Happy Halloween

We took it kind of easy for Halloween this year, but we did go to our church's trunk or treat. Our ward is in a small town, and some people brought horse drawn wagons. There were also fun games, face painting, and way too much candy.

Switch-a-roo

Joe works from home most days, and for the past year he has been shoved in a corner of our bedroom. There are several inconveniences associated with this located. First, my bedroom is never tidy. Even if I clean all my things, make the bed, and vacuum, there is still a huge paper mess in that one corner.

Our house has 4 bedrooms. One is ours, one the girls' and one Sterling's. That leaves us with one spare room. We have been using that spare room for a playroom since we moved in. However, I have noticed that the kids rarely play in there. I don't know why, but they always feel compelled to bring their toys and crafts into the family room/kitchen. Other than housing the toys and a guest futon, it was sitting mostly idle.

The girls were previously in a room that has the original laminate floor in it. We originally planned to build out the upstairs, and turn that room into the new mud/laundry room, so I didn't want to put carpet in, when we would be changing the floors anyways. After a year of living in a half finished house, I have decided we are not even touching the upstairs until the downstairs is done (probably won't be until the day we list the house for sale).

So a few days ago I was thinking about the configuration, and considering giving Joe his own office in the old playroom. I wasn't too excited about that option, because that room is the biggest "kids" room, and it has carpet. Joe hates carpet under his office chair. And I hate it that the girls room has the laminate. Then, all of a sudden, I had an epiphany. If I changed the girls' room into Joe's office, and moved the girls into the old playroom. Everyone got what they wanted. Joe gets wood, the girls carpet. The girls room is big enough for all their furniture, and most of the toys.

As with many projects, this one turned out to be a lot more work than I originally thought. The first thing that took forever was moving the beds and other furniture into the girls' new room. I had to take apart their bunk beds, and reassemble them again. I also had to get rid of a bunch of toys (which is good), so there would be space for all of them in their room.

I got the girls moved into their new room on Tuesday, and yesterday I was supposed to work on putting Joe's office together. But I also had a bunch of laundry, and miscellaneous household things to do, so I took a day off. Today I had to get back to work.

A while ago I started painting the girls' room pink. After about half the room I decided I didn't like that shade of pink, and kind of just stopped. Joe doesn't want a half pink office. I wonder why. So I pulled out the paint and supplies, and got to work. Let me just quickly say that our ladder had been stored in the chicken coop, and I have NOT enjoyed the aroma of chicken poop all day!

I have been working all day (6 hours straight so far), and I needed a break! My neck and back hurt, and I'm sure I won't be able to walk tomorrow. I know, I'm pathetically out of shape. So now that I had a quick blog break, I better get back in there and finish the job, or it will never get done!

Out the door

I haven't had much bloggy inspiration lately. I don't know if that's because I am just at home, doing my regular thing, or what. I guess whenever other people tell me they just don't know what to write on their blog, I just tell them to write about every day life. So that's what I'll do today, focusing on getting the kids ready for school. Even though it seems so boring to me now (maybe 30 years from now it will be interesting to read)

Today I dragged myself out of bed at 6.20am, after Sterling came into my room to tell me it was time to get up. I always set my own alarm too, but promptly hit the snooze button, because I know I can rely on my little man. I then proceeded to drag Winter out of Bed, pick out her clothes, and head to the kitchen.

I give the kids cereal, slap together some sandwiches, ask them where their lunch boxes are, and clean out the nasty yesterday's cups. I switch the old/not so frozen blue ice, for frozen ice. I try to find a healthy, yet easy snack, and put their lunch boxes together.

Then I look in their folders, and find a gazillion papers that the school sends home with my kids. I can only imagine how much paper they go through every day. I used to just throw most of it away, but now I save any piece that still has a white back, so I can use it to print coupons on. I only keep true art work, no worksheets, coloring pages. Once in a while I'll save a test, so I can document how truly smart my wonderful kids are.

By this time the kids are usually done with breakfast, and I send them into the bathroom to brush their teeth and hair. Then come the socks. For some reason my kids don't consider socks part of an outfit so I have to nag them over and over to actually put them on.

Now I look at the clock. At the beginning of the year, the bus arrived around 6.56 most days. But then there was the occassional day that it came at 6.54am. After the kids missed the bus a few times, I just made it the rule to send them out by 6.48am. But, now that it has gotten darker (it's still pitch black when the bus gets here), and the bus consistently has been coming at 6.57 or later, I take the risk of early arrival missing, and send them out at 6.52am. I know, this is all very precise, but I have to be that way, or else they would miss the bus every day.

