Mommapalooza 4.0

This was the fourth year in a row that we hosted Mother's Day at our house. We began the tradition in 2014 without really intending for it to become a tradition. (The best ones happen that way.) We just wanted to spoil our moms by letting them have the day off from cooking, and that turned into inviting siblings and other family members too, and Mommapalooza was born.

The first year, we hosted it outside at our Marion house, in our beloved pirogi, and we had practically perfect weather. We did burger/picnic food theme and had a great time! The second year, we intended to have it outside, but the weather was unbearably humid, and we feared everyone would be miserable outside, so at the last minute, we moved it inside (still at our Marion house). We grilled pork chops and chicken and had a fun crammed in the dining room of our little house. Last year, Mommapalooza 3.0 was our deadline for having round one of home renovations done, even though we still planned to have the party outside on our deck. Sadly, last May was still wintry, so we feared everyone would freeze to death during lunch, and we packed everyone into half our living room for a pot roast (and all the fixins) lunch.

So you can imagine how grateful we were that this year, we had our garage all finished, and we could plan to party out there from the very beginning, with no fear of what the weather might bring! And multiple people commented that it was a very relaxing and enjoyable space for such a party!

(Find Phoebe in the picture for an extra 10 invisible points!)

This year I went with a breakfast theme! Four kinds of fresh fruit (pineapple, watermelon, blueberries, strawberries), quick cinnamon rolls, ham/egg/cheese sliders, Amish breakfast casserole, the Dashing Dish Sausage/Egg/Cheese Bake, ham and pickle roll-ups, and  smoky links in BBQ sauce.

My sister also brought a breakfast casserole, so we had lots of food!

We enjoyed the food, and Phoebe was a BIG hit with the kids. I'm working on building a better collection of toys and books, and they did play with those too, but I've decided having the dog for the day is really the way to go.

 Also ottomans.

 Also balloons.

We got a group photo and the stinkin' thing was blurry. Sigh.

But we got some other good pictures.

We were so grateful for a beautiful day! Even though we ate in the garage, we were thankful for a chance to be outside after! :)

Craft Night at the Garage!

Podcast Tuesday!!!


We've got stories from Christmas shopping and some Thanksgiving "Would You Rather" fun to share with you this week. Enjoy!

Click here to listen.

Last month, my friend Amber hosted a craft night for her birthday. I mentioned in my "What I Learned in October" post that I really had a great time, and I miss nights like that. I even said I might do a night like that. You know. Sometime. Whenever.

But in the spirit of our Tuesdays at the Table gatherings, I decided to toss out the "someday" and just pick a date and send some invitations. I was terrified, actually, because things like this bring out the junior high in me like nothing else. What if I plan a party and no one comes? {I know I'm not the only one who stresses over that.} But I decided to be brave and do it anyway.

I wrote the invitation on the chalkboard in the garage and texted it to a handful of girls that I thought might be interested.

I knew it was last minute and a very busy time of year, but I thought it might be helpful for them to get away from home for an evening, work on some things for Christmas, or finish up some other craft they never seemed to get done at home. I asked everyone to bring a snack to share and told them they could come late or leave early if they needed to, but the garage would be open from 5-11 p.m. If they wanted dinner, they were welcome to bring something for themselves, but the provided food would just be snacks to share. Low-key and easy.

{Ryan even offered to wrap gifts for anyone who had presents purchased that they didn't want to wrap. I don't think anyone had shopped yet - but I was impressed by his offer!}

The day of the party, I changed the chalkboards out to welcome the guests and display the menu. {I just added the food as each person brought something.}

We borrowed a few tables and set them up around the garage so everyone had plenty of space to work.

I didn't ask the girls if I could use their pictures, so I won't, but we had the best time just hanging out and working on projects. I ended up having four girls come over {and one brought her daughter}, and they were busy! A couple of them worked on a wreath, one made some Pinterest projects, and one worked on lettering some art for a sign. I scrapbooked. :)

And Ryan? He had his own table and project: fixing an extension cord he cut in two with some hedge trimmers. Yes. You heard me right.

And then he kind of forgot to pay attention to what he was doing and he put two matching plug ends on the cord. Whoopsie.

I wore my Christmas shirt, which, incidentally, I forgot I had on earlier that day when I went to the bank, and I got some very interesting looks from a gentleman in the parking lot.

