I had the best time painting this little chest. Nothing special just a little night stand I picked up at a thrift store for $5. But when you are doing what you love time flies.
I stripped the whole thing with Citristrip first. Then I applied a VERY watered down coat of Annie Sloans Old White, and wiped with a rag in the places I thought were to heavy. After the piece dried I applied two coats if clear wax and buffed. It turned out so nice.
As I have said before my daughter is on her highschool’s jrotc drill team this weekend was their first competition, maybe it was motherly pride but I have never seen a group of kids do such wa good job. Great job y’all.
It seems most people have the day off. Not me I’m off to my make money job for the day. Hope everyone has a good day.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
– Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Quote
My dishwasher was broken. It wasn’t getting the dishes clean. The pump was working. The water was running. (If they hadn’t been I would have had to call a repairman) The dishes just weren’t getting clean. So I did what any 21st century homemaker would do I googled “How to Troubleshoot your Dishwasher” it brought up this video.
Now my dishwasher isn’t exactly like this one, so Mr. KimsCorner and I had a little tougher job getting the bottom apart, but guess what. The bottom basket was clogged and dirty. Someone who shall remain nameless (my oldest son) had put some jars with labels into the dishwasher, the labels had come off and fallen down into the bottom basket. It saved us at least $75 for a service call, or $399 for a new dishwasher. We spent $0, and there was very little blood shed. (The only thing is that we have VERY different styles of reasoning, I’m spaghetti and he is waffles). Next we will attempt to fix the oven, as long as we don’t kill one another.
Ok, Ok, so maybe to some of you this isn’t such a big deal. But this girl has just gotten her build on. Other than filling a hole with spackle I’ve never built anything (oh I forgot I did glue the fleur de lis on the front of the cabinets, but does that count?). Ok here we go. . .hang on let me get the drill. Oh and I have to turn on the light in the closet (I didn’t even know there was a light in the closet until I was standing here trying to figure out how to build the shelves).
Half of our basement used to be a garage but the people before the people before us (two owners ago) converted it into bedrooms. Boy am I glad they did. Now all the kids can have their own rooms, anywho. . .
10:18 am
Off to get the drill. . .
10:17 am
Hang on I’m going to go build a fire, the 64 degrees the furnace is sitting on just isn’t cutting it in this 18 degree weather. Also, while I’m there I think I’ll put in a load of laundry. . .you can hang out and look around a while. . .I’ll be right back.
10:39 am
Ok I’m back, first thing you want to do is look at your closet mine has a little alcove thingy so all I have to do figure out how high I want my shelves, measure up from the floor on both sides and mark it.
ON BOTH WALLS. (That is too remind me, not you guys) Then measure how deep the shelves go back (19 inches in this case), so I can cut my furring strips 18 inches long so they don’t show and attach them to both walls at the same height.
Hang on did I remember to close the fireplace screen? Let me go check. . .
10:44 am
Now I am lucky enough to have bought a Chop Saw (or Miter Saw) at a yard sale for next to nothing, so I will go out the garage and cut 4 pieces at 23 inches each because I want 2 shelves, but you can do this with a circular saw, just measure twice, cut once and don’t saw off a finger please.
10:45 am
Forgot my jacket and had to come back in, like I said it’s 18 degrees out there.
11:02 am
I would have been back sooner, but I forgot something in the garage and then I forgot what I forgot, so it took me 2 trips back to get the tape measure. Ok now how tall do you want your shelves? Remember the top of the cleat is the bottom of the shelf. So I want my first shelf 20 inches off the floor so I will measure up from the floor 20 inches, mark it ON BOTH the walls (again reminding myself) and then attach a cleat to both walls. By the way if you want really good measurements and don’t want to just fly by the seat of your pants check out this post over at the The CSI Project.
Only thing is I don’t recommend trying such a long stretch with your shelves unless you put a brace of some kind in the middle, can you see how they sag a bit? That sag is only going to get worse believe me. We have some long shelves in the Hallmark store I work at and the sag is terrible, even when you don’t put heavy stuff on the shelves. And once they are sagging there is no good way to unsag them (is unsag a word?) unless you brace them some how.
I’m going with 20 inches so it clears the old raggety CPU that my packrat frugal, husband has sitting in the closet.
