The Inspired Housewife

This is my daughter and her family..

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love each and everyone in this picture. Did I always think I would feel this way….no.

I want to share my story with you because I would like to think that it might help someone else from making the same mistakes that I have made.

It all started when my daughter was in middle school…she came home from youth group and asked me if it’s ok to date a black guy. Since she was too young to date I wasn’t really concerned, but I was curious what sparked the question.

At the time I was really proud of my answer….I told her that it would be fine as long as he was an awesome Christian. I really thought at the time I believed that but of course I knew it was not something I would ever have to deal with. We live in a small town with a VERY small group of minorities. What were the chances?

The years went by from that question and her friendship grew with this boy that had caught her attention so long ago. They never really dated in high school…they didn’t even go to the same college yet know matter how many guys she dated none of them could come close to her black friend . By this time I knew that her heart was drawn to him and I did everything in my power to stop it. Was he a Christian like I had said…yes. He even came from an awesome Christian family.

The truth was I had lied to my daughter. It wasn’t ok.

Years of prejudice came up from areas that I didn’t know were in me.  I don’t think I ever really thought of myself as better than a black person but I just really thought that it was best if we all married our own kind. What would people think? What would her children look like?

During this time my now son in law was patient. He loved my daughter but he was going to wait until he had our blessing before he married her. We are talking years.

We now love our son in law.

So what lessons can be learned from all this?

1. I still think my initial answer to my daughter was a good one….what matters above all is the man’s relationship with God.

2. If you are dating a person of a different color don’t hide him from your family. My daughter did this and so my mom radar went up. If she wasn’t bringing him around he must be bad. I would have thought that no matter what color he was. If she had brought him by sooner we would have been able to get to know him for who is …not “the black guy”

3. If someone you love is dating someone of a different race try to get to know them…and their family. When you do you might find out that you have a lot more in common than you think. You might find out that they aren’t too happy about the situation either…and then all of a sudden you will be upset about them judging your child for their color not for who they are…and then you might pause and be ashamed of yourself.

4. Pray….ask God to open your heart. I remember God telling me that this guy is going to take care of me in my old age…I just about screamed at God…NO…that was not the answer I wanted…yet He kept telling me the same thing. It’s funny because now I feel great comfort having him in the family because I know he would take great care of me if he had to.

I grew up in the 60 and 70′s…Did I call my brother the N word when I got mad at him? Yes…everyone I knew did. Did I have black friends at school? yes…Did I ever go to any of their houses…no.

I say dumb things…not because I want to hurt anyone…I just don’t always realize what I’m saying. I have asked my son in law to be patient with me but I guess he was been learning to be patient ever since my daughter flashed her big brown eyes his direction.

I now look at my grandchildren and I don’t see them as black or white…

They are the color of love…

This house is about 20 minutes north of mine…. There is so much that I love about this house….

I love the working shutters on this house. I don’t know if they are hurricane shutters or not…probably not, but I love how they look. I had thought about doing this on our house but I really like big windows and you can’t do this on big windows. The brick window sills add so much. I love the bricks that they chose.

I also love the arbor that is on the garage. I really think we will do something like this to our garage someday. Or maybe we will add it to the front of our cottage.

I smiled when I saw the inside of this house. I love the craftsman look and you don’t see it often in Florida…unless of course you are at my house.

I may be putting a mirror in my old window…I love the look of this in a foyer.

The kitchen is just beautiful…

I think the wood top on the island is just beautiful! See the drawer microwave in this picture? I had thought about doing that too. Do you know anyone with a drawer microwave?

Now for one of my favorite parts of this house…

Fireplaces in Florida houses don’t make a whole lot of sense but I love outdoor fireplaces! I would love to have a spot like this in my new house. I chose not to have a screened in porch because quite frankly I hate cleaning them. But I love the charm of this place. Can’t you just imagine great family times out here?

I love how they made even the outside of the screen room  charming. Have you ever seen a more awesome porch? Be honest….you are thinking of how you can change up your porch right now, aren’t you?

Even though I am blessed to have two of my grandchildren living near me, one of my grandchildren lives about 1,800 miles away from me. I hate being a long distance grandma.

Oh I am blessed that he comes to see me a couple times a year….soon he will be coming for seven weeks.

Yes I said 7 weeks. I know…..I shouldn’t complain…as I said…I am blessed.

But trying to keep a relationship going with a little guy so far away can be hard. We skype on a regular bases….his mom follows him around their house as he crawls all over showing me all of his toys. I love it!

My sister and sister in law both try to see their long distance grandchildren every 6 weeks when they are little. That works for them, but not everyone can always work that out.

