This is pure happiness

Can you tell he's been at the ranch??

Easter: Two

I can remember fighting hunting for eggs with my sisters in the back yard in our matching dresses and crimped hair hoping we'd get the egg with the dollar bill in it. Ok, ok hoping to get the egg with the chocolate in it, who and I kidding. Easter is one of our biggest holidays as Christians, but almost all of the activities that we do are geared for kids. And adults who love sugar. (Side note - why won't the cadbury mini-chocolate egg makers just offer them year round? I'm sure my sister C and I could keep them in business. just saying.)

Anyway, since we are adults only at my casa, we decided to try a Christian seder meal this year. I looked at a bunch of helpful blog posts (here, and here) and came up with our own little dinner. The meal is based on the traditional Jewish passover meal  - which was to remember when God passed over the Jews during the plagues and their freedom from Egypt. The passover celebration would have occurred the last day of Jesus's life, so that means what we call "The Last Supper" was actually the passover seder that He had with his disciples. The meal consists of different foods that represent parts of the passover story, and some readings and verses.  It was very eye opening to think that just a few days before His death, He would have been remembering God's faithfulness to deliver His people and provide for them. Many times in the readings "freedom" was mentioned - how He freed the Jews from Egypt, how His death freed us from the bonds of sin. Such a cool way to see Easter in a new way.

And then we had chocolate pie :)

Pile O' Bricks

My boy, he loves his bed. And I mean Loves with a capitol L. When I took him out to the new property for the first time....he immediately ran off sniffing every inch of the place. When he was pooped, he looked for his bed. When he couldn't find that, he found the next best thing...

Easter: One

“The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is one of the best attested facts on record. There were so many witnesses to behold it, that if we do in the least degree receive the credibility of men’s testimonies, we cannot and we dare not doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. It is all very easy for infidels to say that these persons were deceived, but it is equally foolish, for these persons could not every one of them have been so positively deceived as to say that they had seen this man, whom they knew to have been dead, afterwards alive; they could not all, surely, have agreed together to help on this imposture: if they did, it is the most marvelous thing we have on record, that not one of them ever broke faith with the others, but that the whole mass of them remained firm. We believe it to be quite impossible that so many rogues should have agreed for ever. They were men who had nothing to gain by it; they subjected themselves to persecution by affirming the very fact; they were ready to die for it, and did die for it. Five hundred or a thousand persons who had seen him at different times, declared that they did see him, and that he rose from the dead; the fact of his death having been attested beforehand. How, then, dare any man say that the Christian religion is not true, when we know for a certainty that Christ died and rose again from the dead? And knowing that, who shall deny the divinity of the Savior? Who shall say that he is not mighty to save? Our faith hath a solid basis, for it hath all these witnesses on which to rest, and the more sure witness of the Holy Spirit witnessing in our hearts.”

Charles H. Spurgeon, vol. 2, Spurgeon’s Sermons: Volume 2

Budgeting

 When you ball on a budget like us, you have to make everything count.

My handyman works for free...but I do have to provide him with an endless stream of cokes to keep him motivated. :)

We're trying to save money where we can, which is so hard when you're trying to work on a home because everything is so EXPENSIVE.  Take high-quality paint for example...there is no way I'm spending $30 per gallon on paint. No freaking way.  So, we tapped into the power of the take-back paint shelf. If you don't know what this is...be prepared to have you mind blown.

There is a shelf at Lowes and Home Depot where they put the paint that people never pick up.  Most of the time it's the custom-colored paints, which usually means it was mixed with a high quality base color.  We strolled over there to look for paint for the garage...and hit the jackpot.  Two tan-ish light colored primer & paint that were almost the same color....for $5 per can.  Yes, that is a savings of $25 dollars per can!!!   We mixed the two together, and bam - custom garage color.

Now...stay with me here...if you happen upon the take-back paint shelf and find the holy grail of take-back paints - a whiteish color - you can have the worker (if you smile pretty) add a custom color to tint it to your desired color - or pick up a couple of custom sample paints and add them yourself. Mixing your own paint can be very rewarding for a DIYer - - Just be careful to make sure you have enough paint to complete your project. If you run out, you'll likely never be able to re-create the color again.

Slowly but surely, we're getting the garage back in fighting shape:

Floors: before and ah!

We started off this weekend optimistically with good attitudes (moving brings out the jerkazoid in me...can I get an amen??) our tile chisel and floor scraper ready to move and work on the floors...

 Ha, what idiots we were.

My DIY bestie and her hubby have stained concrete floors and I love love love them. When whatahusband saw them and loved them too, we knew we wanted to put them in this house. So we listened to their tips and set off to do it ourselves like they did. After all, they made it seem so easy!

(I'm sorry, did I already mention that we're idiots?)

We rolled up the carpet to see what we had....

Nailed it! That carpet came right up! Easy cheesy. The pad came up in a flash too, and the old man smell disappeared, PRAISE the LORD.
We're off to a great start!
Fist pump!

Now...what's under the carpet...

Hmmm...it's tile. Okay okay, not too bad. It's not the easiest thing to get off a slab. Maybe it's not on the entire floor....

Spoke to soon.  It's all over the biggest room in the house. Ok. don't panic. It looked like the kitchen had linoleum because I peeled away some of the fake wood floors and it looked like it was a different color and texture than the living room tile....which would be alot easier to get off the floor than tile, I've heard.

Ah! wrong again! It's just THE SAME TILE with grey glue all over it!!!!!  

Oh gosh this is terrible.

Maybe I'll just learn to live with it...it might not be too bad...

Who am I kidding. It's hideous. It has to go.

Well... nothing left to do but try to get some of it up.  Maybe we'll get lucky and it will just chip right up.  Hit it with the sledge hammer, holmes.

Well... nothing happened.

Ok, really let it have it this time. Sledge it!!

  

We. have. one. crack.

This is the hardest tile on earth.

It's 1/2 an inch think.

10 minutes of hammering, chiseling, and bleeding...he almost had one tile. ONE tile.
(ok moms, no serious blood. Just the typical Whatahusband project amount)

I think it's laced with steel. I'm serious. I could bomb this place and after the dust settled, the only thing left would be this tile. And I would bet money it wouldn't even crack. Stupid tile.

I'm not sure who said it first...What did we get ourselves into?!?!?!

Dwelling

Isaiah 32:18

"My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places."

 

 We are in the throws of moving and remodeling, but eagerly awaiting living out on our new property. Spring is right around the corner, and I'm waiting for the bushes and trees to reveal their true colors....because I really don't have a clue what we've got! ;)       

Most of all, I'm so thankful to God for providing us with such a sweet blessing.  This is our first home together, and it will likely be our last. I can see it - the vision of what it could become.  We anticipate spending the rest of our lives in this place - it will be a life-long project for sure, a work in progress - but isn't that what we are too?  God so graciously loves us when we are not what we should be, and helps transform us into something greater - less of us, more of Him.