Before and After Home Improvement Projects

We have decided that we need to sell the house.  Glen still doesn't know where his job may or may not take us, but it's undeniable that this is the course of action we feel we are being led to do.    After living in a house for eighteen years though, this is a big to-do.

I don't like house projects.  They stress me out.  I have anxiety when it comes to making decisions.  I dread calling and dealing with workers.   I hate feeling like our house is being invaded.   It's just not my favorite thing in the world. 

  My life has been completely immersed in house stuff lately, and  weirdly I have not felt anywhere near the stress and anxiety that I normally feel with even one project.  I can only explain it that I feel like Heavenly Father is giving me strength to do what we feel like is the right thing to do right now.    I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm enjoying the process, however I definitely am not hating / dreading / avoiding it near as much as usual...so that's a good thing. 

Do you want to see a glimpse of what we've been working on? 

I thought so!   

Here's the "before" of our HALL BATHROOM.  I had already taken down the medicine cabinet, so it wasn't a true "before", but it's close.  

Here's the after....

We put in a new vanity, a big new mirror, new light fixture, a new towel rack, painted the walls, and switched out the shower curtain for a nice neutral white.   It feels fresh and nice! 

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Here's the "before" of our BASEMENT BATHROOM: 

And the "after"...

We did a new vanity, mirror, paint, and vinyl plank flooring over the old tile.   It looks great! 

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Here's the "before" of our MASTER BATH:  

Here's phase one with a new vanity, recessed medicine cabinet, paint, and vinyl plank flooring

Here it is after we glazed over the tile with white.  The shower door is still to come.

I have mixed feelings about the white tile, however it does make our bathroom seem a little bigger, so I guess it's a good thing.   I can't wait to get the new shower door installed. 

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Here's my pride and joy project--the one I was most excited about doing, even before we decided to sell the house.  I've hated this fireplace from the moment we moved in....

And now it's finally beautiful!   And I tiled over the brick myself (with Adam as my assistant)!

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We also got new railings to replace the ugly wrought iron we had before...

BEFORE 

AFTER (before staining)

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We got new windows.

BEFORE 

AFTER

I love how much easier they are to open and close now!

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We retiled the entry way.

BEFORE

AFTER

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We got new light fixtures....

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We put vinyl plank flooring over the concrete in our laundry room and added some beadboard to the unfinished walls.  It looks soooooooo different, but I weirdly never took a before picture of that ugly part of my house.

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WE've also gotten rid of a TON of stuff and have been packing up most of the rest and moving it to this storage unit.

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We are feeling like we've accomplished a lot and that we are on a good path to get it on the market in a few weeks, but we still have a few big things to go. 

PROJECTS STILL TO COME:

new roof

painting

new carpet in basement

refinish wood floors in bedroom

take care of the yard

taking care of water drainage on one side of the house

In the meantime, don't mind me if I look a little bleary eyed and seem a bit distracted.  This hasn't been quite as painful as I expected, but let's just say that we won't be rushing to buy another house anytime soon.  

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Celebrating in NYC

Ellie turned 14 last week.   

Yeah, she's our baby, so this is pretty much craziness.

Several months ago (right after Glen got his new job) we decided we wanted to see a show in NYC.  When we were looking at the available dates, we were immediately drawn to Ellie's birthday weekend!   It would be so fun to celebrate her birthday in NYC...so that's what we did.   

We saw two shows: 

The first was "Dear Evan Hansen," which was the show we planned this trip around. 

It was a powerful performance, albeit a little edgier than we expected.  WE'd been listening to the soundtrack for it for the last year or two, so we thought we knew the story, but there's so much more power to it when you see it performed in real life.     It was amazing. 

The next show we watched was in the evening...."Frozen!"  We added this show to our schedule later and didn't get as good a seats for it.   Still, it was high energy and so fun!

 Ellie and I threw keto eating out the window for the weekend and let her choose her birthday food.  We had real deal pizza for lunch, burgers and fries for dinner (no picture!)....

 and doughnut ice cream sandwiches for dessert!   We don't mind keto eating for the most part, but it was fun to be able to enjoy some fun foods that we didn't cook ourselves!    YUM!  

In case you're wondering...yes, going off keto affected her seizure control for the worse.  We got right back to it when we got home again. 

 WE literally only spent about 24-hours in NYC, so we didn't have a lot of time outside of the shows and the eating, but big city life is always entertaining too.   

The flashy billboards and glittering lights are sensory overload themselves, but then there are just the random full-size airplane parked on the side of the road...   

