Today Might Just Be the Day...

What happens in the daily life of the family.. the drama of foster care, the adventures of parenting, & pictures to share with everyone!

New House (Part 3, but who’s counting..)

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OK, on to the downstairs…

This is the bar area, right down the stairs from the kitchen.

 

The living room...

And... more living room photos...

This is one end of our craft room/office/soon to be workout room.. It's also the room in the house that still has boxes... But, I did straighten enough for one photo.

 

Hmm.. I thought I had more, but I guess I don’t. Downstairs there is also a tiny guest bedroom, the laundry room & a bathroom.

Tomorrow, I’ll post photos of the kiddos’ rooms & bathroom & then our tour will come to an end.

Free Stuff!

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Well, at least the chance to win some…

In an effort to promote Rad Crafts, we’re doing a give away through facebook… If you’d like to enter to win one of these cute shirts, just go to this page and follow the directions. I’d love to send it to someone I already know!

Good luck!

Or, if you *insist* on buying, the easiest place to buy is right here.

New House (Part 2)

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Okey-dokey… I’ve listed a couple items on etsy, posted photos on facebook… what else can I do with insomnia at 4 in the morning? Oh, blog!

Let’s continue the house tour.

Mommy's Little Couch Potatoes! This is our "Cowboy Room"... i'ts right off of the kitchen, and you can see the light from the doors that lead to the backyard... also, in the back corner is a half bath.

The view that those couch potatoes were seeing.

Toy storage! This is an odd photo, but it's one side of the closet in the Cowboy room! I *love* this closet!

More toy storage...

And, that’s the end of the main level… Next, upstairs… Just a couple more before I will try to sleep again.

Our master bedroom.

And, the other side of the master.

Not glamorous, but I'm showing the whole place, so this is our closet...

One last area…

The deck off of our bedroom. From the other side, I can literally see the boys' school!

 Alright, back to bed for me! I will carry on the tour soon.

One Quick Hint…

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I know that some of the people who read this blog came here because I’m a foster mom (although, we don’t have any foster kiddos.. ha!)…

And it just occurred to me that I have a trick that I don’t think I’ve shared on here. Being a foster parent comes with some risk. The kids that are in care come from unsafe environments and that danger usually is because of what the biological parents either did or didn’t do. We’ve been very lucky and have had mostly positive interactions with the biological parents that we’ve dealt with, but that’s not always true. And the truth is that you just don’t know who you’ll be dealing with. So, I advise foster parents to be careful. When they share photos, I tell them to make sure that the address isn’t in the photo, or that you can’t see their license plate….

One of the easiest ways to find someone is through their phone number. A few years ago, I decided that I wanted us to be unlisted. I didn’t want anyone to find us through our phone number. Our kids were starting to learn it and I knew that whatever they are learning they repeat. So, I called the phone company. I don’t remember the exact number, but the phone company was going to charge us every.single.month to be unlisted. I thought it was ridiculous. I even called another phone company to switch my service, but the second charged even more! But, someone shared a work-around with me that I’ll pass along to you… You *do* have to pay if you want to be unlisted, however, you don’t have to be listed as yourself!

So, if I call you and there’s a wierd name on the caller ID, it’s still me. I called and changed my name and edited my personal information. They tried to give me a hard time, but they really didn’t have a leg to stand on… if I’d just gotten married, I’d be changing my name. This time I was just wedding with “the system” instead.

I encourage you to be extra creative if you go this route.. ever wanted to be a Kennedy? Mmm.. or maybe royalty? Mrs. Pitt?

My New House (Part 1)

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I anticipate this post taking me awhile to get everything uploaded.. so I figure I’ll do it in a couple parts.

But, I am very excited to share with y’all, my new house.

And I’d love to hear what you think about it (have I ever told you how much I *love* comments?!? Yes, Mom, I’d like yours, too!).

This is the view as you enter the front door, formal living room & dining room are to your left, kitchen is straight ahead.

This is the formal living room.. I had a hard time getting a good photo of the room, but you may recognize this piece as our old entertainment center.

And the other side of the formal. (You will notice that a certain someone is in a lot of these pictures. For some reason, when a camera comes out, she thinks it's time to be center stage--I wonder where she learned that..)

The dining room--this was taken from the hallway, so the formal is to the left, the kitchen is to the right.

 

The other end of the dining room.

My kitchen! This is the view from the stairs and I love it. This is part of what sold me on the house.

My kitchen from the other side of the island.

 Okey-dokey, I think that’s good for now.. that’s most of the main level. Next post will have photos of our Arizona room (that’s what we call additions in Arizona…). That’s the only room on the main level that’s not pictured. This house is a little funky because it’s a tri-level.. you can see what that means in that last picture of the kitchen, a few stairs down and a few stairs up.

So, what do you think?

Was Today the Day?

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So, I had some (lofty in my opinion) goals for today. Did I make it?

Well, today was a good day. I have cleaned half of the bathrooms. The kids got along for over an hour! In fact, the little ones did great through trips to both Costco & Target… Amazing! Now the bananas didn’t quite make it to banana bread, but they are instead in muffins that smell delicious. New items on my site? Well, maybe tomorrow will be the day for that…

Tonight, I think that I can go to bed feeling pretty good.

