crayon roll

I've been itching to make some things lately. On my "I think I might like to make this" list has been a crayon roll. I found a tutorial here. Well, this afternoon I made one. It didn't take too long and I used materials that I had sitting around. I had a couple problems that I will fix if I make another one. Hopefully it will get some use, though.

my twenty-tenth birthday

In honor of my twenty-tenth birthday, I would like to enumerate 30 things related to my life...but I haven't come up with things for all of them. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

1 - great husband
2 - wonderful children
3 - number of times I've donned cap and gown for a school graduation
4 - car accidents I've been in
5 - cameras I distinctly remember owning
6 - months between getting engaged and getting married
7 - years I've (almost) been married
8 - years I lived in Atlanta...actual Atlanta address, even
9 -
10 -
11 - countries I've visited
12 - houses/apartments I've lived in
13 -
14 -
15 - quilts made
16 - hours spent in labor for each child
17 -
18 - age of my first "real" haircut
19 - years spent in school
20 -
21 -
22 - age when I got married
23 - states I've been in at some point
24 - months working in a "real" job
25 - age when I had my first child
26 -
27 -
28 - age when I had my second child
29 -
30 - years since my parents heard "It's a girl, and she's redheaded."

edit: I was not married at the age of 22, but rather, 23. The funny thing is that my husband, mother, mother-in-law, and plenty of other people who knew the right age looked at this post and didn't notice my mistake. At least my best friend knows how old I was when I got married...even if I don't. :)

a couple pictures

Here are a couple pictures from our trip to Toccoa Falls.

weekly update

Well, as of Friday, I had lost another pound. However, as of today, I am up .2 pounds from last week. The difference? For the last several days, I have spend most of my time either on the couch or in the bed. I have been sick. My best guess is that it is a mild case of the flu. At any rate, laying around isn't so good for losing weight. I'm hoping to be better in the next day or two and be able to get back into things. I'll still be happy if I can get to 10 pounds lost by the 14th (because that's probably when I'll start eating yummy things for my birthday). I'm just going to have to make sure to get some exercise in!

B&A - front flower bed

(there are three new posts)

Here is the big work...or at least what I feel like has been the biggest work. As you can see in the before pictures, the bed in the front of our house was filled with large old bushes. There were several different kinds...holly, azalea, hawthorn, etc. They were ok, but several of them had lots of dead areas. I don't like holly bushes to begin with. It really bugged me that there were so many different kinds. And...Matt thought they were too big. So, back in the fall, I started cutting down these bushes. Last weekend, we moved the last of them. There was one azalea that we decided to move over to an empty spot in the bed at the side of the yard. That left a bunch of stumps to be removed. That was Matt's big task this weekend. My hope was just that the bed would be empty. I was very happy when Matt was able to finish quickly and we were able to go ahead and prepare for planting our new Camellias. We bought them last weekend, but I didn't think we would get to planting them quite yet. Anyway, we were able to get everything cleaned out and the Camellias in. They are small now, but eventually, they will fill in the whole space if we let them. For the near future, however, I plan to put a few more things in this bed. I just have to find something that I like. We're also going to put in mulch, but we haven't gotten that far yet. I considered waiting to post pictures when we get all that done, but I was too happy with our progress to wait. I'll get more pictures up when the rest gets done. Anyway, here are the pictures. I also included a couple closer pictures of one of the Camellias and one of the flowers. (sorry that the pictures were taken during different seasons)

B&A - bushes at the side of the house

We have some nice big bushes that run along the side of the house. Three of them are hawthorns. I don't know what the fourth one is. They were growing higher than the windows, so they were really too big. I didn't think that I would get to pruning them this year, but I had some time this weekend. I needed to cut a foot or more off of them, so they ended up with very few leaves. At the moment, they look a little funny. I am expecting that they will fill in nicely when Spring arrives. For now, though, you can appreciate the work by looking at the before and after pictures. Oh yeah, Matt also cut down the Pampas Grass at the corner of the house. We haven't decided yet what we're going to do about that big massive thing at the back corner of the house. We may just cut it down completely.

B&A - side azaleas

When I was picking out some before pictures for the front and side of the house, I ran across a picture of the azaleas at the side of the yard. These are the ones in the front of the house along the side fence. This was part of the massive pile work. You can see in the before picture that there was a good bit of dead stuff and they were also getting a little big. Now, they're about 18 inches off the ground. Hopefully, they'll grow out nicely. Our neighbor, Mr. Crenshaw, assures me that they will.

the numbers are working for me

Well, the numbers are looking up this week. I've lost enough to put me at a total of 8 pounds in 8 weeks. Yay! Part of me feels like 8 pounds isn't really all that much, but I'm keeping my sights set on the big picture. I know that a pound a week is good and that is my goal. I know that if I can keep up that rate, I'll be doing great by the end of the year. Mainly, I'm just taking it one day, one choice at a time.

how I painted those lines

Ok. I am no expert or anything, but I thought I would make a post about how I did the lines in Nathan's room. I started to add it to a comment, but it was going to be too long. So...here goes.