11:25 am
Ok I’ve marked it all up and it’s ready to attach. I’m going to run switch the laundry. Grab a bite to eat and get something to drink before I move on. . . you want a glass of tea? No. Ok see you in a minute.
2:12 pm
And I wonder why things take me so long to finish. I just got back from running a few errands that couldn’t wait, now I’m off to pick up lil Miss Drill Team at school. She got to wear her dress blues today and perform for the Superintendent of Schools (well the whole drill team did) so I am taking her to WalMart to have her picture made. (Unless she blacked her eye with her rifle.) So I’ll get back to the project when I get home. Hope you didn’t have anything else to do . . . here’s the remote and the heating blanket . . . comfy? I’m such a terrible host but HGTV always has something interesting on. I’ll be back.
5:30 pm
Ok I’m back. . . I put 3 screws in each cleat, making sure they are the same height on both sides.
Back out to the garage to cut the shelves 24 inces. . . be right back.
5:50 pm
Ok I’m back. . . I noticed something while I was out in the garage, the chop saw wasn’t sliding all the way back. So my tip is to make sure the saw isn’t hitting the wall or it won’t cut properly.
Lay the shelf across the cleats and viola you have a shelf. Now just do it 2 more times (or however many shelves you have), and you are finished. Another little tip. I cut a piece of furring strip to 24 inches and laid it across the cleats in front of the shelves to kinda hold the shelves in place. I then drilled a small pilot hole and screwed them into the cleats. You don’t have to do that but it gives a little more stability and a little more finished look.
Now it’s time to cook dinner, would you like to stay for supper??
Just when you think you’ve seen it all along comes something like this.
Someone asked me to share my adoption story. It is a LONG, beautiful story of God’s grace and provision. It is a story of His strength and His courage. You see if He weren’t a courageous God, and if He weren’t a God of ALL strength and power, then I could never have become a mother.
When I was 18 years old I had my appendices removed at that time they found a small ovarian cyst. I was told that it was normal and not to worry. Approximately 6 months later I had this horrible pain in my side and I went to the doctor. I had a cyst the size of a basketball on my ovary, they surgically removed it and said not to worry. Six month later I had a cyst the size of softball, they surgically removed it and said not to worry. And so it went for 4 more surgeries.
At 21 years old I got married. We began trying to conceive right away. After 3 months, at my regular check up I ask the gynecologist if I should be worried and she said probably not, but because of all the surgeries I had gone through she would just schedule a laparoscopy to “take a look”.
When I woke up they told me that I had lost one of my ovaries because it had twisted around and became severely infected and that they had done everything they could to save the other ovary, but I had a less than 5% chance of ever naturally getting pregnant.
Enter all the fertility procedures and drugs, it was a terrible time. We weren’t sure which things were acceptable to our faith and which things weren’t this was 18 years ago and the science was still pretty new. Now I don’t believe I would have tried IVF knowing what I know now, but that is only my own personal choice.
By the time we started looking into adoption we had spent most of our money and some of my parents money on the fertility treatments and at that time private adoptions were running about $15,000 to $20,000.
Enter the Cabinet for Children and Families. We decide that perhaps we would try to adopt a special needs child. We went to the Adoption Training, had a home study and opened our home for adoption and started waiting. This was around Christmastime in 1995. At that time the State was DESPERATE for foster parents, so they called us and conned talked us into becoming foster parents. I had always said that I couldn’t be a foster parent because it would hurt too much when the children left. But, (there’s always a but isn’t’ there) everything flowed so well that we agreed and within 3 days of opening our home we had a set of 2 year old twins. Then suddenly we had their 1 year old brother, then enter their 4 year old sister.
We were a family, at least we thought we were. Their birth mother was very low functioning and she told us that she would let us adopt them if she couldn’t get them back. They were in our home for 3 years.
Other children came and went but I had the four siblings to ease the pain of the leaving. It was difficult but God gives you the strength you need when you need it. He is a good and gracious God.
Then one day out of the clear blue sky they called us and asked if we could take a premature newborn whose mother had left her at the hospital. I jumped at the chance. I had never had a baby, we were thrilled beyond belief. She was beautiful. I was thrilled and life was good.
