Last week I started back to school with teacher meetings.  I usually only teach 1 hour a day, but the week of teacher meetings I’m at school quite a bit more.  I don’t mind.  The staff is fun to be with and they fix us breakfast 🙂  Really yummy breakfast.

I had big plans for blog posts last week…but I underestimated the amount of stuff I had to do in the amount of time I had to do it.  You know how it goes I’m sure.  We finished the week with a family gathering at our house.  Perhaps this is a good time to note that I am now 39. I love that we have a big family on my husband’s side.  Just his parents, his sisters and their kids (plus us) is 29 people!  My house has been a dirty disaster for months and I was excited for the motivation to clean it up.

I only yelled a couple of times.  I find it helps if I say, “I’m trying not to freak out, but I’m worried about… ” The kids are great about seeing me as human and pitching in to help before I get completely overwhelmed.  If I am getting overwhelmed, I just say “I am getting overwhelmed.”  Everyone can relate to feelings like that.  It’s so much better than screaming and storming around like a 2 year old which still happens except less.

Sometimes I hand the kids something and tell them to hang it in the closet and when I walk by the room I see it in the middle of the floor instead, like they stood in the doorway and threw it in. Please tell me stuff like that happens in every house.  We are working on it.  If I were going to be completely honest, I’d have to admit I still stand in the doorway and throw stuff into my office.

My mom got me a really cool gift for my birthday.  I see they have a magnetic version too.

These little lenses clip onto a phone camera and make the pictures a lot better. My favorite is the wide angle lens.  It allows me to take pictures that are much closer to what I see with my eyes.  The macro lens is cool too.  It allows the camera to focus really close up and get amazing details–like fingerprints on your own finger.

Here’s a shot of the boy’s bedroom without the lens

And with the wide angle lens.  This was a low light situation which is why it’s a bit blurry.

And while I’m being completely random, here’s the inspiration photo for their new bedroom.  We are buying paint on labor day weekend when it’s on sale  :). I’m excited and overwhelmed with the to do list at the same time. The window on the left is a mirror.  It’s the only thing I haven’t purchased yet for the room….I hope it’s not crazy expensive.

I’m not pushing myself to get done quickly.  The goal is to have the room painted and the boys sleeping in there again over the holiday weekend so their school routine isn’t disrupted.  Then I’ll piece the rest of the stuff together as it happens.

The other side of the room will be a saw horse table lego station with toy towers on either side.  I built the towers this week.  I’m not a great builder, but with a few tips from my husband they came out pretty good. I forgot to stain the book shelf…I’ll do it later. The slide out bins are from Ikea’s Trofast line.

While we were building stuff, we put some more touches in the girl’s bathroom.

If you’ll remember the before:

Here’s where we are now.  When I get more things finished I’ll do a detailed post on just this room. The shower curtain is lowering back down as soon as I can bribe my husband to move it.  I thought I would love it high, but I really don’t.

Here’s a close-up of the towel hooks.  I used the chop saw all by myself after I saw my husband do it once.  I bragged to him how I did it all by myself.  He responded with, “You WHAT!??? I would have liked to have been there for your first time.”  I guess those things can be dangerous.

The hook on the left came with the house.  It used to be green and I rub and buffed it gold.  The other 3 are from Hobby lobby.  They were rusty some kind of metal and I gave them the gold treatment too.  I’m afraid the gold wax will rub off onto the towels.  I’ll let you know how it goes before I can recommend it.

Here’s proof that I’m a sawing monkey.  The compound sliding mitre saw is my new favorite toy.

A lot of things on my Honey-Do list have been transferred to my own list now that I have some skills.