Smart Sister and Staircase Redo

Well I have a smart sister. She said the reason I may not be able to upload pictures to the blog is because there were too big. Well sister was correct. So I now can post pictures. Yippee! So of course I started with my beautiful little girl. She is two now. How time flies. She is almost potty trained and talks quite a bit. (Not sure where she got that from.) =) She really likes Barney, animals, her family and is just generally a happy, busy girl. Now that I can post pictures I will be adding some more through the next couple of weeks so you can all be updated on her.

Well we are almost finished with the upstairs of our home. 3 out of the 4 rooms are drywalled, electrical work finished, flooring in and most of the moulding in. We (which means Miguel with help from me when I know what I am doing) just have to finish putting up some moulding and the last room needs to be mudded, painted, flooring installed, and moulding. It is feeling soooo good! One pretty big project was our staircase. Have you ever seen a staircase that is over 100 years old? Well get ready people, it is not pretty!

Lovely huh? The front part of the stairs were breaking off, there were cracks, not to mention drywall mud, primer and paint all over them. It w

as simply a horrible sight. And then enters my talented husband. We had to buy all new risers and treads because they were just in too bad of shape to save. So I painted the risers white with free paint from Me

nards. Seriously any home fixer uppers out there.....watch Menards ads. They do rebates A LOT and one they do semi-frequently is paint that ends up being free. Then I stained the tread parts with Jocobean stain. I sanded and stained the banister in the same color. Now it was hubby's turn to rip up all of the old and install new. There is still some parts we need to fill in with wood filler and some more moulding, but over all I think the end results is a far cry better than what we started with.

I am loving it! Also, notice my cute helper who loves to "help it mom". I have to give credit to a really neat blog that my sister referred me to.

Its thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com. She also redid her staircase and inspired me with the look that she went with.

So, that is one project we have been up to. Of course there will be more to follow, especially since you can now see pictures. And I shall leave you with another of my Miss Adaliah....

After Affects of Joy in the Journey

First off, I know I have been promising updated pictures of Miss Adaliah Ruth but I can not get them to upload to this blog. Not sure what is up with that, but hopefully I will figure it out soon.

I usually enjoy the changing seasons and I do not even mind winter or snow or cold. But, my dear friends, I am finished this year! Adaliah asks to go outside and play every time I let the dog out. We are down to about 20% left in our propane tank and the propane people can not get to our tank because the drive has about a foot of snow with ice on top of it. So I am finished with winter. I am ready for the sun, and green, and my vegetable and flower gardens. With that in mind I have been pouring over gardening books and online sites. Has anyone every ordered plants online? Did you have much luck that way?

A few months back I posted about "Joy in the Journey", about how God was dealing with me to just "Be still" and enjoy the journey through where He is taking me. Not to always be worrying about just getting there. (Yes, I know I just wrote about not enjoying winter any more, He is still working on me people!) Well, amazing things have been happening in my life personally as God has been dealing with me about this. I have started to change my eating habits and do some (and its kinda of little some) exercising. I have been shocked to see 15 pounds drop off. It has just been little things like switching to skim milk and not putting handfuls of cheese on everything and watching my portions. I go to bed full every night and it has been so easy. I have been so amazed and happy. I also have more energy and just mentally feel better.

Other area of my life that has been personally affected is my finances. Anyone who knows me knows I have always been a saver. But, it seems like we were always wondering where our money went to. So I decided it was time to enjoy the journey more by getting our finances under control as well. I tracked what we spent for three months. We saved EVERY receipt and I imputed them into an excel file according to the category it fell under like, house expences, gas, eating out ect. Then based on that I could set up a realistic budget that we started at the begining of this month. We are doing the envelope system which means I get X amount of dollars for groceries and that cash goes in an envelope. Thats all I get for two weeks. So it means I make up menus and have to shop with a calculator in my hands. Its amazing when we take the debit card away and have cold hard cash how much harder it is to part with the cash. So far so good. We are hoping by being more diciplined with our finances we can accomplish some goals we have in our life, like getting this house finished, doing some traveling, and being completely debt free in 12 years or less (this includes our house). So anyone else have a budget. Any tips? Rememer as you go about your day that God has come to give us life more abundatly. So enjoy your day. Sing while you do the dishes. Thank God that you have all of these nice clothes to wear as you fold them and put them away. Just have joy today! God bless you all!