Despite the utter DOWNPOUR happening outside all during the party, and the fact that most people got soaked going in and out, we had a very fun night. The snacks were delicious, the company was fun, and I think we all got a decent amount of work accomplished.

I'd love to do it again sometime. The space is perfect for it, and it's a bonus that Ryan brings his own crafts and joins us! :)

The Saturday Six

One.

So this happened last week. I have to say that of all the places in the whole wide world that I ever imagined to see my name, the Wall Street Journal was never one of them. {Mostly because I have always associated it with numbers, and you know how well I get along with those!} So anyway. This was pretty cool!

Two.

Ryan actually found this article, but I agree with it so much that I couldn't help but share. I do not take it for granted that I'm able to run hard after my dreams right now because Ryan is shouldering the entire financial load on his own. This is such a gift, and I appreciate it. When people find out we don't have kids, they think it's kind of strange that I don't work outside the home, but we're learning that this works best for us. We need this to thrive. And I'm grateful to him that we can do it. {By the way, the photo has NOTHING to do with the article, but I just love pictures of Ryan!}

Three.

Source

I love Jennifer Rothschild, and I love lessons learned by the water...so I loved this post. Love the reminder that even in the bigness of an ocean...in the bigness of all this world is...God sees us and loves us.

Four.

Two or three years ago, I saw these wooden letters on the Dayspring website, and they were on sale. I felt they so perfectly captured the life God has given us that I wanted to own them. I purchased them, but in our Marion house, we didn't have a good spot to put them, so they sat in the trunk of my car until we moved. Ryan hung them up in our hallway, and I have had multiple people comment on how much they love them. I figured they had long since cycled out of the inventory at Dayspring, but I happened to notice this week that they are part of the Labor Day sale! Twenty bucks - on sale from fifty!! They're wooden letters, but they are not very thick or heavy, so that's good for your wall. I love their strong presence and what they represent. I would give them two thumbs up...and they would make a great gift, if you're buying ahead for Christmas! 

Five.

Source

I told Ryan this week that it's officially been 3 years since we returned home from our Caribbean Cruise. I shouldn't have brought it up. It is like reminding a kid that his puppy died. Ryan LOVES cruises and has mourned the fact that we've not been on one since. Whoopsie! So perhaps because cruises were on the brain, I happened upon this post, which fascinated me entirely. This girl is a packer extraordinaire. Packed for a seven day cruise IN A CARRY-ON. I can't even pack for CHURCH in a carry-on. I realize she probably didn't mess with things like books and journals and tripods and such, but seriously - still!!! This is impressive.  

Six.

Source

I was a sixth grader the first time I picked up a book written by Janette Oke. I'd exhausted all the literary possibilities of young adult fiction {on the approved-by-the-parents list}, but my voracious appetite for reading remained. Mom encouraged me to try a grown-up book, and Love Comes Softly was my gateway to the fiction I now love and devour regularly. Janette Oke was a pioneer of Christian fiction, and her pioneer stories captured my heart. I read them all and still own the entire collection.

Her When Calls the Heart series, written back in the 80's and set in Canada has recently become the inspiration for the extremely popular TV series by the same name. I confess I have not watched the series, because I learned when Love Comes Softly became a movies series that it's hard on readers when beloved books translate to film. I loved the movie series, don't get me wrong, but it was hard to see so many details change. I eventually had to pretend the two were unrelated entirely.

So when I saw that a new book series existed, called Return to the Canadian West, co-written by Janette Oke and her daughter, Laurel Oke Logan, I was torn. I desperately wanted to read the books because I love Janette so, but at the same time, I saw the books were companion stories to the TV series and I just wasn't sure my little soul could handle it.

But I picked up Where Hope Prevails, the third book in this series, and was delightfully surprised to find it as easy to love as any Oke book I've ever read. I don't know how much authoring Janette did and how much Laurel did, but the spirit of the book is exactly what I remember of every single novel I ever read, and I adored the story.

I will say that while I hadn't read the first two books in this series {didn't know about them until now}, I wasn't lost in any way. I will go back and read the first two, though I now know some serious spoiler alerts about the way they'll end, based on the plot in this book.

This book is the story of Elizabeth Thatcher, a city born-and-bred teacher who has moved to the Canadian West to teach in a small mining town. As the book opens, Elizabeth is just returning to Coal Valley after spending a summer back east with her family. She is shocked to find that the town has erupted in growth and change in her relatively short time away, and while the townspeople have made decisions they're excited about, the changes are tough for Elizabeth to fit into when she returns.