When I first started on the lines in the room, I thought "I better not set out to make them truly level because this is an old house." So instead, I thought I would pick a measurement off the floor and make my lines that way. Well, that didn't work. The lines looked funny. So...I decided to try the level approach. That looked much better. I was really surprised, though, because there is quite a variation from one side of the room to the other in relation to the floor. Anyway, I used both a laser level on a tripod and a normal two foot type level. The two foot level helped me to get the laser line exactly level. The tricky part was getting around the corners. They looked funny with the laser up and took a couple tries to get the tape where it needed to be.

Once I got the first line up around the room, the others were pretty easy. Since my first line was nice and level, I could measure down from it for the next line. I measured three points and then used those to align the laser level. That worked really well for getting all the other tape in place. So...the time that I spent getting the first line right was really worth it!

did you know?

You can now watch MacGyver on cbs.com - season one. Pretty cool.

B&A - Nathan's Room

Well, there are still a couple rooms that I haven't posted pictures of on the blog. I'm going to try to get some up this week. For today, here are a few pictures of Nathan's room. This room originally had green carpet and the typical beige walls and trim. The carpet was taken out and the hardwood floors refinished. The ceiling, walls, and trim were all painted. This room took a little extra paint than the others did. I think the paint that was on the walls may have been the original paint for the house. Also, after we moved in, Nathan and I painted stripes on his walls. They didn't turn out exactly like we were expecting because of the texture of the walls, but I think they still work. As in the rest of the house, the outlets and switch were replaced. We still have plans to get Nathan a different set of drapes (he loves the traverse rod that he can open himself), but we haven't found what we want at a good price yet. In the meantime, he is using the ones that were originally in the living room.

not so great choices

Well, I've been making some not so great choices lately. I haven't done horrible, but... The majority of problems is just drinking calories. The milk at home and the tea at restaurants just calls. I handle water ok for a little while, but I am just not a fan. Anyway, the scales couldn't decide exactly what I weighed last night. The number I decided to record is slightly less than last week's number. Hopefully, though, the reality is one of the smaller numbers that the scales gave me. I am now adding some exercise to my routine. I still haven't figured out how to get some good cardio in, but I am starting to do some things at night while watching tv. I'm not jumping into anything too major...just making sure that I'm moving for at least 30 minutes each night. I'll be doing some weight lifting, some situps, etc. So far, making small choices with my food seems to be working (when I do it) so I'm going to stick with the same idea for exercise. At the very least, moving for 30 minutes uses up a few calories. Hopefully, I'll be building muscles, too.

behind on the weekly updates

So...I'm like a week and a half behind on my supposed weekly weight updates. It really wasn't intentional...really. Anyway, there's no particularly good news to report. As of Tuesday the 5th, I had gained a pound. I wasn't surprised. I didn't eat so great. As of this past Tuesday, I had lost .8 of that pound. So, on average, I am doing ok. (Just over a pound a week.) However, I really need to get back on track. I'm not so sure what is going to happen this week. I'm now on a second round a prednisone for my poison ivy. It is known to make people gain weight. We'll see. If I can get back on track, I can be at 10 pounds lost by my birthday. That would be good. I would be happy with that.

flashback

I have been going through pictures lately so that I can get some printed (finally) to put in albums and in frames. As I go through them, it's nice to reflect on the circumstances that surround the pictures. Here is one that has a soft spot in my heart. This is the last picture with Mommy and her only child, Nathan. I was actually in labor at this point. Nathan was all packed up and ready for Grandma to pick him up. The next time I saw him, he had a little sister.

more pruning

Well, I didn't put up pictures of the actual pruning, but here is a picture of the waste. This pile is from the weekend project described below as well as the additional bed that I pruned. The new one was on the side of the house toward the front. (Actually, you can see the very edge of it behind the big green trash can.) It was another group of overgrown azaleas. These weren't as bad as the ones in the back, but there wasn't any way to prune them to look nice without cutting them down to about 18 inches. In the process, I got poison ivy or poison oak or something like that. No fun! Anyway, I'll be back pruning before long, but next time I'll wear long sleeves and baby oil and take a shower and wash my clothes immediately afterwards.

weekend project

We did several things around the house this weekend, but the biggest project was the back corner of the yard. In that area, there were a bunch of very overgrown and yucky looking azaleas. There was also a big pile of rotting tree branches. Well, I worked on cutting back all the azaleas to about 12-18 inches and Matt helped me clean out the branches. He also hauled most all the stuff I was cutting up the hill to put beside the road for the trash people to pick up (I hope they have an empty truck when they get here!). I would share some pictures, but they just wouldn't do it justice. The "before" pictures that I have were taken back when things were green and there were leaves on the trees. The "after" picture is all brown and leafless. So...you just can't compare very well. Maybe after the leaves grow back and the grass is green I'll put some pictures up. I'm just enjoying knowing that the corner of our yard is now a usable space rather than a "don't dare go in there" space. It's like a breath of fresh air!

is it right?