One month before the siblings were to have their parental rights terminated an Aunt and Uncle appeared and said that they wanted to take the siblings. Under this States old laws and the old Federal guidelines they were able to take them. After 3 years, they were just gone. I was devastated, but remember I said God is good. He left my baby with me, she was 3 months old and thriving, He gave us strength that we would have never had on our own.
Eleven more children came and went, I loved them all, but they weren’t meant to be mine. I trust Him for each of them. He loves them more than I ever could. My baby was still here with me. She was growing into a beauty!!
She made me laugh when there was nothing to laugh about, she gave me hope. One night I was praying. Begging God not to take my sweet little one, and I heard Him speak to my heart. It wasn’t audible, just quiet and firm and sure. “The child is yours.” From that moment forward I knew, and I gave her the name Danielle. Her birth name was very close to this, and we had always called her Dani. Danielle means God is My Judge, and He is the only one I trust to judge what child belonged in my home.
The State and Federal guidelines changed about this time. Danielle was 24 months old, and we were heading down the home stretch to adoption. The State started a new foster parenting pilot program and they asked us to be one of 15 families to test the program. It was called concurrent placement. It was for children who were working toward reunification and adoption at the same time. We said okay. So we stopped taking children in the regular foster program and opened our home to concurrent placement children only.
The thing about being in a new program is that it took awhile for any children to be chosen for the program. So we didn’t have any placements for a while. This was good, because we needed a break. We took our first vacation and enjoyed our daughter.
Danielle is bi-racial and my husband and I are both Caucasian , so we wanted her to have a sibling who was bi-racial like her. So I began to bug the Cabinet workers for another baby. I pestered them for 6 months and the answer was always the same. We don’t have any babies in the concurrent program right now.
I had started trusting the Cabinet to give me another child, instead of trusting the one who gave me Danielle. Isn’t it strange that we can trust God only so far? That when our wants overwhelm us that we stop trusting him and start trusting ourselves and others?
I had worked myself up into a real huff. I was in the parking lot at the local Meijer and I told God that He was in charge. I said “Lord I’m not going to worry about this anymore, if you want me to have another child, you will bring that child to me.” He must have been waiting for me to let go, because when I got home there were 4 messages on my answering machine. They had a baby and I needed to come down right away and get her. Needless to say I did, and that is how Gabrielle came into our home. (By the way, Gabrielle means the Lord is my Strength).
Danielle’s adoption was finalized and we were ecstatic. She was happy too, she did a somersault , in the court room. (I don’t think she really knew what was going on, but we were all thrilled, including the judge.)
Gabrielle’s mother was a very young, very hurt, very confused girl. Life had not been good to her. She told us that she would give up parental rights to Gabrielle, as long as we adopted her, but there was a catch; we had to adopt her son too. You should have seen the look on the social worker’s face when she found out there was another child. Birth Mom had another child in a different state’s custody who was just 1 year and 10 days older. We agreed. It took some time to cut through all the red tape between states and get the boy here.
While we were working to get Noah (Noah means Peace) from one state to another, my social worker called me. She said sheepishly “I don’t know how to tell you this (long pause) but Danielle’s mother just had another baby.” Hysterical laughter on my end of the phone. I couldn’t do anything but laugh. She said “Are you alright?” I told her that I was but that I had to talk to my husband about this new turn of events. Of course our answer was yes, and so Andrew Isaac came to be our child. (Isaac means laughter.)
Noah followed about 2 month later. The red tape took awhile but everything flowed like God had meant it to be so we were at peace.
We had 4 adoptions in 12 months and we were a family. We closed our home to foster children, our quiver was full and we started a new stage of life as permanent parents.
I told you the story was LOOOONG. But it is full of God’s grace and provision. We aren’t the perfect parents. But we tell the children that each and everyone of them is a gift from God.
Some things I learned from all this are:
You can’t always trust a social worker or a birth parent, but you can always trust God.
Even when things seem darkest, God is always working for your good.
God is in charge and nothing you can do will take that away from Him.
If you ever want an unusal grapic FREE, then head on over to the Graphics Fairy. You can find all kinds of really cool graphics from the strange to the beautiful. Check it out!!
I was just visiting over at the The Lettered Cottage, and she has the coolest Linky Party Coming up.
I’m going to give this a lot of thought. I’m leaning toward the word BELIEVE. . . how about you? The Party starts January 16th, see you there.
Kim
