cooly house

Of all the styles I like, of all the things I find beautiful and cool and awesome and exciting, I will have to say that the log-cabin is the number one for me. Do you know that store, Outdoor World? It is this giant mega mart of fishing and hunting crap, crazy tents and grills and boats and acorn shirts for Grandmas, but the whole thing in there just gets me so excited. I want to "do" my house up like that. I want a bed with big huge logs for the frame of it. I want log couch, too. Log walls. Wood floors. Massive amounts of money spent on feeding and enjoying and listening to the birds, identifying them, recording it all down, encouraging them to nest and stay all year. On my log couch with my special sitting nook and coffee coffee coffee and tea tea tea and yeah hell yeah the new agey tribal flutes Cd, too-- all of it. The Oak leaf fleece blanket on my slippered feet. A mountain retreat?

Ok so what about the high rise and IKEA and pink neon plastic JPop ornaments and Chinese paper star lanterns and the Bubble Chair and post modern modern 3 story deluxe apartment in da sky? I don't think they are mutually exclusive. At all.

So the closest to my dream would be the kinda stuff you see on maybe Extreme Homes or something, even though none of it is very crazy. I want beauty and peace and woodsy modernism. Like Cardinals and acorns but drawn in a cool way.

Birdie

http://www.zacandzoe.com/misc/zzonebird.html
See this? Why is it so expensive? i think I want to make some cutey little calico birds for decorations/toys and I might use these for inspiration. Cute, right? Rediculous what some people will pay for things.

So cute new blankies

I have a thing for winter-symbolism. Snowflakes, especially. Any time of the year, the darling and precious snowflake on a plate, a cup, a sweater, a hand towel, or a BLANKET, and I am just giddy. So adorable and appealing are the pictographic images that surround not necessarily Christmas, but winter, and I am just ga-ga.

So guess what I got? The yummiest, fluffy-puffiest, deep and warm and utterly GORGEOUS bedding set from Target last night! My sweet sweet people from the Friday night gang at work chipped in and got me a Target gift card--such an unexpected surprise, especially the nice thing they wrote in the card--sniff! sniff!-- and I high tailed it to the nearest Target and bought this fantastical thing. Comforter and 2 pillowcases. Flannel. Coolest color scheme. SO thick--did I even know I wanted a thick quilt, per se? Well, lemme tell ya this bed is SICK now, how it beckons me! I really cant even look in my room when I visit the bathroom oh so many times a day because like a magnet, this "new bed" SUCKS ME IN with its soft and fluffy beauty.

Thank you, sweet curling club Friday people, and thank you Target for selling something so high quality and gorgeous for $29.99. My bedroom is so glorious now, I am going to go jump in immediately! G'night! Off to puffyville!

Seasonal complaints

My whole family is drying up! They are thirsty and have the driest skin. I chase them around with lip balms and ice waters and bought super expensive cracked-skin cream. Arggg. We need a humidifier but I picture it not working and the little ones dumping it or drinking it or worse. Winter can be a pain. I like it, alot, in theory, but it is just a PAIN. In summer, it is hot and you always feel sticky and gross and flithy, but at least there isn't all this huge MAINTENANCE the second you wake up, you know? In winter, t is just so much WORK to feel like you have it together. It is the opposite of relaxed-island living.

I wake up and immediately I am FREEZING and have to put on a huge outfit. Long sleeved shirt, sweater, jeans, socks, shoes, and then run to go pee! My lips are split and I am super thirsty and cold. I cant bear the idea of going out to the kitchen shivering and tense, and all the household chores seem much harder. The kids don't want to get up, and when they do, they seem to always be barefoot and i pester them to get some socks on, NOW. I HATE seeing their little red feet with crumbs on them--- YUCK. I want everyone to be totally dressed, even down to shoes. I get uptight when it is cold. It is my parenting/protecting thing coming out. I feel much less tolerant of relaxed/lazy stuff and want hot meals to be eaten properly, at the table, and then cleaned. No summery treats all over the place. If my kids liked this stuff, it would be oatmeal for breakfast, soup for lunch, chili or stew or lasagna for dinner, cocoa for bedtime. Baths for all children, slather them all from head to toe in the expensive medical cream, pass around the chapstick, 4 sippy cups of ice water, and in footie pajamas asleep by 7:30pm. Too bad I'm never even home anymore at night.