Well, I hesitate to believe it, but the scales say that I lost another 2.4 pounds last week (for 6.4 pounds total). I honestly don't believe it. I didn't do so great this past weekend. Between Caroline's party and out of town guests, eating just wasn't "normal" or as controlled as I would like for it to be. However, I didn't snack quite as much either. We'll see if this number holds through next week.

a Simmons visit

This past weekend, my best friend from college and her kids came to visit. They came on Friday and left Monday. It was fun to have them here for several days! Michelle and I had fun just hanging out when the kids were sleeping. Nathan and Jay had lots of fun playing together...we didn't even do much of any refereeing. Caroline and Sara Grace are a little too young to do much playing, but they did acknowledge each other with happy smiles and such. Here are several pictures from their visit.

The Girls







The Boys

another visit with Kaitlin

Jenn and Kaitlin were in the area for Jenn's sister's birthday. They came down from Macon tonight and had supper with the Ferguson side of the family. She did some very cute smiling when she first got there. Also, she likes her Aunt Jennifer! She cried for everyone else. She didn't cry for me. Well...maybe that's not quite true. She didn't cry the whole time I held her anyway. :)

a better report

Well, this week's report is much better than last week's. Since last Tuesday I have lost 2.2 pounds. That's a total of 4 pounds. Yay!

Some people may be thinking "why is she putting all her business out on her blog?" Well, for me, it's a sort of motivation. I would much rather post that I've lost weight than gained it. It's kinda like accountability...but without anybody getting on my case. So far, things seem to be working. So...I think I'll keep it up.

B&A - divider wall

Thanks to a great suggestion from a loyal blog reader, we have two new chalkboards at our house. :) I've had the chalkboard paint since before we moved in, but just haven't gotten around to using it. I think the kids are going to enjoy having the chalkboards to play on and it looks nice, too. You can't really tell from this picture, but it kinda goes with the other black in the room (former computer armoire turned pantry, picture frames, cabinet hardware, etc). We're still debating about doing the same thing on the other side of the divider wall. Anyway, here are the before and after shots.

weekly weight update

Well, I lost another .8 lbs this past week. I didn't do the best eating, but I did get a little exercise (yard work and ice skating) in, so I guess they balanced out some. I really need to do better on my eating this week so that I can catch up to my 1 pound a week goal. We'll see.

our hope is in the Lord

The other day I ran across a web page that really made me sad for the writers. They were a couple of parents who had a premature baby. The baby ended up dying. As they told their story, they said that they were ok with him dying because of a number that kept popping up in their lives. They would see the number in times or on a receipt. They "knew" that it was a sign from (or for) their baby. They even began to add numbers to get their special number. Then, they started subtracting them. Anything to find the number that gave them some peace. It made me sad. I wish they had known where to find real peace. I wish that they could have turned to God. I wanted them to be able to rest in knowing that He is in control. To know that they would one day see their little boy again. But instead, their hope was in a number. I'm glad that I have a God to run to in hard times.

one down, many many more to go

In the first week, I lost one pound. Yay! If I could keep that up, I would be doing well by the end of the year. Of course, my commitment to myself at this moment is just through mid-March. Anyway, I'm sure that I can do better. I can eat better and I can exercise. But I have to celebrate the successes.

Extended Moseley Christmas

After Jake's wedding on Friday night, we got together with the extended Moseley family for Christmas on Saturday. (For more on Friday, visit the kids' blog.) We had a great time seeing everyone. We hadn't seen most of them for more than a year - since Thanksgiving 2006. The kids swapped gifts and the adults did a white elephant type game (but with good gifts). Here are a few pictures from the event:

the weekend update

1. I have started (or am going to start) a new Bible study. It's by Kay Arthur and It's called "Covenant". It's about how the blood covenant with God runs throughout the Bible and points us to Jesus. I had a choice of a 1-1.5 hours per week version or a 3-4 hours per week version. I took the longer choice. I decided that the was it is organized will help me get more out of it if I actually make the time. So, I'm going to make my best effort to do that. I hope to share some of the things I am learning along the way.