I am open to any suggestions you might have for long distance grandparenting.

Here is one that you might like…

Hallmark has a whole ton of books that you can read, and it will tape your voice.

This is the one we sent him…

Since I skype with him more often than grandpa, we had grandpa do the reading.

He loved it!

In fact my daughter says she was shocked because he won’t let her read to him, but he loves having Grandpa read….(thru the book)

Now for the funny part about this story…

The other night he was reading his book before he went to bed…evidently it got left open and when the sunlight came in the room Grandpa’s voice started reading the book. LOL …Kind of freaked out my daughter.

So I highly recommend the books, but you might want to send it with a warning.

I thought I would show you what we worked on this weekend….

Do you remember seeing this mirror in my kitchen?

 I loved the size of the mirror but the dark frame wasn’t really working for me. The other problem was the mirror was way to high to really work. Even though it looks pretty in the picture, the reality was that when the Christmas lights went down it had nothing worth reflecting….and you certainly couldn’t see yourself in it.

I decided it needed to be a chalkboard.

We painted chalkboard paint right over the mirror…

We then used “Annie Slones” white paint. This is really my first project for the paint. It took two coats to cover the dark brown.

Once that was dry we rubbed on clear wax

We then immediately  rubbed on the dark wax. This allows you to work with the wax rubbing to get the look you are wanting.

At one point I thought it was turning out a bit too dark so I just put clear wax on top of the dark wax. This allowed me to rub some of the dark wax off.

I was actually very pleased on how it all worked. I am an old school antiquer….for years I have just been rubbing stain over the top of paint to get the aged look I want. I have gotten pretty good at it but it is not near as easy to work with as the wax.

I am pleased with how the project turned out…

Yes I will be hanging it, but first I need to finish it. Because it is going to be hanging so high I don’t think I really want it as a chalkboard. I am planning on getting chalk markers and permanently writing something on it.

This is where I need your help. I can’t figure out what to write. In my old house I had sayings everywhere ………… I am older now and …..

let me put it this way. Many years ago my mother hung a plaque in her house that said….” Only one life will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last”

Soon everyone started to associate mom with this ….so much so that we put in on her tombstone.

Now I find myself afraid to hang something for fear my children will put it on mine….lol

All of a sudden every saying I can think of comes under way to much thought.

So please….I need your help…What would you write on your kitchen wall if you had the chance?

If I had known how much toilet paper a house with four girls could go thru I would have bought stock in it a long time ago. I can’t tell you how many of these I have thrown away over the years and not given it any thought …..

Until Pinterest…..Now I feel guilt over all of the rolls I have thrown away over the years.

http://designbynight.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-09-09T10%3A47%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=3

http://kiflieslevendula.blogspot.com/2011/07/kisautok.html

Wouldn’t this be cute on the top of a gift?

How fun would these be for Easter?

This is clever…

http://itsalmostgenius.com/index.php/genius/reuse-toilet-paper-rolls-to-hold-your-wrapping-paper/

My grandson would love this…

http://craftsbyamanda.com/2011/02/cardboard-tube-binoculars.html

Simply stuff the tubes full of dryer lint. The ultimate in recycling!

I have done this and it really works well…just make sure you stuff them really tight.

Here is the only toilet paper roll crafts I have ever done.

http://www.theinspiredhousewife.com/2011/04/from-toilet-paper-to-elegant-napkins/

What is the best toilet paper craft you have ever done?

I  asked my daughter to put the ribbon away the other day and this is what I found later.

Away would have been in the drawer not near the drawer.

See the drawers in this picture…

they are nearly shut.

My daughter is not the only one in our family to suffer from CED….Close enough disorder. All my children have had it. I remember telling my other kids once that we were going to go NEAR Disney world because obviously near is good enough for them.

Everywhere I look I see evidence of how this disorder has taken over our lives…the dishes make it near the dishwasher …the laundry near the hamper…even the toilet paper often just makes it near where it belongs.

The problem is this disorder can take over your life. I get near my weight goal and then I decide I’m close enough and go for the chocolate cake.  I plan on working out 3 days a week and after 2 days I decide that I really have other things to do, 2 is close to 3 right?

When I was a Blue Bird back in the 60′s our troop motto was….”I must finish what I begin.” Funny how things stick in your head…lol. The point is I have never learned this. I never finished college…I never finished about 8 million craft projects that I have started over the years….I can’t tell you how many years I haven’t finished my Christmas cards.

So when I yell at my daughter for not putting the ribbon in the drawer, what I am really saying is….don’t be like me…finish the job!

Does this disorder run in your family too?

