden is terribly sick this week.  He hardly has any voice at all and at night has this horribly dry, hacking cough.  He walks around in semi-zombie zone all day.  The funny thing is - I'm worried that he's getting behind in his KINDERGARTEN work since he hasn't been to school all week.  I sometimes really resent the reading machine that kindergarten has become!  Alden resents homework already and he's 5.  FIVE.  Sheesh.  But he does love going to kindergarten and talks about his classmates a lot.

I don't know if it's because we have so many kids his age in our complex, but Eli has recently morphed from this terribly shy guy into a spunky little personable kid.  He loves having friends over and being at friends' houses.  He's in preschool twice a week and he absolutely adores the idea that he has school just like Alden.  I kept him home this week because he had a bit of a cough as well and you would've thought the world had ended!  Eli is such a sweetie.  He loves to make people laugh.  I hope that he never stops asking me to "cuddle-snuggle" with him.

Gracie is soo much personality wrapped up in a small package.  She's small for her age but is growing cognitively into a pretty fun person.  She's started taking on Eli's habit of doing silly things to make people laugh.  She speaks in short sentences and two- or three-word phrases and I can for the most part understand what she's trying to communicate.  She is such a good little mommy to her babies and stuffed animals and loves to be independent - doing things herself and playing in the backyard alone.


All in all, life is pretty sweet at the Brunson house these days.  There's never enough time or energy to get it all in, but we're all enjoying life!

P.S.  I got to reconnect with a Saba friend today!  Amanda and her husband are here doing their rotations as well.  It is so good to be able to re-connect with old friends!