I have this blank wall in my dining room that’s been blank for almost a year (that’s when it was painted.)  I have this lovely picture to put there – a print of one my Mom painted.  But, I needed something nice to go with it to make it complete.  Aha.  Those vinyl wall things are so very cool these days.  I’ll get a verse – something significant in our lives – to put on the wall beside the pictures.  Oh boy.  So many obstacles in my way.

1)  Will it actually look nice?
2) What verse?  Oh my.  Months and months went by when I’d forget to think about it, or forget to ask Keith what he thought, or other things were more pressing, or…
3) Okay, now I have the verse.  What web-site to use?  There are so many.
4) What color should it be??  What dimensions?  What font.  Good grief.  The options and unknowns are so daunting.  And then…
5)  What?!?  $150???  Sigh.  Yes, we have the money.  But then I got to thinking.  This is a single application deal.  When the wall needs to be re-painted, the whole thing is history.  Do I really want to spend that much on something that will for sure last no more than 5 -10 years?
6)  But it might look really, really cool.

What do you think?

Since I don’t have the gumption to blog, I’ll throw a few links your way that made me smile lately.

This first one you’ve possibly seen, since it’s been bopping around on Facebook.  But in case you haven’t, here’s some encouragement for all moms.

Then, this was brought to my attention.  You can read the product description if you want, but the first two customer reviews are the real hoot.  (You have to scroll down the page a ways.)

Happy reading!

I know you probably think that I’m super-mom.  All home-schooling moms are, right?  Our houses are usually neat and tidy and our school day runs along smoothly on a very organized schedule.  Oh, and our kids always get along and listen to us.  We never lose our focus for what a day should look like and what good parenting looks like.  Right?  Yeah, right!!

Today has been less than stellar in some ways.  We went to an amazing concert last night, but got home quite late.  So we all slept in this morning.  And I woke up feeling down and discouraged.  So I started the school day by sending them downstairs to watch a science DVD.  Then at least I had a little time to read my Bible and collect my scattered brains.  Things have improved somewhat, although my parenting could use some real help on some key points…

What actually inspired this post is this picture of our table this morning.  This just sums up how messy and imperfect life is sometimes.

On another note, I’ve been intrigued by my boys the last few days.  Since Friday they’ve been playing on the living room floor with a combination of blocks, Wikki Stix, and plastic Easter eggs.

I think they’re pretending to be lizards and dinosaurs living on houseboats in the ocean.  They’ve developed businesses  and built lots of boats, etc.  I’m so impressed with their creativity.  Is this the result of the very small amount of electronic entertainment in their lives?

And other random stuff:

- Tonight we’re having a hot dog roast and game night with the other home-school families.  Yay for not having to celebrate Halloween!

- My boys have been introduced to the dastardly game of “spoons”.  They love it and I suppose we’ll be playing it tonight.

- I’m planning a couple of days to scrap-book in the near future.  Woohoo!

- I got some second-hand halloween costumes for J & H for Christmas for only $10 each.  They are a cat and an alligator.  The kids will be so impressed, I’m sure.  They love dressing up in stuff like that.

- I’m hoping for a somewhat lazy afternoon!

Yes, I bought black paint, and yes, I painted my dishwasher and fridge.

Taking the plunge. “I wonder if this will work!”  We had amazing weather so it was great for doing it outside.  Except that the bugs stuck in the wet paint.

And here’s the finished product:

Not bad, eh?  There are a few imperfections which made me squelch my perfectionistic self and go on with life.  I painted over all the words/controls on the dishwasher because I didn’t know what else to do.  I bought a paint pen so that someone with better hand-writing than myself can write them back in.  But I’m not sure if I’ll bother.  I wrote down all the buttons/words on a piece of paper in case I need them.

So now, the next step in the Grand. Kitchen. Reno. is doing something to fix the finish on the cupboards.  I’m thinking paint, but Keith isn’t convinced yet.  Time will tell.  Nothing more is happening until next spring/summer.

No, this post isn’t about the dangers of having a glass of wine with dinner.  You know how one decision can lead to the next thing and the next thing and pretty soon you’ve got more than you bargained for?  Well, let me tell you about my stove.  My oven has been a junker for quite awhile now.  And finally we made the decision to get a different one. At first I was happy to just get a better used one.  But Keith wanted to get a new one.  Well, that was the beginning of  a long sequence of things.  Keith and I went to Winnipeg last month and one of the main things on the agenda was to get a stove – a white, coil-top, good-quality, but lower-end stove.  I don’t need all the bells and whistles, ya know.  Now I’ll give you the condensed version of the story.  We left the store with a black, flat-top, convection, um, not-cheap stove.  What in the world?  Here’s one part of the process:  Keith: “I think that long-term you’ll be happier with the flat-top.”  Me: “Well, long-term, I’d be happier with black!” (I had no idea that my happiness had such power!  Originally, I was going to be ecstatic if the thing could just bake evenly and not burn my bread!!!)  So, out with the old…

And in with the new:

(Notice how I didn’t clean up the kitchen to take pictures.)  So now, can you guess what the problem is?