So what is it about winter that I supposedly like? It is pretty. when we have what we need in the house, which feels like never, we can be cozy and safe. We can sled, in theory, but we don't get deep snow like we used to, and it is an ORDEAL to put it mildly. Maybe this year Steve can come with us--but we never have boots of our own, only the kids do....last year Charlie couldn't walk so I concluded that he was too little to sled so he stayed home with Daddy.

We could ice skate but we don't know how and it seems difficult/impossible to teach 4 kids to skate at the same time if i cant skate. This would be a good situation for a helping adult friend. We have an ice arena very close by....

In theory we could have jaunty laughing friends over for jaunty laughing hot drinks and movie nights....this one does sound quite good....

I like to wear big cozy clothes that make me feel cute and not like my lard is spraying out. Summer time is a gross time of armpits flying out and hyper leg hair maintenance and dry-spot-on-your-foot-shame marketing pressure and i resent all that. That stuff ruins summer. In winter I can wear my jeans and long sleeved t shirts and look cute and feel nice and protected, not like I am in some swimsuit competition everytime I go to the grocery store.

I like to cook and bake and have it be a good thing that the oven heats up the whole kitchen, not a torture fest.

I guess all I am actually trying to say is winter and summer suck and I like fall. Taking care of four children in extreme temperatures is much much harder than when it is nice out.

:)

Battling the brrr

Wow, did we ever get close to doing something rather hasty. We were --this close-- to moving just because we have some ideas about simple living and thought that we HAD to live in a tiny tiny cabin to live simply--and mostly, because our gas heating bills were so high last year and we thought with our big, old, inefficient furnace, and our long, big (for us) drafty house, there was no hope. But we can do simple living here, and we have made lots of strides in this area, even if all the work has been majorly curtailed by me working most nights, we are still on track. It costs about $2000 to move and we dont have it. Plus it is really really really alot of work to re-set up a home life. With little children, it is so much more than just unpacking stuff when you can. It is major disruption of schedules and lots of negative fallout as a result that takes months if not longer to recover from. Sounds kinda like a nightmare right now.

So here is my new stance on the heat-bill thing: The Man cant chase me from my home. Can I honestly say we did EVERYTHING we could last year to keep the bills their lowest? No.

The new plans:

We will discontinue all use of our "3 season room" which connects our driveway to our home. You can park in the driveway but then you have to come to the front door. There is no overnight parking on our street, so oh well. Walk 100 feet and get over it. (These mean words being directed at myself not my visitors!)

We will lock and put down blankets/towels in front of the door that leads to this room and will not go in there unless extremely necessary. For those of you who remember me saying it was going to be our homeschool gym, well, we just cant afford any play toys at all although we got a slide a few months ago, we can put it in the kids' bedroom and be "fun-parents" until spring.

We will put on the storm windows AND the blow-dryer plastic treatment on EVERY window in the house. We will put down rolled up blankets in front of every door that leads to the outside. We will lay down rugs and wear shoes and socks or slippers from the time we wake up until bedtime.

We are going to start using space heaters, as well. These are not dangerous as people are lead to believe, they are small and cheap and efficient and they all have no-tip sensors inside so they instantly turn off when and if they get knocked over. We only use 2 bedrooms for sleeping, so we could theoretically turn the heat OFF at night, or way down. Daddy gets up early to go to work and, like the olden times only much much easier, he could be the one to turn on/up the heat.

We could theoretically use 4 or 5 little space heaters at different times and not use gas heat hardly at all. I already use cold to wash clothes and we don't have a dishwasher. So it would be heating our baths and showers only, and somewhat our home. We are on a "payment plan" with the electric company anyhow, we pay $104 a month so we could use the electric space heaters without too much worry.

I think back to what people used to have to do in the mornings in the way of chopping wood out in the snow, using outhouses, milking freezing cows and goats, lighting fires, and I think we are wimpy pathetic people nowadays. I have no interest in "freezing" all day, nor wearing hats in the house or anything so sad or extreme. But with the money saved from not living the way we did last winter, we could definitely afford six pairs of slippers or a fireplace guard (we only do fires at night because Charlie can walk right into our fireplace, it is right at floor level.)

Thank you, Mom for helping us out last year when we got our gas bill for $800. It won't happen again!