The Saturday Six

One.

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I confess {again} that I'm way too excited about the remodeling done over at KariAnne's gatehouse. Her kitchen renovation gave me goosebumps - more because of her ridiculously small budget {that she stayed within!!!} than because of the actual decorating. Though I loved that too. Ryan and I had a small budget for our kitchen renovation too - proof that great big things can happen through little tiny budgets. :)

Two.

Speaking of kitchens...ours struggles a tiny bit in the storage department, because it isn't the biggest room in all the world. One thing we didn't have a good place for...Ryan's grilling tools. They were all so long, they didn't fit in our drawers! So this was his solution, and I think it's a great one. He bought Command strips and hung them on the side of the refrigerator that faces the wall. No one sees!

Three.

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In news that made me cry this past week...many of you probably read about the bus accident that happened last weekend in Indianapolis. The bus was carrying teens home from camp and they were almost home when the bus crashed, killing 4 people. Three of those were the youth pastor, his wife, and their due-next-month daughter.  I read this note this week, written by the youth pastor's dad...and while I cried, it was the biggest Jesus-in-the-flesh thing I have seen in a while. God's presence blows me away.

Four.

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Never before have I seen a behind-the-scenes look at a book's cover photo shoot, so I loved this blog post by novelist Tamera Alexander. And in unrelated news, how fun would it be to be the cover model? Just for the experience??

Five.

Now that our house renovations are done {for the hard work part} we can get busy assembling it and reorganizing the decor. How glad am I that Emily Clark's blog has taught me the magic of spray painting existing pieces to give them new life? We spray painted our massive gold mirror {which I got 90% off at Hobby Lobby many years ago} and two 90% off Hobby Lobby finds from a few weeks ago - black! Bring on the new dining room, baby!

Six.

We are not the kind of couple who subscribes to whole foods and clean eating and all that jazz. If that's for you - that's great, but it's not for us. We like treats too much! But we have started drinking organic milk - mostly because it has a longer expiration date. We were throwing away a lot of milk because unless it was a week when we both craved a lot of cereal, we couldn't get through 1/2 gallon before it went bad. So as much as we'd like to say we're all super healthy....we're pretty much just saving money. The healthy way.