Beth's not-quite-fiance Jarrick, is a Mountie, and while he loves his work, his assignments take him away far too often, leaving the two of them unsure of what their own future might hold. While she prays for guidance, Elizabeth immerses herself in teaching, spending time with her students and friends, and trying to catch up with the changes in the town.

I will absolutely be purchasing the first two books in this series so I can have the complete set, and while I have no idea how closely this holds to the TV show, I have to say, I loved the book.

* Thanks, Bethany House, for providing a copy of this book to me in exchange for an honest review. And thanks for taking a chance on Janette all those many years ago.* 

 

Garage Makeover

Tamar, this post is especially for you!

When Ryan and I moved into this house, we were so excited about our new garage. It was one of the upgrades for us. We left behind a detached 1 1/2 car garage for an attached 2.25 car garage. Yes, I know 2.25 is not a thing, but I just made it one. We rejoiced at simple luxuries like walking inside during a rainstorm without getting wet. Going into the garage without putting on shoes. You get the idea. We loved it and had not a single plan in this world to do a thing to it other than organize it {which Ryan had already done} and enjoy it.

And then...Mommapalooza 3.0.

We hosted Ryan's family and mine for Mother's Day, with every intention of eating at folding tables on the porch, but we did NOT intend for the day to be cold and cloudy. At the last minute, we had to move the party inside to keep all our guests from freezing while they ate. And while we did fit in our living room, it was a tight squeeze and not overly comfortable.

It's a common problem in his family, because there are so many of them. And we realized, as we pondered this conundrum, that nearly everyone in his family serves big family meals in their garages.

You see where this is going, don't you?

We do love our garage, but it was decidedly a garage. Our niece informed us it smelled like a garage, and it was only half finished. Apparently when our house was built, the requirement {or common practice, I'm not sure which} was that any wall that touched a part of the house had to be insulated and drywalled, but that was it. So we had a literally half-finished garage with unidentified splotches of who-knows-what on the floor.

More than adequate to function in every way we needed. Still a luxury to us. But, as I said, decidedly a garage.

So Ryan cleared out the entire thing {all freshly organized, though it was!}, and we started with insulation. We hired a company to come and spray a skim coat of insulation on the open walls. {I say this as though I know what I'm talking about.} They were in and out in less than half a day, and when they left, our walls boasted a lovely base coat of insulation:

Ryan and I purchased rolls of insulation and spent a couple of nights adding that over the top of this skim coat. {I rolled them out, measured, cut, and fluffed them, and Ryan hung them.}

We were stunned, even with just this much done, at how much more finished the room looked and how much more controlled the temperature felt! Whaddya know?!? Insulation works!

Ryan can drywall and mud, but he hates both very much, and at this point, doing that project on our own would have taken weeks, so we elected to hire it done. Sometimes the value of your time and sanity makes hiring a project worth it, right? These guys came to our house over the course of two days, but in total, they were there less than 8 hours. They put up drywall in the remainder of the garage, mudded and sanded it, repaired some areas on the existing drywall, and textured the ceiling to match the inside of the house. It was impressive, and Ryan said it was worth every penny.

The next step was to paint the walls, and if you heard the podcast a couple of weeks ago, you heard about the giant paint debacle that landed us hosing down great quantities of ourselves and items in the garage. It was insane. The paint color we used was the same as the one in our master bathroom. It's a Valspar color called Wet Pavement, and the Lowe's guy told us it is actually one of the most popular paint colors they sell. {Who knew??} It seemed to us to be a nice, neutral, inviting color.

The painting took wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more time than we anticipated, but it looked so nice when it was done. {Incidentally, we also painted the ceiling a white coat before we painted the walls. We were hoping to get out of it, but the fact that the drywall on the ceiling was done years ago meant there were discolorations under the texturing, so we had to paint.}

Our next plan was to do an epoxy paint treatment on the floor so it looked more finished as well. I did a whole separate post on that, which you can find here if you missed it, but let's just say the prep work on that took about a week. The floor has to be crazy clean and crazy dry, so Ryan did a lot of washing, scraping, degreasing, and who knows what all, and then we had fans on it for days, making sure it was 100% dry.

The paint itself went on in about two hours. Ryan rolled the paint on the floor and I threw in the confetti-like chips that give it some personality.

Then that had to dry for several days. We couldn't walk on it, put our stuff back, or park on it while it cured.

But the after look of that was just amazing, in our opinion.

