First Anniversary

Well, this year has flown by.  Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of Lindsay and Joseph's wedding!

I like looking at the beautiful photos from that wonderful day.

It's been a joyful year.

Happy Anniversary,  Lindsay and Joseph.  May you have many, many more.

Big Change

If you look carefully, you can see the snow falling as the sun rose this morning.  It is still lightly falling and there is a fresh dusting of snow on everything.

Today, is a big day in our family.  It's Tim's last day of work at the company he has worked at for 20 years.  He is a diligent and hard worker, he is thorough in his work and he is very skillful.  His supervisor was incredulous.  They did not expect this at all.  They are going to miss him and his abilities very much.

The Lord provided this work for him just a few months after we left the missions agency we had been with.  It has been what the Lord used to provide for our family of 8.  We are grateful.

However it was time to make a move and on Monday morning he will begin his work at a new employer.  There are perks to this.  He won't have to work every other weekend now, and rarely on Sundays.  He will be on a fixed schedule rather than rotating schedules every 5 weeks.  The benefits package is great.

He ultimately is working toward being self employed.  We are excited by the possibilities.  

Thank you for allowing me to brag about him.  He is an excellent man, and I am so proud of him.

Literary Cafe

Last Saturday, I decided it was time to rearrange the basement, now that Kay and Kamryn had moved out.  This space I am showing you is directly under the living room and is where Kay and Kamryn had their space.

The girls and I had discussed make this space into a library type space for now, Tim wants to eventually make this a place we watch movies together.

This is what we came up with using what we already had down here in the basement.

I am going to paint that mirror and it will get hung up somewhere. The dry sink holds all the games that used to be on top of the bookcases.  The book cases used to be on the same wall in a different area.
  We showed our friend Denny a few photos and he said, "It looks like a Literary Cafe!"  I loved that!

We vacuumed and mopped and dusted and rearranged books.

Tim changed out the old lighting for some halogen track lighting that we still had from the store.  It has brightened it up down there and we are able to direct the lighting to where we want it.

This other space got spiffed up too.  If you head toward the open door you see, to the right is where the wood stove is.  It also has a wicker chair, play kitchen and some dress up clothes.  It's cozy.  The white dresser and black bookcases need attention.  Some of it is where I keep my fabric stash.  Let's just say it could be better organized.  Soon, it will be.

We love the red color on the walls, but I think it's too dark and would like something lighter and brighter!  Eventually the walls will have their baseboard trim too.

We are talking plans now for the shop space which is through the open door.  It is the same square footage as the master bedroom suite and will be made into a second 'master' bedroom for the girls.  With built in beds.  Something like this.

Source

But a double set so it would sleep 4 people without taking up tons of floor space.

I think we are getting close to having a building plan for moving my parents in here with way less expense than the original plan.

Something is always happening here at Creekside Cottage!  I'm never bored!

What do you think?  Do you like my Literary Cafe?  What about the built in bunks idea?  Have you ever moved your parents into your home?

Project For Chairish.com

A few weeks ago Holly from Chairish  contacted me to see if I wanted to create a room using one of their chairs.  This sounded like fun, so I said yes.  These are great vintage furniture pieces!

I had to learn to use Polyvore and now that I know how, I will be using it again, I'm certain.

I was given a choice of chairs to choose from - here are a few.

I thought these were interesting and could be fun.

I chose the blue french accent chair because I have been influenced this year my Marian at Miss Mustard Seed.  I love her style, even though it's not my own, and I decided to play with this chair and create a room that looked like it had inherited furniture.

You know like in Downton Abbey where their house is furnished with pieces that belonged to nearly every Earl who lived there including art work.

This is what I came up with - some old, some new.

Well made, well loved, well used.

What do you think?

Unexpected

Over the weekend, while Tim was on the mend, Rachel started to have some discomfort.  By Sunday night it was pretty miserable, so off to the doctor we went yesterday afternoon.  (I'm thankful they were able to get us in!)  It turned out to be a cyst and needed to be drained.  The best person for this task was available several hours later, so we needed to come back.