As soon as that thing drives away, I asses my tiredness. If I didn't go to bed until after 11pm, I usually jump back in bed, and sleep for another hour or 2. Ginger sometimes joins me, which is nice. The only downside to going back to bed after I got up, is that I feel tired most of the rest of the day. By the time the kids get back at 3.45pm, I usually wonder where the time went.

RAW

My camera has the ability to shoot RAW images. This means you have a lot more flexibility in editing photos on the computer. I never had attempted to use RAW in the last 2 years of owning my camera, because I was scared. I was scared of the unknown. I had no idea if it would be hard to edit RAW images, and I didn't even look into it.

It turns out... it's super easy to edit RAW images! All this time I could have had much more control over the quality of pictures I turned out. The only downside to RAW is that the images are about 10 MB each. What will probably happen in the future is that I will shoot most of my snapshots in normal JPEG form, and use RAW for more important photos.

Brand new on the inside

My husband is amazing. He can perty much fix anything he sets his mind to. He is currently at the tail end of refitting our 1994 geo metro with a new engine, oil pump, clutch, and other main components. What started as a $400 project, quickly grew into a $1100 project. But alas, it should run like a Ferrari (ok maybe not), but it should run as good as new.Tonight Joe's brother Josh came over to help him install the new engine. It might be light enough to carry, but it's a whole other ballgame when you try to lift and slowly lower it, far away from your body.
Joe had complained to me that the only pictures I even take of him are of him sitting around, making funny faces, so I ran out to the shop and shot some quick pics.
Josh just got out of a 5 year contract with the navy, and is an awesome sonar tech. He brought one of his old uniforms to work in. Both Joe and I thought it was super cool, and think it would be even cooler if Joe could get one too. (he has ruined too many pants and shirts working on greasy cars!)

First Placement request

Just minutes ago, I got an email from our adoption agency with the profile of a little girl that is available for adoption. My heart started racing, and I couldn't hardly wait for the (super slow) Word document to open. Then I was sad, because the girl is the same age as Ginger. We don't want to make this adoption process too difficult for our other kids, so we have decided to only adopt a child that is younger than our other children. Hopefully we'll get another placement request soon!

Blanch them!

What do you do when you can buy 20 lbs of baby carrots for $5.80? Blanch, and freeze them! Target had their Green Giant baby carrots for sale for $1.29/lb last week. I also had a $1.00 target coupon, which can be printed as many times as you want. This made each 1 lb. bag $0.29!! The thing is: we just don't eat that many carrots.

So I went to the wonderful world of knowledge: Google. Type in"freeze carrots", and it gives you roughly 854,000 results. Usually the first page or two will have the answer to any question you might have. I found out that in order to preserve the freshness of a carrot, while frozen, it needs to be blanched. Blanching kills the enzyme that breaks down vitamins and nutrients over time.

I bought 20 bags of carrots right before I left to LA, and then ran out of time. Today, I finally decided to move Blanching to the top of my priority list. I got out all the bowls I own, my whole ice-maker bucket thing, and other necessary tools. Here's what you need to do if you ever end up with 20 lbs of carrots in your fridge

1. Boil a large pot of water, and dump some carrots in (I did 2 lbs at a time). They only need to blanch for about 5 minutes
2. Take them out of the boiling water, and dump them into a bowl with ice water. Keep adding more ice, as the ice melts - 5 minutes again -- By the way, it took ALL the ice from my ice maker to do 14lbs of carrots
3. Drain them in a strainer
4. Dry them with a towel
5. Put them in freezer ziplocks, or better yet, into Foodsaver bags. My poor Foodsaver was used a few times right after purchased but then hasn't been used for probably 5 years. Each time I was decluttering I thought about getting rid of that thing, and now I was sure glad I hadn't.
6. Realize that you should be more creative than just freezer carrots, and decide to make "Crockpot Sunday dinner packets".
   
7. Be bummed that you don't have any potatoes, and that you'll have to wait 3 days until your next trip into town.

So the end result is 6 baggies in their nice Foodsaver baggies, and 2 big ziplock bags full of blanched carrots, back in the fridge... waiting for their potato companions. And the other 6 lbs? We had clam chowder tonight, the kids bring them to school as snacks, I snack on them, and we still have 2lbs of fresh carrots in the fridge.