 And the oddball assortment of people that make people-watching an entertaining activity on its own accord.    I don't know what it is about big cities, but they seem to attract the oddest and most colorful personalities!  

We laughed a lot and just enjoyed being together...

 which is something that is all too fleeting these days. 

We are grateful for Ellie and a good excuse to celebrate!   

We love you, Ellie!  

Running--then and now

Once upon a time there was a young teen who got talked into running on the high school cross country team.   She had never really run before.  Actually for that matter, she had never really participated in any sport before, but she decided to give it a try.     She pretty much hated it at first, but kept with it through all four years of high school.  She never did get to be very competitive, but she grew to love running and love the camaraderie of the cross country team.  It is still of my opinion that cross country runners are the smartest, nicest people around.  

Over the years, running has stayed important in my life and running and walking are still my preferred ways to exercise.   But I don't really like racing anymore.  I've done a few races over the years--

A couple half-marathons, a Ragnar, a bunch of 5k's, but for the most part I like to run slow and only a couple times a week. Any more than that and I tend to get injured.   So for the last couple of years I've had the routine of walking most days of the week and running on Mondays/Thursdays only.   It's a routine that keeps me challenged, fit, and uninjured.  And I like being uninjured.   

Fast forward a bunch of years and Cami chose to run cross country in high school too.  Watching her run always made me feel so nostalgic and I was proud of her for sticking with it all four years of high school too.  She also did lacrosse in high school and at BYU. 

Then she married into a crazy running family.  The kind of family where her mother-in-law has run like 20 marathons.  Her father-in-law has run 50 mile trail races.  Even Garrett is hoping to qualify for Boston.  You know that kind of crazy.   

So it shouldn't have surprised us too much when just a few months after she was married, she announced that she was training for a marathon.  And she actually did it.   She trained hard for several months, fighting off a couple of injuries along the way, but this past weekend she did it!   

Cami ran an entire marathon!   

And Garrett did it too.   It wasn't his first one though, so I'm mostly bragging about Cami this time!   

Neither one of them quite met their time goals, but Cami was within a couple of minutes, so she's already talking about trying it again!    And Garrett still wants to qualify for Boston, so I foresee many more long runs in their future.

Meanwhile...this runner here is still quite content with her 10-minute-mile pace treadmill runs twice a week and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. 

More {Keto} Food!

Anyone who knows me in person or who has been following my blogs for long, knows that food is a big part of our lives.   I guess you could even call it one of my love languages.   

I love to make it.  I love to eat it. 

I'm not a fancy cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I really do love trying to create delicious (and at least semi-nutritious) things for my family to eat.   I think that's why I was so surprised when we started our low-carb (keto) way of eating for Ellie's seizures.   I had gone into it thinking  that eating keto food was going to be a sacrifice for us and that we would just have to get used to eating food that was a "lesser-than" version of what we were used to eating.   

Don't get me wrong...changing our way of eating WAS a big adjustment, but it wasn't anywhere near as hard or as bad as I expected.   Eating good, wholesome (low carb) foods is actually very satisfying and helped me to feel better, as well as helping Ellie with her seizure control.  

And as time has gone on, Ellie and I are realizing that we don't really miss "normal" food anymore.   We still have lots of fun, delicious foods we can eat and we still have fun cooking!  

Like this lemon meringue pancake cake we had for breakfast recently!  

Emma and I came up with this idea one weekend morning.   It's our favorite keto pancakes layered with keto lemon curd and topped with stevia sweetened meringue!   It was absolutely everything we'd hoped it would be....fun, unique, and delicious.  All with no sugar and low carbs.   

And here are some chocolate covered strawberries that we made for a RS night that ended up being cancelled for snow.

We used stevia-sweetened Lily's chocolate, so they were not only beautiful, but also delicious and low carb, which meant my kids and I were only a little excited that we had to eat them all ourselves!   😋

Then there's my favorite breakfast (that I've mentioned before)...hemp seed porridge.

It's essentially a keto (low carb) version of oatmeal, made with hemp, flax, and chia seeds.  We love to top it with a stevia sweetened whipped cream topping that we mix up, as well as unsweetened coconut and cacao nibs.  Usually our whipped cream is some version of stevia, chocolate, and PB, but for Valentine's Day we did a stevia and berry version that was delicious too.  

Eating low carb does take planning and work, but it's a work that has been very rewarding to us and I think that we (at least Ellie and I) are doing this for the long haul!  