2. I didn't have the best eating weekend. I didn't completely throw all to the wind, but it just wasn't as good as would be best. I did, however, manage to not drink many calories. And...that is a success. I have discovered one thing. It is really silly to try and start eating better right after the holidays. At least for me, we always end up with candy and such all around that just begs to be eaten. I'm taking it in moderation, though.

successes

There have been plenty of choices in the last couple days that aren't necessarily the best. However, there have also been some successes. I'm going to focus on a couple of those today.

1. I haven't been drinking my calories. Normally, I drink lots of milk at home. When we eat out, I usually have lots of tea. So far, I have only had half a cup (like 8 oz. total) of milk and no tea.

2. Yesterday, when I was out shopping and got hungry, I stopped at Kroger and got a banana and water. No bad for me snack!

3. I have already lots some weight.

focus on the "to"

Lisa sent me an article online about weight loss. As I read it, I was reminded of a lesson I learned one morning in church. It was really simple, but a new way of thinking.

In simplest form, the idea is to "concentrate on going towards a goal, not away from the thing you want to avoid." As it was used in the sermon, the preacher was saying that you don't become Christlike by focusing on getting away from your temptations or non-Christlike desires. If you do, you are giving all of your attention to those things that you don't want...and making it harder to resist them. Instead, you should turn and focus on being like Christ. As you become more like Christ, you will be more able to stand against those other worldly things. In addition, your time is now being spent on Christ - what you really want.

This idea also applies to eating. When I'm tempted with eating something that I don't really need or just munching at night because I want to, I need something to turn "to". I need to figure out what my "to" is. It may be that I need two "to's" - one for the daytime and one at night when I'm vegetating. I'm going to work on this and see what I can come up with.

today's the day

Today is the day that I start getting "not fat". For a person who has often resisted doing things just because other people do do it, it's a little hard to say that I'm starting on New Year's Day. However, the two and a half months from now to my birthday seems like a good timeframe to work on losing weight. I don't have any major reasons to eat lots of fattening food for this time. So...now that we're back in town, I'm starting.

I've done pretty good today, but tonight has been a little harder. I like to eat at night while I'm hanging out watching tv. I'm going to have to figure out how to NOT eat at night. I just don't succeed very well if I completely deny myself. So...we'll see what I can come up with.

a bit of Christmas

I have to say, I haven't felt terribly festive this year. It seems so very strange that Christmas is next week! So, I decided to take a few pictures of the decorations around our home just to reflect on what is here (there's not much out this year).

the countdown

We are so excited that we are going to get to see lots of family and friends in the coming weeks! Here's the countdown:

- The Baileys (Matt's cousin and family), 5 days
- The Simmons's (Jennifer's best friend from college and family), 6 days
- The Johnsons, Moseleys, Autons, Baileys, etc (Matt's extended family), 6 days
- The Fergusons (Jennifer's parents, brother and family - including new neice!), 10 days
- The Nelsons, Tylers, etc (Jennifer's extended family), 11 days
- The Moseleys, Murrays, Childers, etc (Matt's parents and sister and family friends), 13 days

Whew! By the time we're done with all this visiting, it will be time for a rest! We're looking forward to it, though. It has been quite a long time since we have seen some of these people so we are sure to have a good time!

B&A - laundry room

Ok. This is really more like before and middle rather than before and after, but it's already such a big difference. I couldn't help but share. Plus, it may be a while before it becomes a true after. :)

Anyway, the laundry room in our house is one of those that used to be "outside". When the house was originally built, you had to go through the carport to get to the laundry room. However, the carport was long ago (most likely) closed in. So, it is now inside. It didn't much look like it, though. As you can see from the pictures below, it still looked more like something you would find in an outside shop. The only "inside" feature was the floor. It actually has hardwood floors. Of course, they are in terrible shape...but once upon a time, it was probably pretty.



Matt did a lot of the work that has been done. He had some help from Nathan (see below) doing some of the drywall. I did most of the shelves. Matt also did a little electrical work.


So far, there is drywall up on most of the walls (with insulation behind it) and the shelves have been installed. Those really were the most needed parts. We still had all these boxes sitting in the computer room. Now, most of the sitting around stuff is gone. Yay! As you can see, we haven't gotten the new vinyl flooring installed. We're hoping to get that done before too long, but it will at least be after Christmas. Once we get to it, though, it won't take very long.


Here is the view to the right of the door. There is no drywall on the ceilings yet. It is still lots of random pieces of plywood. Eventually, that will also get done along with installing two new light fixtures.


And here is the shot to the left of the door. There is still some work to be done here. Matt is going to install a washer connection box. He needs to do this plumbing work before the drywall behind the washing machine. Unfortunately, the corner will probably stay like it is for a while. The plumbing from the hot water heater runs all in the way of trying to get drywall back there. So...until it dies and has to be replaced, the corner will probably remain undone.