I thought that since it has now been almost 5 months since I moved into my new house that it was about time to start doing some product reviews.

When you are building a house there is just so much to think about. For the most part I enjoyed it…except the appliance buying part. I don’t like research…I like to just go with my gut, but that doesn’t always work when it comes to appliances.

I knew I wanted stainless…I’m not really sure why other than that I figured that they were probably the best looking over the long term. I’m old enough to remember harvest gold appliances and once they were out, the were out.

I wonder how long it will be before we see this color in our kitchens again.

I also decided pretty quickly that I wanted a freezer drawer. They just kind of made sense to me.

The Samsung caught my eye right away. Truthfully I think it was the lights that came on when I opened the door. I am such a sucker..lol

I briefly thought about paying the extra money and getting the cabinet depth one. Then my girlfriend told me that I wouldn’t like it because I would never be able to put large platters in it. She was  right and my husband was happy.

So do you want to know what I think about my fridge now? I like the stainless steel look but I still  haven’t found a stainless steel cleaner that I like. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

The large drawer in the fridge gets off track pretty easy and that can be a pain. I don’t know why I thought I need it…I guess I thought I could store our leftover pizza boxes in it…the truth is ours is full of water bottles.

The fridge has a funny little alarm that goes off if you leave the door open….the problem is that the alarm does not go off if the freezer drawer is left open a bit. For some reason this happens a lot in our house, causing the inside of the freezer to look like a winter wonderland. Not good.

These refridgerators are expensive ,so if they are really out of your budget pause and realize that once it is in your house, it is just a fridge. Don’t buy what you can’t afford.

I am blessed….

Two of my grandchildren live within 2 miles of me. I can’t tell you how much seeing these little faces light up my life.

Yet there are times when I have plans and then the pause button gets pushed because I need to take care of a sick kid.

Do I have plans? Sure I do! Are any of those plans more important than these guys?

After having taken care of my parents for years I am sort of use to putting my life on hold. When I least expected it I would often have to spend the day with my parents in the emergency room. At the time I would be annoyed. Another day that the laundry wasn’t getting done…or my haircut. Now that mom and dad are both gone I wouldn’t trade those memories I have with them for anything.

So when my grandkids are sick I will be there….when my neighbor stops by I will pause my life…when my kid asks me out to lunch I will go…even if I have already ate because I know now that we all need a pause button on our life or we can get caught up in the silliest things.

Thank you God for the pauses in life

One of the rooms in my new house that you have not seen is our study.

 This room sits to the right as you walk in the front door so it kind of needs to look good, yet I want it practical.

When we put the batten board around the room, we didn’t do the one wall because we knew that we were going to do something with that wall. The question was…WHAT?

We stayed at the campground cabins at Disney once…if you haven’t done that, I highly recommend it.  Well Mr. Amazing and I slept on the murphy bed that they had in the living room of the cabin. I fell in love! At the time I thought every kid’s room should have this. They would never have to make their bed again…just close it up into the wall. Now I realize that my daughter’s floor would never be clean enough to open it. lol.

The point of that story was…I thought I was going to put a murphy bed in this room….then I slept in there after my surgery. I found that I really liked the room. I liked having a real bed in there in case I wanted to take a quick little nap during the day.

Then I saw this in the Ballards catalog.

I love this daybed! My mother use to have a little loveseat in her room that this reminds me of. The minute I saw it my mind started spinning. How great would it be to have this in the study! Visions of laying there reading with my grandbabies swirled thru my head.

So now I need to rethink the wall ….This room is suppose to hold all my craft and sewing stuff…while being a kid friendly zone because the secret kid room is off of this space.

So without the murphy bed I get a lot more realistic storage to do all that. Yay…I love when a design idea also functions well.

Years ago we bought a used kitchen. I’m not really sure what I was thinking but I saw these cabinets on Craigslist and I thought my daughter could use them in her house. We got everything…cabinets…sinks…appliances. My daughter had a small kitchen and I thought surely out of all these cabinets we could make something work. WRONG. Small spaces are hard. You need it to fit because you don’t want to waste space with filler boards. So the cabinets have sat in storage.

We ended up selling the appliances and we used the sink in the cottage when we redid that. Now it is time to use some of those cabinets. Mr Amazing and my brother hauled some of the cabinets over so I could get a visual of how the cabinets are going to work.

I am so excited about all the storage I am going to have but I know it will fill up fast.

I have decided to have him cut the top drawers off so they won’t look so much like kitchen cabinets and then he will build shelves above them.

I will keep you posted.  Now I must be patient….When I get a vision I find myself wanting it done NOW! Unfortunately I can think up projects faster than Mr. Amazing can work.