The only thing is we live about 40 minutes from this office and we did not want to go home in between.  That meant only one thing.  We would take the opportunity to go to the Clay Bookstore!  We love this bookstore because they have an awesome used book section!  

I'll show you one treasure I found there yesterday.

I have two of these already under the title "Hidden Art of Homemaking."  I am collecting them to give one to each of my girls, so they will have this inspiring book in their own collections.  The price on this book was $1.50!

We found some other treasures too, that I will share another day, but we were able to find some Lori Wick books to fill out some of our her book series, and also so old volumes of Dicken's Pickwick Papers and Little Dorit.  To my girls the look of the book, the bindings and covers are very important, as well, and these fit the bill.  I'll show you later this week!

Having sometime still to wait, we went to Middle Creek Wildlife Management area.  Soon the lake here will be full of snow geese and tundra swans making their migration north to Canada, but right now our temps have been so cold the lake is frozen and covered with snow!

Rachel and I drove around the lake and saw these guys ice fishing.

 We've eating a picnic lunch in this spot before!

 It was a beautiful day.

I can't wait to go back after things thaw out!  The sight of thousands of birds on this lake is stunning!

Well, back to the doctor's office we went and had the cyst drained. We are thankful and she is feeling so much better.

We came home to Sarah and Tim having made Big Mac Salad and then we watched the Downton Abbey Christmas episode from last season.

Today we are headed out soon for a field trip to Chick Fil A!  Seriously, we are getting a tour of the place!  It'll be so fun!

Back tomorrow with a nifty post about a fun project I got to do for Chairish.com.  

Happy Saturday

I survived my shopping trip and in the last few stores I was so warm.  Between the hat and the fur lined boots, I was cooking.  

Came home to find that Tim was feeling better.  I am going to say the Apple Cider Vinegar helped him.  He says I can claim anything I want!  Lol!  He's sleeping in today, and it seems as if he slept much better last night than most nights this week.  Thanks so much for your prayers and for continuing to ask about him.

Today we are expecting snow, so we'll be working on the basement.  Now that Nate and Kay are in their own place, we have the whole basement available to us once again.  We are going to paint eventually, but for now, we will mop the floors and I think we are going to set it up as a library space.  We have a beautiful bookcase in the basement.  We are going to move that into that space and reorganize the books.

We'll probably move a table into that space, too.  We don't have much seating available for downstairs right now, but we'll work on that soon.  Tim will be replacing lights and I eventually want to change out the fixtures.

What are you up to today?

Grocery Shopping In Severe Weather

Mid-morning I'll be heading out to do my bi-weekly grocery run.  I  run errands on this day too, preferring to not make many trips out during the week, unless necessary.  I like to save my trips out for fun, but I digress.  

Today we are having extremely cold temps made worse by the wind chill.

It's supposed to be a wind chill of -25 today.  Right now it is 1 degree.

We need food so I am heading out and braving the elements.  

I am going to be bundled and I thought I'd talk about what I am going to wear.

I am going to wear my down jacket from Land's End.  It's a bit old and I use it when I go out to feed horses because the hay doesn't stick to it.  But it's my warmest jacket and it fits well again now that I have lost almost 40 pounds.  I look like the Michelin Man in it since it's puffy, but it's warm, so I'm wearing it.  I am going to have a sweater on as well, and leggings under my pants, warm socks with my fur lined boots, and gloves and a hat of course.  Maybe a scarf, as well.  The hat will be a cute one because once it's on, it stays on, even if my head gets hot.  My hair is very fine, and gets really static-y, clinging to my head in the most unattractive ways, when I take my hat off.

Today I'll be going to Costco, Target, Miller's Natural Foods, Leroy Miller's for milk, Christmas Tree Shoppes (great place for tea, shampoo and Quest Bars).  I may run into Aldi's as well.

One thing is certain.  I don't have to worry about any frozen items defrosting today!


I'll leave you with this sweet photo.

Nate drops Kamryn off in the mornings and she often is still sleepy, and goes back to sleep for a while on the couch.  She's a precious girlie, I'm happy she's here with us during the days.

Stay warm everyone and have an excellent day!