If you can’t guess, I’ll give you a hint: colour…  So, being the nerd that I am, this is what is happening now:

Stay tuned for more adventures with “Jenni the cheapskate home renovator”.

We’ve always talked about taking our kids on canoe trips.  But it’s one of those things that’s pretty fun to talk about and much more daunting to actually do!  This year we decided to do an “introductory trip.”   Keith found a spot that we could drive close to.  We thought we’d have to portage in a little ways to the lake, but it ended up that we could drive the truck within 50 yards of the lake!  We had a 30 – 45 minute paddle across the lake and then we camped at the same spot for two nights.  So, it wasn’t really a canoe trip.  The only catch ended up being that it was really windy.  It was a little scary going across the lake on the first day.  Caleb and I were paddling a canoe and for a little while I didn’t know if we were even making any progress.  There were white-caps on the lake and I was wondering what in the world we were doing out there with our family!!!  But God protected us in spite of our ignorance and we made it there.  It was beautiful, but windy the whole time we were there.  On the last day we holed up in a little clearing in the bush to get out of the wind.  Sadly, the batteries died and I couldn’t take any pictures in there.  I read aloud for what seemed like hours and we made food on a little fire and played games.  Of course, the boys chopped, whittled, and sawed anything they could get their hands on!  We ended up waiting to leave for home until pretty late in the evening.  The wind had died down some by then and lessened even more as we paddled.  We watched the sunset as we paddled and arrived at our landing in the dark.  Hannah fell asleep in her chair in the canoe.  We had a bit of a drive to get home, so it was pretty late when we got in.  I gulped and put the kids to bed filthy.  And that was that.  I’m afraid it was so successful we’ll have to do it again next year.

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Since there’s no way I can catch up on blogging about the whole summer, I’ll show you one of the fun days we had.  We were in Cincinnati visiting Dad and Dru.  One day we took the kids to an indoor waterpark.  It was just the right size – small enough that we could do everything and it wasn’t too hard to keep track of everyone.  The kids loved it.  I went on a real waterslide for the first time and loved it.

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Here it is, for those of you just dying to see what the dyeing did to me…

I know it’s not horrible, but it’s just not what I was looking for.  It’s supposed to be “temporary” but I know how that works.  Which makes me concerned about how it will look when it starts growing out.  I don’t like having different-coloured roots.  In fact that’s why I picked a different colour this time.  I thought it would be closer to my natural colour.  hehe.  I guess that’s what I get for messing around with what God gave me.  :-D

- I became a Canadian citizen in June – and I never even blogged about it!

- It was a hot, dry summer.  The grass was brown and crunchy but we got a lot of tomatoes from our little garden.

- We had a great two-week trip to the States in July.  We took C & L to Choral Camp at RBC.  It was a great experience for them and us.  We got to visit my Dad and Dru and some special friends.

- The second half of the summer was difficult – hard personal stuff to deal with, attacks from the Enemy, etc.

- I gave up on most of the projects I was going to do this summer and just focused on cleaning out the basement.  It’s not quite done, but Oh My, the difference is amazing.

- In August my Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Dwen came for a visit.  It was sooooooo wonderful!  Dwen had never been up here before.  It was a treat for all of us!

- A few weeks ago Keith and I got to go to Winnipeg for a few days for shopping and fun and to pick up his sister at the airport.  I found some sweet deals on various things – and we bought a new stove.  :-)  While we were there, Keith’s cousin passed away in S. Ontario.  We ended up putting him on a plane to go to the funeral.  I was glad that I had Heather to come home with me!

- The end of August and beginning of Sept. were really busy with Dad and Dru here for a visit and Keith’s older sister and her two girls.  Lots of parties and food!

- School started late this year.  I was going to start right after Labour Day, but that was the week we went to Winnipeg.  So we started the next week.

- Hannah is a much better pre-schooler to have around this year than last year.  She and Josiah play together much, much better and when I do school stuff with him, I can usually find a way to involve her.  Maybe she’ll learn to read this year too.

- I ordered a parenting book that I can’t wait to read.  I’ll let you know if it’s as good as I think it will be.

- One of these days I’ll post some pictures.  Probably.

- Moose hunting season begins on my birthday this year.  I plan to party anyway.  I’ll let you know how that turns out.

- I had an unfortunate, but learning, experience with hair colour yesterday.  Let’s just say that when the box says, “light warm brown”, it might really mean, “haha, now you’re a brunette”.  I probably won’t post pictures.

We’re going camping this weekend.  I have a list on the computer of standard camping gear.  I just print it off each time I need it.  I was just looking over my list for this weekend and saw that there’s a section titled “Baby/child”.  And under it is listed:

potty chair
diapers
wipes
little swimmers
blankie

Ha!  I just crossed all of them off and realized that I need to update my list.  We are not taking a baby or toddler camping this year!  Weird.  And very nice!