Today might just be the day…

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So, maybe it’s a little late for today to be the day, but there’s always hope for tomorrow.

So, tomorrow just might br the day that:

I get all of our bathrooms clean at once.
I get the banana bread in the oven v. just in my thoughts.
The kids all get along for more than an hour.
I get another item or two on the site…

It’s good to dream, right?

My Wisdom for the Day

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So, as I’ve started into this craft thing, one of the big problems that I’m having is focus. So, I *could* have a little ADD… But, what’s more of the issue is that it’s fun to learn new stuff. I’d much rather spend my time trying out new things than actually making the things that I’ve perfected. And, the least amount of fun is posting those items and selling them. I’d much rather be a crafter (and, yes, I do know that that’s not a real word)  than a seller. And I’d rather be experimenting than duplicating.

As I was pondering that, it came to mind that that’s kinda how a lot of things are. Once we really know what we’re doing, it’s time to move on… I have joked that the problem with planning a wedding is that you only get to do it once. It takes you that whole time to figure out what you’re doing, then you don’t get to practice it at all. The same kinda happens with parenting. You finally become an expert at the newborn thing, then they become infants and there’s another world to learn. You master the bottle or the breast or whatever, then it’s time to start talking about solids. You finally get the hang of packing a diaper-bag just right, then it’s time to start potty training.

I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t mind potty training. That age of kiddo (1.5 to 3) is about my favorite age, although, I do adore babies.. and it’s pretty fun having actual conversations. Anyhow, I’d gladly potty train kids for a living. I think that I’m pretty good at it. But, alas, that time is done at our house. Just this last week or so my “babies” have decided that they’re done with pull ups at night and neither has had a wet bed since.  Like I said, you figure it out, get good at it and then you need a new skill.

My newer challenge is figuring out what to do about the little stalker friend that D has made at school. She’s nice, but I can’t figure out how to get through to her that he can’t play after school every.single.day.

But, as I was pondering all of this, I was also thinking about posting on my blog. And that’s when the wisdom came in… (about time, right?!?) That’s what this whole blog thing is about. Now, I don’t blog to be a leader or a teacher or whatever. I am certainly not a parenting expert (although, I am a potty training expert!).  But, the cool thing is that I do have things to share. There are some things that I do know about. There are experiences that I’ve had that I can guide someone through. And, there are other blogs out there that can do the same for me.

As our society has changed, in many ways we’ve grown apart as people. We don’t know our neighbors as much as we used to (even though we live closer together). Not all of us have the safety net of family close by. But, through this magical Internet, we can all be a little closer, too. There are other moms who are out there who are posting about their challenges and successes and lives each day. And I can learn through them.

So, there is help out there. I think I might just have to do a search for kiddo stalker blogs (that’s a joke!). But, I will remember that there are others out there who I can turn to.

I just need to stay far, far away from the craft blogs! Craft time needs to be for creating, not dreaming up new visions.

What are your favorite blogs?

Bootcamp Thoughts

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So, a few years ago I did a fitness boot camp. I loved it. Well, all of it except for the actually getting up and going to it part, 5:00 is just too early.

Yesterday, I went to an entirely different boot camp. This was a women’s boot camp for entrepreneurs. We took our small business (Rad Crafts) and set up a booth in the vendor area and then attended the speakers… We only sold a few things, but we gave out about a million cards and spoke with tons of other small business owners–although, I don’t think ours is even big enough to consider small, we’re more like a minuscule business. I think it was good. Our booth looked great! We didn’t have space for our clothing rack so we couldn’t display many of our clothes, but we made use of the space we had–photos will have to follow. I feel like we are getting to be experts at setting up our displays.

In a couple of the sessions, I also felt like we were already experts… They were talking about social media… and we’ve been doing the right things (in case you didn’t know, you can follow us on face book or on twitter ). And in another session they were talking about the brand of “you”. I feel like we are just doing what we like & know. So the brand already is “us”. We make cute stuff.

But, there were other areas that were way over our heads. We don’t have any extra insurance, we don’t have credit card terminals, we don’t have a team that we need to be better leaders of…

Overall, I thought it was a good day. I got to hang out with one of my BFF’s & talk about the cute stuff that we create. I think that we already know the next steps that our tiny business needs to take. It’s just a matter of fitting them in on top of all of the rest of life. For Renee, that means work, school, volunteering. For me that means, kids, the house… Fortunately, I think that Rad Crafts has actually helped me do those other things better. It gives me more energy than it takes.

So, with that, I’ll get going with my day. The craft we’re doing here today will not be for sale. It’ll be for lovers… 😉 We’re making Valentine’s Day cards for our boys to take to school tomorrow.

Love you all!

Different

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For the record. Just because something is different does not mean it is, by necessity, better or worse. Sometimes different is just different. Each child needs to be parented a little differently. Just because I don’t parent the same way you do doesn’t mean that my way is better or worse, it could just be different. Just because you dress in a certain style doesn’t mean that you look better or worse than I do, we just won’t look the same. Now, I have my own opinions on what is better or worse, but, so do you. Who am I to judge what is better or worse for you or your family?