 Once that fully dried, our only chore was to move back in! Ryan wanted to switch some things up and around to make the layout work better for what he needed, so he had fun reorganizing everything.

As for me? I just wanted a pretty wall in the garage. One pretty wall. One spot that we could use as a focal point when we have parties and gatherings.

So working together, we came up with the idea to paint a couple of chalkboards on one wall, and Ryan even went the extra mile to put frames around them to dress them up a little bit! We used two old windows our friend Shawn gave us {THANK YOU, SHAWN!!!} on either side, just to add to the overall look.

And now? It's done. Officially done. I think it looks incredible, especially when you compare it to what it looked like before!

That only took a month. WHEW! Exhausting!!! But we do love it. And for you comparison junkies....here are the side by side before and after pics. {Click to enlarge.}

DIY Garage Floor Painting Adventures

We're still working to reassemble our garage after the great makeover of 2016, but I thought I'd show you the kit we used to paint the floor, in case any of you have been dying to paint your garage floor!

You'll see a bit more of this after you see the whole garage makeover process, but basically, our goal with it was to make it into a space that we could use for additional entertaining if we needed to, but we still want it to function as a garage for the majority of the time.

So...in addition to the other improvements we made, we decided to paint the floor with the Rust-Oleum Garage Floor Coating Kit. We got ours at Lowe's, and we found out you can have the paint tinted to any one of nine colors. We chose a tan, because we thought it would coordinate well with our grayish greenish walls.

Here is what came in the kit for a 2.5 car garage {not pictured: one bag of white powder that was a cleaner. Ryan used it before I took the picture!}

 

When you actually get ready to paint {we'll come back to the cleaning in a minute}, you combine the contents of the small paint cans {Part A} into the big paint cans {Part B} and stir for three minutes. {The big paint cans are only filled partway, so there's room for the contents of the small cans. Even comes with a stir stick!} The two remaining bags in the picture are the chips that look much like confetti. Those get sprinkled into the paint after it's applied to the floor, but before it dries.

So. Let's talk about the cleaning.

Ryan had read in reviews that the worst part of this whole process was cleaning the floor to prep it. And he affirmed wholeheartedly that it is TRUE. He spent about a WEEK working on these floors in the evenings after work.

He started by {obviously} clearing everything out of the garage. He purchased a cleaner and degreaser all in one and used a deck brush to scrub the entire floor. Then he hosed it down really well to get all the cleaner off. Then he repeated that process a second time. After that, he used the powder that came with the kit {concrete etch}, mixed it with water, and used that on the entire surface of the floor to clean it again. Three more hose rinsing rounds came after that, because Ryan likes to be thorough!

With the floor completely clean, it was time for drying. We put four fans in the garage and let them run for about four days to make sure the floor was absolutely dry. How long this part takes depends on how quickly your floor dries and the level of humidity at the time. It did not work in our favor that particular week.

Obviously during this time, we could not park in the garage or even walk out there in our shoes. We didn't want to track in ANY MORE DIRT.

When it came time to apply the actual paint, the temperature had to be just right, so we waited until the humidity lowered a bit and it wasn't so hot out before we applied the paint. Ryan ran some painter's tape along the edge of the garage, where the door comes down, so we would know where to stop painting, and then it was time to get started!  

Ryan combined one big and one small can and waited to see if we would need the other before mixing them. {We did not.} He took over rolling the paint onto the floor with a roller on a handle. The paint was incredibly thin and dried really quickly. We learned we had to do pretty small sections in order for it to stay wet enough for me to throw on the chips.

I went along behind and threw in the little confetti chips.

 I divided the two bags into four bowls and tried to scatter them evenly over four quadrants of the garage.

Yeah. That was a fail. I almost ran out!! We only used half the cleaner and half the paint but I could have used twice as many chips!!

I did find out later that you can purchase additional bags separately. So if you're confetti happy like I am, you might look into it!

The actual painting process took us two hours, working together. Definitely much easier than the previous week of cleaning!

We were supposed to stay off the floor entirely for 24 hours and leave cars and other heavy things off of it for a week. But the end result was stunning.

Here was the garage before we painted:

And after:

We think it looks so much brighter!

Here's a close-up:

Would we do it again? Well, please don't make us, but yes! It really was a cost-effective improvement to the space, and the actual painting process was quick and painless. Ryan may not be QUITE ready for that much prep cleaning again yet. But we are so happy with the result! Another great DIY project find!