In other words, don't be surprised if you see lots more keto food posts (or at least references to keto food) here in the future.  😜

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One of THOSE Weekends

With Glen only home for weekends now, our Saturdays and Sundays feel jam-packed!   This Saturday, in amongst all the regular kids' activities,  Glen and the kids spent most of the day working on the yard.  We're hoping that clearing away some of the leaves and branches might make it a little less inviting for our little mouse invaders.   While they were out working, I was doing a major purge on the inside of our house.  We've lived here for almost 18-years now, which means we've had a lot of years to accumulate stuff.  In other words...it was a long day!

At the end of the day, we were all exhausted and ready to relax for a while, but the house had other plans.  Not satisfied with our efforts to make it a BETTER place to live, it opted to show us who was boss...and it clearly isn't us.   

Our plumbing line from the kitchen got clogged and our basement flooded.   It was gross.  It was expensive.  And it did nothing to improve the state of our home.  

One step forward...two steps back.   This fixing up the house stuff is clearly not my thing. 

And after that crazy weekend, on Monday morning I got shoved  into my place of abject humility once again when I heard a little mouse skittering underneath our sink.   I go to scare it off/see if it was caught...

Nope....

Lo and behold, there was the vile creature right there in plain sight, running freely and happily as Mickey himself, in amongst the SEVEN traps we have set up down there.   He skillfully navigated around all of them and disappeared before I could think of the irony of it all.    And then I got mad.

How mad?  

I went to Amazon and ordered mousetraps in bulk.   In BIG bulk.  

I will prevail.

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Where Our Brains Are...

I have more on my brain than usual lately and I've been feeling a little stretched.  And tired. And pulled in a 1000 different directions. 

What's on our brains, you ask?   

Well, here's a glimpse....

Glen's job (still in Philadelphia) has just gotten a bit more stressful.  It's still not a permanent job, but he does have new responsibilities that have allowed him the opportunity to make a bigger difference there, but it also means that he has more on his shoulders.  WE are exceedingly grateful for his job, but it really is stressful to have him so far away.   This is a picture of his office in PA, including the new calendar that Ellie got him for Christmas.  :) 

Spence is doing real life stuff....like oil changes, balancing a budget, and figuring out what girls to ask out!    It's still weird to have him so far away, but we are proud of him and all that he is doing to take care of the "big boy" stuff on his own! 

Cami just started a new semester, just applied to attend the University of Texas next year, started a new job at the community college she attends, and is training for her first marathon next month.  On Valentine's Day her and Garrett got to see "Anastasia" there in Austin.  We gave them the tickets for Christmas. :) 

Emma just started a nannying job, so she's staying very busy taking care of two cute kiddos.   Mostly though she is very happy now that she's heard back from BYU.  

Adam stays busy with his school stuff, planning dates now that he is 16, and trying to determine philosophically what is a sandwich, and what is not.  

For instance, a quesadilla has two breadlike objects with cheese in the middle....does that make it a sandwich?    What about a taco?   Or two waffles with greek yogurt and berries between them?  

If you know the answers to these questions, please call me quick, because there are ongoing debates about this at our house! 

If you can't find Ellie writing a book online with her friends, then she's probably dancing, reading a book, drawing pictures of characters for her book, or playing with Rocky...in other words...she's in motion!   

And me?   What's on my brain? 

Well, thanks for asking...here you go!  

In addition to all the every day stuff....like taking care of my family (spread out in four different states), taking care of myself (I need to do a post on this soon), and teaching my cute middle school earth science class...

My brain is really being overtaken by this kind of stuff...

 backsplash measurements 

 hearth measurements...

 entry way measurements...

and trying to pick out light fixtures, a range hood, bathroom vanities, railings, etc.  Pretty much we are just doing all the things we ever wanted to do to our house and were too lazy to do before....just in case we need to sell it this spring. 

Oh yeah, and there's this...

 Mice!!!!

We've lived in our house 18 years and have never had them like this before (I think a certain teenage driver crashing into the garage door {though it was actually a pretty small crash} may have allowed an easy entry point for them to come into our garage).  We have 20+ traps set up around the house and they're still around.  Last week, after seeing live mice scampering boldly around our house for the third day in a row, I officially decided I was in over my head (especially with Glen not here) and we are calling out the big guns.   What are the big guns?   Steel wool, caulking, some yard work, and a new bucket mousetrap that's supposed to be amazingly effective.  Here's hoping the "Death to All Mice!" rallying cry coming from our house will be heard soon and I will get back a big portion of my brain again! 

 In the meantime, please send any pied pipers you know my way...

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